Problems caused by underinvestment are being seized on by the far right as evidence of ‘state failure’
Waiting for the M49 bus to the zoo, Wolfgang, 82, peers down at the crumpled concrete and metal rubble below, the remains of a Berlin bridge recently demolished after wide cracks were discovered.
Over the loud pounding of a hydraulic hammer crushing the concrete, the retired technician says he watched its construction about 60 years earlier from the window of his nearby flat. “Now we have to hope they’ll get their act together to build a new one, though I have my doubts I’ll be alive to see it finished,” he says.
Yoshua Bengio’s organisation plans to create system to act as guardrail against AI agents trying to deceive humans
An artificial intelligence pioneer has launched a non-profit dedicated to developing an “honest” AI that will spot rogue systems attempting to deceive humans.
Yoshua Bengio, a renowned computer scientist described as one of the “godfathers” of AI, will be president of LawZero, an organisation committed to the safe design of the cutting-edge technology that has sparked a $1tn (£740bn) arms race.
Our lives are blighted by illegal settlements, and Israel has just approved 22 more. Without concrete action, we will be erased
Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender
Each of the 22 illegal settlements approved by Israel last week is another nail in the coffin of the peace process, hammered in by the complicity of western governments and corporations. Israeli settlements are not benign civilian neighbourhoods – they are primary instruments of dispossession, control and apartheid. Settlements are closed militarised zones on Palestinians’ stolen land, cutting off our access to our resources, our farms, our schools, our jobs and each other. Palestinian lands rapidly shrink, our livelihoods are devastated, our rights are systematically violated and our identity is undermined.
Western lawmakers look on, expressing commitment to peace through a two-state solution but choosing to do nothing to achieve this goal. Instead, their policies and inaction enable yet further settlement activity.
Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of Youth Against Settlements
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Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with it
The novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. “I’ve only written nine,” he says. “Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.” The “nine inches” from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem. “I just distrust these systems when it comes to truth,” says Morrison. He is yet to write Nine Inches – “or its sequel, Eighteen Inches”, he laughs. His actual latest book, For Emma, imagining AI brain-implant chips, is about the human costs of technology.
Morrison keeps an eye on the machines, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and their capabilities, but he refuses to use them in his own life and work. He is one of a growing number of people who are actively resisting: people who are terrified of the power of generative AI and its potential for harm and don’t want to feed the beast; those who have just decided that it’s a bit rubbish, and more trouble than it’s worth; and those who simply prefer humans to robots.
He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of avant garde genius?
Jimmy Donaldson, the 27-year-old online content creator and entrepreneur known as MrBeast, is by any reasonable metric one of the most popular entertainers on the planet. His YouTube channel, to which he posts his increasingly elaborate and expensively produced videos, has 400 million subscribers – more than the population of the United States of America and equivalent to the total number of native English speakers currently alive. It’s close to twice as many subscribers as Elon Musk has X followers, and over 100 million more than Taylor Swift has Instagram followers. And that number, 400 million, does not account for the people who watch MrBeast’s videos in passing, or who are aware of his cultural presence because of their children, or who just sort of know who he is but don’t have any intricate awareness as to why he is famous.
That number is the number of people who have made the volitional move of clicking that subscribe button, to ensure that they will a) not miss his latest videos and b) can be literally counted by potential advertisers as a more-or-less guaranteed audience. One last fact, before we move away from numbers and into more nebulous modes of consideration: his 2024 Amazon Prime reality competition show, Beast Games, in which 1,000 contestants competed for $5m (£3.7m), the largest cash prize in television history, reportedly cost $100m to produce, making it the most expensive unscripted show in history. Jimmy Donaldson, at the risk of belabouring the obvious, is an incredibly big deal.
Morocco’s commercial centre has brought investment to the continent – but critics say it masks domestic inequality
For centuries, Casablanca was a significant trading hub for merchants from across the breadth of the Atlantic coast, given its geographical position between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
These days, Morocco’s economic capital is merging those historical roots with a strong modern commercial identity. One such manifestation is the Casablanca Finance City (CFC) district, whose high-rise buildings stand as a symbol of the city’s dream of being a main gateway for international investment into Africa.
Sankirtan mandali troupes are usually male singers and dancers. But in Odisha, women are joining in to spread safety messages as the climate crisis turns their region into a tinderbox
For years, the women of Murgapahadi village in eastern India have quietly managed farms and children, collected flowers and firewood in forests, and kept households running while their husbands work away in cities. This year, many are educating too – in song as they work.
Forest officials are enlisting devotional song-and-dance troupes – sankirtan mandalis – to help in the fight against fires in the dry deciduous woods of Odisha state in soaring temperatures. Fires have already affected more than 4,500 hectares (11,120 acres) of forest in Odisha this year, up from about 4,000 hectares in 2024. Officials are using technology such as AI cameras and satellite data to track blazes but are also turning to the appeal of song to ask villagers not to burn leaves in the forest, apractice believed to benefit the soil, but which has led to uncontrollable wildfires in recent years.
Boiled eggs? Tofu? Avocado? Are these high-protein, low-sugar alternative mousse recipes the new way to make the chocolate dessert? TikTok certainly seems to think so. Guardian Australia staff put them through a taste test so you can decide if you should try making these at home – or give them a miss and keep scrolling instead
Victorian woman, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder over a fatal 2023 beef wellington lunch. Follow live
Barrister ColinMandy SC asks his client why at one stage there were three properties in both Erin and Simon Patterson’s name when the couple had been separated for four years.
I always thought we would bring the family back together. That is what I wanted ... It was something tangible to say to Simon, I see a future for us.
I have not.
I’ve never had a needle biopsy anywhere.
I consulted Dr Google.
I alternated that with Don.
We did talk about it sometimes.
The kind of conversations that we had ... they would gently make fun of the fact that I was religious and I would try and evangelise back to them in a sense ... It was sort of all in good humour.
Zelenskyy says ‘no one cares’ if Putin is angry after hidden drones hit bomber fleet; Russians want truce to collect dead soldiers. What we know on day 1,196
Pardons signed for Tanner Mansell and John Moore Jr, who freed 19 sharks and giant grouper from fisherman’s longline
Donald Trump has pardoned two south Florida shark divers convicted of theft for freeing 19 sharks and a giant grouper from a fisherman’s longline several miles from shore.
Pardons for Tanner Mansell and John Moore Jr were signed on Wednesday. They had been convicted in 2022 of theft of property within special maritime jurisdiction.
Critics had called for Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai to step down after reports of his son’s lavish spending
Mongolia’s prime minister has resigned after he failed to receive enough support in a vote of confidence in parliament, Mongolian media has reported. The country’s embassy in Washington confirmed it.
Prime minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai received 44 votes, well short of the 64 needed, according to news site ikon.mn.
Fringe Society CEO says venues could offer concertgoers ‘morning after’ shows or tempt residents who ‘want to hide’
Organisers of Edinburgh fringe events have been urged to be “pretty smart” and capitalise on the decision by Oasis and AC/DC to play gigs in the city midway through the festival.
There was surprise and irritation when it emerged the bands would be staging four concerts at Murrayfield stadium in mid-August when the world’s largest arts festival is in full flow.
Shock decision has raised fears ancient site with almost 2,000-year-old geoglyphs will be exploited by illegal miners
Archeologists and environmentalists have expressed their outrage at a shock decision by Peru’s culture ministry to cut by nearly half the protected archaeological park around the iconic Nazca Lines, excluding an area nearly the size of urban Lima, the country’s capital city.
The Unesco world heritage site attracts thousands of tourists to see the massive hummingbird, monkey and whale figures in the desert in Peru’s second-biggest tourist attraction after Machu Picchu. Last year, archaeologists using AI discovered hundreds of new geoglyphs dating back more than 2,000 years, predating the famous lines in the sand.
Doug Burgum says Biden order that banned drilling in 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will be reversed
Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the US’s open spaces.
Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued by Joe Biden in December that banned drilling in the remote 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the New York Times reported.
Hamit Coskun, found guilty of religiously aggravated public order offence, was ‘motivated at least in part by a hatred of Muslims’, judge says
A man has been fined after he set fire to a Qur’an outside the Turkish consulate in London, in an act that was deemed “motivated at least in part by a hatred of Muslims” by a judge.
Hamit Coskun, 50, who was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence on Monday, called his prosecution “an assault on free speech”.
Election pitting liberal Lee Jae-myung against conservative candidate Kim Moon Soo comes after months of chaos following Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived imposition of martial law
South Koreans are voting for a new president in a snap election triggered by a brief period of martial law imposed by the now-impeached former leader Yoon Suk Yeol.
Polls suggested that Yoon’s liberal arch-rival, Lee Jae-myung, was heading for a comfortable victory in what Lee has described as “judgment day” for Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
Offer gives no ground on Tehran’s demand to continue to enrich uranium inside country, sources say
Iran is on the brink of rejecting US proposals on the future of its nuclear programme after the US draft insisted that Tehran would have to suspend the enrichment of uranium inside Iran and set out no clear route map for lifting US economic sanctions.
The US proposals were the first in written form since five rounds of indirect talks started, but Iranian diplomatic sources said the US proposals gave no ground on Iran’s demand to continue to enrich uranium inside the country.
Police believe remains are of Izabela Zablocka, from Normanton, and have launched murder investigation
Human remains have been found in a search for a woman missing for more than 15 years as police launch a murder investigation into her disappearance.
Izabela Zablocka, from Normanton in Derby, was 30 when she went missing in 2010. Originally from Poland, she had last made contact with family on 28 August 2010.
Claudia Sheinbaum defends decision to put 2,600 judges’ posts to vote despite record low turnout
Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the country’s unprecedented judicial elections after just 13% of Mexicans turned out to vote, a record low in a federal election.
Roughly 2,600 posts, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, were up for grabs on Sunday, as an entire judicial system was put to the vote for the first time in the world.
33-year-old ends time at Spurs to take first No 1 role
West Brom dismissed Tony Mowbray in April
Ryan Mason has left Tottenham to take over as West Brom head coach on a three-year contract.
Mason quickly emerged as a leading candidate for the Championship club after they dismissed Tony Mowbray on 21 April. Spurs’ rollercoaster 2024-25 campaign – in which they secured Europa League success – only ended on 25 May and forced West Brom to bide their time but Mason, after a short holiday, decided to accept their offer and take his first step into management.
Oncologists say patients rejecting proven treatments are dying needlessly because of increase in online ‘cures’
Cancer patients are snubbing proven treatments in favour of quackery such as coffee enemas and raw juice diets amid an “alarming” increase in misinformation on the web, doctors have said.
Some were dying needlessly or seeing tumours spread as a result, oncologists said. They raised their concerns at the world’s largest cancer conference in Chicago, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco).
The actor and director claims that an Austrian newspaper invented a recent interview with him
Clint Eastwood has released a statement to claim a recent interview with him is a fabrication.
Quotes from an alleged interview with the Oscar-winning actor and director had gone viral over the weekend and were picked up by a number of sites. Yet Eastwood has now said that he never spoke to anyone from German-language Austrian newspaper Kurier.
Proceeds from Chelsea sale earmarked for Ukraine aid
Government issues statement over recovery of money
The government says it is “fully prepared” to take Roman Abramovich to court to resolve the three-year impasse over the £2.5bn frozen from the sale of Chelsea.
In a rare joint statement, the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, and the foreign secretary, David Lammy, confirmed the UK was ready to escalate its efforts to secure the money which has been promised to support humanitarian activity in Ukraine.
Prime minister seeks to shore up his fragile coalition and vows not to back down
Donald Tusk says he will call a vote of confidence in his government to try to shore up support for his coalition after a bruising setback in Poland’s presidential election.
In his first public comments since Sunday’s election result was declared, the prime minister sought to regain momentum as he promised to “get to work” and submit a number of draft laws.
Jesse Armstrong’s rushed Succession follow-up might be heavy on of-the-moment buzzwords, but it’s too smug to make any real point
Picture this: a group of very rich people gather at an ostentatiously large, secluded retreat. The SUVs are black, tinted, sleek. The jets are private. The egos are large, the staff sprawling and mostly unseen, the decor both sterile and unimaginably expensive. This is the distinctive milieu of Succession, the HBO juggernaut which turned the pitiful exploits of a bunch of media mogul failsons into Shakespearean drama for four critically acclaimed seasons. It is also the now familiar aesthetic of a range of eat-the-rich satires plumbing our oligarchic times for heady ridicule, if increasingly futile insight – The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Knives Out: Glass Onion, Parasite, The White Lotus and the recent A24 disappointment Death of a Unicorn to name a few. (That’s not to mention countless mediocre shows on the foibles of the wealthy, such as this month’s The Better Sister and Sirens.)
So suffice to say, I approached Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong’s first post-series project about four tech billionaire friends gathering for poker as one’s AI innovation wreaks havoc on the globe, with a sense of pre-existing fatigue. The market of ultra-rich satire is, to use the logic of Armstrong’s characters, saturated. (Or, to use their language: “I would seriously rather fix sub-Saharan Africa than launch a Sweetgreen challenger in the current market.”) There’s more than a whiff of Argestes, the second-season Succession episode at a billionaire mountain retreat, to these shots of private cars pulling up to a huge chalet hugged by snowcapped peaks. And though Armstrong, who solely wrote and directed the film, continues his avoidance of easy one-to-ones, there’s more than a whiff of Elon Musk to Venis (Cory Michael Smith), an AI company CEO and the richest person in the world with a tenuous grasp on reality, a stupendous sense of nihilism and unrepentant need to assert his own virility (the landscape, he notes, is “so beautiful you can fuck it”).
More than a century on, the officer who was the victim of antisemitism is in line for a posthumous promotion
More than a century ago he was wrongly convicted of treason in a case that convulsed France and laid bare a rising tide of antisemitism.
On Monday, French politicians took the first step towards remedying the injustice – unanimously backing a symbolic effort to promote Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish French army captain, to brigadier general.
Sprinter has reported multiple incidents of verbal abuse
Growth of betting has been linked to abuse of athletes
Three-times Olympic champion Gabby Thomas said she was verbally abused at the Grand Slam Track meet in Philadelphia last weekend, the latest incident of harassment she has reported this year.
Thomas, who won gold in the 200m, and 4x100m and 4x400m relays in Paris, said in a post on X that a man followed her around the track shouting insults while she was taking photographs with fans and signing autographs.
Delegations in Istanbul agree swap of at least 1,000 prisoners, and Ukraine says Russia agreed to return some abducted children
Negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul ended without agreement on a ceasefire on Monday, but with both sides agreeing to exchange more prisoners.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the two sides had agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, with the possibility of swapping an additional 200 PoWs. He said an agreement had also been made to return the remains of killed service personnel, but added that this would take careful preparation.
Marcelo Gomes Da Silva must be in state for ‘fair’ chance for court to review merits on any contested issues, says judge
A Boston high school student who was detained by immigration agents on Saturday while he was on his way to volleyball practice must be kept in Massachusetts for at least 72 hours, a federal judge said on Monday.
Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, 18, entered the United States on a student visa, according to a lawsuit filed on his behalf after his arrest. While his student visa status has lapsed, he is eligible for and intends to apply for asylum.
Alisa Petrov, 15, last seen on 21 April, walked into Colorado Springs police department and identified herself
A 15-year-old Utah girl, who vanished in April, has been located safe and in good health in Colorado Springs, authorities confirmed late Sunday night.
According to Sgt Shaun Becker, Alisa Petrov walked into the Colorado Springs police department earlier that evening and identified herself. Officials stated she appeared to be unharmed and physically well.
The attack by a man hurling molotov cocktails struck at the heart of one of Colorado’s largest Jewish communities
The first 911 calls reporting the Colorado flamethrower attack were as horrific as they were unbelievable.
“There is a male with a blow torch setting people on fire,” a dispatcher advised the city’s police department, passing on the account of an eyewitness. Another official reported: “Multiple burns, potential terror attack.”
Exclusive: More schools identified as targets after controls on IDF action against Hamas operatives at civilian sites loosened
A series of recent deadly airstrikes on school buildings sheltering displaced people in Gaza were part of a deliberate Israeli military bombing strategy, with further schools identified as targets, the Guardian has learned.
At least six school buildings have been struck, reportedly killing more than 120 people, in recent months as part of a targeting effort by the Israeli military.
Kazakhstani beats Draper 5-7, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 in fourth round
World No 62 reaches major quarter-final for first time
With his presence at the French Open hanging desperately in the balance, Jack Draper stepped up to the baseline, down two sets to one, hoping he would begin the new set with a clean slate to initiate his resurgence. Instead, he could only watch on helplessly as his opponent threaded four outlandish winners to break his serve to love.
It was that kind of evening for Draper, the fifth seed in Paris, who was thoroughly outplayed by a stupendous performance from the unseeded Alexander Bublik. The Kazakhstani held his nerve in front of an ebullient Court Suzanne Lenglen crowd to close out an immense 5-7, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 win and reach a grand slam quarter-final for the first time in his career.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman charged with multiple felonies after allegedly shouting ‘Free Palestine’ as he attacked Boulder crowd
A man has been charged with a federal hate crime and multiple other felonies after he allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack a crowd of people who were raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 victims.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is alleged to have shouted “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowdon Sunday. The FBI said Soliman told police he planned the attack for a year and had specifically targeted what he described as the “Zionist group”, the Associated Press reported.
Manufacturing survey signals third monthly decline in output in a row amid uncertainty over tariffs
US manufacturers have warned that Donald Trump’s trade war is hitting production, pushing the dollar close to a three-year low against sterling on Monday.
The greenback suffered a fresh sell-off, after the closely watched ISM survey of the manufacturing sector signalled a third monthly decline in output in a row.
A vision of what war between the UK and another state such as Russia would look like is sketched out briefly but starkly on a page of the strategic defence review.
Such a conflict could involve attacks on the armed forces in the UK and overseas, air and missile attacks on critical infrastructure, and sabotage and efforts to manipulate information and undermine social cohesion.
After years as a directionless collection of celebrity footballers, PSG are a true team now. But they still represent one of the sport’s darkest trends
Paris Saint-Germain’s success in the Champions League final on Saturday was a victory for youth and adventure. It was a victory for a team built with a coherent vision, and a rebuke to those who believe the game is just about collecting the biggest names. It was a victory for Luis Enrique, a very fine coach who has suffered dreadful personal tragedy. It was a victory for forward-thinking, progressive, fluent football.
Full-back Aït-Nouri has one year left on his contract
Manchester City are optimistic of signing the Wolves full-back Rayan Aït-Nouri as part of their summer revamp. City are yet to bid for the Algeria defender but he is regarded as a primary target.
City’s chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, has said the club were not aggressive enough in the market last summer and want to complete most of their close-season business in time for the Club World Cup with their first game on 18 June. The Lyon midfielder Rayan Cherki is another target.
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