We are in dangerous territory as courts encourage jurors to discern untruth from body language. In fact, the words are far more revealing

Imagine you are a juror on a murder trial. A married couple have been found shot dead. The defendant, a man known to them, denies the charge. You’ve heard the prosecution’s evidence and you’ve heard his testimony. But you and your fellow jurors are unsure if you should believe his protestations of innocence. At the hotel in the evening, another juror makes a novel suggestion: contact the spirits of the dead couple to find out if the defendant is lying. In agreement, you all sit around a crudely constructed Ouija board and call upon the spirits of the dead couple to ask: “Who killed you?” The board spells out the name of the defendant. The next day, you return a guilty verdict to the court.

Sounds too absurd to be true? Well, in 1994 an English jury did consult a Ouija board (a retrial was ordered, and the defendant was found guilty again). But it is no less absurd than a jury being directed by the courts to use an assessment of body language to make a judgment. Judicial directions in Scotland advise jurors that they can “look at the content of witnesses’ evidence, [and] their body language in giving it”. Similarly, in England and Wales, jurors are instructed not to take so many notes during a trial that they are “unable to observe the manner/demeanour of the witnesses as they give their evidence”. It appears that the UK’s judicial system is no different from most of the population in assuming there is a clear association between body language or demeanour and deception – while being ignorant of the fact that looking at these to determine an individual’s honesty is not trustworthy.

Kirsty King is a lecturer in communication at UCL. She is the author of The Language of Lies

Continue reading...

The 2022 football tournament cost me my freedom for three years. This year, I’ve lost my passport, safety and perhaps more

What I saw in a town called Al-Shahaniyah on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar, seven years ago broke every rule and human right in the book. Desperate, hard-working people were on strike for not receiving their salaries for two, four or six months. Salaries that rarely exceeded $300 (£220) a month, in one of the richest countries in the world at the time.

They had no food, no drinking water and no money to survive on or send back home to their families. But what made the situation worse was that they were building something for each and every one of us: not a mansion, a private home, or a road in the middle of nowhere. They were building World Cup stadiums for Messi and Ronaldo to play in, and for me and you to enjoy the show.

Continue reading...

Record numbers linked to warming waters is mixed news for fishers, with shellfish catches down but octopus catches booming

Record numbers of octopuses found off the south-west coast of England last year have now spread as far as Scotland and Wales and are transforming the fishing industry and the marine ecosystem, according to a study.

The surge in sightings of one of the world’s most intelligent invertebrates was first recorded in 2025 off the south coast of Devon and Cornwall.

Continue reading...

Iata boss Willie Walsh blames fuel suppliers, governments and aircraft makers, saying new ‘realistic timeline’ now needed

• Air fare rises ‘inevitable’ as airlines face extra $100bn jet fuel bill

The aviation industry’s landmark pledges to be net zero by 2050 will probably not now be achieved, airline leaders have admitted.

The collective goal to eliminate net carbon emissions was declared by global airlines only five years ago in 2021, with similar pledges made by national aviation industry leaders and governments, including in the UK, in 2020.

Continue reading...

Wie dacht dat het door een sisverbod afgelopen zou zijn met sissen naar vrouwen die dacht: verkeerd. Er wordt namelijk nog steeds massaal door deze en gene gesist naar vrouwen. En dat niet alleen, ook andere vormen van seksuele straatintimidatie gaan verrassend genoeg onvrolijk door. En dat niet alleen, want een proef met speciale sisboa's in zeven gemeenten blijkt helemaal geen unaniem belachelijk groot succes. Het AD schrijft: "Het aanpakken van gesis en andere seksuele straatintimidatie door speciaal getrainde boa’s blijkt een mislukking. Een proef in zeven gemeenten, waaronder grote steden als Rotterdam, Tilburg en Utrecht, heeft in twee jaar tijd zes boetes opgeleverd." ZES (6) hele boetes in TWEE (2) hele jaren. Dat zijn er 0,25 per maand! Toch laten gemeentes zich niet zomaar wegsissen, een gemeentewoordvoerder uit Utrecht zegt gewoon door te gaan met de proef: "Hiermee geven we een duidelijk signaal." Een overduidelijk signaal inderdaad: aan speciale sisboa's hebben we in de strijd tegen seksuele straatintimidatie net zoveel als aan theatervoorstellingen.

Reuters reports:
Several large data centers and crypto facilities planning to connect to the Texas power grid ahead of peak summer demand have failed key reliability tests, raising the risk of power outages just as electricity use hits its seasonal high, according to the state grid operator... Unlike traditional industrial customers, which tend to draw electricity steadily and predictably, data centers are engineered to cut their connection to the grid at the first sign of trouble to protect their equipment and keep services running. That makes them an unpredictable and potentially destabilizing force on grids already under pressure from rising demand. Four groups of unnamed large electricity users, including data centers, abruptly disconnected from the Texas grid during a test of how they would handle routine voltage disturbances, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said in a report dated May 21.

When large customers abruptly cut their power use, it can knock the grid off balance and trigger wider outages. ERCOT, which manages electricity for most of Texas, said it reviewed about 20 gigawatts of large customers seeking to connect to the system, including eight projects totaling roughly 3.9 gigawatts aiming to start up before July 1. It said it identified four groups of large power users that could each trigger more than 5,000 megawatts of demand tripping under certain fault conditions, based on simulations of transmission system disturbances. Those abrupt drops in demand were equivalent to the electricity consumption of a large city such as Boston.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LEEUWARDEN (ANP) - Bij de zuivelfabriek van FrieslandCampina in Leeuwarden gaan ongeveer honderd werknemers maandag een staking houden van zestien uur in het cao-conflict in de zuivelindustrie. Volgens vakbond FNV begint de staking om 14.00 uur en duurt de actie tot dinsdagochtend 06.00 uur.

De stakers komen een uur eerder samen op de parkeerplaats van het bedrijf met vlaggen en toespraken, aldus FNV. De staking is alweer de zesde in iets meer dan een week bij FrieslandCampina, het grootste zuivelbedrijf van Nederland. Eerder staakten werknemers van fabrieken in Meppel, Beilen en Nuenen. Afgelopen nacht was er nog een staking in Borculo.

Bij FrieslandCampina in Leeuwarden werken in totaal ongeveer zevenhonderd mensen. Bij die fabriek wordt rauwe melk verwerkt tot onder meer koffiemelk.

De cao-gesprekken tussen FNV en de Nederlandse Zuivel Organisatie (NZO) zijn vastgelopen. NZO zegt dat de acties op dit moment nog geen gevolgen hebben voor consumenten en melkveehouders.

NICOSIA (ANP) - EU-buitenlandchef Kaja Kallas betreurt de recente escalatie in de Iranoorlog. "De regio heeft geen escalatie nodig, maar juist dat de partijen aan de onderhandelingstafel gaan zitten en tot een akkoord komen", zei ze maandag voor het begin van de vergadering van de EU-ministers van Defensie in Cyprus.

Die boodschap blijft de Europese Unie aan de VS, Israël en Iran uitdragen, zei de topdiplomaat. "Er moet een diplomatieke oplossing komen voor de Straat van Hormuz. Iran en de VS moeten om tafel zitten om tot een oplossing te komen."

De oorlog moet stoppen en de Straat van Hormuz moet worden geopend, zei Kallas. Daarna moeten gesprekken worden gevoerd over "de moeilijkere onderwerpen zoals nucleaire wapens, maar ook andere cruciale kwesties". Daar ging ze niet verder op in.

Het begeleiden van schepen door de Straat van Hormuz, na een staakt-het-vuren, wordt deze maandag door de EU-ministers van Defensie besproken.

Tone'o Down-Under has added a photo to the pool:

Still running wild on the sea front, Eden Beach, Perth, Western Australia.
I was walking along the sea front at Eden Beach and this Grey was feeding on the bush 100 metres from the beach, then 'plop!' he just sat down right in front of me.

Today's anonymous submitter sends us a React view that presents some admin options. Of course, it should only show us those admin options if the user is authorized to do that. So let's see how they implemented it:

{(isAdmin || canSeeResults) && (
    <div>
        <p>Admin Actions</p>
            {(isAdmin || canSeeResults) && (
                <div>
                    <button> Show Results </button>
                </div>
            )}
    </div>
)}

If they're an admin or can see the results, we print out an Admin Actions header, and then if they're an admin or can see the results, we show them a Show Results button.

I once had a math teacher who claimed he didn't trust anyone, and that's why he always wore suspenders and a belt. I don't think he's still alive, let alone writing React code, but I see a "belts and braces" approach in play. Though in this case, I don't think it adds any safety.