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Spending watchdog warns £38bn cost of Sizewell C nuclear plant is ‘risky’

National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’

The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.

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Britain must think like a hot country – otherwise inequalities will only grow

The government must act to redress the unequal impact of climate change, or risk rising temperatures making disparities worse

It may not always feel like it, but Britons are going to have to get used to living in a hot country.

Temperatures are already 1.4C above the historic norm, and heading for a 2C rise in the next two decades. This may not sound like much, but it will mean far higher temperatures in summer – heatwaves as high as 45C lasting for more than a week, dwarfing the previous record of 40C in 2022 – as well as more frequent droughts and severe flooding, according to a major report published on Wednesday.

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Winston Churchill: The Painter review – We will daub them on the beaches

Wallace Collection, London
Intended to relieve the stresses of office, especially during wartime, Churchill’s amateurish works have an overpowering joy – but his donkeys would make Lowry blush

Winston Churchill, British prime minister during the second world war and again in the 1950s, was firstly a politician and statesman, but secondly a painter. He was not an artist though. He described his paintings as “daubs”: they are the amateur output of a Sunday painter, more about mild stress relief than technically efficient vehicles intended for iconographic messages. There is an innocent charm in Churchill’s declaration that “the simplest objects have their beauty” – and in his encouraging others to paint too, without seeking fame or recognition. He exhibited modestly, and anonymously, in minor salons in the 1920s. Squinting (very) hard just about reveals the colourist efforts of perhaps a very minor impressionist-leaning painter, to be charitable, though any relation to the existing art historical canon is irrelevant: the works are of interest because of the identity of their creator, and as primary historical sources. They record where he was, when, and what he saw: variously stately mansions while staying with friends; bottles of his favourite tipples; Blenheim Palace and its grounds; holidaying in the French Riviera; and, inevitably, views while travelling as a statesman, such as Jerusalem in 1921, shortly after the Cairo Conference, which he chaired as colonial secretary under prime minister Lloyd George.

Curators Xavier Bray and Lucy Davis wisely avoid reading political views into these scenes, though can’t resist insinuating the odd symbolic link, such as between a cannon pointing out to sea in The Beach at Walmer (c 1938), a favourite bathing spot of the Churchill family, and his contemporaneous public warnings against Nazi Germany.

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Kylie Minogue announces she had second cancer diagnosis in 2021

In new Netflix documentary, pop superstar says she ‘got through it, again’, referring back to successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005

Kylie Minogue has revealed that in early 2021 she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, after diagnosis and successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005.

The pop star discussed the previously unannounced diagnosis in a new Netflix documentary entitled Kylie, available from today. “My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself … Not like the first time,” she said, referring to her highly publicised first treatment.

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Pep Guardiola refuses to confirm expected departure from Manchester City

  • Manager to speak to club hierarchy before announcing decision

  • Guardiola: ‘The first person I have to talk to is my chairman’

Pep Guardiola refused to publicly comment on the expectation that his 10-year reign at Manchester City will come to an end despite reports in the Guardian that he has already informed his players.

“I could say I have one year of contract – the conversation we have had for many years,” he said. A 1-1 draw at Bournemouth meant City could not prevent Arsenal becoming Premier League champions. Guardiola repeated the deflection he has used throughout this season. “Always from my experience, when you [media] announce whatever you announce during a competition, it is a bad, bad result.”

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Thousands under evacuation orders in southern California as wildfire threatens homes

Hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the wind-driven fire in the Simi Valley area as at least one home is destroyed

More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.

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Sanja Matsuri, Asakusa May 2026.

mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo:

Sanja Matsuri, Asakusa May 2026.

thexiffy

Last.fm last recent tracks from thexiffy.

Bankai - Eve of the War / Stress

Bankai

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

OpenAI Co-Founder Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic

OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival AI lab Anthropic. "The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent -- and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds," reports Axios. From the report: Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's pre-training team, which is responsible for the massive training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to Anthropic. Karpathy will help launch a new team focused on using Claude itself to accelerate pretraining research -- an increasingly important frontier as AI companies race to automate parts of AI development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D," Karpathy said in a post on X.

Karpathy is a rare AI figure with credibility across research, industry and education. He was a founding member of OpenAI before serving as Tesla's director of AI, where he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot. Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" and recently described himself as being in a "state of AI psychosis" since December -- embracing "tokenmaxxing" and aggressively stress-testing frontier models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stone Oval

David de Groot has added a photo to the pool:

Stone Oval

A sculpture in Mayfield Garden, Oberon NSW. Behind me, up on the hill, is the owner's residence, so they could look down on this scene from there.