Richard Osman has revealed the final lead character for the forthcoming big screen adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club.

Calender Girls actress Celia Imrie will play retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft – one of four main characters from the book.

She will star alongside Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley, who Osman announced as cast members last month on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment.

They will play the roles of Elizabeth Best, Ron Ritchie and Ibrahim Arif respectively.

Speaking on that podcast, Osman had said: “Joyce, we’re still in negotiations but again the name is the one that people most shout at me in the street.”

Making the announcement on X on Tuesday, the Pointless host said he was “thrilled” to add Imrie to the cast.

Chris Columbus – the man behind Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire and two Harry Potter movies – is set to write and direct the film, which is being produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

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The movie is based on Osman’s debut novel of the same name which follows a group of friends in a retirement home who solve cold cases for fun, but become entangled in a real murder.

It is set in a retirement home Cooper’s Chase, in the fictitious village of Fairhaven in Kent.

Osman said the production would take place from “the end of June to September” in the UK.

An adaptation of the novel was first confirmed in 2020 after Amblin Partners secured rights in a competitive auction.

Osman has since written three more books in the series since his fastest-selling adult crime debut, with a fifth due out next year.

Amal Clooney has revealed she was on the panel of international legal experts who recommended seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli and Hamas leaders.

The human rights lawyer, whose husband is actor George Clooney, wrote about assisting with evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza, in a post on the couple’s Clooney Foundation for Justice website.

She and other international law experts unanimously agreed to recommend that International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan seek the arrest warrants.

Mr Khan has alleged Mr Netanyahu, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh were responsible for war crimes in both Gaza and Israel.

Mr Netanyahu has said he rejects “with disgust” the prosecutor’s “comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas”.

Mrs Clooney, who had previously faced criticism online for not speaking out publicly on the war, has now said she joined the panel more than four months ago and supports the “historic step” in seeking the warrants.

“I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives,” she wrote.

“As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law.

“So I support the historic step that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.”

In a statement on the warrants, Mr Khan said he has reasonable grounds to believe the Hamas leaders “bear criminal responsibility” for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

He outlined a list of alleged crimes, including murder, taking hostages and rape and other acts of sexual violence.

On Mr Netanyahu and his defence minister Mr Gallant, Mr Khan said he has reasonable grounds to believe they too “bear criminal responsibility” for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

He outlined a list of alleged crimes, including “starvation of civilians” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population”.

In her statement on the panel’s recommendations, Mrs Clooney added that she hoped “witnesses will co-operate with the ongoing investigation” and that “justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much”.

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Reacting to the ICC’s decision, Mr Netanyahu said: “With what audacity do you compare Hamas that murdered, burned, butchered, decapitated, raped and kidnapped our brothers and sisters and the IDF soldiers fighting a just war.

“No pressure and no decision in any international forum will prevent us from striking those who seek to destroy us.”

US President Joe Biden said the move by the ICC prosecutor was “outrageous”, adding: “Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”

A spokesman for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the ICC’s action was “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”.

A panel of three ICC judges must consider Mr Khan’s application, in a process that takes an average of two months.

The court has no means to enforce arrest warrants and its investigation into the Gaza war has long been opposed by the US and Israel.

As Israel is not a member of the ICC, neither Mr Netanyahu nor Mr Gallant would be at immediate risk of arrest should the judges agree to issue warrants, although it could make it difficult for the Israeli leaders to travel abroad.

Scarlett Johansson has said she was “shocked” and “angered” after OpenAI allegedly recreated her voice without her consent for a new ChatGPT system.

The actress released a statement where she personally criticised the company’s CEO Sam Altman for insinuating she was the voice named ‘Sky’ by posting the word ‘her’ on X, a reference to a film where she voiced an AI which a human fell in love with.

“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system,” the 39-year-old Oscar nominee said.

“He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.”

She went on to say that eventually for personal reasons she declined his offer then, nine months later, her attention was drawn to how much the “Sky” voice sounded like her.

“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson said.

“Mr Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word “her” – a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.

“Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there.

“As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice. Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice.”

“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”

On Monday OpenAI released a statement saying it would “pause” the use of a ChatGPT voice after users noticed it sounded like the actress.

OpenAI said: “We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky.

“We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.”

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The artificial intelligence (AI) company offers five voices that can speak generated answers through its ChatGPT service.

OpenAI earlier denied it intentionally copied Johansson and said it believed “AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice”.

The New York Times sued OpenAI at the end of last year over allegations it, and its biggest investor Microsoft, unlawfully used the newspaper’s articles to train and create ChatGPT.

The suit alleges that the AI text model now competes with the newspaper as a source of reliable information and threatens the ability of the organisation to provide such a service.