Guardian readers tackle a thorny topic and share their stories of dating a friend’s ex – or a friend dating their ex
Life is full of big, messy questions. How should we spend our finite time on Earth? What is the nature of good and evil? And, thorniest of all: is it OK to date a friend’s ex?
This year, reality TV fans debated this question with vim and verbosity when it was revealed that Bravo reality stars Amanda Batula and West Wilson had started kissing (!) and dating (!!) even though West had broken the heart of Amanda’s best friend, Ciara Miller.
‘I like goals that are lofty and sport needs moments’
Keely Hodgkinson races in 800m in Diamond League
A bullish Josh Kerr has insisted he is in the shape of his life and “not scared of failure” as he attempts to break the one-mile world record at Saturday’s London Diamond League.
The former 1500m world champion and double Olympic medallist has developed a reputation as an admirably straight‑talker throughout his career, unafraid to state his ambitions publicly. Few have ever been so lofty as the one that awaits this weekend, though, as he attempts to surpass the great Hicham El Guerrouj’s one-mile mark of 3min 43.13sec that has stood since 1999. An entire generation of athletics fans were not even alive to see it happen.
Antonelli’s lead in the F1 drivers’ standings looked insurmountable after Monaco, but now Russell is potentially within one race win of wiping it out
Squaring off at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, Formula One’s leading title protagonists Kimi Antonelli and George Russell are embroiled in an increasingly tense head to head.The teenager and his experienced Mercedes teammate facing each other as well as each addressing their own approach to a championship still very much up for grabs.
The 19-year-old Antonelli appeared to have an iron grip on the lead, having secured five straight victories, the last at Monaco, after which he enjoyed a 68-point lead over Russell. However, with Antonelli enduring some bad luck during the past three rounds and Russell taking a strong win in Austria, that gap has reduced to 25 points. A seemingly insurmountable chasm has suddenly become all too bridgeable and with it the title race is on again.
Exclusive: Grants are part of controversial package criticised as misuse of public money to influence European politics
Donald Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by the prominent Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young, the Guardian can reveal.
The intended grants, revealed in US government documents, are part of a package of support for European groups viewed favourably by the Trump administration. Some former US officials have criticised the funding as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics.
Tot nu toe betroffen de dubieuze stappen van de FIFA vooral zaken rónd het voetbal en de toewijzing van de eindtoernooien. Maar dit toernooi overschreed de FIFA een nieuwe grens.
De onzekerheid is groot in de Volkswagen-fabriek in Zwickau, nu de VW-top een nieuwe, grootschalige reorganisatie heeft aangekondigd. Mogelijk moet de fabriek, die sinds een recente modernisering alleen elektrische auto’s maakt, alsnog dicht.
Vrijdag presenteerde de Europese Commissie de langverwachte herziening van ETS, het systeem waarin bedrijven betalen voor hun CO2-uitstoot. Waar de een noodzakelijke bijsturing ter bescherming van de Europese industrie waarneemt, is het voor de ander een „lelijke afzwakking” van klimaatbeleid.
*I mean, it might be for all I know! But I do love a raton-laveur; one sets up in our garage at least every other summer. And pretty much every time I am in the city, I spot a raccoon.
AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De AEX-index op de aandelenbeurs in Amsterdam is vrijdag lager gesloten tot onder de 1100 punten. Donderdag bereikte de hoofdindex voor het eerst ooit een slotstand boven die grens, nadat de AEX een dag eerder al tussentijds dat aantal aantikte. Maar vrijdag zorgden onder meer de koersverliezen van de chipbedrijven voor een lagere slotstand.
De AEX-index zakte 0,9 procent tot 1091,97 punten. Donderdag was nog een plus van 0,4 procent te zien en sloot de hoofdindex op 1102,38 punten, mede dankzij een stevige koerswinst van chipmachinemaker ASML. De MidKap daalde vrijdag 0,7 procent naar 1077,38 punten. De beurzen in Frankfurt en Parijs verloren tot 0,5 procent en die in Londen klom een fractie.
Besi, ASMI en ASML stonden bij de dalers en zakten tot 4,5 procent. De chipbedrijven hadden op het Damrak last van een verkoopgolf op de beurzen in de Verenigde Staten en Azië. Beleggers maakten zich zorgen over de hoge investeringen van techbedrijven in AI. Er zijn veel chips nodig voor alle AI-toepassingen, maar beleggers vragen zich af of bedrijven die hoge investeringen wel kunnen terugverdienen en of de koersen van chip- en techbedrijven niet te hard zijn gestegen.
Oorlog
Techinvesteerder Prosus eindigde helemaal onderaan de hoofdfondsen en verloor 4,8 procent.
Verder hadden beleggers aandacht voor de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten. De VS en Iran hebben elkaar opnieuw aangevallen. Zo meldden Iraanse staatsmedia dat afgelopen nacht doden zijn gevallen en mensen gewond raakten tijdens Amerikaanse aanvallen op Iran.
Olieprijzen
Door het geweld in het Midden-Oosten liepen de olieprijzen vrijdag op. Brentolie, de maatstaf voor olie uit het Midden-Oosten, werd 3 procent duurder op 86,75 dollar per vat. De prijs van een vat Amerikaanse olie steeg 3,2 procent tot 81,48 dollar.
Op het Damrak profiteerde olie- en gasconcern Shell van de hogere prijzen en steeg 2,1 procent, bovenin de AEX-index. In de MidKap had luchtvaartcombinatie Air France-KLM last van hogere brandstofkosten en daalde 3,8 procent.
In Londen zakte Burberry 6,4 procent. Het Britse modemerk, bekend van zijn trenchcoats en sjaals met ruitjesmotief, zag de omzet stijgen in het afgelopen kwartaal. Vooral in Noord- en Zuid-Amerika en China werd meer verkocht, maar in Europa, het Midden-Oosten en Afrika nam de omzet af.
BELFORT (ANP) - Mauro Schmid heeft de dertiende etappe van de Tour de France gewonnen. De Zwitserse renner van Jayco AlUla was vrijdag de beste in een sprint tegen de Colombiaan Harold Tejada, nadat het tweetal was weggereden van hun medevluchters. De Brit Tom Pidcock werd derde. Het is de eerste ritzege in de Tour voor Schmid, die in 2025 al eens tweede werd in een etappe.
De etappe van Dole naar Belfort door de Vogezen was met 205,8 kilometer de langste van deze Tour. Het peloton gaf een kopgroep van 57 renners de ruimte met een maximale voorsprong van ruim 8 minuten.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to pay data broker giant Thomson Reuters $125 million for access to its databases of personal data — which includes peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information — to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigate what it describes as “voters fraud” and immigration fraud, according to procurement documents reviewed by 404 Media. The document says Thomson Reuters is able to let ICE continuously monitor millions of people and entities of interest.
The news comes after President Trump held a conspiracy-laden and unhinged press conference about election security on Thursday, setting the stage for potentially undermining the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections. It also follows ICE fatally shooting 2 people in a week.
“Due to ICE’s re-prioritized mission, there is need for this data to be readily accessible to support the presidential mandate of the identification of Voters Fraud, Immigration Fraud and National Security,” the procurement document reads. “This data specifically validates and verifies school, benefit, immigration and other eligibility requirements.”
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Do you work at Thomson Reuters? Do you know about any other data sales like this? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
Thomson Reuters is most well known for running the Reuters news agency, but the company is also a massive data broker and sells access to that data to companies and governments. Its data product, called CLEAR, promises to “Accelerate investigations confidently through a vast collection of public and proprietary records,” according to Thomson Reuters’ website.
Thomson Reuters lists some of the data sources that feed into CLEAR, and 404 Media has obtained an internal list. It includes credit header data, which is the personal information someone provides to a financial institution to open a credit card like their address, which goes to the credit bureaus and then transferred to Thomson Reuters. The procurement document also says it includes social media, property records, geolocation information, license plate data, and more.
The planned sale is specifically with Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS), a subsidiary which often handles Thomson Reuters’ government contracts. The document says TRSS offers embedded data scientists to clients who are cleared up to a Top Secret/SCI [Sensitive Compartmented Information] level. The plan is to pay the company $25 million a year over the next five years, totaling $125 million.
Parts of DHS have previously accessed CLEAR data, and 404 Media has reported on internal ICE documents which say it is integrated with Palantir’s tool for finding neighborhoods to raid. But the new document stresses that ICE has such a high need for this data, that it is planning to spend more than a hundred million dollars on another form of access to it.
Screenshots of the document.
“The importance of TRSS owning the proprietary data makes it essential for quality control to ICE. The access to that data after it is passed through another vendor serving as the prime contractor is included as part of ICE’s current contract, the data support request that ICE has in the past years for CLEAR data is significant, this year it has multiplied based on the urgency to identify Unaccompanied minors and individual involved in any type of fraud of government funds,” it continues.
“Access to the same volume of data that is owned by TRSS through other companies that offer the services will sustain in [sic] additional cost to ICE because of the transactional fees they will incur in obtaining the data,” it adds.
The document says that TRSS is the only company able to offer access to the data in “batch.” Another section reads, “TRSS is the only contractor able to provide ICE with a continuous monitoring and alert service for millions of individuals and entities of interest, this is essential for national security purposes.”
In a previous statement to 404 Media about ICE’s earlier access to CLEAR data, Thomson Reuters said, “It’s inaccurate to connect CLEAR to ICE and its deportation and enforcement operations.” When 404 Media contacted the company on Thursday and sent the new procurement document which describes ICE wanting the data for voter fraud and immigration fraud enforcement, the company provided a new statement: “We prohibit the use of CLEAR for the purpose of identifying and locating noncriminal immigrants or undocumented individuals with the intention of deportation solely on the basis of the individual’s immigration status. We take this restriction seriously, and we enforce it.”
“We continue to work with our customers to provide technology and services that support investigations into areas of national security and public safety, such as child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and weapons trafficking, and fraud/financial crime,” the statement added. The company also said, “Immigration status is not a search field in CLEAR.”
Thomson Reuters previously fired a longstanding employee after they spoke out about the company selling data products to ICE. 404 Media previously reported ICE invited staff to demos of a license plate reader app from Motorola that can be enhanced by CLEAR data.
Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment for the B.C. General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), which is a minority shareholder in Thomson Reuters, said, “Thomson Reuters has given shareholders, employees, and the media inconsistent and shifting accounts of the nature of its ICE contracts. TRSS latest ICE contract is the first to include voter fraud that we are aware of, and we intend to press the company, alongside other investors, for clarity on this contract.”
Update: This piece has been updated to include comment from Emma Pullman.
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