The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

An Israeli professor lost a prestigious US job offer after speaking out on Gaza. Now the university is paying him $250,000

The University of Minnesota withdrew an offer from Raz Segal to lead its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies after an organized campaign against his hiring

When the University of Minnesota (UMN) extended an offer to historian Raz Segal to lead its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in June 2024, it did so upon the near-unanimous recommendation of a committee of academics after a rigorous search process. The scholars had enthusiastically praised Segal, with one committee member describing a presentation he gave as “breathtaking”.

But five days after making the offer, the university abruptly withdrew it, citing “perspective” it had received from members of the community. The reversal followed backlash over Segal’s criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he called “a textbook case of genocide” in an October 2023 op-ed published in Jewish Currents. Segal’s critics condemned the piece, published just days after the 7 October attacks in Israel, accusing him of justifying Hamas crimes – an assertion that Segal rejected and the article does not sustain.

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Practical Magic review – Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock’s 90s witchy fantasy still enchants

Preceding a long-awaited sequel, Griffin Dunne’s supernatural suburban romance gets a big-screen rerelease. With its romcom quirk, buttery cinematography and stabs of black comedy, it remains a zany gem

With a sequel shortly to make an appearance – Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest (but not Evan Rachel Wood) all reprising their roles – the original Practical Magic from 1998 is now getting a rerelease. This is Griffin Dunne’s smalltown supernatural goof-fest, adapted from a bestseller by Alice Hoffman; the sequel is based on her own follow-up, The Book of Magic. A zanier adventure in occult romance can hardly be imagined, and the elements of grown up noir violence only make it weirder – it is as if The Witches of Eastwick took on something of Thelma & Louise with a decaffeinated David Lynch. Meanwhile, cinematographer Andrew Dunn bathes the daytime scenes in a golden, buttery light.

In a suburban American anytown, buttoned-up residents and frowning soccer moms are disapprovingly obsessed with the fact that the local Owens family womenfolk are witches. There is an amusing “prelude” scene showing a Salem-style public hanging of one of their ancestors; a stark stab of black comedy. In the present day, the Owens sisters Sally and Gillian, played by Bullock and Kidman, are intensely aware of their magical inheritance, as personified by naughty maiden aunts Frances and Bridget, played by Channing and Wiest.

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‘The first time I felt art in my nose’: why a critic missed the point when he called my exhibition meaningless

Projects like London’s Backyard Biennial East are collective endeavours aiming to reach people who feel excluded by art galleries

In 2018, on the outside wall surrounding the entrance of the National Theatre of Bangladesh, I first encountered a work by the artist Reetu Sattar. A group of musicians were perched on construction scaffolding, all dressed in white and playing a single note on the harmonium – an instrument used in Bengali classical music. Together, they produced a low hum that seemed to vibrate through everything around me. The work was called Lost Tune.

I came across the work at a time when I desperately wanted to learn a musical instrument, but music was not allowed in my house. A growing sentiment in many Bangladeshi Muslim households held that music was prohibited in Islam, despite our long histories of musical traditions. It felt as though everything we knew of the past had been locked away inside the Jadu Ghor, the “magic house” (the Bangla words for museum), quietly collecting dust.

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Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace issues first building contract – for a military base

Exclusive: Louisiana firm awarded tender to build rudimentary outpost to house Moroccan troops

Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract in the devastated territory: a project to build a rudimentary 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops, a source familiar with the matter told the Guardian.

The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq.

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Students using AI to cheat will face stricter rules, says Danish government

Teenagers must make oral defence of essays and schools will monitor computers during exams under crackdown

Danish teenagers will have to make an oral defence of their written essays to combat AI cheating, the government has announced.

Pupils aged 16 to 19 at upper secondary school (known in Denmark as gymnasiet) will also be encouraged to do written assignments at school under controlled conditions, including monitoring of their computer screens, rather than at home.

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The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

IT department put sticky notes on the laptops to help employees log in

PWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the weekly column where we lovingly poke fun at other organizations' security screw-ups, in hopes the rest of us can learn a valuable lesson. This week’s story involves an IT department that ought to know better putting user credentials in the precisely wrong place. Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at pwned@sitpub.com. Anonymity is available upon request. Our terrifying tech tale comes courtesy of Marc Bishop, director of business growth at Wytlabs, a marketing and SEO company. In the course of his career, Bishop came across one firm where the people guarding the henhouse left the keys out where almost anyone could get them. Bishop’s client company was responsible on the surface. They had a strong password policy and even made users take security training. Then they moved offices, and that's when basic security hygiene went out the window. The company decided to take some old laptops and give them out to new users. To make life easy for the recipients, they put sticky notes – everyone’s favorite credential-sharing tool – on the laptops with the name of each employee and their initial login credentials on it. Let’s just stop for a moment to remark on how bad it is to put usernames and passwords on a piece of paper where the wrong person could see them. Even the IT department should not know your password, should someone in IT themselves turn rogue. So, even if the laptop stayed on a shelf in a closet that only the support staff had access to, having that sticky note would be bad. However, our situation is even worse because the laptops in question were stored in a conference room while the facilities team finished readying the office for the move. During that time, anyone who had access to the conference room could go in and get multiple user account credentials. And that's exactly what happened: A contractor entered the conference room and took pictures of the sticky notes. This non-employee later logged in remotely and accessed all kinds of proprietary data, including planning documents that were sitting on shared drives. What’s particularly shocking about this story is that the IT department was the cause of the information leak. People who work in tech and are charged with maintaining security should never put a password, even a temporary password, out in the open. Password security is paramount. If someone is starting with a new account, send the credentials through an encrypted channel - and preferably ensure only the intended recipient can view the temporary password. ®

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Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Drone met explosieven op luchthaven Leipzig, essentieel voor Oekraïne, is ‘nieuw niveau van gevaar’

Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Tunnel nog lang dicht na ongeluk met twee vrachtwagens

Op de A16 richting Breda is donderdagmiddag in de Drechttunnel een ongeluk gebeurd met twee vrachtwagens. De parallelbuis van de tunnel is afgesloten vanwege bergingswerkzaamheden. Hoe lang de tunnelbuis dicht blijft, is onduidelijk. De verwachting is wel dat het nog lang duurt.

Nagasaki

Alan Hempseed has added a photo to the pool:

Nagasaki

Nagasaki

Alan Hempseed has added a photo to the pool:

Nagasaki