Residents of Potters Bar, a small town just north of London, are trying to block what would be one of Europe's largest data centers from being built on 85 acres of rolling farmland that separates their community from the neighboring village of South Mimms. Multinational operator Equinix acquired the land last October after the local council granted planning permission in January 2025, and the company intends to break ground this year on a development it estimates will cost more than $5 billion. The UK government's decision to classify data centers as "critical national infrastructure" and a new "gray belt" land designation that loosens building restrictions on underperforming greenbelt parcels helped clear the path for approval -- even though objections from locals outweighed signatures of support by nearly two-to-one during the public consultation. A protest group of more than 1,000 residents has since appealed to a third-party ombudsman and the UK's Office of Environmental Protection, but has so far failed to overturn the decision.
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No database match for sample found two miles from home offers as search for TV host’s mother enters third week
DNA found on a glove about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house did not result in any leads on the case, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
Unknown male DNA was found on a glove that resembled one worn by Guthrie’s abductor in the surveillance video from the night of the 84-year-old’s disappearance, the FBI said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman expects "human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks" from AI, and believes most work involving "sitting down at a computer" -- accounting, legal, marketing, project management -- will be fully automated within the next year or 18 months. He pointed to exponential growth in computational power and predicted that creating a new AI model will soon be as easy as "creating a podcast or writing a blog."
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‘I’m trying to figure out if I can actually do this’
Woods says he could play in this year’s Masters
Tiger Woods has confirmed he has been asked to captain the US team at Ryder Cup next year. Woods, who has not played competitively since the 2024 Open Championship, has also semi-remarkably left the door open to teeing up in the Masters this year.
With the US still reeling from defeat by Europe at Bethpage in September, thoughts have turned towards attempts to reclaim the Ryder Cup in Ireland. Woods is the PGA of America’s first choice as captain. The 50-year-old will determine whether he believes he can commit sufficiently to the role.
Continue reading...Secretary of state spoke of ‘golden age’ of US-Hungary relations at time of tense transatlantic relations with traditional allies
Even before he in effect endorsed Hungary’s Viktor Orbán before of a crucial parliamentary election, Marco Rubio’s itinerary for Europe promised to be provocative. After meeting with US allies at the Munich Security Conference during a particularly tense moment in transatlantic relations, the US secretary of state departed for Slovakia and Hungary – the two EU states most dependent on Russian energy and sceptical of the bloc’s support for Ukraine.
In what bordered on an explicit political endorsement, Rubio told Orbán that relations between Hungary and the US had entered a “golden age” – and would stay like that for as long as Orban remains in power.
Continue reading...Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and more react to death of the civil rights leader at the age of 84
Three Democratic former presidents led a wealth of tributes on Tuesday to Jesse Jackson, a “titan” of the civil rights movement and “one of America’s greatest patriots” who has died at the age of 84.
The former US president Joe Biden said history would remember Jackson as “a man of God and of the people”, calling him in a post on X: “Determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.”
Continue reading...Sheriff says sample found two miles from home offers no new leads as search for Savannah Guthrie’s mom enters third week
DNA found on a glove about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house did not result in any leads on the case, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
Unknown male DNA was found on a glove that resembled one worn by Guthrie’s abductor in the surveillance video from the night of the 84-year-old’s disappearance, the FBI said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Case became focal point for immigration after he was deported to El Salvador where he faces gang threats
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot re-detain Kilmar Ábrego García because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadorian national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
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Britain has lost more than 14,000 pubs since 2009, a decline from roughly 54,000 registered public houses and bars to under 40,000 by 2022, according to a new analysis of UK business register data by data analyst Lauren Leek. The North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands lost 25 to 30% of their stock; London saw the smallest decline. Leek trained a random forest model on 49,840 pubs and found spatial isolation -- how far a pub stood from its nearest neighbour -- was the single strongest predictor of closure. Median nearest-neighbour distance for surviving pubs is roughly 280 metres; for closed pubs, 640 metres. Each closure pushes remaining pubs further into isolation, a dynamic Leek calls a "spatial death spiral." Much of that isolation traces to ownership. Stonegate, Britain's largest pub company and a holding of PE firm TDR Capital, carries over $4 billion in debt from its 2019 leveraged acquisition of Ei Group. PE-backed and overseas-owned companies now control roughly a quarter to a third of all British pubs.
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Jackson’s two presidential runs brought the civil rights movement into the heart of the Democratic party and opened doors for others to walk through
He witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Forty years later, he joined the jubilant crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park to greet Barack Obama’s election victory and had tears streaming down his face.
Jesse Jackson, who died on Tuesday at the age of 84, was hailed by Martin Luther King III and his wife Andrea King as “a living bridge between generations”. He was the most influential African American political voice between King and Obama. His two runs for the Democratic nomination created the imaginative space for a Black president. He was the architect of a “rainbow coalition” that shapes the Democratic party today.
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