The day after the state’s Republican governor signed the ban into law, a judge in South Carolina has blocked a measure outlawing abortion at roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion rights advocates and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit moments after Governor Henry McMaster announced his signature on the bill. South Carolina’s latest law – which could extend the sweeping restrictions and outright bans on abortion care across the entire US South, and threaten legal access to care for millions of Americans – is nearly identical to a bill that was blocked by the state Supreme Court last year. The decision on Friday means the state’s abortion regulations revert to previous rules that allow for abortion care up until about 20 weeks after after fertilization. “The status quo should be maintained until the Supreme Court reviews its decision,” Judge Clifton Newman said. “It’s going to end up there.” His decision on 26 May comes just four months after the state’s Supreme Court permanently struck down a similar measure, which the court determined ran afoul of the state’s constitution. Restrictions on abortion care “must be reasonable and it must be meaningful in that the time frames imposed must afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy,” Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority opinion on 5 January. More than a dozen states, mostly in the South, have outlawed most abortions or severely restricted access within the year after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which revoked a constitutional right to abortion care that was affirmed by the decision in Roe v Wade for nearly half a century. South Carolina remains the only state south of Virginia without severe restrictions or outright bans on abortion care past the 12th week of pregnancy. Most of those states have moved to ban abortion in nearly all cases with limited or no exceptions. Last year, lawmakers in South Carolina failed to adopt an anti-abortion law that would ban nearly all abortions in the state, but a six-week ban took effect shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling on 24 June. In a statement following the governor’s signature on the latest six-week ban, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lambasted Republican lawmakers who are “dismantling women’s rights across the South, putting their health and lives in jeopardy. “ South Carolina’s ban will cut off access to abortion for women in the state and those across the entire region for whom South Carolina is their closest option for care,” she added. This is a developing story Read More North Carolina Republicans approve 12-week abortion ban as sweeping restrictions spread across US South Senator who voted for anti-trans bill that passed by one vote admits she wasn’t paying attention From the Civil War to today's mattress sales, Memorial Day is full of contradiction GOP leaders in Kansas back off threat to sue Democratic governor over education funding DeSantis pushes past embarrassing campaign start, outlines travel schedule for early state visits

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Formula One bosses were facing up to one of the most embarrassing days in the sport’s recent history after practice for the much-anticipated Las Vegas Grand Prix was completed at 4am in an empty arena. After months of hype leading up to the £500million race, the first running was abandoned with just eight minutes on the clock. Second practice was then delayed by two and a half hours, and played out in front of vacant grandstands after furious fans were ejected to comply with local laws. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc topped the order, with Max Verstappen sixth and Lewis Hamilton ninth, but the event - billed by F1 chiefs as the greatest show on earth - dramatically unravelled more than seven hours previously. A water valve cover broke free from the newly laid tarmac and tore into the underbelly of Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari at 210mph on the Las Vegas Boulevard. The force of the impact visibly jolted Sainz in the cockpit and, amid a flurry of white smoke and orange sparks, disabled his machine. Race director Niels Wittich red-flagged the session, but not before Esteban Ocon also struck the debris. On-board footage from Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin captured the 42-year-old dramatically dodging the loose drain cover. Eleven minutes later, at 8:49pm, it was announced practice would not be resumed. Both Sainz and Ocon escaped without injury - but their cars were severely damaged. A giant hole tore through Sainz’s Ferrari leaving his mechanics facing an extensive repair job. Team principal Frederic Vasseur, who appeared in a pre-arranged press conference moments later, was furious. “We completely damaged the monocoque, engine and battery,” he said. “It is just unacceptable.” Second practice had originally been scheduled to start at midnight. But it was postponed as all 30 drain covers along the 1.2-mile Las Vegas Boulevard - which runs against the backdrop of Caesars Palace, Bellagio and Venetian hotels - were inspected. The covers were removed and holes filled with concrete and quick-drying resin in a hasty repair job. The track was finally deemed fit-for-purpose at 2:30am local time. However, when the running resumed the stands were empty after strict labour laws posed a security risk. Some disgruntled fans, who refused to leave, were moved on by police. A general admission ticket for the three-day event costs 500 US dollars (£400), while a hospitality suite was sold at an eye-watering 150,000 US dollars (£120,000) for the three days. The disastrous failure in Las Vegas comes 48 hours after a Superbowl-like opening ceremony, and a day on from triple world champion Verstappen heavily criticising the staging of the Grand Prix - the first here in four decades - as “99 per cent show, and one per cent sport”. F1 executives are keen to build on the sport’s growing popularity in the United States. The race in Nevada joins Austin and Miami as the third in America. Yet the mess here drew parallels with the 2005 United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis where only six drivers took part amid tyre safety fears. Leclerc finished half-a-second clear of team-mate Sainz. Verstappen, a winner of 17 of the 20 rounds so far, was nine tenths adrift with Hamilton 1.3 sec back in his Mercedes. Third practice is due to begin at 8.30pm on Friday (4.30am GMT on Saturday) with qualifying for Saturday’s 50-lap race taking place at midnight (8.00am GMT on Sunday). PA Read More Carlos Sainz handed ‘ridiculous’ penalty after drain cover crash at Las Vegas GP Empty grandstands at Las Vegas GP as chaotic practice session takes place at 3am Toto Wolff launches furious defence of F1 after absurd start to Las Vegas GP Empty grandstands at Las Vegas GP as chaotic practice session takes place at 3am Toto Wolff launches furious defence of F1 after absurd start to Las Vegas GP Ferrari boss rages at F1 after ‘unacceptable’ loose drain cover wrecks Sainz’s car

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Food can bring people comfort in the darkest times, and for Imad Alarnab, this time came when he was stranded as a refugee in Calais for more than two months. A hot plate had been donated, people collected leftovers from supermarkets, and having been a successful chef back in Damascus – with three restaurants, and a string of cafes and juice bars – Alarnab did what he did best, night after night, he cooked. “It was just something I felt like I needed to do, because you get to make a lot of people happy. Especially at that time, they needed something to be happy about,” says the 45-year-old, who would feed as many as 400 people at a time. The overcrowded camp that became known as The Jungle was close by, but Alarnab says it was too terrifying and overcrowded, so he and a group of several other Syrians slept on the steps of a church instead. And it was here he cooked the food of home – adapted, of course, depending on what they had. “To have a decent warm meal – for people whose lives have been on hold, they can’t cross to safety – was a big deal for all of us,” says the father-of-three. In fact, it was the first time he’d cooked for lots of people since all of his businesses were bombed within a week in 2012, in the country’s civil war, and this was the moment hope returned. “I think it restored all of the faith that things could, and would, get better,” Alarnab writes in his debut cookbook, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. By July 2015, he’d made the painful decision to leave his wife and three daughters in Damascus to make the treacherous journey via Lebanon, Greece and North Macedonia, to the UK, where they had relatives. With his children too young to make the journey, the family planned to join once he’d been granted asylum. “If I had any other choice, I would have definitely taken it. [Fleeing] wasn’t the easiest but it was somehow the safest,” he says. “When I was in Syria during the war, people were saying, ‘It’s not safe to go out of the house because maybe you’re going to die’. But I needed to feed my family, if I stayed in the house they would die from hunger. There’s no good choice or bad choice, but maybe it’s the only one you can make. “When I was leaving Damascus, my oldest daughter made me promise I would see her within one year. I said, ‘Yes, I promise,’ but I wasn’t really sure if I was going to keep that promise or not.” And during the three months before he reached the UK – walking hundreds of miles on foot, on train, in the back of cars, on push bike, at the mercy of smugglers, with false IDs and the kindness of strangers – there were moments of doubt, like when he was crammed in the back of a lorry in Turkey for seven hours. “There were about 95 of us, I felt it was a stupid decision, risking my life so much. I believe the driver was so scared, or maybe drunk – the speed was absolutely scary. I thought we were not going to make it.” His journey ended eventually by using a fake passport to cross the Channel in October 2015 (the moving, often harrowing, story is weaved through his new cookbook), and first finding work illegally in a car wash, where he also slept as an overnight security guard, sending money home. After his family were able to emigrate (just under the year he’d promised his daughter) someone introduced him to the Cook For Syria scheme – and soon he was hosting super clubs at his house. By May 2021, he’d opened his London restaurant, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. His first cookbook is a combination of dishes served up at the restaurant and his late mother’s recipes. “Almost every single dish is somehow related to my mother – I keep seeking her approval in everything I do in life, but especially with cooking,” he says. It was his mum, Summer, who first taught him to cook. “Even if you create your own recipes, somehow you will [always] be inspired by your first teacher”. She died very suddenly while Alarnab was living alone in a caravan in west London. Syrian food at its heart is “simple, first of all, and affordable for everyone”, he says. “We use a lot of mild spices, not very hot spices.” They’re mostly things you’ll know; “cumin, mint, garlic, nothing really special about it. [but] you put it together in a special way”. Middle Eastern in identity, much of it might feel familiar; tabbouleh, hummus, baklawa; while traditional dishes include buttered halibut, jaj bailfurn (grilled chicken thighs) and kippeh (lamb and bulgur wheat dumplings). Lunch is typically a feast of many dishes. “We’re a family of five and we never ever have one dish for lunch,” says Alarnab. “And we don’t throw anything away.” Before the war – which began as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 but has since involved a complex number of groups fighting one another, including so-called Islamic State, leaving at least 11 million people displaced – Alarnab was one of the lucky ones, he says. “We had a comfortable life, but most people in Syria were suffering. When you have a dictatorship for more than 50 years, of course people will be suffering. You cannot explain life without freedom to someone who’s lived all of their life with it. “People keep asking me silly questions – ‘Why did you have to go to 10 different countries to come to the UK? You could just get a plane ticket straight from Lebanon to Heathrow’. No, it doesn’t work like that. As a Syrian, my passport takes me to three countries – war zone countries. Even if I wanted to go to every country supporting Assad, I’d still need a visa.” Once the fighting started, food, that once brought him so much joy, lost all meaning. “I don’t know how to describe it, but the food tasted like blood. I know it’s disgusting, but nothing tasted the same. When you live in fear for your family, when your daughters are not safe to go to school, food will taste [bad], nothing can make you happy.” Cooking Syrian food now makes him feel “connected” to his home country, of course, “but it also makes me feel part of this unique community in the UK”. Arriving in London, he says: “I felt safe, I felt ‘I can be different, I can be myself, no one cares’. Everyone’s so different, it makes all of us lookalike.” Even after starting from scratch in a new country after losing everything, with a highly-acclaimed restaurant and now a cookbook, he’s most proud of his daughters. His eldest is studying at Warwick University after gaining straight As, his middle child is a talented artist. “The youngest [13] is the naughty one still,” he laughs. “But you can feel they appreciate their life – they are so happy about it.” ‘Imad’s Syrian Kitchen’ by Imad Alarnab (HQ; £26). Read More The National Portrait Gallery’s new restaurant is fabulous upgrade The dish that defines me: Alex Outhwaite’s Vietnamese bun cha 3 TikTok-approved recipes for picnic season It’s easier to make baklava at home than you might think Get set for Wimbledon with top pastry chef’s strawberry recipes Pinch of Nom: Healthy eating doesn’t have to cost the earth

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Our bellies have always been the target of derision and ire. Long have they been poked and prodded. Sighed at and sucked in. Reprimanded and insulted. But ever since social media became the new WebMD for chronic self-diagnosers, it’s been open season on every little bodily function. Every involuntary twitch, skin bump and mood shift has been analysed to death – but none more so than the dreaded bloat. Stomach bloating can happen for all sorts of reasons. Often the main culprit is a big meal. It’s that feeling of being uncomfortably full and needing to undo the top button of your jeans, as if you’ve just had a particularly heavy Sunday roast. Unless you have real food intolerances or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or the symptom is caused by hormonal changes, bloating is the body’s normal reaction to eating a little too much. It usually subsides after a few hours. But this is 2023. A bit of bloating is no longer something you can just wait a few hours to get rid of – social media dictates that it needs to be gone immediately, and if it doesn’t then there must be something wrong with you. And not to stop there, either. You should also be cutting 10 different types of foods out of your life, doing five simple exercises 200 times a day and taking an assortment of supplements and pills because God forbid your stomach be round for the next two hours. According to Dr Tamara Alireza, a functional medicine specialist at Skinfluencer London, bloating should be taken seriously if it doesn’t come and go with food. If it becomes a chronic problem, or is accompanied by other symptoms such as persistent stomach and pelvic pain, changes to bowel habits, unexpected weight loss, fatigue and fever, vomiting, or bleeding, it may be something different entirely. “Excess bloating can be linked to IBS, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and coeliac disease, but also to more serious conditions,” she says. But we are a society obsessed with quick fixes, and anti-bloating pills have become a popular “cure” for the woes of a distended belly. Last month, fitness influencer Sam Cutler took it to new heights when she provided the pills for her wedding guests during the meal. Some viewers of her TikTok video – which sparked so much horror that it rapidly went viral – claimed that the pills were essentially “laxatives”. The glut of brands that have emerged in recent years would disagree, though. Many claim to use all-natural ingredients to “speed up digestion” and reduce gas without a laxative effect. Admittedly, curiosity got the better of me. I am lucky enough not to suffer from any particularly gut-churning conditions, but I do have eyes bigger than my stomach. It means I regularly end up regretting wearing trousers to a meal, cursing myself as my belly strains against the waistband. Could these pills really make me feel more comfortable after a big dinner, or would they just lead to some unfortunate toilet habits? I am kindly sent a couple of packs by Wild Dose, which lists extracts of ginger, liquorice, fennel seed, turmeric, peppermint leaf and dandelion root alongside a “proprietary enzyme complex” and a probiotic blend in each brown pill. They smell very herbal and are a rather unappealing greenish-brown colour – it initially makes me wonder if it’s an omen for what my guts are about to experience. After two weeks of taking them daily, I found that they did make a slight difference in my post-meal stupor and I feel comfortable quicker than before. However, the change has been marginal and, if anything, they made me more gassy, to the chagrin of my significant other. The medical community is reluctant to support the efficacy of similar supplements, as there remains little clinical research to back up their claims. Dr Alireza describes anti-bloat pills as a “Band-Aid on a fire hydrant” for people who have genuine problems with their gut. “I generally would not recommend taking any pills to counteract the bloating,” she says, “rather I would be keen to first determine the source of the issue.” She points to her practice, which aims to determine the root cause of symptoms and treat it – instead of providing temporary fixes. But I think the real reason behind social media’s obsession with bloating has nothing to do with #guthealth. Instead, it is our inherent fatphobia and fear of fatness that fuel this battle against the bloat. Are we so afraid of looking fat for even a couple of hours that we flock to pills and exercises with such abandon? Given the way people have fallen over themselves to get their hands on Ozempic, a drug intended to help diabetes patients but which has made a name for itself as a weight-loss miracle, it appears the answer is yes. It’s no mistake, either, that women are the primary targets for anti-bloating content online. Studies show that women are twice as likely to experience it as men, particularly during menstruation and menopause because of hormonal fluctuations. But the expectation for women to maintain at least the illusion of thinness at all times is also much higher. Many of us learned at an early age how to suck in our stomachs and – even as adults – keep them sucked in pretty much all day. As I write this, I realise that I’ve been subconsciously engaging my core muscles despite sitting behind a desk. No wonder the promise of no more bloating is so appealing, if it makes looking mildly smaller less of a chore. Joanna Dase, fitness expert and operations director of female-focused health clubs Curves, says that any medical conditions should be diagnosed by qualified professionals rather than social media. She acknowledges that while bloating can affect body image, no one should worry about your normal, natural responses to digestion. “If you have a professional opinion and there is no health problem related to it, then you just need to have an actual understanding of your body and its natural functions, and being OK with yourself. It’s just how your body breaks down food.” Read More Wellness gurus claim your hormones are out to get you – but is it just another scam? ‘Thanks Pfizer’: The weird world of shakes, health anxiety and illness online A One Direction fan claimed she had a brain tumour. 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