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Grandmother, 90, loses High Court fight with her grandchildren to bury her late daughter after claiming she is Ghanaian royalty and cremation is against ‘maternal burial custom’
A 90-year-old grandmother, Mercy Ofori-Kuma, has lost a nearly two-month High Court battle with her granddaughters over how to lay her daughter Margaret, 60, to rest, after arguing that cremation would breach the family’s Ghanaian royal burial customs. Margaret died suddenly on 9 June without leaving formal instructions, prompting a dispute between Mercy, along with…
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James McNeill Whistler review – painter’s work shines through attention-grabbing life story
The Guardian has reviewed James McNeill Whistler, a new documentary in the Exhibition on Screen strand, released in UK and Irish cinemas from 15 September and timed to coincide with a Tate Britain retrospective closing at the end of September. The review finds the film strikes a good balance between the American-born artist’s colourful, scandal-strewn…
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Exclusive: Paying for frontier AI models buys 4-month head start at 5x the cost
A new Mozilla report finds that the performance gap between top US closed AI models and the best open-weights models from Chinese developers has narrowed to just 4.4 months, prompting many organisations to switch to cheaper open models for everyday work. This matters because it reshapes how businesses allocate AI spending, with companies increasingly reserving…
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The Debut review – Julianne Moore is a thrill in Jesse Eisenberg’s oddball comedy
Julianne Moore stars in The Debut, Jesse Eisenberg’s third film as director, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It marks a departure from his earlier, more grounded work, as he leans into surreal, Charlie Kaufman-esque absurdism to tell the story of Mona, a repressed housewife who auditions for a community theatre musical and becomes…
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Gov.uk still struggling with IT contractor tax rules
UK government departments continue to struggle with applying IR35 tax rules for contractors, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) still working through a lengthy review of its off-payroll worker assessments for a second consecutive year. The persistent difficulties highlight ongoing weaknesses in how central government implements tax legislation it expects private businesses to…
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HTC Vive Eagle review: Pricey smart glasses that fail to impress
Engadget has reviewed HTC’s Vive Eagle, camera-equipped smart glasses now launching in the West after debuting in Taiwan a year ago, as the company attempts to compete with Meta’s Ray-Ban line. The review argues HTC faces a steep challenge, as it lacks both Meta’s ability to subsidise hardware and the cultural cachet of celebrity-backed marketing,…
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Venice best actress winner says she signed on at Danish job centre days before her victory
Danish actor Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice film festival on Saturday for her first leading feature role, in May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown, which also took the Golden Lion for best film. Shortly beforehand, she had flown back to Copenhagen to sign on at the job centre, as she…
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‘The cauldron was already bubbling …’ Green Lung, Druidess and the return of folk horror to British heavy metal
British heavy metal is experiencing a revival of “folk horror” influences, with bands such as Green Lung and Druidess drawing on British folklore, cult horror films and pagan imagery rather than generic satanic themes. This matters as it marks a stylistic evolution within metal, echoing a broader cultural pull towards nature and tradition as an…
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Legend of Destruction review – starry voices grace animated telling of the Jewish revolt against the Romans
Legend of Destruction, an Israeli animated film reviewed by the Guardian, dramatises the first-century Jewish revolt against Roman rule in Judea, drawing an English-language cast including Oscar Isaac, Evangeline Lilly and Elliott Gould. Eight years in the making and completed in 2021, the film has only now reached digital platforms, a delay the review suggests…