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The Great Escaper to Poolman: the seven best films to watch on TV this week
Fri, 07 Jun 2024 08:00:43 GMT
Glenda Jackson’s swansong – and probably Michael Caine’s – is an impossibly moving drama about the D-day’s 70th-anniversary bash in Normandy. Plus, Chris Pine’s jolly, silly mashup of The Big Lebowski and Chinatown
Continue reading...Police say spectators ‘turned their backs toward the pitch and did not stand for the playing of the national anthem’
Three people have been arrested for turning their backs and remaining seated when China’s national anthem was played prior to Hong Kong’s home World Cup qualifier against Iran, police have said.
Football spectators in Hong Kong used to boo the Chinese anthem as a show of political discontent, but the government banned the practice in 2020 as part of a wider crackdown after huge democracy protests in the city.
Continue reading...Democracy campaigners welcome move by Lord Sumption and Lord Collins, who cited political situation in statement
Two of the last remaining British judges to sit on Hong Kong’s top court have resigned, with one citing the political situation in the former colony.
Lawrence Collins and Jonathan Sumption, former UK supreme court justices, announced their resignations on Thursday. “I have resigned from the court of final appeal because of the political situation in Hong Kong, but I continue to have the fullest confidence in the court and the total independence of its members,” Lord Collins said.
Continue reading...Although women are helping to address a desperate labour shortage, they face resistance in a sector dominated by men
With one last heave, Mayumi Okada launches a heavy, sopping wet rope into the Pacific Ocean. As a fresh afternoon wind forms frothy crests on the waves, her husband, Kuniaki, leaves his cabin, peers over the edge of their boat and confirms that the latest batch of oyster “spat” larvae is in position, ready to mature into the plump, highly prized bivalves associated with this region of north-east Japan.
Three years ago, the couple abandoned regular careers to build a new life in Tomari, a tiny coastal community 500km (310 miles) north of Tokyo. Kuniaki, 54, had always dreamed of earning a living going out to sea. Mayumi was supportive, but she also had maritime ambitions of her own.
Continue reading...Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable), but about how Microsoft figured it out. The natural conclusion was that Microsoft was spying on its AI users, looking for harmful hackers at work.
Some pushed back at characterizing Microsoft’s actions as “spying.” Of course cloud service providers monitor what users are doing. And because we expect Microsoft to be doing something like this, it’s not fair to call it spying...
Sanmu Chen appeared to write the date of massacre in the air as anniversary becomes increasingly sensitive in Hong Kong
Hong Kong police detained an artist on Monday night after he appeared to write “8964” in the air with his hand, a reference to the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre, hours before Tuesday’s 35th anniversary.
Public acknowledgment of the events of 4 June 1989, when Chinese soldiers shut down a weeks-long peaceful protest with violence, killing anything from several hundred to several thousand people – is banned in mainland China and increasingly sensitive in Hong Kong.
Continue reading...Smaller allies emerge as powerful kingmakers in effort to form government before swearing in of PM
Narendra Modi is facing the first test of coalition politics after losing his outright majority in the Indian election, with smaller coalition allies emerging as powerful kingmakers in the formation of the government.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) won the most seats in the election results declared on Tuesday, but not enough to pass the 272 parliamentary majority mark, forcing it to rely on coalition partners to return to power.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: After pollsters and pundits predicted a sweeping victory that never came, is India’s prime minister entering his final act in politics?
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Good morning.
For months, the consensus was that India’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) was going to win a thumping majority in the general election. A few days ago, exit polls indicated the BJP was going to secure a sweeping victory, and could even gain seats to win a two-thirds majority in parliament. The party’s confidence came through most clearly in its highly publicised goal of winning 400 seats.
Israel-Gaza war | At least 30 Palestinians including five children have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a UN school housing displaced people in al-Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, medical officials have said, with dozens more wounded. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted a UN school in al-Nuseirat, saying it had been housing Hamas terrorists from the 7 October attack on Israel who were planning further attacks.
Wales | The Welsh first minister, Vaughan Gething, has lost a no-confidence vote less than 12 weeks after taking office, following a series of scandals that have called into question his judgment and transparency.
General election 2024 | The UK Statistics Authority has opened an investigation into remarks made by Rishi Sunak about the economy “going gangbusters” amid concerns that politicians could misuse economic data in the run-up to the election. The watchdog’s intervention came soon after the chair of the organisation began a review of Sunak’s claim that the Treasury calculated that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 for everyone if it won the election.
Climate crisis | Fossil fuel companies are the “godfathers of climate chaos” and should be banned in every country from advertising akin to restrictions on big tobacco, the secretary general of the United Nations has said while delivering dire new scientific warnings of global heating.
NHS | A cyber-attack thought to have been carried out by a Russian group has forced London NHS hospitals to resurrect long-discarded paper records systems in which porters hand-deliver blood test results because IT networks are disrupted.
Continue reading...Strongman-style leader set for historic third term but with authority diminished after loss of majority
Narendra Modi has secured the backing of his political allies in order to form a government and is expected to be sworn in over the weekend, after a dramatic election in which his party failed to secure an outright majority.
At a meeting in Delhi after Tuesday’s shock results, parties in the National Democratic Alliance, which is led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), pledged their support to Modi and backed his return as prime minister for a historic third term. “We, the leaders of the NDA, unanimously elect Narendra Modi as our leader,” the party leaders said in a resolution.
Continue reading...Anger at rampant unemployment, stagnant wages and inflation led to surprise losses in Uttar Pradesh
It was less than six months ago that Narendra Modi walked solemnly through the ornate surroundings of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and one of its most politically crucial. His appearance in the holy city to inaugurate the newly constructed Hindu temple, built on the ruins of a mosque demolished two decades earlier, was cast as the pinnacle of the prime minister’s decade in power – the crowning glory of his Hindu nationalist agenda and his ticket to a third term in office. The ceremony was deemed to mark the unofficial launch of his election campaign.
But on Tuesday evening Modi was faced with a rude awakening. His Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which has ruled India with an iron grip for a decade, has lost its majority as a single party and will have to rely on coalition partners to return to government. The losses were particularly heavy in Uttar Pradesh, long considered to be the BJP’s bastion – and nowhere more so than in Ayodhya.
Continue reading...Latest results reveal unexpected blow to PM, forcing negotiation with coalition partners to regain power
Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party has lost its parliamentary majority, dealing an unexpected blow to the prime minister and forcing him to negotiate with coalition partners in order to return to power.
With all votes counted early on Wednesday morning, it was clear that the landslide for the BJP predicted in polls had not materialised and instead there had been a pushback against the strongman prime minister and his Hindu nationalist politics in swathes of the country.
Continue reading...Narendra Modi says India has placed its faith in the ruling coalition ‘for a third consecutive time’, as figures show his BJP party unlikely to secure an overall majority
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance, the NDA bloc, is enjoying an early lead as votes are counted, pulling ahead in 154 seats of the total 543 in the lower house of parliament.
Early trends show the opposition INDIA alliance leading in 120 seats.
The first votes counted are postal ballots, which are paper ballots, mostly cast by troops serving outside their home constituencies or officials away from home on election duty.
This year, postal votes were also offered to voters over 85 years of age and people with disabilities to allow them to vote from home.
According to some exit polls, Modi and the BJP could be headed for a two-thirds majority in parliament, giving them an even stronger victory than in the 2019 elections.
Continue reading...Uncrewed Chang’e-6 lander is carrying rock and soil samples in ‘very important achievement’ after lunar liftoff
China’s uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe is on its way back to Earth carrying the first samples from the far side of the moon, in a major achievement for Beijing’s space programme.
The probe landed on the lunar surface on Sunday, within one of the oldest craters on the moon – the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin – then spent two days gathering rock and soil samples using its drill and robotic arm.
Continue reading...Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
Events marking 35 years since troops ended peaceful protest with deadly violence are banned in China and Hong Kong
Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have arrested or put under surveillance several dissidents before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this week, according to human rights groups.
On 4 June it will be 35 years since Chinese soldiers shut down a weeks-long peaceful protest with violence, killing anything from several hundred to several thousand people.
Continue reading...I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to predict that artificial intelligence will affect every aspect of our society. Not by doing new things. But mostly by doing things that are already being done by humans, perfectly competently.
Replacing humans with AIs isn’t necessarily interesting. But when an AI takes over a human task, the task changes.
In particular, there are potential changes over four dimensions: Speed, scale, scope and sophistication. The problem with AIs trading stocks isn’t that they’re better than humans—it’s that they’re faster. But computers are better at chess and Go because they use more sophisticated strategies than humans. We’re worried about AI-controlled social media accounts because they operate on a superhuman scale...
A court in the Philippines has banned the commercial growth of golden rice, a genetically modified rice which was created to help tackle vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. It’s just the latest twist in a long and controversial journey for this rice. Ian Sample hears from the Observer science and environment editor, Robin McKie, and from Glenn Stone, a research professor of environmental science at Sweet Briar College in Virginia who is also an anthropologist who has studied golden rice, about why it has taken so long for this potentially life-saving technology to reach the fields, if it is the silver bullet so many had hoped for, and whether this ban is really the end of the story
Continue reading...“It’s hard to see this wildly disproportionate response as anything other than an attempt to chill speech on this issue.”
The post Columbia Coincidentally Rewrites Disciplinary Rules Just in Time to Screw Over Student Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
All over the country, architecture firms make the case for bigger jails — then get hired to design them.
The post The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms appeared first on The Intercept.
Residents living near the volcano have been ordered to evacuate as authorities warn of further eruptions
Authorities in the Philippines have ordered residents living near Kanlaon volcano in the country’s west to evacuate, after an eruption sent a 5km (three mile) plume of ash into the sky.
The six-minute explosive eruption on Monday caused a “strong earthquake” and prompted the suspension of work and schools in nearby Canlaon City, while three airlines cancelled 32 flights on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Found guilty on 34 counts by a New York jury, Trump might find himself campaigning behind bars.
The post These Convictions Thwart Trump’s Plan to Pardon Himself appeared first on The Intercept.
Deterrence policy against asylum seeker boats is under strain, with three vessels arriving in a week in May
The number of asylum seekers on Nauru appears to have topped 100, with a further two groups of 37 people sent to the Pacific Island.
The people, classified as “unauthorised maritime arrivals”, include 33 Bangladeshis who were found on Christmas Island on 9 May, one of who is a woman. Their boat was destroyed by bad weather.
Continue reading...Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
Kuo Chiu, known as KC to his friends, teaches urban design at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He’s also one of many of the country's citizens who practises rifle skills in his spare time, in case of a Chinese invasion.
The population of Taiwan has long grown familiar with Beijing’s pledge to one day ‘unify’ what it claims is a breakaway province. But recently, there has been a significant increase in aggressive and intimidatory acts.
Taiwan’s 160,000 active military personnel are vastly outnumbered by China’s 2 million-member armed forces, leading many civilians to turn to voluntary medical and combat training to protect themselves.
The Guardian's video team spent time with KC to see how he is preparing
Continue reading...Tinned chickpeas are flying off the shelves at Tesco. Vegan influencer Christina Soteriou and child nutritionist Charlotte Stirling-Reed explain why – and share their tips for recipes and moreish snacks
“Chickpeas are flying off the shelves, so our priority is making sure they’re always available when customers want them,” says Ashley Wainaina, Tesco’s canned pulses buyer. “We’ve even changed our stocking system to make it more efficient, so we can keep up with demand.”
As the UK’s largest food retailer, Tesco is helping customers make better choices when they shop by highlighting better foods, such as snacks containing under 100 calories or foods that are high in fibre or low in sugar, through its Better Baskets campaign. Chickpeas are loaded with protein and fibre, they’re filling, a third of a tin counts as one of your five a day, and they can be cooked in a plethora of different ways. They’ve been eaten for millennia across the Middle East, India and the Mediterranean, and their popularity has soared here recently, too.
Continue reading...We know turbulence is a common part of flying – but are some routes more prone? And where is it the worst? Turbulence is the leading cause of in-flight injuries to crew and passengers and after the fatal Singapore Airlines incident and injuries to passengers above Turkey on a Qatar Airways flight, you might be wondering if flights are about to get bumpier. Incidents of severe turbulence are on the rise – increasing by 55% between 1979 and 2020 – and the climate crisis is thought to be a responsible factor
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Continue reading...Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, has been slowly swallowed by the sea over the past few decades. This has led to the relocation of the school and many homes, resulting in a dwindling population. Currently, there are only four students attending the school, often leaving just one in each classroom. The village has experienced severe coastal erosion, causing 1.1-2km (0.5-1.2 miles) of shoreline to disappear since the mid-1950s
Continue reading...The board had proposed appending a statement that would have undermined a Palestinian scholar's article. The students rejected it.
The post Columbia Law Review Is Back Online After Students Threatened Work Stoppage Over Palestine Censorship appeared first on The Intercept.
Researchers tested for bias in Facebook’s algorithm by purchasing ads promoting for-profit colleges and studying who saw them.
The post One Facebook Ad Promotes a For-Profit College; Another a State School. Which Ad Do Black Users See? appeared first on The Intercept.
The narrative that took hold ignored inland campuses, like in the Rust Belt and into Appalachia, where students formed their own encampments.
The post Not Just Coastal Elites: Here’s How Three Rust Belt Colleges Protested Israel’s War in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
“It’s hard to see this wildly disproportionate response as anything other than an attempt to chill speech on this issue.”
The post Columbia Coincidentally Rewrites Disciplinary Rules Just in Time to Screw Over Student Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
From the Cairngorms to the South Downs, the Pembrokeshire coast to the Norfolk Broads, our tipsters share their memorable discoveries
We love to visit the northern Lake District. You can enjoy the buzz of friendly Keswick, full of great cafes, independent shops, lovely parks and fantastic views in every direction. Travel on the open-topped bus from Keswick to Seatoller and take in the beauty of Derwentwater and Borrowdale, passing through the “loveliest square mile in Lakeland” according to Alfred Wainwright. For true peace and quiet, explore the northern fells: walk from Mungrisdale to Bannerdale Crags and Blencathra while admiring those brave enough to take on Sharp Edge. Later, sit by the stream and enjoy a coffee in beautiful Caldbeck village.
Katharine
Whether you’re off on a two-week holiday or a weekend by the sea, travelling doesn’t have to mean pulling on your tracksuit bottoms
Continue reading...The second world war is not fodder for the culture wars. We owe it to those who fought to keep it that way
Nigel Farage launched his campaign to become Clacton’s MP by citing a recent survey that revealed more than half of 18- to 34-year-olds couldn’t correctly identify what happened on D-day. Praising a local veteran travelling to Normandy for the 80th anniversary commemorations, the Reform party boss described the poll as representing “a complete failure of the education system … as if we’re telling our youngsters to be ashamed of our past”. It formed a key part of a speech full of supposedly patriotic, anti-immigrant, anti-trans rhetoric.
A narrow, nostalgic view of the second world war that connects the conflict with culture war issues and a sense of contemporary British decline is frequently exploited by reactionaries such as Farage, both as a political tool and a stick with which to beat supposedly ignorant young people. Jibes that millennials and Gen Z are “too woke” to fight might in fact be familiar to anyone who has read letters between British commanders of the second world war. General Montgomery, one of the architects of the D-day invasion, wrote in 1942 that “the trouble with our British lads is that they are not killers by nature”. A 1943 army report, meanwhile, blamed books, cinema, plays and education for making soldiers weak under fire.
Luke Turner is a writer, editor and the author of two books, Men at War and the Wainwright prize-shortlisted Out of the Woods
Continue reading...Artist duo Lola Paprocka and Pani Paul travelled the world photographing teenagers they connected with – along with their broken phones, braces and acne scars
Continue reading...Exclusive: Rivals from two forces fighting to control Darfur region would be subject to asset freezes and travel bans
The EU intends to impose sanctions on six Sudanese military figures who are fuelling the conflict that has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, European diplomats have said.
EU foreign ministers meeting later this month are expected to approve sanctions against six individuals from the rival forces who have been fighting for control of Darfur, the vast, largely arid region of western and south-western Sudan.
Continue reading...Interesting story of breaking the security of the RoboForm password manager in order to recover a cryptocurrency wallet password.
Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they thought Michael had used in 2013 and found that the pseudo-random number generator used to generate passwords in that version—and subsequent versions until 2015—did indeed have a significant flaw that made the random number generator not so random. The RoboForm program unwisely tied the random passwords it generated to the date and time on the user’s computer—it determined the computer’s date and time, and then generated passwords that were predictable. If you knew the date and time and other parameters, you could compute any password that would have been generated on a certain date and time in the past...
Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
Brian Krebs reports on research into geolocating routers:
Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geolocate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally—including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems—and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops...
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
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