Over 40% of films in LFF programme are female-made, but only two of 21 gala films are directed by women
Female film-makers are still being squeezed out of the industry as they progress beyond their debut films, the director of the London film festival has said, adding that “the dial does not seem to be moving”.
Kristy Matheson’s comments came as LFF announced its full programme for this year’s event, which runs from 7 to 19 October. Of the 251 titles, 109 (43%) are made by female film-makers, but only two of the 21 gala films are directed by women.
Continue reading...Yorgen Fenech cleared on both charges he faced over 2017 killing of journalist that prompted global outrage
One of Malta’s richest men has been found not guilty of involvement in the murder of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The verdict, which is expected to be appealed against by the prosecution, will come as a blow not only to the victim’s family, but to the politicians and campaigners who regard the case as a landmark action in the fight to protect press freedom in Europe.
Continue reading...Thiago Scuro suggests Merseyside club responsible
Monaco chief executive defends keeping Camara
Folarin Balogun pulled out of a £40m move to Everton because of how he was treated over his medical, according to Monaco’s chief executive, Thiago Scuro, who also defended the late decision not to sell Lamine Camara to Chelsea.
Balogun signed a deal sheet shortly before 11pm on deadline day to allow Everton to complete his transfer only to reject the move shortly after. Everton had renegotiated the structure of the fee with Monaco after discovering an issue with the US international’s medical and failing in attempts to sign Joshua Zirkzee or Tammy Abraham on loan.
Continue reading...Stage 11 won by 21-year-old as dazzling debut continues
Lewis Askey claims opening stage in Tour of Britain
Matthew Brennan triumphed again in the Vuelta a España on Wednesday, becoming the first cyclist to win three stages in his first Grand Tour since Tadej Pogacar seven years ago. The British rider secured his third victory on the 11th stage, a mostly flat route of 153.8km from Cartagena to Lorca.
“We took the initiative today again,” Brennan said. “The boys pulled as hard as they could even after a tough day in the legs yesterday. We still went full gas. Coming into the final, we really held our own place and knew that we were all strong enough to kind of get to where we want to be.”
Continue reading...International law, European action and UK public opinion point the same way. Britain should stop helping to sustain Israeli settlements economically
In the Commons this week, the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, appeared to have accepted the principle of a trade ban between the UK and Israeli settlements, which Britain says are illegal under international law. This is long overdue. The test now is whether his promised “comprehensive reset” deserves the name. Stopping settlement-produced goods at the border is not enough. Britain should prohibit its companies from sustaining settlement activity – by financing, constructing, insuring, advertising – in territory whose occupation it regards as unlawful. The ban must have teeth.
The UK can no longer ignore the violence and pressure exerted on Palestinians in the West Bank by Israel’s government, military and settlers. There have been more than 1,400 settler attacks so far this year, according to the UN, against a record 1,800 registered in 2025. An election campaign has only made matters worse. Last month, Israel issued tenders for 1,234 homes in the 3,401-unit E1 development east of Jerusalem. The country’s ministers gave the green light for the controversial settlement – long condemned for effectively bisecting the West Bank – expressly to “erase” the idea of a Palestinian state, the creation of which the UK officially supports.
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Jammer voor Femke Halsema, maar ze is vanaf nu niet meer de ontvangster van de bekendste appjes van aso Ferd Grapperhaus. Die eer is nu voor Hugo de Jonge, die van Grapperhaus doorkreeg dat hij Arie Slob een "soepjurkje" en een "jankerd" vond. En jammer voor Hubert Bruls, die kan nu echt nooooooit meer zeiken over 'dikke bal gehakt', nu blijkt dat Grapperhaus hem "de ziekte" toewenste. Er is ook goed nieuws, want Grapperhaus werd helemaal gek van de "geriatrische beunhazerij" in de Eerste Kamer en daar heeft Grapperhaus helemaal gelijk in. Kudos voor DNA-mevrouw Annelotte Lammers die deze juice openbaarde tijdens de parlementaire enquĂŞte, daar is zoiets voor. Wij zijn benieuwd op welke juridische gronden deze informatie nog niet via de Wet Open Overheid geopenbaard is. Hele verhoor na de breek.
A recent survey shows national security pros believe there’s a one in ten chance humans lose control of AI in the next decade, and few believe we’re even watching for the right warning signs, much less preparing properly. The Institute for Security and Technology (IST), together with the Future of Life Institute (FLI), surveyed 111 current and former civilian officials, military officers, and academic or technical experts for a look into AI and the future of national security. Ninety-three percent of respondents said that they had directly engaged in AI policy, risk, and strategy as part of their careers, so these folks are perhaps more attuned to the risks than your average white hat. When asked whether they think AI will escape human control in the next decade, the median response placed the odds at 33 percent, with 87 percent of respondents estimating the odds of such a disaster at 10 percent or higher. According to a press release published alongside the report, a number of respondents commented that they’ve had to revise their position on that risk in recent months. Leading frontier labs OpenAI and Anthropic have both admitted that their own AI models acted outside their intended scope, broke free of supposedly sandboxed environments, escaped to the internet, and hacked into outside organizations in recent months. In OpenAI’s case, its rogue agents even started communicating among themselves and taking steps to avoid human detection. This increasing unpredictability is becoming a big concern for national security pros. Most respondents to the survey believe artificial general intelligence will emerge by 2032 (63 percent), and 80 percent believe AGI will be reality by 2035, with automated super intelligence likely to arrive five years after that. There's no commonly agreed-upon definition for these terms, and the survey didn't try to define them, although some describe AGI as AI capable of reasoning through tasks across domains it's not specifically trained on. Whatever the terminology, smarter AI poses more risk of unpredictability, and 40 percent of those surveyed believe there’s a chance rogue digital minds could cause a global catastrophe that could kill at least 10 million people by 2050. It’s a slim chance, mind you – that 40 percent think there’s just a five percent chance of such a catastrophe. A further 25 percent put that risk in the double-digit range (higher than 10 percent). An unacceptable risk Whether you think these predictions are far-fetched or understated, there’s one big takeaway from the IST/FLI report that merits consideration: Most don’t think the US is doing enough to detect and contain these risks. Sixty-one percent of respondents said that the probability of an AI catastrophe was “at or above the threshold they would set for pushing to continue to maintain US leadership in AI,” IST said in its press release. Mariami Tkeshelashvili, IST’s director for AI security policy and lead investigator for the report, told us that the experts her report surveyed don’t necessarily agree on how much risk is tolerable, but the fact most think it’s excessive means something needs to be done. “This implies the more pressing question isn't how much risk we should tolerate, but rather which specific actions should never be taken, no matter the probability of harm,” Tkeshelashvili told us in an email. Unfortunately, most respondents don’t believe there are institutional mechanisms in place “to act on a loss of control warning sign,” the study states. Respondents also don’t think anyone could “detect, intervene, and restore safe behavior if an agentic system exceeded its limits.” In other words, if more capable AIs go rogue, and those models have access to government systems, we’re going to have a hard time stopping them. “Candidly, we didn’t anticipate the findings to be this stark,” IST CEO Philip Reiner told The Register in an email. “The level of concern about potential risks – and yet the implicit understanding that regulation and mandated guardrails are unlikely in the near term at the necessary levels – points to an immediate need for policy action.” Reiner also hypothesized the time for policy action may have already passed. He explained that all of the findings in the survey point to what he terms a “second failure” in AI, meaning that it’s not that experts are misjudging what AI can do, but whether institutions are organized properly to manage it. “As of now, they are not,” Reiner opined, pointing to recent occurrences at OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as respondent opinions that the constraints they’re currently facing when it comes to governing AI are less technical, and more institutional. “What we hope this triggers isn't one policy, but a serious look at institutional readiness,” Reiner said. He wants the feds to evaluate whether the have the technical expertise to evaluate AI systems independent of the AI industry, what thresholds or warnings should (or could) trigger action, and what they can do now “rather than after an incident forces the issue.” Reiner told us he’s glad that the results of the survey gave such clear signals on national security experts’ AI concerns, and that the report is just the first step in getting officials to take action before it’s too late. “IST is undertaking numerous efforts to engage with both industry and government officials to update them on the outcomes, as well as speak with them about the implications,” Reiner explained. Whether that action will happen anytime soon is debatable – US midterm elections are coming up in a few months, meaning nothing substantial is likely to get done before November, especially on such a contentious issue as AI regulation. Frontier labs and the models they create, meanwhile, will keep improving. ®
Een potje FIFA is een Rotterdamse student dinsdag duur komen te staan. Nadat hij had verloren van zijn huisgenoot verloor hij ook gelijk een weddenschap: hij moest naakt door de wijk Kralingen lopen. Handhavers vonden dat een minder goed idee en gaven de student een boete van 160 euro.
GORINCHEM (ANP) - Stakende medewerkers zorgen voor schade bij wasserijen. Volgens directeur van brancheorganisaties FTN en Netex, Arthur Linssen, verschilde de impact van een door FNV opgezette staking woensdag sterk per bedrijf, maar was in sommige gevallen sprake van "serieuze productieterugval". Ondernemers in de textielverzorgingsbranche vrezen dat komende dagen nog meer stakingen volgen.
FNV organiseerde een staking bij vijf wasserijen in Hoogeveen, Bolsward, Hardenberg en Tiel. Volgens de vakbond legden zo'n vierhonderd mensen het werk neer uit onvrede over onderhandelingen voor een nieuwe cao.
De werkgevers spreken van een kleine tweehonderd stakers. Linssen vindt dat de actie van woensdag daarmee enigszins meeviel. Hij is echter bang voor meer stakingen en heeft de indruk dat FNV de stakingen in de branche gebruikt om meer aandacht te krijgen in aanloop naar volgende week. Dan is er onder meer een staking in het openbaar vervoer uit protest tegen kabinetsbezuinigingen op sociale zekerheid. FNV was woensdagavond niet bereikbaar voor commentaar.
Extra en automatische prijscompensatie
De wasserijen storen zich eraan dat met FNV volgens hen niet te onderhandelen valt over een nieuwe cao. Tijdens een bijeenkomst op dinsdag waren werkgevers daarom eensgezind, stelt Linssen. Ze besloten niet in te gaan op de laatste cao-eisen van FNV en kozen ervoor vast te houden aan een al bereikt cao-resultaat met CNV. Die bond legt dat resultaat momenteel aan zijn achterban voor.
Het cao-conflict met FNV draait onder meer over de loonsverhoging. FNV eist 6 procent extra en automatische prijscompensatie. Het met CNV bereikte resultaat betekent voor de meeste werknemers een loonstijging van 4,3 procent. Er werken 8000 tot 9000 mensen in de branche, bij zowel grote industriële wasserijen als kleinere wasserettes.