3+ week, 5+ day ago (412+ words) Hard to recreate "higher calling" of England job, he says Southgate trying to "make a difference" in other areas Sir Gareth Southgate says he is not looking for a return to football management, saying it would be hard to recreate the "higher calling" he found as England"s manager. Southgate indicated he intends to focus on working with young people and helping to counter the "negative narrative" he says is found in the country. In an interview on BBC Radio 4"s Today programme, Southgate was asked how he responded to being linked with vacant management roles in the Premier League and elsewhere. "I"ve had one of the most incredible jobs in football which also had a higher purpose because it was my country," he replied. "That"s going to be very hard to replicate. Having had 37 years in football…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago (413+ words) Plucked from obscurity, James Cartlidge messed up his maths while his opposite number had forgotten his politics 101 And right now, Jimmy C will be more than pleased if all this stays that way. That he slips beneath every radar. Because right now he has locked himself inside a cupboard and is refusing to come out. Two shrinks have been brought in from the Priory to try to get him to come out quietly. "It's OK," they can be heard saying. "It's safe now. Everyone has gone away. Who are you again?" With Keir Starmer away in Brazil at Cop30, Kemi Badenoch had used the opportunity to go to Aberdeen to make the case for fossil fuels " it's almost as if she comes pre-programmed to be misguided on everything " so this week's PMQs was left in the less than capable hands of…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago (425+ words) The use of AI in the surprise game-of-the-year contender has sparked a heated cultural and ethical debate, and raised existential questions for artists, writers and voice actors Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Estimated playtime: three to four hours Nintendo has released the first image from the forthcoming Legend of Zelda movie, starring Bo Bragason and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, pictured here lounging in a meadow. In it, Link looks very Ocarina of Time; I am reassured that Princess Zelda is holding a bow, which hopefully indicates she'll be a part of the action rather than a damsel in distress. The nominations for December's Game awards are out, led by Ghost of Y'tei, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Death Stranding 2. (The Guardian has been a voting outlet for the awardspreviously, but is not this year.) As we reported last week, the annual…...

3+ week, 1+ day ago (1565+ words) After nine weeks of inquiry evidence, a picture has emerged of systemic breakdown and poor information sharing Of all the professionals who studied Axel Rudakubana before his murderous attack in Southport last summer, the notes of a rookie police officer in 2019 may be the most prescient. The actions of Rudakubana, then aged 13, showed "potential for huge escalation, wrote PC Alex McNamee after spending just 20 minutes with the teenager when he admitted taking a knife to school to attack a bully. The risk, he wrote, was "high. Yet by July 2024, six days before his knife rampage, Rudakubana had been discharged from mental health services after five years with a perfunctory report that concluded: "Poses risk to others " None. The failures that left Rudakubana, then 17, able to murder three young girls " Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot…...

4+ week, 9+ hour ago (619+ words) When courts ban people from accessing leaked data " as happened after the airline's data breach " only hackers and scammers win It's become the playbook for big Australian companies that have customer data stolen in a cyber-attack: call in the lawyers and get a court to block anyone from accessing it. Qantas ran it after suffering a major cybersecurity attack that accessed the frequent flyer details of 5 million customers. The airline joined the long list of companies in Australia, dating back to the HWL Ebsworth breach in 2023, to go to the New South Wals supreme court to obtain an injunction against "persons unknown" " banning the hackers (and anyone else) from accessing or using the data under threat of prosecution. Of course, it didn't stop hackers leaking the customer data on the dark web a few months later. But it might have…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago (558+ words) Prison governors in England summoned to an urgent meeting with ministers as deputy PM comes under scrutiny The overnight Guardian version of the story is here. Here is a round-up of the latest developments on this story this morning. The Ministry of Justice has said that Lammy did not tell MPs about the accidental release of the Algerian offender in the Commons yesterday because he did not have full information about it. In a statement released last night, an MoJ spokersperson said: The crisis in the prison system this government inherited is such that basic information about individual cases can take unacceptably long to reach ministers. On entering the house, facts were still emerging about the case and the DPM had not been accurately informed of key details including the offender's immigration status. No media story about the individual case…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (470+ words) When account was suspended my brother-in-law was caught in debt as 200 penalty charge notices piled up My brother-in-law has received 200 penalty charge notices (PCNs) for unpaid ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) charges in London. He set up an auto pay account for his non-Ulez-compliant van, but because of a series of blunders has paid "11,445 in fines, owes another "1,400, and is facing bills for 70 more fines after losing his appeals. It began last December when his auto pay account was suspended and PCNs began arriving. The account was reinstated by TfL with a different spelling of his surname, so his appeals of his PCNs were refused because he was deemed to be a "third party. TfL has refused to let him pay the debts through an individual voluntary arrangement. He has dyslexia and a serious chronic autoimmune disease triggered by stress. His…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (415+ words) Climate Action Tracker report finds pledges made in past year have not cut the forecast for global heating Away from the official Cop30 negotiations, members of the Amazon's indigenous communities were gathering in Bel'm's university yesterday for the inauguration of a parallel People's Summit. Pictures filed by news agencies showed people dancing, singing and mingling at the event, on the grounds of the Federal University of Para, just a couple of miles from the conference centre where the UN climate summit is taking place. This year's climate conference is the first being held in the Amazon rainforest, a symbolic choice by the host country, Brazil, in part to ensure that Indigenous peoples have a larger presence. But some have nonetheless felt excluded from proceedings, frustrations which contributed to a fracas on Tuesday night when protesters tried to force their way in…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (724+ words) The telco pays up after scammers exploited ID check weakness at subsidiary Coles Mobile. Follow today's news live Follows on from previous post The proposed reforms to work health and safety laws clarifies the responsibility around the use of these systems and will allow union representatives to gain access to the algorithms behind the systems so they can fully understand how they are impacting workers " and take action to enforce labour standards, if required. The amendments will place an obligation on the person legally responsible for the business to ensure these digital tools do not lead to unsafe workloads, unreasonable performance tracking, excessive surveillance or discriminatory work allocation. The NSW minister for industrial relations, Sophie Cotsis, said. As digital systems become more common in workplaces, the Minns Labor government is making sure that these systems help businesses without undermining the…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago (1128+ words) When Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine posted complaints about their local primary school, they never expected six uniformed police officers to turn up at their door Before it catapulted a small school community in London's commuter belt into the centre of a global news story, the year-four class WhatsApp group at Cowley Hill school in Borehamwood was unremarkable " a place of snide comments, reminders about non-uniform day and flustered messages about being late for the school run. "It was mum gossip, you know?" said one member, Sarah. "A bit juicy, but it wasn't anything nasty." In its own " thoroughly improbable " way, it raised a question that might feel familiar to many whose phones get overtaken by the school group chat: what's the difference between a concerned parent, a busybody and someone who should face the full force of the law?...