Mumsnet sparks fury from parents over 'normalising' smartphones for children after using six-year-old in marketing campaign
The parenting forum has launched a £279 phone designed to 'put child safety first and give parents peace of mind'.
One in TWENTY drivers now have disability blue badge as councils urged to crack down on misuse
A record high of 5.2 per cent of people in England had a blue badge as of March 31 last year, analysis of Department for Transport (DfT) data found.
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews the Easter weekend's TV: Forget the Serengeti, Sir David finds bloodthirsty drama in your garden!
In all the wildlife footage presented by David Attenborough throughout his long lifetime, there's little more jaw-dropping than the sight of an otter hunting ducklings in an English country garden.
Coleen Rooney 'filmed her swanky 40th birthday bash for her £10m Disney Plus show after partying with pals at her lavish £20m mansion'
Disney+ viewers will be in for a treat as Coleen Rooney's lavish 40th birthday bash was captured as part of her £10million deal with the streaming giant.
Hundreds of Theatres Show Apocalyptic-Yet-Optimistic New Movie, 'The AI Doc'
Hundreds of theatres are now showing a new documentary called The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist. Variety calls it "playful and heady,"edited "with a spirit of ADHD alertness." The New York Times suggests it "tries to cover so much that it ends up being more confusing than clarifying, but parts are fascinating."
But the Los Angeles Times calls it an "aggravating soup of information and opinion that wants to move at the speed of machine thought." So while co-director Daniel Roher asks whether he should bring a child into a world with AI, "Perhaps more urgently, should Roher have made an AI doc that treats us like children?"
First, he parades all the safety doomers, seeming to believe their warnings that an unfeeling superintelligence is upon us and we can't trust it. Then, sufficiently disturbed, he hauls in the AI cheerleaders, a suspiciously positive gang who can envision only medical miracles and grindless lives in which we're all full-time artists. Only then, after this simplistic setup where platitudes reign, do we get the section in which the subject is treated like the brave (and grave) new world it is: geopolitically fraught, economically tenuous and a playground for billionaires.
Why couldn't the complexity have been the dialogue from the beginning, instead of the play-dumb cartoon "The AI Doc" feels like for so long? Maybe Roher believes this is what our increasingly gullible, truth-challenged citizenry needs from an explanatory doc: a flashy, kindhearted reminder that we're the change we need to be.
Read more reactions here and here. Mashable warns the documentary's director "will ultimately craft a journey that feels like a panic attack in real time. In the end, you may not feel better about mankind's chances against the rise of AI. But you'll likely feel less helpless in the future before us all."
They also point out that the film "shares some ways its audience can more actively be apart of the conversation, and provides a link to the film's website for engagement," where 6,948 people have now signed up for its newsletter. ("Demand a seat at the table," urges its signup button, under a warning that "Government and AI companies are designing our future without us. We need to reclaim our voice in shaping the future of AI...")
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
APRIL 6: As the Moon moves into bold Sagittarius, one sign should make a move, says JEMIMA CAINER, while another must be honest
Today the spirits are very much in communication with the world around us.
Will 'AI-Assisted' Journalists Bring Errors and Retractions?
Meet the "journalist" who "uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly," according to the Wall Street Journal.
"AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune's web traffic in the second half of 2025." And most were written by 42-year-old Nick Lichtenberg, who has now written over 600 AI-assisted stories, producing "more stories in six months than any of his colleagues at Fortune delivered in a year."
One Wednesday in February, he cranked out seven. "I'm a bit of a freak," Lichtenberg said... A story by Lichtenberg sometimes starts with a prompt entered into Perplexity or Google's NotebookLM, asking it to write something based on a headline he comes up with. He moves the AI tools' initial drafts into a content-management system and edits the stories before publishing them for Fortune's readers... A piece from earlier that morning about Josh D'Amaro being named Disney CEO took 10 minutes to get online, he said...
Like other journalists, Lichtenberg vets his stories. He refers back to the original documents to confirm the information he's reporting is correct. He reaches out to companies for comment. But he admits his process isn't as thorough as that of magazine fact-checkers.
While Lichtenberg started out saying his stories were co-authored with "Fortune Intelligence", he now typically signs his own name, according to the article, "because he feels the work is mostly his own." (Though his stories "sometimes" disclose generative AI was used as a research tool...) The article asks with he could be "a bellwether for where much of the media business is headed..."
"Much of the content people now consume online is generated by artificial intelligence, with some 9% of newly published newspaper articles either partially or fully AI-generated, according to a 2025 study led by the University of Maryland. The number of AI-generated articles on the web surpassed human-written ones in late 2024, according to research and marketing agency Graphite."
Some executives have made full-throated declarations about the threat posed by AI. New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said AI "is almost certainly going to usher in an unprecedented torrent of crap," referencing deepfakes as an example. The NewsGuild of New York, the union representing Fortune employees and journalists at other media outlets, said the people are what makes journalism so powerful. "You simply can't replicate lived experiences, human judgment and expertise," said president Susan DeCarava.
For Chris Quinn, the editor of local publications Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer, AI tools have helped tame other torrents facing the industry. AI has allowed the outlets to cover counties in Ohio that otherwise might go ignored by scraping information from local websites and sending "tips" to reporters, he said. It has also edited stories and written first drafts so the newsrooms' journalists can focus on the calls, research and reporting needed for their stories.... Newsrooms from the New York Times to The Wall Street Journal are deploying AI in various ways to help reporters and editors work more efficiently....
Not all newsrooms disclose their use of AI, and in some cases have rolled out new tools that resulted in errors or PR gaffes. An October study from the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC, which relied on professional journalists to evaluate the news integrity of more than 3,000 AI responses, found that almost half of all AI responses had at least one significant issue.
Last week the New York Times even issued a correction when a freelance book reviewer using an AI tool unknowingly included "language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian." But it was actually "the second time in a few days that the Times was called out for potential AI plagiarism," according to the American journalist writing The Handbasket newsletter.
We must stem the idea being pushed by tech companies and their billionaire funders who've sunk too much into their products to admit defeat that the infiltration of AI into journalism is inevitable; because from my perch as an independent journalist, it simply is not...
Some AI-loving journalists appear to believe that if they're clear enough with the AI program they're using, it will truly understand what they're seeking and not just do what it's made to do: steal shit... If you want to work with machines, get a job that requires it. There are a whole lot more of those than there are writing jobs, so free up space for people who actually want to do the work. You're not doing the world a favor by gifting it your human/AI hybrid. Journalism will not miss you if you leave...
But meanwhile, USA Today recently tried hiring for a new position: AI-Assisted reporter. (The lucky reporter will "support the launch and scaling of AI-assisted local journalism in a major U.S. metro," working with tools including Copilot and Perplexity, pioneering possible future expansions and "AI-enabled newsroom operations that support and augment human-led journalism.") And Google is already sponsoring a "publishing innovation award"...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mother of Nottingham stabbing victim Barnaby Webber accuses inquiry witnesses of being 'arrogant, evasive and deflective'
Emma Webber, whose eldest son Barney was killed in a stabbing rampage in 2023, said several witnesses at the inquiry into the atrocity were arrogant and evasive when giving evidence.
Donald Trump emerges from White House for first time since incredible rescue mission to save downed airman
President Donald Trump was spotted at the White House on Sunday afternoon in the middle of a rather quiet Easter with few public appearances on his schedule.
New Yorkers step out in their most extravagant Easter bonnets as colorful creations and adorable animals take over the streets of Manhattan
New Yorkers spilled onto the streets of Manhattan in their most extravagant creations for the 2026 Easter Bonnet Parade.
Man, 18, 'rapes women in her 20s after leading her down alleyway in seaside town'
The victim was attacked in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in the early hours of this morning.
Olivia Attwood copies Kim Kardashian by undergoing stem cell therapy in South Korea after admitting she feels 'lost' following Bradley Dack split
Olivia Attwood copied Kim Kardashian by undergoing stem cell therapy in South Korea after admitting she feels 'lost' following split from Bradley Dack.
GTA-style heist leaves luxury sports cars worth half a MILLION dollars smashed in the street as urgent hunt for raiders is launched
Several pricey cars were left abandoned after a luxury car heist went wrong in New York City.
Naga Munchetty's brutal parting shot - and ANOTHER headache for the BBC: Insiders lift lid on 'sly and awkward jabs', 'bizarre' behaviour and say: 'She just can't help herself!'
With tensions behind the scenes at an all-time high, the last thing BBC bosses needed was another slew of unfavourable headlines.
Clubber in his 20s dies in the street in Manchester after falling ill inside the venue
The reveller, in his 20s, is thought to have suffered a medical episode in the early hours of Saturday.
Holly Ramsay and Adam Peaty 'are being morphed into the next power couple by pals David and Victoria Beckham' after landing luxe new campaign
The Olympic swimmer, 31, and daughter of chef Gordon Ramsay, 26, tied the knot in December and now appear to be attempting to forge a team image in the world of social media.
Lucy Mecklenburgh and fiancé Ryan Thomas 'delay their wedding plans to remain financially independent after she became concerned over his money struggles'
Seven years after Ryan Thomas popped the questioned to Lucy Mecklenburgh in Positano, Italy, the pair have still not tied the knot.
Crooks Behind $27M in 'Refund' Scams Busted By YouTube Pranksters After Being Lured to Fake Funeral
One crime ring scammed 2,000 elderly people of more than $27 million between 2021 and 2023 using tech support/bank impersonation/refund scams. "Victims were in their 70s and 80s," reports the U.S. Attorney's office for California's southern district. Victims were first told they'd received a refund (either online or via phone), but then told they'd been "over-refunded" a massive amount, and asked to return that amount.
But 42-year-old Jiandong Chen just admitted Thursday in a U.S. federal court that he was involved in the fraud and money laundering via cryptocurrency — pleading guilty to two charges with maximum penalties of 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine, plus 20 years in prison with a maximum fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered. "Chen, a Chinese national, is the second defendant charged in a five-defendant indictment." And what tripped him up seems to be that "Certain members of the conspiracy also did in-person pickups of money directly from victims..."
And so YouTube enters the story — when the scammers called pranksters with 1,790,000 subscribers to their "Trilogy Media" channel. In an elaborate three-hour video, the team of pranksters lured the scammer to a rented Airbnb where they're staging a fake funeral with a nun. (One of the men acting in the video remembers "we start doing a prayer... I'm holding the scammer's hand in my nun outfit...")
They convince the scammer to collect the cash from a dead man — "Is there anything you'd like to say to him?" Then there's demon voices. The scammer's victim resurrects from the dead. Did the cash mule bring holy water?
The end result was a video titled "CONFRONTING SCAMMERS WITH A FAKE FUNERAL (EPIC REACTIONS)". But two and a half years later, their "cash mule sting house" video has racked up over 1.3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 2,979 comments. ("This video is longer than Oppenheimer. Thanks for the laughs fellas.")
And the scammer is facing 60 years in prison.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Veteran Waitrose worker of 17 years sacked after tackling shoplifter trying to steal Easter eggs
Shop assistant Walker Smith, 54, was approached by a customer in Waitrose in Clapham Junction, south London , who told him someone had filled a shopping bag with Easter eggs.
Trump issues fresh threat to Iran promising to 'blow everything up and take over the oil' as he sets new deadline after foul-mouthed Easter Sunday rant and daring rescue of airman
Trump issued a new, startling threat to Iran after he posted a swear-filled threat on Sunday morning, as Americans woke up to celebrate the Christian holiday of Easter.