The Guardian — page 27

2073 articlestheguardian.com &nearr;

Coverage, page 27

page 27 of 104

Denmark summons Russia’s ambassador after warship fires flares at Danish army helicopter – Europe live

Danish PM says action was ‘reckless’ as Moscow-attributed security incidents continue to intensify across Europe Separately, Dutch authorities are investigating a major outage that affected parts of the country’s railway system, suspecting a possible sabotage after objects were placed on tracks. The objects caused failures across the network, affecting several level crossings which ‌disrupted road traffic, Dutch rail infrastructure operator Pro Rail said in a statement. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Jakub Krupa15 Sept

Peter Llewellyn-Jones obituary

Pioneer in the teaching of British Sign Language who devoted himself to improving accessibility and opportunity for deaf people Peter Llewellyn-Jones, who has died aged 76, was an interpreter and teacher who helped to establish sign language interpreting as a recognised profession in Britain. Throughout his working life, alongside employment as an actor and writer, he devoted himself to improving accessibility and opportunity for deaf people. He became a pioneer in the teaching of British Sign Language interpreting and linguistics, and wrote the UK’s first undergraduate degree course in the subject, for the University of Wolverhampton in 1992. Peter was also instrumental in developing sign-language interpreting for British television and in bringing it on to the stage; starting in the early 1980s, he worked on 600 professional theatre productions across the UK. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Gary Tippings15 Sept

All the Wrong Moves by Anthony Scaramucci review – confessions of an ex-Trumper

The president’s former press secretary has learned all the right lessons, but how come it took him so long? The most interesting chapter in Anthony Scaramucci’s All the Wrong Moves is the one where the hedge funder turned podcaster goes to work for Donald Trump. It’s summer 2017, and he’s been given the job of comms director, which he doesn’t know how to do, but he and Trump think it’ll work out because they’re both from New York. Or maybe he took it because he had “Potomac fever”, which afflicts Wall Street financiers who find themselves on the riverfront in Washington DC thinking they know how to run a country just because they’re “full of power and judgmental insight … about to fix everything”. This appointment lasts only 11 days, not even enough time to be truly tainted by Trump’s first term, though it is enough time for Scaramucci to miss the birth of his son. The account is a mea culpa soup, with the author full of regrets for his hubris, his impulsivity, his “pride, egotism and asinine stupidity”, the fact that, despite the clear-sightedness bestowed by his humble beginnings, he’d come to assume the collective biases of the rich people he hung out with. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Zoe Williams15 Sept

AI safety requires more than just slowing our pace | Stuart Russell

Safety requirements are non-negotiable. They depend on meeting concrete goals, not just adjusting a timeline It has been a week of high drama in AI, precipitated by the resignation of the AI safety researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic. This followed several weeks of increasingly lurid and disturbing revelations about the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident. My inbox yesterday included a message from Business Insider with the subject line: “AI doomsday debate reaches boiling point”. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Stuart Russell15 Sept

Scrap windfall tax on oil and gas firms early, North Sea industry urges

Labour should replace levy in 2027 rather than 2030 as energy bills are poised to surge over the winter, says lobby group The North Sea oil and gas industry has called on Labour to scrap the windfall tax on fossil fuel firms three years early, as Britain heads into a winter with energy bills expected to reach their highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the industry’s trade body, wants the tax replaced in 2027, rather than in 2030, with a narrower levy that only applies during price spikes. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Alex Daniel15 Sept

Why a decade of doomsday warnings failed to slow the AI race

From Stephen Hawking to Jacob Coxon’s viral Anthropic resignation, fears that AI could threaten humanity have shaken the industry without stopping its pursuit Before an Anthropic researcher resigned and declared human extinction imminent last week, tech leaders and scientists had sounded the alarm about a superintelligent AI ending humanity for over a decade. The development of artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race”, warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 – a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Johana Bhuiyan15 Sept

Thank goodness Labour’s ‘shambolic’ plan to reorganise local councils has been paused. What was it thinking? | Polly Toynbee

This misconceived Treasury pet project may have been foisted on the government, but it would have added to voters’ mistrust in politics Shock reverberated through England’s councils last week. “Beggars belief!” “Shambolic!” council leaders protested to the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), which says: “We’ve never before heard such expletives. They’re apoplectic, incandescent.” And they have every right to be. The government has slammed the brakes on its unexpected reorganisation of local councils. This almost certainly ends the one-size-fits-all, politically damaging remapping of England’s councils , which was never forewarned in Labour’s manifesto. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The Guardian•Polly Toynbee15 Sept

Night of the Coyotes review – border-crossing role-play is tourist attraction in struggling Mexican town

Clara Trischler’s absorbing feature sees residents of the small town of El Alberto hired to play characters in a re-enactment of the migrant experience In contrast to other migration documentaries, which focus on the new life that awaits those who have crossed the border, Clara Trischler’s absorbing second feature trains its gaze on those who are left behind. The suspenseful opening plunges us into a whirl of familiar images: tense whispers in the dead of night as a ragtag group of people stumble, and even crawl, their way towards an unseen border. All of a sudden a blinding light intrudes, guns are fired in the air: a police car has arrived on the scene. This terrifying sequence of events is later revealed to be make-believe. In the small Mexican town of El Alberto, whose population has been depleted by a steady flow of migration to the US, role-playing re-enactments function as both a means of deterrent and, oddly enough, a tourist attraction. Advertised as Caminata Nocturna – “night hike” in Spanish – these events recruit local residents to perform as specific characters, including the fearsome “coyotes”, AKA human traffickers. The attendees experience the full scale of a border-crossing operation, from being loaded on vans to intimidation from their coyotes, and police interrogation. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Phuong Le15 Sept

UK must heed warnings from AI experts, minister says

Louise Haigh will set out benefits of AI to TUC conference while vowing government will take safety seriously Ministers must “heed the warnings” from industry leaders about the threat posed by AI as it looks to capitalise on the technology, the first secretary, Louise Haigh, will say on Tuesday. Labour MPs and peers have called for the government to further cooperate with international partners to build regulation for the technology, after three Anthropic researchers warned that artificial intelligence could kill off humanity within the decade. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor15 Sept

Jaguar Land Rover in talks to sell Defender to Nato countries

Carmaker builds on relationship with British armed forces by seeking to cash in on Europe’s rearmament drive Business live – latest updates Jaguar Land Rover is in talks with Nato countries about selling them the newly revamped Defender military vehicle, as the UK-based carmaker seeks to tap into Europe’s defence spending boom. It is also among carmakers bidding for a UK defence ministry contract worth £900m to replace an ageing fleet of Land Rovers that have been out of production since 2016, competing with General Motors and the UK’s Ineos. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Julia Kollewe15 Sept

Leading UK retailers ‘breaking law’ by not refunding customers for returned goods, Which? finds

Consumer group says online shops routinely failed to reimburse delivery costs of unwanted purchases or cost of items Leading retailers are breaking the law by failing to properly refund customers for returned goods, a Which? investigation has found. Some of the UK’s biggest online shops routinely failed to reimburse delivery costs when customers returned unwanted purchases, while others failed to refund the cost of the goods themselves. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Sarah Marsh, Consumer affairs correspondent15 Sept

Pietersen was the original Bazball – and his return may be just what England need | Barney Ronay

While there’s a statistically significant chance it will all go south, KP’s mentorship could be a throwback to better days At the end of his time as consultant to the England cricket setup Gilbert Enoka praised Brendon McCullum’s incredible work in healing the culture of his team. Enoka is best known as the architect of the no-dickheads policy in sport. This is basically Doctor Dickhead. Dickheads? He’s not having them. “There wasn’t one dickhead in there,” Enoka announced, proudly. And history has shown this to be correct. All the evidence suggests the numerical value of dickheads in the England cricket team was something other than one. And yes, zero is not one. Fair point. But so are all the other numbers, the ones that go up the other way into plurals, multiples, an infinity of dickheads. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Barney Ronay15 Sept

Conservation ‘gateway drug’: farmers embrace ancient craft of hedge laying

Grant applications in England surge as interest grows in habitat that captures carbon and helps reduce flood risk The ancient craft of hedge laying is experiencing a strong revival as farmers use techniques that peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries to boost wildlife, capture carbon and help tackle flooding. Hedge laying, which restores and revives mature hedges to keep them fresh, was among the four most popular categories of capital grants selected by farmers out of a total pot of £225m provided by the government this year to support practical environmental improvements on farms and across the countryside. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Sandra Laville15 Sept

Are Manchester United as poor as the early Premier League table suggests?

Michael Carrick’s side are 13th in the table after four games but, City mitigation aside, several areas need attention Manchester United are 13th in the Premier League, having taken four points from their first four games: a 2-0 defeat at Hull, 5-2 win against Ipswich, 2-2 draw at Everton and the 1-0 defeat by Manchester City on Sunday. Mitigation regarding the City reverse can be found in the derby coming three days after the Champions League win against Sabah on Thursday, with Enzo Maresca’s side having 48 hours more rest after winning at Porto. So are United, who host Brighton in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday before visiting Fulham in the league on Sunday, as poor as the table suggests? Continue reading...

The Guardian•Jamie Jackson15 Sept

Lucy Letby: will final report express view on nurse’s guilt and could it affect her case?

Final report from Lady Justice Thirlwall’s wide-ranging inquiry to be published on Tuesday Lady Justice Thirlwall’s report from the Lucy Letby inquiry will be published on Tuesday after public and private hearings into the events at the Countess of Chester hospital linked to the nurse’s convictions for the murder and attempted murder of babies. Here we take a look at the inquiry and report. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Jamie Grierson15 Sept

Trump facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies

President has dismissed anxieties over AI’s dangerous potential even as Democrats and some Republicans acknowledge risks Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies. Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity. Continue reading...

The Guardian•David Smith and Chris Stein in Washington and Nick Robins-Early in New York15 Sept

UK companies keep shedding staff as pay growth slows, meaning state pension could rise by 3.9% – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as wage growth – used to set triple-lock pension – slows to 3.9% Helen Morrissey, head of retirement analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, is also expecting the state pension to rise by 3.9% next year under the triple-lock system. Morrissey explains: “Pensioners stand to be almost £490 better off next year as today’s earnings figures have a huge impact on next year’s state pension. The data, alongside September’s inflation figure and 2.5%, is a key component of the triple lock formula used to increase state pensions. With CPI inflation currently sitting at 2.9% it seems increasingly likely that today’s 3.9% increase in average earnings will be the figure used. This would put someone on the full new state pension on course to receive £250.70 per week from next April – up from the current £241.30 per week. Someone on a full basic state pension would receive £192.10 per week – up from £184.90. “Today’s earnings figures show wage growth running at 3.9%, which puts a State Pension increase of a similar magnitude firmly on the cards next April under the triple lock. “If confirmed, this would see the full New State Pension rise to over £13,000. While we will need to wait for September’s inflation figure before the uprating mechanism is formally confirmed, inflation is currently expected to remain below earnings growth, making an earnings-led increase the most likely outcome. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Graeme Wearden15 Sept

UK pay growth slows to 3.9% before crunch interest rates decision

Figure likely to dictate rise in state pension triple lock, as workers face inflation squeeze fuelled by oil price rises Business live – latest updates Wage growth in the UK slowed in July as workers came under pressure from a renewed cost of living squeeze fuelled by the Iran war, highlighting the challenge for the Bank of England as it prepares to set interest rates. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show average growth in total earnings, including bonuses, eased to 3.9% in the three months to July, down from 4.1% in the three months to June, matching the forecasts of City economists. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Richard Partington Senior economics correspondent15 Sept

What would it take to make India’s cities better – and safer?

After a five-storey building collapsed in Delhi, focus is on how urban areas can adapt to growing populations. Plus, Ahmedabad’s ace newspaper delivery driver goes viral Recently, I may have saved a woman’s life on the road. Somehow, this was something I had expected to happen. On that day, I saw a truck leave a construction site with a tangled wire trailing behind. I frantically looked to see what the wire was attached to and spotted the scaffolding a few meters ahead. I shrieked and grabbed the hand of the woman walking in front of me just as the metal pipes came crashing down. We hugged for a brief second, and then walked our separate ways. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Niha Masih15 Sept

‘I was being polite’: prominent athlete continued texting Alan Jones after alleged assaults due to his reputation, trial hears

Witness tells court he sent Jones friendly messages after two alleged assaults because he had been generous to him Listen to the podcast Alan Jones on Trial Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A prominent athlete who has accused Alan Jones of twice kissing him without consent has told a Sydney court he continued to text the broadcaster after the alleged assaults because Jones was powerful and had been generous to him. The witness, who is appearing for a second day in the seventh week of a lengthy trial, agreed he had sent Jones friendly messages after the two alleged assaults. Continue reading...

The Guardian•Amanda Meade Media correspondent15 Sept