Top Stories
TOP STORY
TOP STORY
Britain wakes up to Labour Party landslide
Keir Starmer has said the “sunlight of hope” is now shining in Britain again as Labour won a landslide election victory.
The Labour leader officially became prime minister today, with voters giving Starmer a large mandate to bring about change in Britain.
Sunak’s Conservative Party recorded its worst performance in a general election. Labour has won over 410 seats, while the Conservatives were on just 121, with some left to declare.
A surge in votes for the Reform party suggested it would win at least four seats, with Nigel Farage, the party leader, becoming an MP in Clacton on his eighth attempt to enter parliament.
The rise of Reform, which split the rightwing vote, could pose a major challenge for an incoming Starmer government, which will have to devise a strategy to fight the rise of the hard right, a trend mirrored across Europe.
Labour has less than two weeks before presenting its first package of legislation in the king’s speech, including legislation to bolster workers’ rights and to set up Great British Energy, the energy generation company at the heart of Labour’s green plans.
POLITICS
POLITICS
Heiress stops donations until Biden replaced
Multimillionaire heiress Abigail Disney said she will stop donations to the Democratic Party "until they replace Biden.”
Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high," Disney, a longtime Democrat, said. "If Biden does not step down, the Democrats will lose.”
In 2024 so far, Disney has given more than $50,000 to left-leaning political groups, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Her statement comes a day after Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings said Biden should be replaced. "Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous," he said.
Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have been major supporters of the Democratic Party, donating more than $20 million to the party in the last few years.
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TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
Artists criticize Apple's lack of transparency
Creators are unhappy about Apple’s lack of transparency around the raw information powering its AI model, Apple Intelligence.
Artists, authors and musicians have accused generative AI companies of sucking up their work for free and profiting off it, leading to more than a dozen lawsuits in 2023.
Midjourney CEO David Holz said its models were trained on “just a big scrape of the internet,” adding, “There isn’t really a way to get 100 million images and know where they’re coming from.”
Shutterstock and Photobucket have reportedly signed deals with Apple to license training images, but Apple hasn’t publicly confirmed those relationships.
While Apple Intelligence tries to win kudos for a more privacy-focused approach using on-device processing and bespoke cloud computing, the fundamentals appear similar.
Karla Ortiz, an illustrator and a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Stability AI and DeviantArt, said: “We know for generative AI to function as is, it relies on massive overreach and violations of rights, private and intellectual … Apple is not an exception.”
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
What caused out-of-season Hurricane Beryl?
Hurricane Beryl was decidedly out of season as it devastated Grenada and other Windward Islands in the Caribbean.
On June 30, the storm became the earliest Atlantic hurricane on record to achieve Category 4 status. A day later, it intensified to become the earliest Atlantic storm to reach Category 5, with sustained winds of about 168 mph.
Scientists have predicted 2024’s Atlantic hurricane season will be “hyperactive” due to that record-breaking ocean heat and the pending onset of the La Niña phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, climate pattern.
Brian McNoldy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami, said: “The ocean heat content—warm water depth— looks more like it normally would the second week of September.”
McNoldy said the ocean temperatures may not be as warm next year. “It would be nice to get back down to what records used to be …[the temperatures] seem like a foreign climate at this point.”
HEALTH
HEALTH
Bench and a grandmother ‘new’ therapy
Elderly grandmothers are the center of a form of mental health therapy adopted in the US and other countries from Zimbabwe.
Benches are set up in quiet, discreet corners of community clinics and some churches and poor neighborhoods. Older women with basic training in problem-solving therapy patiently sit, ready to listen and engage in a one-on-one conversation.
The therapy is inspired by traditional practice in Zimbabwe, where grandmothers were the go-to people for wisdom during rough times. It was considered abandoned in urbanization.
Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatry professor and founder of the initiative, said: “Grandmothers are the custodians of local culture and wisdom … they have an amazing ability [for] ‘expressed empathy’… to make people feel respected and understood.”
Last year, Chibanda was named the winner of a $150,000 prize in the US for revolutionizing mental healthcare. Over one in five Americans are estimated to live with a mental illness.
In Washington, the organization HelpAge USA is piloting the concept. So far, 20 grandmothers determined to “stop the stigma around mental health and make it okay to talk about feelings” have been trained by a team from Friendship Bench Zimbabwe.
OTHER NEWS
OTHER NEWS
Canada names first woman to lead military
Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan has been appointed the first woman in Canada to lead its military.
A highly decorated soldier and mother of four children, Carignan will be promoted to the rank of general and take over from retiring General Wayne Eyre as Chief of the Defense Staff.
The Canadian Armed Forces have been grappling with a toxic culture "hostile to women … [and] conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault.”
Carignan was tasked over the past three years with reforms to make the Canadian Armed Forces more respectful and inclusive following hundreds of sexual misconduct accusations.
According to government data, Women comprise 16% of the Canadian military. Carignan signed up in 1986, three years before Canada allowed women in combat roles.
OFFBEAT
OFFBEAT
Kevin Bacon ‘regular person’ for a day
Kevin Bacon decided to spend a day as a regular guy—and he quickly realized he preferred his life as a celebrity.
Bacon wore an elaborate disguise to see what life would be like if unrecognizable. “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”
When he tested the look at outdoor Los Angeles shopping mall The Grove, “People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fing coffee or whatever. This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”
The actor, 65, has worked steadily since the late 1970s and became a megastar with 1984’s Footloose. “I honestly feel very grateful for where I happen to be.”
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