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The Guardian view on AI and public services: computers can’t cure all of Britain’s problems | Editorial

Public investment in technology is the right move. But ministers must not become boosters for an industry that causes harm as well as good Digital technology companies have reshaped our world and will continue doing so. Sir Keir Starmer knows his government must seek a role in shaping this new order – and avoid ceding all control to the US and China. According to official estimates, the UK is the third-largest AI market. Its universities are important incubators of talent. Google DeepMind, two of whose scientists won a Nobel chemistry prize last year , was a British company until Google bought it in 2014. But the world’s two largest economies, and particularly the US corporations that dominate our online lives, are a long way ahead. The danger for the rest of the world is being swept along in an AI wave over which it has little control. Expanding Britain’s publicly owned computing resource – a national asset known as sovereign compute capacity – is a necessary step toward securing ...

Missing Briton’s belongings found in Dolomites as rescuers continue search

Italy’s Alpine cliff and cave rescue corps find items belonging to Aziz Ziriat as search continues Items belonging to a British hiker who has been missing in the Dolomites since New Year’s Day have been found as the search for him continues. Sam Harris, 35, and Aziz Ziriat, 36, from London, last sent messages home on 1 January and the pair did not check in for their flight home on 6 January. Friends and relatives have travelled to Italy. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/6P3wvCp

AfD launches manifesto as campaign season for German election begins

Polling for the far-right insurgent and its extreme policies is rising but other parties have closed ranks against it despite their weak popularity Germany’s far-right AfD party has signed off on its manifesto before next month’s critical election, proposing a series of deeply controversial policies on everything from migration to education as the campaign for a new government in Europe’s powerhouse formally kicked off. The party, founded in 2013, endorsed the far-right concept of “re-migration” into its programme, threatening the mass deportation of migrants if they came into power. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/1njwUq2

McAtee hits hat-trick as Manchester City brutally expose Class of 92’s Salford

Manchester City reeled off a third win on the bounce and it was all the sweeter with their victims ­having such strong Manchester United connections. Salford City, owned by the Class of 92, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Phil and Gary Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes, were always primed to be easy fall-guys and with 65 places between them and England’s champions, Karl Robinson’s men were cuffed aside as if in an exhibition. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2amKUpM

Majority of Britons believe Musk having negative impact on UK politics

More voters think tech tycoon’s comments on grooming gangs are unhelpful than those who back him More than half of voters think Elon Musk is having a negative effect on British politics following his criticism of Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer . The South African-born billionaire has spent much of the past week using his social media platform X to attack Starmer and the Labour government for their opposition to another national inquiry into grooming gangs. He accused Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of being a “rape genocide apologist ” and falsely claimed Starmer was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes ”. Despite strong suggestions that Musk is preparing to make a large donation to Reform UK, he also recently tore into Nigel Farage, saying he was not up to the job of leading the party. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/VZa2wIT

Trump’s conviction is the latest twist in the Maga story | Lloyd Green

The supreme court order may also be a harbinger of what awaits the US over the next four years: litigation that again divides the judiciary and the nation Donald Trump will take the office on 20 January 2025 as a convicted felon. On Thursday night, a sharply divided US supreme court declined to ride to his last-minute rescue . In a one-paragraph order, the majority refused to stay his state court-sentencing whose genesis lay with payments that Trump allegedly arranged to cover up his purported affair with the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Last May, a Manhattan jury unanimously found the 45th president guilty of 34 counts of conspiracy and fraud. The supreme court order may also be a harbinger of what awaits the US over the next four years: litigation that again divides the judiciary and the nation. Five of the nine supreme court justices, including chief justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, refused to buy what the monarch of Mar-a-Lago was selling. Th...

Rachel Reeves must handle bond sell-off with care, but this is not a Truss-level event

Unlike 2022, bond markets have not been shocked, but the chancellor will know threat of a doom loop is not far away Borrowing costs at the highest level since 1998, the pound at a 14-month low and some major UK company shares dropping like a stone. For a government that had pledged a return to economic stability, it has been a tough start to 2025 for Rachel Reeves. As the chancellor prepared to fly to China to promote closer economic ties with Beijing, the blow-up in the bond market appeared to ease on Thursday after a rough couple of days. But Reeves is still battling a political fire and comparisons to Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini-budget . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/n4IzZqa