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Nearly a decade after his first election as president, Emmanuel Macron is presiding over a tense country sliding toward the fiscal brink.
Mark LandlerEuropeFrance
US tech giant says small AI models may soon be capable of self-replication without access to a data centre.
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Military police investigator tells an inquiry that the probe into suspected murders was "dictated" from above.
Defence also cross-examines witness over postmortem examinations of Jesse Baird and Luke DaviesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA bullet hole left in a bedroom door and DNA found in the barrel of the firearm have been scrutinised in court as Beau Lamarre-Condon’s double murder trial continues in Sydney.Lamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of fatally shooting Jesse Baird and Luke Davies with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home in on 19 February 2024. Continue reading...
Kat WongNew South WalesSydney
Mobeen Azhar isn’t afraid to tackle hard topics in a brilliant documentary about the rise of Islamophobia – even when it involves hearing criticism about his own decisions In 2024, the journalist Mobeen Azhar made a documentary called Small Town, Big Riot that ought to have been highly influential, but, in our atomised modern media landscape, wasn’t. He deconstructed how anti-immigrant racists, radicalised by online propaganda, lies and hearsay, end up on the streets perpetrating shocking violence and rioting against a largely imaginary foe.Azhar’s new film tackles a wider, thornier problem and is less satisfying as a result. But in his willingness to debate hard topics – even if it means hearing difficult arguments, some of which are aimed at him personally – he is still provoking thoughts and airing views that better-known journalists would never go near. Continue reading...
Jack SealeTelevisionCulture
Russia’s silence over the death of a lab worker underlines that pandemic preparedness amounts to nothing if information on threats is withheldIn pandemic preparedness work, scientists like to focus on the technical challenges: identifying pathogens, diagnosing infections, understanding their effects and developing vaccines and treatments. Each step promises progress through human innovation, investment and planning. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, brings experts together to identify and prioritise emerging disease threats and collect the evidence needed to prepare for them. But preparedness depends on more than scientific innovation.As the past week has shown, politics is the elephant in the room in all of this. No one could have predicted we would be talking about pneumonic plague, and that the death of a single lab worker in Russia would cause global headlines. It mig
Devi SridharInfectious diseasesWorld Health Organization
Debut feature from Ben Sottak provides outlandish Halloween-based scares, with Milly Shapiro superb as the naive yet resilient home-defender, Pumpkin Home Alone meets Mad Max in this atmospheric seasonal chiller, named for Halloween and not a cheery greeting. A disease has wiped out most of humanity, leaving 16-year-old Pumpkin (Milly Shapiro) stranded alone in her rural family home in the middle of nowhere for the best part of four years. This classic American clapboard house has always been the perfect quaint yet unsettling place to celebrate Halloween, and she determines to uphold the family tradition and do just that, sending a radio broadcast to anyone listening to invite them to celebrate spooky season with her. Unfortunately, the message is picked up by some less than wholesome types, led by Thalia (Shannyn Sossamon), thus setting the stage for the proverbial to hit the fan.It’s t
Catherine BrayFilmHorror films
The great Irish writer died, a broken man, at only 46. Imagining a second act for him is a great idea – but the results are sentimental and unconvincingIn 1895, four days after the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, the Marquess of Queensberry left a card at Oscar Wilde’s club that publicly accused him of “posing as a somdomite”. Instead of instigating the libel case that led to his imprisonment and early death in a Paris hotel just five years later, what would have happened if Wilde had simply torn that card up? John Boyne’s new novel sets out to answer that intriguing question.For starters, Boyne contrives a fate for Wilde’s beloved Lord Alfred Douglas which entertainingly redistributes the details of the real Wilde’s life before, during and after his time in Reading jail. This sets up the novel’s cat-and-mouse game with the history it is reimagining. Wilde himself, convenient
Neil BartlettFictionBooks
(XL)This is a beguiling, endlessly inventive and frequently astonishing fifth LP from a group at increasing ease with being the best band of their generationFifteen centuries ago, the Byzantine archbishop Theophilus of Adana did first-hand business with the devil for his own superficial betterment. Today, we just blindly tick a little box marked “accept terms and conditions” or let high-street snake oil merchants inject poison into our faces. The Faustian pact has become as depressingly banal as it is endemic and destructive – and unlike Theophilus, we can’t rely on the Virgin Mary to save us now. In the midst of headlines about AI destroying humanity, the idea of listening to music submerged in precisely this shade of doom might sound like, well, hell. If anyone can thread that poisoned needle, it’s Fontaines DC.When the Dublin band introduced their last album, 2024’s Romance, it came w
Laura SnapesFontaines DCMusic
Modernity means cities – or so we’re told. This bold new study of those who make their living from the land argues otherwiseThe word “peasant” has a negative edge: it has come to mean someone ignorant, unsophisticated, lowborn. Such an attitude, writes Maraym Aslany in this impressive piece of anthropology-cum-history, is “a residue of the massive psychodrama which made us who we are … we became modern by expelling the peasant parts of ourselves”. Her book weaves together a global history of peasants and an account of the four years she spent travelling in India, Cambodia, Peru and Ghana, living with and talking to peasant families.She aims to challenge the notion that the decline of the peasantry is the necessary condition for becoming “modern”. This notion arose in Britain, the first country to rid itself of its peasants when, with the enclosure acts, it turned its land from a common g
Joe MoranHistory booksScience and nature books
A giant screen, big battery, rapid chip and top cameras push the great iPhone 18 Pro to the max with a price tag to matchApple’s largest Pro iPhone gets its biggest battery upgrade yet to make it a true two-day phone with new Siri AI and a variable aperture camera.The iPhone 18 Pro Max is the supersized sibling of the regular 18 Pro and, though it is no longer Apple’s most expensive phone thanks to the £2,000 iPhone Duo, it has a similarly large price tag to match costing from £1,299 (€1,599/$1,299/A$2,299).Screen: 6.9in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)Processor: Apple A20 ProRAM: 12GBStorage: 256, 512GB or 1TBOperating system: iOS 27Camera: 48MP + 48MP UW + 48MP 4x, 18MP front-facingConnectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)Dimensions: 163.4 x 78 x 8.75mmWeight: 249g Continue reading...
Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editoriPhoneApple
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