
We asked some of those who have family in Iran to tell us their views on the current crisis
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, has called on the west to help unseat Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Speaking on Friday at a news conference in Washington, Pahlavi said: “The Iranian people are taking decisive action on the ground. It is now time for the international community to join them fully.”
Continue reading...At 81, Jean Stewart was frustrated by her growing frailty, so she decided to get active. Now 96, push-ups, kettlebell squats and pushing a weight-loaded sledge keep her strong
I see people 30 years younger than me and they’ve given up,” Jean Stewart, 96, says. It’s not an attitude she relates to. “I like to do things for myself.”
Stewart was very active in her youth: she played hockey and softball at school and worked for the Girl Scouts for years. As she got older, however, everyday tasks became harder.
Continue reading...In harrowing documentary My Underground Mother, a woman finds out what really happened to her mother in the war
When journalist Marisa Fox was a young girl, her mother would regale her with stories of her own youth, all of which roiled with drama and consequence. When she was a 13-year-old girl living in Poland in the late 1930s, on the brink of the Nazi occupation, her mother told her she was pulled away from her mother and put on a boat to Palestine where she spent the rest of the second world war. As a teenager in that country, she said she became part of a radical Jewish underground group for whom she acted as a spy and a saboteur, smuggling bombs and guns which they used against the British army who ran the country at the time and who they very much wanted to force out. “I was a hero,” her mother would often boast, “never a victim.”
Stories like those both dazzled and horrified the young Fox, but by the time she was nine she began to realize that certain parts of the tale didn’t add up. “I would say to her: ‘Wait a minute, if you were born in 1935 and [the second world war] started in 1939, you would have been four, not 13,’” Fox said. “Whenever I would say that, she would say: ‘No more questions.’”
Continue reading...Progress of artificial general intelligence could stall, which may lead to a financial crash, says Yoshua Bengio, one of the ‘godfathers’ of modern AI
Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.
The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Continue reading...From finding love to becoming a better parent … Philippa Perry, Paul Dolan, Orna Guralnik and others reveal the books that will change your life
Continue reading...Bruised and tainted by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the Labour peer still has admirers – and the drive to go again
The BBC’s interview with Peter Mandelson had offered ample evidence of the Labour peer’s “formidable political brain”, according to Louis Mosley, UK head of the US data firm, Palantir Technologies.
An indefensible error of judgment had been made by Mandelson, Mosley said in a panel discussion with Laura Kuenssberg after the airing of some of the 30-minute interview on her Sunday morning political show, but “he is a masterful interpreter of Trump and we now live in a world where that man will determine much of what happens, and we need people who can be that translation function”.
Continue reading...Prime minister and opposition politicians condemn threat to impose 10% tariff unless deal reached to buy the Arctic island
Keir Starmer has said Donald Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on the UK and seven other European countries over Greenland was “completely wrong”.
The US president said on Saturday that the levies would apply from 1 February to Nato members – including the UK, France and Germany – who have deployed troops to the territory in response to growing uncertainty over its future.
Continue reading...Government extends grip on north after stalled efforts under Ahmed al-Sharaa to reach accommodation with Kurds and fold their forces into national army
Syria’s army has taken control of swathes of the country’s north, dislodging Kurdish forces from territory over which they held effective autonomy for more than a decade.
State media said on Saturday that the army took over the northern city of Tabqa and its adjacent dam, as well as the major Freedom dam, formerly known as the Baath, west of the Syrian city of Raqaa. It came despite US calls to halt the advance.
Continue reading...Three Czech skiers swept away in Murtal district while five killed in Pongau area near Salzburg
An avalanche killed three Czech skiers in central Austria, police said, bringing the total to eight killed in the country’s Alps on Saturday.
Avalanches across the Alps have claimed victims since last week after heavy snowfall.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Amazon, Meta and X among firms holding hundreds of meetings with people at heart of government, data shows
Tech companies have been meeting government ministers at a rate of more than once per working day, enjoying high-level political access that dwarfs that of child safety and copyright campaigners, who called the pattern “shocking” and “disturbing”.
Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X, whose Grok AI image generator has sparked outrage with its sexualised images of women and children, were among the US tech companies holding hundreds of meetings with people at the heart of government, a Guardian investigation has found.
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