You travel 2,000 miles for a chance at a better life, only to arrive at your destination and realise that everything works almost exactly the same way it did at home: Coming out as a homosexual refugee in Germany is out of the question. Those guys are still afraid of exactly the same people they feared at home.

Online, when chatting or setting up dates, he calls himself Alex. He keeps his real name a secret because Alex is from Syria; he's a refugee and he's gay. Even in Germany, where he is supposedly safe, Alex doesn't have the courage to come out.

Getting in touch with Alex wasn't easy. It took me several weeks to get his cell phone number and organise a meeting. We eventually met in Bochum in western Germany. He's a burly guy in his early thirties with brown hair and a meticulous haircut. He's wearing simple jeans and a dark jacket; he has the stature of a bouncer, yet he comes across as timid, even shy. He gives me a quick handshake.

The problem now is that a lot of people from my country have also made it to Germany. - Alex, Syrian refugee

Alex fled Syria because of the war but also because his colleagues accidentally found out he's gay, which is an absolute deal breaker in his family. The problem now is that "a lot of people from my country have also made it to Germany. And they brought their views about gay people with them. They still reject us," Alex says.

Alex sits on the edge of the sofa – he speaks quietly but he is also open and thorough. Before leaving Syria, he studied economics and worked in a luxury hotel frequented by foreigners. He earned his own money and met other gay men once in a while. Being gay is illegal in Syria, with offenders facing at least three years in prison.

Alex keeps asking me to make sure that his real name won't be used in this article. His siblings also live in Germany and it's imperative that they don't find out about his orientation because his family would disown him immediately.

Asylum seekers reach Europe by means of the Balkan route or the Mediterranean. And they some times carry with them the objectionable convictions of their home countries. According to Alex, most Arabs are conservative: "They're disgusted by gays. They say we need to rid society of these 'germs'."

WATCH: The Struggles of LGBT People in One of Europe's Most Homophobic Countries

The situation is particularly bad in refugee shelters, where complete strangers are jammed together in tiny places. As recently reported in Berlin and in Dresden, gay men and women face daily discrimination even in those spaces. However when it comes to episodes of violence most of the cases go unreported, according to representatives from the various LGBT groups I spoke to. Still, Berlin is the first German state to do something in reaction to these attacks. According to Berliner Morgenpost, there are plans for a separate shelter that will exclusively house homosexual and transexual refugees.

At the moment, Alex is living in his own apartment in western Germany – he prefers it that way as it affords him a certain level of freedom. Most of the people he hangs out with, both Germans and refugees, don't have a clue that he's homosexual.

He mostly socialises with other gay refugees at the Rosa Strippe counselling centre in Bochum, where there is a weekly meeting set up for that exact reason. Nicole Ulrich, a professional counselor, is always present. One of her responsibilities is to make sure everyone is aware of the mores in their new home – the fact that in Germany you can be open about your sexuality, for instance, or that you can hold your partner's hand in public. "People need to learn about the freedom Germany offers," Ulrich says.

She also advises Alex and the others on another delicate point – their asylum applications. According to EU law, "facing persecution for being homosexual" is a reason to be granted asylum, in the same way that " being persecuted for your political beliefs" is. However, it's often much harder to see this through in practice because the central question becomes, 'how do I prove that I'm homosexual?'

Those who are persecuted for their sexuality are not only afraid but also often ashamed. They are likely to appear hesitant during the asylum interviews and then get entangled in contradictions, which often affects the result of their asylum request. - Claus Jetz, Cologne Gay and Lesbian Association

It all comes down to the individual interviews conducted by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, which is part of each asylum seeker's process. The result of the application is largely based on whether the administrator finds each story believable.

Political refugees often carry official files that prove that they were persecuted in their country of origin – and many of them are proud of this proof. People who flee their homes because of their sexuality, on the other hand, officially fall into a different category – it's called " being part of a persecuted social group". This means that their human rights have been infringed on and that they've been discriminated against.

"Those who are persecuted for their sexuality are not only afraid but also often ashamed" says Claus Jetz from Cologne's Gay and Lesbian Association. "That means that they are likely to appear hesitant during the asylum interviews and then get entangled in contradictions. That is partly because most of them have had bad experiences with administrators, police and interpreters back home. They will hem and haw around and think up other reasons to apply for asylum. Sadly, the result is that often they don't come across as believable and are therefore threatened with deportation."

To the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, "believable" means "a concrete and convincing submission of facts with exact details." Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out that human dignity must always be considered.

Evidence such as videos and pictures was forbidden by the European Union in 2014. Before that, the Czech Republic used phallometric tests to determine whether someone was gay. Now even intimate questions are forbidden – at least in theory. According to Nicole Ulrich, these are still quite common: "The methods of questioning are in fact rather questionable. To my knowledge, applicants have been asked to explain how their sexuality works under repugnant conditions." For that reason, LGBT organisations are demanding better education for both the interviewers as well as the interpreters.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees does not register how many people apply for asylum citing their sexuality as the reason they faced persecution back home. But they do observe countries of origin. In Iran for example, the situation is clear – homosexuals face a death sentence. But the situation gets more complicated with other countries. For instance, the criteria on which the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs judges a country as safe or unsafe are unclear. They consider both Ghana and Senegal to be "Safe Countries of Origin", even though homosexuality is illegal in both. I did reach out to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a comment but did not get a response.

Alex from Syria has just had his asylum application interview, during which he says he didn't tell the whole truth either. He talked about the Syrian civil war and only made vague references to being part of a "persecuted social group". He said no word about him being gay – which means that he could be sent back as soon as the civil war ends.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

Always a bit awkward when a top secret email leaks, isn't it. In the latest episode of Politicians Not Caring That Much, a message from a Conservative member of Portsmouth city council got out in which he suggested smearing a local anti-domestic violence charity and feminist group Sisters Uncut. In the email, Councillor Scott Harris set out his plans to attack Shonagh Dillion, the chief executive of Aurora New Dawn, a Portsmouth domestic violence support charity, as well as the local chapter of Sisters Uncut.

The email says, "The elections are coming...quite frankly, it might be a good idea to play dirty this time." Bizarrely, as if he's the star of a shit low-budget political drama, he goes on to promise that he's "compiling some stuff on Shonagh Dillion, Aurora New Dawn, and Sisters Uncut".

We wondered why a small-time politician wanted to attack a charity who are doing vital work to keep women in abuse relationships alive so we spoke to Emily* from Sister's Uncut.

VICE: Hey Emily. What was your reaction to seeing the email?
Sisters Uncut: Our reaction was basically disgust. We know that two women a week in England and Wales die as a result of domestic violence which is why we're doing what we're doing to help save domestic abuse services across the country, which includes this service in Portsmouth which is currently facing £180,000 worth of cuts. It's pretty disgusting that his response to that is to play politics with women's lives.

£180,000 seems a lot to cut in one small city...
That money covers the Early Intervention Project in Portsmouth which has won awards. It would completely cut the whole project which includes more than a dozen staff members who'd lose their jobs. These are workers who are highly specialised; it's not just something anyone can do. It would cut the support that exists for doctors and social workers to get specialist advice from domestic violence professionals if they needed it.

Why were you specifically targeted by this bloke?
We were contacted by activists and workers in Portsmouth who had found out about these proposals and were devastated. At the moment we're a London-based group but we are growing. We worked in conjunction with them to stage direct action at the council meeting which was discussing these cuts. We shut it down with a banner drop saying that cutting these services kills women. Interestingly, the result of that was that all the Conservative councillors ran from the chamber. They couldn't face being confronted with the truth of what they're doing. It's not just resources, this is women and children's lives.

So that sparked the smear campaign?
From the emails that we've seen, basically in order to win the battle against us, he's willing to dig up dirt on us, see what he could find. I guess that'd make us look bad and him and them look better.

What's your response to his email going to be?
It's definitely made us more determined to do our work not just in Portsmouth but everywhere there are people who are angry or cuts to domestic violence services. We understand that the leader of Portstmouth Council has said that she won't be disciplining him, she's drawing a line under it and he's issued apologies to everyone involved. We certainly haven't received an apology. Actually, the only apology we would accept would be a fully-funded specialist domestic violence services in Portsmouth.

Is that where you're focussing your energies at the moment, expanding outside of the capital?
We've got several groups that are starting up across the country. We're looking at how we can go from a London-based activist group to a mass movement. Ever since our first direct action we've been getting emails from women across the country asking us about what's happening. Survivors of domestic violence, workers in the sector and just people who can see what's happening in this country and are angry.

@hannahrosewens

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Refugees in the Calais "Jungle". On Monday David Cameron warned that we could see scenes like this in England if we leave the EU (Photo by Jake Lewis)

On Monday, David Cameron came out with the full frighteners. The tomato ketchup blood, the joke shop fangs. Vote for Britain to stay in the EU or the puppet gets it.

Migrants, he said. Thousands of them. Living in the fields of southern England. Just like they now live in Calais. All because Britain's idiot voters abandoned the EU mothership in their referendum. Cameron was right that if the Le Touquet Treaty Britain signed with France in 2002 were to be revoked, it would mean that migrants could just buy a ferry ticket to Britain (they can't right now because as a result of the Treaty, Britain begins at the Calais port). It's just that – as many "No" campaigners were happy to point out – the Le Touquet Treaty has nothing to do with the EU. It's only between Britain and France. Exactly the sort of treaty we'll need more of if we leave.

But if this was the first of many scaremongering stories, then what are the many? After the Scottish referendum, politicians understand that people vote for the option that seems least uncertain and scary. So where's the Project Fear of the EU vote? Which big scares are we going to be seeing from both sides in the coming months of lies and damned lies?

THE TRAVEL NIGHTMARE

Could travelling to Europe become more difficult? (Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete)

The end of EU membership would mean the end of restriction-free travel within the EU.

THE SCARE
Picture every Brit who wants to hop the Eurostar having to take a half-day holiday to visit the French embassy, offer thumb-prints, spittle, letters of reference and several thousand pounds in surety, like, say Russian citizens have to if they want to visit Britain. Imagine the French border cop presently lazily swiping your passport through his machine transforming into a Gallic version of the crew-cut Robocops at JFK who always want to know what the purpose of your visit is sir, what you had for breakfast the day Hae Min Lee was killed sir and where exactly your mother lost her virginity sir.

THE REALITY
Going to France would become a lot like going to Morocco is now, or The Philippines, or Canada. Or, say, like going to France was in 1972. You 'd turn up at the border. Provided you weren't shitting condoms of heroin, you'd automatically get a visa stamp. You could stay for an initial 90 days, and, providing you hadn't stabbed anyone, have it renewed. Work visas would be a lot more tricky, though.

(Photo by Javier Izquierdo)

THE END OF BRITS LIVING ABROAD

If we leave, British citizens already living in Europe will lose all their social welfare entitlements, and possibly be kicked out. Just like we're gonna do to the Poles and Romanians.

THE SCARE
Your granny loses her villa on the Costa del Sol and is brought back to Croydon on an RAF mercy flight.

THE REALITY
A mixed picture. For the 400,000 British pensioners living in Spain, provided they kept their bank accounts, their direct UK state pension provision would go on as it already does. Welfare benefits, of course, are much more localised, so it'd be more dicey for the "I'm moving to Berlin" crowd signed on to the generous German dole. They might have to take their commitment to being a starving artist a bit more seriously.

SCEXIT

(Photo by Liam Turbett)

If England votes to leave but Scotland doesn't, then it would mean the end of the UK.

THE SCARE
If the English effectively screwed the Europhile Scots over, Nicola Sturgeon would seize the perfect moment to argue that Scotland should be free to remain within the EU, seeing as that's what Scots voted for, and the only way to do that would be via another independence referendum.

THE REALITY
The stats back it. A Sunday Times poll last summer suggested that 66 percent of Scots wanted to stay in, compared to 51 percent of English voters. But Scotland needs the UK Parliament to vote in favour of a new referendum bill, so the SNP would be relying on Labour and the Tories to effectively put a gun to their own heads and pull the trigger.

MORE EXPENSIVE ROAMING TARIFFS

A lot of EU "red tape" isn't Brussels telling you not to use hand sanitiser that isn't made from tulips – it's actually stuff that makes your life a lot better, and it'd be gone.

THE SCARE
You fly back from Alicante to Derby International Airport. You return home. To a bill. From Vodafone. For £123,000. For downloading five episodes of Baby Beauty Queens.

Watch: Wolf of the West End

THE REALITY
This is a real thing. Once Britain is on the outside, British companies won 't necessarily be bound by its regulations, like the EU rule limiting the amount mobile phone companies can charge abroad. However, if British companies want to export goods and services into the EU, we'll probably remain in European Economic Area. That would mean that, like Norway, we abide by all the EU's rules (because that's the easiest way to export our goods), but won't have any direct input into how the rules are made. So, for most things, the noticeable change would be nil. But from a negotiating point of view, we'd basically be holding our dicks and waving from the other side of the glass partition at the orgy.

A EUROPEAN ARMY

Some Norwegian soldiers. State of this (Photo by Matthias)

If we remain in Europe, the deeper integration of the continent will mean a pan-European defence force, and a possible end for the British Army as a distinct thing.

THE SCARE
Imagine Our Boys marching shoulder to shoulder with Dutch soldiers. The Dutch – who probably have some clause in their contract that says they don 't fight on weekends or after 5PM. And the Scandos, who just want to fire written apologies for colonialism they never even did at the enemy. And the Germans. The fucking Germans.

THE REALITY
The idea has been proposed many times already, in many different configurations. However, the British have always threatened to block it, and in one of his few negotiating successes, David Cameron has already secured opt-out on the "ever-closer union" clause in the EU, so win or lose, we 'd be well within our rights to just tell them to eff off.

THE END OF THE CITY

(Photo by SLR Jester)

If there's one thing that financial analysts agree on, it's that leaving/remaining in Europe will destroy our financial services sector.

THE SCARE
Either being hog-tied to Brussels' bonus caps and red tape is going to smother our competitiveness, or being outside of the world's biggest economic trading zone will render us utterly pointless. Either way: we're doomed! Canary Wharf will be a ghost town full of empty black marble apartments and uncleaned bins of Nespresso capsules and the rest of the economy will follow.

THE REALITY
Either way – we're not doomed! The City may be more sluggish if we remain in, or more unwieldy if we leave, but the costs of firms relocating are astronomical, and besides, they'd all have to decide to relocate to the same place to derive the same hive-mind benefit London presently offers. Plus London still a place people actually want to live in, unlike the culture vacuums of Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong or Zurich.

WW2 II

An American bombing raid over a German city (Photo via)

Imagine World War 2. Now imagine something a lot like that, but now.

THE SCARE
The EU was set up specifically to prevent another war between France and Germany, initially by binding together their economies. If Britain leaves, the EU Jenga tower could collapse, leading to a renewed trade and influence war between the two biggest regional economies, an arms race, a charismatic dictator, and TOTAL WAR.

THE REALITY
If Britain does go, expect Greece to get more edgy. Expect the EU-loathing Danes to kick off. Expect the Europhobe Finns to get involved, then the other desperately screwed bits of the Eurozone like Spain and Portugal, and soon enough, the EU could be just France and Germany locked in a loveless clinch with a husk of remaining eastern European losers. But total war? It's only like only 6/10 plausible.

@gavhaynes

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(Photo by David Hunt via)

You might think "talk radio" is a media anachronism – night watchmen with delirium tremens and paranoid truck drivers arguing with disgraced football pundits and Yewtree-absolved former DJs about everything from Simon Mignolet's form this season to the Gaza Strip – and you'd be exactly right. But for those very reasons, it's also the most consistently, accidentally brilliant form of discourse in British culture.

If you really want to know what's going on in this country, you won't find out on #BBCQT, where inner-city English teachers with half-finished novels pretend to fancy Ed Balls. You won't find it on Comment Is Free, or in the audience at a UCL talk with Yanis Varoufakis and Owen Jones. But you will find it on those bawdy slagging matches you can just about make out when you're trying to find Magic or Heart or Rinse or Absolute 80s from the back seat of a Prius.

Among all the noise and fury of UK talk radio, one man stands taller than any other. It's not Gaunt or O'Connor, not Hawksbee or even Jacobs; it's George Galloway, the host of the self-proclaimed "Mother of All Talk Shows", now coming back to radio – specifically talkRADIO, a new station from the people behind talkSPORT – after a five-year break, in which GG was elected in Bradford West, defeated in Bradford West, announced as a London mayoral candidate and presumably soon de-announced as a London mayoral candidate.

Gorgeous George might be one of politics' most notable characters – a man who can't seem to leave his front door without threatening to sue someone or being assaulted by a Zionist; a man who once used the phrase "cock-a-hoop" at a US Senate hearing; a man who once pretended to be a cat in some strange game of quasi-sexual role-play on national television. But for me, it's his recently re-commissioned radio show where his finest work has been done.

Between 2006 and 2010, The Mother of All Talk Shows became required listening for me. I think I first heard it drunk in the back of my dad's car, high and dry from some terrible half-night out, and found myself immediately captivated by the burning ire on show. From what I remember, Galloway was berating someone who was asking how "the Great could be put back into Great Britain", screaming him down with fire and brimstone. It was like nothing I'd ever heard on radio before – a weird mix of Tim Westwood and Billy Graham. On another show I seem to recall him stonily reading out a Sun report on the displays of wealth at Wayne Rooney's wedding, before shouting about how Wayne should read The Great Gatsby and learn a lesson or two.

I thought I could be the only one listening. Surely this was only for me and maybe a few people who had died with their DABs on? But the switchboards were white-hot with bullshit. Every time Galloway cut someone off for offending him, somebody else would prop up, ready to dine in hell. Many were the talk-radio standard – white men working late-nights looking to vent about those they'd perceived as fucking them over – but the demographic also seemed to stretch far beyond that. There were racist housewives; waffling lefty professor types; young Muslim guys bigging up Galloway; even a self-proclaimed modern Nazi from Loughton. This was American History X sponsored by LDV Vans, I was hooked.

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In his first stint on talkSPORT he survived a few controversies, notably trying to rally his listeners to come to a massive anti-Israel protest. In the end he committed a political hara-kiri: quitting to stand for parliament again. But in its afterlife, the show has perhaps found even more fame, with people uploading the classics to YouTube and racking up a community of obsessives in the process. Some have even gone on to make playlists and compilations, such as "Galloway reads nutter texts compilation" and "Galloway getting tore into hun callers".

I spoke to a few friends who have become similarly obsessed with the MOATS archive. One long-time listener, no-time caller described it to me as "one of the greatest unbroken runs in broadcasting history my favourite thing is how he sees it as some high brow show for intellectual debate, but all he gets is lunatics and knuckle draggers. By the same token he despises anyone parochial – Protestants, Tories, Zionists, little Englanders, Rangers fans. That collision is probably the funniest thing about the show: armchair Hitlers from Ascot and Barnet ringing him to say the police force doesn't need more black people."

And it's Galloway's remarkable self-seriousness that maintains the gold the whole thing was built on. He will argue with anyone – anyone "who thinks they're hard enough", as he says repeatedly. But many of those who think they're hard enough are more mad or sad or bored than hard, so Galloway's "good fight" is reduced to him basically shouting at faceless people with generic aliases who either don't care or don't make sense. It's the "Don't Feed the Trolls" mentality realised in audio-only Technicolor, a man with an enormous sense of self-importance shouting into an anonymous void of cackling, disembodied ghouls.

My personal favourite moment in the show's history is the notorious "Jean in Twickenham", a quietly fuming and presumably quite pissed suburbanite who "doesn't want Scots, Irish or anyone here". She declares that she is 100 percent English and that "life was so nice" before they came. Galloway is, of course, not happy. "Have you heard of William the Conqueror, JEAN? Have you heard of the Picts, or the Celts, or The Anglo Saxons?" he bellows with his eloquent, educated, but totally incandescent rage, with not a second to stop and worry if this woman might not be sound of mind, or really that invested in her grim opinions. "Why don't you go and live in Gibraltar," mutters Galloway before cutting her off into the darkness.

Another fan favourite is the cult-hero "Ken from the Highlands", a frequent caller who some Galloway heads have gone as far as to label a stalker. Ken – a born-again Christian who at one point started using cunning aliases like "Kenny from Blackpool" in order to get past the producers – and George had many a clash on the show, usually about issues of faith and war. Between them, there's a strange, possibly sectarian, definitely Highlands vs Central Belt feud going on; a very Scottish beef played out on nationwide radio. At one point Ken suggests that Galloway is anti-Christian because he declares himself a Catholic. It is not the kind of thing you'd hear on Question Time; it's both much more weird and much more real than that.

Galloway regards Ken as a superstitious fuddy-duddy, unfaltering in his love for Jesus and Bush. Ken regards Galloway as a fiend, a menace, a scoundrel, a child of some eastern devil. Yet, like with many of these situations, there's an odd romance to their relationship, like two ageing boxers who can't stop meeting each other in increasingly desperate promotions.

With him back on radio, it's almost like Galloway couldn't live with out his bigoted nemeses, the people who wind him up, the people who keep him going. His dedication to arguing is such that even when he's taking a few years out of arguing in politics, he's still arguing about politics. For a man who doesn't drink, he's remarkably similar to the bloke at the pub who won't stop talking about ISIS. But whatever you think of his politics and his dealings, you have to respect his ceaseless pursuit of a barney, and his total refusal not to take it seriously. To him, every teardrop is a waterfall; every throwaway comment is a defamation case; every late-night talk show is a revolution. God knows where his latest show will go, but he'd promise you it won't be boring.

@thugclive

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It's not easy being woke. Johnny Depp's 16-year-old daughter Lily Rose Depp tried to come out as a queer ally recently and accidentally just came out. She took part in an LGBT+ outreach project and said her sexuality fell somewhere on a "vast spectrum" which many took to mean she was announcing her sexuality. She has since come in again, to say she was doing the exact opposite: "I was literally doing it just to say that you don't have to label your sexuality; so many kids these days are not labelling their sexuality and I think that's so cool."

Rose-Depp's fingers might be burnt, but she's far from the only young celebrity dipping their toe into queer issues: Jaden Smith became the face for Louis Vuitton womenswear in January and now Instagrams photos of himself wearing dresses and standing on fire hydrants.

The author, when asked to smile for a photo

I was a pretty serious kid. Teachers used to call me a "thinker," which was fine until around the time I turned 19. That was when what I considered to be my neutral expression got a new name: Resting Bitch Face (RBF).

If you haven't heard of RBF before, here's a quick explainer from the internet's best friend UrbanDictionary: "A condition that affects 1 in 6 people meaning that their 'zoned out face' is in a constant state of bitchiness e.g. 'Claire Horn has resting bitch face!!'"

Yes, Claire Horn does have Resting Bitch Face, and so do I. If you want to get into specifics, my particular form of RBF has been described as "perpetually unimpressed" or "about to sneeze."

I'm not going to lie. It's been a rough couple of years. At least I haven't been alone, though. Victoria Beckham, Kristen Stewart, Kanye—we've all lived through this together. VB and KStew exhibit the most common type of RBF: "lemon mouth angry school principal." Kanye, one of the few widely cited male RBFers, is afflicted by a rarer form dubbed, "Son, I expected more of you."

Kristen Stewart's face. Image via YouTube

RBF is frustrating to live with but finally science has brought some answers. Last year, two behavioral researchers, Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, used a technology called FaceReader to determine whether RBF is actually a thing, or just a delusion in the eye of the beholder. FaceReader scans more than 500 points on the human face and assigns an expression based on eight "basic" emotions: happy, angry, sad, scared, surprised, disgusted, contemptuous, or neutral.

To create a baseline, Rogers and Macbeth ran "normal" faces through FaceReader and found that most people's resting faces register as "neutral." Then they ran photos and videos of celebrities most often accused of RBF—Kanye, KStew, etc. What the pair found is that these faces registered far higher "contempt" than the normies. That sneering, condescending emotion accounts for around 5.76 percent of the resting expression for those afflicted with RBF.

Kanye West's face being analyzed. Image via Noldus

This doesn't sound great but there's still hope. "This is a fundamental and key point," Rogers and Macbeth note in a paper about their work. "FaceReader is not detecting enough contempt to reflect true contempt... It just looks like contempt to the viewer." As they explain, the human brain is hardwired to comb other people's faces for emotional cues and so even tiny differences can make an impression. "Because contempt is based upon elements of comparison and judgment, viewing this in someone's face creates a feeling of uneasiness, or uncomfortableness, for the person viewing that face," they explain.

So there it is—science says Resting Bitch Face is your problem, not mine. However, having the self esteem of someone who's been teased most of her adult life about her RBF, my main takeaway from this research is that looking at my face makes people uneasy and uncomfortable.

This research did give us a number though: 5.67 percent. This is the line where RBF begins. If the percentage of contempt in your expression falls below this threshold, you're in the clear. What if I'd been unfairly grouped in with those discomfort-inducing sneerers for all these years? All I needed was a contempt score below 5.67 percent. To find out, I got myself a copy of FaceReader to run some experiments.

By run some experiments, I mean that I wasted the next few hours of my life trying to take a selfie that was totally blank—it's impossible. We've been conditioned to pull some sort of expression whenever a camera is pointed in our faces. In some photos my eyes were too narrow; in others what I thought was a subtle smile came out as a full-blown sneer. It seems I have absolutely no control over my face.

My face being analyzed by FaceReader

I finally gave up on attaining expressionless perfection and just put a photo into FaceReader. It did some Minority Report biometric shit and spat out some graphs with all the answers I was looking for.

A screenshot from 'Political Machine 2016', via YouTube

Sometimes, it feels like video games can predict the future. Electronic Arts' Madden NFL series has a pretty good track record when it comes to selecting Super Bowl winners. Back in 1992, Randy Chase's strategy game Power Politics made Associated Press headlines when it correctly predicted that Bill Clinton would be the next President of the United States.

Power Politics wasn't the first presidential election simulator – that's probably 1981's President Elect – but it was the most advanced, and early 1990s political analysts were impressed by the game's depth and attention to detail. Power Politics has proved remarkably robust, too. Twenty-four years after the game debuted, presidential simulators still follow Power Politics' basic template. The candidates may have changed, but the rules remain largely the same.

Election simulators turn the presidential election into turn-based strategy games, giving armchair campaign managers the chance to guide their favourite candidates to victory. Usually, every candidate act simultaneously, and players must anticipate their opponents' next moves while also juggling their limited resources. There's a time limit, too. Players need to sway as many voters to their side as possible before Election Day, when the computer tallies up the electoral votes and declares a winner.

A screenshot from 'President Infinity', played in 2015, via YouTube

Not every election game is created equal, of course. For example, only one of this year's major election simulators, President Infinity, includes the crucial primary elections. In the wake of the Iowa Caucus, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are all viable Republican candidates, and this November's presidential election will unfold very differently depending on who walks out of the Republican National Convention with the GOP nomination in July.

Spiritually, President Infinity is Power Politics' closest successor, offering a complicated and thorough simulation with all the visual panache of an Excel spreadsheet. In some ways, President Infinity offers too much detail: you'll have to plan your travel itinerary, schedule speeches, prepare for debates and manage your advertisements. Everything costs money, so you'll need to fundraise to stay competitive. You also need to manage an in-game currency called Political Capital, which can be used to buy surrogates who will campaign on your behalf as well as important third-party endorsements.

A screenshot from 1992's 'Power Politics', via YouTube

None of these actions affect voters directly. Instead, everything you and your opponents do changes candidates' momentum. When momentum's high, you'll win supporters. When it's low, you'll lose them. You can change your opponents' momentum by attacking them in ads or during public appearances, but if your campaign is too negative, that can backfire. On top of all of this, your candidate has a stamina meter. When that runs out, you'll need to let them rest.

That's a lot to pay attention to. Thankfully, there's also a way to make President Infinity play itself. Simply choose a candidate with very little money and no name value – someone without a Wikipedia page is a safe option – and don't take any actions during your turn. The CPU-controlled frontrunners will duke it out amongst themselves, leaving you free to watch the action.

On the Democrats' side, President Infinity's primaries don't get too interesting. Over the course of the 11 simulations I ran, Hillary Clinton only lost the nomination twice – to Vice President Joe Biden, who's not running in real life. Sorry, Bernie fans: despite his New Hampshire success, according to President Infinity, Sanders doesn't stand a chance.

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With the Republicans, it's a different story. In most President Infinity runs, Donald Trump drops out of the election by late March, thanks to a combination of momentum-killing debate performances, public speaking gaffes and media scandals. In fact, after ten simulations, the Republican card was caught in a five-way tie: Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush all scored two nominations. It took a tie-breaking 11th run to crown Marco Rubio the Republican candidate for President of the United States, and even then, Fiorina gave him a run for his money.

In the ensuing Clinton versus Rubio battle, President Infinity predicts a Rubio win three out of five times. On one run, Rubio won the popular vote, but Clinton walked away with the presidency. In two others, Election Day polls predicted a Clinton victory, only for Rubio to emerge the winner (as in real life, President Infinity's polling isn't entirely accurate). It's going to be a close race, but according to President Infinity, Marco Rubio will be America's next president.

The Political Machine 2016, another election simulator, disagrees. The Political Machine is simpler and more polished than President Infinity. The Political Machine has a friendly, responsive user interface, and players' actions – delivering speeches, deploying advertisements and building regional campaign headquarters – have a direct effect on states' electorates. There's none of this "momentum" stuff. Your actions either win voters or they don't.

A screenshot from 'The Political Machine 2016', via YouTube

The Political Machine is also the only election game that asks players to take a stand on the issues. In most games, President Infinity included, you can choose the topics of your speeches, but you don't actually choose a position. In The Political Machine, you'll need to advocate policy that both appeals to undecided voters and also won't piss off your own party. That's not as easy as it sounds.

In six different games of The Political Machine, Clinton won the White House four times – twice when I controlled her, and twice when I managed Rubio. That makes sense: in The Political Machine, the deck is stacked in Clinton's favour from the beginning. Clinton has higher stamina and fundraising ratings than Rubio and starts the game with more money. Basically, Clinton can get stuff done faster and more efficiently. That's a big advantage in The Political Machine – and not a bad quality for a president, either.

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That's one game for Rubio, and one for Clinton. So can the mobile titleCampaign Manager break the deadlock? As it turns out, not really. Campaign Manager only lets players take a few actions: you can create advertisements, mount a ground campaign and hire volunteers. That's it. There's just one currency, money, which is replenished by tapping on dollar signs that appear during the game. Both candidates start with the same amount of cash in the bank, and nobody has an advantage.

Campaign Manager is too simple to use as a predictive tool – generally, whoever the player is controlling wins. But by stripping an election simulator down to its base components, Campaign Manager reveals a common philosophy that all these games share. In election games, the presidential race isn't a clash of ideologies or personalities. It's a contest to see who can manage their resources most effectively. What a candidate says doesn't matter as much how and when they say it. Votes aren't earned, they're bought and sold.

In other words, when it comes to who's really going to win the White House later this year, video games provide us with only one clear answer: whoever is willing to pay the most for it.

@ChrisWGates

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This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.

The long subway ride from DC's airport to Silver Spring was unusually pleasant. It had been about an hour since I had taken a low dose of methamphetamine. It was my 40th birthday—October 30, 2006—and I was headed to a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-sponsored meeting.

A friend, who had a prescription for the drug, had given me a couple of pills as a gift, knowing that I was an expert on amphetamines but had never actually taken any myself. I sat on the train feeling alert, mentally stimulated, and euphorically serene.

And when the effects had worn off after a few hours, I thought, that was nice, worked out, and enjoyed a productive two-day meeting. Well, maybe not enjoyed—it was a NIDA meeting after all. But I didn't crave the drug or feel the need to take any more. I certainly didn't engage in any unusual behaviors—hardly the stereotypical picture of a "meth head."

So why is it, then, that the general public has such a radically different view of this drug?

Perhaps it has something to do with public "educational" campaigns aimed at discouraging methamphetamine use. These campaigns usually show, in graphic and horrifying detail, some poor young person who uses the drug for the first time and then ends up engaging in uncharacteristic acts such as prostitution, stealing from parents, or assaulting strangers for money to buy the drug. At the end of the advertisement, emblazoned on the screen, is: "Meth—not even once." We've also seen those infamous "meth mouth" images (extreme tooth decay), wrongly presented as a direct consequence of methamphetamine use.

These types of media campaigns neither prevent nor decrease the use of the drug; nor do they provide any real facts about the effects of meth. They succeed only in perpetuating false assumptions.

Swayed by this messaging, the public remains almost entirely ignorant of the fact that methamphetamine produces nearly identical effects to those produced by the popular ADHD medication d-amphetamine (dextroamphetamine). You probably know it as Adderall®: a combination of amphetamine and d-amphetamine mixed salts.

Yeah, I know. This statement requires some defense.

This is not to suggest that people who are currently prescribed Adderall should discontinue its use for fear of inevitable ruinous addiction, but instead that we should view methamphetamine rather more like we view d-amphetamine. Remember that methamphetamine and d-amphetamine are both FDA-approved medications to treat ADHD. In addition, methamphetamine is approved to treat obesity and d-amphetamine to treat narcolepsy.

In the interest of full disclosure, I too once believed that methamphetamine was far more dangerous than d-amphetamine, despite the fact that the chemical structure of the two drugs is nearly identical (see figure). In the late 1990s, when I was a PhD student, I was told—and I fully believed—that the addition of the methyl group to methamphetamine made it more lipid-soluble (translation: able to enter the brain more rapidly) and therefore more addictive than d-amphetamine.

It wasn't until several years after graduate school that this belief was shattered by evidence—not only from my own research, but also by results from research conducted by other scientists.

In our study, we brought 13 men who regularly used methamphetamine into the lab. We gave each of them a hit of methamphetamine, of d-amphetamine, or of placebo on separate days under double-blind conditions. We repeated this many times with each person over several days and multiple doses of each drug.

Like d-amphetamine, methamphetamine increased our subjects' energy and enhanced their ability to focus and concentrate; it also reduced subjective feelings of tiredness and the cognitive disruptions typically brought about by fatigue and/or sleep deprivation. Both drugs increased blood pressure and the rate at which the heart beat. No doubt these are the effects that justify the continued use of d-amphetamine by several nations' militaries, including our own.

And when offered an opportunity to choose either the drugs or varying amounts of money, our subjects chose to take d-amphetamine on a similar number of occasions as they chose to take methamphetamine. These regular methamphetamine users could not distinguish between the two. (It is possible that the methyl group enhances methamphetamine's lipid-solubility, but this effect appears to be imperceptible to human consumers.)

It is also true that the effects of smoking methamphetamine are more intense than those of swallowing a pill containing d-amphetamine. But that increased intensity is due to the route of administration, not the drug itself. Smoking d-amphetamine produces nearly identical intense effects as smoking methamphetamine. The same would be true if the drugs were snorted.

As I left DC and traveled home to New York, I reflected on how I had previously participated in misleading the public by hyping the dangers of methamphetamine. For example, in one of my earlier studies, aimed at documenting the powerfully addictive nature of the drug, I found that when given a choice between taking a small hit of meth (10 mg) or one dollar in cash, methamphetamine users chose the drug about half the time.

For me, in 2001, this suggested that the drug was addictive. But what it really showed was my own ignorance and bias. Because, as I found out in a later study, if I had increased the cash amount to as little as five dollars, the users would have taken the money almost all of the time—even though they knew they would have to wait several weeks until the end of the study before getting the cash.

All of this should serve as a lesson on how media distortions can influence even scientific knowledge about the consequences of drug use.

It took me nearly 20 years and dozens of scientific publications in the area of drug use to recognize my own biases around methamphetamine. I can only hope that you don't require as much time and scientific activity in order to understand that the Adderall that you or your loved one takes each day is essentially the same drug as meth.

And I hope that this knowledge engenders less judgment of people who use meth, and greater empathy.

Dr. Carl L. Hart is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also the author of the book High Price: A neuroscientist's journey of self-discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society Follow him on Twitter.

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

A performance apparently befitting of a freakout by a Toronto city councillor. Photo via Facebook

Does Jimmy K want Canada to block Bey?

That's a possibility he raised with the Toronto Sun on Tuesday.

Jim Karygiannis, Toronto city councillor, former member of parliament, and all-around plain-spoken guy, told the tabloid on Tuesday that the Trudeau government should investigate ties between Beyoncé—and her Super Bowl backup dancers—and the Black Panther Party.

And while it might seem ridiculous to suggest that Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) should turn Beyoncé Knowles-Carter away at the border, well, it is.

Beyoncé is slated to perform in Toronto on May 25, but after her Super Bowl halftime performance—which, on top of being the best, gave shout-outs to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X—the city councillor says the federal government should be vetting whether or not she's eligible to enter the country.

"Perhaps Immigration Minister John McCallum should have her investigated first?" Karygiannis told Sun columnist/Rob Ford apologist Joe Warmington, who is very good at transcribing interviews with city councillors he likes. "If someone wore bullets and supported here, they would not be welcomed in the United States—that's for sure."

Likewise, he said, "she or some of them could be found not eligible to enter the country as others in the past have faced," adding that it's wrong for the pop star to be advancing "gun culture or anti-police sentiments."

VICE reached out to the councillor to find out what the hell he was talking about.

"Look, if there's questions, have Minister MacCallum investigative," Karygiannis said. "People are offended by it... and if people are offended by it, call the minister."

Despite telling the Sun that her performance was "disturbing," Karygiannis says he has no problem with the performer: "I don't care whether she comes, she doesn't come. I don't care."

But, at the same time, Karygiannis kept reiterating that people should pass their complaints onto the federal government and ask it to investigate. "If people are offended with what's she's wearing, is where it should be addressed. If you're offended by it, don't let her in."

Lots of people hated Bey's performance, of course. New York mascot Rudy Giuliani ranted about how it's anti-cop, and proceeded to tell America's black population what it should be doing,

But nobody raised the idea of banning Beyoncé from the country, especially because that's not even remotely how Canadian law works.

Let's go through the CBSA's checklist of how someone can be denied entry to Canada:

"Security"—Unless you consider her ass to be dynamite, I don't think national security applies.

"Human or international rights violations"—While she did slay at the Super Bowl, there were no reported casualties.

"Criminality"—Jay Z once stabbed a guy in the stomach and spent three years on probation. But that's his problem.

"Organized criminality"—Destiny's Child does not sound like a very good gang.

"Health grounds"—She looks healthy to me.

"Financial reasons"—Maybe she has too much money?

"Misrepresentation"—"Listen, Mrs. Beyoncé, you need to put your last name on the form."

"Having an inadmissible family member"—I think we can all get behind banning Jay Z from Canada for his verse on "Monster."

I cannot find "being offended," "wearing a bullet sash," or "making Chris Martin look stupid" anywhere on the CBSA website.

And while Canada has a long history in barring would-be entrants at the border, there are generally pretty good reasons.

Chris Brown, for one, got turned away en route to a show in Montreal, probably due to his criminal record. Emo band the Used (a.k.a. the poor man's My Chemical Romance) had a similar experience thanks to some decade-old misdemeanors. Rapper Danny Brown was also denied en route to tour dates in western Canada.

A 'Sports Illustrated' model from a 1992 HBO promo (via YouTube)

YouTube is probably the greatest anthropological project ever launched. It has managed to expose the multitudes of the human condition more than any other medium ever created, and allowed people to express themselves in more diverse ways than at any point in history. This weekly column is an outlet for me to share with you some undiscovered gems, as well some very well-trodden gems, and discuss just what it is that makes the chosen accounts so intriguing.

WHO: Jay Cooper
WHAT: Archive of old adverts and TV moments.
HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS AT TIME OF WRITING: 822
WHY SHOULD I CARE: A couple of weeks ago we talked about SilverDrizzle and Qadoshezkaton, two channels that have taken it upon themselves to document and share two very different types of music (grime and what I can only really describe as "agony metal"). This week's edition looks at another kind of archival channel, the difference being it's based around things that are found and, more to the point, visual.

Jay Cooper is an American man who uploads ripped VHS tape to his channel, which is also called Jay Cooper. The clips are mostly newscasts, advertisements and, strangely, footage of the funerals of British monarchy. But we'll get back to those later.

Let's start with the newscasts. Jay Cooper has uploaded – among others, of course – a news report from 1989 on WHO, a local news station in Des Moines, Iowa. The report features a non-fatal double stabbing, a potential accidental arson from a two-year-old who burnt their sibling and the rush for Thanksgiving groceries. They also talk about President Bush (senior) urging Gorbachev to "work with him" at a summit in Malta; the death of the Lebanese President in a bomb attack; and a cover story about career women.

The larger, international stories are par for the course, but there's something eerie about the dark local news. A woman found in her front garden, throat slashed, stabbed multiple times. A clearly shaken police chief giving an interview, his strange, low-definition head looming sadly in the pitch black darkness. There is an odd, broken hum about it, the grimness captured the way it will always remain for the people involved.

Jay Cooper sadly hasn't got any really old-school ads on his channel, but he does have these promo compilations from HBO. These days, HBO is seen as the most progressive, modern TV network going, having been home to some incredibly groundbreaking shows, like Oz and The Sopranos. But even a station as sleek and "cool" as HBO clearly isn't exempt from the chintzy-ness of the early-90s, in the form of a growling, whisky-soaked purr of a sleazebag advertising the 1992 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.

By far the strangest and most compelling thing on Jay Cooper's channel, though, are the multiple-hour-long videos of funerals and depositions. If you were so inclined, you could go to his channel and watch all five and a half hours of CNN's coverage of the funeral of Princess Diana. The horse-drawn procession of her coffin, ambling by as thousands of people look on, on a sunny September day. Her children having to walk behind the casket holding their dead mother in front of millions of people. The clop of the horses only interrupted by the solemn commentary of the news anchor. A speech and a poem reading by Tony Blair. And, of course, the performance of "Candle in the Wind", the only time it has ever been performed, by Elton John, to a throng of weeping onlookers. A furiously bizarre time captured in its entirety, viewed over 300,000 times by people who comment bemoaning her passing, calling her a beautiful angel.

On the other side of the coin is the full four-hour deposition of former President of the United States Bill Clinton. A man in the most powerful seat of governance in the world, sat in a room, being questioned about his alleged inappropriate relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The camera focused completely on his face for almost the entirety of the video, every concerned expression he musters, every time he plays with his glasses, the blank stare of trying not to appear guilty. The president on view for all to see, being asked questions about vaginal intercourse.

These were two examples of figureheads in our society being seen in ways we never expected to see them. It is important we have these to watch. It's good to learn from them. In the future, should we make a dead princess's children walk down the middle of a road behind her, flanked by soldiers while people with Boyzone haircuts take photos? I'm not so sure.

As pleasant as it is to remember what TV was like back in the day, we should remember that the darker side of it – the hysteria of tragedy – is probably best kept under wraps.

@joe_bish

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This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

If the streets of central Athens could speak, this Sunday they'd have been mumbling, "Leave us alone, for fuck's sake."

It's February 2016 and demonstrations take place in downtown Athens every single day. Doctors, farmers, lawyers, civil servants, even policemen – everyone is demonstrating against an overhaul of the country's pension system demanded by international lenders and imposed by the local Left-wing government.

Everyone, except the 4,000 people who turned up at Athens' Propylaia earlier this week. These guys were protesting the new Greek ID cards, which will come with a microchip carrying the holder's NI number. But as it turns out microchips and NI numbers are instruments of the devil - at least according to the country's Christian Orthodox fanatics, conspiracy theorists and thriving far-right community. So those brave few got together to protest in the city centre, holding religious icons and Greek flags.

I decided I should try and talk to a few of them. The first person I approached – a tall nervous man in his forties called Anthony – told me that if we tolerate microchips in our ID cards, in a few years Greeks will need chips implanted under their skin in order to get into supermarkets. The second – a lady from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki who was attending the demo with her husband and her son – took time out of her day to explain to me why all journalists are slaves to Satan. A third gave me an impassioned speech about how the New World Order will soon demand that we all type our phone numbers into cash machines if we want to get any money out. Which isn't that scary.

In short, it all felt as if a few thousand YouTube comments had suddenly come to life and decided to take a stroll around Athens on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

See for yourself in the photos below.

Junior doctors on strike

Britain's junior doctors are out on strike for the second time in a month today. Their grievances are the same as last time: opposition to a proposed contract that would make them work until 10PM without overtime and make Saturday part of the normal working week. After the last strike, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt signalled that he'd enforce the new contract whatever the doctors thought, which didn't do much to cool tensions.

With future strike days planned and a poll on Tuesday showing that 90 percent of junior doctors would consider quitting if Jeremy Hunt forced the proposals through, it doesn't look like an agreement will be reached any time soon. Today, Jeremy Hunt was pleading with doctors to "do the right thing", which in this case seems to mean "shut up and take the pain". He thanked the doctors who did go to work, but despite their efforts nearly 3,000 operations were cancelled.

Since the first strike, public opinion has largely been with the doctors, and support only seems to have grown. A poll found today that the public overwhelmingly blame Jeremy Hunt for the strike.

VICE went down to Brighton General Hospital to pick the brains of patients and ask what they thought of the strike.

Peter Triste, 67
I'm here waiting for my friend who's been in hospital. My opinion is that no one wants to be affected by a strike, but at the same time I think it's important to ask the question: why do they feel they need to? With all of the cuts, they must be under hellish pressure. By making them work so hard, I think the government is playing on the loyalty of the staff. I don't think they get their worth – let's put it that way.

My own GP has gone early because, at his age, he didn't want to work under the new regime. Anyone operating under duress – as it seems the junior doctors will be under the new contract – will not work as well as they can do. In terms of solutions to all this, I mean, I wouldn't mind paying an extra 20p in the pound on taxation if it meant we had a good health service, but there you go.

Miriam Binder, 59
I was last in the hospital a week ago for something unexpected that came up, but I've come down here today to support the doctors. I've had a lot of experience as a patient in the NHS: both good and bad. I've got vascular disease so have had a lot of treatment to do with that. I have a grandson who desperately needs mental health care at the moment and can't get it. I have a daughter who is due to undergo brain surgery. I have a foster child who has undergone brain surgery. And my other daughter had her kids here in this hospital. When you look at the low level of funding the NHS has got, when you look at what the doctors are actually managing to deliver, it's outstanding. Absolutely outstanding.

Nobody becomes a doctor because it's an easy job; slugging your guts out for seven years. The government's taking advantage of that dedication and commitment. If the government wins this – If the government wins this! I daren't even think about it.

Jo Borne, 48
My son's here for a clinic; it's a regular thing – he's disabled and I'm his carer. We haven't been affected by the strikes so far. I don't know a lot about the strike, but I'm for it. Definitely. Wholeheartedly. I don't see a lot of junior doctors at the hospital – we normally see the consultants – but the doctors who we do see are doing a great job. I think they're doing the right thing striking. I think they work hard with the hours they put in, and they have to deal with a lot of stress and often difficult patients.

If the government tried to privatise the NHS I think it would be the worst thing they could do for everyone. The NHS has done a lot for my family. If it wasn't for them my husband wouldn't be here. He's got an aggressive brain tumour. He's had two operations to remove it. He has chemotherapy and radio therapy and regular MRI scans. My life would have been turned upside down without the NHS.

David Mercer, 68
I definitely think it's right that they should go on strike. If they're overworked and tired it's going to lead to misdiagnosis and other things; it's bad for the patients and it's bad for them. Critics of the strike say things like: "They've always worked hard" and "That's the way it's always been." Well, just because it has been that way, doesn't make it right, does it? I haven't been affected directly, which surprised me, as I'm up here fairly regularly. People moan about waiting all day, but if you're ill, you're ill: you can wait anywhere. I'm happy with my doctors, with the surgery and with the treatment I've had when I have been treated.

Oliver Gough, 88
I've been in hospital for five weeks and I'm going home today. I didn't know about the strike and my treatment hasn't been disrupted by it, as far as I know. I've had very good treatment, very good food, I've been looked after very well, generally. The doctors have been excellent. So they're trying to cut their overtime and make them work longer hours? Well that's just brilliant! If the doctors work longer hours, they should get paid overtime. I think making them work harder will make the whole system less efficient; the doctors will get tired and it might be dangerous. I think, simply, they shouldn't be expected to work overtime and longer hours. And who should make these decisions? The government? Hmm.

@owebb

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I sprint the final 20 metres to the car. Somehow, I've managed to escape this Russian military base – in Cuba, not anywhere closer to Moscow. Any guard I encountered, I neutralised using the incredibly subtle tool of a hammer. The game assures me it's non-lethal. Sure, a fractured skull almost certainly poses zero risk to anyone's life. At least, this is what I've been telling myself each time I've lured an enemy down a dark corridor for a thump to the temple.

"That was funny, but you'll never get away with it in Paris," smirks one of the Square Enix staff walking around the Hitman preview event I'm at, their steady patrolling making them seem like guards of a different sort. Guards I shouldn't whack with a hammer.

But I'm delaying on answering the big question here, hanging above the heads of every Hitman fan: does this new entry in IO Interactive's long-running stealth-murder series feel anything like the beloved Hitman: Blood Money of 2006? Or, at least, not so much like the maligned Hitman: Absolution that came out six years later and is, iOS titles aside, the immediate predecessor to this forthcoming entry?

'Hitman', beta launch trailer

The answer is that Hitman, 2016 version, is somewhere between the two points, but a lot closer to Blood Money than Absolution. It features the next-gen polish that we saw in Absolution, while the large levels filled with flexible opportunities for sneaky kills return from Blood Money, albeit with a whole lot more non-player characters to interact with. The three areas I explore are thriving with life, some of which to talk to, some of which to take away. The two-part tutorial begins with a boat party before our quiet protagonist, Agent 47, finds himself at the aforementioned base. Later, the first mission proper turns you loose at a Parisian fashion show, complete with dodgy meetings going on in secret rooms.

Each area is teeming with hostiles, weapons to improvise, opportunities for kills – and potential witnesses. And if they see so much as the slightest shadow of your misdeeds, you'll need to take care of them. Suffice to say that while learning the art of the hit, I had to stuff a dozen and more bodies into a side room before stalking off into the night, whistling a jaunty tune and wearing the clothes of the last guard I killed. Who was, conveniently and just like every other male in the game, exactly my size.

The gunplay in Hitman feels fine – an armed Agent 47 is more than a match for a room full of guards, which makes total sense considering you're a genetically engineered killing machine. But fighting in this fashion is only ever a war of attrition. There's only one of you, and every round chips away at 47's health. There are, however, absolutely loads of them. However many guards you drop with a headshot, they will just keep coming.

The Hitman games have always been tough: pulling off the perfect hit takes plenty of practise, nerves of steel and often a little bit of luck. But that final factor's always been a big part of the series' charm. It makes those flawless assassinations feel all the better, like fate was as much on your side as thorough preparation.

Everything gels immediately in the new Hitman. The tutorial shows you Agent 47's training montage within the International Contract Agency (ICA), and the shadowy assassination broker that he works for/against through the series. Within seconds you choke out a poor crewmember near the party boat and slip into his outfit. "We've not seen anything like that before," remarks Diana Burnwood, 47's long-term handler. I guess 47's been into role-play since before he joined ICA.

The boat feels claustrophobic and tense, but it's a perfect location to show off the way playing dress up works in 2016. Disguises have always been an awkward element of the Hitman series, hard to introduce into any stage while ensuring they make enough thematic sense. There's no risk of dissonance this time, though: wearing the uniform of a guard gives 47 his privileges, unless you run into one of that (now, at least, incapacitated) guard's closest work colleagues, or the security supervisor, who knows his entire team personally. And this will probably happen – the crew of the target-owned boat is small, each guard knowing the next, so it's vital to not linger too long in anyone's sight.

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You can avoid suspicion by keeping your distance from other guards. Get your head down if they're passing nearby. Wipe down a table; look like you're supposed to be there. It's a constant challenge – just putting on someone else's clothes isn't enough to prevent detection in Hitman. You have to act the part, too.

The second part of the tutorial sees you throw down with the Russian military. While I pick up a hammer for the blunt approach, the journalist playing next to me manages their hit with perfect stealth, slipping in and out of the hot zone like a whisper.

Little did I know, slyly watching his silent entry to the facility, that he had a master plan. The second tutorial – in addition to introducing enemies with some firepower on their side – is all about the game's opportunities system, a new addition for 2016. Overhearing two guards discussing the fighter jet that'll be used to fly out the Soviet spy you're here to assassinate gives you an inventive new way to take down the mole. With a bit of prodding, and a lot of sneaking, you can sabotage the jet's ejector seat and splatter your target when it triggers prematurely.

These sorts of kills have long been a hallmark of the Hitman series, with perhaps the most infamous being the switching of a prop gun for the real deal during Blood Money's "Curtains Down" opera level. The difference here is that several of them are available in any single scenario. Talking about too many of them would ruin the surprise, but when you move into Paris there are a number of options open to particularly creative players. You might, for example, want to note that Agent 47 is the spitting image of a world-famous supermodel rumoured to be walking the catwalk at today's fashion show.

There is a wealth of positives to embrace about the new Hitman, then; but with the base game – the tutorials and Paris, with further missions available episodically – released just weeks away from the time of writing, on March 11th, I have some concerns. During my preview session with Hitman, it crashed ten times in three hours. The beta, which starts on February 12th, might allay performance fears – hopefully, what I played was a version several tweaks ahead of what the public is about to get its hands on. Perhaps more pertinently, there's the question of longevity: is there enough to do in this game? Will one level proper be enough to keep people content until the next batch of missions becomes available? Square Enix are gambling on yes – and the inclusion of a few extra modes might be reason enough to back their corner.

New on Munchies: Snakes on a Plate

The Contracts mode from Absolution returns for 2016's Hitman. Square Enix have revealed that 30 million contracts have been played to date on Absolution, so they're bringing it back. The basic structure hasn't changed: carry out a hit and then upload your efforts so that online friends and strangers alike can either replicate them or, better yet, improve upon your best. What's different is the scope of the mode – 300 "fully simulated" NPCs populate each Contract stage, all of which have their individual routines, ready to either interrupt your progress or become an essential cog of it. Either way, horrible, horrible murder is the likely result.

Escalation contracts are included, too. These are similar to the Contracts missions, but they're hand designed by the team at IO Interactive. They slowly escalate in difficulty by adding more and more problems to the mix every time you beat a scenario. This led to running someone down in the middle of a hall with an ancient cavalry sabre, so expect similarly ridiculous antics when you play the game yourself.

Finally, there are the Elusive Targets challenges. This is what I'm most excited by – time-limited targets who will come online for just a few hours, in real time, with players getting just one chance to take them down. If you kill them, they're dead, obviously; but if they escape, that's it. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, as they say. And finding these targets is going to be tricky – each has their own backstory, but the player will receive just a few cryptic clues on how to find them. Players will be skulking around looking for hints and listening into conversations if they want to find the target, and I can see this mode appealing massively to Hitman perfectionists.

At its best, Hitman 2016 is the pinnacle of what any game in this series should be. It's incredibly polished, and when everything clicks into place, and you strike down your target having laid out the most incredible plot ahead of that moment, it's just so much fun. But its drip-fed digital release model is a risk, and its pricing a little confusing – you get access to everything for your standard $60 (about £45 in the UK), but breaking the full game down into its components can see that price rise, and it's actually marginally cheaper to buy further episodes individually than as an "upgrade pack" complete bunch of five. A disc version including (presumably) everything won't come out until much later in 2016.

I'm not wholly convinced that the loyal Hitman audience of old will be up for playing the new game piecemeal, but the beta is likely to separate those who are ready to go right now from others who'll wait for the physical package. I'll be playing the beta at home, I know that much, and if the idea of getting away with murder appeals to you, I recommend you do the same.

Hitman is released on March 11th, with its beta beginning on February 12th – check the game's official website for more information.

@_JakeTucker

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A police officer confiscating cannabis plants from a hidden high street farm in Wakefield (Photo: West Yorkshire Police handout)

Boarded up, whitewashed and graffiti-covered. No sign of life behind dirty windows. There are vacant ghost shops in every high street in Britain. Retail statistics show that 16 shops are closing every day, most of them mothballed by the recession or beaten into submission by the internet.

In the north of England, in towns like Stockport, Burnley, Bolton and Hartlepool, one in five high street shops are empty. Community halls, police stations and working men's clubs also stand abandoned, remnants of an era when local family-run firms weren't being undercut into oblivion by the multinationals.

Yet, as these businesses and venues pull down the shutters, a more resilient, recession-proof trade has been stepping into the empty shells they leave behind: illegal cannabis grows.

Over the last decade, as the number of shops closing down has risen, so too have the number of cannabis farms discovered hiding behind decaying shop fronts, sucking up electricity and water, inches away from shoppers, police stations and banks. Each bust tells the story of a once thriving business or community asset recycled to become part of Britain's cannabis cultivation industry.

At first, these high street cannabis farms appeared to be one-offs, unearthed by chance. In 2012 a dog walker in Liverpool was passing a vacated African restaurant when her pet Jack Russell decided to urinate against its shutters. The dog owner was startled to see her pet suddenly jolt and drop dead on the pavement.

As firemen later learned when they forced their way behind the shutters and into the old restaurant, the upstairs had been turned into a makeshift cannabis farm with 55 plants. Bad wiring, caused by an attempt to bypass the electricity meter, had electrified the shutters and killed the dog.

A cannabis farm found in a former bank in Grimsby (Photo: Humberside Police handout)

In the last few years these squatter cannabis farms have been popping up behind an array of vacated high street facades: the Blockbusters in Wakefield and a former Barclays bank in Grimsby; a pet shop in Folkestone, a funeral parlour in Burnley, a beauty salon in Llanelli and a dog grooming shop in Rhondda.

Not forgetting an old Salvation Army hall in the Wirral, a jewellery shop in Bradford, a nail bar in Birmingham, a furniture shop in Huddersfield, a car showroom in Knaresborough and a convenience store in Selkirk. And most recently, in January, in the old Debenhams building in Derby city centre.

You have to feel sorry for the publicans and club owners who've been forced to close their doors because the business of selling legal drugs has failed them, only to see the buildings they vacate being used to grow and distribute illegal drugs. Cannabis grows have been discovered, for example, in shut down pubs in Brockley, Manchester, Merthyr and South Shields and in defunct nightclubs in Bolton, Glamorgan, Sutton, Liverpool and Swansea.

It was perhaps not what the Lord our saviour intended, but cannabis farms have been found inside abandoned churches in Edinburgh, Burnley and Morecombe. Grows have also been uncovered in a recently abandoned go-kart complex in Ayr, a leisure centre in Newport, a disused cinema in Nottingham and an NHS mental health centre in Essex.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: You Might Want to Think Twice About Putting Weed in Your Vagina to Ease Cramps

Britain's cannabis cultivation epidemic was originally sparked by the arrival of specialist Vietnamese grow gangs from Canada in the early-2000s. Over the last decade, because of police clampdowns, cannabis cultivation has moved from big grows run by Vietnamese and English gangs in suburbia and rural areas to hard-up individuals getting a crop on in harder to find, smaller grows in urban loft spaces.

In 2012, a report by Leeds City Council acknowledged that "the current financial climate may be encouraging certain members of the community to develop their own cottage industry, cultivating small cannabis farms for additional income".

And some of these people, either through a tip-off or opportunism, have opted against getting caught with a loft full of plants by hiding cannabis cultivations in plain sight: in empty shops and buildings in their local high street. The only problem with the high street grows is that they are more likely to be discovered, especially if you have no aroma control.

One crew of cannabis growers, who had set up a 60-plant farm in an empty high street estate agents in Edinburgh, were forced to start painting the shop front, over and over again, after local shopkeepers began to get suspicious about the curious smell seeping through the whitewashed office windows. After the fifth coat of paint, police raided the farm.

A building doesn't even have to be empty. In April last year a large cannabis farm was found in the building that housed Tiki Tots children's nursery in the well-off Edinburgh neighbourhood of Morningside. As the children were playing downstairs, officers discovered nearly 100 plants being nurtured in a room above the nursery.

WATCH: 'Kings of Cannabis', our documentary about weed seed pioneer Arjan Roskam.

Grows have also been set up by shop owners while they are still in business, as a way of keeping the wolf from the door. In 2014, police found a cannabis farm in the back room of a working pub, the Cleveland Arms in Liverpool. The year before, a father and son running a car audio shop in Stockport were rumbled after they decided to supplement their income by getting a crop on in the back room and selling weed alongside subwoofers.

High street cannabis farms are part of a wider infrastructure in which the drug trade operates, just out of view, in our towns and cities. Scratch the surface, from health shops selling dodgy valium and cab firms serving up to college students, to hairdressers and take-aways selling cocaine and crack, and the drug trade is there. There will be at least one shopfront in every high street that owes its very existence to the drug trade.

In Scotland in 2010, for instance, police raided 12 children's nurseries because they were suspected of being set up for money laundering purposes by organised drug gangs. As a Scotland Yard money laundering expert told me in 2012: "If you want to get large amounts of money to be made to look legitimate, then cash businesses are the way forward. And the best cash businesses are high street stores."

But the police are not immune to austerity themselves. They do not have the resources to investigate a seemingly respectable high street shop, or even what might be going on behind the rising numbers of shuttered-up empty stores. Yet as more shops become victim to harsh economic realities, the ever-fluid drug trade – fuelled by unofficial credit, hard cash and catering for an endless demand – will always be there in the background, ready to step in.

@Narcomania

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I just searched stock images for 'love' and thought these donkeys looked sweet. Forgive me. (Photo via Klearchos Kapoutsis)

And a leather tourniquet closes around your throat, and your legs – bound to your shoulders with a complex system of pulleys and chains – start to stiffen and cramp, and the blood pools in your genitals and in your brain, and you shudder to one final, magnificent orgasm you and croak: I love you.

And wax drips off your nipples and cools on your thighs, and it stings and solidifies and brings up wicked goosepimples on your soft, supple flesh, and edging close to ecstasy you pant: I love you.

And hands unseen are whipping at you through the dark, and each of your limbs is bound to a separate nub of the bed, and your body isn't yours anymore, it is scratches and the pink pre-blushes of bruises and the sting of a whip and the red welts of suffering, and you are gristle, euphoric gristle, and you shout to whoever it is that's hurting you, who's pleasuring you: I love you.

And you take one delicious breath after the hands are released from around your neck and the bag taken out from over your head and you release that slick, sticky feeling was your entire body being covered in lubricant and you look at what a mess you are, what a dirty little mess you've become, and look up at the light and say: I love you.

And you take a sip from a glass of water because every fluid in your body has gushed out of you in a wave and you whisper: I love you.

And you glisten and gleam and you are fresh out of the shower and pampered and powdered and swaddled in tight, fresh underwear, and suddenly every single one of your holes is filled at once – every single one, you are yanked and filled like a cushion at a cushion factory – and you yell out as much in surprise as in delight: I love you!

And you kneel on the floor and graciously lap it all up and gargle: I love you.

On NOISEY: Meeting the UK's Most Obsessive Vinyl Hoarders

Anyway: Valentine's news, now! And it turns out saying "I love you" or talking about love or whatever in bed is actually more erotic, long-term, than wearing fancy lingerie or straight-up foreplay, it says here.

That's according to a Chapman University study into the sex'n'satisfaction habits of 39,000 married or cohabiting consenting heterosexual adults, anyway, all of whom had been with their partner for three or more years. So, like: the exact inverse of freaky. The most 'slice of plain white bread with just a smidgen of warm margarine' sex-havers in the universe. Proper 'just tap water is fine, thanks' orgasm-doers. The 'Can we have the lights off, Lynn? And close the curtains. You know I can't rest if we don't close the curtains' of the sex-enjoying world.

Anyway, out of them: turns out the more satisfied were the ones who regularly indulged in intimate behaviour, with 75 percent of satisfied men and 74 percent of satisfied women in the study being the ones who regularly said "I love you" or spoke lovingly about love while they had sex. And probably said things like "actually, I prefer spooning to actual intercourse" immediately afterwards. Kind of people who get up early to go to farmer's markets. Dream distantly of living in Downton Abbey times. Take little tupperwares full of seeds and nuts to work to stop them breaking down and just enjoying a dirty, guilty little vending machine Crunchie.

That said the phrase was also uttered by 49 percent of dissatisfied men and 44 percent of dissatisfied women, so maybe love truly is a lie.

"Almost half of satisfied and dissatisfied couples read sexual self-help books and magazine articles, but what set sexually satisfied couples apart was that they actually tried some of the ideas," said lead study author Dr David Frederick. The study also found 83% of people were sexually satisfied during the first six months of their relationships, and people who sent a teasing little ''''''''''''sext''''''''''' earlier in the day were more likely to be sexually satisfied later on. Also sexual variety was important for overall satisfaction, but analysts couldn't figure out exactly which various sexual flavours were conducive to long term satisfaction – "evidence on the effectiveness of specific forms of variety, such as showering together or wearing lingerie or use of sex toys, is lacking" – so guess you've got to mess around with it a bit.

On MUNCHIES: Sex and Food – Snakes on a Plane

So, thanks to science, this: if you're planning on having some electric, earth-shattering orgasms this Valentine's Day, don't come at them with a dild or a variety pack of intense warming pleasure gels or restraints or frankly appalling DVD footage of someone getting done: instead just drop the L-bomb, right in the middle of the freshly ironed sheets, right before you bark yourself to a climax six minutes after starting. Have a good one, lovers. Have a good one.

@joelgolby

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"It's like we've won the lottery!" yelps a man called Tony, his curly mop of hair jiggling as he gleefully teeters around his council flat like a flicked Subbuteo. He nuzzles into long-term fiancée Diane's grey roots and and exclaims: "You've never seen so much money in your life!"

The pair, both stars of Channel 5's new reality show The Great British Benefits Handout (GBBH), are staring in shock at a briefcase filled with £26,000. Tony and Diane are middle-aged and haven't worked in their adult lives, making up just two of the UK's 638,000 long-term unemployed. The money is theirs on the proviso that they and their 21-year-old son, a quiet furry boy named Michael, get off the dole. The idea of this "social experiment", we're told, is to see if the family, currently living on £6,000 a year in state benefits, can pull themselves out of worklessness with a sum of money the narrator says "could turn their lives around".

UK Apache

UK Apache, one of the two men behind jungle classic "Original Nuttah", is sitting opposite me, reflecting on his upbringing.

"I was raised by revolutionary people – my mum and grandparents were heavily involved in the anti-Apartheid struggle, so I was taught to fight for justice and speak the truth," he says. "My grandfather Cassim was in the ANC and friends with Nelson Mandela, and my grandmother Zubeida was Mandela's first secretary – they're in his biography, Long Walk to Freedom."

It's a bitter January morning and Apache – real name Abdul Wahab – and I are taking refuge in his friend's restaurant, Khani Halal, on Tooting High Street. I'm here to talk to him about his journey from young "nuttah" to finding peace and purpose in Islam. But, for the moment, he's in full flow remembering his formative years as an only child – of Indian-South African (mum) and Iraqi (dad) parentage – raised by his mother in working class Tooting in the 1970s and 1980s.

As a teenager, reggae proved a defining influence.

"It was political music and had a positive message, with this talk of the world being in turmoil, sufferance, revolution and fighting for justice. Two of my close friends were Jamaican, and we'd bunk off round each other's houses and listen to Bob Marley, the legend, Papa Michigan, Brigadier Jerry, Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs," he recalls.

"We'd go youth club on the Doddington Estate in Battersea where there were these sound system dances. I was imitating being a Jamaican – I'd dress like a Jamaican, walk like a Jamaican, talk like a Jamaican, but I wasn't Jamaican; I was a Jafaican," he laughs.

A young UK Apache with Nelson Mandela

In the 1970s and 1980s, Britain's black political struggle saw South Asian and African-Caribbean communities unite against violence on the streets, discrimination in the workplace and a fight for rights in the face of a hostile state and its institutions. The struggle's soundtrack was reggae: outsider, anti-establishment music that spoke to disenfranchised youth, whether black, brown or white.

Back then, Tooting was a far cry from the melting pot it is today, when a Chicken Shop and the Honest Burger on Tooting High Street stand out as exotic among the succession of South Asian restaurants. Indeed, for a "skinny little Asian kid" like UK Apache, the threat of a kicking was never far away.

"South London was rough with the National Front around," he says. "When we moved to Tooting we had things thrown at our house and neighbours called us 'Pakis'. White and black skinheads were out Paki-bashing, and sound system dances weren't welcoming to me – you could get bottled or bricked, and there was this chat: 'Who does he think he is? He thinks he's black.' I was just being who I was, and reggae was a way of talking to the people. All I ever wanted was to make music with a positive message and provide for my mum."

By 1990, Apache was making ripples in UK reggae with his debut release "No Poll Tax" and performing with Lord Gelly's Sound at Notting Hill Carnival. But like thousands of other inner city and suburban Londoners at the time, it wasn't long before he turned his attention to jungle.

"I instantly felt connected to jungle," he says. "It was British, and as much as I loved reggae, it was Jamaican. Jungle is where my name, UK Apache, came from. In reggae people used to call me Apache – as in Apache Indian – but jungle was UK, so I put UK in front of Apache and it fit like a jigsaw. It seemed god-sent."

UK Apache soon came across the work of a teenage Shy FX, in particular the Goodfellas-sampling "Gangsta Kid", and in 1994 they booked some time in a studio in Victoria. "Original Nuttah" was what emerged, and within months it was in the UK Top 40.

Yet, as "Original Nuttah" peaked, UK Apache walked away. Why?

"I felt people were trying to cheat me – I was confused and angry and I had no one to trust. It was too much pressure, so I stepped away," he says. "Major labels wanted an album, but it was a total mess – I'd fallen out with everyone. That was the start of my journey into Islam. Initially I was praying, studying and performing 'Nuttah', so I was doing the call to prayer at my masajid in Tooting. During the day I was doing 'Allahu-Akbar' and at night singing 'na-ni-ni-whoa' – I lived that life for many years."

UK Apache may have left the music business behind, but he's aware that "Original Nuttah" is as much of an anthem now as it was in 1994. Taking the vocal melody, he's reimagined it as "I Was a Nuttah", a conscious reggae take on the original, with lyrics reflecting his age and faith.

UK Apache performing a sample of "I Was a Nuttah" for VICE

"I wrote 'I Was A Nuttah' because the message of unity, peace and Islam is bigger than me, or any of the negative 'Original Nuttah' stuff. Its message is universal. For example, it talks about respecting youth – youth clubs have closed down, the cost of studying has gone up, the government want young people to be slaves and in debt all their lives. It's madness," he says, shaking his head.

It's an especially shaky time for young Muslims in Britain, with political rhetoric and media coverage from certain newspapers making Islam out to be a threat to British values. It's depressingly reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, when black boys were the boogiemen. Now it's brown boys with beards and brown women in hijabs and niqabs.

"Everyone is wondering why British Muslims are joining IS. I believe young Muslims feel alienated and lost, with nothing to hold on to. We all have a part to play – Muslims, non-Muslims, the government and the media who only talk about Muslims in a negative way and never show us in a positive light. Muslims have the biggest part to play – especially mosques, because many are not run in the correct way, and I've experienced it myself. There are imams who are not qualified, because they are not from Britain and they don't speak a word of English. This is a disaster.

"Imams should be from Britain so they can relate to youth. If young Muslims don't get the correct understanding of Islam from a mosque or imam, they're going on the internet, where they can get wrong information and be groomed to do acts that are not Islamic."

READ ON THUMP: The Inside Story of the Best Jungle Labels You've Probably Never Heard of

Over the last couple of years, UK Apache's been trying to address the void between elders and youngers by giving talks at mosques.

"In my time there weren't many gangs, but there was trouble around drugs and fights, and I've experienced these things," he explains. "Islam guides you in a positive, peaceful manner. It depends on how serious you are, but if you look to Islam it will guide you in the right way. So I've been sharing my experiences and relationship with Islam with the youth, and I always talk about unity and bringing people together."

Apache is acutely aware that one of the most effective means of connecting people is music. However, despite recording "I Was A Nuttah", it's far from certain whether or not he'll pursue music – even if it's in a spoken word or nasheed style (without any instruments, bar very basic percussion).

"Music is haram, and I don't want to lie because of my own desire. However, if I make the decision to do it, and live properly and well in other respects, that's on my head," he says. "There always seems to be someone who wants to hear 'I Was a Nuttah', and it's been taking on a life of its own. Sometimes these things build over the years. It has a good message, so let's see where it goes and takes me – we'll leave it in the hands of the creator."

@_storywallah

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Picture moments before Dublin Weigh in shooting. Madness. pic.twitter.com/p9GhcyJ8C4
— Colm (@cohcfc) February 6, 2016

A feud between two of Dublin's major criminal families has descended into deadly violence, with both sides taking to the city's streets to settle scores.

Last Friday, a six-strong armed gang rushed a boxing weigh-in at Dublin's Regency Hotel. Wearing Gardai-style rapid response uniforms and armed with two AK-47 rifles, the masked gunmen opened fire on the auditorium, before quickly disappearing into the city. One of their alleged targets, 34-year-old David Byrne, was dead, and two others lay wounded.

Since then, police have set up checkpoints around the city, and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has called for calm as her government attempts to slow a cycle of violence that is quickly gathering momentum.

Initial confusion over who was responsible for the shooting was exacerbated by a statement released after the incident and published by the BBC. A man claiming to be a member of dissident group the Continuity IRA (CIRA) said the organisation had carried out the attack and would be targeting more gangland figures. Some local experts were doubtful of the CIRA's involvement in what appeared to be a calculated mob hit, rather than a violent political statement.

An authenticated statement released by the CIRA late on Monday confirmed this suspicion: "The Continuity IRA wish to make it clear that we did not have any involvement in Friday's shooting at the Regency Hotel. We have absolutely no involvement in criminal feuds. We see the false claim that the CIRA were involved in this act as another attempt to tarnish the name of the organisation."

Instead, it's believed that a gangland rivalry is to blame.

Attending the weigh-in was Daniel Kinahan, son of Christy Kinahan, considered to be Ireland's leading crime boss and the head of an international drug smuggling operation based in Spain's Costa Del Sol. It is thought that Daniel was the intended target of the raid and that the Hutch family – a two-generation Dublin crime dynasty and former allies of the Kinahans – were responsible.

The Hutch family became notorious in Ireland after 24-year-old Gerry Hutch was named as a suspect in two of the most lucrative robberies the country had ever seen, the IR£1.7 million robbery of an armoured van in 1987 and the IR£3 million armed robbery of a security depot in 1995. However, Hutch – nicknamed "The Monk" because of his religious beliefs and humble lifestyle – was never prosecuted. Instead, in 2007, he paid the Irish government over €1.5 million in "owed" taxes and retired, saying he would be spending his time between Dublin and the Canary Islands.

As the younger generation of the Hutch dynasty rose to authority, they gravitated towards the drug trade, working alongside the other major Dublin crime faction, the Kinahans. Gary Hutch, nephew of Gerry Hutch and a convicted armed robber and drug dealer, had even been a housemate and friend of Daniel Kinahan's at one stage – but the alliance wouldn't last.

In late 2015, Gary was shot dead in a Spanish apartment complex, reportedly because Christy Kinahan believed he had stolen over €100,000 from the gang while working for them. This was the first time a member of the Hutch family had been targeted in such a way, and it's this incident that is thought to have led to the attempted murder on Friday of Daniel Kinahan and other senior Kinahan gang members. The suspected killer is known to Garda as an associate of Gerry Hutch.

Video footage from the weigh-in attack was still doing the rounds when, on Monday evening at around 7.45PM, 59-year-old father of five Eddie Hutch was gunned down by masked shooters in the hallway of his home on Poplar Row in Dublin's northside.

Described as a "quiet man", Eddie was Gerry Hutch's brother. Although he had a record, he had managed to keep away from most major criminal activity and made his living as a taxi driver. However, as the two feuding sides flex their muscle, extended family members and associates have seemingly become fair game. Following Friday's attack, police have moved Gary's brother, Derek Hutch, to the special protection wing at Wheatfield Prison, where he is currently serving time for manslaughter. He's already been the target of attacks within the prison.

At a two-hour long press conference yesterday, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan addressed the events, saying: "We will stand down this threat from these gangs, and the garda will have every resource that they need in order to have the kind of armed response that is necessary and the kind of saturation policing that we need to see."

Fitzgerald went on to explain that a permanent armed response unit would be created to deal with gangland activity as a direct result of the weekend's murders.

It's unlikely that Monday's murder will be the final act of violence in this feud, but the people of Dublin can do little but wait and watch. Meanwhile, the Irish intelligence services are coordinating with Spanish security authorities in an attempt to deal with the situation.

A looming election in Ireland will not afford politicians room to manoeuvre past difficult questions, and this current crisis brings the unresolved issue of Ireland's criminal underworld to the fore. The management of Dublin's gangland and maintaining public safety are topics that require action, not posturing, before a civilian is caught in the crossfire.

@itsdavidgilmour

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In today's age of insatiable austerity, it can sometimes be a struggle to find ways of saving money. Other than having Sainsbury's Basics ham and coleslaw for lunch and dinner and staying indoors every weekend to watch your life pass you slowly by, there isn't a great deal you can do. So thank god for wombling, a new and inventive way of saving those precious pennies.

Named after those fictional furry animals that just loved to collect your refuse, wombling is a new trend of money-saving in which you basically hang about in supermarket and fast food restaurant car parks and look for discarded receipts. Due to the high number of price guarantee and loyalty schemes available these days, many receipts will often have barcodes that you can scan and save money on your next shop with.

58-year-old retiree Stephen Auker, from Keighley, west Yorkshire, started the trend and he reckons he makes up to £200 a month, or £2,400 a year, scanning the codes off other people's detritus. And he's not just some lone money-saving maverick either: he's started a Facebook group that has over 5,000 followers.

Keen to get in on this action, we sent two of our interns out on a wombling trip of their own, to see if they too can partake in the glory of 'saving money by picking up old receipts in car parks'.

TOM USHER, WOMBLER

When braving the cold sharp sun of a Wednesday morning to go and pick up other people's discarded receipts for tuppence, a few things travel through your mind. How did it get to this stage? What is my life saying? And most importantly, how can I go around picking up other people's discarded receipts for tuppence without anyone actually seeing my face?

But there was no time for such self-conscious thoughts; I needed action. I began scouring the floor on the local high street, in every crack and crevice on the side of the road, nonchalantly whistling like a Looney Tunes character every time someone came near me or made anything resembling eye contact. I instantly found two brown Tesco receipts, so instantly my insecurities were paying dividends.

I moved further away, towards a train station. According to the honourable Womble code and actual plain old UK law, it is illegal to hassle customers for receipts or look inside bins in or outside stores. But godammit, I was desperate. I darted into a Sainsbury's Local and eyed up a bin full of sweet, delicious receipts, casually tossed away by the self-service checkouts as if they were nothing. Do these people not realise what a goldmine they are sitting on? I made a dart for one of the bins by the entrance but a piercing look from a cashier stopped me dead in my pathetic paper-chasing tracks. I backed away. I'm as keen to save pennies as the next wombler, but I'm not willing to risk my life. Or, well. Not life, but: one of the deeper remaining shreds of my pride.

Dejected, I exited the store doing that weird kind of half-smile at the cashiers like I was just really happy to have visited this particular Sainsbury's Local even though I didn't actually buy anything and my behaviour was close to "having a bad trip on Acid" levels of paranoia. But then it struck me: the car parks. Of course. Had I not paid attention to the great womble prophet Stephen Auker at all? I knew there was a Sainsbury's and Matalan car park round the back of a shopping mall nearby so I dived two-footed into its paper-filled bosom.

And what a bosom! The suckers out there not in the know about wombling obviously felt like a car park was the best place to dump their scrunched-up gold, and so I really went to town here. But then I saw my colleague had the same idea as me in terms of location and it suddenly became a Supermarket Sweep-esque dash around the place to pick up as many sheets as possible. I actually managed to get quite a few but – though they looked impressively lengthy – most were from Matalan and Iceland, who just seem to enjoy having long receipts with not much penny-saving action going on in them. After weighing up what I'd got online from various stores, I'd reckoned I'd saved just over 45p in total. But for an hour's work in this current climate, not too shabby at all!

— @williamwasteman

AMELIA DIMOLDENBERG, WOMBLER

After watching a very tense YouTube video from wombling pioneer Stephen Auker titled, 'Tesco manager approaches me when I'm wombling (E21),' I was rather apprehensive about picking up receipts in close proximity to large corporations. Especially as the first stop on my wombling adventure was a Tesco Express, a notorious death trap for womblers. As I braved the store's interior, sadly the freshly polished lino floor showed no signs of forgotten receipts. They were all stuffed into small black boxes underneath the self-service tills, which are impossible to reach without security seeing. A clever trick. Obviously they have had trouble with womblers before.

After a disappointing start, I decided to venture out to a larger supermarket, preferably one with a car park like those I had seen in Stephen's videos. On my way to the bus stop I stumbled across not one, but TWO scrunched-up Tesco Express receipts. Quickly I looked around and checked for any onlookers then placed them in my pocket. Success.

When I finally got to a big Sainsbury's, it was pretty much the same story inside: the floors were spotless, not a receipt to be found. I began to walk out of the main doors, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted another wombler. Slowly, the supermarket morphed into an episode of Blue Planet – "We now see the two womblers meeting for the first time in their natural habitat, and fighting over a receipt to the death." I could tell the man was a wombler because he was rummaging through a line of stationed trolleys with a '£3 off your next shop' voucher in his hand. Annoyingly that voucher was the only good piece of wombler meat in the area and my wombler nemesis had already claimed it. But then in an unforeseen twist of events, like a fool, the man dropped the voucher back onto the trolley and I was poised to take back what was rightfully mine.

From then on the game changed. I walked out into the Sainsbury's car park and knew I was playing with the big boys. Running through lines of cars, eyes to the ground, I looked out for my next kill – it's surprising how many pieces of tissue can have the appearance of a receipt. Top Tip: follow the wind. It will lead you to piles of unwanted receipts that have been swept behind bins and large metal fences, trapped, screaming to get out. I picked up another three receipts from behind the car park fence and called it a day.

My wombling adventure was over now over and I was ready to bask in the glory of my success. Disappointingly, I don't know why, but there is something incredibly unsatisfying about making it rain with a handful of muddy receipts. All in all, I'd managed to save a breathtaking 32p. Was it worth it? Was the thrill of the chase worth it? Was clambering to grab the discarded vouchers and receipts of others worth it? For 32p? Do you even need me to answer that question?

— @ameliadimz

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(Photo: Twitter user @SimNico971)

A man has reportedly channelled his inner Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Alec Baldwin and Brian McFadden by completely losing his shit on an aeroplane – specifically an Air Mediterranee flight from Algiers to Paris.

Around 45 minutes into the flight, the man allegedly tried to urinate on a fellow passenger, sparking a mass brawl aboard Flight ML2673. The flight was forced to divert to Lyon as a result of the incident.

Staff on board the Airbus A321 said the man had become unruly as a result of being told he couldn't smoke or drink on board. Somewhere in between that and him pissing on a fellow passenger, starting a mass brawl and single-handedly diverting an aeroplane, the man also lost his shirt, as passenger pictures on Twitter have shown.

Eventually the plane did end up landing at its original destination, three hours later, where the shirtless piss brawler was removed, alongside another man.