Claude’s parent company’s $65bn in latest funding round underscores vast sums of money still flowing into industry Anthropic, the AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, announced on Thursday it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. The move makes Anthropic the world’s most valuable AI startup, eclipsing its competitor OpenAI. The deal marks an exceedingly successful period of growth for Anthropic, which was once considered to be a smaller player in the global AI arms race. The widespread adoption of its products by large enterprise businesses, especially following its release of powerful coding assistants late last year, has turned it into a dominant player in the industry. Continue reading...

Rival groups are vying for territorial control of strategic cocaine production and trafficking region At least 52 guerrilla fighters have been killed in clashes between two rival armed groups vying for territorial control of a strategic cocaine production and trafficking region in south-east Colombia, a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) involved in the fighting has said. The clashes, the most violent in recent months, took place in the jungles of the department of Guaviare, near the village of Barranco Colorado. Continue reading...

Cutting boards are some of the germiest kitchen items. We asked a food safety professor for the best ways to clean one to prevent bacteria The six best plastic-free cutting boards, tested Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things Your cutting board could be dirtier than a toilet seat, according to germ experts. When we recently asked microbiologists about surprisingly filthy everyday items, they ranked cutting boards among the germiest household items (alongside kitchen sponges and water bottles). Many things at home could technically be dirtier than toilet seats, a surface we emphasize disinfecting regularly. (We asked custodians for cleaning tips there.) So this is not something to spiral into a germaphobic panic about, but at dinner cleanup, it’s worth paying some special attention to that cutting board you just used to chop up zucchini or carve chicken. Knowing how to clean this kitchen surface is vital for avoiding unpleasant odors, unsightly stains and potentially harmful bacteria such as salmonella or E coli. Best dishwasher-safe cutting board: Material Kitchen MK Free Board Best dish sponge: Blueland Compostable Scrub Sponge Continue reading...

Speaking in West Bank settlement, Israeli PM, who is fighting for political survival before elections, says ‘we are squeezing Hamas’ Middle East crisis – live updates Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has given orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the Gaza Strip in a move that threatens to torpedo an already fragile ceasefire and create catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the already devastated territory. Under the US-brokered ceasefire in October, the Israeli army withdrew to a demarcation line which gave Israel direct control of 53% of the occupied territory. Since then, Israeli forces have steadily advanced their positions westward into the Hamas-controlled half of the strip, and declared an ever-expanded no man’s land west of that, within which they claim the right to decide who can enter and open fire on anyone perceived as a threat. Continue reading...

London authority’s new Tory-led administration delivers significant blow to Labour’s flagship housebuilding scheme Enfield council in north London has withdrawn from the government’s new towns programme, in a significant blow to Labour’s flagship housebuilding scheme. The move by the new minority Conservative-led administration could present one of the first tests of Rachel Reeves’s planning changes, designed to curb the use of judicial reviews against new infrastructure. Continue reading...

Colleges and placements can help the 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds who aren’t earning or learning. But what they need most is work For a few days at least, political attention is focused on young people aged 16-24 who are not in education, employment or training (known as Neets). A report from the commission led by Alan Milburn, a former health secretary, shines a bright light on a group that needs it. The document concentrates on analysis, with recommendations due in the autumn. Describing problems is generally easier than solving them. The latest figures record more than 1 million Neets – one in eight of their age group; 60% are economically inactive, meaning that they are not looking for work. The report warns that there will soon be more unless action is taken. It points out that this issue is too often approached from the wrong direction. Political attacks on welfare spending and mean-spirited criticisms of “kids these days” are a distraction from the facts about unemployment, rising ill health and inadequate training. The UK’s poor track record compared with other countries proves that this is a policy failure. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Clean power remains essential. But until it arrives, Britain must stop LNG made scarce by the Iran war setting gas and electricity prices The US-Israel war on Iran will drive household energy costs in Britain to their highest level in two years over the summer. This has given fresh impetus to calls for the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, to change course. The cabinet minister is vulnerable because he promised cheaper bills if Britain embraced his clean, green power plan. Critics, including Labour’s former prime minister Sir Tony Blair, are circling. Yet Mr Miliband ought to ignore the naysayers. Until global carbon emissions, including Britain’s, are reduced to net zero, the planet will continue to fry and temperature records will continue to be broken. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The pop singer said that suggestions that a recent outfit was ‘childlike’ were rooted in sexist attitudes toward women Olivia Rodrigo has responded to controversy over a recent babydoll dress she wore while performing on stage in Spain. The singer faced backlash online after she wore a short puffy dress with a floral pattern while performing her recent single Drop Dead at Barcelona’s Teatre Grec on 8 May. She also wears a similar style dress on the cover of her upcoming album. Continue reading...

Duffy wrote novels, plays and poetry, campaigned for gay rights, and was a ‘tireless advocate’ for authors’ rights Maureen Duffy, author of more than 60 works and a pioneering activist for gay rights and writers’ rights, has died at the age of 92. Duffy was awarded the inaugural £10,000 Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Pioneer prize last year by Bernardine Evaristo, who described her as a “true trailblazer in every sense of the word”. Continue reading...

Paramount+ will air 183 matches per season Deal is major uplift in valuation of TV rights CBS Sports has signed a four-year deal to acquire the rights to broadcast the Women’s Super League live in the United States from next season until the end of the 2029-30 campaign. The new deal will see the Paramount+ streaming service air 183 WSL matches a season, while the CBS Sports Network will show one live match a week, with select matches also airing on CBS Sports Golazo Network. Continue reading...

Ten people, all of whom were e-scooter riders, were killed in collisions compared with six in 2024 Nearly 500 people were seriously injured in collisions involving e-scooters in Great Britain last year, government statistics have shown. The Department for Transport (DfT) said there had been an estimated 1,484 casualties in crashes involving electric scooters, compared with 1,390 in 2024. Continue reading...

The artwork, in Milan’s oldest shopping arcade, has been worn down by visitors honouring an unusual tradition A floor mosaic of an anatomically detailed bull in one of Milan’s grand arcades is getting a sensitive makeover after being worn down by thousands of passersby honouring an unusual tradition. Legend has it that grinding your heel on the bull’s testicles at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II guarantees you will return to the city. Continue reading...

PM says predecessor misunderstands government’s successes and ‘very different’ situation compared with 1997 Keir Starmer has dismissed Tony’s Blair’s argument that his government is on the wrong track, saying he is implementing the policies needed for today, not the very different situation faced by Blair in 1997. “You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much that Tony says about what the government is doing,” Starmer said during a visit to an apprentice training centre in west London. Continue reading...

Richard Thackeray and Phil Snell respond to an article by Wendy Liu on using artificial intelligence Wendy Liu’s thoughtful piece on AI and cognitive sovereignty raises real concerns about labour redundancies, the hype and the environmental cost (I avoid AI tools because thinking is supposed to be hard. It’s what makes us human, 24 May). But I think she allows those legitimate grievances to colour a separate and more interesting question: what is AI actually doing to the way we think? I use AI heavily and it has changed how I think, but not in the way she fears. It has made me more curious, not less. I now ask questions that I wouldn’t have known to ask and explore territory I would never have had time to reach. Yes, I offload research, but that offloading doesn’t empty my mind, it frees it. Continue reading...

Dr Susan Oman on a campaign that is designed to raise public awareness of AI Your editorial on Pope Leo XIV’s call to centre human dignity in AI debate makes an important argument (The Guardian view on the Pope and Claude: Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI is right to put humanity first, 25 May). While governments, faith leaders and tech bosses debate the future of AI, one group is consistently left out of the conversation: the public, the very people whose lives the technology is shaping. Last week, I gave evidence on AI sovereignty to the all-party parliamentary group on AI that aligns with Pope Leo’s position. I argued that AI sovereignty was a series of deeply human and societal questions that exceed technical, material and macroeconomic concerns. I showed that public concern about AI has risen by 10% in two years, and that 91% believe fairness should be prioritised over economic gain. Yet there is no national programme to help the public understand, trust or have a say in AI. Continue reading...

Jamie Evans questions the exclusion that means his family will not be able to claim £8,000 of support while his wife is a PhD student The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is right to order a Competition and Markets Authority review of hidden childcare charges (Report, 24 May). However, she would do well to also review her department’s own eligibility criteria for accessing 30 hours of funded childcare in the first place. One particularly egregious exclusion is that of PhD students, who miss out on approximately £8,000 of support that the majority of other working parents can access, despite earning only about £20,000 per year (if on a typical UK Research and Innovation-funded course). This is the situation that will affect my wife and I from February next year, when our soon-to-be-born daughter will turn nine months old and my wife will need to return to the completion of her PhD (improving patient experiences of GP services). Continue reading...

Readers respond to an article by Roe McDermott saying that women don’t need laws to make them ‘reflect’ on their choices Well done to Roe McDermott for saying what is rarely said – that abortion doesn’t lead to inevitable regret (Abortion trauma is a myth. Irish women don’t need laws to make them ‘reflect’ on their choices, 26 May). My own experience of one, many years ago, was that it was in fact a very straightforward decision – I didn’t want to become a mother, so I didn’t. End of. What was maybe most confusing about it was that I somehow felt that I should feel more hesitant and conflicted than I actually did, that I wasn’t a “proper woman” because I wasn’t more upset about it all. Continue reading...

Water company blames increased demand amid extreme heat, but customers want answers about lack of storage reservoirs “Spitting, fuming, angry and powerless” is how Pat Prestage describes her emotions after a water outage that has affected thousands of homes in Kent during a May heatwave. On Wednesday, 8,000 South East Water customers in Whitstable lost water, with 14,000 more in Tankerton, Ashford, and its surrounding areas facing intermittent supply or low pressure. South East Water’s incident manager, Matthew Dean, said on Thursday that 22,000 people had had water supply problems. Continue reading...

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A landmark government-backed report has warned that the UK risks a ‘lost generation’ of young people, as new figures show that more than 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK were not in education, employment or training. The former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn said youth disengagement was a mounting economic risk to the country, and urged a fundamental reset of policy covering schools, the health service and the welfare state. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, Richard Partington Continue reading...

Latest updates from 6.30pm (BST) start in Chelmsford The Spin: finding treasure in an old Lancashire cowshed What do you get for beating the world champions? An even tougher test a few days later. England started their T20 World Cup build-up with a 2-1 series win over the holders New Zealand; now they face the 50-over world champions, India, in an intriguing three-match series that begins at a sweltering Chelmsford. Most people have India as second favourites behind Australia to win the World Cup, so this is a litmus test for both teams. But while neither team will want to go into the World Cup on the back of a series defeat, winning and losing is only part of the story. Cricket is an individual game within a team sport, and there are places up for grabs in both teams. Continue reading...

The new and excoriating account of the dire prospects for UK young people is a call to action. It could be the Beveridge report for our time The diagnosis is dire. Alan Milburn has published the first part of his forensic report on the lives and chances of young people, their fate after leaving school or college, the inadequacy of their health, education and pastoral care, and the reluctance of employers to hire them. This is a “moral crisis”, he says. There are now more than a million young people not in work, education or training (Neets), and Milburn expects that number to rise to 1.25 million without radical change. The government needs a “big idea”, he tells me. This should be it, “the spine, the purpose”. Perhaps he was expected only to solve the particular problem of left-behind and lost Neets. What he has delivered instead is an excoriating overview of how badly this young generation is treated altogether. A sense of shock reverberates through every well-written page. Why have children and young people had such a low priority in resources and political concern, especially since 2010? There has been institutional neglect, loss of youth and careers services, chaotic non-communication or data exchange between dislocated silos, small schemes coming and going. Milburn describes a catastrophic failure: it needs a whole “system reset” and no more “tinkering”. Continue reading...

Concerns among commissioners in bloc that surge in imports could lead to decline similar to that of US rust belt towns EU commissioners will meet on Friday for crunch talks aimed at imposing new restrictions on imports from China amid growing concern that Beijing is fuelling conditions for US-style rust belt towns in Europe. The surge in imports of everything from electric cars to key components in machines, medical devices and food stuffs has been dubbed China Shock 2.0, potentially mirroring the experience in the US 25 years ago when Beijing joined the World Trade Organization. Continue reading...

Whether you want a stick, a spray or a tinted cream, our expert’s favourite formulas can provide year-round sun protection • The best face moisturisers for every budget There’s nothing quite like the warmth of the sun on your face after a long, dreary winter. But before you bask in it, you should always apply an SPF. That’s especially true if you use vitamin C and retinol serums, which can increase your vulnerability to sun damage. If you’re not wearing an SPF every day, you might as well toss the rest of your skincare out of the window. As well as the risk of sunburn, UV rays cause longer-lasting, deeper skin damage, resulting in age spots, pigmentation and premature ageing. But if the thought of slathering sticky sunscreens on your face every day makes you want to spend your life in perpetual shade, you’ve come to the right place. Best face SPF overall: Beauty of Joseon relief sun rice + probiotics Best budget face SPF: E45 Sensitive Sun face cream Continue reading...

The 22-year-old Frenchman set up by teammate Stuyven Vingegaard keeps pink jersey after attack on final climb Paul Magnier of Soudal Quick-Step completed a hat-trick of victories in this Giro d’Italia by winning a bunch sprint on stage 18 in Pieve di Soligo. The 22-year-old Frenchman was perfectly set up by his teammate Jasper Stuyven in the final few high-speed turns and powered to the line, after 171km of racing, ahead of two Italian sprinters. Continue reading...