A Mancunian singer-songwriter becomes a viral divisive figure while trying to track down a girl called Emily

Last week came the news that gen Z are big fans of going to the cinema. Now here’s a gen Z romcom from Working Title, the company behind Bridget Jones’s Diary and Notting Hill. Directed by Alicia MacDonald from a script by Rachel Hirons, Finding Emily shares DNA with Richard Curtis’s comedies – the same warm heart and charm, plus levels of cheesiness that some may find cringe. In the end I found it impossible to hate, though one or two performances felt a bit lacking in comic flair.

It’s set in Manchester, where indie singer-songwriter Owen (Spike Fearn) meets undergraduate Emily (Sadie Soverall) at the student union. They click, but when Emily taps her number into his phone, she misses out a digit. Is it a drunken error, or has she wrong-numbered him? Owen is convinced it’s a mistake and sticks up posters around campus to find her. After a tipoff, he waits outside a lecture hall for psychology student Emily (Angourie Rice). She’s American, and not his Emily, but she offers to help, suggesting Owen emails every Emily enrolled at the university – all 318 of them. Owen accidentally sends the email to all rather than BCCing, creating an email group of Emilies who are divided in their reactions. Is he some kind of creepy virgin “incel”? Or a diehard romantic? Owen becomes a meme: “email guy”.

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The ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is an extraordinary example of bald self-dealing

Donald Trump is stealing almost $2bn in taxpayer money and handing it out to his friends. That’s the upshot of the president’s recent agreement following a $10bn lawsuit he brought in his personal capacity against the IRS, an agency that he oversees. Trump brought the suit over leaks of some documents from his tax returns to the press. To resolve the suit, the justice department will create a fund of nearly $1.8bn – a wildly outsized figure compared with Trump’s somewhat flimsily alleged injuries – that can be doled out to Trump allies. The Guardian describes the fund as “loosely controlled and secretive”, but members of the Trump administration have not ruled out January 6 insurrectionists as possible awardees.

The so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will be administered by four commissioners appointed by Trump’s attorney general and one appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership – Trump, who can fire the commissioners, will have ultimate control. It will have the authority to issue formal apologies for alleged mistreatment of conservative political actors by previous administrations – ie, those few who were prosecuted or sued during the Biden era. When Trump leaves office, any remaining money will not be available for his successor to use similarly, but will instead be distributed back to the federal government. But I doubt that there will be any remaining money. We may never know either way: there is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public, and required reports to the attorney general on its conduct are to be confidential. In addition to the creation of this massive slush fund, the agreement also requires that the IRS drop all audits of Trump and his family.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

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Documents released by government also show late queen was ‘very keen’ for her son to have prominent role

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Formal security vetting and due diligence appears not to have been carried out before the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, the government has said, as it emerged that the late queen was “very keen” for her son to take up a prominent role in promoting Britain’s interests.

The first batch of documents relating to the appointment of the former prince as trade envoy by Tony Blair in 2001 includes a memo dated 25 February 2000 and addressed to Robin Cook, then the foreign secretary, in which the then chief executive of British Trade International, David Wright, said Queen Elizabeth II’s “wish” had been for Mountbatten-Windsor, then the Duke of York, to take on the role.

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Vivaldi's eponymous browser has reached version 8, with a major revamp of the user interface. The company refers to the redesign as "Unified" and describes it as "a rethinking of how the Vivaldi interface works as a system." Where before the browser's core elements – tabs, toolbars, panels, and content – existed as separate layers, everything is now one single continuous surface. It's easy on the eye, though you can switch back to the previous design. The company has added several default themes and has a vast library of community-generated themes available. There are also layouts that can be selected during onboarding or in settings. These range from minimalist to fully loaded setups packed with Vivaldi's familiar controls and settings. Don’t come looking for a list of new features, though. Vivaldi has loaded up the browser with gizmos over the years, and the redesign highlights some of those. A recent example is the auto-hide feature, which removes browser fluff to show more content. The company wrote: "While the rest of the browser industry has spent recent years racing to force artificial intelligence between people and the web, Vivaldi has taken a different path, adding tools that give users more power to explore the web and decide for themselves. "One big, crazy strategy: putting the users first." That's not to say Vivaldi is AI-free, though CEO Jon von Tetzchner was less than complimentary about many of its applications in a January Register interview. The browser uses AI for translation, for example, but the company has not slathered the technology across the product in the way some rivals have. Microsoft's Edge, also a Chromium browser, recently received updates that removed Copilot Mode in favor of more built-in Copilot features. The assistant can look across multiple tabs, surface key details, and reason based on browsing history and past chats. Bruce Lawson, self-described Regulator Botherer at Vivaldi, told The Register: "Microsoft retiring Copilot Mode isn't a retreat, it's an escalation. They're not removing the AI, they're embedding it into the browser so deeply that it's everywhere, all the time, with no off switch. That's not a feature. That's a takeover. "Our stance is clear: when you outsource exploration to an artificial agent, you're not browsing anymore, you're being browsed." ®

Na het daverende succes van een soortgelijke actie op Den Haag Centraal, waarna (nog even opzoeken wat precies, red.), pakt XR nu door en gaat het aanstaande zaterdag proberen alle sporen op Utrecht CS te blokkeren. Dit (onder andere) omdat Israël stom is omgegaan met een Nederlandse cameraman. De blokkade zal duren van 13.00 tot 14.00. Tenzij iemand tegemoet komt aan de wensen van de jongens en meisjes van XR, die 'een volledig economisch embargo' eisen tegen Israël, bekend van hummus. Dat zal ze leren! Over leren gesproken: een Israëlische klimaatwetenschapper zou vandaag op de Radboud een praatje houden, maar zegde na dreigen en drammen van activisten aldaar af. Ongetwijfeld tot enthousiasme van XR, en gelijk hebben ze, dat klimaat komt later wel.

LEUSDEN (ANP) - Klussers hebben meer uitgegeven bij GAMMA en Karwei. Dat meldt Intergamma, het moederbedrijf van de beide bouwmarkten. De doe-het-zelfketens profiteerden van meer klanten in de winkels, die volgens Intergamma kwamen voor persoonlijk advies en voor inspiratie.

De omzet van Intergamma kwam in 2025 uit op iets boven de 2 miljard euro, een groei van 3 procent ten opzichte van 2024. De winst voor belasting steeg met 19 procent tot 176 miljoen euro. Het aantal klanten steeg met 1,7 miljoen tot 73 miljoen.

Het marktaandeel van GAMMA en Karwei samen steeg met 0,4 procent naar 20,3 procent. Eerder meldde concurrent Hornbach al in 2025 uit te komen op een groter marktaandeel, van 29,4 procent.

In België werd GAMMA wel iets minder populair. Daar verloor het bedrijf 0,2 procent marktaandeel. Intergamma is het moederbedrijf van de doe-het-zelfformules GAMMA, Karwei en GAMMA België en heeft in totaal 370 vestigingen. Er werken zo'n 10.000 medewerkers bij het bedrijf.

President Vladimir Putin’s billionaire childhood friends Boris and Arkady Rotenberg are developing a yacht marina at Balaklava Bay.

De Taliban in Afghanistan hebben in nieuwe regels bekendgemaakt dat meisjes er vanaf hun negende mogen trouwen. Als een meisje niets zegt, mag haar echtgenoot dat interpreteren als instemming met seks.