Enlarge (credit: SEAN GLADWELL)

Unraveling how consciousness arises out of particular configurations of organic matter is a quest that has absorbed scientists and philosophers for ages. Now, with AI systems behaving in strikingly conscious-looking ways, it is more important than ever to get a handle on who and what is capable of experiencing life on a conscious level. As Christof Koch writes in Then I Am Myself the World, "That you are intimately acquainted with the way life feels is a brute fact about the world that cries out for an explanation." His explanation—bounded by the limits of current research and framed through Koch’s preferred theory of consciousness—is what he eloquently attempts to deliver.

Koch, a physicist, neuroscientist, and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, has spent his career hunting for the seat of consciousness, scouring the brain for physical footprints of subjective experience. It turns out that the posterior hot zone, a region in the back of the neocortex, is intricately connected to self-awareness and experiences of sound, sight, and touch. Dense networks of neocortical neurons in this area connect in a looped configuration; output signals feedback into input neurons, allowing the posterior hot zone to influence its own behavior. And herein, Koch claims, lies the key to consciousness.

In the hot zone

According to integrated information theory (IIT)—which Koch strongly favors over a multitude of contending theories of consciousness—the Rosetta Stone of subjective experience is the ability of a system to influence itself: to use its past state to affect its present state and its present state to influence its future state.

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Campaigners say move to electronic permits by end of the year is a ‘recipe for disaster’ that could leave immigrants without proof of status

Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.

By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.

In thrall to a character who may not truly exist any more, the Labour leader kicked off his election campaign in Purfleet

• Tim Burrows is the author of The Invention of Essex

Call him Southend Keir. The kind of geezer who when in search of a new job – in this case the next prime minister of the UK – rolls up his sleeves and takes himself to dockside Essex. That’s where the Labour leader launched his six pledges for the next election on Thursday, in an aircraft hangar-sized rehearsal space in Purfleet, a town in Thurrock known for its 18th-century gunpowder battery. But there were no explosive pledges. Instead, there were anaesthetised assurances that if elected, Labour will, tentatively, try to make people’s lives a little bit better. Just not straight away.

The significance of Essex was not lost on the Times, which pointed out the party’s attempts “to win over the modern equivalent of Blair’s ‘Essex man’”. Simon Heffer, the Telegraph columnist, came up with the term Essex man in 1990 to describe a new kind of voter who materialised during the Thatcher era. He had sharp elbows and worked as a trader in the City of London, near to where his unionised father had worked on the docks. He may have grown up in a socially rented east London flat, but he now lived in leafier environs on the other side of the newly built M25, where he was likely to have bought a council house.

Gender stereotypes at home may hamper female students’ ability to progress in the classroom, research suggests

Parents are more likely to overestimate maths ability in sons than daughters, according to research that suggests that gender stereotypes at home may hinder the progress of female students.

The findings, presented in a lecture at University College London this week, found that parents tend to be overconfident about their children’s academic performance in reading and maths regardless of gender. But, in maths, parents overestimated boys’ skills to a significantly greater extent.

Chancellor seems to cherrypick data as he tries to outline how the Tories have got the country back on its feet

Jeremy Hunt called a press conference on Friday to outline why the electorate should trust the Conservatives with the economy, but some of his claims appear to have used cherrypicked facts and figures. He gave his speech just over a week after the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, accused the Conservatives of “gaslighting” the UK over the state of the economy by presenting too rosy a picture of what is actually going on.

Here are some of Hunt’s statements on the economy, and some context for his claims.

Marina Hyde: ‘So Russell Brand was baptised in the Thames, and all his sins were washed away. Cheaper than a lawyer, I suppose’; plus Jenny Kleeman meets Raffaella Spone, the woman accused of creating and circulating a damaging ‘deepfake’ video of teenage cheerleaders. The problem? Nothing was fake after all.

‘Strikingly large’ sum being recouped from people who fell foul of system that did not flag overpayments

Ministers are clawing back more than £250m from unpaid carers over benefit infringements that occurred largely as a result of government failures, it can be revealed.

More than 134,000 people who care for loved ones are being forced to repay often huge carer’s allowance overpayments. The debts are incurred in many cases through no fault of their own, and leave carers saddled with enormous debts, and some with criminal convictions.

Supporters gather enough valid signatures to put measure – that would enshrine abortion rights into constitution – on to ballot

Voters in Colorado will have a say on abortion rights this fall after supporters collected enough valid signatures to put a measure on the ballot, part of a national push to pose abortion rights questions to voters since the US supreme court removed the nationwide right to abortion.

The Colorado measure officially made the ballot on Friday and would enshrine abortion rights into the constitution in a state which already allows abortion at all stages of pregnancy despite the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

WTH? DPRK IT WFH: Justice Department says N. Korean hackers are getting remote IT jobs, posing as Americans.

The post North Korea IT Worker Scam Brings Malware and Funds Nukes appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Enlarge / A kitty named Clover prepares to play with a robot arm in the Cat Royale "multi-species" science/art installation . (credit: Blast Theory - Stephen Daly)

Cats and robots are a winning combination, as evidenced by all those videos of kitties riding on Roombas. And now we have Cat Royale, a "multispecies" live installation in which three cats regularly "played" with a robot over 12 days, carefully monitored by human operators. Created by computer scientists from the University of Nottingham in collaboration with artists from a group called Blast Theory, the installation debuted at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, Australia, last year and is now a touring exhibit. The accompanying YouTube video series recently won a Webby Award, and a paper outlining the insights gleaned from the experience was similarly voted best paper at the recent Computer-Human Conference (CHI’24).

"At first glance, the project is about designing a robot to enrich the lives of a family of cats by playing with them," said co-author Steve Benford of the University of Nottingham, who led the research, "Under the surface, however, it explores the question of what it takes to trust a robot to look after our loved ones and potentially ourselves." While cats might love Roombas, not all animal encounters with robots are positive: Guide dogs for the visually impaired can get confused by delivery robots, for example, while the rise of lawn mowing robots can have a negative impact on hedgehogs, per Benford et al.

Blast Theory and the scientists first held a series of exploratory workshops to ensure the installation and robotic design would take into account the welfare of the cats. "Creating a multispecies system—where cats, robots, and humans are all accounted for—takes more than just designing the robot," said co-author Eike Schneiders of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab about the primary takeaway from the project. "We had to ensure animal well-being at all times, while simultaneously ensuring that the interactive installation engaged the (human) audiences around the world. This involved consideration of many elements, including the design of the enclosure, the robot, and its underlying systems, the various roles of the humans-in-the-loop, and, of course, the selection of the cats.”

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Exclusive: FoI request reveals Arts Council updated guidance after discussing Gaza conflict with DCMS

Arts Council England (ACE) issued a warning that “political statements” could break funding agreements after discussions with the government about artists speaking out over the Israel-Gaza war, newly released documents suggest.

A freedom of information request made by the actors’ union Equity has revealed that the conflict was discussed in a meeting between ACE and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in December.

Patients are already dying as wonder drugs lose their effectiveness. International action is urgently needed

As apocalyptic horror stories go, it’s up there with the scariest. Yet it’s not fiction writers but top scientists who are warning of how the world could look once superbugs develop resistance to the remaining drugs against them in our hospital pharmacies. Patients will die who can currently be cured; routine surgery will become dangerous or impossible. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – it happens not only with bacteria but also viruses, fungi and parasites – is one of the top global public health threats facing humanity, says the World Health Organization (WHO). It kills 1.3 million people and contributes to 5 million deaths every year, predicted to be 10 million by 2050. In addition to the appalling human toll, it will increase the strain on and costs of health services. But is it high enough up the agenda? Covid-19 knocked it off, and the climate crisis gets more attention. AMR does not so often get top billing.

This week efforts have been made to change that, with talks at the UN triggering wider coverage chronicling the sorry plight we are in. From the pharmaceutical industry to the WHO to NHS England, the same tune is being played: we are not doing enough to avert disaster.

Exclusive: Experts call for higher taxes and tougher regulation as research shows cost to NHS, other public services and economy

The cost of alcohol abuse is laid bare in a new study that shows £27bn a year being spent in England on the health and social harms of drinking.

The research that found the extra burden on the NHS, social services, the criminal justice system and the labour market cost at least 37% more than in 2003, when comparable research by the Cabinet Office estimated the costs at between £18.5bn and £20bn.

Chancellor also criticised for ‘dodgy dossier’ on Labour plans as he aims to make low tax a key election issue

Jeremy Hunt has been accused of exaggerating the Conservatives’ economic record and presenting a “dodgy dossier” on Labour’s spending plans, as he moved to put low tax at the heart of his party’s offering at the next election.

The chancellor gave a speech in central London on Friday, pitching the Conservatives as having helped the UK recover from economic troubles more quickly than expected. He also signalled a further cut to national insurance in the autumn, having already reduced the tax from 12p in the pound to 8p.

After an 81-year-old’s fatal collision with a cyclist in London’s Regent’s Park, calls have risen for stronger sanctions

It is a bright early spring morning in central London, and inside Regent’s Park the birds are chirping as the sun rises sleepily over the lawns and lake. On the road which encircles the park, however, the mood is anything but lazy.

Scores of cyclists are riding on the 4.5km Outer Circle – some of them clearly commuters, others on racing bikes and dressed in Lycra or the colours of a cycling club. In one five-minute period before 8am, travelling anticlockwise alone, more than 150 riders pass, some in clumps of up to 15.

Shadow foreign secretary sets out vision for a more strategic, less elitist approach to UK diplomacy

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, says his family history as descendants of enslaved people will inform his work in government, as he seeks to deepen the UK’s relations with the global south and the Commonwealth.

“I will take the responsibility of being the first foreign secretary descended from the slave trade incredibly seriously,” he said in a speech setting out how Labour would reform the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), a Whitehall department that has a reputation for institutional conservatism.

Politics is about achieving things and telling a compelling story. But neither the president – nor Starmer – can match Trump’s gift for narrative

The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.

It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Kulveer Ranger resigns Tory whip after committee also recommends suspension from House of Lords for three weeks

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A peer is set to be suspended from House of Lords bars for 12 months after he was found to have bullied and harassed two people while drunk.

Kulveer Ranger has resigned the government whip after the House of Lords conduct committee also recommended that he be suspended from the house for three weeks.

Trump will look to again cast Biden as greatly diminished while Biden will aim to remind voters why they rejected Trump in 2020

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It’s game on for a pair of presidential debates between two unpopular candidates most Americans wish weren’t running for the nation’s highest office.

In a ratatat social media exchange on Wednesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed to participate in two debates on 27 June, hosted by CNN, and on 10 September, hosted by ABC.

Party leader cites concerns about first minister Vaughan Gething’s actions over donation and pandemic message leak

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The first minister, Vaughan Gething, is facing fresh turmoil after Plaid Cymru ended its cooperation agreement with the Labour-led government in Wales.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid leader, said he was deeply concerned that Gething had refused to hand back a £200,000 donation for his successful leadership campaign from a company whose owner was convicted of environmental crimes.

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product, researchers have found

The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.

Jeremy Hunt indicates ministers not opposed to offer from Czech billionaire in principle

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The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has said the UK will look at the national security implications of a bid for Royal Mail by the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, but indicated ministers were not opposed to the takeover in principle.

Royal Mail’s owner, the London-listed International Distributions Services (IDS), on Wednesday backed a £3.5bn bid by Křetínský’s EP Group, after initially rejecting a £3.2bn offer.

Senate judiciary committee chair says supreme court justice biased after report says flag linked to Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claim was flying outside his house

• Upside-down US flag reportedly hung outside Samuel Alito’s home days after Capitol attack

The Hawaii Democratic senator Brian Schatz also had strong words for Samuel Alito after the New York Times reported that a flag associated with Donald Trump’s election lies flew outside his house:

On X, Alicia Bannon, the director of the judiciary program at the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, warned that Samuel Alito’s display of a flag associated with Donald Trump’s election lies was “a five-alarm fire”:

Barclays’ analysis may be slightly off the mark, but the megastar is tapping into a new trend in spending

Taylor Swift has long been credited with an outsized influence on music, celebrity culture – even politics. But reviving the UK’s flagging economy may be too much to ask, even of the sequinned megastar.

Research published this week by analysts from Barclays pointed to the extraordinary spending surge that ensues when Swift touches down, and suggested she could bring a £1bn boost to the UK.

Little change at top between 2021 and 2022 but European names such as Nova beginning to gain favour

New entries to the list of top 100 baby names in England and Wales for 2022 suggest European names are gradually gaining favour, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.

While girls’ names remained largely unchanged from 2021, with Olivia top (most popular with mothers aged 25 and older), followed by Amelia (most popular with mothers aged under 25), Isla and Ava, more unusual names are creeping in.

Fears grow that former president will follow through on threat to roll back gun-control regulations if he wins White House

When Donald Trump last addressed members of the National Rifle Association in February, he pitched himself as a paragon of inaction on gun violence, vowing to again march in lockstep with the gun rights group if he is reelected in November.

“During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” Trump said at the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show then. “When I’m re-elected, every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated.”

Academics’ union calls offer a ‘descent into parody’ while mosques complain about C of E special treatment

It is meant to remind Britons of the “example set by our ultimate public servant”, but a £4.4m government scheme to send out free portraits of Charles III for display in public buildings is not quite going to plan.

After first limiting the availability of the oak-framed pictures of the king in his admiral’s uniform to courts, schools and police and fire services, the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, said this week that any jobcentre, university, Church of England church or hospital could also have one.

Telling patients I can’t get their life-saving medication is awful. The government must act to prevent a real tragedy

• Mike Hewitson owns a pharmacy in west Dorset

For the past 16 years, I have run a small community pharmacy in rural west Dorset. My business is older than me – the little yellow-brick building I own is about to turn 235. Right now, I am really concerned about it getting through the next 12 months.

In my years as a pharmacist, I have never seen things as bad as they are at the moment. We are going through a period of rampant drug shortages in England, caused by global shortages, the NHS’s insistence on paying unsustainably low prices for medicines and Brexit, among other things, and people are on the brink. Long gone are the days when customers could place a prescription order safe in the knowledge their life-saving medication would arrive the next day.

Mike Hewitson owns a pharmacy in west Dorset and is a member of the Community Pharmacy England network. As told to Poppy Noor

Chancellor attempts to draw election battle lines, suggesting he wants to reduce national insurance and Labour intends to raise tax

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Jeremy Hunt has said further tax cuts are on the way in the autumn after the economy has “turned a corner”, as he criticised Keir Starmer for promising “motherhood and apple pie”.

The chancellor attempted to draw the battle lines for the next election by painting the Conservatives as tax-cutters and Labour as intending to raise tax.

My own traumatic experience shows why we must push back against those who try to chip away at our freedom of choice

As the criminal justice bill stumbles through parliament this week – beset by delays and controversies, and picking up amendments as it goes – another woman, Sophie Harvey, is on trial for an alleged illegal abortion, after taking pills to end her pregnancy when she was past the 24-week legal threshold. She was just 19 at the time. She faces a sentence of up to life in prison.

Anyone who cares about women’s rights should be alarmed not just by this trial, but by two new amendments to the bill put forward, targeting abortion in England and Wales. The first, from Caroline Ansell, a Conservative MP, aims to reduce the abortion limit to 22 weeks. The other, tabled by Liam Fox, another Conservative, would stop women’s choice over whether to abort a pregnancy where Down’s syndrome looks likely, up to birth. Currently, she can choose to do so for the entirety of her pregnancy, under ground E of the Abortion Act, which allows for termination if there is “substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.

Plaid Cymru has ended its cooperation agreement with the Welsh Labour government in the Senedd over concerns over donations to leader Vaughan Gething

The Daily Express and Daily Mail have both asked questions about the taxing of pensions. Jeremy Hunt is on combative grounds here. He is asked when calling Labour’s plans a “myth” is he accusing them of lying. He says:

Well, calling them a myth is about as rude as I get. But frankly, it is a lie. I don’t make any bones about it. It is fake news. And it is an absolute disgrace to try and win this election by scaring pensioners about a policy that is not true.

Our argument is this is about the future growth of the economy, because we can see looking around the world that more lightly taxed economies have more dynamic private sectors, they grow faster, and in the end that is more money for precious public services like the NHS.

• Brazil gets 119 votes to 78 for Belgium-Netherlands-Germany
• Infantino says legal threats over Club World Cup are ‘futile’

Brazil was declared the host of the 2027 Women’s World Cup at the Fifa congress, beating the joint bid of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany to become the first South American country to hold the tournament. Brazil’s bid received to host the 10th edition of the competition the backing of 119 member associations, compared with 78 votes for the European bid.

“We knew we would be celebrating a victory for South American women’s soccer and for women,” said the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, Ednaldo Rodrigues. “You can be sure, with no vanity, we will accomplish the best World Cup for women.”

Campaigners say move to use the arts to reinforce economic ties with Riyadh may help to launder Gulf state’s human rights record

It was an unusual gig for YolanDa Brown, the saxophonist and composer who this week performed high above the clouds for a UK delegation on a private British Airways plane bound for Saudi Arabia.

The flight was part of a trade offensive for British businesses and institutions in Riyadh, with Brown’s performance part of a new focus for Saudi-UK relations – international arts.

This dying government is happy to see universities in crisis, the economy damaged and soft power lost – if it wins a few votes

A key turning point in British politics was Tony Blair’s famous three priorities: “education, education, education”. A giant step was his 1999 conference speech: “Today I set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century.” By 2017-18 that symbolic threshold had been crossed in England, with more than half of young people taking that leap forward. In 1980 it was just 15%.

But universities are falling into severe financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, the Tories are not unduly bothered. They attack universities all the time, calling for cuts in student numbers. Now they are plunging the knife into vital funding from foreign students. They ignore pleas from major companies, which wrote to the government this week, to stop a migration policy that is threatening investment in the UK by blocking foreign students.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

John Woodcock, whose review proposes bans for protest groups, has lobbying links to firms in arms and fossil fuel sectors

Activists have accused the government’s independent adviser on political violence of a conflict of interest, after it emerged that he had lobbying links to companies that would benefit from curbs to protesting.

John Woodcock, formerly a Labour MP and now a crossbench peer, has prepared a review of “far-left” involvement in disruptive protest, which includes activism against climate change and war. At the same time, he has been chairing and advising lobby groups representing arms manufacturers and fossil fuel firms.

Scientists point to loopholes in new legislation that have been closed under European Union regulations

New rules intended to reduce the use of antibiotics in farming in the UK have been criticised as too lax and weaker than their equivalent under EU laws.

The updated regulations come into force on Friday. They ban the routine use of antibiotics on farm animals, and specifically their use to “compensate for poor hygiene, inadequate animal husbandry, or poor farm management practices”.

Unite launches bid to persuade Keir Starmer to invest more in north-east Scotland

The UK’s oil and gas workers risk becoming “the coal miners of our generation,” Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, has warned, urging Labour not to ban new North Sea licences without a clear plan to safeguard jobs.

Unite is launching a billboard campaign in six Scottish constituencies aimed at persuading Keir Starmer to commit more investment to north-east Scotland, the centre of the offshore oil and gas industry.

Commitments range from cutting NHS waiting times to delivering economic stability – and are united by a lack of detail

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has unveiled six commitments which, he said, would constitute the first steps taken by a Labour government. The Labour leader was reluctant to use the word “pledge”, but the six statements inevitably drew comparisons with Tony Blair’s 1997 pledge card.

Unlike Labour’s promises going into that election, however, the steps Starmer outlined were generally vague and their success is likely to prove difficult to measure.

Last week, General Motors announced that it would end production of the Chevrolet Malibu, which the company first introduced in 1964. Although not exactly a head turner (the Malibu was "so uncool, it was cool," declared the New York Times), the sedan has become an American fixture, even an icon [...] Over the past 60 years, GM produced some 10 million of them. With a price starting at a (relatively) affordable $25,100, Malibu sales exceeded 130,000 vehicles last year, a 13% annual increase and enough to rank as the #3 Chevy model [...] Still, that wasn't enough to keep the car off GM's chopping block. [...] In that regard, it will have plenty of company. Ford stopped producing sedans for the U.S. market in 2018. And it was Sergio Marchionne, the former head of Stellantis, who triggered the headlong retreat in 2016 when he declared that Dodge and Chrysler would stop making sedans. [...] As recently as 2009, U.S. passenger cars [...] outsold light trucks (SUVs, pickups, and minivans), but today they're less then 20% of new car purchases. The death of the Malibu is confirmation, if anyone still needs it, that the Big Three are done building sedans. That decision is bad news for road users, the environment, and budget-conscious consumers—and it may ultimately come around to bite Detroit.

House Republicans seek recordings of classified documents case interviews, in what Democrats call a ‘purely political’ move

Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.

In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.

Former lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump is under fierce attacks on his credibility by the ex-president’s legal team

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Donald Trump’s lawyer on Thursday attacked the core charge against the former president as he sought to undercut Michael Cohen, the former attorney whose $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels is at the heart of the criminal trial in New York.

The defense, led by the Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, had Cohen admit that technically Daniels entered into a legal contract to sell the rights of her story about a sexual encounter with Trump, apparently in an attempt to justify labelling the repayments as legal expenses.

Republican congressman travels to New York to support former president and says he is ‘standing back, and standing by’

Matt Gaetz echoed Donald Trump’s infamous remarks about the far-right Proud Boys on Thursday, as the Florida Republican congressman and other rightwing supporters of the former US presidentattended his criminal trial in Manhattan.

“Standing back, and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote on social media, with a photo of his group of supporters standing behind Trump outside the court where Trump is on trial on election subversion charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star during the 2016 campaign.

European Commission vice president, Maroš Šefčovič, cites progress on trade and economy for territory but not border checks

Talks on a post-Brexit deal to govern the border between Gibraltar and Spain have broken up without an agreement, although both sides insisted a deal was “getting closer”.

David Cameron, the UK foreign secretary, met the European Commission vice president, Maroš Šefčovič, in Brussels to discuss the British overseas territory on the Iberian peninsula, which has been in limbo since Britain left the EU.

Suppressed DWP study told of hardship endured by carers forced to repay thousands after minor allowance breaches

Ministers were warned three years ago that unpaid carers were being treated unfairly and forced to repay huge sums for minor benefit breaches, a long suppressed government report has revealed.

A Department for Work and Pensions document presented to politicians in 2021 detailed how carers – the majority of whom were on low incomes and spending 65 hours a week caring for loved ones – endured financial hardship, stress and anger after being heavily penalised for falling foul of strict carer’s allowance eligibility rules.

The opposition leader knows that he is being measured for the highest office in the land

The outward purpose of Labour’s campaign event in Thurrock on Thursday was to launch Sir Keir Starmer’s six “first steps” commitments, most of which were already familiar in some way. This was duly done, and with presentational panache. But the event had a far larger objective – to make it clear to the public that the Labour party is now ready to govern Britain.

In all but name this was a general election campaign launch, even though the vote is probably months away. The shadow cabinet was there, seated in rows. The event was professionally prepared, choreographed to include personal stories, none more powerful than that from the cancer patient Nathaniel Dye. There were also important video endorsements of Labour, including from the CEO of Boots, Seb James, and from the former senior Met police officer Neil Basu. Each pledge was presented by the relevant shadow minister. It was structured and slick, evidence of a party that knows what it is doing.

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The Treasury has been quietly selling off the government’s stake at ever-higher prices on a rising market. Why mess with that?

The government’s plan to sell shares in NatWest to the general public is so advanced that the odds on the chancellor pulling the plug on a pet project are slim. Investment bankers from Barclays and Goldman Sachs are doing their well-remunerated stuff, and M&C Saatchi is knocking up some adverts. The go-ahead for a rah-rah pre-election retail share offer is expected any week now.

In a rational world, though, Jeremy Hunt would call the whole thing off. He already has a tried-and-tested method for disposing of the state’s NatWest shares and – this is the point – it is working splendidly.

Prime minister tells TV show panel he loves his constituents and home in Richmond, North Yorkshire

Rishi Sunak has said he will “of course” stay on as an MP if the Conservatives lose the next general election, in his first remarks about what he would do in that scenario.

Asked on ITV’s Loose Women whether he loved the job enough to carry on in those circumstances, the prime minister said: “Yes of course I’m staying, I love being an MP, I love my constituents, I love my home in North Yorkshire, it’s wonderful – and I love being able to get back there.”

One in three office workers who use GenAI admit to sharing customer info, employee details and financial data with the platforms. Are you worried yet?

The post Risks of GenAI Rising as Employees Remain Divided About its Use in the Workplace appeared first on Security Boulevard.