Google has said it will invest £5bn in the UK in the next two years to help meet growing demand for artificial intelligence services, in a boost for the government.
The announcement, which comes as Google opens its new datacentre in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, is expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs, the US tech company said.
Linklater’s ahead-of-the-curve adaptation of a 1999 play about an alleged rape is reconfigured to try and reflect current concerns
Richard Linklater’s 2001 movie Tape, and Stephen Belber’s 1999 play that preceded it, were ahead of the curve in their targeting of male sexual violence, blurred lines of consent, performative apologies and self-victimising aggressors. Now comes a remake from Hong Kong for the post-#MeToo era. It makes a few updates, such as situating the film in an Airbnb apartment (instead of a motel room), where two old high-school friends convene. But, somewhat too reverential towards the original, this new version from director Bizhan Tong doesn’t do enough either conceptually or aesthetically to dig down into today’s shifted gender battle lines.
In Tong’s scenario, flippant lifeguard and small-time drug-dealer Wing (Adam Pak) invites his straight-laced school buddy Chong (Kenny Kwan) over to shoot the breeze at his apartment. Initially they smoke spliffs and banter testily about their diverging life paths; the latter, now going by the anglicised name of Jon, has become a promising low-budget film-maker. But steering the conversation to a touchy subject – Wing’s former sweetheart Amy (Selena Lee), whom Jon later slept with – Wing goads his so-called friend into confessing he raped her. Then he delivers the coup de grace: the room has been sprinkled with webcams that have videoed their exchange.
A century from now, a literature scholar pieces together a picture of our times in a novel that quietly compels us to consider the moral consequences of global catastrophe
The sheer Englishness of Ian McEwan’s fiction may not be fully visible to his English readers. But it is clearly, and amusingly, visible to at least this Irish reader. It isn’t just McEwan’s elegiac, indeed patriotic, attentiveness to English landscapes – to the wildflowers and hedgerows and crags, to the “infinite shingle” of Chesil Beach, to the Chilterns turkey oak in the first paragraph of Enduring Love. Nor is it merely the ferocious home counties middle-classness of his later novels, in which every significant character is at the very least a neurosurgeon or a high court judge, everyone is conversant with Proust, Bach and Wordsworth, and members of the lower orders tend to appear as worrying upstarts from a world in which nobody plonks out the Goldberg Variations on the family baby grand. No, McEwan’s Englishness has most to do with his scrupulously rational, but occasionally and endearingly purblind, liberal morality: England’s most admirable, and most irritating, gift to politics and art.
These thoughts were provoked by a brief passage in McEwan’s future-set new novel that describes the “Inundation” of Britain after a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a tsunami that, combined with rising sea levels, wipes out everything but a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain peaks. In these entertainingly nihilistic pages, the fate of that other major chunk of the British Isles is not mentioned. Presumably Ireland, with its dearth of high peaks, fared badly as Europe drowned. But from McEwan’s future history, you’d never know it. I began to think of What We Can Know as another of McEwan’s deeply English stories. It has, I thought, the familiar partialities of vision. Has Brexit, endlessly backstopped by those pesky six counties, taught English liberals nothing?
It was the place to be through the 1980s, a nightclub where Johnny Rotten and Kim Wilde rubbed shoulders with the Beastie Boys and, er, Mel Smith. David Koppel’s new book captures it all
A new wellbeing hotel on the tiny outpost of Styrsö in the Gothenburg archipelago is a perfect base for a relaxing, restorative break
If you came to stay on the tiny island of Styrsö (steer-shuh) in the Gothenburg archipelago in the late 19th or early 20th century, there was a good chance it was because you had tuberculosis. The island had already begun to appeal to city folk who came here for fresh air, sea baths and peace, but the sanatoriums set up by the renowned Dr Peter Silfverskiöld gained such a positive reputation that the isle became known as a health resort. Those glory days have long since faded but Kusthotellet, a new hotel dedicated to wellbeing, aims to tap back into the restorative vibe.
The conditions that first drew health-seekers to the island still pertain. It’s tucked away and protected from winds, but the lack of high ground nearby means the sun shines on its southern coast from dawn to dusk, and there’s no pollution. “This island is such a peaceful place – you can really relax and recharge your batteries,” Malin Lilton, manager of Kusthotellet, told my companion and me. “As soon as you get on the ferry your pulse rate goes down and you start breathing in the good air.”
Westminster’s hardening attitudes to immigration are leading anti-racist campaigners to warn a far-right UK government no longer seems unthinkable
“I remember my father marching against the National Front in the 1970s. It felt like it was a minority. The majority of people are still decent. But now, the far right seems legitimised and popular,” Dabinderjit Singh, a retired senior civil servant said.
Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on storytelling, their strangest interactions with fans and bonding over The Lord of the Rings
How does one measure success? For Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the historians behind the hit podcast The Rest Is History, it could be the number of unexpected and overly familiar conversations with strangers. On a holiday high up in the mountains of Bulgaria, Holland was wandering around a secluded monastery when someone called out, “Love the podcast!”
Sandbrook, meanwhile, is used to getting weird looks from fans who find it hard to compute that the man in front of them is one half of the soundtrack to their dog walks and commutes. “The weirdest thing that people say – which I’ve heard more than once – is, ‘My wife and I listen to you in bed every night,’” he says, looking mildly appalled.
Knowsley is a Labour stronghold. But judging by the polls and the people I spoke to, the messages of the right are truly cutting through
At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.
It was a Friday evening, so we opened a bottle of wine and put pizzas in the oven. I was updated on various family milestones – a house sale had gone through, a baby bump was starting to show, the poor dog was on its last legs. My daughter entertained everyone with an energetic rendition of Sleeping Bunnies. Behind her, the BBC News at Six played images of migrants huddled on inflatable boats sailing across the Channel.
Keir Starmer will have to choose how to spend limited political capital, with most pressing issues ones UK and US do not agree on
Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man”, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.
One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.
A fragrant parcel of baked fish seasoned with herbs and lemon, all rounded off with a fruity, nutty dessert
There is something so simple but so delicious about a parcel of fish. Like unwrapping an edible present, the smell hits you before anything else, which in this case is fennel, thyme and lemon. It is a delicate way to cook fish, so the sauce needs to have some character, and basil, olives and lemon with a slick of olive oil make a beautiful, late-summer seasoning. Round off the feast with a blackberry and crisp almond pastry slice that tastes all the better if you forage your own fruit.
US president says he is bringing defamation and libel action in Florida against the newspaper, accusing it of being a ‘virtual mouthpiece’ for Democrats
Donald Trump says he has brought a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, alleging defamation and libel.
In a social media post late on Monday, the US president accused the newspaper of a “decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole”.
In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race
By the time Song-Chun Zhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count. Or so it felt. This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, and his father ran a village supply store in rural China. There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home, and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge and share tales. Zhu grew up in that shop, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of tragedies: a family friend lost in a car crash, a relative from an untreated illness, stories of suicide or starvation. “That was really tough,” Zhu recalled recently. “People were so poor.”
The young Zhu became obsessed with what people left behind after they died. One day, he came across a book that contained his family genealogy. When he asked the bookkeeper why it included his ancestors’ dates of birth and death but nothing about their lives, the man told him matter of factly that they were peasants, so there was nothing worth recording. The answer terrified Zhu. He resolved that his fate would be different.
The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over ...
‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.
To be clear, “that thing” is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.
I never thought I’d see fear spread so far and fast. Next year’s midterm elections are now crucial for the Democratic party – and for democrats everywhere
I return to Europe from the US with a clear conclusion: American democrats (lowercase d) have 400 days to start saving US democracy. If next autumn’s midterm elections produce a Congress that begins to constrain Donald Trump there will then be a further 700 days to prepare the peaceful transfer of executive power that alone will secure the future of this republic. Operation Save US Democracy, stages 1 and 2.
Hysterical hyperbole? I would love to think so. But during seven weeks in the US this summer, I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality of President Trump’s assault on what had seemed settled norms of US democracy and by the desperate weakness of resistance to that assault. There’s a growing body of international evidence to suggest that once a liberal democracy has been eroded, it’s very difficult to restore it. Destruction is so much easier than construction.
Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist
Senate votes 48-27 to confirm Stephen Miran as Fed governor but court rules Cook may remain in place
Senate Republicans voted on Monday to confirm a senior Trump official to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors as the White House raced to strengthen the US president’s control over the central bank ahead of its latest meeting.
Hours before Fed policymakers convene for their September decision on interest rates, the Senate voted 48 to 27 to confirm Stephen Miran – already chair of Donald Trump’s council of economic advisers – as a governor.
Group of people who crossed Channel by boat understood not to have been on Air France plane after legal challenge
The first flight to France carrying people who crossed the Channel under Keir Starmer’s “one in, one out” deal has not taken place as planned, according to reports.
A small group of individuals were removed from an Air France flight on Monday due to travel from Heathrow to Paris after a legal challenge, according to multiple newspaper reports.
Partey due in court on Wednesday to answer rape charges
Villarreal manager says midfielder is ‘prepared to play’
Thomas Partey is scheduled to appear at Southwark crown court on Wednesday morning to answer rape charges – after his new club, Villarreal, kick off their Champions League campaign at Tottenham on Tuesday night.
It is an extraordinary situation with Partey, who spent five years at Arsenal before joining Villarreal in August on a free transfer, guaranteed a hot reception at Spurs’ stadium.
Transatlantic passenger liner HMHS Britannic sank in 1916 after striking German mine off island of Kea
Deep-sea divers have retrieved a first batch of objects from the Titanic’s sister ship, which sank off the coast of Greece in 1916, including a signal lamp, ceramic tiles and a pair of binoculars.
The Greek culture ministry said on Monday that a research programme had involved “the retrieval of objects from the wreck site [of the HMHS Britannic] for the first time, from depths exceeding 120 metres [390ft].”
Terms of eight to 13 years handed down over a music video and a Berlin show, according to reports, as collective rejects charges as politically motivated. What we know on day 1,301
Talk of revolution in the coffee shops of Nepal increased after protest movements across south Asia
Across Kathmandu, the acrid stench of smoke still lingers. Singha Durbar, the opulent palace that housed Nepal’s parliament, stands charred and empty, its grand white columns turned a sooty black. The home of former prime minister KP Sharma Oli – who just last week seemed to have an unshakable grip on power – is among those reduced to ruins, while Oli remains in hiding, his location still unknown.
They stand as symbolic monuments to the week that Nepal’s political system was brought crashing down at the hands of a leaderless, organic movement led by young people who called themselves the Gen Zs, referring to those aged between 13 and 28.
Fifty years ago, on the day Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia, a young law student lowered the Australian flag and raised Papua New Guinea’s for the first time.
The 22-year-old, Arnold Amet, had spent the preceding years active on his university campus, debating the merits of independence, petitioning future leaders to abandon the British monarchy, and imagining what it might mean for his people to finally govern themselves.
Exclusive: Alternative dating app Feeld reports that the once-boutique studio is now a worldwide signifier of edgy yet popular entertainment
The dating app Feeld has revealed that mentions of the film studio A24 have increased 65% year-on-year in members’ profiles over the past 12 months.
Feeld caters for those seeking alternative relationship choices and overindexes for women and non-binary people, bisexuals and pansexuals, yet it reports that the majority of members whose profiles mention A24 are cis-gender male, straight and aged 26-30.
Karen Attiah says she was dropped by newspaper after 11 years for addressing political violence, race and gun control
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the newspaper over social media posts about gun control and race in the aftermath of far right commentator Charlie Kirk’s killing.
Attiah, 39, recounted in a Substack post that she had been dropped as a Post columnist after 11 years for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns”.
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