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UK goes shopping for homegrown AI with £100M procurement scheme
The UK government has launched the first competitions under a £100 million procurement scheme designed to give homegrown AI startups a route into public sector contracts. Chancellor John Healey unveiled the R&D Procurement Scheme, part of the wider Sovereign AI initiative, at a G20 finance ministers meeting in North Carolina, with ministers framing it as…
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Political tax row, gangland trial and record £125m Fernández deal
A thinktank warns Chancellor John Healey he must raise taxes to fund defence spending, an Old Bailey trial exposes a violent North East crime feud, and Manchester City complete a British-record £125m signing of Enzo Fernández. Also: a Sydney teen’s terror plot guilty plea and children’s mental health crises rising.
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‘He was always a bit of a groundbreaker’: David Bowie enters a new dimension in ‘extended reality’ documentary
David Bowie is featured in a new 3D “extended reality” documentary, David Bowie: Unseen Unheard, premiering at Venice Immersive, the Venice Film Festival’s showcase for immersive storytelling, which is marking its 10th anniversary. Created by Denis O’Regan, Bowie’s former official photographer, with the full backing of the singer’s estate, the piece is part of a…
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“You can’t just throw new people at that problem”: Bethesda devs doubt future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will have the same “quality level”, after losing seasoned staff to Xbox cuts
Unionised staff at Bethesda Games Studios have voiced fresh concerns that Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs will undermine the quality of future Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles, arguing that decades of institutional knowledge and technical expertise have been lost in the cuts. The comments, made to The Guardian, come as the union continues negotiating severance…
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Jasmine Jobson Teases Details About Netflix’s ‘Top Boy’ Spin-Off Series ‘Jaq’: “She’s Going Down A Crazy Rabbit Hole”
Actress Jasmine Jobson has previewed Netflix’s upcoming Top Boy spin-off series, working titled “Jaq”, which follows her BAFTA-winning character Jaq Lawrence and will shoot next year as a six-part sequel to the original drama, which ended in 2023. The project forms part of a broader expansion of the Top Boy universe, alongside a prequel series…
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This data has helped fight workplace discrimination for 60 years. The Trump administration plans to delete it
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is set to stop collecting demographic data from companies through its EEO-1 reports, ending a data collection system that has underpinned anti-discrimination enforcement for six decades. Experts and former commission staff warn that without this information, it will become far harder to identify patterns of workplace discrimination in…
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Barclays faces complaint over backing for power plant near world’s largest mangrove forest
Barclays Bank is facing a formal complaint over its financial links to a coal-fired power station near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, which spans Bangladesh and India and is home to millions of people. Three complainants have submitted a case to the UK government’s Office for Responsible Business Conduct, alleging the bank breached…
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Thames Water, I refuse to pay the sewage charge in my bill while you pollute Britain’s rivers and coastlines | Jenny Jones
In a Guardian opinion piece, Green party peer Jenny Jones explains why she has stopped paying the sewage element of her Thames Water bill, in protest at the company’s repeated pollution of rivers and coastlines. She frames the move as a direct response to government inaction, arguing that water companies are failing their basic duties…
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Is this the future of America?
The Verge examines how Loudoun County, Virginia, became “Data Center Alley,” the world’s densest cluster of data centres, and the growing local and national backlash this has provoked. What began in 2007 as a deliberate economic strategy to diversify county revenue away from residential property taxes has, aided by the legacy infrastructure of AOL and…
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UK cyber bill targets AI users, not the vendors building it
The UK government has turned down proposals from members of the House of Lords to bring AI vendors and frontier model developers within the scope of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, opting instead to rely on voluntary safeguards. Cybersecurity minister Baroness Lloyd of Effra argued that regulating AI companies through the bill would not…