AI risks entrenching racism and sexism in Australia, the human rights commissioner has warned, amid internal Labor debate about how to respond to the emerging technology.
Lorraine Finlay says the pursuit of productivity gains from AI should not come at the expense of discrimination if the technology is not properly regulated.
Bluetooth noise cancellers have good sound, physical buttons and buck trend of boring black cans with distinctive transparent aesthetic
London-based Nothing’s latest gadget is a set of over-ear headphones that throws out the dull design norms of noise-cancelling cans for an attention-attracting look that is a cross between a 1980s Walkman and Doctor Who’s Cybermen.
The large, semi-transparent cans are certainly a statement piece on your head, with an outer design covered in details, dot-matrix print and physical buttons, but sadly stopping short of the flashing LEDs of the company’s phones.
Doctor Marianne wonders if her gay colleague Tor’s approach to dating would work for her, in the second film of Dag Johan Haugerud’s absorbing trilogy
Here is the second of Norwegian film-maker and novelist Dag Johan Haugerud’s seductive trilogy about affairs of the heart and mind, set in Oslo. (It comes between Sex and Dreams.) It is a thoroughly grownup and absorbing drama, acted with such sympathy and warmth, a ruminative and exploratory movie of ideas, and one that pays its audience the compliment of treating them as intelligent beings. Love is about a familiar question: can straight people learn from or even absorb the open and polygamous approach to sex that appears to come easier to gay people (and perhaps younger people of all sexualities), perhaps specifically gay men? Or is that idea stereotypical and naive?
Andrea Braein Hovig plays Marianne, a urology consultant whose job it is to give bad news to a succession of men about their prostate cancer. She is single (though her past romantic life remains a mystery); her best friend, Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), tries to set her up with a divorced friend. But Marianne finds herself restive with the whole monolithic idea of dating and relationships and she is fascinated with what her nurse Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) tells her about his own life. After work, she encounters him on their commuter ferry and he candidly tells her he uses Grindr to set up exciting, ephemeral encounters on this very craft.
An entrancing biography of Tony Cornell, who displayed a scientist’s commitment to impartiality as he investigated the paranormal
My first and only experience with a Ouija board occurred when I was 11, at a friend’s house. It was good, spooky fun until it wasn’t. I recall movement and the start of a message before we recoiled from the board. Later that evening, I learned that my grandfather had died. While I realise now that a boy with a terminally ill relative and a lurid imagination was not the most reliable witness, I remember wanting to believe that I’d had a brush with the uncanny.
When Times journalist Ben Machell’s dying grandmother bequeathed him a crystal ball, he began idly searching for mediums and happened acrossthe work of a man named Tony Cornell. Between 1952 and 2004, Cornell worked (unpaid and to the detriment of two marriages) for the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Weeding out deception and delusion from accounts of paranormal activity to find out what, if anything, remained, Britain’s most diligent parapsychologist was more claims adjuster than ghostbuster. His answering machine filled up with pleas to investigate strange happenings around the country: a trawlerman mauled by an invisible hound, a house that bled water, a rural bungalow plagued by fires and expiring pets.
The revival of Nielsen’s 80s classic applies CGI and flashbacks a little too liberally, but there’s the odd glimmer of wit in an otherwise clunky script
Ever since Brigitte Nielsen unlaced her battle corset after shooting ended on pulpy fantasy actioner Red Sonja back in the 1980s, there’s been talk of sequels and/or reboots. Truffle around the internet and you’ll find a saga to rival the finest in Old Norse about deals signed and projects greenlit and then abandoned over the years, with names attached to direct ranging from X-Men’s Bryan Singer to Transparent’s Joey Soloway. What a shame Soloway’s version never got off the ground because that surely would have been a hoot, and probably more interesting than this soggy, CGI-infused, low-budget confection that’s finally arrived.
Little-known actor Matilda Lutz gets the lead role this time around, as well as getting all the hair extensions in the auburn aisle. She presents a Sonja that’s more a pixie-like hippy chick than Nielsen’s Valkyrie heroine, a bit of a loner who mostly kicks around the forest with her beloved horse. Sonja finds herself sucked, at first unenthusiastically, into camaraderie after she is captured by evil emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan, clearly enjoying himself) and compelled to fight in gladiatorial combats. Sometimes her opponents are the other prisoners, and sometimes they are gargantuan amalgamations of pixels and VFX fairy dust, including a grumpy cyclops roughly the size of a tower block who is controlled by Draygan with what looks like a magic torch. Wallis Day plays another antagonist with bleached eyebrows and agonising visions of all the people she’s ever killed, just to show that baddies have backstories too.
I was looking for liberation from the apps, but quitting them only made my life harder and turned me into a man obsessed
I unlocked my iPhone screen at the precise moment that my weekly screen time notification appeared – accidentally dismissing it before I could take a screenshot – and promptly erupted into a rage. I had spent an excruciating week resolutely not looking at my phone, part of a month-long effort to whittle my daily screen time down from more than four hours a day to less than an hour, with the hope of improving my mental wellbeing (and possibly carving out a career as an inspirational speaker). But my efforts felt futile without being able to post evidence online about how offline I had become. I frantically Googled how to retrieve notifications (you cannot) and – briefly – considered re-creating my screen time report in Photoshop.
Over the past decade or two, my efforts at self-improvement have taken various forms: the year where I read 105 books; the period during which I gave up all forms of sugar including, misguidedly, fruit; and a dalliance with shamanism that, I’m sorry to say, included interpretive dance. Some might suggest I would be better off learning to cook, or drive, or type with more than one finger, but they can’t reach me because I no longer look at my phone.
In Alaska the Russian leader will claim to want peace, but only on his terms – and play on the president’s desperation to ‘make a deal’ quickly
Wars do not have to be won. Total victories loom largest in the popular imagination because those are the stories nations always tell to sustain patriotic feeling. The fuller version of history is written in stalemates.
That is worth remembering when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Both leaders have incentives to pretend that Ukraine’s fate can be settled decisively without any Ukrainians at the negotiating table. That doesn’t make it so.
Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires.
In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angoulême, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion and Saint-Girons. Météo France said the “often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures” in the region were 12C above the norm for the last few decades.
The conditions for ferocious fires are expected to worsen as the planet heats up, putting more people at risk
With bigger and stronger wildfires becoming more common as Europe swelters in record-breaking heat, people will need to adapt and learn how to stay safe.
Chinese-style sweet-and-sour pork with plums, chicken wings with plum ketchup and a chai creme caramel with tea-poached plums
There’s a windfall of delicious plums to be gathered in gardens and pick-your-own farms up and down the country right now, but they’re often overlooked. Instead, it’s peaches, nectarines and apricots that get all the glory. Well, more for me! Plums that haven’t flown in from far-flung places are best: sweet, tart, fleshy and complex in flavour. It’s a no-brainer to earmark them for comforting cakes and puddings, but they are an equally worthy companion for meat, such as duck, pork or fried chicken, because their natural sharpness cuts through any fatty richness.
Putin has escalated strikes on Donetsk region and is likely to demand Ukraine hands it over in talks with Trump
Nataliya Petrovna pointed to a crater on the edge of a football field. Around it lay bits of twisted metal. From nearby came loud banging as residents fixed plywood to their damaged five-storey apartment block. Many of its windows were broken. “The last few days have been terrible. We could hear the drones buzzing over us. The one that exploded near the school opposite was a Russian Shahed. Maybe some kind of new type,” she said.
Petrovna lives in the eastern garrison city of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk province, about 15 miles from the frontline. The distance is just beyond the range of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, at least for now. But it is easily reachable by other kinds of enemy objects. They include air-dropped glide bombs, Grad rockets and unmanned kamikaze drones – now cruising Ukraine’s skies in overwhelming numbers.
Late-night host says he was eligible thanks to his Italian grandmother and that president’s second term is ‘so much worse’ than he expected
Jimmy Kimmel has revealed he acquired Italian citizenship due to Donald Trump’s presidency, the latest in a wave of celebrities to make contingency plans after his re-election in 2024.
Speaking on The Sarah Silverman Podcast, the US late-night host confirmed the news. Italian news agency Ansa confirmed Kimmel had obtained Italian citizenship earlier this year after proving his ancestral lineage.
Sarah Shaw, who has a US visa and lives in Washington state, was detained after attempting to re-enter US from Canada
A New Zealand woman who is being held at a US immigration centre with her six-year-old son after they were detained crossing the Canada-US border, is being wrongly “treated like a criminal”, according to her friend and advocate.
Sarah Shaw, 33, a New Zealander who has lived in Washington state for just over three years, dropped her two eldest children to Vancouver airport on 24 July, so they could take a direct flight back to New Zealand for a holiday with their grandparents.
The Japan Boxing Commission will crack down on rapid dehydration to ‘make weight’, which experts say makes the brain susceptible to bleeding
Boxing authorities in Japan will introduce stricter safety measures after the sport was left in shock by the deaths this month of two boxers competing in the same event.
Officials from the Japan Boxing Commission (JBC) told reporters this week the changes would include pre-bout urine tests, tougher rules on rapid weight loss and improvements in ringside medical services.
One of the world’s most successful authors answers readers’ questions on his sources of inspiration, the colour of fear, knowing when to quit – and why manual labour is invaluable for writers
I once entered a short story competition in the Guardian, judged by you, but failed. Is it simply a case of trying until something sticks? Or is accepting a lack of talent a relief over chasing an impossible dream? EvolAnth Well, it’s not necessarily a lack of talent. I think everybody has talent, but you have to hone it. The more you do it, the more you like it. And when you have talent, you want to do it, you know?
You signed my copy of Christine with the words “Keep on screaming for vengeance” because I was wearing a Judas Priest badge. Is music still important to you?RobFrampton
Yeah, music is still important to me. I’ve moved on from Judas Priest because I couldn’t get the rights to use the lyrics from You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ for my [2008] novel, Duma Key. So I’ve moved on to Rancid, Nazareth, Anthrax and Metallica. I don’t listen to music if I’m composing directly from my head to the page. When I’m rewriting, I like to listen to club music, disco or something with a repetitive beat that flows through my head and goes in one ear and out the other. Today I was listening to some zydeco music, and LCD Soundsystem. I like North American Scum, Losing My Edge and Daft Punk Is Playing at My House very much.
Letter from rights groups says RedBird Capital’s proposed takeover threatens media pluralism and transparency
A group of nine human rights and freedom of expression organisations have called on the culture secretary to halt RedBird Capital’s proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph and investigate the US private equity company’s ties to China.
The international non-governmental organisations, which include Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders and Article 19, have written to Lisa Nandy arguing that RedBird Capital’s links with China “threaten media pluralism, transparency and information integrity in the UK”.
The shockwaves sent by the US president could finally push Switzerland closer to the EU
Growing up in Zurich often felt like being removed from the world. It shouldn’t be that way: after all, Switzerland is at the heart of Europe. Riding on the cosy Zurich trams, one hears all the world’s languages; and the airport offers more direct intercontinental flights than Berlin. And yet, coming of age in Switzerland is like sitting in an aquarium looking at the world through a thick bulletproof window.
That glass was shattered last week when Donald Trump announced 39% tariffs on Swiss exports. The US is the most important destination for Swiss products: 18.6% of all its exports go there. If Trump maintains the tariffs, sales to the US “will be effectively annihilated”, said Switzerland’s industry lobbying group. The rightwing Swiss business minister, Guy Parmelin, announced a furlough programme to shield the economy from “mass layoffs”. The tabloid newspaper Blick captured the mood with a stark black front page, pronouncing it a “black day” for Switzerland.
Charity gives children a well-earned break from caring responsibilities, hoping that a day’s snorkelling amid the island’s wildlife will help them connect with nature
“A seal just swam right by me,” squeals Odin Rawlinson, 14, as he awkwardly clambers back on to the dive boat in his flippers. He had hoped to see a megalodon or a kraken (a mythical sea creature) on his first ever snorkelling trip. But to his surprise, he finds the marine life that actually frequents the waters off Lundy in the Bristol Channel just as enchanting.
Odin Rawlinson on the trip to Lundy – the 14-year-old looks after his mother who has kidney failure and has to have regular dialysis sessions in hospital.
The gloriously horrific monsters are classic nightmare fuel in this incredibly confident new take on Ridley Scott’s movie franchise. We haven’t seen a trail of bodies like this in years
It’s usually a bad sign if you’re wondering what the heck is going on in a drama when you’re two episodes in, but there is an exception: you can happily ride on if you sense that, although you don’t know what it’s doing, the show definitely does. Such is the bristling, bewildering, overpoweringly confident aura of Alien: Earth, a new TV take on cinema’s greatest sci-fi horror franchise by writer-director Noah Hawley of Fargo fame.
We are in the year 2120, just the right setting for a show that plays on our fears that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to live in hell. Simple green-on-black text, styled like a computer readout from the 80s, informs us that, in this broken future, corporations have taken over the universe, and which one achieves total domination will be determined by which of three technologies wins a “race for immortality”: cyborgs (enhanced humans), synths (wholly artificial beings) or hybrids (synthetic bodies with human consciousnesses implanted).
Updated regulations ban the country’s 40 million civil servants from lavish banquets, and restrict them from overseas travel for ‘personal leisure’
Adjacent to a municipal government building in Beijing, a normally bustling restaurant is now eerily quiet, at lunchtime most of its seats are empty.
The recent crackdown on civil servants frequenting restaurants – part of a government austerity drive intended to crack down on corruption – has likely affected business and caused liquor sales to plummet, admits one waitress who works in the opulent establishment.
Disclosure of migration status, and ethnicity, could help keep peace ‘where there are high levels of disinformation’
Police forces should consider disclosing the ethnicity and migration status of suspects when they are charged in high-profile and sensitive investigations, according to new official guidance.
After a row over claims that police “covered up” the backgrounds of two men charged in connection with the alleged rape of a child, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing have backed plans to release details of nationality when there is a “policing purpose” for doing so.
Jhon Durán helps Mourinho’s side to 5-2 aggregate win
Rangers advance to face Club Brugge in playoffs
José Mourinho is one round away from taking Fenerbahce back into the Champions League for the first time in 17 years.
The storied head coach’s team surged into the Champions League qualifying playoffs by overturning a two-goal deficit in a 5-2 qualifying round win against Robin van Persie’s Feyenoord. Fenerbahce went through 6-4 on aggregate and will face Benfica, where Mourinho got his first head coach job 25 years ago, with a place in the 36-team league phase at stake.
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