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Kaia Gerber has issued some guidance for her elder brother Presley Gerber about taking care of his skin in the sun. Presley, 24, and Kaia, 21, are the children of model Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber, a businessman. Both siblings followed in their mother’s footsteps and have successful modelling careers, often sharing their work and off-duty looks on social media. On Saturday (19 August), Presley shared photos of himself on a sandy beach while topless. The images show him with a bandana draped around his shoulders. In the caption to the Instagram post, Presley wrote: “Sunscreen’s a myth”. In fact, sun protection provides an essential barrier to harmful UVA and UVB rays. According to the American Cancer Society, UVB rays are responsible for the majority of cases of skin cancer. In disagreement with her brother’s statement, Kaia left a public comment on the post to give him some alternative guidance. “Hi Presley! It’s me, your sister!” she began her message. “Remember me from childhood? We share the same parents [wacky face emoji] I actually wanted to share with you that sunscreen is not a myth!! It is real!! I actually use it myself!!” Fans and followers have jumped in on their exchange, with many leaving laughing emojis at the humorous tone of Kaia’s message. “Absolutely! Sharing is caring @presleygerber!” one fan remarked. “Sis has got your back! You've raised them well @cindycrawford!” Another simply wrote: “Love your brain Kaia!!” Earlier this year, Kaia shared her thoughts on the “nepo baby” debate, which highlights the privilege enjoyed by those in the entertainment and creative industries who have famous parents. Speaking to Elle in January, the model and actor acknowledged the ways that nepotism had helped her career. “I won’t deny the privilege that I have,” she said. “Even if it’s just the fact that I have a really great source of information and someone to give me great advice, that alone I feel very fortunate for.” She also shared a comment that Crawford made about her daughter’s busy modelling career. “My mom always joked, ‘If I could call and book a Chanel campaign, it would be for me and not you,’” Gerber added. “But I also have met amazing people through my mom whom I now get to work with.” Read More Stylist comes to bride-to-be’s rescue after hair is ‘destroyed’ just before wedding Geri Halliwell says she was ‘quite grumpy’ to Christian Horner in their early relationship Prince William criticised for including Charlotte in apology for missing Lionesses final James Blunt claims he changed his age on his Wikipedia page Shirlie Kemp says male doctor told her to ‘get over’ endometriosis Chrissy Teigen posts topless photo to remind fans to get mammograms

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A man who gunned down a beloved store owner in California during a dispute over a Pride flag, was killed during “a lethal force encounter” with police. The identity of the gunman has not been released, with the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office only stating that he was a male adult. The man shot and killed Laura Ann Carleton, 66, at her clothing store “Mag Pi” after he made “several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store,” officials said. The shooting happened around 5pm on Friday at the store on Hook Creek Road in in Cedar Glen, near Lake Arrowhead. When deputies responded to the store, they found Carleton with a gunshot wound. The mother of nine was pronounced dead at the scene. The gunman fled the area, but was later located near Torrey Road and Rause Rancho Road and was armed with a handgun when he was confronted by the authorities. He was killed during “a lethal force encounter” with deputies, who did not sustain injuries. “Through further investigation, detectives learned the suspect made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store before shooting Carleton,” officials said. It was unclear whether the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime. The 66-year-old mother-of-nine had remained defiant as a prominent ally to the LGBT+ community. When people first ripped down the Pride flag hanging outside her store, Carleton simply got another and hung it straight back up. Friends say this happened multiple times in the two years since she opened the California store as a second outpost to her first location in Studio City. Hollywood director Paul Feig, whose works include Bridesmaids and The Heat, posted a tribute saying that Carleton, who he called his “wonderful friend,” had been killed by a young man. “Her alleged murderer was later shot and killed by the San Bernardino police and so no longer poses a threat to the community,” Feig continued. “But this intolerance has to end. Anyone using hateful language against the LGBTQ+ community has to realize their words matter, that their words can inspire violence against innocent loving people. Let’s all keep moving forward with tolerance and love. Let’s not let Lauri’s tragic death be in vain.” The Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ described her as a “remarkable figure”, whose "unwavering support" for the community and “dedication to creating a safe and inclusive space within her shop touched the lives of many”. The shooting comes about one month after the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD released a report indicating a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ harassment, vandalism or assault in the United States. “This is absolutely horrific. This disgusting hate has no place in CA,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a social media post on Saturday. Read More Laura Carleton shooting – latest: Mag.Pi store owner and ‘true LGBTQ ally’ killed in row over Pride flag California store owner, 66, shot dead after argument about Pride flag outside her shop Paul Feig leads celebrity reactions to ‘horrific’ shooting of California store owner over Pride flag

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Nobody believed the Russians would really invade, says Yuriy Bova, mayor of the small Ukrainian town of Trostyanets, just 20 miles from the Russian border – but 24 February 2022 will forever be etched in his mind. As Russian tanks trundled across the border in the early hours of the morning, there were no Ukrainian troops in Trostyanets – in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy region – and the residents of the town knew the enemy would arrive within hours. Bova says they tried as best they could to slow down the Russian advance. Felling trees onto the roads through the rolling hills and forests surrounding Trostyanets, brought one column of invading vehicles to a halt for two days. However, it wasn't enough. “There weren’t just four or five armoured vehicles, as we had imagined. Instead, there was another column with more than 100 vehicles, including up to 60 tanks and armoured personnel carriers, 20 troop-carrying trucks plus fuel tankers,” Bova says. The Russians rumbled into Trostyanets on the first day of the invasion, beginning a nightmare for the town’s 21,000 inhabitants. I'd heard about the plight of the town a month later, on 27 March – when it was freed from Russian occupation. In the intervening weeks, much of the town was destroyed, 49 of its people were killed and 13 others believed “disappeared” by the occupiers. I was in another area of Ukraine – and knew nobody in Trostyanets – but started to dial numbers I could find. The first person to answer was on a number for the “Hotel Trostyanets". The woman who answered, Tetyana Shevchenko, the hotel’s owner had just returned to her town. I could hear her trying to muffle her sobbing as she told me about how the hotel had been utterly trashed. Everything that could be stolen, such as TVs, fridges and air-conditioners, had been looted, while beds, furniture, even doors had been smashed. However, even while absorbing the destruction at the business she and her husband spent years building, Tetyana said she felt lucky compared to others whose relatives had been killed or homes had been reduced to piles of charred rubble. Such a refusal to surrender to despair is a trait that was to become ever more apparent across Ukraine. I finally managed to visit Trostyanets recently, more than 15 months into a war Moscow appeared sure would only last weeks. Hotel Trostyanets was easy to find on the town’s main street, standing intact as part of a row of burned and battered husks of buildings. The town, founded in 1660, contains onion-domed churches and a fortress enclosed by a stone white-painted wall, built in the mid-18th century. During the occupation, the Russians positioned heavy artillery inside, calculating – correctly – that Ukrainian forces would not target a structure listed as a historic treasure. The building was unscathed by Ukrainian shelling but its walls are peppered with bullet holes from machine-gun fire in a bile-filled farewell by the fleeing Russians. Every street bears some scars. The railway station and shops, restaurants and residential buildings that had fringed a large square and park are a scene of total devastation, with most of the structures blasted beyond redemption. The park is a churned-up mixture of tarmac and soil. Eerily perched at its centre, atop a high concrete pedestal, is a Second World War-era Soviet T-34 tank. One of its treads, hit by shellfire, trails limply. When the Russians arrived, they commandeered the hotel and kicked Tetyana out. She said they immediately set out to inspire terror in the town, whose people were often beaten or detained, without rhyme or reason. Many men were forced to strip at gunpoint and stand on the street throughout freezing nights, she says. “They intimidated people, looted shops. Soon they started rounding people up for torture. They used the basement at our railway station as a torture chamber, where they did whatever they wanted,” Tetyana adds. “They understood that we were frightened of them and they behaved even more arrogantly, they enjoyed it.” Two of her friends, a married couple, were riding bikes when the Russians shot at them without warning, says Tetyana. The woman died but the Russians “wouldn’t let her body be moved for burial and she lay there until the Russians left”. Tetyana is active in local politics and was head of the local election commission. She feared the Russians would eventually come for her and she and her daughter managed to leave in mid-March to western Ukraine. Both their husbands had previously left and were in the Ukrainian military. Tetyana and her husband started repairing their hotel as soon as the Russians left, using their savings – as well as help from the local authorities. She gives a wry smile as she shows a photo of the door of room number six, where a Russian scrawl indicates a Russian commander had stayed. The door will be part of a planned museum about the town’s occupation. The situation on the battlefield is now somewhat different. Ukraine has been pushing a counteroffensive to take other territory occupied by Russia in the south and east, and the border area not far from Trostyanets has become the centre of cross-border incursions by pro-Ukrainian forces. The bulk of these have been carried out by Russian partisans seeking to cause trouble for president Vladimir Putin. The Russian Belograd region, between two and three hours’ drive from Trostyanets into Russian territory, has faced shelling, as well as the raids. But Trostyanets had seen its own version of guerrilla activity during the Russian occupation. The mayor, Bova, relays how it worked. A powerfully-built compact man, Bova was born in Trostyanets and was formerly a businessman. He was first elected as a councillor when he was 24 and has been the town’s mayor for 18 years. British and American intelligence had warned the Ukrainian government that the Russians had prepared detailed lists of people in government, military, police, education, social activists, businesspeople and others they suspected would help organise resistance and who were marked for arrest or execution. Bova says: “I had to decide whether to stay in my office and wait to be arrested and taken away or perhaps killed. That would have been madness. Weapons were in short supply – we had just four machine guns. So we couldn’t fight with that.” He and his comrades established contact with the Ukrainian 81st Brigade operating in the area and they asked his people to provide intelligence on what was going on inside Trostyanets. “They said that would be much more valuable than any fight we could have put up at that time,” says Bova, who became commander of Trostyanets’s territorial volunteer forces. Some of the Ukrainian partisans stayed inside the town while Bova and others operated from bases in forests close to Trostyanets, gathering detailed information about the Russian forces – including where they ate and slept and where their heavy weapons and armoured vehicles were at any time. They also helped guide Ukrainian artillery firing at Russian positions. Ukrainian intelligence believes one of the first of the many Russian generals to be killed during this invasion died in Trostyanets. Bova secretly visited the town twice to show the partisans he was close by and boost morale. On 21 March last year, they and Ukrainian regular forces launched an attack on the occupying forces in an attempt to liberate the town. But after a fierce firefight they had to withdraw. Bova says quite a few Russians were killed but so was one of the partisans. However, Ukrainian forces were encroaching on the town and the demoralised Russians, fearing being surrounded, fled on the night of 27 March across the border into Russia. Bova speaks to me inside his office at the town’s main administration building which, he says, like other public and community buildings in the town, had been looted and wrecked by the Russians. “The Russians smashed and destroyed everything. Three days before they left they fired some 30 tank shells into our main hospital... They also deliberately destroyed residential buildings. It was pure malice.” Bova suspects the 13 “disappeared” people were among those tortured beneath the railway station. Two prisoners were found alive in the basements as the Russians fled. They told of victims who bled to death after their fingers were cut off. Anguish flickers across Bova’s face as he recalls how the first thing the torturers demanded while beating their captives was his whereabouts. Since the town was liberated, Bova says he has worked tirelessly to rebuild Trostyanets. Electricity, water and heating systems were destroyed or ripped out. The town’s firefighting vehicles, ambulances, buses and any movable equipment was stolen. He said the Russians took even basic toolkits and wrecked what they could not take. He says all the tasks had to be performed in parallel – a huge logistical puzzle – and Bova reached out to and has been contacted by 130 organisations and groups around the world eager to help rebuild Trostyanets. In addition, scores of individuals have helped, many turning up unannounced to donate funds or supplies or roll up their sleeves to assist. He says everything from food, clothing and medicines to hospital apparatus, emergency vehicles and buses needed to be replaced “to return some semblance of normality”. “Today there are no homeless people in Trostyanets living under a tree,” he says. “Everyone has some roof over their heads.” But the tension never really leaves. The enemy is never out of reach, being so close to the border. Bova has a vision to rebuild Trostyanets using innovative designs from around the globe – taking into consideration factors such as the needs of elderly or disabled people and employing energy efficient and green technologies kind to the environment. “We know that we can’t invent everything ourselves when searching for new concepts,” he says. Therefore, he believes, to rebuild their country, Ukrainians need to forge partnerships with groups and individuals around the world to learn their approaches on incorporating culture, education parks and recreation into town planning. To that end he has traveled to the US, where among other projects he is seeking to adapt for Trostyanets “a new philosophy of park design” being developed by the city of Chattanooga in Tennessee. And last month he was in London for “The Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023” which was co-hosted by the UK and Ukraine and aimed at ensuring Ukraine can come back stronger from the devastation it has faced. Bova believes rebuilding Ukraine must begin even before the fighting is over. “We’ve mastered swiftly the technology of the new [Western] weapons we’ve been given. This is a people who didn’t break despite the horrors inflicted by the Russians and our nation is capable of swiftly mastering the technologies and ideas to rebuild our country.” He says so many people have died to ensure Ukraine survives and that it is “a duty to make every one of those sacrifices count – by building a new future they would be proud of and not recreating the past.” Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Sunak ‘discourages’ cluster bomb use after Biden agrees to send them to Ukraine Thousands march in Bosnia to mark 1995 Srebrenica genocide as ethnic tensions linger on Ukraine's president hails the country's soldiers from a Black Sea island to mark 500 days of war