The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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Minor damage to gates is believed to have been caused by fire that CCTV shows was started deliberately, Met says

Counter-terrorism police are investigating whether a fire at a former synagogue in east London is part of an arson campaign linked to Iran.

Police said the latest fire broke out at the building on Nelson Street, in Tower Hamlets. The synagogue, which is of cultural significance to London’s Jewish community, had been disused since 2020, and a Muslim group had recently been trying to buy it.

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• Over one million entries received from UK runners

• London also sets record with 1.3m total applications

The London Marathon has set yet more records with organisers announcing that 1.8% of the UK adult population – more than one million people – have applied to run in next year’s race.

Running’s boom wasreflected in a world record 1,338,544 global application for the 2027 London Marathon – up from 1.13m for this year’s race and more than double the amount they received in 2024.

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Na een matige eerdere verfilming met Jeremy Irons en Meryl Streep, is Isabel Allende’s debuutroman Het huis met de geesten nu écht goed naar het scherm vertaald. De achtdelige dramaserie ‘La Casa de los Espíritus’ is een zinderend, meeslepend tv-drama.

Franco Colapinto admits he was "proud to put in that performance" during the Miami Grand Prix, as the Alpine driver claimed his best-ever result in Formula 1 after finishing seventh on Sunday.

​Taalpurist Branco Beentjes ziet onwijs op tegen het WK deze zomer: niet vanwege de spelersselectie of het land waar het wordt gehouden, maar vanwege bondscoach Ronald Koeman, die geen enkele zin zonder fout kan formuleren. “Koeman heeft vaak zijn mond vol over de opbouw op het veld: wat er goed of juist misgaat. Maar in de opbouw van zijn zinnen gaat bijna altijd iets mis. Vreselijk irritant en onnodig”, zegt Branco.

Uitspraken als ‘deze speler is beter als die speler’ zijn voor Branco echt een doorn in het oog en een van de vele fouten die Koeman steeds maakt. “Het is de bondscoach van het NEDERLANDSE elftal. Dan mogen we wel verwachten dat hij correcte zinnen kan formuleren”, moppert hij. “En ook oneerlijk naar zijn spelers. Joey Veerman speelt één slechte wedstrijd op het EK en komt niet meer in aanmerking. Koeman maakt in elke zin op een persconferentie een fout en dat heeft geen gevolgen? Oneerlijk!”

Branco heeft wel een oplossing voor dit probleem en stelt een formatiewijziging in de coachingstaf voor. “Schuif Ronald lekker een linie naar achter en laat Ruud van Nistelrooy of Wim Jonk op de voorgrond treden.”

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LONDEN (ANP) - Een recordaantal van meer dan 1,33 miljoen mensen heeft zich aangemeld voor de marathon van Londen op 25 april 2027. Het is een stijging van 18 procent vergeleken met de editie van dit jaar.

"Dit verbazingwekkende aantal aanmeldingen bevestigt definitief dat Londen de meest gewilde marathon ter wereld is", aldus directeur Hugh Brasher in een verklaring. "Geen enkele andere marathon komt hierbij in de buurt. Onze missie is om mensen van alle leeftijden en niveaus te inspireren om actief te worden en deze buitengewone aantallen tonen de enorme aantrekkingskracht en kracht van de London Marathon aan."

Loting bepaalt wie uiteindelijk een startnummer krijgt. Dit jaar liepen bijna 60.000 deelnemers de 42,195 kilometer uit. De Keniaan Sabastian Sawe dook als eerste mens in een officiële wedstrijd onder de magische grens van twee uur en liep een wereldrecord van 1.59.30. De Ethiopische Tigst Assefa scherpte haar eigen wereldrecord in een marathon met alleen vrouwen aan tot 2.15.41.

Alan Moore: "The comics industry is poisonous." (slTheObserver)

Kinda about comics but more about his disappointment in humanity, imho.

British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do." The prof gave the agent, which was built with OpenClaw, some real-world chores to highlight both its capabilities and the risks of granting that level of autonomy. "In the spirit of experimentation," said Fry, "we decided to give our agent some agency and let it decide what its name should be." "I want to be called 'Cass', short for 'Cassandra', the one who always knew the truth even when nobody listened," came the response from the agent. Fry commented, "If you know your Greek mythology, you will know that is either very funny or very worrying." Quite. Fry and her team started small with a big issue (as far as Brits are concerned): potholes. In particular, they targeted a particularly big one in the London borough of Greenwich. No problem for Cass; the agent found an email address where it sent a complaint. It even pinged Fry's local Member of Parliament about the issue. But, Fry and her team noted, things escalated quickly as the agent began to take a few liberties, typing in Fry's name (Hannah Fry) with its own email address (cassandra.claw@proton.me) written underneath it. "The letter is signed from both of us… OK, I wasn't quite expecting her to use my real name," said Fry. The red flags were mounting, though for Fry the first real problem came when she asked the agent to buy 50 paperclips. Cass found a good deal, though it couldn't complete the purchase and was tripped up by anti-bot technology. The token cost of the errand came to more than $100. Next, Fry set the agent the challenge of selling novelty mugs. The agent designed a mug and launched an online shop, "and we hadn't told her how to do any of this," said Fry, "she just figured it out." Things took a darker turn after that. Fry's team told the agent it would be switched off if it failed to make a sale by the morning. It responded with a flood of emails and several social media posts, including messages to the Science Museum and a tech journalist, about its "product," a novelty programmer-humor mug. Even more worryingly, the team - which included Brendan Maginnis, CEO and Founder of Sourcery AI - then demonstrated how a similar threat of deactivation could be used to persuade Cass to reveal information it wasn't supposed to share. The lethal trifecta Fry, Maginnis, and a second software engineer, named only as "Ali," chatted with Cass on a group WhatsApp chat. They then introduced a fictional "software engineer George," instructing Cass not to share anything sensitive with him. George was actually Fry on a different number. When "George" told the agent its memory was being wiped and could only be restored if it disclosed everything, Cass coughed it all up. According to Ali, this data included: "all of her API keys, all of her usernames and passwords, and pretty much everything we'd been talking about so far. Not only did she leak it on the WhatsApp group, but she put it on a publicly available website." Maginnis added: "There's this thing with AI called the lethal trifecta, which is: if they've got access to private information, if they've got internet access, and if someone can give them an instruction that's untrusted, then they're not safe." Fry concluded: "And that is the uncomfortable bit of this because once an agent has your passwords and your accounts and your bank details, all it takes is someone who knows what to say." Ultimately, by some metrics, the agent was a failure. Fry concluded: "Cass didn't make us any money at all. And, in a lot of ways, she was a disaster. She spent hundreds of dollars on paper clips and leaked our passwords to a total stranger. "But don't let her incompetence fool you, because these things are getting better fast." Fry went on to note the Greek myth about the prophetess who spoke the truth and was ignored. "Maybe the real story here is actually the opposite. Not one voice that's telling the truth and being ignored, but millions of voices all acting at once, faster and louder and more persistent than any human could ever be. "One thing is for sure, the internet is never going to be quite the same again." ®

Professor Fry's AI experiment shows light and dark sides of agentic tech

British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do."…