What in the World Why some athletes and musicians are using OnlyFans as a side hustle
OnlyFans is an online platform where people create content (photos, videos and live streams), which can be monetised. Although it hosts a variety of content across topics like fitness and cooking, OnlyFans is known widely for hosting adult content, much of it explicit. As its popularity has soared, so too has the controversy and stigma surrounding the platform.
Last week, Kurts Adams Rozentals, a world-class British canoeist, revealed that he had been banned from competing by Paddle UK — the sport's governing body — after they learned he was an OnlyFans content creator. He told the BBC he started posting content because Paddle UK's annual grant of £16,000 was insufficient to cover rent, travel, food and other expenses associated with full-time training in London.
BBC Business Reporter Charlotte Edwards explains exactly how the platform works and who owns it. She also gives us the latest on the embattled British canoer.
Plus: Chimgozirim Nwokoma, a senior reporter for Tech Point Africa, tells us about All Access Fans — an African start-up that have taken inspiration from OnlyFans' subscription-based business model — and the reaction to it.
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Sky News
35 minutes ago
- Sky News
US warplanes transit through UK: Here's what the flight tracking data shows
Flight tracking data shows extensive movement of US military aircraft towards the Middle East in recent days, including via the UK. Fifty-two US military planes were spotted flying over the eastern Mediterranean towards the Middle East between Monday and Thursday. That includes at least 25 that passed through Chania airport, on the Greek island of Crete - an eight-fold increase in the rate of arrivals compared to the first half of June. The movement of military equipment comes as the US considers whether to assist Israel in its conflict with Iran. Of the 52 planes spotted over the eastern Mediterranean, 32 are used for transporting troops or cargo, 18 are used for mid-air refuelling and two are reconnaissance planes. Forbes McKenzie, founder of McKenzie Intelligence, says that this indicates "the build-up of warfighting capability, which was not [in the region] before". Sky's data does not include fighter jets, which typically fly without publicly revealing their location. An air traffic control recording from Wednesday suggests that F-22 Raptors are among the planes being sent across the Atlantic, while 12 F-35 fighter jets were photographed travelling from the UK to the Middle East on Wednesday. Many US military planes are passing through UK A growing number of US Air Force planes have been passing through the UK in recent days. Analysis of flight tracking data at three key air bases in the UK shows 63 US military flights landing between 16 and 19 June - more than double the rate of arrivals earlier in June. On Thursday, Sky News filmed three US military C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft and a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane arriving at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport. Flight tracking data shows that one of the planes arrived from an air base in Jordan, having earlier travelled there from Germany. What does Israel need from US? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 15 March that his country's aim is to remove "two existential threats - the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat". Israel says that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, though Iran says its nuclear facilities are only for civilian energy purposes. A US intelligence assessment in March concluded that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. President Trump dismissed the assessment on Tuesday, saying: "I think they were very close to having one." Forbes McKenzie says the Americans have a "very similar inventory of weapons systems" to the Israelis, "but of course, they also have the much-talked-about GBU-57". The GBU-57 is a 30,000lb bomb - the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence. Mr McKenzie explains that it is "specifically designed to destroy targets which are very deep underground". Experts say it is the only weapon with any chance of destroying Iran's main enrichment site, which is located underneath a mountain at Fordow. Air-to-air refuelling could allow Israel to carry larger bombs Among the dozens of US aircraft that Sky News tracked over the eastern Mediterranean in recent days, more than a third (18 planes) were designed for air-to-air refuelling. "These are crucial because Israel is the best part of a thousand miles away from Iran," says Sky News military analyst Sean Bell. "Most military fighter jets would struggle to do those 2,000-mile round trips and have enough combat fuel." The ability to refuel mid-flight would also allow Israeli planes to carry heavier munitions, including bunker-buster bombs necessary to destroy the tunnels and silos where Iran stores many of its missiles. Satellite imagery captured on 15 June shows the aftermath of Israeli strikes on a missile facility near the western city of Kermanshah, which destroyed at least 12 buildings at the site. At least four tunnel entrances were also damaged in the strikes, two of which can be seen in the image below. Writing for Jane's Defence Weekly, military analyst Jeremy Binnie says it looked like the tunnels were "targeted using guided munitions coming in at angles, not destroyed from above using penetrator bombs, raising the possibility that the damage can be cleared, enabling any [missile launchers] trapped inside to deploy". "This might reflect the limited payloads that Israeli aircraft can carry to Iran," he adds. Penetrator bombs, also known as bunker-busters, are much heavier than other types of munitions and as a result require more fuel to transport. Israel does not have the latest generation of refuelling aircraft, Mr Binnie says, meaning it is likely to struggle to deploy a significant number of penetrator bombs. Israel has struck most of Iran's western missile bases Even without direct US assistance, the Israeli air force has managed to inflict significant damage on Iran's missile launch capacity. Sky News has confirmed Israeli strikes on at least five of Iran's six known missile bases in the west of the country. On Monday, the IDF said that its strategy of targeting western launch sites had forced Iran to rely on its bases in the centre of the country, such as Isfahan - around 1,500km (930 miles) from Israel. Among Iran's most advanced weapons are three types of solid-fuelled rockets fitted with highly manoeuvrable warheads: Fattah-1, Kheibar Shekan and Haj Qassam. The use of solid fuel makes these missiles easy to transport and fast to launch, while their manoeuvrable warheads make them better at evading Israeli air defences. However, none of them are capable of striking Israel from such a distance. Iran is known to possess five types of missile capable of travelling more than 1,500km, but only one of these uses solid fuel - the Sijjil-1. On 18 June, Iran claimed to have used this missile against Israel for the first time. Iran's missiles have caused significant damage Iran's missile attacks have killed at least 24 people in Israel and wounded hundreds, according to the Israeli foreign ministry. The number of air raid alerts in Israel has topped 1,000 every day since the start of hostilities, reaching a peak of 3,024 on 15 June. Iran has managed to strike some government buildings, including one in the city of Haifa on Friday. And on 13 June, in Iran's most notable targeting success so far, an Iranian missile impacted on or near the headquarters of Israel's defence ministry in Tel Aviv. Most of the Iranian strikes verified by Sky News, however, have hit civilian targets. These include residential buildings, a school and a university. On Thursday, one missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, southern Israel's main hospital. More than 70 people were injured, according to Israel's health ministry. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had struck a nearby technology park containing an IDF cyber defence training centre, and that the "blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section" of the hospital. However, the technology park is in fact 1.2km away from where the missile struck. Photos of the hospital show evidence of a direct hit, with a large section of one building's roof completely destroyed. Iran successfully struck the technology park on Friday, though its missile fell in an open area, causing damage to a nearby residential building but no casualties. Israel has killed much of Iran's military leadership It's not clear exactly how many people Israel's strikes in Iran have killed, or how many are civilians. Estimates by human rights groups of the total number of fatalities exceed 600. What is clear is that among the military personnel killed are many key figures in the Iranian armed forces, including the military's chief of staff, deputy head of intelligence and deputy head of operations. Key figures in the powerful Revolutionary Guard have also been killed, including the militia's commander-in-chief, its aerospace force commander and its air defences commander. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that US assistance was not necessary for Israel to win the war. "We will achieve all our objectives and hit all of their nuclear facilities," he said. "We have the capability to do that." 3:49 Forbes McKenzie says that while Israel has secured significant victories in the war so far, "they only have so much fuel, they only have so many munitions". "The Americans have an ability to keep up the pace of operations that the Israelis have started, and they're able to do it for an indefinite period of time." Additional reporting by data journalist Joely Santa Cruz and OSINT producers Freya Gibson, Lina-Sirine Zitout and Sam Doak.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter: from Disney to festival headliners
Eight days apart, at the British Summer Time stage in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of 65,000, two glittering, platinum pop titans will perform. First up, next Friday, is Olivia Rodrigo: 22 years old, 46 million monthly listeners on Spotify; 14 Grammy nominations; three wins; and about to headline Glastonbury. Then, on July 5 and 6, Sabrina Carpenter: 26 years old, 70 million monthly listeners on Spotify; six Grammy nominations; two wins; her song Espresso the biggest single of 2024 by a female artist. The pair have often been depicted as bitter rivals: two Disney Channel alumni whose overlapping journeys to superstardom were powered partly by lyrics that may, or may not, have been written about the same ex-boyfriend. But really, they are both lessons in how to pull off the Disney breakaway — what happens when young women wriggle out of their contracts and embrace their new freedom by singing about the brutality and reality of modern girlhood, its shattering heartbreaks and the fun of the rebound. One of the things that marks both of them out is the obsessiveness with which their fans pore over their songs and image-making, whether it's Rodrigo last week being accused on social media of ordering a Nashville music venue to take down Taylor Swift imagery before she filmed there — it was actually removed by the venue for legal reasons — or Carpenter sending the internet into meltdown with the suggestive cover art for her new album, Man's Best Friend. Rodrigo grew up in Temacula, California, a theatre kid in a family who did other things — her mother a teacher, her father a therapist. After various singing competitions and school productions, she was made the lead in the American Girl doll franchise movie at 12 years old and, the following year, cast in Disney's Bizaardvark and then High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a mockumentary. Rodrigo was homeschooled, studying for her exams on set. 'Like, 'Oh shit, I worked my whole childhood and I'm never going to get it back,'' she told The Guardian in 2023. 'I didn't go to football games, I didn't have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. That's kind of sad.' After a song she wrote for the High School Musical show went viral, Rodrigo sought a record deal, choosing not to make music for Disney's in-house label. She went with Interscope/Geffen. Disney allowed her to break her contract before the show's fourth series and, during the pandemic, Rodrigo sat down to write. In 2021 her song Drivers License went stratospheric, breaking a Spotify record as the first song to hit 80 million streams in seven days. The track reached No 1 in 48 countries on Apple Music, 31 countries on Spotify and 14 countries on YouTube. 'It's been the absolute craziest week of my life,' she said in an interview. 'My entire life just, like, shifted in an instant.' Four months later she released her debut album, Sour, a pop-punk triumph about her teenage heartbreak, the songs searing and seething with anger, underwritten by longing and ache — all written by a 17-year-old, with her producer, Dan Nigro. Though she stretched her legs in the ballads, it was her stroppy, plucky rock which was particularly satisfying. Critics, with some arch surprise that it had come from a squeaky-clean Disney-kid, gave the album rave reviews. At Glastonbury 2022 she brought on Lily Allen to sing Allen's 2009 banger F*** You, dedicating it to the Supreme Court justices who had just overturned the Roe v Wade abortion ruling in the United States. 'I'm devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,' Rodrigo said on stage, having spent hours memorising her speech. As well as being a great song with crushing lyrics, it created a perfect storm of gossip and intrigue. 'And you're probably with that blonde girl,' she sang, 'who always made me doubt — she's so much older than me.' Fans were convinced she was singing about her former Disney co-star Joshua Bassett, with whom they thought she had a romantic relationship. The 'blonde girl', they suspected, was Sabrina Carpenter, who was rumoured to have dated Bassett the next summer. 'I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did,' Rodrigo told Variety. 'I just remember [everyone being] so weird and speculative about stuff they had no idea about.' She also said she and Carpenter had only met 'once or twice in passing'. 'So I don't think I could write a song that was meaningful or emotional about somebody that I don't know.' In January 2021, two weeks after Drivers License blew up, Carpenter released Skin. 'Maybe 'blonde' was the only rhyme,' went the lyrics. 'You been telling your side, so I'll be telling mine.' She, like Rodrigo, was not drawn on specifics. 'The song isn't calling out one single person,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Some lines address a specific situation, while other lines address plenty of other experiences I've had this past year.' The internet whirled, creating soap opera plots around them. They both later said they received a barrage of death threats. Bassett told People magazine that he received so much hate that he was taken to hospital, diagnosed with septic shock. 'I have a right to stand up for myself,' he told GQ. 'People don't know anything they're talking about.' For his part Bassett, 24, has just been on a European tour, playing venues in Glasgow, Birmingham and London that are about 20 times smaller than his apparent exes' Hyde Park performances. Carpenter, meanwhile, has hit mega fame. Her sixth album, Short n' Sweet — she is 5ft tall — debuted at No 1 in America. Her single Espresso went platinum in more than a dozen countries and won a Grammy for best pop solo performance. The Disney empire first claimed Carpenter, who grew up East Greenville, Pennsylvania, at 12 years old, signing her into a five-record deal, after which she starred in its show Girl Meets World. After family-friendly pop, Carpenter broke away from the label after just four albums ('I definitely didn't fulfil my contract, thank god,' she told Vogue) and signed with Island Records at 22. Her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send, took a turn towards something more grown-up — and cheeky. 'Woke up this morning, thought I'd write a pop hit,' she trills. Her image shifted again for Short n' Sweet, taking on a hyper-femme, soft-edged, Betty Boop look, her blonde hair big and bouncing. As Time magazine put it: 'She's short, she's funny, and she's horny.' But as she became more of a sex bomb, she got more sardonic. 'You'll just have to taste me when he's kissing you,' she sings in Taste. Her video for Please Please Please featured her then-boyfriend, the actor Barry Keoghan, shortly after his viral scene in Saltburn, in which he is so lustful for his friend he drinks his bathwater. During her performance at Coachella, she swapped her lyrics around with a wink. 'He's drinking my bathwater like it's red wine,' she sang. After their break-up, the internet is again spinning with speculation that her new song, Manchild, relates to him. 'This song became to me something I can look back on that will score the mental montage to the very confusing and fun young adult years of life,' she wrote on social media. It includes the couplet: 'Never heard of self-care/ Half your brain just ain't there.' Carpenter's amped-up naughtiness, however, now runs the risk of tipping into alienation. Her recent album cover, which shows her on her knees in front of a man's legs, while a hand pulls her hair, drew enormous criticism including from Glasgow Women's Aid. Her caricature of the sexualised, submissive woman suddenly looked exactly like the thing it was supposed to be riffing off. At Hyde Park, Rodrigo and Carpenter will hit the same stage on successive weekends after sold-out arena tours, their fans trailing in stomper boots and eyeliner (Rodrigo) or sequins and pale-pink babydoll dresses (Carpenter). It is a very modern coming-of-age story, two young women whose specificity of lyrics and canny presentation of their personal lives have whipped up a frenzy of speculation; whose rage and cheek and charm has been released on the world; who dazzle and glitter — and kick 'em where it hurts.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Kirsty Wark: When I started on TV, I wore jackets with massive shoulders
I have these ridiculous, sparkly shoes from Chanel that are so special, but too high for me to walk in. When my daughter was 16 she 'borrowed' them from my wardrobe to go clubbing. They're famous in our house for that reason alone. As a child I loved Chelsea Girl and a shop called Shades in Kilmarnock. When I went to university I started shopping at vintage shops. Actually we just called them jumble sales in those days. I bought a lot of miniskirts. I used to love going to a charity place for distressed gentlefolk in Edinburgh. Older women gave them things they had knitted. I bought this very cool Fair Isle knit with short sleeves that I really, really liked and cherished for many years. Like many young Scottish women, I was given a sewing machine for my 21st birthday, which I used to alter good jackets and dirndl skirts from the Fifties, some of which I still wear. These days it's a really good quality cotton dress. I've got a couple of La DoubleJ shirtdresses that are so great. I wore one when I was presenting at the Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition and ended up having my picture taken with a woman who was wearing the same dress. I got very good at planning once I started working for the BBC. I definitely thought a lot about what I was going to wear in order not to have to think about it again. The key thing is never to be uncomfortable so I'm focused on the job. There is no stylist or budget for wardrobe. When I first started on TV, I wore a lot of burnt orange linen jackets with massive shoulders. They became a suit of armour. You get used to the feedback from viewers. I've had all sorts of comments, from the man who said I looked like I was wearing a chequerboard, to the guy who messaged to ask if I was on my way to a rodeo; I was wearing a western shirt by Christopher Kane. I wear a lot of navy — well, specifically Margaret Howell navy. My everyday uniform is a pair of cords or a pair of baggy jeans and a stripy top. It's something of an obsession. I buy expensive ones and cheap ones, everywhere from Uniqlo to Agnès b. Whenever I buy one, I buy one for my daughter, Caitlin too. I don't shop on the high street much, but I do love what Clare Waight Keller is doing at Uniqlo. • Read more fashion advice and style inspiration from our experts Desmond & Dempsey pyjamas — I adore them. I also like Tekla for nightwear. There are a host of Scottish labels I go to regularly. I love Le Kilt — Sam McCoach, who is behind it, is brilliant — and I adore Christopher Kane. What he and his sister Tammy created is amazing. I've worn so many of his pieces over the years — a heavy duchess satin coat is probably my most treasured. I love the Glasgow/Paris-based La Fetiche too. I don't really have fashion regrets, but there are hairstyles. I once had a perm and, oh my goodness, did I regret that from the moment I got out of the salon. I looked like a footballer. Crop tops are a problem. I've bought a lot of long coats: I think the swaddling effect appeals. I wear them less now,but I've always thought there was something glamorous about them. I had an incredible one at school that I bought in a second-hand shop, and then I got a chocolate brown one when I went to university. I recently bought a new one at the Woolrich shop in New York. Icons of Style is presented by Kirsty Wark, on BBC iPlayer now
