️ Latest news from the second round at Augusta National
️ Official leaderboard | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail Scott
Wyndham Clark’s birdie putt at 6 looks good. A straight roll. But it drifts a little to the right just before reaching the cup, enough to kink out. That really did look like it was going in. So he remains at -3 for both his round and the Tournament overall. He’s no longer the only player out there in red for his round today: Im Sungjae, who finished second on debut in the November Masters of 2020, birdies 7 and 8 to move into credit today – he’s +3 overall – while the old trooper Freddie Couples birdies 2 to get back to +5. Such a shame about that hideous run at 15, 16 and 17 yesterday - quadruple bogey, double bogey, double bogey – but you can forgive a 66-year-old for running out of gas under the heat of the late-afternoon sun.
The Par 3 Contest winner Aaron Rai starts his second round calmly and confidently. Tea Olive found in regulation, and a long birdie putt that shaves the hole. He remains at -1 after yesterday’s 71, a round that promised more after going out in 33. Meanwhile Wyndham Clark’s run of consecutive birdies comes to an end at 5. Just a par, though he’s now landed his tee shot at 6 into the heart of the green, using the slope to bring his ball towards the flag tucked away front left. He’ll have a good look at birdie from 18 feet, a putt not exactly flat and straight, but as flat and straight as they come around here.
Continue reading...PM pushes back after Trump’s threats to leave alliance and says European members must do more in light of Iran war
Keir Starmer has said it is in the best interests of the US to stay in Nato and that Europe must do more to support the alliance in light of the war in Iran.
The British prime minister, speaking at the end of a multi-stop trip around the Gulf to discuss the tentative ceasefire and options to fully reopen the commercially vital strait of Hormuz, pushed back against Donald Trump’s threats to leave the defence alliance.
Continue reading...Petition with 4,000 signatures decries ‘slap in the face’, saying Philz made fortune off LGBTQ+ community
Philz, a popular coffee chain with locations across California, is facing growing criticism after news broke that the San Francisco-based company planned to remove Pride flags from its stores.
The move is part of an effort to “[create] a more consistent, inclusive experience across all our stores, including removing a variety of flags and other decor”, Mahesh Sadarangani, the company’s CEO, said in a statement to SFGate. The company did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Continue reading...Melania Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House on Thursday to announce that she ‘never had a relationship’ with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Her address has seemingly put Epstein back on the political agenda when focus had been firmly on the US and Israel’s war in Iran.
The intervention came at a difficult time for her husband, Donald Trump, as the fragile ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran seemed to be at risk of falling apart, and as US lawmakers are raising the alarm over the president’s mental stability.
Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian US editor, Betsy Reed – watch on YouTube
Jonathan Freedland on Politics Weekly America with the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief David Smith on whether Trump could be forced out of office – listen here or wherever you get your podcasts
Continue reading...Futurism found that Google News is surfacing Polymarket betting pages alongside traditional news sources. "The bets often appear in the 'For you' section of Google News, which is tailored to a user's personal interests," the publication reports. "In one instance, it was even the very top result, as with this bet on the price of Bitcoin." From the report: In our testing, Polymarket bets are also showing up on the Google News home page. But links from the prediction market can pop up all over Google News, including in searches. In further tests, looking up "will ships transit the strait," referring to the Strait of Hormuz, returned numerous credible sources like Financial Times, The Guardian, and Reuters. Just below them, however, was a Polymarket bet on the number of ships that would be allowed to pass through the critical oil passageway. This doesn't appear to be an accident. When searching "Polymarket" in its search bar, Google News now allows users to choose it as a "source," directing them to a page that aggregates other Polymarket hits. It's not the only non-news site that's selectable as a source -- looking up "Reddit" and "X" offers the option, too -- but searching for "Kalshi," another prediction market and Polymarket's main competitor, doesn't give the option to use it as a source. [...] In light of all this, Polymarket appearing in Google News is a major victory for the prediction platform -- rubber-stamping its image as an authority on developing real-world events right alongside genuine real publishers of journalism.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Claude Mythos’s apparent superhuman hacking abilities are alarming experts as the Trump administration remains blinded by hostility
In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled. Blood shortages followed and delays to blood tests led to a patient’s death.
Lethal cyber-attacks like this are thankfully rare. But a new AI release could change that – plunging us into a terrifying new world of chaos and disruption to the digital systems that we rely on.
Shakeel Hashim is the editor of Transformer, a publication about the power and politics of transformative AI
Continue reading...Claude Mythos’s apparent superhuman hacking abilities are alarming experts as the Trump administration remains blinded by hostility
In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled. Blood shortages followed and delays to blood tests led to a patient’s death.
Lethal cyber-attacks like this are thankfully rare. But a new AI release could change that – plunging us into a terrifying new world of chaos and disruption to the digital systems that we rely on.
Shakeel Hashim is the editor of Transformer, a publication about the power and politics of transformative AI
Continue reading...️ Latest news from the second round at Augusta National
️ Official leaderboard | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail Scott
Wyndham Clark’s birdie putt at 6 looks good. A straight roll. But it drifts a little to the right just before reaching the cup, enough to kink out. That really did look like it was going in. So he remains at -3 for both his round and the Tournament overall. He’s no longer the only player out there in red for his round today: Im Sungjae, who finished second on debut in the November Masters of 2020, birdies 7 and 8 to move into credit today – he’s +3 overall – while the old trooper Freddie Couples birdies 2 to get back to +5. Such a shame about that hideous run at 15, 16 and 17 yesterday - quadruple bogey, double bogey, double bogey – but you can forgive a 66-year-old for running out of gas under the heat of the late-afternoon sun.
The Par 3 Contest winner Aaron Rai starts his second round calmly and confidently. Tea Olive found in regulation, and a long birdie putt that shaves the hole. He remains at -1 after yesterday’s 71, a round that promised more after going out in 33. Meanwhile Wyndham Clark’s run of consecutive birdies comes to an end at 5. Just a par, though he’s now landed his tee shot at 6 into the heart of the green, using the slope to bring his ball towards the flag tucked away front left. He’ll have a good look at birdie from 18 feet, a putt not exactly flat and straight, but as flat and straight as they come around here.
Continue reading...Military euphemisms can be deadly. Yet the brutal rhetoric of the US and Israel is proving still more lethal
“Metaphors can kill,” the linguist George Lakoff wrote in an influential essay on the Gulf war. “The use of a metaphor with a set of definitions becomes pernicious when it hides realities in a harmful way.” He described the effects of the US employment of business cost-and-benefit analogies, sporting comparisons and the fairytale of the just war with heroes and villains.
All veiled the reality of conflict. Euphemism was long the preferred choice for the US military. Spokespeople discussed “collateral damage” rather than civilian deaths and “surgical strikes”, framing destruction as both precise and part of a necessary and ultimately healing process. Donald Trump chooses naked menace instead. This week he issued a genocidal threat against Iran, having previously threatened to bomb it “back to the stone age” and destroy bridges and power plants – schools and medical facilities having already been pulverised. He said that he was “not at all” concerned about potential war crimes.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...Outrage from survivors follows first lady’s statement calling on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse
More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have accused Melania Trump of “shifting the burden” on to them after she called on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse.
“Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony,” said a group of 13 people and the brother and sister of the late Virginia Giuffre, who was one of the most vocal Epstein accusers, in a statement. “Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility not justice.”
Continue reading...Melania Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House on Thursday to announce that she ‘never had a relationship’ with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Her address has seemingly put Epstein back on the political agenda when focus had been firmly on the US and Israel’s war in Iran.
The intervention came at a difficult time for her husband, Donald Trump, as the fragile ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran seemed to be at risk of falling apart, and as US lawmakers are raising the alarm over the president’s mental stability.
Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian US editor, Betsy Reed – watch on YouTube
Jonathan Freedland on Politics Weekly America with the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief David Smith on whether Trump could be forced out of office – listen here or wherever you get your podcasts
Continue reading...Former vice-president spoke before a crowd at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network gathering in New York
Kamala Harris said she is “thinking about” running in the 2028 presidential election.
“I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” the former vice-president told the crowd at a gathering of the National Action Network (NAN), a civil rights organization founded by Al Sharpton, on Friday in New York City.
Continue reading...