The BBC has announced a review into Russell Brand’s time at the corporation amid the rape and sexual assault allegations made against the comedian. The broadcaster also said on Tuesday that it was removing some content featuring the 48-year-old from its iPlayer and Sounds apps which “now falls below public expectations”. An episode of comedy panel show QI and a Joe Wicks podcast, both featuring Brand as a guest, have been removed, the PA news agency understands. YouTube had earlier announced that the Google-owned company has stopped Brand making money on its platform because he was “violating” its “creator responsibility policy”. Brand has strongly denied the allegations, which also include claims of controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour. A spokesperson for podcasting platform Acast confirmed to PA on Tuesday that advertisements were turned off “immediately” for Brand’s Under The Skin podcast following the allegations. In a long-arranged Q and A with BBC staff on Tuesday, the corporation’s director general Tim Davie was quizzed about how it was responding following accusations about Brand’s time on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music between 2006 and 2008. The Times reported on Monday that a woman claims Brand used the BBC’s car service to pick her up from school when she was 16 so she could visit his home. Mr Davie said he hopes a review, led by BBC’s director of editorial complaints Peter Johnston, will give an “initial report in weeks, not months” and added that “the objective is to be totally transparent”. He also said: “The review will also look at the position regarding any cars used by the BBC at that time – because that was obviously something that, again, in a powerful testimony, was mentioned.” The news comes after the remaining shows of Brand’s Bipolarisation tour were postponed and the Metropolitan Police said it had received a report of an alleged sexual assault in the wake of media allegations. According to Companies House, Brand on Tuesday resigned as a director of both performing arts business One Arm Bandit and filming company Mayfair Film Partnership. Mr Davie has said the broadcasting industry needs to be “very vigilant” following questions being raised about the wider TV industry – which he also said had “faced significant” power imbalance issues in the past. It comes as the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairwoman Dame Caroline Dinenage has written to the BBC, Channel 4 and TikTok to request further details on what actions they are taking in response to the allegations – and to GB News in relation to their coverage of the claims. The letters also requested updates on the investigation being conducted by Banijay UK, which bought Endemol, the company commissioned by Channel 4 to produce the Big Brother spin-off shows Brand hosted, into his behaviour while he was working on its programmes. Mr Davie also said: “I do think we’re in a different place, over 15 years. When I listened back, frankly, to some of those broadcasts I think, that is just completely unacceptable. What led to that being on air? “I just look at that stuff and I say there is no way I will listen to that, there’s no way I accept it. We have to be clear about that together, that we will not accept that.” Brand has been accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame and working for the BBC, Channel 4 and starring in Hollywood films, following a joint investigation by The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. In the documentary, footage was shown of the actor making comments about female BBC staff on his radio show. Brand’s YouTube account, which has 6.6 million subscribers, has been suspended from YouTube’s Partner account “following serious allegations against the creator”, meaning the channel is no longer able to make money from advertising on the platform. In a statement, YouTube said the decision applied to all channels that may be “owned or operated” by Brand, adding: “If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.” Brand still has a presence on video platform Rumble, where his channel has 1.4 million followers and he hosts a weekly live show at 5pm BST, but there was no new episode on Monday. His most recent video on Rumble is the short clip from Friday denying the allegations and saying he has been “promiscuous” but that all of his relationships have been “consensual”. Dame Caroline has asked TikTok’s director of government relations, Theo Bertram, whether Brand could monetise his posts on the video sharing platform, where he has 2.3 million followers. The committee chairwoman also asked “what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour”. Dame Caroline also wrote to GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos over presenter Beverley Turner supporting Brand in a tweet over the weekend and defending him on her show on Monday morning. She acknowledged Turner was challenged on the programme but remained “concerned that having a presenter so clearly supporting an individual who is the subject of intense media coverage, including seeking their appearance on the show, undermines any perception of due impartiality in the broadcasting”. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live BBC removes some Russell Brand content as monetisation suspended on YouTube Google Bard can now link to Gmail and other apps to help with responses How does Russell Brand make money online?

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Future space missions might use all-female crews because they are more “efficient”, a new study has suggested. Many space agencies around the world are already preparing for the first human trips to Mars and perhaps other planets. But those trips will be incredibly resource-intensive, with the food and other material required to support a crew over years being an important consideration. One way to minimise that demand on resources would be to send all-female crews, a new study conducted by the European Space Agency suggests. It found that female astronauts would be likely to need less water to stay hydrated, expend less energy, need less oxygen and carbon dioxide and produce less heat than their male counterparts. That in turn would require less space to store the equipment needed to allow those astronauts to live, and therefore make the journey theoretically easier for engineers. The exact difference between a male and female crew would depend on the stature and other details of the astronauts that were chosen. But in all situations, the all-female crew were found to use less energy. That was because they are lighter than their male counterparts, and tend to use less oxygen when they are exercising. The difference remained true even when the astronauts were modelled as if they were engaging in the kind of exercise that astronauts have done on the International Space Station, which is required to ensure they stay fit and healthy without the usual gravity on Earth. The fact that women also tend to be smaller would be another advantage the scientists note, since it would mean that engineers would be able to build them smaller space habitat modules. “There may be a number of operational advantages to all-female crews during future human space exploration missions,” the team conclude in a new paper. The work was theoretical and used already published data on female astronauts and physiological research. The research is published in a new paper, ‘Effects of body size and countermeasure exercise on estimates of life support resources during all-female crewed exploration missions’, in Scientific Reports. Read More Why is Elon Musk purging Twitter accounts? Apple finally launches two professional apps on the iPad AI robots figure out how to play football in shambolic footage

Elon Musk has shared his thoughts on whether aliens really exist out there in the universe. The 52-year-old billionaire is CEO of SpaceX, which manufactures and launches rockets into space with the "goal of enabling people to live on other planets," and now he's given his take on whether there is life beyond Earth. Musk appeared via video link at the International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday (October 5) where his ambition to launch his Starship spacecraft to Mars was discussed, along with what future endeavours into space will look like. While aliens were also mentioned, Musk said he has seen "no evidence" they exist. "People often ask me if I’ve seen any evidence of aliens and I unfortunately have seen no evidence of aliens yet," Musk said. "We are the aliens, as far as I can tell." He added: "And I think if anyone would know, it would probably be me, and I’ve not seen any evidence of aliens. "So, what that perhaps suggests is that this tiny candle of consciousness that is humanity is all that exists in a vast darkness, and we should do everything we can to ensure that the candle does not go out." It's not the first time Musk has discussed this topic as he shared a similar opinion during an interview in April with with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. However, he added that if knew aliens were real he would tweet this information out to the world. "I'm, you know, very familiar with space stuff," he said. "I’ve seen no evidence of aliens. I would immediately tweet it out. "That’d be probably the top tweet of all time. 'We found one, guys!' It's the jackpot with some 8billion likes." Definitely worth keeping an eye on Musk's tweets then, you know, just in case... Meanwhile, the business magnate has claimed he is in fact an alien himself. "I keep telling people I’m an alien, but no one believes me," Musk recently tweeted. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Elon Musk, the owner of X – the company formerly known as Twitter – said on Saturday that the social media platform “may fail” as a new glitch wiped out most pictures tweeted before December 2014. “The sad truth is that there are no great ‘social networks’ right now. We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one,” Mr Musk posted on X. Since his take-over of the company for $44bn, the multibillionaire has tried to shake things up, introducing radical new changes to the platform, from laying off over three-fourths of Twitter’s workforce to his latest statement that the platform’s feature to block other user profiles would be removed. The platform, being rebranded as X, has also suffered blackouts and glitches in recent times with the latest one appearing to affect tweets with pictures and links published prior to December 2014. X appeared to have problems displaying old posts that came with attached images or hyperlinks converted using Twitter’s built-in web link shortener. Among the images initially lost was the famous “most retweeted” selfie from the 2014 Oscars by the event’s host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres. This image has since been restored, but most old tweets before December 2014 have broken short links instead of the actual media or links. “More vandalism from Elon Musk. Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014. That’s - so far - almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service,” Brazilian YouTuber Tom Coates posted on Twitter. The glitch comes after Mr Musk’s X intentionally slowed down access to the sites of rival social media platforms such as Threads, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as those of news organisations like New York Times last week. X seemed to add a delay of about five seconds when people clicked on links to go elsewhere on the web. There are speculations that the latest glitch preventing access to old images could be due to X trying to recover more server space, but this might also not be an intentional move carried out for cost-cutting purposes. Some people also appear to be able to view their old images back again, but it remains unclear why the glitch occurred in the first place. Read More Musk vows to remove blocking function from X/Twitter as new logo debuted Elon Musk says ability to block other X accounts may be removed in future Elon Musk’s X now sorts posts on accounts based on number of likes, not by chronology Musk vows to remove blocking function from X/Twitter as new logo debuted X now sorts posts on accounts based on number of likes, not by chronology Musk’s Twitter takeover sparks mass exodus of climate experts