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So ends Sir Keir Starmer's first parliamentary year; not with a bang but a whimper. As the PM drifts rudderless in a sea of troubles, those happy days of July 2024 must seem like some faraway dream.

Pubs have been given the extension to stay open late after England's women have taken on Spain in Switzerland in the final of this year's European Championships.

The Lord of Dance's political ambitions were revealed during a High Court planning battle concerning his Castlehyde mansion in Cork.

Sick leave in the Whitehall blob is surging under Labour, analysis suggests. Absence rates jumped by up to 26 per cent in major government departments last year.

Award-winning actor Billy Porter stirred controversy with a provocative statement while promoting his new leading role on Broadway.

The future queen of Norway, 21, is 'excited' to become a student and is 'looking forward to starting my studies at the University of Sydney', she said in a statement shared on Instagram.

A recent Echelon firmware update has effectively bricked offline functionality for its smart gym equipment, cutting off compatibility with popular third-party apps like QZ and forcing users to connect to Echelon's servers -- even just to view workout stats. Ars Technica reports: As explained in a Tuesday blog post by Roberto Viola, who develops the "QZ (qdomyos-zwift)" app that connects Echelon machines to third-party fitness platforms, like Peloton, Strava, and Apple HealthKit, the firmware update forces Echelon machines to connect to Echelon's servers in order to work properly. A user online reported that as a result of updating his machine, it is no longer syncing with apps like QZ, and he is unable to view his machine's exercise metrics in the Echelon app without an Internet connection. Affected Echelon machines reportedly only have full functionality, including the ability to share real-time metrics, if a user has the Echelon app active and if the machine is able to reach Echelon's servers. Viola wrote: "On startup, the device must log in to Echelon's servers. The server sends back a temporary, rotating unlock key. Without this handshake, the device is completely bricked -- no manual workout, no Bluetooth pairing, no nothing." Because updated Echelon machines now require a connection to Echelon servers for some basic functionality, users are unable to use their equipment and understand, for example, how fast they're going without an Internet connection. If Echelon were to ever go out of business, the gym equipment would, essentially, get bricked. Viola told Ars Technica that he first started hearing about problems with QZ, which launched in 2020, at the end of 2024 from treadmill owners. He said a firmware update appears to have rolled out this month on Echelon bikes that bricks QZ functionality. In his blog, Viola urged Echelon to let its machines send encrypted data to another device, like a phone or a tablet, without the Internet. He wrote: "Users bought the bike; they should be allowed to use it with or without Echelon's services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ozzy Osbourne's final months were filmed for a BBC documentary, his son Jack has revealed.

The joy of school holidays turns quickly to despair at home when their need to let off steam leads to graffiti on the walls, food blocking the washing machine and toys stuck in the U-bend.

She wasn't behind the camera, but the Princess of Wales was instrumental in shooting the official portraits from King Charles's Coronation.

There was a time when Martine McCutcheon had the world at her feet. So what has happened to the actress we know as the loveable, straight-talking tea lady Natalie from Love Actually?

Ioan Gruffudd was the very picture of paternal joy and delight this week, as he climbed the steps of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles, his new pregnant wife Bianca at his side.

The President's MAGA base of true believers refuses to accept the official reasons why the files on the late notorious paedophile can't be made public.

A source close to Hulk Hogan's family revealed to Daily Mail that the aging wrestling star knew he was suffering myriad health problems before his passing on Thursday aged 71.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A federal judge reprimanded lawyers with a high-priced firm defending Alabama's prison system for using ChatGPT to write court filings with "completely made up" case citations. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco publicly reprimanded three lawyers with Butler Snow, the law firm hired to defend Alabama and other jurisdictions in lawsuits against their prison systems. The order sanctioned William R. Lunsford, the head of the firm division that handles prison litigation, along with Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford. "Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction," Manasco wrote in the Wednesday sanctions order. Manasco removed the three from participating in the case where the false citations were filed and directed them to share the sanctions order with clients, opposing lawyers and judges in all of their other cases. She also referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar for possible disciplinary action. [...] "In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up," Manasco wrote. She added that using the citations without verifying their accuracy was "recklessness in the extreme." The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KIERAN GILL: West Ham United star Lucas Paqueta appears to have won his seismic two-year fight to save his career after standing accused of spot-fixing by the FA.

On 7 July we published an article about the Motability scheme which incorrectly referred to cars leased by users of the scheme as 'free'. This was inaccurate. In fact, the scheme allows people who receive an...

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Sasha Levin, a respected developer and engineer at Nvidia, has proposed a patch series aimed at formally integrating AI coding assistants into the Linux kernel workflow. The proposal includes two major changes. First, it introduces configuration stubs for popular AI development tools like Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codeium, Continue, Windsurf, and Aider. These are symlinked to a centralized documentation file to ensure consistency. Second, and more notably, it lays out official guidelines for how AI-generated contributions should be handled. According to the proposed documentation, AI assistants must identify themselves in commit messages using a Co-developed-by: tag, but they cannot use Signed-off-by:, which legally certifies the commit under the Developer Certificate of Origin. That responsibility remains solely with the human developer. One example shared in the patch shows a simple fix to a typo in the kernel's OPP documentation. Claude, an AI assistant, corrects "dont" to "don't" and commits the patch with the proper attribution: "Co-developed-by: Claude claude-opus-4-20250514." Levin's patch also creates a new section under Documentation/AI/ where the expectations and limitations of using AI in kernel development are laid out. This includes reminders to follow kernel coding standards, respect the development process, and understand licensing requirements. There are things AI often struggles with.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The reference to the Last Of The Summer Wine character - known for her curlers and wrinkled stockings - was deemed to be 'unacceptable professional conduct'.

Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, aged around 18 months, is photographed in his mother's arms in the tent they now share in Gaza City