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THE progress of artificial intelligence models over the past few years has been faster than almost anyone expected. Some advances have left society scrabbling to adapt. Teachers are struggling to stop students using chatbots to write their essays, artists claim they are losing paid work to image-creating AIs and efforts are under way in some places to replace journalists with large language models. But bigger changes are afoot. Google, Microsoft and Baidu, which run the three most-used search engines in the world, have all announced that their services will be upgraded, or at least augmented, with AI chatbots. Rather than entering a simple query and being presented with a list of potentially relevant websites, users will be able to ask niche and detailed questions and get a bespoke answer. It sounds like…

LOOKS can be deceiving when it comes to the state of UK rivers. I recently spent some time by the Fal river in south-west England, which looks beautiful and pristine, but is far from it. Much of it is in the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the river is the source of the Fal oyster, a protected designation of origin food. Yet it has been dubbed “the most polluted river in England”. Last year, the Independent newspaper analysed Environment Agency (EA) data on sewage spills in England and found that the Fal is the most fouled river in the country. In 2021, raw sewage flowed into the river for nearly 7500 hours, or more than 10 solid months, from one or more of the 103 storm overflows that discharge…

It wasn’t long after the pandemic began that people around the world started to notice something weird was going on. As the rhythms of daily life changed, some people’s days seemed to run together; others felt theirs stretched on indefinitely. The sense of what an hour felt like was corroding. News outlets filled with attempts to explain what was happening. Ruth Ogden, an experimental psychologist who studies time perception at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., says she had only ever gotten maybe one interview request before the pandemic, and has since received at least a hundred. And while the study of time is certainly not new, she says the volume and pace of academic publication on the topic seem to have increased too. Studies published since early 2020 have…

Twenty-five years after winning the best picture Oscar for Titanic — and 12 years after his second best picture nomination, for Avatar — producer Jon Landau is back in the awards race with Avatar: The Way of Water. Landau talks to THR about besting his own box office records, what it will take for performance-capture roles to be acknowledged by awards voters and if the still-untitled third Avatar film will stick to its current release date of December 2024. Do you have a favorite screening experience of The Way of Water? My favorite screening experience was in early December when I flew from New Zealand to New York, and I screened the movie for Zoe [Saldaña], Sam [Worthington], Sigourney [Weaver] and Stephen Lang. It was the first time we were really sharing…

THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS ARE A SMOOTH, GLACIATED LANDSCAPE, scoured by ice and rock over millions of years. Mountains lift their rounded backs. Bowl-shaped hollows known as corries nestle within curving ridgelines. The land has two faces. In late summer the terrain is shrouded in heather, threaded with the royal purple of its tiny blooms, along with delicate leaves of creeping willow and bog myrtle, soft beads of blaeberries, and red-glowing lingonberries. But within a few short weeks these same uplands might be swathed in snow: drifts banked high, gales whipping through the wind-carved ice at a hundred miles an hour. This is the domain of the mountain hare. These little mammals are also found in tundra, alpine, and boreal regions across Eurasia. An estimated 99 percent of mountain hares in the United…

The EOS R will be long remembered as Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera. It arrived with four all-new RF-mount lenses and an EF-EOS R adapter that enabled EF-mount lenses to be used. Centred around a 30.3MP CMOS sensor with an ISO range expandable to 50-102,400, it can shoot bursts at up to 8fps and features Dual Pixel AF with 5,655 selectable positions, along with 4K video (with a 1.7x crop). There’s a 3.2in, 2.1m-dot fully articulated touchscreen and a 3.69m-dot OLED EVF. However, it lacks IBIS, an AF joystick, or dual card slots. What we said ● ‘It’s like an EOS 6D Mark II in the way it feels like an entry point into full frame’ ● ‘The introduction of a new customisable ring on RF-mount lenses is welcomed’ ● ‘It’s built around a…

Where did people live after their homes were bombed in the Second World War? During the Second World War, approximately 3.75 million houses in the UK (about two in seven) were damaged by enemy action. About 220,000 were destroyed. The worst destruction took place in two phases: the Blitz of September 1940 to May 1941, and the V-weapon campaign of June 1944 to March 1945. Limited prewar preparations against air raids had focused on the danger from bombs or gas. Initially, they proved inadequate to a more mundane challenge: rehousing those who had lost their homes in the midst of a sustained bombing campaign that kept adding to their number. The Blitz forced rapid improvements. Post raid services, including social work to help with relocation, functioned well for the rest of the…

Every home ought to be tailor-made to represent the personalities and lifestyle of its owners, to become a comforting space where many happy memories are made. For a family of three, the brief given to their interior designer was simple: to create a modern interior with a touch of elegance for their three-bedroom apartment. The vivacious couple, who enjoy entertaining, wanted spacious living and dining areas where they could host their friends, along with an interior in a predominantly neutral scheme and ample storage throughout the abode to house their extensive collection of drinkware, shoes and clothes. Led by Michael Ong and Jeremy Tay, the Prestige Global Designs team thus aimed to craft a cosy sanctuary that fit the brief, while adding a dose of fun to spaces such as the nursery…

An ongoing scandal To The Guardian Thank you so much for your editorial on the seemingly forgotten cladding scandal. Apart from the fear of living in a flammable building, there is also the endless financial rip-off of paying increased building insurance – my daughter’s premium has risen 1,000%. The Government has done little to help apart from talk to the insurance industry, while continuing to enjoy a bonanza in insurance premium tax, generated from leaseholders. As for the few buildings that have been fixed, during remediation work lasting many months, families will have been living in freezing flats with all insulation removed and natural daylight blocked off, on what is in effect a building site. Whether flats are actually to be made safe, or just affordably less dangerous, is another matter. The fiasco surrounding…

One curious and less-wellknown impact of the Mongol empire's explosive expansion was a huge surge in the hunting of owls – almost to the edge of extinction in some regions. And it all stemmed from a striking and powerful foundational myth. According to legend, long before they embarked on their far-reaching campaigns of conquest, the Mongols lived on the far side of a mighty mountain range. It was impenetrable but for one single road running through an abandoned fortress. That castle, though, sparked immense fear: anyone venturing too close would be assailed by terrifying noises that caused them to flee in panic. So the Mongols remained hemmed in. One day, the story goes, a rider engrossed in a hunt found himself unexpectedly at the daunting fortress, where he was filled with terror…

THE JANUARY BREEZE WAS AS SHARP AS MY GRIEF. A muted winter sun shimmered off the snow-draped mountains cradling my mother’s hometown in northern Lebanon as the cemetery gates creaked open, and I placed my mum’s portrait with her ancestors. She was home, at least symbolically. She had passed away unexpectedly in November on a random Thursday morning in Australia, where she had lived for many years. My mother’s end was bookmarked at her beginning, in a motherland she never truly left. There are parts of this country we carry with us, even if, like me, we were not born here. We carry them in our names, in our food, in our stories, and in our family bonds that transcend time, distance, and generations, drawing us back. There is a song by…

Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin was a notable reunion between writer-director Martin McDonagh and stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who first teamed up on McDonagh’s feature debut, 2008’s In Bruges. But McDonagh’s latest film — which has netted him Oscar nominations for best director, original screenplay and picture — also reteamed him with Graham Broadbent, who has produced each of McDonagh’s features and earned his second Oscar nomination for best picture, after Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri scored a nom in 2018. Speaking with THR, Broadbent looks back on when he first read the script for McDonagh’s darkly comic fable and claims that when the Oscar-winning writer-director calls about a new project, Broadbent knows it will be extraordinary. You’ve worked with Martin McDonagh several times before and with great success.…

What happened Rishi Sunak travelled to Belfast last week in a bid to conclude a new deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Prime Minister had hoped to persuade Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to agree to a renegotiated deal that would finesse the Protocol, part of Britain’s Brexit settlement with the EU that is designed to prevent the creation of a hard border in Ireland. Since being implemented two years ago, the Protocol has drawn fierce criticism from Northern Irish unionists – and from sections of the Tory party – who complain that it subjects the region to EU laws, and that it introduces restrictions on imports from the UK mainland. Although talks with the EU are still ongoing, Sunak had hoped that mooted solutions, designed to smooth trade across…

FOR 45 YEARS, LUCY STUDEY, 53, TOLD ANYONE who would listen that her father had murdered scores of young women and men, burying some of them with the help of his children. No one believed her. Cadaver dogs have now pinpointed suspected human remains at the spots she identified in a remote stretch of western Iowa, about 40 miles south of Omaha, Nebraska, investigators tell Newsweek. “I know where the bodies are buried,” Lucy Studey previously told Newsweek. She recalled how her father, Donald Dean Studey, would transport bodies, using a wheelbarrow in the warmer months and a toboggan in winter. Many bodies, she says, were dumped in a well about 100 feet deep. Others, she says, were buried in shallower graves along trails. “He would just tell us we had to…

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars today unveils Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow to mark the end of production of one of the most transformative motor cars in the marque’s history. This Bespoke masterpiece, limited to just 12 examples worldwide, is also the last V12 coupé Rolls-Royce will ever make, as it embarks on its bold new electric era. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars presents Black Badge Wraith Black Arrow Collection The final examples of Wraith, the most powerful Rolls-Royce in history Collection of 12 cars celebrates Wraith, which transformed perceptions of Rolls-Royce The last V12 coupé the marque will ever build ahead of its all-electric future Introduces Gradient Paint, one of the most complex surface finishes Rolls-Royce has ever produced Design concept inspired by Thunderbolt, which set world land speed records in the 1930s Incorporates illuminated Thunderbolt Speedform between front seats Record-breaking…

TWITTER’S “BLUE CHECK” USED TO SIGNAL author authenticity. Now, it’s a way for peddlers of misinformation to appear trustworthy. Dozens of well-known purveyors of misinformation—many of whom were only recently allowed back onto the platform—are paying $8 a month for a blue check through Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk’s new verification system called Twitter Blue, lending them an air of legitimacy as the platform’s relaxed moderation standards allow them to spread false narratives at scale. NewsGuard analyzed the Twitter activity between March 1 and March 7, 2023, of 25 misinformation superspreader accounts that were “verified” by Twitter Blue. Each of the 25 accounts analyzed by NewsGuard had at least 50,000 followers and was either affiliated with a website that NewsGuard has assessed as having spread false information or found to have…

What happened Vladimir Putin welcomed the Chinese president Xi Jinping to Moscow this week, for a three-day state visit designed to cement their countries’ strategic partnership. Putin called Xi a “dear friend” and said the pair had spent a long time discussing China’s 12-point “peace plan” for Ukraine, which was published last month. Xi, in turn, praised Putin’s “strong leadership”, and said China would “continue to work with Russia to firmly safeguard the international order”. He didn’t publicly commit to supplying any weapons to Russia. The US criticised Xi’s visit, saying it was providing diplomatic cover for Russia to continue committing atrocities in Ukraine. Meanwhile in Kyiv, the Japanese PM, Fumio Kishida, met with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The visit came days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant…

Accompanies the documentary Shock and War: Iraq 20 Years On Do you think we're now far enough removed to be able to view the Iraq War as a historical event? It's a good question, because there's an ongoing debate about when you can start looking at an event with a historical eye: is it five years afterwards, 10 years, 20 years? When does it stop being news or current affairs? The impacts of the 2003 Iraq War are still rippling out to this day, and some of its legacies – including the way Iraq is run – are still unresolved. So it would be wrong to say that we can treat it purely as history. But we can now ask people who were involved to reflect and to analyse the events in…

Having spent the past quarter century working for Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger has often visited The Milky Way, the Los Angeles restaurant once run by the director’s mother, Leah Adler (who died in 2017), and her second husband, Bernie Adler. Krieger also knew Spielberg’s late father, Arnold, and knew that Bernie and Arnold had once been close friends, but had no idea that a young Steven Spielberg had discovered the blooming relationship between his mother and the family friend when making home movies as part of his obsession with amateur filmmaking. This very personal story would come to light when making the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, which Krieger produced alongside Spielberg and Tony Kushner, who co-wrote the script with the director. Krieger began her tenure with Spielberg as his assistant before…

Can you predict earthquakes? No. As the US Geological Survey (USGS) puts it: “Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future.” A proper prediction would have to define date and time, location, and magnitude. The location is the easiest part: most big earthquakes occur along the fault lines between the Earth’s 17 or so tectonic plates. More than 80% of large quakes occur around the “Ring of Fire” at the edges of the Pacific plate. Also very vulnerable are “triple junctions”, where three plates meet: southeastern Turkey sits on the junction of the African, Anatolian and Arabian plates. But even defining location is a vague science, since…

Some of my fondest childhood memories include my years at a convent school, where I learnt Christmas carols for the first time. My kindergarten classmates and I would surround the biggest doll to ever have been called Baby Jesus, cheerfully blaring out those Yuletide songs many of us know and love. Standing next to me would be my best friend Boli, a cool, smart five year old who I adored without question. So, as she confidently sang out, ‘White shepherds washed their socks by night’, I blindly followed suit, verbatim. It wasn’t until much later when I learnt to read, that my songbook revealed that the carol was not quite about the nocturnal laundry habits of sheep-rearing men. The words actually go, ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’. When I…

Why was Iraq invaded? “Our mission is clear,” declared president George W. Bush following the ground invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003: “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people”. The Bush administration alleged a material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which in late 2002 had given Iraq “a final opportunity” to disarm (an obligation imposed after its defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991). The official case for war fell apart quickly: no significant WMDs were ever found, and by late 2003, Bush conceded there was no evidence linking Saddam to al-Qa’eda. That has led many to suggest a range of other motives, from spreading democracy to controlling the oil trade, to…

OST PEOPLE ASSOCIATE BAD habits with the kind of activities that wind up on a list of New Year’s resolutions—eating and drinking too much, spending too much time on the smartphone and avoiding the gym. But bad habits are often behind more than just our personal peccadilloes. The neural machinery of habit formation is also the root cause of many of the worst collective behaviors: Texting while driving, gossiping about co-workers, littering, mansplaining, farting silently in public, making racist or unfair assumptions about strangers and even spreading the kind of misinformation online that some experts warn is threatening to undermine our democracy. Many people who are aware of bad habits and recognize them to be potentially harmful blame themselves for being weak and lacking the willpower needed to resist them. But in…

IT'S PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE TO know exactly what your dog is thinking. But a few years ago, Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, decided he wanted to try and find out anyway. The catalyst was Bern’s diminutive pug Newton, a fawn-colored pooch with a friendly disposition and a small black mole on his cheek vaguely reminiscent of a young Robert De Niro. Every night for more than a decade, Newton climbed into bed with Berns and his wife and nestled his meatball-shaped head into the crook of the neuroscientist’s armpit, before passing out and snoring loudly. The routine continued even after Newton grew so arthritic that he relied on a tiny-wheeled cart attached to his hind legs to tow himself around and required assistance to get into the bed. When Newton…

An independently wealthy Republican President is tossed out of office after a single term amid massive economic hardship and fears of political violence. There are rumors he was under surveillance or about to be arrested. Relentless, bitter, appalled at his Democratic successor, he stews in his elegant midtown Manhattan suite, plotting his next move. Except it was not Trump Tower but the Waldorf-Astoria, and the ex-President was Herbert Hoover. But in this case, history neither repeats itself nor rhymes. Hoover not only respected the presidency, he honored it in his postpresidency. When Franklin Roosevelt announced a bank holiday immediately after his Inauguration, Hoover declared he should “receive the wholehearted support of every citizen.” A decade later, when 100 million people in Europe were at risk of starving, Harry Truman enlisted Hoover’s…

It’s a grey afternoon in provincial Denmark, and Tommy Uttrup Jensen is picking his teenage daughter’s teeth up from the road. He gathers two – the two front ones – and holds them in his palm. Beside him, in floods of tears, his daughter Cecilie is carried into an ambulance. Her bike race is over. A decade on, the image still feels fresh in Tommy’s mind. “She was in huge pain,” he says. “I brought the teeth with me to the hospital, where they had a dentist put them back in. Not that I’ve done it, but it’s apparently rather painful.” Painful, perhaps, is an understatement. It would take four doctors to restrain the teenager at the hospital. So bad was the crash – in which another rider hurtled over her head…

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its most recent report this week, yet again warning that without immediate and huge emissions reductions, we will fail to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. This is the goal set to try to avoid more severe planetary disruption. “If we don’t act with the necessary speed, we will shoot past 1.5 degrees and possibly even 2 degrees,” says Peter Thorne at Maynooth University in Ireland, one of the authors of the report. “Really, it’s a call to arms.” The world is now likely to reach 1.5°C in the first half of the next decade regardless of what happens with emissions, says Thorne, but what we do now determines whether we stabilise around that threshold or blast right through it. Does this…

In the first two weeks of February, the U.S. Air Force shot down four flying objects that had intruded on the skies over North America, a deployment of force unprecedented during peacetime. The first object shot down, on Feb. 4, was a Chinese balloon that the Biden Administration says was part of a yearslong scheme to spy on nations across the earth. But so far, officials have been much less detailed about what the other objects are. One shot down over Alaska on Feb. 10 was described as a “car-sized object” that did not appear to have a propulsion source. One downed over Canada on Feb. 11 was described as “cylindrical,” potentially a balloon, but smaller than the Chinese one. And it was not immediately clear what was shot down Feb.…

In the early hours of Monday 6 February, the first of a series of devastating earthquakes struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, with another hitting the region on 20 February. At the time of writing towards the end of the month, more than 50,000 people are known to have lost their lives, and thousands more are missing. Hundreds of thousands have been injured or displaced. The scale of the devastation and human loss is unfathomable – and another humanitarian tragedy is likely to unfold in the coming weeks, as the homeless are forced to rely on grievously inadequate provisions. Governmental organisations, together with various international charities and NGOs, are doing their best to respond to the disaster. Search and rescue efforts comprised the first wave of work but, as time passes,…

WHILE JAPAN’S POPULATION HAS LONG BEEN both shrinking and getting older, Asia’s second biggest economy may be nearing a point of no return, according to government reports and officials. As of October 2022, Japan’s population was 124.94 million, a decrease of over half a million people from 2021 and the twelfth consecutive annual decline, according to a late April report from Japan’s Statistics Bureau. The bureau said the number of working-aged Japanese between 15 to 64 fell to 74.2 million, or 58 percent of the population, the lowest percentage since 1945. Meanwhile, the number of people over 65 rose to 36.23 million, or 29 percent of the population, the highest percentage since 1920. These trends first emerged in the early 1990s, at the tail end of the Japanese economic miracle decade. Low…

THE long-running debate over the origins of covid-19 has taken another turn. A French scientist has spotted genetic sequences that were put on a database by researchers in China that suggest the coronavirus behind the pandemic might have jumped to people from animals such as raccoon dogs at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. Within a few days, the sequences were removed by the same researchers – although Florence Débarre at the French National Centre for Scientific Research managed to download them beforehand and is investigating further. “It is critical that all data that relates to how this pandemic began be made available immediately” “It is really critical that any and all data that relates to how this pandemic began be made available immediately,” Maria Van Kerkhove at the World Health Organization…

“The ability of the user to interact with an interior is of primary importance; better still when the interior can help to improve the owners’ well-being, especially after a tiring day,” says LH Chan, principal designer of TDC & Associates. “The user-friendliness of a space is important because the interior is a living hub and not a cold display piece. A beautiful interior is only the by-product.” All these qualities and more are embodied in the projects by the local firm, which is known for crafting impeccably elegant and timeless abodes in Singapore, Shanghai, and beyond. This beautiful apartment in Singapore’s East Coast neighbourhood is a prime example. The owners, who work in the financial industry, chanced upon the exquisite work of the design firm in a magazine and loved what…

Good design can inspire and delight—a well-crafted space doesn’t just respond to the functional needs of the brief, but offers an immersive and uplifting experience that can improve our well-being. Organised annually by Tatler Homes Singapore, the Tatler Homes Design Awards (THDA) celebrates the innovative spirit and inspiring projects completed by local firms. Now into its sixth iteration, this edition was sponsored by Arova, Gaggenau, Gallery 1819, Hafary, KEF, Liaigre, Sol Luminaire, Synergraphic Design and Toto. The winners of the THDA 2022 were unveiled during a live broadcast from the Liaigre Singapore showroom in Purvis Street; the award recipients attended the event in person to offer their acceptance speeches. A total of 11 accolades were presented during the evening and awarded to the projects and firms that conveyed a beautiful harmony…

1 MACBOOK AIR M2 From £1,249, apple.com How many times can Apple change the game? Before M1 has even had time to bed in, just as the ridiculous two-chips-in-one M1 Ultra starts rolling out, the company has bumped itself up a generation with the M2. Not only that but it has given the MacBook Air a radical redesign that seems to place it firmly at the top of Apple’s laptop stack – even higher, perhaps, than the M2 version of the MacBook Pro. This isn’t a ‘new guts, same case’ type design. Apple shows its continuing commitment to the idea of the notch by cutting a chunk out of the 13.6-inch (2560x1664) liquid retina display to house its much-improved 1080p FaceTime camera; to make up for the slightly reduced screen real estate, its…

When Missouri Senate candidate Lucas Kunce logs on to Zoom for our game of Magic: The Gathering, he isn’t messing around. He has what he calls his “streamer setup”— an extra computer monitor— and has opted for Standard, a dynamic version of the strategic trading-card game where we build decks ahead of time using cards from the most recent sets. I don’t often play Standard, so I’ve “netdecked”—built my deck based off an online list. I soon see a problem: I don’t recognize Kunce’s deck at all. It’s one he’s built himself. He plays Field of Ruin, which destroys one of my nonbasic lands, then does it again by bringing Field back with Conduit of Worlds. He then plays Jace, the Perfected Mind to dump my entire deck into my graveyard,…