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Cornwall van dwellers face homelessness amid council crackdown

Half of county’s planning infringement notices target caravans in fields, fuelling eviction fears for vulnerable people

People living in caravans and horseboxes on farms in Cornwall because they can’t afford or find a house to rent are facing homelessness after a crackdown by the council.

Cornwall council recently announced that it was one of the top five authorities in England for enforcing infringements of planning regulations. Half of those notices, it said, were served on caravans in agricultural fields.

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I’m taking the plunge and buying a new swimsuit: the Becky Barnicoat cartoon

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From The Invite to My Chemical Romance: the week in rave reviews

Seth Rogen brings an oddly sweet relationship comedy, and the facepainted kings of theatrical emo turn The Black Parade into a formidable live spectacle. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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Burning flags, busty blondes and bison skulls: 48 photographs that capture America at 250

From the gold rush to civil rights, the moon landing to 9/11, the US has always understood, mythologised and sold itself through the power of the still image

The United States was founded in 1776, but did not begin to see itself until the autumn of 1839, when daguerreotypes, the first form of photograph, reached American cities. You could argue the US began again on the morning it could look at its own face.

At first photography seemed to answer the democratic promise of 1776. A portrait was no longer reserved for the rich; almost anyone could now leave a trace of their existence. The gold rush became one of the first great American dramas to find the camera: ordinary diggers squinting into the lens, looking beyond it for gold. A more emblematic American scene can scarcely be imagined: what would be called the American Dream, a lottery everyone plays and very few win. The myth was not that they all found gold – it was that the search itself made them American.

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An AI philosopher, the conflict and chaos in Taylor Swift’s songs and the erasure of US history from national parks

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

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Sydney records hottest June since 1859 as expert warns new high a ‘signature’ of global warming

Bureau of Meteorology says city’s mean temperature reached 16.1C, surpassing the previous record of 15.7C set in 1991

Sydney has officially experienced its hottest June since records began, following a winter month of spring-like warmth.

While early weather data suggested the month was merely among the warmest, the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed on Friday that June 2026 broke the all-time mean temperature record at Observatory Hill, where tracking first began in 1859.

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Hachiman-bori Moat 八幡堀

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Hachiman-bori Moat 八幡堀

吉高の大桜

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吉高の大桜

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News for nerds, stuff that matters

Alibaba To Ban Claude Code In Workplace Over Alleged Backdoor Risks

Alibaba has reportedly banned employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code and directed them to its own Qoder platform amid a growing dispute over features that can help identify China-linked users. Reuters reports: The ban is part of a deepening spat between the two companies after Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities -- a dispute that highlights the frantic race between the U.S. and China to take the lead in artificial intelligence. [...] Anthropic said last month that it had suffered a strike by Alibaba, which it described as a "distillation" effort that involves training a less capable model on the outputs of a stronger one. The distillation helps accelerate China's ability to reach Anthropic's advanced Mythos Preview capabilities, it said in a letter seen by Reuters that was sent to two U.S. senators.

Alibaba's ban comes just days after developers said Claude Code contained mechanisms that inspected user environments, including timezone and proxy-related information, and inserted subtle markers into prompts sent to Anthropic's servers. An Anthropic employee wrote on Tuesday on X that the feature was "an experiment we launched in March" intended to prevent account abuse by unauthorized resellers and protect against model distillation. The person who spoke to Reuters about Alibaba's ban said that Anthropic's restrictions targeting China were difficult to enforce on individual users who can deploy servers in the United States and make traffic appear as if it originated there. But companies were more aware of legal and compliance risks, the person added.

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Behind Blue Eyes

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Behind Blue Eyes