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Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman have made their return to live TV as they opened Strictly on Saturday night for the first time since announcing they are leaving the show. 

Giving a company a silly name may make it more successful, researchers claim. 'Non-semantic' names such as Google, Xerox or Etsy create a mental itch which makes people more curious.

Thursday Ubuntu-maker Canonical "officially launched Canonical Academy, a new certification platform designed to help professionals validate their Linux and Ubuntu skills through practical, hands-on assessments," writes the blog It's FOSS: Focusing on real-world scenarios, Canonical Academy aims to foster practical skills rather than theoretical knowledge. The end goal? Getting professionals ready for the actual challenges they will face on the job. The learning platform is already live with its first course offering, the System Administrator track (with three certification exams), which is tailored for anyone looking to validate their Linux and Ubuntu expertise. The exams use cloud-based testing environments that simulate real workplace scenarios. Each assessment is modular, meaning you can progress through individual exams and earn badges for each one. Complete all the exams in this track to earn the full Sysadmin qualification... Canonical is also looking for community members to contribute as beta testers and subject-matter experts (SME). If you are interested in helping shape the platform or want to get started with your certification, you can visit the Canonical Academy website. The sys-admin track offers exams for Linux Terminal, Ubuntu Desktop 2024, Ubuntu Server 2024, and "managing complex systems," according to an official FAQ. "Each exam provides an in-browser remote desktop interface into a functional Ubuntu Desktop environment running GNOME. From this initial node, you will be expected to troubleshoot, configure, install, and maintain systems, processes, and other general activities associated with managing Linux. The exam is a hybrid format featuring multiple choice, scenario-based, and performance-based questions..." "Test-takers interested in the types of material covered on each exam can review links to tutorials and documentation on our website." The FAQ advises test takers to use a Chromium-based browser, as Firefox "is NOT supported at this time... There is a known issue with keyboards and Firefox in the CUE.01 Linux 24.04 preview release at this time, which will be resolved in the CUE.01 Linux 24.10 exam release."

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What's most remarkable about her is that at an age when most women in showbusiness are starting to find themselves sidelined, Winkleman is at the top of her game.

Sergeant Kevin Bollaro, has been charged with official misconduct and tampering with records in connection to the deaths of local veterinarian Lauren Semanchik and Tyler Webb.

Putin is amassing nuclear weapons and attack submarines in the Artis Circle as his country prepares for war with NATO, Norway has said. 

Elizabeth Harper, who was abused in Rotherham aged 14, said the Prime Minister wanted the inquiry to fail as it would damage his party.

Hadush Kebatu, jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage girl, should have been transferred from HMP Chelmsford to an immigration removal centre on Friday ahead of his deportation.

In a stark letter to the Chancellor, the nine major grocers said growing cost pressures meant grocery prices had been rising over the past year and were expected to rise further.

Morimasa Hibino, 69, lost his balance and fell to his death from the outer wall of the ancient temple in the Italian capital.

QUENTIN LETTS: Hallowe'en arrived early for Sir Keir Starmer last week when an opinion poll found the Greens to be level with Labour. Eek! No wonder the Prime Minister is looking so knackered.

In March, The Mail on Sunday exposed a series of sickening comments posted online by Aqeel Jamil, a consultant gastroenterologist at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth.

Beijing 's ambassador to the UK said that the 'key to ensuring the sound and steady development of UK-China relations' depended on Britain accepting that 'Taiwan has never been a country'.

If you want to know what Reform UK mean when we say Britain is broken, just look at the case of Hadush Kebatu. The illegal migrant from Ethiopia sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Epping, Essex.

"Exxon Mobil sued California on Friday," reports Reuters, "challenging two state laws that require large companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks." In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Exxon argued that Senate Bills 253 and 261 violate its First Amendment rights by compelling Exxon to "serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees," and asked the court to block the state of California from enforcing the laws. Exxon said the laws force it to adopt California's preferred frameworks for climate reporting, which it views as misleading and counterproductive... The California laws were supported by several big companies including Apple, Ikea and Microsoft, but opposed by several major groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which called them "onerous." SB 253 requires public and private companies that are active in the state and generate revenue of more than $1 billion annually to publish an extensive account of their carbon emissions starting in 2026. The law requires the disclosure of both the companies' own emissions and indirect emissions by their suppliers and customers. SB 261 requires companies that operate in the state with over $500 million in revenue to disclose climate-related financial risks and strategies to mitigate risk. Exxon also argued that SB 261 conflicts with existing federal securities laws, which already regul "The First Amendment bars California from pursuing a policy of stigmatization by forcing Exxon Mobil to describe its non-California business activities using the State's preferred framing," Exxon said in the lawsuit. Exxon Mobil "asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year," reports the Associated Press: In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state's new reporting requirements. The company would have to use "frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil" for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states... A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was "truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency."

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Keir Starmer 's defeat in Labour's deputy leadership contest is a calamity for him. The only question now is whether his MPs move against him before or after next year's local elections.

Weight-loss drugs, medically can cause a loss of muscle mass alongside fat, so doctors advise that users take up strength training and eat enough protein to combat the unhelpful side effects.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp took a good look at the images on a promotional web page for Databricks' "context-aware AI assistant": If there was an AI Demo Hall of Shame, the first inductee would have to be Amazon. Their demo tried to support its CEO's claims that Amazon Q Code Transformation AI saved it 4,500 developer-years and an additional $260 million in "annualized efficiency gains" by automatically and accurately upgrading code to a more current version of Java. But it showcased a program that didn't even spell "Java" correctly. (It was instead called 'Jave')... Today's nominee for the AI Demo Hall of Shame inductee is analytics platform Databricks for the NYC Taxi Trips Analysis it's been showcasing on its Data Science page since last November. Not only for its choice of a completely trivial case study that requires no 'Data Science' skills — find and display the ten most expensive and longest taxi rides — but also for the horrible AI-generated bar chart used to present the results of the simple ranking that deserves its own spot in the Graph Hall of Shame. In response to a prompt of "Now create a new bar chart with matplotlib for the most expensive trips," the Databricks AI Assistant dutifully complies with the ill-advised request, spewing out Python code to display the ten rides on a nonsensical bar chart whose continuous x-axis hides points sharing the same distance. (One might also question why no annotation is provided to call out or explain the 3 trips with a distance of 0 miles that are among the ten most expensive rides, with fares of $260, $188, and $105). Looked at with a critical eye, these examples used to sell data scientists, educators, management, investors, and Wall Street on AI would likely raise eyebrows rather than impress their intended audiences.

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Huge majorities think the plan would be an invasion of privacy and open to hacking and abuse, with only a small minority thinking it would help deter illegal migration.

Scientists in Philadelphia analysed the medical data of more than 1.3 million patients and found those with GERD had a 27 percent higher risk of heart attack than those without the condition.