the times | Friday August 7 2020 2GM 9
News
A man who repeatedly stabbed a
McDonald’s executive at random as she
walked home with her baby daughter in
a pram has admitted attempted murder.
Mark Brazant, 44, had left prison six
days before he repeatedly stabbed
Josephine Conlon, a marketing manag-
er, in the face and neck in Streatham,
south London, on December 30.
The jury at the Old Bailey failed to
reach a verdict after more than 40
hours but Brazant pleaded guilty when
the prosecution requested a retrial.
A paranoid schizophrenic with a his-
tory of attacking lone women, Brazant
slashed Ms Conlon, 36, across the face
with a kitchen knife as she walked
home from meeting friends with her 21-
month-old daughter on December 30.
Brazant had followed Ms Conlon
Biology. “They are totally different
from what we see today. They have all
these funky appendages coming out of
what is essentially their forehead.”
The ant caught in amber was
Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, which
seemed to use its mandibles to pin prey
against a horn. “It is almost like a collar,
it has it handcuffed,” said Dr Barden.
It is those mandibles that set hell ants
apart. Unlike all ants we see today, they
move vertically rather than laterally.
Ultimately, though, that may have been
their undoing. Hell ants did not evolve
into anything else, they just died out.
“We speculate that might be related
to their highly-specialised predatory
behaviour. Maybe these mandibles
made them less resistant to extinction.”Ancient hell ant locked in
eternal embrace with prey
Tom Whipple Science Editor‘Voices’ told offender to stab stranger
before throwing her to the ground and
dragging her into a driveway. The pram
rolled away and stopped against a car.
Ms Conlon told the court that she
had expected to be raped before she
realised that she was bleeding and got
back on her feet, looking her attacker in
the eye and causing him to flee.
Two days later he handed himself in
at Wandsworth police station, telling
officers: “I have murdered someone, I
have stabbed someone. Don’t know if
they are dead.”
After the attack Ms Conlon was
taken to hospital and underwent an
operation. She is still being treated for
scars to her face and neck.
Brazant had denied that he intended
to kill Ms Conlon, saying that he had
been hearing voices telling him to hurt
someone. He said that he chose her
because she was small, female, pushinga buggy and he did not think that she
would fight back. Having stabbed her
repeatedly, he told himself “that’s
enough, that will do” and left, he said.
The court heard that Brazant was on
medication for his mental health
condition but was not taking it.
The court was told that Brazant had
carried out a series of random attacks on
November 26, eight days after he went
missing from his sheltered accommoda-
tion. He slapped a woman in the face at
8.20am in central London, then 30 min-
utes later he choked another outside a
Pret a Manger after asking why she was
“smiling” at him. Brazant grabbed
another woman and punched her at
Waterloo Tube station at about 3pm. He
admitted battery but was released on
licence from prison on Christmas Eve.
Judge Mark Lucraft, QC, set a
sentencing date for September 16.John Simpson Crime Correspondent
For the cockroach, it was a bad day. But
as the mandibles of the hell ant caught
its neck in a fatal grip, it may have taken
some consolation in the fact that it was
about to be a bad day for its foe too.
Because 99 million years ago, these
two duelling insects were caught in tree
sap, which later became amber. Inside
that amber, perfectly preserved and re-
covered from Burma, is a rare example
of one of the most enigmatic branches
of the insect family: the hell ant.
“Hell ants lived in the age of the dino-
saurs, and they are very dinosaur-like
in that their lineage is now gone,” said
Phillip Barden, from the New Jersey
Institute of Technology, told Currentex that you were always in love with. In
fact, that’s what makes conscious un-
coupling work.”
Separately, Paltrow hosted a
video podcast with Cameron
Diaz about the stress of acting.
The two women both swigged
from glasses of Avaline, Diaz’s
new brand of “clean wine”.
Diaz, 47, confirmed that she
had retired two years ago and
said that she had no intention to
return. Her last project was the
2014 musical Annie. “I got a peace
in my soul, because I finally was
taking care of myself,” she said. “It's
so intense to work at that level and be
that public and put yourself out there.”
Diaz married the musician Benji
Madden in 2015 and gave birth to Rad-
dix, their first child, in December. She
said Paltrow had inspired her to have
children. “I would not have become a
mother if it wasn’t for you. I’d be like,
‘I'm not having kids’. And you’re like,
‘You are having kids, you’re getting
married.’ ”
Leading article, page 27Gwyneth Paltrow discussed acting,
relationships and motherhood in a
podcast with Cameron Diaz. She said
she was upset by the “mockery and
anger” that greeted an announcement
describing her break-up with Chris
Martin as a “conscious uncoupling”When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris
Martin announced their “conscious un-
coupling” in 2014 it caused some to
question whether they had resorted to
psychobabble to avoid expressions
“split up” or “separate”.
In a candid article about the end of
their marriage, Paltrow has now admit-
ted that she also disliked the term when
she first heard it.
“Frankly, the term sounded a bit full
of itself,” she wrote in Vogue. “[It sound-
ed] painfully progressive and hard to
swallow. It was an idea introduced to us
by our therapist, the man who helped us
architect our new future. I was in-
trigued, less by the phrase, but by the
sentiment. Was there a world where we
could break up and not lose every-
thing? Could we be a family, even
though we were not a couple? We de-
cided to try.”
She and Martin, 43, the singer-
songwriter for Coldplay, have previous-
ly been guarded about their private
lives but the actress described the pro-
cess in detail in the magazine.
Paltrow, 47, who divorced Martin in
2016 and is now married to the screen-
writer Brad Falchuk, said that she real-
ised that their relationship was unten-
able while they were on holiday in a
cottage in Tuscany. The couple have
two children: Apple, 16, and Moses, 14.
The actress, who won an Oscar for
Shakespeare in Love and has gained a
global following for her appearances
in Marvel comic book films, said that
they had great days and “days when
we couldn’t stand each other” before
they decided to announce their sepa-
ration on Goop, her lifestyle website.
She said she was trembling before
giving the go-ahead to publish. “We
knew that the piece would generate
a lot of attention — a celebrity
couple ending their relationship al-
ways does — but I never could have
anticipated what came next. The
public’s surprise gave way quickly to ire
and derision. A strange combination of
mockery and anger. Frankly, the inten-
sity of the response saw me bury my
head in the sand deeper than I ever had
in my very public life.”
She suggested that the public atti-
tude to her was cyclical, and that people
usually warmed to her ideas. It remains
to be seen whether people will come
around to her promotion of jade vaginal
eggs, which her company said could
balance a woman’s hormone levels
before withdrawing the claim after a
legal complaint. “I, or we at Goop, intro-
duce something unfamiliar, there’s a bigreaction, before gradual cultural adop-
tion,” she wrote.
She said that she was still in love with
parts of Martin’s personality despite her
second marriage and his relationship
with the actress Dakota Johnson. “It’s
OK to stay in love with the parts of yourPaltrow’s self-conscious uncoupling
The actress now admits
that the language of
her break-up statement
was ‘a bit full of itself ’,
Jack Malvern writes
reh plewillcomeex that yo
fact, th
coupl
Se
vid
Di
T
fr
nh
sa
ret
201
in m
taking
so inten
that publ
Diaz m
Madden
dix, their
reactionbeforegradualculturaladop saidPalt