The dancers said that Lizzo's response was contradicting everything she and her brand stood for

Suspect Daniel Khalife has pleaded not guilty to escaping Wandsworth prison and people can’t believe it. The 21-year-old former soldier is accused of escaping custody after allegedly sneaking out of the prison on 6 September. Police suspected Khalife escaped via the prison kitchen, where he was working, by attaching himself to the underside of a food delivery truck. After a four-day manhunt, he was apprehended by a plain-clothes counter-terrorism officer who spotted him cycling along a canal towpath in Northolt, west London on 9 September. On Thursday 21 September, Khalife appeared at the Old Bailey via video link, where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of escaping from HMP Wandsworth. Khalife was asked, “Are you guilty or not guilty?”. He replied: “I am not guilty.” Given the worldwide coverage of the events, people have been left shocked, if not impressed, by the absolute audacity of the plea – so much so that “Shaggy” (of 'It Wasn’t Me' fame) began to trend on Twitter. “Just an incredible flex,” one person argued. Someone else called it the “The ‘Shaggy’ defence”. “Maybe Daniel Khalife didn't escape because the outside is the *REAL* prison, eh?” someone else joked. One person argued: “Daniel Khalife pleading not guilty to escaping prison is so classic him. He wants a trial, he wants the attention, he loves it. Get him in the jungle or CBB immediately.” 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.

Gold mining gangs have been blamed for a spate of “alien” attacks in Peru designed to terrorise local residents. People in Alto Nanay, a village of roughly 3,000 people in the northern Amazon Basin, have reported “armoured” and “floating” aliens wearing dark hoods since mid-July. The so-called aliens have also been reported as being seven feet tall and, according to some, are impervious to bullets. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Some locals have put the attacks down to the “Face Peelers”, a regional superstition, or “green goblins”. However, the prosecutor’s office says it is more likely that members of local gold mining gangs are behind the attacks. Prosecutors think the gangs are hoping to scare people away from their illegal gold mines, and even speculated that they are using jetpacks to access difficult-to-reach spots in the dense jungles nearby. “They would be using state-of-the-art technology, such as thrusters that allow people to fly,” Carlos Castro Quintanilla, the Peruvian government’s prosecutor investigating the case, told Radio Programas del Perú. The Alto Nanay region is rich in gold deposits, and illegal mining is big business there. Quintanilla, a specialized prosecutor for environmental matters in the Loreto region, which includes Alto Nanay, told RPP that the gangs do 80 per cent of their illegal business in the Nanay River basin. Jairo Reátegui Ávila, the leader of the Ikitu indigenous people who live in the region, was the first person to call the people “aliens”, and told the radio station they were “frightened by what is happening in the community.” “I have shot him twice and he does not fall, but rises and disappears,” he told RPP. The Daily Mail reported that a 15-year-old was cut on the neck in one of the attacks and was treated in hospital. The Ikitu community has even asked the military to intervene, while citizens have organised night patrols to find the attackers. Gold mining is largely unregulated in Peru, and gangs have settled there after having been expelled from neighbouring Brazil and Columbia. Artisanal mining boomed when the financial crisis hit in 2008, which made gold more profitable than drug trafficking. 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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Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown has come under fire for her novel, Nineteen Steps, after working with a ghostwriter on the book. The novel was inspired by Brown’s grandmother’s experience of the 1943 Bethnal Green tube disaster, and was ghostwritten by Kathleen McGurl. Only Brown’s name is on the cover of the book, prompting social media users to criticise Brown after the book’s release. One X/Twitter user said: “You should be ashamed. “Ghostwritten celebrity novels have ruined children’s literature and now they’re doing the same thing to adult fiction.” When Nineteen Steps was published earlier this month, Brown posted a photo on Instagram of herself standing next to McGurl. The caption reads: “I couldn’t have done this without you!” Nonetheless, that has done little to silence her critics. One person wrote on Instagram: “So you can become an author and not actually write it yourself these days. What’s the point?” Another said: “You mean she wrote it for you and you’re taking the credit.” Others jumped to the 19-year-old’s aid, pointing out that scores of celebrities have faced criticism for using ghostwriters in the past. Media personality Zoella (real name Zoë Sugg) was slammed for doing the same thing with her memoir Girl Online in 2014. Katie Price and Naomi Campbell have also used ghostwriters for fiction books released under their name. And more recently, Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, was written by JR Moehringer. That book broke the record for the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, with 1.43m copies sold on its first day. One commenter wrote on Instagram: “This author will be paid a s***tone more because Millie’s name is on it. “Ghostwriting is not new, and by sharing this post she is literally acknowledging the author, whose name will also be in the book. “The author will be very happy, and Millie supplied the whole story and all her family’s research. Everyone seriously needs to get off their high horse.” In a March blog post, McGurl said she was sent “a lot of research that had already been pulled together by Millie and her family, and plenty of ideas”. McGurl then interviewed Brown several times over Zoom before she wrote the first draft, she said. 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.