********** UNIVERSITY **********
return to top
Solution to Evan Birnholz’s March 30 crossword, ‘Schoolbooks’
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:00:43 +0000
Give this reading list the old college try.
Match ID: 0 Score: 10.00 source: www.washingtonpost.com age: 1 day
qualifiers: 10.00 school
In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000
The Trump administration’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk rests on an opinion article she wrote in 2024, her lawyers said in a filing.
The post In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed appeared first on The Intercept.
![]() |
Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
In the rapidly advancing landscape of AI technology and innovation, LimeWire emerges as a unique platform in the realm of generative AI tools. This platform not only stands out from the multitude of existing AI tools but also brings a fresh approach to content generation. LimeWire not only empowers users to create AI content but also provides creators with creative ways to share and monetize their creations.
As we explore LimeWire, our aim is to uncover its features, benefits for creators, and the exciting possibilities it offers for AI content generation. This platform presents an opportunity for users to harness the power of AI in image creation, all while enjoying the advantages of a free and accessible service.
Let's unravel the distinctive features that set LimeWire apart in the dynamic landscape of AI-powered tools, understanding how creators can leverage its capabilities to craft unique and engaging AI-generated images.
This revamped LimeWire invites users to register and unleash their creativity by crafting original AI content, which can then be shared and showcased on the LimeWire Studio. Notably, even acclaimed artists and musicians, such as Deadmau5, Soulja Boy, and Sean Kingston, have embraced this platform to publish their content in the form of NFT music, videos, and images.
Beyond providing a space for content creation and sharing, LimeWire introduces monetization models to empower users to earn revenue from their creations. This includes avenues such as earning ad revenue and participating in the burgeoning market of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). As we delve further, we'll explore these monetization strategies in more detail to provide a comprehensive understanding of LimeWire's innovative approach to content creation and distribution.
LimeWire Studio welcomes content creators into its fold, providing a space to craft personalized AI-focused content for sharing with fans and followers. Within this creative hub, every piece of content generated becomes not just a creation but a unique asset—ownable and tradable. Fans have the opportunity to subscribe to creators' pages, immersing themselves in the creative journey and gaining ownership of digital collectibles that hold tradeable value within the LimeWire community. Notably, creators earn a 2.5% royalty each time their content is traded, adding a rewarding element to the creative process.
The platform's flexibility is evident in its content publication options. Creators can choose to share their work freely with the public or opt for a premium subscription model, granting exclusive access to specialized content for subscribers.
As of the present moment, LimeWire focuses on AI Image Generation, offering a spectrum of creative possibilities to its user base. The platform, however, has ambitious plans on the horizon, aiming to broaden its offerings by introducing AI music and video generation tools in the near future. This strategic expansion promises creators even more avenues for expression and engagement with their audience, positioning LimeWire Studio as a dynamic and evolving platform within the realm of AI-powered content creation.
The LimeWire AI image generation tool presents a versatile platform for both the creation and editing of images. Supporting advanced models such as Stable Diffusion 2.1, Stable Diffusion XL, and DALL-E 2, LimeWire offers a sophisticated toolkit for users to delve into the realm of generative AI art.
Much like other tools in the generative AI landscape, LimeWire provides a range of options catering to various levels of complexity in image creation. Users can initiate the creative process with prompts as simple as a few words or opt for more intricate instructions, tailoring the output to their artistic vision.
What sets LimeWire apart is its seamless integration of different AI models and design styles. Users have the flexibility to effortlessly switch between various AI models, exploring diverse design styles such as cinematic, digital art, pixel art, anime, analog film, and more. Each style imparts a distinctive visual identity to the generated AI art, enabling users to explore a broad spectrum of creative possibilities.
The platform also offers additional features, including samplers, allowing users to fine-tune the quality and detail levels of their creations. Customization options and prompt guidance further enhance the user experience, providing a user-friendly interface for both novice and experienced creators.
Excitingly, LimeWire is actively developing its proprietary AI model, signaling ongoing innovation and enhancements to its image generation capabilities. This upcoming addition holds the promise of further expanding the creative horizons for LimeWire users, making it an evolving and dynamic platform within the landscape of AI-driven art and image creation.
Sign Up Now To Get Free Credits
Upon completing your creative endeavor on LimeWire, the platform allows you the option to publish your content. An intriguing feature follows this step: LimeWire automates the process of minting your creation as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), utilizing either the Polygon or Algorand blockchain. This transformative step imbues your artwork with a unique digital signature, securing its authenticity and ownership in the decentralized realm.
Creators on LimeWire hold the power to decide the accessibility of their NFT creations. By opting for a public release, the content becomes discoverable by anyone, fostering a space for engagement and interaction. Furthermore, this choice opens the avenue for enthusiasts to trade the NFTs, adding a layer of community involvement to the artistic journey.
Alternatively, LimeWire acknowledges the importance of exclusivity. Creators can choose to share their posts exclusively with their premium subscribers. In doing so, the content remains a special offering solely for dedicated fans, creating an intimate and personalized experience within the LimeWire community. This flexibility in sharing options emphasizes LimeWire's commitment to empowering creators with choices in how they connect with their audience and distribute their digital creations.
After creating your content, you can choose to publish the content. It will automatically mint your creation as an NFT on the Polygon or Algorand blockchain. You can also choose whether to make it public or subscriber-only.
If you make it public, anyone can discover your content and even trade the NFTs. If you choose to share the post only with your premium subscribers, it will be exclusive only to your fans.
Additionally, you can earn ad revenue from your content creations as well.
When you publish content on LimeWire, you will receive 70% of all ad revenue from other users who view your images, music, and videos on the platform.
This revenue model will be much more beneficial to designers. You can experiment with the AI image and content generation tools and share your creations while earning a small income on the side.
The revenue you earn from your creations will come in the form of LMWR tokens, LimeWire’s own cryptocurrency.
Your earnings will be paid every month in LMWR, which you can then trade on many popular crypto exchange platforms like Kraken, ByBit, and UniSwap.
You can also use your LMWR tokens to pay for prompts when using LimeWire generative AI tools.
You can sign up to LimeWire to use its AI tools for free. You will receive 10 credits to use and generate up to 20 AI images per day. You will also receive 50% of the ad revenue share. However, you will get more benefits with premium plans.
For $9.99 per month, you will get 1,000 credits per month, up to 2 ,000 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 50% ad revenue share
For $29 per month, you will get 3750 credits per month, up to 7500 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 60% ad revenue share
For $49 per month, you will get 5,000 credits per month, up to 10,000 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 70% ad revenue share
For $99 per month, you will get 11,250 credits per month, up to 2 2,500 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 70% ad revenue share
With all premium plans, you will receive a Pro profile badge, full creation history, faster image generation, and no ads.
Sign Up Now To Get Free Credits
In conclusion, LimeWire emerges as a democratizing force in the creative landscape, providing an inclusive platform where anyone can unleash their artistic potential and effortlessly share their work. With the integration of AI, LimeWire eliminates traditional barriers, empowering designers, musicians, and artists to publish their creations and earn revenue with just a few clicks.
The ongoing commitment of LimeWire to innovation is evident in its plans to enhance generative AI tools with new features and models. The upcoming expansion to include music and video generation tools holds the promise of unlocking even more possibilities for creators. It sparks anticipation about the diverse and innovative ways in which artists will leverage these tools to produce and publish their own unique creations.
For those eager to explore, LimeWire's AI tools are readily accessible for free, providing an opportunity to experiment and delve into the world of generative art. As LimeWire continues to evolve, creators are encouraged to stay tuned for the launch of its forthcoming AI music and video generation tools, promising a future brimming with creative potential and endless artistic exploration
Elzbieta Olszewska refused time to complete paper application but was only told of decision after visitor visa had expired
A Polish woman has been threatened with deportation by the Home Office because her application form to stay was accidentally filled in online instead of on paper.
Elzbieta Olszewska, 80, had been living alone in her flat in Warsaw before arriving in the UK last September. Her only child, Michal Olszewski, 52, an aeronautical engineer who lives in Lincoln with his wife, had been travelling regularly to the Polish capital to support her.
Continue reading...Florida prosecutors say Michelle Taylor used gasoline to set a fire that killed her son. Top forensic chemists say they’re wrong.
The post The Arson Evidence Doesn’t Hold Up. Florida Is About to Convict Her for Murder Anyway. appeared first on The Intercept.
The remote North Sea isle of Læsø is world-famous for the gastronomic delights that come from its waters – so the best way to explore it is in waders
After just 10 minutes in the company of the enigmatic seaweed expert Rie Ladefoged, I’m considering buying a pair of fishing waders. I’m waist deep in the swell and suck of The Kattegat sea off the Danish island of Læsø, armed with a plastic tub and some kitchen scissors, gathering seaweed.
“Ten years ago I went to a lecture on Japanese seaweed. The expert was talking about the best place in Denmark to harvest seaweed – and it was Læsø. I’m so lucky it was Læsø,” says Ladefoged.
Continue reading...The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
Dressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king. He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.
Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers. Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates. White, a Trump ally and Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: “Welcome to the States, boys.”
Continue reading...We asked the experts about keeping luggage as light as possible (and still being ready for anything)
• The best travel-size toiletries for your next trip
Packing is a fine art. No one wants to lug heavy bags around transport hubs or arrive at the other end to a chaotically stuffed bag full of creased clothes. But we all have our “essentials” to cram in. For some, that’ll be a full skincare routine or a semblance of a wardrobe; for others, it’ll be sports equipment (though you really should leave the weights at home). So whether you’re flying on an airline offering ever-dwindling luggage limits, trying to cram a car for the whole crew, or rushing between trains with a backpack, it really does pay to travel light.
But what are the secrets to lightening the load without compromising? To find out, we’ve asked world travellers for all their best hacks and buys. Whether it’s the travel writer who’s been solo backpacking for more than 20 years or the hotel designer who has to dress smartly while zipping to locations across Europe, our globe-trotters shared their tips for everything from the ultimate wear-everywhere shoes to the best tech cheats.
Continue reading...Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.
The post Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump wants Gaza for real estate deals, but Mike Huckabee’s all-inclusive Israel tours erase Palestinians for a higher purpose.
The post Trump’s Pick for Israel Ambassador Leads Tours That Leave Out Palestinians — and Promote End of Days Theology appeared first on The Intercept.
We’d like to hear your memories of the retail store and how you might be affected by its sale
The 233-year-old brand, WH Smith, is to sell its 480 retail stores to the Hobbycraft owner, Modella Capital.
The high street business, which employs 5,000 staff, will disappear from the high street after a “short transitional period” but will retain its brand for its travel shops. The other retail stores will be rebranded as TGJones.
Continue reading...Incident took place near the popular Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada
The Russian consulate in Hurghada said the submarine, named “SINDBAD”, had 45 Russian tourists on board in addition to crew members.
The consulate said four people had died, but did not specify if they were Russian, Reuters reported.
Six people have died and nine others are injured after a tourist submarine sank in the popular Egyptian Red Sea destination of Hurghada, two municipal officials said. AP reported that the officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
The incident, involving a recreational vessel operated by Sindbad Submarines, occurred in waters opposite Hurghada’s Marriot Hotel resort. Citing municipal officials, Reuters and Associated Press reported that six foreigners, whose nationalities are still unknown, had died. It was not immediately clear what caused the submarine to sink.
The Russian embassy in Egypt has said that that all of the tourists on board the submarine were Russian. It said 45 passengers were on board the vessel, including children, in a Facebook post.
The local governorate’s office told Reuters that all of those confirmed dead were foreign citizens, while survivors had been ferried by ambulance to several hospitals in the city. Emergency crews were able to rescue 29 people, according to a statement released by the governorate. Many tourist companies have stopped or limited travelling on the Red Sea due to the dangers from conflicts in the region.
The Sindbad club’s website says it offers short tourist trips in two submarines that it operates that have a maximum depth range of 25 metres. According to the website its submarines allow tourists to “experience the beauty of the Red Sea’s underwater world without getting wet”.
Continue reading...Another 39 people rescued and brought to shore after incident on vessel at Red Sea resort
Six Russian tourists have died and 39 people have been rescued after a submarine sank near the resort of Hurghada, the latest in a series of fatal accidents involving tourists on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
Four survivors, including at least one child, were admitted to intensive care, according to an official statement.
Continue reading...Investigative journalists working as part of the Gaza Project used reporting, geolocation, and forensic analysis to reconstruct the shooting of Fadi al-Wahidi.
The post Gaza Journalist Fadi al-Wahidi Avoided Israel’s “Red” Zone. Israel Shot Him Anyway. appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump is demanding social media handles for citizenship, green card, and visa applicants whether they're already in the U.S. or not.
The post Trump Wants Immigrants on U.S. Soil to Hand Over Social Media Accounts to Apply for Citizenship appeared first on The Intercept.
We’d like to hear about the theme parks and amusement parks that have shut down in your area
Oakwood Theme Park in Pembrokeshire, the largest theme park in Wales, has closed after nearly 40 years. It follows the closure of other attractions across the UK, including Flambards theme park in Cornwall, which shut its doors in November 2024.
We’d like to hear your memories and see your pictures of cherished theme parks and amusement parks that are now no more.
Continue reading...We would like to hear from parents about their children’s experiences of getting NHS dental treatment
According to a government report, nearly 50,000 tooth extractions took place last year in NHS hospitals in England for 0 to 19-year-olds, with 62% of those having a primary diagnosis of tooth decay.
We would like to hear from parents in England about their experiences of accessing NHS dental services for their children. Were you able to find somewhere locally or do you have to travel further afield? How easy have you found it to access care? We’re also interested in hearing from those whose children have had hospital tooth extractions recently.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...I’d tried running, pilates, swimming and barre, and hated the lot. Then I moved to London and, having no money, I had to start walking to places. Shockingly, I enjoyed it
I never understood people who enjoy high-intensity exercise. Wine – yes. Films – obviously. Model trains – whatever floats your boat. But exercise? I didn’t get it. I wept on reformer pilates machines and left circuits classes halfway through under the guise of going to the toilet. I went to the park with the intention of running and instead lay down in the grass with a Cornetto. I pleaded illness – and once, the death of a fictional pet – to waive class cancellation fees. Exercise just wasn’t for me.
And it’s not as if I didn’t try. I attempted swimming and barre, power yoga and boxing – all of it hellish, not to mention inaccessibly expensive. When I walked past a certain glass-fronted gym near my flat, invariably with some sort of snack in my hand, I felt a pang of pity for the people inside – sweaty, muscled prisoners, unable to free themselves from the tyranny of the treadmill.
Continue reading...Europe’s human spaceflight ambitions are reaching new heights, and ESA’s Astronaut Reserve is a key part of this journey. Selected in 2022, these talented individuals are undergoing Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) to ensure they are ready for future missions.
Among these remarkable women from across Europe are Meganne Christian, a materials scientist from the UK, Anthea Comellini, an aerospace engineer from Italy, and Carmen Possnig, a medical doctor from Austria, who recently completed their first ART training block at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany.
Their diverse scientific backgrounds reflect the wide-ranging expertise needed for human spaceflight, whether as part of ESA’s astronaut class, mission planners, or scientists shaping the future of space exploration. Beyond their work with ESA, they are also driving innovation, advancing research, and strengthening the broader space sector. Women play key roles across ESA and beyond, contributing as leaders and experts in these areas.
Meganne, Anthea and Carmen recently completed their first ART training block at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. In this image, they are pictured inside a mockup of the Columbus module, Europe’s permanent laboratory on the International Space Station.
The training covered key areas such as human behaviour and performance to develop teamwork and decision-making skills in high-pressure environments. They also received physical fitness training, scuba certification in ESA’s Neutral Buoyancy Facility, and media training to effectively communicate the importance of space exploration to the public.
In addition to technical and operational skills, they explored fundamental science, including biology experiments conducted on the International Space Station. Their training also includes insights into space policy, mission operations, and the latest advancements in space technology.
While members of the Astronaut Reserve are not yet assigned to specific missions, their training ensures that they are prepared for potential future opportunities through commercial spaceflight
The journey continues in the second half of 2025, when the members of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve will return to EAC for the next phase of ART, further building on the skills and knowledge they have gained.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who started the now-infamous group chat coordinating a US attack against the Yemen-based Houthis on March 15, is seemingly now suggesting that the secure messaging service Signal has security vulnerabilities.
"I didn’t see this loser in the group," Waltz told Fox News about Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Waltz invited to the chat. "Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out."
Waltz’s implication that Goldberg may have hacked his way in was followed by a ...
President criticized by some in both parties after telling NBC ‘there are methods’ in securing a third term despite constitutional barriers
Immigration remains a strength for Donald Trump, but his handling of tariffs is getting more negative feedback, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About half of US adults approve of Trump’s approach to immigration, the survey shows, but only about four in 10 have a positive view of the way he’s handling the economy and trade negotiations.
The poll indicates that many Americans are still on board with Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations and restrict immigration. But it also suggests that the Republican president’s threats to impose tariffs – which have been accompanied by tumbling consumer confidence and wild stock market swings – might be erasing his advantage on another issue that he made central to his winning 2024 campaign.
The economy was a drag on then president Joe Biden, who saw the share of Americans who approved of his handling of the economy fall to a low of roughly three in 10 in 2023. Trump drew considerable strength in November from voters who prioritized the economy, but just before he took office in January, an AP-NORC poll found that few Americans had high confidence that he’d make progress on lowering prices in his first year.
Views of Trump’s job performance overall are more negative than positive, the survey found. About four in 10 US adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, and more than half disapprove.
Wall Street is set to join the global sell-off when trading begins in around two hours.
Hopes that this week’s reciprocal tariffs would not be as harsh as feared were dashed over the weekend after US President Trump doubled down on his pursuit of using import levies to ‘make America great again’. With just a couple of days to go until the White House outlines the details of the reciprocal tariffs – the broadest set of restrictions yet to be unveiled by the Trump administration – there is a growing sense of panic in the markets about the scale and implications of the April 2 announcement.
Continue reading...Trump wants Gaza for real estate deals, but Mike Huckabee’s all-inclusive Israel tours erase Palestinians for a higher purpose.
The post Trump’s Pick for Israel Ambassador Leads Tours That Leave Out Palestinians — and Promote End of Days Theology appeared first on The Intercept.
Shares nosedive at Wood Group after Deloitte review finds ‘inappropriate management pressure’
The UK oil services company John Wood Group has admitted that its financial results need to be restated, after a review found “cultural failings” led to information being withheld from its auditors.
The FTSE 250-listed company said the independent review, carried out by Deloitte, also found “inappropriate management pressure” to stick with existing financial reports.
Continue reading...We asked 18 Republicans whose districts benefit most from Biden’s IRA climate law if they back Trump’s demands
Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.
The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.
Continue reading...Pro-Kremlin newspaper reports Washington and Moscow talks have started; US president speaks out against Russian president
Here are some fuller comments from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, as carried by BBC News:
We continue to work with the American side, primarily on sorting out our bilaterial relations, which had been greatly damaged by the previous [US] administration. And we are also working on several areas regarding the Ukraine peace process.
Work is ongoing. We have nothing concrete yet that we could or should tell you. This process is drawn out due to its complicated nature. The President remains open to contact with President Trump. A telephone call can be organised quickly if needed.
Continue reading...US president says his Russian counterpart’s questioning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s credibility could delay ceasefire
Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.
The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.
Continue reading...“Do your job!” the crowd chanted, urging Rep. Victoria Spartz, one of the most outspoken DOGE supporters, to rein in Elon Musk.
The post GOP Leaders Said Don’t Do Town Halls. This Indiana Republican Did — and Got an Earful. appeared first on The Intercept.
Downing Street says it ‘reserves right’ to respond to protect national interest when US levies are announced this week
Downing Street has admitted the UK will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump announces his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday, and said it “reserves the right” to respond to protect the national interest.
Ministers are now expecting the UK to be hit by a tariff that will apply to all countries as part of the US president’s “liberation day”, despite hoping to have secured a carve out.
Continue reading...Rise from current limit of £85,000 would be first big change to protection scheme since 2008 banking crisis
UK savers would have up to £110,000 of their deposits protected if their bank or building society goes bust under proposals put forward by the Bank of England.
The plan, put forward by the central bank on Monday, represents a near-30% hike from the current limit of £85,000, and would mark the first substantial change to the savers’ protection scheme since the 2008 banking crisis.
Continue reading...Threat of deepening trade war on eve of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ spooks investors across US, Asia-Pacific and Europe
Stock markets across the world fell heavily on Monday after Donald Trump suggested that new tariffs he is expected to announce this week would hit “all countries”.
Shares fell across Asia-Pacific markets, in Europe and in the US after the US president crushed hopes that “reciprocal tariffs” expected on Wednesday would target only countries that have the largest trade imbalances with the US.
Continue reading...Company says it has ‘green signal’ after rail regulator suggests space at Eurostar depot can be freed up for rivals
Richard Branson’s Virgin Group has said there are “no more major hurdles to overcome” before it can begin operating passenger trains through the Channel tunnel after a decision by the rail regulator.
The company, owned by the billionaire entrepreneur, made the claim after the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) said some capacity at Eurostar’s Temple Mills maintenance depot in north-east London could be made available to other operators.
Continue reading...Whether it is by declaring a trade war or by bullying Greenland, visceral hatred is driving American policy
The “Signalgate” scandal confirmed what Europeans already knew. The Trump administration’s disdain for Europe is deep and the transatlantic fracture is structural. While our leaders publicly play down the significance of the unravelling that is manifestly under way, few actually sound as convinced in private.
Hopes persist that Europe can prevent the most extreme manifestation of the collapse in the relationship, be it an invasion of Greenland, the withdrawal of US forces from Europe’s Nato member states or an all-out trade war. Most urgently, European leaders are focused on ensuring that if (or perhaps when) the US throws Kyiv under the bus, it is Europe collectively that will somehow succeed in securing a free, independent and democratic Ukraine. But there should be no illusion that this will happen by working in synergy with Washington or even with its tacit approval.
Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist
Continue reading...After myriad false starts and much fluctuation, the lingering question is not how far Trump can take his trade wars, but how far he will
Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, struggling with higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country’s industrial heartlands – and leave the rest of the world to pick up the bill.
On Wednesday – a day dubbed Liberation Day by the president and his aides – Trump has vowed to pull the trigger and impose an historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claims will fund an extraordinary revival.
Continue reading...Government fears hit from new US trade barriers but remains hopeful of progress in ongoing negotiations
Ministers believe Britain will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump unveils his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday as part of what the US president is calling “liberation day”.
On Sunday night, Keir Starmer spoke with Trump in what Downing Street described as part of “productive negotiations” towards a deal. A No 10 spokesperson said both men had agreed talks between the two sides would “continue at pace this week”, adding: “They agreed to stay in touch in the coming days.”
Continue reading...The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
Dressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king. He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.
Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers. Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates. White, a Trump ally and Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: “Welcome to the States, boys.”
Continue reading...US president says he and Canadian prime minister ‘agree on many things’ after first talk since Carney assumed role
Donald Trump described a long-awaited call with the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, as “extremely productive” amid a trade war between the two nations launched by the US president.
The Friday morning call, requested by the White House, marks the first time the two leaders have spoken since Carney became prime minister on 14 March.
Continue reading...Australia’s richest person has close ties with the US president’s ‘Trumpettes’ and has even styled her company headquarters with Maga-inspired designs
The founder of a key support group for the US president has praised Gina Rinehart as a “female Donald Trump” and backed a push by the mining magnate to bring Trump’s policy ideas to Australia.
Toni Holt Kramer, the president and founder of The Trumpettes USA, told Guardian Australia she had been friends with Rinehart since the first Trump presidency in 2016, describing her as an “extremely brilliant woman”.
Continue reading...Records reviewed by The Intercept show that ICE altered contracts with immigration detention centers to cut transgender care requirements.
The post ICE Is Erasing Rules That Protected Trans Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.
Despite years of official criticism of encrypted messaging, CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed that Signal comes installed on agency computers.
The post U.S. Officials Called Signal a Tool for Terrorists and Criminals. Now They’re Using It. appeared first on The Intercept.
Sweeping order from military covers most of city in southern Gaza; European Union says resumption of negotiations is only way forward
Palestinian medics killed by Israeli forces and buried in mass grave, says UN
The Israeli military said on Monday that an inquiry had found that on 23 March, troops opened fire on a group of vehicles that included ambulances and fire trucks when the vehicles approached a position without prior coordination and without headlights or emergency signals.
It said several militants belonging to the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed.
Continue reading...Plan to cut most standalone positions in favour of shorter fellowships will hurt international recruitment, critics say
It will be tough to attract international research talent if prestigious Australian Research Council fellowships are axed under proposed changes, researchers say, with lack of funding making the nation not “match fit” to take on Trump-led uncertainty.
The overhaul proposed axing most standalone positions in favour of shorter fellowships that are “embedded” into projects.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...The director, whose film JFK has been derided by historians for suggesting the CIA had a role in the killing, will speak to task force aiming ‘to get to the bottom of this mystery’
Film director Oliver Stone will testify at a US House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday that is considering thousands of pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy released this month at the direction of President Donald Trump.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said that lawmakers will hear from witnesses about the value of the documents.
Continue reading...US president says he hopes those responsible for spraying ‘Gaza is not 4 sale’ on his Ayrshire golf course will be ‘treated harshly’
Donald Trump has described members of a pro-Palestine group accused of vandalising his Turnberry golf resort as “terrorists”.
The clubhouse at the five-star resort on the west coast of Scotland was graffitied earlier this month and the course was dug up and painted with the words “Gaza is not 4 sale”.
Continue reading...Total of 38% of Republican voters agree Hegseth should quit, compared to just a third who think he should keep job
More Republican voters think that Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, should resign than those who think he should remain in his job, according to a poll conducted after he and other Trump administration officials shared sensitive military attack plans with a journalist who was accidentally added to a message group chat.
Hegseth outlined details of a US airstrike in Yemen in a Signal group chat that included Donald Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, as well as his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to the chat.
Continue reading...Donald Trump says deteriorating magnolia will be removed but wood ‘may be used for other high and noble purposes’
A nearly two-century-old tree with a history tied to the former US president Andrew Jackson will be removed from the White House grounds because it is deteriorating, Donald Trump said on Sunday.
The southern magnolia stands near the curved portico on the south side of the building. It is where foreign leaders are often welcomed for ceremonial visits, and where the president departs to board the Marine One helicopter.
Continue reading...Attacks on the pillars of civil society are chilling speech. But American democracy was built on criticism
I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say.
When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts.
Continue reading...Officials in France and Belgium hit out at ‘American interference’ amid growing transatlantic tensions
Officials in France and Belgium have hit back at American efforts to impose Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity measures on Europe, which in the US has seen Disney put under investigation.
Several companies across the EU have in recent days reportedly received letters informing them that the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives also applies to firms around the world looking to do business with the US government.
Continue reading...The Smithsonian’s museums have been ordered to root out ‘divisive narratives’. It’s part of a pattern: the battle lines are now clear
It has come to this: we are now in Ministry of Truth territory. In Washington DC, the Smithsonian Institution, the US’s ensemble of 21 great national museums, last week became the subject of an executive order by President Donald Trump. “Distorted narratives” are to be rooted out. There will be no more of the “corrosive ideology” that has fostered a “sense of national shame”. The institution has, reads the order, “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that portrays “American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”. The vice-president, JD Vance, is, by virtue of his office, on the museum’s board. He is charged by Trump to “prohibit expenditure” on programmes that “divide Americans based on race”. He is to remove “improper ideology”. The order is titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. George Orwell lived too soon.
The move is deeply shocking, but predictable. After Trump’s insertion of himself as chair of the John F Kennedy Center and his railing against the supposed wokeness of the national performing arts venue, the federally funded Smithsonian was bound to be next in line. Those who imagined the Kennedy Center was a one-off, attracting the president’s ire for personal reasons, were deluding themselves about the scale of Trump’s ideological ambition. Picked out for opprobrium in the executive order are the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for celebrating transgender women (the museum, it should be pointed out, has yet to be built); the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and an exhibition titled The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the American Art Museum.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer
Continue reading...Rebuilding is more than reconstruction: it is resistance. It is our refusal to be erased, our determination to remain and exist on our land
On the 17th night of Ramadan – a time meant for prayer, reflection and mercy – Gaza burned. Once again, our screens fill with images too harrowing to describe: tiny bodies wrapped in bloodstained cloth, fathers carrying their children’s remains in plastic bags, mothers screaming into skies that rain death instead of mercy. In less than an hour, Israeli airstrikes killed over 350 Palestinians, including 90 children. Entire families wiped out as bombs fell on areas Israel itself had designated as “safe zones”, turning supposed sanctuaries into mass graves.
This was not merely a resumption of violence. This is the continuation of a genocide that never truly paused, only ebbed enough to vanish from headlines while Palestinians continued to die by the dozens daily. The heaviness of this moment is unbearable, bringing back the brokenness of the past year that has not yet healed. For this slaughter to continue while the world watches reveals how deeply indifferent global powers have become to Palestinian suffering, how thoroughly dehumanized an entire people must be for their massacre to be debated as a matter of “security concerns”.
Ahmad Ibsais is a first generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege
Continue reading...Trump administration’s slashes to prevention and access expansion likely to erode progress on eliminating epidemic
The federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections and expand access to care, decimating progress toward eliminating the epidemic in the United States, scientists say.
Over the last month, more than 300 research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been terminated – 65 of them were specifically related to researching advancements in HIV care. Some scientists were notified about losing funding as recently as last Thursday. NIH, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the largest funding source of medical research in the world, leaving many scientists scrambling to figure out how to continue their work.
Continue reading...Musk denied he was buying votes but said the court election outcome would be critical to Trump’s agenda and ‘the future of civilization’
Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.
“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”
Continue reading...Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking
No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
Elon Musk and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.
Continue reading...Newly sworn in Jens-Frederik Nielsen says ‘Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that’
The US will not get Greenland, its new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has said in response to Donald Trump’s latest statements that he wants to take control of the vast Arctic country.
“President Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that. We do not belong to anyone else. We determine our own future,” Nielsen said.
Continue reading...The president – who believes he has been treated unfairly by the press – is squeezing the media in different ways than his first term
On Tuesday 4 March, Donald Trump stood in the House of Representatives to issue a speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term.
Near the beginning of what was to be a marathon address, the president declared: “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.”
Continue reading...The Trump administration’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk rests on an opinion article she wrote in 2024, her lawyers said in a filing.
The post In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed appeared first on The Intercept.
Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.
The post Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself appeared first on The Intercept.
Appeals court had upheld block on flights using Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members
The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.
The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.
Continue reading...The law behind the warrants bars concealment of people in the country illegally, yet the students were legal residents living on campus.
The post ICE Got Warrants Under “False Pretenses,” Claims Columbia Student Targeted Over Gaza Protests appeared first on The Intercept.
Manager’s fate was sealed by former club Gladbach as Red Bull hierarchy act to rescue season with top-four finish
It was fitting that it happened here, and how Marco Rose himself must have felt the inevitable creep of irony as the afternoon went on, and as the end result trundled into view in Mönchengladbach. He had plenty of time to acquaint himself with the possibility during a second half in which RB Leipzig rarely looked like scoring. If the game was still going on now, their vaunted collection of attacking players might still be looking for the breakthrough.
There had been a handful of other occasions during the season when Rose must have suspected he would become what he is now: the ex-coach of RB Leipzig. “We believed in our cooperation with Marco and his team for a very long time,” the club’s managing director for sport, Marcel Schäfer said. “We tried everything until the very end to turn things around together.”
Continue reading...Annual peak is lowest on record, covering 5.53m sq miles – about 30,000 sq miles below the previous low in 2017
Winter sea ice in the Arctic has reached a record low in 2025, according to Nasa and the US’s National Snow and Ice Data Center. The annual peak, recorded on 22 March, was the lowest since records began 47 years ago, with sea ice covering just 5.53m sq miles – about 1.1m sq miles less than last year – and 30,000 sq miles below the previous low in 2017. The Gulf of St Lawrence had almost no ice, while the Sea of Okhotsk experienced notably lower than average sea ice extent.
In late January, sea ice extent in the Arctic unexpectedly decreased, losing an area the size of Italy (more than 115,000 sq miles). This can be attributed to cyclones pushing southerly winds in the Barents and Bering seas, causing ocean waves that broke apart and melted thin ice at the edge of the ice sheet. Temperatures up to 12C above normal were recorded between northern Greenland and the north pole.
Continue reading...At the rural orphanage where I volunteered, the place resembled a Dickensian workhouse. The staff’s main tools were antipsychotics and violence. The experience gave me a window into Putin’s Russia
By Howard Amos. Read by Harry Lloyd
Continue reading...From Russia to the US, those who seek to uphold the law are coming under increasing pressure
What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.
Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...Canonisation has long been a way for the Catholic church to shape its own image. As the Vatican prepares to anoint its first millennial saint, we ask how it decides who is worthy
There are more Audio Long Reads here, or search Audio Long Read wherever you listen to podcasts
Continue reading...Trump’s “Operation Aurora” swept up only one suspected gang member — but set the stage for a radical expansion of government power.
The post How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped Trump Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic appeared first on The Intercept.
Only drones can begin to capture the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip. The journalists doing it were targeted again and again.
The post Israel Leveled Gaza — Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World appeared first on The Intercept.
“We had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The post The Real Outrage About the Yemen Signal Group Is That It Called for Attack on Civilian Home appeared first on The Intercept.
Incident took place near the popular Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada
The Russian consulate in Hurghada said the submarine, named “SINDBAD”, had 45 Russian tourists on board in addition to crew members.
The consulate said four people had died, but did not specify if they were Russian, Reuters reported.
Six people have died and nine others are injured after a tourist submarine sank in the popular Egyptian Red Sea destination of Hurghada, two municipal officials said. AP reported that the officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
The incident, involving a recreational vessel operated by Sindbad Submarines, occurred in waters opposite Hurghada’s Marriot Hotel resort. Citing municipal officials, Reuters and Associated Press reported that six foreigners, whose nationalities are still unknown, had died. It was not immediately clear what caused the submarine to sink.
The Russian embassy in Egypt has said that that all of the tourists on board the submarine were Russian. It said 45 passengers were on board the vessel, including children, in a Facebook post.
The local governorate’s office told Reuters that all of those confirmed dead were foreign citizens, while survivors had been ferried by ambulance to several hospitals in the city. Emergency crews were able to rescue 29 people, according to a statement released by the governorate. Many tourist companies have stopped or limited travelling on the Red Sea due to the dangers from conflicts in the region.
The Sindbad club’s website says it offers short tourist trips in two submarines that it operates that have a maximum depth range of 25 metres. According to the website its submarines allow tourists to “experience the beauty of the Red Sea’s underwater world without getting wet”.
Continue reading...Another 39 people rescued and brought to shore after incident on vessel at Red Sea resort
Six Russian tourists have died and 39 people have been rescued after a submarine sank near the resort of Hurghada, the latest in a series of fatal accidents involving tourists on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
Four survivors, including at least one child, were admitted to intensive care, according to an official statement.
Continue reading...February’s dip in inflation was only a blip – the pain for consumers and the UK economy is poised to continue
The painful jump in household bills from Tuesday will push the UK’s poorest households further into poverty. The increase will also provide a further jolt to Labour ministers still reeling from a spring statement that prompted finger-jabbing accusations that their policies are Tory-lite.
The “squeezed middle”, put in the spotlight by energy secretary Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader, will also find that a recovery from the post-pandemic inflation shock has juddered to a halt.
Continue reading...Sonia Bompastor not looking for excuses after Chelsea draw as Villa earn first win under Natalia Arroyo
Sonia Bompastor refused to use fatigue as an excuse after Chelsea dropped points to West Ham on Sunday. Goals from Maika Hamano and Aggie Beever-Jones fired the Blues to a 2-0 lead within 21 minutes, but Shekiera Martinez’s second-half double meant the Hammers stole a point. It was the first time in more than seven years that Chelsea had squandered a two-goal lead in the WSL. The reigning champions went into the match having played Manchester City four times in 12 days, but Bompastor did not want to make any excuses. “It’s always difficult with this quick turnaround to have all the energy but that’s not an excuse,” the manager said. “We are Chelsea, we have the depth in the squad and the quality in the squad enough to finish this block with a better result. But sometimes it happens.” Emillia Hawkins
Continue reading...A complaint to Connecticut’s attorney general says Yale’s endowment is also violating its own investment ethics policies.
The post Yale Investments in Companies Selling Arms to Israel Violate State Law, Says an Official Complaint appeared first on The Intercept.
Members of the Trump administration, including the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, routinely vilified Hillary Clinton's use of a private server for classified emails, before and after Trump defeated her in the 2016 presidential election. Hegseth and Rubio, as well as CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and national security advisor, Mike Waltz, were all in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen to which a journalist for the Atlantic was inadvertently added. Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton reacted to the leak by saying on X: 'You have got to be kidding me'
Continue reading...DOGE claims it’s not an “agency” that has to comply with FOIA. We don’t buy it — and so far judges haven’t, either.
The post DOGE Keeps Trying to Dodge the Freedom of Information Act. So We’re Suing. appeared first on The Intercept.
Exclusive: Findings are a warning to policymakers that raising subsidies ‘can be costly and ineffective if not carefully designed’, co-author says
Throwing more money at cheaper childcare fees won’t be enough to help mothers with young children get back to work, new research shows, as lower-income families lose more in benefits and taxes than they gain from working an extra day.
The independent economic research body e61 Institute analysed childcare reforms in 2018 and found that higher subsidies for lower- and middle-income families had no measurable impact on mothers’ participation in the jobs market.
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Continue reading...More than 2,000 people sign petition in support of jazz musician and composer of River to Sea, Kellee Green
More than 2,000 people in the music industry have signed a petition supporting a jazz musician and composer whose winning entry River to Sea in the 2025 Queensland Music Awards prompted Brisbane city council to revoke its funding of the annual event.
Australian pianist Jayson Gillham, who is locked in a legal battle with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, also issued a statement on Monday, condemning Kellee Green’s case as yet another troubling example of the suppression of political expression by Australian artists.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...Cloudflare has a new feature—available to free users as well—that uses AI to generate random pages to feed to AI web crawlers:
Instead of simply blocking bots, Cloudflare’s new system lures them into a “maze” of realistic-looking but irrelevant pages, wasting the crawler’s computing resources. The approach is a notable shift from the standard block-and-defend strategy used by most website protection services. Cloudflare says blocking bots sometimes backfires because it alerts the crawler’s operators that they’ve been detected.
“When we detect unauthorized crawling, rather than blocking the request, we will link to a series of AI-generated pages that are convincing enough to entice a crawler to traverse them,” writes Cloudflare. “But while real looking, this content is not actually the content of the site we are protecting, so the crawler wastes time and resources.”...
Citizen Lab has a new report on Paragon’s spyware:
Key Findings:
- Introducing Paragon Solutions. Paragon Solutions was founded in Israel in 2019 and sells spyware called Graphite. The company differentiates itself by claiming it has safeguards to prevent the kinds of spyware abuses that NSO Group and other vendors are notorious for.
- Infrastructure Analysis of Paragon Spyware. Based on a tip from a collaborator, we mapped out server infrastructure that we attribute to Paragon’s Graphite spyware tool. We identified a subset of suspected Paragon deployments, including in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore. ...
A Cornell student suing the Trump administration over free speech — and now facing deportation threats — shares his story on The Intercept Briefing.
The post Exclusive: As Trump Threatens to Deport Him, Momodou Taal Says It’s “Time to Escalate for Palestine” appeared first on The Intercept.
In Sudan, fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, appear to have filmed and posted online videos of themselves glorifying the burning of homes and the torture of prisoners. These videos could be used by international courts to pursue war crime prosecutions.
Kaamil Ahmed explains how the international legal system is adapting to social media, finding a way to use the digital material shared online to corroborate accounts of war crimes being committed in countries ranging from Ukraine to Sudan
Continue reading...Trump is demanding social media handles for citizenship, green card, and visa applicants whether they're already in the U.S. or not.
The post Trump Wants Immigrants on U.S. Soil to Hand Over Social Media Accounts to Apply for Citizenship appeared first on The Intercept.
“The World After Gaza” author on what Israel’s war reveals about power, violence, and who sets the rules on the world stage.
The post Israel’s “Culture of Cruelty” Inspires the Far Right Worldwide, Says Pankaj Mishra appeared first on The Intercept.
Cornell student Momodou Taal’s lawyers said the demand was “retribution” for his lawsuit against the crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.
The post He Sued Trump Over Free Speech. Then ICE Demanded He Turn Himself In. appeared first on The Intercept.
The shape of the Trump 2.0 White House has spurred serious concerns about public health and reproductive rights, and left military leaders 'stunned' and former intelligence experts 'appalled'. From a vaccine skeptic in charge of running the department of health, to a wrestling mogul in charge of the country's education, and even a ‘deep state conspiracy theorist’ becoming head of the FBI, the Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael takes us through the six most controversial members, and what their appointments could mean for the country
Continue reading...A pod of dolphins were seen swimming near a SpaceX capsule after it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico carrying US astronauts Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and Nicholas Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Wilmore and Williams had been stuck aboard the International Space Station for nine months due to an issue with a new Boeing capsule
Continue reading...Europe’s human spaceflight ambitions are reaching new heights, and ESA’s Astronaut Reserve is a key part of this journey. Selected in 2022, these talented individuals are undergoing Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) to ensure they are ready for future missions.
Among these remarkable women from across Europe are Meganne Christian, a materials scientist from the UK, Anthea Comellini, an aerospace engineer from Italy, and Carmen Possnig, a medical doctor from Austria, who recently completed their first ART training block at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany.
Their diverse scientific backgrounds reflect the wide-ranging expertise needed for human spaceflight, whether as part of ESA’s astronaut class, mission planners, or scientists shaping the future of space exploration. Beyond their work with ESA, they are also driving innovation, advancing research, and strengthening the broader space sector. Women play key roles across ESA and beyond, contributing as leaders and experts in these areas.
Meganne, Anthea and Carmen recently completed their first ART training block at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. In this image, they are pictured inside a mockup of the Columbus module, Europe’s permanent laboratory on the International Space Station.
The training covered key areas such as human behaviour and performance to develop teamwork and decision-making skills in high-pressure environments. They also received physical fitness training, scuba certification in ESA’s Neutral Buoyancy Facility, and media training to effectively communicate the importance of space exploration to the public.
In addition to technical and operational skills, they explored fundamental science, including biology experiments conducted on the International Space Station. Their training also includes insights into space policy, mission operations, and the latest advancements in space technology.
While members of the Astronaut Reserve are not yet assigned to specific missions, their training ensures that they are prepared for potential future opportunities through commercial spaceflight
The journey continues in the second half of 2025, when the members of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve will return to EAC for the next phase of ART, further building on the skills and knowledge they have gained.
ESA’s second group of Astronaut Reserve members has successfully completed the first block of their intensive Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) programme. Starting in January 2025, four members of the European Astronaut Reserve—Meganne Christian from the UK, Anthea Comellini from Italy, John McFall from the UK and Carmen Possnig from Austria— tarted their two months training programme at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, honing essential skills required for future space exploration and scientific research.
The cliche of the loutish, emotionally inadequate boyfriend is everywhere. The truth is more complicated
How is the ideal heterosexual girlfriend supposed to behave? This played on my mind after I watched Companion, a film about a loutish millennial man named Josh with a robot girlfriend named Iris. Iris was designed to be the perfect girlfriend, and so she regards Josh with total devotion and admiration, and prioritises their relationship above all else. She has a head full of fake memories, such as the one of the day they met, when they were both in the same supermarket and he clumsily upended a display of oranges, sending them rolling across the floor. This caught her attention. She has been programmed to regard this as the best day of her life.
Like so many things you watch and read now, Companion is intended to reflect a familiar trope back at the viewer in an exaggerated but unchallenging fashion. It’s a pantomimed version of a wildly imbalanced heterosexual relationship, a portrayal that will be familiar to anyone who has come across “heteropessimist” discourse recently. Men, in this telling, are broadly akin to useless, unappealing Josh. Women feel deeply disappointed and embarrassed about dating them but are still committed to doing so, like a self-aware version of Iris. Crucially, heteropessimism shows no desire to reform the very real disparities between men and women, but the opposite: it takes as a given that women are sheepishly resigned to heterosexual relationships reflecting the worst of these inequities.
Rachel Connolly is a writer and author of the novel Lazy City
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...“We had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The post The Real Outrage About the Yemen Signal Group Is That It Called for Attack on Civilian Home appeared first on The Intercept.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
Florida prosecutors say Michelle Taylor used gasoline to set a fire that killed her son. Top forensic chemists say they’re wrong.
The post The Arson Evidence Doesn’t Hold Up. Florida Is About to Convict Her for Murder Anyway. appeared first on The Intercept.
From misogynist content creators such as Andrew Tate to the ubiquity of pornography, boys face a barrage of toxic influences. We talk to sixth-formers about the pressures and joys they experience
***Contains some spoilers***
The release of the hit Netflix drama Adolescence this month has unleashed a wave of panic around teenage boys. Keir Starmer said the UK “may have a problem with boys and young men”, while parents began worried conversations about their children’s online lives. But how true to life is it?
Continue reading...Labour’s measures to ban deep-peat burning aim to safeguard habitats, tackle carbon emissions, and protect wildlife, so why are hunters up in arms?
Burning vegetation on deep peat will be banned under government plans to protect nature and reduce carbon emissions.
Vegetation on peatland is often burned to create habitat for grouse, which like to feed on the fresh shoots of new plants that grow after the burn. This increases the number of birds available to be shot for sport.
Continue reading...Net zero is a target that countries should be striving for to stop the climate crisis. But beyond the buzzword, it is a complex scientific concept – and if we get it wrong, the planet will keep heating.
Biodiversity and environment reporter Patrick Greenfield explains how a loophole in the 2015 Paris climate agreement allows countries to cheat their net zero targets through creative accounting, and how scientists want us to fix it
Continue reading...SEMrush and Ahrefs are among
the most popular tools in the SEO industry. Both companies have been in
business for years and have thousands of customers per month.
If you're a professional SEO or trying to do digital
marketing on your own, at some point you'll likely consider using a tool to
help with your efforts. Ahrefs and SEMrush are two names that will likely
appear on your shortlist.
In this guide, I'm going to help you learn more about these SEO tools and how to choose the one that's best for your purposes.
What is SEMrush?
SEMrush is a popular SEO tool with a wide range of
features—it's the leading competitor research service for online marketers.
SEMrush's SEO Keyword Magic tool offers over 20 billion Google-approved
keywords, which are constantly updated and it's the largest keyword database.
The program was developed in 2007 as SeoQuake is a
small Firefox extension
Features
Ahrefs is a leading SEO platform that offers a set of
tools to grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and monitor your
niche. The company was founded in 2010, and it has become a popular choice
among SEO tools. Ahrefs has a keyword index of over 10.3 billion keywords and
offers accurate and extensive backlink data updated every 15-30 minutes and it
is the world's most extensive backlink index database.
Features
Direct Comparisons: Ahrefs vs SEMrush
Now that you know a little more about each tool, let's
take a look at how they compare. I'll analyze each tool to see how they differ
in interfaces, keyword research resources, rank tracking, and competitor
analysis.
User Interface
Ahrefs and SEMrush both offer comprehensive information
and quick metrics regarding your website's SEO performance. However, Ahrefs
takes a bit more of a hands-on approach to getting your account fully set up,
whereas SEMrush's simpler dashboard can give you access to the data you need
quickly.
In this section, we provide a brief overview of the elements
found on each dashboard and highlight the ease with which you can complete
tasks.
AHREFS
The Ahrefs dashboard is less cluttered than that of
SEMrush, and its primary menu is at the very top of the page, with a search bar
designed only for entering URLs.
Additional features of the Ahrefs platform include:
SEMRUSH
When you log into the SEMrush Tool, you will find four
main modules. These include information about your domains, organic keyword
analysis, ad keyword, and site traffic.
You'll also find some other options like
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush have user-friendly dashboards,
but Ahrefs is less cluttered and easier to navigate. On the other hand, SEMrush
offers dozens of extra tools, including access to customer support resources.
When deciding on which dashboard to use, consider what
you value in the user interface, and test out both.
If you're looking to track your website's search engine
ranking, rank tracking features can help. You can also use them to monitor your
competitors.
Let's take a look at Ahrefs vs. SEMrush to see which
tool does a better job.
The Ahrefs Rank Tracker is simpler to use. Just type in
the domain name and keywords you want to analyze, and it spits out a report
showing you the search engine results page (SERP) ranking for each keyword you
enter.
Rank Tracker looks at the ranking performance of
keywords and compares them with the top rankings for those keywords. Ahrefs
also offers:
You'll see metrics that help you understand your
visibility, traffic, average position, and keyword difficulty.
It gives you an idea of whether a keyword would be
profitable to target or not.
SEMRush offers a tool called Position Tracking. This
tool is a project tool—you must set it up as a new project. Below are a few of
the most popular features of the SEMrush Position Tracking tool:
All subscribers are given regular data updates and
mobile search rankings upon subscribing
The platform provides opportunities to track several
SERP features, including Local tracking.
Intuitive reports allow you to track statistics for the
pages on your website, as well as the keywords used in those pages.
Identify pages that may be competing with each other
using the Cannibalization report.
Ahrefs is a more user-friendly option. It takes seconds
to enter a domain name and keywords. From there, you can quickly decide whether
to proceed with that keyword or figure out how to rank better for other
keywords.
SEMrush allows you to check your mobile rankings and
ranking updates daily, which is something Ahrefs does not offer. SEMrush also
offers social media rankings, a tool you won't find within the Ahrefs platform.
Both are good which one do you like let me know in the comment.
Keyword research is closely related to rank tracking,
but it's used for deciding which keywords you plan on using for future content
rather than those you use now.
When it comes to SEO, keyword research is the most
important thing to consider when comparing the two platforms.
The Ahrefs Keyword Explorer provides you with thousands
of keyword ideas and filters search results based on the chosen search engine.
Ahrefs supports several features, including:
SEMrush's Keyword Magic Tool has over 20 billion
keywords for Google. You can type in any keyword you want, and a list of
suggested keywords will appear.
The Keyword Magic Tool also lets you to:
Both of these tools offer keyword research features and
allow users to break down complicated tasks into something that can be
understood by beginners and advanced users alike.
If you're interested in keyword suggestions, SEMrush
appears to have more keyword suggestions than Ahrefs does. It also continues to
add new features, like the Keyword Gap tool and SERP Questions recommendations.
Both platforms offer competitor analysis tools,
eliminating the need to come up with keywords off the top of your head. Each
tool is useful for finding keywords that will be useful for your competition so
you know they will be valuable to you.
Ahrefs' domain comparison tool lets you compare up to five websites (your website and four competitors) side-by-side.it also shows you how your site is ranked against others with metrics such as backlinks, domain ratings, and more.
Use the Competing Domains section to see a list of your
most direct competitors, and explore how many keywords matches your competitors
have.
To find more information about your competitor, you can
look at the Site Explorer and Content Explorer tools and type in their URL
instead of yours.
SEMrush provides a variety of insights into your
competitors' marketing tactics. The platform enables you to research your
competitors effectively. It also offers several resources for competitor
analysis including:
Traffic Analytics helps you identify where your
audience comes from, how they engage with your site, what devices visitors use
to view your site, and how your audiences overlap with other websites.
SEMrush's Organic Research examines your website's
major competitors and shows their organic search rankings, keywords they are
ranking for, and even if they are ranking for any (SERP) features and more.
The Market Explorer search field allows you to type in
a domain and lists websites or articles similar to what you entered. Market
Explorer also allows users to perform in-depth data analytics on These
companies and markets.
SEMrush wins here because it has more tools dedicated to
competitor analysis than Ahrefs. However, Ahrefs offers a lot of functionality
in this area, too. It takes a combination of both tools to gain an advantage
over your competition.
When it comes to keyword data research, you will become
confused about which one to choose.
Consider choosing Ahrefs if you
Consider SEMrush if you:
Both tools are great. Choose the one which meets your
requirements and if you have any experience using either Ahrefs or SEMrush let
me know in the comment section which works well for you.
With a splash of white wine and a dash of balsamic, any good meaty sausages will do nicely in this simple but mouthwatering dish
From Tuesday to Saturday, Andrea Legri makes approximately three kilos of sausage a day for his stall on Testaccio market. At about nine on any given morning, he may well be in the back section of the stall, which is visible through glass, his hands steadying the tabletop machine that feeds the minced pork into opaque casings. If ordered in advance, Andrea will also prepare sausages al punto di coltello (point of the knife) – that is, the meat cut by hand, which, paradoxically, manhandles it less and makes a colossal difference, producing a juicier, chewier sausage. One customer, who has been a regular for decades and with whom I am on dog-walking-nodding terms, quite regularly orders 3kg of hand-cut sausages for his family.
Andrea is a third-generation butcher: his grandfather took on the stall in the late 1950s, when Testaccio was still a slaughterhouse district, and passed it on to his son, Franco, who was later assisted by his own son, Alessandro, Andrea’s brother. While Andrea grew up around the stall, skill and trade, and worked there at weekends from the age of 18, he trained as a mechanic. Everything changed in 2018, though, when Franco, a central figure at the market, passed away, and the brothers reorganised: Alessandro took on a role at another butcher, and Andrea, who had just turned 30, took over the stall. Also in the back section, above the ventilator, is a small frame containing family photos, while on the worktop is a recipe book titled Il Macellaio di Roma Capitale Suggerisce (A Butcher of Rome Suggests), which includes Franco’s recipes and was produced by the guild of butchers in the early 1980s, with all profits going to families in need.
Continue reading...This week: your March favourites; gifts for new mums; and how to make your smartphone last longer
Never has the term “fool’s spring” been more fitting. When the sun came out early in the month, many of us began to prepare for the summer that felt just around the corner. Hundreds of you, like me, bought the most genius overnight bag for the weekends away that were surely about to happen, and the perfect nail colour for the new season.
But let’s be real: it’s not summer yet. A fact evidenced by just how many of you were also buying practical raincoats, stay-in-all-day satin pyjamas and – less glamorously – microwave rice cookers. Here are the Filter recommendations you loved the most this month.
Continue reading...Light, bright and sustaining: warming ginger and the richness of peanut butter and coconut milk make this an ideal soup for spring
This is the perfect transitional soup. I often make it without the crab, because it’s economical enough that you could have it on a weeknight with enough left over for lunchboxes the next day. But if you’re having friends over, or just fancy a treat, the flavour of the soup works beautifully with the crab – you could even use tinned crab, too.
Continue reading...Paul Marchant accepts behaviour fell below standards expected at owner Associated British Foods
The boss of Primark has admitted an “error of judgment” and resigned following an allegation made by a woman about his behaviour towards her in a social situation, the retailer’s owner has said.
Associated British Foods (ABF) said that Paul Marchant accepted that his actions fell below the standards it expected and had resigned with immediate effect.
Continue reading...Teams like Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls have gone down in history for their winning streaks. But what’s it like to be on a truly terrible roster?
The business of sports is about winning. But that, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of losers out there. That’s most evident every year in the NBA around the first day of spring. With about a dozen games left in the regular season, it’s obvious which teams are also-rans – and they have probably known that for some time. But when a team are losing and losing often, how does that affect the roster? How do the players deal with the constant lows?
“When you lose,” says former NBA All-Star Xavier McDaniel, “it’s like getting a life sentence. I knew for me, losing, it started me to drink beer. Losing created a lot of bad habits. Losing can be a disease. We were losing so much [my rookie season] that by January I was drinking beer!”
Continue reading...The remote North Sea isle of Læsø is world-famous for the gastronomic delights that come from its waters – so the best way to explore it is in waders
After just 10 minutes in the company of the enigmatic seaweed expert Rie Ladefoged, I’m considering buying a pair of fishing waders. I’m waist deep in the swell and suck of The Kattegat sea off the Danish island of Læsø, armed with a plastic tub and some kitchen scissors, gathering seaweed.
“Ten years ago I went to a lecture on Japanese seaweed. The expert was talking about the best place in Denmark to harvest seaweed – and it was Læsø. I’m so lucky it was Læsø,” says Ladefoged.
Continue reading...Alex Fisher highlights how disabled people will be hit hard by the government’s welfare changes. And Kathleen Coleman is in despair at the party she has voted for all her life
I used to work as an assessor for personal independence payments (Pip). One day, I visited a gentleman who was terrified of losing his Pip. Despite his fear, he offered me tea, but only had a tiny amount of milk in his fridge. He was ashamed and started to cry. I called the local food bank to help him.
Now, I am an occupational therapist. On my to-do list is an appeal letter for a patient with Huntington’s disease, a complex, incurable condition. He scored zero on his Pip assessment, yet his neurological apathy and cognitive impairment affect his daily function. Proposed welfare cuts by Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall (Report, 26 March) will severely impact his access to vital support.
Continue reading...Whose brand tastes like a tropical ambrosia, and whose tastes like soapy gunk? Restaurateur Ravinder Bhogal dives in …
• The best rice cookers for gloriously fluffy grains at home
Coconut milk is always found front and centre in my pantry because it is a cornerstone of so much of my cooking. I buy it in bulk and rely on it to bring a voluptuous, fragrant, dairy-free creaminess to so many of my favourite dishes, from curries and dals to soups and rice dishes. It’s also indispensable for puddings for vegan friends, and for my sweet-toothed, lactose-intolerant husband. It mellows out spices and pulls a dish together, adding a silkiness to sauces and a sweet, nutty richness to cakes, batters and vegan custards.
I appreciate the convenience of the canned stuff because making coconut milk from scratch, as my mother used to do when I was growing up in Kenya, is laborious: a mature brown coconut has to be broken, its flesh grated, then soaked in hot water, before being strained and squeezed several times through a cheesecloth.
Continue reading...How reporters with the Gaza Project investigate the killing and targeting of Palestinian journalists.
The post Journalists Under Fire in Gaza, Israel’s Deadly War on Reporters appeared first on The Intercept.
A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas
Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Meera Sodha and all our star cooks, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.
Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.
Continue reading...Plastics are everywhere, but their smallest fragments – nanoplastics – are making their way into the deepest parts of our bodies, including our brains and breast milk.
Scientists have now captured the first visual evidence of these particles inside human cells, raising urgent questions about their impact on our health. From the food we eat to the air we breathe, how are nanoplastics infiltrating our systems?
Neelam Tailor looks into the invisible invasion happening inside us all
Continue reading...Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, direct to your inbox every Thursday
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday
Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you
Continue reading...![]() |
Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
“Do your job!” the crowd chanted, urging Rep. Victoria Spartz, one of the most outspoken DOGE supporters, to rein in Elon Musk.
The post GOP Leaders Said Don’t Do Town Halls. This Indiana Republican Did — and Got an Earful. appeared first on The Intercept.
We asked 18 Republicans whose districts benefit most from Biden’s IRA climate law if they back Trump’s demands
Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.
The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.
Continue reading...President criticized by some in both parties after telling NBC ‘there are methods’ in securing a third term despite constitutional barriers
Immigration remains a strength for Donald Trump, but his handling of tariffs is getting more negative feedback, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About half of US adults approve of Trump’s approach to immigration, the survey shows, but only about four in 10 have a positive view of the way he’s handling the economy and trade negotiations.
The poll indicates that many Americans are still on board with Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations and restrict immigration. But it also suggests that the Republican president’s threats to impose tariffs – which have been accompanied by tumbling consumer confidence and wild stock market swings – might be erasing his advantage on another issue that he made central to his winning 2024 campaign.
The economy was a drag on then president Joe Biden, who saw the share of Americans who approved of his handling of the economy fall to a low of roughly three in 10 in 2023. Trump drew considerable strength in November from voters who prioritized the economy, but just before he took office in January, an AP-NORC poll found that few Americans had high confidence that he’d make progress on lowering prices in his first year.
Views of Trump’s job performance overall are more negative than positive, the survey found. About four in 10 US adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, and more than half disapprove.
Wall Street is set to join the global sell-off when trading begins in around two hours.
Hopes that this week’s reciprocal tariffs would not be as harsh as feared were dashed over the weekend after US President Trump doubled down on his pursuit of using import levies to ‘make America great again’. With just a couple of days to go until the White House outlines the details of the reciprocal tariffs – the broadest set of restrictions yet to be unveiled by the Trump administration – there is a growing sense of panic in the markets about the scale and implications of the April 2 announcement.
Continue reading...UK PM hosting international summit on illegal migration and claims Labour has achieved the highest return rate for eight years
Downing Street has sent out more details of the enforced returns numbers quoted by Keir Starmer in his speech to the Organised Immigration Crime summit. (See 9.26am.)
It says the more than 24,000 migrants made to leave the country since July 2024 meant the government has achieved the highest rate of returns in eight years. It says:
The continued rise in removals includes a 21% increase in enforced returns and a 16% increase in foreign national offenders being removed from the UK since July 5, including the 4 biggest returns charter flights in the UK’s history, with a total of more than 850 people on board.
The massive surge in removals followed the government’s immediate action to redeploy staff across the Home Office to work on policies that deliver results …
Continue reading...Trump’s “Operation Aurora” swept up only one suspected gang member — but set the stage for a radical expansion of government power.
The post How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped Trump Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic appeared first on The Intercept.
Florida prosecutors say Michelle Taylor used gasoline to set a fire that killed her son. Top forensic chemists say they’re wrong.
The post The Arson Evidence Doesn’t Hold Up. Florida Is About to Convict Her for Murder Anyway. appeared first on The Intercept.
Despite years of official criticism of encrypted messaging, CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed that Signal comes installed on agency computers.
The post U.S. Officials Called Signal a Tool for Terrorists and Criminals. Now They’re Using It. appeared first on The Intercept.
Total of 38% of Republican voters agree Hegseth should quit, compared to just a third who think he should keep job
More Republican voters think that Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, should resign than those who think he should remain in his job, according to a poll conducted after he and other Trump administration officials shared sensitive military attack plans with a journalist who was accidentally added to a message group chat.
Hegseth outlined details of a US airstrike in Yemen in a Signal group chat that included Donald Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, as well as his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to the chat.
Continue reading...The law behind the warrants bars concealment of people in the country illegally, yet the students were legal residents living on campus.
The post ICE Got Warrants Under “False Pretenses,” Claims Columbia Student Targeted Over Gaza Protests appeared first on The Intercept.
Voters scored both PM and Peter Dutton poorly on key leadership questions including trust, competence and being out of touch
Labor has ticked ahead of the Coalition on a two-party plus basis in the first Guardian Essential poll of the election period, as Anthony Albanese turns the blowtorch on Peter Dutton in the opening days of the campaign.
Essential’s “2PP+” measure, which allows voters to remain undecided, put Labor ahead 48% to 47%, with 5% undecided. The survey of 1,100 people was of a piece with recent major polls from Newspoll, Resolve and YouGov, which showed small movements toward Labor in recent weeks.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who started the now-infamous group chat coordinating a US attack against the Yemen-based Houthis on March 15, is seemingly now suggesting that the secure messaging service Signal has security vulnerabilities.
"I didn’t see this loser in the group," Waltz told Fox News about Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Waltz invited to the chat. "Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out."
Waltz’s implication that Goldberg may have hacked his way in was followed by a ...
Musk denied he was buying votes but said the court election outcome would be critical to Trump’s agenda and ‘the future of civilization’
Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.
“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”
Continue reading...Australia’s richest person has close ties with the US president’s ‘Trumpettes’ and has even styled her company headquarters with Maga-inspired designs
The founder of a key support group for the US president has praised Gina Rinehart as a “female Donald Trump” and backed a push by the mining magnate to bring Trump’s policy ideas to Australia.
Toni Holt Kramer, the president and founder of The Trumpettes USA, told Guardian Australia she had been friends with Rinehart since the first Trump presidency in 2016, describing her as an “extremely brilliant woman”.
Continue reading...Trump administration’s slashes to prevention and access expansion likely to erode progress on eliminating epidemic
The federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections and expand access to care, decimating progress toward eliminating the epidemic in the United States, scientists say.
Over the last month, more than 300 research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been terminated – 65 of them were specifically related to researching advancements in HIV care. Some scientists were notified about losing funding as recently as last Thursday. NIH, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the largest funding source of medical research in the world, leaving many scientists scrambling to figure out how to continue their work.
Continue reading...The president – who believes he has been treated unfairly by the press – is squeezing the media in different ways than his first term
On Tuesday 4 March, Donald Trump stood in the House of Representatives to issue a speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term.
Near the beginning of what was to be a marathon address, the president declared: “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.”
Continue reading...Trump wants Gaza for real estate deals, but Mike Huckabee’s all-inclusive Israel tours erase Palestinians for a higher purpose.
The post Trump’s Pick for Israel Ambassador Leads Tours That Leave Out Palestinians — and Promote End of Days Theology appeared first on The Intercept.
The Smithsonian’s museums have been ordered to root out ‘divisive narratives’. It’s part of a pattern: the battle lines are now clear
It has come to this: we are now in Ministry of Truth territory. In Washington DC, the Smithsonian Institution, the US’s ensemble of 21 great national museums, last week became the subject of an executive order by President Donald Trump. “Distorted narratives” are to be rooted out. There will be no more of the “corrosive ideology” that has fostered a “sense of national shame”. The institution has, reads the order, “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that portrays “American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”. The vice-president, JD Vance, is, by virtue of his office, on the museum’s board. He is charged by Trump to “prohibit expenditure” on programmes that “divide Americans based on race”. He is to remove “improper ideology”. The order is titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. George Orwell lived too soon.
The move is deeply shocking, but predictable. After Trump’s insertion of himself as chair of the John F Kennedy Center and his railing against the supposed wokeness of the national performing arts venue, the federally funded Smithsonian was bound to be next in line. Those who imagined the Kennedy Center was a one-off, attracting the president’s ire for personal reasons, were deluding themselves about the scale of Trump’s ideological ambition. Picked out for opprobrium in the executive order are the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for celebrating transgender women (the museum, it should be pointed out, has yet to be built); the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and an exhibition titled The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the American Art Museum.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer
Continue reading...Exclusive: Meeting hosted by shadow housing minister for estate agents and landlords prompted accusations of collusion
Senior Tories have held private talks with big landlords about how to thwart the government’s renters’ rights bill, the Guardian has learned, with ideas including launching a legal challenge under human rights law.
Jane Scott, the shadow housing minister, recently hosted a roundtable meeting with several of the country’s largest landlords and estate agents, at which they discussed a number of ways to delay or stop the bill altogether. The ideas included challenging it in the courts and delaying it with repeated rounds of Lords amendments, according to three people in attendance.
Continue reading...Gina Rinehart is Australia’s richest person – and as her wealth continues to rise, so does her power and influence. But what does she want? In the first episode of Gina, senior correspondent Sarah Martin explores the impact Rinehart could have on Australian politics. Rinehart grew up in the vast expanse of the Pilbara. To understand her story, we delve into her past and how her unique childhood under the influence of Lang Hancock shaped her
Continue reading...The Trump administration’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk rests on an opinion article she wrote in 2024, her lawyers said in a filing.
The post In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed appeared first on The Intercept.
“We had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The post The Real Outrage About the Yemen Signal Group Is That It Called for Attack on Civilian Home appeared first on The Intercept.
Members of the Trump administration, including the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, routinely vilified Hillary Clinton's use of a private server for classified emails, before and after Trump defeated her in the 2016 presidential election. Hegseth and Rubio, as well as CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and national security advisor, Mike Waltz, were all in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen to which a journalist for the Atlantic was inadvertently added. Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton reacted to the leak by saying on X: 'You have got to be kidding me'
Continue reading...Cadogan Hall, London
Chelsea Opera Group were at their best and conductor Paul Wingfield drove the score hard in this rare outing for the French composer’s startlingly original work
Édouard Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys was first performed in Paris in 1888. A work of often startling originality, it was hugely admired in its day and still hovers on the fringes of the repertory in the French-speaking world. Elsewhere, however, its outings have been sporadic, so Chelsea Opera Group cannot be too highly commended for tackling it in a very fine concert performance conducted by Paul Wingfield.
The opera derives from the Breton legend of the city of Ys that vanished, Atlantis-like, beneath the ocean. The king of the title, however, is not its central protagonist, and Lalo focuses on his two daughters, gracious Rozenn and imperious Margared, both in love with the soldier Mylio, initially believed a casualty of the recent war between Ys and the forces of the enemy prince Karnac. A pawn in her father’s politics, Margared is to marry Karnac as part of their peace treaty. But her refusal to do so on discovering that Mylio is both alive and loves Rozenn, leads first to the resumption of hostilities, then to her conspiring with Karnac to open the floodgates that protect the city from the sea.
Continue reading...Downing Street says it ‘reserves right’ to respond to protect national interest when US levies are announced this week
Downing Street has admitted the UK will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump announces his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday, and said it “reserves the right” to respond to protect the national interest.
Ministers are now expecting the UK to be hit by a tariff that will apply to all countries as part of the US president’s “liberation day”, despite hoping to have secured a carve out.
Continue reading...University called Dr Joanne Liu, ex-head of Doctors Without Borders, after planning to speak on Gaza and federal cuts
The former international head of Doctors Without Borders says she was left “stunned” after New York University canceled her presentation because some of her slides discussing cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could be viewed as “anti-governmental”.
Dr Joanne Liu, a pediatric emergency physician at Sainte-Justine hospital and a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who also served as the former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), told CTV News last week that she was scheduled on 19 March to give a presentation at her alma mater on challenges in humanitarian crises.
Continue reading...February’s dip in inflation was only a blip – the pain for consumers and the UK economy is poised to continue
The painful jump in household bills from Tuesday will push the UK’s poorest households further into poverty. The increase will also provide a further jolt to Labour ministers still reeling from a spring statement that prompted finger-jabbing accusations that their policies are Tory-lite.
The “squeezed middle”, put in the spotlight by energy secretary Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader, will also find that a recovery from the post-pandemic inflation shock has juddered to a halt.
Continue reading...Donald Trump says deteriorating magnolia will be removed but wood ‘may be used for other high and noble purposes’
A nearly two-century-old tree with a history tied to the former US president Andrew Jackson will be removed from the White House grounds because it is deteriorating, Donald Trump said on Sunday.
The southern magnolia stands near the curved portico on the south side of the building. It is where foreign leaders are often welcomed for ceremonial visits, and where the president departs to board the Marine One helicopter.
Continue reading...Attacks on the pillars of civil society are chilling speech. But American democracy was built on criticism
I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say.
When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts.
Continue reading...We’d like to hear from UK renters who have been asked to pay a fee or higher rent because they owned a pet
MP Taiwo Owatemi’s £900 expense claim for a landlord’s surcharge to let her keep her dog in her London flat has prompted ministers to ask the Commons authorities for a review of allowance rules.
The MP, who has a cockapoo called Bella, made her expense claim last August and it was accepted by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa). But security minister Dan Jarvis said on Sunday he would not have made such a claim, and criticised the rules that allowed his Labour colleague to do so.
Continue reading...Elzbieta Olszewska refused time to complete paper application but was only told of decision after visitor visa had expired
A Polish woman has been threatened with deportation by the Home Office because her application form to stay was accidentally filled in online instead of on paper.
Elzbieta Olszewska, 80, had been living alone in her flat in Warsaw before arriving in the UK last September. Her only child, Michal Olszewski, 52, an aeronautical engineer who lives in Lincoln with his wife, had been travelling regularly to the Polish capital to support her.
Continue reading...Rebuilding is more than reconstruction: it is resistance. It is our refusal to be erased, our determination to remain and exist on our land
On the 17th night of Ramadan – a time meant for prayer, reflection and mercy – Gaza burned. Once again, our screens fill with images too harrowing to describe: tiny bodies wrapped in bloodstained cloth, fathers carrying their children’s remains in plastic bags, mothers screaming into skies that rain death instead of mercy. In less than an hour, Israeli airstrikes killed over 350 Palestinians, including 90 children. Entire families wiped out as bombs fell on areas Israel itself had designated as “safe zones”, turning supposed sanctuaries into mass graves.
This was not merely a resumption of violence. This is the continuation of a genocide that never truly paused, only ebbed enough to vanish from headlines while Palestinians continued to die by the dozens daily. The heaviness of this moment is unbearable, bringing back the brokenness of the past year that has not yet healed. For this slaughter to continue while the world watches reveals how deeply indifferent global powers have become to Palestinian suffering, how thoroughly dehumanized an entire people must be for their massacre to be debated as a matter of “security concerns”.
Ahmad Ibsais is a first generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege
Continue reading...Whether it is by declaring a trade war or by bullying Greenland, visceral hatred is driving American policy
The “Signalgate” scandal confirmed what Europeans already knew. The Trump administration’s disdain for Europe is deep and the transatlantic fracture is structural. While our leaders publicly play down the significance of the unravelling that is manifestly under way, few actually sound as convinced in private.
Hopes persist that Europe can prevent the most extreme manifestation of the collapse in the relationship, be it an invasion of Greenland, the withdrawal of US forces from Europe’s Nato member states or an all-out trade war. Most urgently, European leaders are focused on ensuring that if (or perhaps when) the US throws Kyiv under the bus, it is Europe collectively that will somehow succeed in securing a free, independent and democratic Ukraine. But there should be no illusion that this will happen by working in synergy with Washington or even with its tacit approval.
Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist
Continue reading...After myriad false starts and much fluctuation, the lingering question is not how far Trump can take his trade wars, but how far he will
Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, struggling with higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country’s industrial heartlands – and leave the rest of the world to pick up the bill.
On Wednesday – a day dubbed Liberation Day by the president and his aides – Trump has vowed to pull the trigger and impose an historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claims will fund an extraordinary revival.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ministers halt money for radiotherapy auto-contouring that would reduce waiting times and address staff shortages
Ministers have cut millions of pounds of funding for potentially life saving AI cancer technology in England, which cancer experts warn will increase waiting times and could cause more patients to die.
Contouring is used in radiotherapy to ensure treatment is as effective and safe as possible. The tumour and normal tissue is “mapped” or contoured on to medical scans, to ensure the radiation targets the cancer while minimising damage to healthy tissues and organs.
Continue reading...Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking
No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
Elon Musk and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.
Continue reading...Government fears hit from new US trade barriers but remains hopeful of progress in ongoing negotiations
Ministers believe Britain will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump unveils his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday as part of what the US president is calling “liberation day”.
On Sunday night, Keir Starmer spoke with Trump in what Downing Street described as part of “productive negotiations” towards a deal. A No 10 spokesperson said both men had agreed talks between the two sides would “continue at pace this week”, adding: “They agreed to stay in touch in the coming days.”
Continue reading...He was the most senior Asian officer in British policing, tipped for the top job of Met commissioner. But then came Black Lives Matter and the murder of Sarah Everard – and he couldn’t stay silent any more
Neil Basu is enjoying not being a police officer, he says. “The vast majority of mornings, I wake up and go: ‘Thank God I don’t have to do that any more.’ I sleep. I never used to sleep.” Before he quit two and a half years ago, Basu was assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police in London and the most senior minority ethnic police officer in Britain. For his final seven years in the job, he had to be on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. “The only time I relaxed was when I was on a plane, until they brought in wifi,” he says. As officers aren’t allowed alcohol while on duty, “I’ve got an encyclopedic knowledge of zero-alcohol beers and I’m a rugby player; you can imagine how difficult that was.”
There is plenty more Basu doesn’t miss about policing. After 30 years in the toughest areas of the job – kidnap, rape, murder, gang violence, counter-terrorism – he has seen things that would keep most of us awake at night. But as a British Asian man rising through the ranks of the Met, he also experienced first-hand the prejudice, politics, cultural malaise and stubborn reluctance to change policing – including the circumstances of his departure. He has a lot to get off his chest – a book’s worth, in fact, although he describes his aptly titled memoir, Turmoil: 30 Years of Policing, Politics and Prejudice, less as a score-settling exercise and more as “a letter from an angry lover”. “I love policing,” he says. “I love what it does for society. I love that, when it’s done well, police officers are the best people on the planet. It’s a shame that when it’s done badly, they’re the worst.”
Continue reading...US president says his Russian counterpart’s questioning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s credibility could delay ceasefire
Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.
The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.
Continue reading...Alex Fisher highlights how disabled people will be hit hard by the government’s welfare changes. And Kathleen Coleman is in despair at the party she has voted for all her life
I used to work as an assessor for personal independence payments (Pip). One day, I visited a gentleman who was terrified of losing his Pip. Despite his fear, he offered me tea, but only had a tiny amount of milk in his fridge. He was ashamed and started to cry. I called the local food bank to help him.
Now, I am an occupational therapist. On my to-do list is an appeal letter for a patient with Huntington’s disease, a complex, incurable condition. He scored zero on his Pip assessment, yet his neurological apathy and cognitive impairment affect his daily function. Proposed welfare cuts by Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall (Report, 26 March) will severely impact his access to vital support.
Continue reading...From Russia to the US, those who seek to uphold the law are coming under increasing pressure
What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.
Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...If a tree-planting scheme in western England can match the first national forest, people as well as wildlife will benefit
The benefits for bats were presumably not at the top of the government’s list of reasons for announcing the creation of the new western forest. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, regards rules that protect these nocturnal mammals as a nuisance. Nevertheless, the rare Bechstein’s bat, as well as the pine marten and various fungi, are expected to be among species that benefit from the multiyear project, to which central government has so far committed £7.5m.
Like England’s only existing national forest, in the Midlands, this one will be broken up across a wide area, featuring grassland, farmland, towns and villages as well as densely planted, closed-canopy woodland. John Everitt, who heads the National Forest organisation (which is both a charity and a government arm’s length body), describes this type of landscape as “forest in the medieval sense with a mosaic of habitats”.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
Dressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king. He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.
Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers. Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates. White, a Trump ally and Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: “Welcome to the States, boys.”
Continue reading...New emails reveal ‘panic’ inside the Home Office at the case of Ali Kololo, who was wrongly imprisoned for the 2011 murder of British tourist David Tebbutt
A Kenyan man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death over an attack on British tourists is suing the Metropolitan police over its role in the case.
Ali Kololo was imprisoned for more than a decade in what his lawyers called “appalling conditions” before being released when his conviction was quashed in 2023.
Continue reading...Appeals court had upheld block on flights using Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members
The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.
The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.
Continue reading...Records reviewed by The Intercept show that ICE altered contracts with immigration detention centers to cut transgender care requirements.
The post ICE Is Erasing Rules That Protected Trans Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.
Exclusive: Findings are a warning to policymakers that raising subsidies ‘can be costly and ineffective if not carefully designed’, co-author says
Throwing more money at cheaper childcare fees won’t be enough to help mothers with young children get back to work, new research shows, as lower-income families lose more in benefits and taxes than they gain from working an extra day.
The independent economic research body e61 Institute analysed childcare reforms in 2018 and found that higher subsidies for lower- and middle-income families had no measurable impact on mothers’ participation in the jobs market.
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Continue reading...The Albanese government pledges to crack down on ‘price-gouging’, but there is no clear definition of what it is – and charging high prices is not illegal
Australia’s dominant supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, argue the competition regulator has found no evidence of price-gouging. The claim undermines Labor’s first big election campaign policy pledge – that it will crack down on the process.
Are the supermarkets right?
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...More than 2,000 people sign petition in support of jazz musician and composer of River to Sea, Kellee Green
More than 2,000 people in the music industry have signed a petition supporting a jazz musician and composer whose winning entry River to Sea in the 2025 Queensland Music Awards prompted Brisbane city council to revoke its funding of the annual event.
Australian pianist Jayson Gillham, who is locked in a legal battle with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, also issued a statement on Monday, condemning Kellee Green’s case as yet another troubling example of the suppression of political expression by Australian artists.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...Conviction is a huge blow to her party and harms her drive for respectability, while serving the victimisation narrative
It is a political earthquake that is almost certain to end Marine Le Pen’s ambitions for the 2027 presidential election and throws her far-right party into chaos just as it was setting its sights on taking power in France.
Barred from running for political office for five years with immediate effect after being convicted of embezzling European funds for her party, Le Pen’s political future is now thrown into doubt. She will probably not be able to mount a fourth campaign for the presidency in two years’ time.
Continue reading...DOGE claims it’s not an “agency” that has to comply with FOIA. We don’t buy it — and so far judges haven’t, either.
The post DOGE Keeps Trying to Dodge the Freedom of Information Act. So We’re Suing. appeared first on The Intercept.
A Cornell student suing the Trump administration over free speech — and now facing deportation threats — shares his story on The Intercept Briefing.
The post Exclusive: As Trump Threatens to Deport Him, Momodou Taal Says It’s “Time to Escalate for Palestine” appeared first on The Intercept.
Max Rushden is joined by Lars Sivertsen, Seb Hutchinson and Sanny Rudravajhala to look back on the FA Cup quarter-finals
Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.
On the podcast today; Crystal Palace stun Fulham thanks to an amazing Eberechi Eze performance. They’ll play Aston Villa in the semi-finals who comfortably beat Preston North End with Marcus Rashford finding his goalscoring boots after a four month drought.
Continue reading...‘I am a crime writer, I understand theft,’ said Val McDermid – joining Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro and Kate Mosse in their appeal to Lisa Nandy to act on their behalf
A group of prominent authors including Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Mosse and Val McDermid have signed an open letter calling on the UK government to hold Meta accountable over its use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence.
The letter asked Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, to summon Meta senior executives to parliament.
Continue reading...At the rural orphanage where I volunteered, the place resembled a Dickensian workhouse. The staff’s main tools were antipsychotics and violence. The experience gave me a window into Putin’s Russia
By Howard Amos. Read by Harry Lloyd
Continue reading...From misogynist content creators such as Andrew Tate to the ubiquity of pornography, boys face a barrage of toxic influences. We talk to sixth-formers about the pressures and joys they experience
***Contains some spoilers***
The release of the hit Netflix drama Adolescence this month has unleashed a wave of panic around teenage boys. Keir Starmer said the UK “may have a problem with boys and young men”, while parents began worried conversations about their children’s online lives. But how true to life is it?
Continue reading...Canonisation has long been a way for the Catholic church to shape its own image. As the Vatican prepares to anoint its first millennial saint, we ask how it decides who is worthy
There are more Audio Long Reads here, or search Audio Long Read wherever you listen to podcasts
Continue reading...How reporters with the Gaza Project investigate the killing and targeting of Palestinian journalists.
The post Journalists Under Fire in Gaza, Israel’s Deadly War on Reporters appeared first on The Intercept.
The director, whose film JFK has been derided by historians for suggesting the CIA had a role in the killing, will speak to task force aiming ‘to get to the bottom of this mystery’
Film director Oliver Stone will testify at a US House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday that is considering thousands of pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy released this month at the direction of President Donald Trump.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said that lawmakers will hear from witnesses about the value of the documents.
Continue reading...Trump is demanding social media handles for citizenship, green card, and visa applicants whether they're already in the U.S. or not.
The post Trump Wants Immigrants on U.S. Soil to Hand Over Social Media Accounts to Apply for Citizenship appeared first on The Intercept.
Cornell student Momodou Taal’s lawyers said the demand was “retribution” for his lawsuit against the crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.
The post He Sued Trump Over Free Speech. Then ICE Demanded He Turn Himself In. appeared first on The Intercept.
The shape of the Trump 2.0 White House has spurred serious concerns about public health and reproductive rights, and left military leaders 'stunned' and former intelligence experts 'appalled'. From a vaccine skeptic in charge of running the department of health, to a wrestling mogul in charge of the country's education, and even a ‘deep state conspiracy theorist’ becoming head of the FBI, the Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael takes us through the six most controversial members, and what their appointments could mean for the country
Continue reading...Only drones can begin to capture the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip. The journalists doing it were targeted again and again.
The post Israel Leveled Gaza — Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World appeared first on The Intercept.
“The World After Gaza” author on what Israel’s war reveals about power, violence, and who sets the rules on the world stage.
The post Israel’s “Culture of Cruelty” Inspires the Far Right Worldwide, Says Pankaj Mishra appeared first on The Intercept.
A GP surgery in one of the most deprived areas in the north-east of England is struggling to provide care for its patients as the health system crumbles around them. In the depths of the winter flu season, the Guardian video producers Maeve Shearlaw and Adam Sich went to Bridges medical practice to shadow the lead GP, Paul Evans, as he worked all hours keep his surgery afloat. Juggling technical challenges, long waiting lists and the profound impact austerity has had on the health of the population, Evans says: 'We are seeing the system fail'
Continue reading...
In the rapidly advancing landscape of AI technology and innovation, LimeWire emerges as a unique platform in the realm of generative AI tools. This platform not only stands out from the multitude of existing AI tools but also brings a fresh approach to content generation. LimeWire not only empowers users to create AI content but also provides creators with creative ways to share and monetize their creations.
As we explore LimeWire, our aim is to uncover its features, benefits for creators, and the exciting possibilities it offers for AI content generation. This platform presents an opportunity for users to harness the power of AI in image creation, all while enjoying the advantages of a free and accessible service.
Let's unravel the distinctive features that set LimeWire apart in the dynamic landscape of AI-powered tools, understanding how creators can leverage its capabilities to craft unique and engaging AI-generated images.
This revamped LimeWire invites users to register and unleash their creativity by crafting original AI content, which can then be shared and showcased on the LimeWire Studio. Notably, even acclaimed artists and musicians, such as Deadmau5, Soulja Boy, and Sean Kingston, have embraced this platform to publish their content in the form of NFT music, videos, and images.
Beyond providing a space for content creation and sharing, LimeWire introduces monetization models to empower users to earn revenue from their creations. This includes avenues such as earning ad revenue and participating in the burgeoning market of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). As we delve further, we'll explore these monetization strategies in more detail to provide a comprehensive understanding of LimeWire's innovative approach to content creation and distribution.
LimeWire Studio welcomes content creators into its fold, providing a space to craft personalized AI-focused content for sharing with fans and followers. Within this creative hub, every piece of content generated becomes not just a creation but a unique asset—ownable and tradable. Fans have the opportunity to subscribe to creators' pages, immersing themselves in the creative journey and gaining ownership of digital collectibles that hold tradeable value within the LimeWire community. Notably, creators earn a 2.5% royalty each time their content is traded, adding a rewarding element to the creative process.
The platform's flexibility is evident in its content publication options. Creators can choose to share their work freely with the public or opt for a premium subscription model, granting exclusive access to specialized content for subscribers.
As of the present moment, LimeWire focuses on AI Image Generation, offering a spectrum of creative possibilities to its user base. The platform, however, has ambitious plans on the horizon, aiming to broaden its offerings by introducing AI music and video generation tools in the near future. This strategic expansion promises creators even more avenues for expression and engagement with their audience, positioning LimeWire Studio as a dynamic and evolving platform within the realm of AI-powered content creation.
The LimeWire AI image generation tool presents a versatile platform for both the creation and editing of images. Supporting advanced models such as Stable Diffusion 2.1, Stable Diffusion XL, and DALL-E 2, LimeWire offers a sophisticated toolkit for users to delve into the realm of generative AI art.
Much like other tools in the generative AI landscape, LimeWire provides a range of options catering to various levels of complexity in image creation. Users can initiate the creative process with prompts as simple as a few words or opt for more intricate instructions, tailoring the output to their artistic vision.
What sets LimeWire apart is its seamless integration of different AI models and design styles. Users have the flexibility to effortlessly switch between various AI models, exploring diverse design styles such as cinematic, digital art, pixel art, anime, analog film, and more. Each style imparts a distinctive visual identity to the generated AI art, enabling users to explore a broad spectrum of creative possibilities.
The platform also offers additional features, including samplers, allowing users to fine-tune the quality and detail levels of their creations. Customization options and prompt guidance further enhance the user experience, providing a user-friendly interface for both novice and experienced creators.
Excitingly, LimeWire is actively developing its proprietary AI model, signaling ongoing innovation and enhancements to its image generation capabilities. This upcoming addition holds the promise of further expanding the creative horizons for LimeWire users, making it an evolving and dynamic platform within the landscape of AI-driven art and image creation.
Sign Up Now To Get Free Credits
Upon completing your creative endeavor on LimeWire, the platform allows you the option to publish your content. An intriguing feature follows this step: LimeWire automates the process of minting your creation as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), utilizing either the Polygon or Algorand blockchain. This transformative step imbues your artwork with a unique digital signature, securing its authenticity and ownership in the decentralized realm.
Creators on LimeWire hold the power to decide the accessibility of their NFT creations. By opting for a public release, the content becomes discoverable by anyone, fostering a space for engagement and interaction. Furthermore, this choice opens the avenue for enthusiasts to trade the NFTs, adding a layer of community involvement to the artistic journey.
Alternatively, LimeWire acknowledges the importance of exclusivity. Creators can choose to share their posts exclusively with their premium subscribers. In doing so, the content remains a special offering solely for dedicated fans, creating an intimate and personalized experience within the LimeWire community. This flexibility in sharing options emphasizes LimeWire's commitment to empowering creators with choices in how they connect with their audience and distribute their digital creations.
After creating your content, you can choose to publish the content. It will automatically mint your creation as an NFT on the Polygon or Algorand blockchain. You can also choose whether to make it public or subscriber-only.
If you make it public, anyone can discover your content and even trade the NFTs. If you choose to share the post only with your premium subscribers, it will be exclusive only to your fans.
Additionally, you can earn ad revenue from your content creations as well.
When you publish content on LimeWire, you will receive 70% of all ad revenue from other users who view your images, music, and videos on the platform.
This revenue model will be much more beneficial to designers. You can experiment with the AI image and content generation tools and share your creations while earning a small income on the side.
The revenue you earn from your creations will come in the form of LMWR tokens, LimeWire’s own cryptocurrency.
Your earnings will be paid every month in LMWR, which you can then trade on many popular crypto exchange platforms like Kraken, ByBit, and UniSwap.
You can also use your LMWR tokens to pay for prompts when using LimeWire generative AI tools.
You can sign up to LimeWire to use its AI tools for free. You will receive 10 credits to use and generate up to 20 AI images per day. You will also receive 50% of the ad revenue share. However, you will get more benefits with premium plans.
For $9.99 per month, you will get 1,000 credits per month, up to 2 ,000 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 50% ad revenue share
For $29 per month, you will get 3750 credits per month, up to 7500 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 60% ad revenue share
For $49 per month, you will get 5,000 credits per month, up to 10,000 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 70% ad revenue share
For $99 per month, you will get 11,250 credits per month, up to 2 2,500 image generations, early access to new AI models, and 70% ad revenue share
With all premium plans, you will receive a Pro profile badge, full creation history, faster image generation, and no ads.
Sign Up Now To Get Free Credits
In conclusion, LimeWire emerges as a democratizing force in the creative landscape, providing an inclusive platform where anyone can unleash their artistic potential and effortlessly share their work. With the integration of AI, LimeWire eliminates traditional barriers, empowering designers, musicians, and artists to publish their creations and earn revenue with just a few clicks.
The ongoing commitment of LimeWire to innovation is evident in its plans to enhance generative AI tools with new features and models. The upcoming expansion to include music and video generation tools holds the promise of unlocking even more possibilities for creators. It sparks anticipation about the diverse and innovative ways in which artists will leverage these tools to produce and publish their own unique creations.
For those eager to explore, LimeWire's AI tools are readily accessible for free, providing an opportunity to experiment and delve into the world of generative art. As LimeWire continues to evolve, creators are encouraged to stay tuned for the launch of its forthcoming AI music and video generation tools, promising a future brimming with creative potential and endless artistic exploration
Are you looking for a new graphic design tool? Would you like to read a detailed review of Canva? As it's one of the tools I love using. I am also writing my first ebook using canva and publish it soon on my site you can download it is free. Let's start the review.
Canva has a web version and also a mobile app
Canva is a free graphic design web application that allows you to create invitations, business cards, flyers, lesson plans, banners, and more using professionally designed templates. You can upload your own photos from your computer or from Google Drive, and add them to Canva's templates using a simple drag-and-drop interface. It's like having a basic version of Photoshop that doesn't require Graphic designing knowledge to use. It’s best for nongraphic designers.
Canva is a great tool for small business owners, online entrepreneurs, and marketers who don’t have the time and want to edit quickly.
To create sophisticated graphics, a tool such as Photoshop can is ideal. To use it, you’ll need to learn its hundreds of features, get familiar with the software, and it’s best to have a good background in design, too.
Also running the latest version of Photoshop you need a high-end computer.
So here Canva takes place, with Canva you can do all that with drag-and-drop feature. It’s also easier to use and free. Also an even-more-affordable paid version is available for $12.95 per month.
The product is available in three plans: Free, Pro ($12.99/month per user or $119.99/year for up to 5 people), and Enterprise ($30 per user per month, minimum 25 people).
To get started on Canva, you will need to create an account by providing your email address, Google, Facebook or Apple credentials. You will then choose your account type between student, teacher, small business, large company, non-profit, or personal. Based on your choice of account type, templates will be recommended to you.
You can sign up for a free trial of Canva Pro, or you can start with the free version to get a sense of whether it’s the right graphic design tool for your needs.
When you sign up for an account, Canva will suggest different post types to choose from. Based on the type of account you set up you'll be able to see templates categorized by the following categories: social media posts, documents, presentations, marketing, events, ads, launch your business, build your online brand, etc.
Start by choosing a template for your post or searching for something more specific. Search by social network name to see a list of post types on each network.
Next, you can choose a template. Choose from hundreds of templates that are ready to go, with customizable photos, text, and other elements.
You can start your design by choosing from a variety of ready-made templates, searching for a template matching your needs, or working with a blank template.
Inside the Canva designer, the Elements tab gives you access to lines and shapes, graphics, photos, videos, audio, charts, photo frames, and photo grids.The search box on the Elements tab lets you search everything on Canva.
To begin with, Canva has a large library of elements to choose from. To find them, be specific in your search query. You may also want to search in the following tabs to see various elements separately:
The Photos tab lets you search for and choose from millions of professional stock photos for your templates.
You can replace the photos in our templates to create a new look. This can also make the template more suited to your industry.
You can find photos on other stock photography sites like pexel, pixabay and many more or simply upload your own photos.
When you choose an image, Canva’s photo editing features let you adjust the photo’s settings (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.), crop, or animate it.
When you subscribe to Canva Pro, you get access to a number of premium features, including the Background Remover. This feature allows you to remove the background from any stock photo in library or any image you upload.
The Text tab lets you add headings, normal text, and graphical text to your design.
When you click on text, you'll see options to adjust the font, font size, color, format, spacing, and text effects (like shadows).
Canva Pro subscribers can choose from a large library of fonts on the Brand Kit or the Styles tab. Enterprise-level controls ensure that visual content remains on-brand, no matter how many people are working on it.
Create an animated image or video by adding audio to capture user’s attention in social news feeds.
If you want to use audio from another stock site or your own audio tracks, you can upload them in the Uploads tab or from the more option.
Want to create your own videos? Choose from thousands of stock video clips. You’ll find videos that range upto 2 minutes
You can upload your own videos as well as videos from other stock sites in the Uploads tab.
Once you have chosen a video, you can use the editing features in Canva to trim the video, flip it, and adjust its transparency.
On the Background tab, you’ll find free stock photos to serve as backgrounds on your designs. Change out the background on a template to give it a more personal touch.
The Styles tab lets you quickly change the look and feel of your template with just a click. And if you have a Canva Pro subscription, you can upload your brand’s custom colors and fonts to ensure designs stay on brand.
If you have a Canva Pro subscription, you’ll have a Logos tab. Here, you can upload variations of your brand logo to use throughout your designs.
With Canva, you can also create your own logos. Note that you cannot trademark a logo with stock content in it.
With Canva, free users can download and share designs to multiple platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack and Tumblr.
Canva Pro subscribers can create multiple post formats from one design. For example, you can start by designing an Instagram post, and Canva's Magic Resizer can resize it for other networks, Stories, Reels, and other formats.
Canva Pro subscribers can also use Canva’s Content Planner to post content on eight different accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.
Canva Pro allows you to work with your team on visual content. Designs can be created inside Canva, and then sent to your team members for approval. Everyone can make comments, edits, revisions, and keep track via the version history.
When it comes to printing your designs, Canva has you covered. With an extensive selection of printing options, they can turn your designs into anything from banners and wall art to mugs and t-shirts.
Canva Print is perfect for any business seeking to make a lasting impression. Create inspiring designs people will want to wear, keep, and share. Hand out custom business cards that leave a lasting impression on customers' minds.
The Canva app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The Canva app has earned a 4.9 out of five star rating from over 946.3K Apple users and a 4.5 out of five star rating from over 6,996,708 Google users.
In addition to mobile apps, you can use Canva’s integration with other Internet services to add images and text from sources like Google Maps, Emojis, photos from Google Drive and Dropbox, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Bitmojis, and other popular visual content elements.
In general, Canva is an excellent tool for those who need simple images for projects. If you are a graphic designer with experience, you will find Canva’s platform lacking in customization and advanced features – particularly vectors. But if you have little design experience, you will find Canva easier to use than advanced graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator for most projects. If you have any queries let me know in the comments section.
Be the first to see our latest thought-provoking films, bringing you bold and original storytelling from around the world
Discover the stories behind our latest short films, learn more about our international film-makers, and join us for exclusive documentary events. We’ll also share a selection of our favourite films, from our archives and from further afield, for you to enjoy. Sign up below.
Can’t wait for the next newsletter? Start exploring our archive now.
Continue reading...The Trump administration’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk rests on an opinion article she wrote in 2024, her lawyers said in a filing.
The post In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed appeared first on The Intercept.
Appeals court had upheld block on flights using Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members
The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.
The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.
Continue reading...The law behind the warrants bars concealment of people in the country illegally, yet the students were legal residents living on campus.
The post ICE Got Warrants Under “False Pretenses,” Claims Columbia Student Targeted Over Gaza Protests appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump’s “Operation Aurora” swept up only one suspected gang member — but set the stage for a radical expansion of government power.
The post How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped Trump Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic appeared first on The Intercept.
Florida prosecutors say Michelle Taylor used gasoline to set a fire that killed her son. Top forensic chemists say they’re wrong.
The post The Arson Evidence Doesn’t Hold Up. Florida Is About to Convict Her for Murder Anyway. appeared first on The Intercept.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who started the now-infamous group chat coordinating a US attack against the Yemen-based Houthis on March 15, is seemingly now suggesting that the secure messaging service Signal has security vulnerabilities.
"I didn’t see this loser in the group," Waltz told Fox News about Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Waltz invited to the chat. "Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out."
Waltz’s implication that Goldberg may have hacked his way in was followed by a ...
DOGE claims it’s not an “agency” that has to comply with FOIA. We don’t buy it — and so far judges haven’t, either.
The post DOGE Keeps Trying to Dodge the Freedom of Information Act. So We’re Suing. appeared first on The Intercept.
French far right leader cannot run for public office for five years after court finds her guilty of embezzlement of European parliament funds
The judges have begun reading their verdicts.
Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer for the European parliament, arriving in court, said that what was at stake was the embezzlement of European taxpayers’ funds.
Continue reading...We asked 18 Republicans whose districts benefit most from Biden’s IRA climate law if they back Trump’s demands
Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.
The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.
Continue reading...“Do your job!” the crowd chanted, urging Rep. Victoria Spartz, one of the most outspoken DOGE supporters, to rein in Elon Musk.
The post GOP Leaders Said Don’t Do Town Halls. This Indiana Republican Did — and Got an Earful. appeared first on The Intercept.
The president – who believes he has been treated unfairly by the press – is squeezing the media in different ways than his first term
On Tuesday 4 March, Donald Trump stood in the House of Representatives to issue a speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term.
Near the beginning of what was to be a marathon address, the president declared: “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.”
Continue reading...Only drones can begin to capture the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip. The journalists doing it were targeted again and again.
The post Israel Leveled Gaza — Then Killed the Drone Journalists Who Showed it to the World appeared first on The Intercept.
“We had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The post The Real Outrage About the Yemen Signal Group Is That It Called for Attack on Civilian Home appeared first on The Intercept.
Despite years of official criticism of encrypted messaging, CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed that Signal comes installed on agency computers.
The post U.S. Officials Called Signal a Tool for Terrorists and Criminals. Now They’re Using It. appeared first on The Intercept.
A Cornell student suing the Trump administration over free speech — and now facing deportation threats — shares his story on The Intercept Briefing.
The post Exclusive: As Trump Threatens to Deport Him, Momodou Taal Says It’s “Time to Escalate for Palestine” appeared first on The Intercept.
Cornell student Momodou Taal’s lawyers said the demand was “retribution” for his lawsuit against the crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.
The post He Sued Trump Over Free Speech. Then ICE Demanded He Turn Himself In. appeared first on The Intercept.
RSS Rabbit links users to publicly available RSS entries.
Vet every link before clicking! The creators accept no responsibility for the contents of these entries.
Relevant
Fresh
Convenient
Agile
We're not prepared to take user feedback yet. Check back soon!