EUROVISION 2025 is being staged in Switzerland, where the very first Song Contest was held in 1956, and the UK’s entry was officially revealed in March.
The country-pop trio, made up of members Lauren Byrne, Holly-Anne Hull and Charlotte Steele, may be new to Eurovision, but this isn’t the first time they’ve performed on a big stage.
Joining Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2, band member Lauren Bryne explained: “We met at sixth form college a few years ago and, essentially, we always had free periods on a Monday which is when we just used to get together and sing.
Lauren continued: ”That turned into us singing every single day of the week and not going to our classes and our teacher used to come and find us in random spare classrooms and knock on the door and be like, ‘Girls are you coming into class today?’ and we were like, ‘No Jenny, we’re just going to stay in here, sorry!’
“So we did that for years and years and it kind of became a little in joke that it was always happening on a Monday so that’s where Remember Monday was born and, yeah, about a year and a bit ago, we packed in the day job and went full time and it’s going OK! [laughs]. Here we are.”
Remember Monday performing on The Voice in 2019Credit: ITV
It has also been revealed that the trio will be performing their song What The Hell Just Happened? at the song contest.
The song, which chronicles the aftermath of a night out with friends, has been described as an ”upbeat pop track full of energy, excitement and drama”.
While talking about their upcoming Eurovision entry, Remember Monday explained: ”What The Hell Just Happened is exactly how we’re feeling right now!
”It’s all very surreal; our friendship goes so far back, and we definitely never imagined that we’d be doing anything like this.
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The group will be performing their song What The Hell Just Happened?Credit: Instagram
”When you’re a kid and people ask you what you want to be when you grow up, an absolute classic is “I wanna be a pop star”, so the fact that we’re getting the chance to live that dream as three best friends is just wild.
”We’re going to be the first girl band to represent the UK since 1999, which feels like such a crazy honour.
”We’re going to bring loads of fun, energy and hopefully do something that you won’t have seen before on the Eurovision stage.
”We honestly can’t wait to experience this with all of the other incredible artists from around the world, and hopefully make everyone back at home feel proud!
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Remember Monday performed at major UK events including Country to Country, The Long Road and Buckle and BootsCredit: Splash
”This is really the music World Cup and we’ll do our best to bring it home!”
More Eurovision entries
The UK’s Eurovision entry for 2025 is not the only one confirmed.
Malta will also be represented at the Eurovision Song Contest, however, the title of singerMiriana Conte’s tune has sparked a huge row – because it sounds like a rude word.
She has been ordered to change it following ”a report submitted by an EBU member — understood to be the BBC”, sources say.
Following the news, Miriana took to Instagram and wrote: ”While I’m shocked and disappointed, especially since we have less than a week to submit the song, I promise you this: the show will go on — Diva NOT down.”
President Trump’s choice of Dr. Casey Means, a Los Angeles holistic medicine doctor and wellness influencer, as his nominee for surgeon general appears to mark another attempt to defy establishment medicine and longstanding federal policy.
Trump portrayed Means — a 37-year-old Stanford medical school graduate and author who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “former surgeon turned metabolic health evangelist” — in his announcement as fully in sync with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mission to “Make America Healthy Again.”
“Casey has impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social.
But some who know Means question whether she is completely aligned with Kennedy.
Robert Lustig, professor emeritus of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at UC San Francisco, who is a friend of Means, told The Times he was shocked and surprised.
“What’s surprising to me is that she wanted the job, because she had difficulties adopting RFK’s full portfolio,” Lustig said, citing Kennedy’s controversial pronouncements on vaccines and fluoride in public water supplies. “She didn’t want to be part of the administration, in part because she couldn’t accede to those views. So what has changed is not clear.”
Means did not respond to requests for comment. Still, she celebrated in February when Kennedy was sworn in, saying on an X post that “his vision of the future aligns with what I want for my family, future children, and the world.”
Over the last year, she has raised public concerns about some vaccines. In August, she spoke out on X against CDC guidelines that all infants should receive a dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth.
“The idea of giving a newborn the hepatitis B vaccine (followed by 2 additional doses) if the baby is born to parents *without hepatitis B* is absolute insanity and should make every American pause and question the healthcare system’s mandates,” she said.
“I have said innumerable times publicly I think vaccine mandates are criminal,” she said on X in November.
But when Lustig spoke to Means four weeks ago, he told The Times, Means had left her home in Pacific Palisades, worried about toxic air and water after the L.A.-area wildfires, and had moved to Hawaii. He said she wanted to start a family and did not express interest in working with Kennedy at the time.
“I know that her views are not his — that’s why she didn’t accept it earlier,” Lustig said. “If you’re an employee, you have to take the whole portfolio. You don’t get to choose parts of it, and she was uncomfortable.”
The president announced Means as his pick a day before his initial choice for the position, New York family physician and Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat, was scheduled to have a hearing with senators Thursday.
Trump has yet to explain why Nesheiwat was replaced as his nominee, but he said she would work at the Department of Health and Human Services in “another capacity.”
The U.S. surgeon general is known as “the nation’s doctor.” According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the role is to provide Americans with “the best advice on how to improve their health, by issuing advisories, reports and calls to action to offer the best available scientific information on crucial issues.”
Lustig said he had no doubt Means — whom he got to know by advising Levels Health, a digital metabolic health company she co-founded — would bring a different perspective to the U.S. government.
“Here’s the problem: We have an epidemic of chronic disease and there are no medicines that fix any of these diseases,” Lustig said. “They’re not fixable by drugs. They’re fixable by food. And the reason is because all of these diseases are mitochondrial diseases, and we don’t have drugs that get to the mitochondria.
“We have to change the food supply,” he added. “There is no option. Casey knows that. So as surgeon general, she would be able to make that case.”
In that sense, Lustig agreed with Trump, who said, “Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”
“I think she’s a terrific person,” Lustig said. “She will bring a very different mindset to the office.”
But Lustig said he believed Kennedy was flat out wrong on vaccines.
“I know why he’s wrong on vaccines,” he said. “I understand where his brain is, because I got a half hour with him on the phone, one on one. But I cannot alter my integrity to match that — and I thought that Casey couldn’t either.”
Means is an unorthodox pick for a president famed for his diet of Big Macs and Diet Cokes.
Her website features pictures of broccoli and almonds. Her Instagram page shows bright bowls of tofu scrambles with heirloom tomatoes, avocado and beet sauerkraut.
Her newsletter recounts how, at the age of 35, after she moved to L.A., she embraced the “woo woo (aka, the mystery),” set up a meditation shrine in her home and sought relationship advice from trees.
Means was raised in Washington, D.C., the daughter of mildly religious, Republican parents. Her Californian-born father, Grady Means, a retired American business executive and government official, served in the White House as assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, led the Food and Nutrition Task Force to reform the food stamp program and provided oversight to the National Health Insurance Experiment.
After graduating from Stanford Medical School, Means was 4½ years into a five-year residency to be a head and neck surgeon at Oregon Health & Science University when she dropped out, disillusioned with the healthcare system.
“During my training as a surgeon, I saw how broken and exploitative the healthcare system is and left to focus on how to keep people out of the operating room,” she says on her website.
“The reason she quit was because she saw that the same patients were coming back with the same problems, and her mentors, the faculty at Stanford, when she would ask, ‘Why is this happening?’ would say, ‘Shut up and operate,’” Lustig said.
“She had a crisis of confidence that she was actually not helping the problem, or was actually part of the system that was actually making the problems.”
In 2019, Means co-founded Levels Health, which works to “empower individuals to radically optimize their health and wellbeing by providing real-time continuous glucose biofeedback.”
Two years later, her break with establishment medicine became more intense — and more personal — when her mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“What put her over the edge was when her mother passed away of pancreatic cancer, and it was missed,” Lustig said. “She had all the symptoms and signs of metabolic syndrome in her and none of her doctors addressed any of them.”
Means served as Levels Health’s chief medical officer until last year, when she and her brother, Calley, published a 400-page diet and self-help book titled “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.”
In August, she catapulted to mainstream fame — particularly on the right — when Tucker Carlson featured her and her brother on his podcast for a show titled “How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick, and the Dark Truth About Ozempic and the Pill.”
“The system is rigged against the American patient to create diseases and then profit off of them,” Means told Carlson.
Over the last few months, Means and her brother, who now serves as a White House health advisor, made public appearances at “Make America Healthy Again” events.
In September, she addressed a U.S. Senate roundtable on chronic disease listing all the things she didn’t learn in medical school: “For each additional serving of ultra-processed food we eat,” she said, “early mortality increases by 18%.”
Critics were quick to take to X to mock her statistics.
“I’ve easily had 1000 bags of chips in my life,” said Brad Stulberg, adjunct clinical assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan’s School of Health. “If this is true, it means my mortality risk has increased by 18,000 percent. That seems unlikely.”
Washington, DC – Jewish students involved in protests at Columbia University say their pro-Palestinian activism is driven by their faith – not in spite of it.
On Tuesday, a group of Jewish student activists met with members of the United States Congress in Washington, DC, to tell their stories, which they say have been left out of mainstream narratives about anti-Semitism on college campuses.
As student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza swept the country last year, Columbia University in New York became a flashpoint.
The university saw one of the first student encampments in the country, erected to demand an end to investments in companies complicit in human rights abuses. Shortly after the tents started popping up, the campus also witnessed some of the first mass arrests of student protesters in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
That visibility has made Columbia a focal point for President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on what he called “illegal protests” and campus anti-Semitism.
Earlier this year, Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil became the first student activist to be detained by the Trump administration and targeted for deportation.
Tuesday’s delegation of Jewish students came to Congress to push the case that Khalil and others like him should never have been detained in their name. They met with at least 17 Democratic legislators from both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Al Jazeera spoke to several students who participated in the lobbying day, which was organised by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, an advocacy organisation. Here are some of their stories:
Tali Beckwith-Cohen
Raised in upstate New York, history major Tali Beckwith-Cohen said she grew up in a community where Zionism was the norm. She remembers being told “myths” about Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”: a slogan used to justify the establishment of Israel.
But as she began to learn Palestinian history and meet Palestinians, Beckwith-Cohen said her beliefs were challenged.
Eventually, after the war in Gaza began in October 2023, she became involved in Palestinian rights activism.
Human rights groups and United Nations experts have found evidence that Israel’s tactics in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”. More than 52,615 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far.
“For a long time, I had this kind of feeling of discomfort, this feeling of wrestling, this feeling of maybe cognitive dissonance, and how can I reckon these values I hold dear with Zionism?” Beckwith-Cohen told Al Jazeera.
“We are seeing the bombing, the disregard for human life, for children, for hospitals, for schools. It forced me to make a choice.”
She stressed that the protests were spaces of solidarity, where students of all backgrounds were committed to the idea that their safety is intertwined.
“There’s so much in the media narrative about what’s happening on Columbia campus that is just disingenuous and just so untrue to what we’ve experienced,” Beckwith-Cohen said.
“So we’re here today to tell our Congress people that what we’re seeing on campus is clearly an authoritarian, fascist crackdown on all dissent, not only students peacefully advocating for an end to genocide.”
Student activists Carly Shaffer and Raphie on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 6 [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Carly Shaffer
When Carly Shaffer voiced concern about the Israeli escalation in Gaza on a university WhatsApp chat, some of her fellow students questioned her Judaism.
Out of the hundreds of people on the chat, she remembers that Khalil – the activist arrested for deportation – was the only person who contacted her directly to reject the comments she was subjected to.
As she got to know Khalil, she came to view him as the “embodiment” of someone who cared about the safety of all students on campus.
Shaffer told Al Jazeera that she felt “sick” and “horrified” when Khalil was arrested. Her discomfort was then compounded when she saw that the Trump White House celebrated his detention on social media with the phrase “Shalom, Mahmoud” – a Jewish greeting repurposed as a taunt.
Shaffer, who is pursuing a master’s degree in human rights and social policy, grew up in California and was raised by a single mother in a low-income household.
She said speaking out against injustice – including in Palestine – is a practice rooted in her Jewish faith.
“The Columbia protest movement, it’s a movement of love. It’s a movement of solidarity,” Shaffer said. “And Jewish students are also integral and crucial to this movement.”
She said that, when Jewish student protesters held religious events on campus, their peers from the encampment joined them and inquired about their traditions.
“These are the same students who are being portrayed as anti-Semites, who are going out of their way to go and learn about Passover and celebrate a Jewish holiday with their Jewish friends,” Shaffer told Al Jazeera.
She decried the “weaponisation of anti-Semitism”, saying that the issue is being used to shut down conversations about Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
“Jewish students are being used as pawns in Trump’s political agenda,” she said. “And the weaponisation of anti-Semitism to dismantle this movement is not just a threat to Jewish students; it’s a threat to all of us. That’s why it is so important for us as Jewish students to directly correct this false narrative.”
Sarah Borus says Trump is using the fear of anti-Semitism to target non-citizens and free speech in the US [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Sarah Borus
Barnard College student Sarah Borus, who was arrested during the crackdown on the Columbia encampment, said she grew up in an anti-Zionist family in a “very Zionist community”.
She felt it was important for Jewish students like herself to convey their experiences directly to the people in power in Washington, DC.
“We’re talking to members of Congress to tell them our stories that are left out of mainstream news,” Borus told Al Jazeera.
“Trump’s mission is not about protecting Jewish students. It is about using fears of anti-Semitism – because of the way that the Gaza solidarity encampment was portrayed last year – in order to target non-citizen student activists, in order to target academic freedom, free speech, and really put many, many people in danger.”
When asked how she feels about the potential backlash to her activism, Borus acknowledged that the current political climate left her fearful.
“I’m scared, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m proud of the choices I have made,” she said. “I would not make any different ones, and I am willing to take on the risks, if that’s what must be done.”
Shay Orentlicher says student protests have helped shift the public discourse in the US [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Shay Orentlicher
Shay Orentlicher has no regrets about participating in Columbia University’s encampments, despite the administrative and political crackdowns.
Orentlicher said Christian nationalists are trying to erase the perspective of pro-Palestine Jewish students and define Judaism in a way that fits their political purposes.
But protesting against the killing of Palestinians, Orentlicher said, is an expression of both Jewish and humanist values. And Orentlicher believes that Columbia’s demonstrations have helped raise awareness nationwide.
“Despite the oppression we have faced, despite the suffering, and despite the despair of worrying that we have not done enough to stop the genocide, to stand up for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, I think we have shifted the public discourse in a really important way,” Orentlicher said.
“And we also have built a really beautiful community. And I don’t regret what I did at all. I wouldn’t change anything.”
Raphie
Raphie, who chose to identify by his first name only, said he grew up “very Zionist”. But as he learned more about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, he felt he had been deceived.
“The Jewish elementary school I went to, for instance, had a map of Israel, and it was like a diamond – no West Bank or Gaza on it,” he said.
“When I saw the actual map with the occupied territories, I was like, ‘Wait, I was lied to.’ And that kind of made me go on this whole journey of exploring what Zionism is, what occupation is, what settler colonialism is.”
Raphie, who is studying maths, said the war on Gaza, the campus protests and the backlash the student protesters faced all made him feel a “personal responsibility to fight for what is right”.
In his experience, the demonstrations were welcoming, not anti-Semitic. What was anti-Semitic, he said, was the fact that the university targeted Jewish student protesters for their political views.
Several students, including Raphie, said Columbia refused to grant students associated with Jewish Voice for Peace the permission necessary to hold religious celebrations in public spaces. They described that rejection as a form of discrimination.
The university did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Raphie also drew a distinction between feeling uncomfortable about ideas that challenge one’s worldview and actually being unsafe.
“It’s normal in college to encounter new viewpoints, new perspectives. That’s how I became more pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist,” he said. “I initially felt uncomfortable when I encountered anti-Zionist views, but then I grew to understand them. That’s normal.”
Raphie stressed that the real suffering is happening in Gaza.
“The students who are not safe right now, of course, are the students in Gaza. Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. They haven’t had food for 60 days.”
May 6 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Tuesday a week after Carney’s Liberal Party succeeded in elections considered to be influenced by Trump’s comments and economic moves made against Canada.
“Canada and the United States are strongest when we work together and that work starts now,” Carney posted to X Monday after his plane touched down in Washington.
The post was a follow-up to what Carney said Friday in regard to Tuesday’s meeting, that they would “focus on addressing immediate trade pressures” and “the future economic and security relationship between our two sovereign nations.”
The Trump administration placed a 25% import tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA trade agreement on March 4, which Trump called a punitive move based on allegations that Canada hadn’t properly stopped the entry of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. Canada responded with tariffs on many American goods.
Canada’s Liberal Party rode a wave of anti-American sentiment led vociferously by Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, who has described Trump’s actions as a “betrayal” and a fundamental shift in the U.S.-Canada relationship.
Trump has also soured the relationship between the two countries by repeatedly commenting that he is interested in annexing Canada to become a U.S. State.
He posted to his Truth Social account on APril 28 when Carney was announced the election winner, that duties would disappear and taxes would be halved “if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America.”
“America can no longer subsidize Canada with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we have been spending in the past,” and that “It makes no sense unless Canada is a state,” Trump wrote.
During his victory speech, Carney told the crowd that Trump’s comments weren’t “idle threats,” and that “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen.”
Hanwha Group Vice
Chairman Kim Dong-kwan, second from right, explains the conglomerate’s
shipbuilding facilities to US Navy Secretary John Phelan, far right, at Hanwha’s
Geoje shipyard in South Korea, Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Hanwha Ocean
May 3 (UPI) — South Korea’s defense industry is gaining global interest, as demonstrated by high-profile visits from U.S. figures like Donald Trump Jr., who met with business leaders in Seoul Tuesday. Reportedly, among them was Hanwha Group Vice Chairman Kim Dong-kwan.
Vice Chairman Kim also hosted US Navy Secretary John Phelan Wednesday at Hanwha’s shipyard in Geoje, roughly 200miles southeast of Seoul.
“Working with leading shipyards like Hanwha Ocean Shipbuilding and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is essential to ensuring deployed U.S. ships and systems remain fully operational in the Indo-Pacific,” Secretary Phelan said.
“Leveraging the expertise of these highly capable shipyards enables timely maintenance and repairs for our vessels to operate at peak performance. This level of large-scale repair and maintenance capability strengthens our combat readiness, sustains forward deployed operational presence, and reinforces regional stability,” he stated
Observers point out that such visits reflect growing global recognition of South Korea’s defense capabilities.
Hanwha Group operates such subsidiaries as Hanwha Aerospace, known for the K9 self-propelled howitzers, and Hanwha Ocean, a manufacturer of warships and submarines.
As the eldest son of Chairman Kim Seung-youn, Vice Chairman Kim is regarded as the heir apparent of South Korea’s seventh-largest conglomerate.
“For the United States, South Korea is indispensable to reviving its shipbuilding industry, as President Donald Trump has stressed,” Seoul-based consultancy Leaders Index CEO Park Ju-gun told UPI.
“Washington is likely to seek South Korea’s capital and technology as the country is a global leader in naval vessel construction. Hanwha Ocean is well-positioned, having already invested in the U.S. last year,” he said.
In June 2024, Hanwha Ocean and its sister company channeled $100 million to acquire Philly Shipyard, which has delivered about half of the large U.S. Jones Act commercial ships since 2000.
Hanwha Ocean was soon awarded a maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) contract for the U.S. Navy’s dry cargo and ammunition ship Wally Schirra.
The task was completedin Geoje and Hanwha Ocean is now working on another MRO deal for USNS Yukon, a replenishment oiler assigned to the Navy’s 7th Fleet.
Beyond the U.S., the traditional weapons of South Korea gained popularity after the war between Russia and Ukraine started in early 2022.
According to South Korea’s defense ministry, arms exports more than doubled from $7.73 billion in 2021 to $17.3 billion in 2022. The figure dropped to $13 billion in 2023 and $9.5 billion last year, but is projected to rebound to $24 billion this year in consideration of ongoing negotiations with multiple countries.
In addition to Hanwha, several other South Korean defense corporations have proactively entered the global market, including Hyundai Rotem, Korea Aerospace Industries, LIG Nex1, and HD Hyundai.
“South Korean firms are favored by global buyers for their quick delivery and cost-effectiveness, the advantages shaped by the country’s continued weapons production amid North Korean threats,” Jeonbuk National University professor Jang Won-joon said in a phone interview.
“Their international rivals are also trying to expand facilities to better meet demand. Against this backdrop, South Korean players will need to innovate to maintain their edge in the long run,” he commented.
However, some critics take issue with the Seoul administration’s lack of transparency in arms exports.
“The Korean government vows to become one of the world’s top four arms exporters. Yet, it does not disclose related information transparently,” attorney Lim Jae-sung noted in a local newspaper column.
World-renowned master cue craftsman John Parris tells BBC Sport’s Daniel Austin about producing cues for top snooker players such as Ronnie O’Sullivan.
Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis has diluted his control of the club in preparation for Champions League qualification.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, has strict rules regarding multi-club ownership models such as the one Marinakis heads up.
In addition to owning Forest, the Greek businessman also controls Greek team Olympiakos, as well as Portuguese side Rio Ave.
Forest and Olympiakos are both on course to qualify for next season’s Champions League, a prospect that would contravene Uefa’s rules that state clubs under the same ownership cannot compete in the same European competition.
Documents filed at Companies House show that Marinakis has ceased to become a “person with significant control” of NF Football Investments Limited, the vehicle that owns the City Ground club.
