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Showdown between Musk and Altman has rendered the world's most wealthy comical under egalitarian eye of courtFor the past couple of weeks, on the fourth floor of a courthouse on a quiet street in downtown Oakland, the world's richest man and one of the world's most valuable startups have been at war over the future of artificial intelligence.Being one of the reporters in the room has felt like watching an updated, opposite-coast version of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities – ambition, ego, greed and the spectrum of social class on full display. The supporting cast has included Elon Musk fanboys, a stern judge and a who's-who of Silicon Valley's most influential people. Continue reading......

Emissions understated by factor of five in Essex plans for tech giant, while Greystoke's Lincolnshire plans show similar errorDevelopers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK's total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK's total carbon footprint. Continue reading......

Passengers were evacuated safely after the plane struck a person and an engine then caught on fireA Frontier Airlines plane hit a person on the runway of Denver's international airport during takeoff, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate, authorities said.The plane, headed to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11.19pm on Friday, the Denver airport's official X account wrote. Continue reading......

Simply hanging on could be a disaster for Iranians, while Trump needs to resolve this economic crisis he created Exchanges of fire between Iran and the US demonstrate the serious instability of the situation in the Middle East. Though the US strikes late on Thursday were just “a love tap”, according to the US president, Donald Trump, the reality is that neither side can continue the high-stakes standoff in the strait of Hormuz indefinitely.The US and its ally Israel demonstrated a comprehensive military superiority over Iran – taking minimal casualties in the 38-day war – but Washington has both failed to translate that into strategic dominance and allowed Iran to take control of the strait, driving up the oil price. Continue reading......

Parent company of president's Truth Social platform generated only $870,000 even as net sales were up 6%The parent company of Donald Trump's Truth Social platform – one of the president's preferred communications channels – lost nearly $406m in the first three months of the year while generating a little over $870,000 in revenue, according to financial filings.The Trump Media and Technology Group's quarterly report for January to March 2026 showed that while net sales were up 6% year over year, the company took sizable losses related to other investments. Continue reading......

Florida agreement grants US president control of licensing and merchandising at renamed airport, analysts sayIt was a week in which one prominent name in aviation, Spirit Airlines, disappeared, killed in the company's own admission by high fuel prices resulting from Donald Trump's war in Iran.Within days, however, another moniker was already flying high in industry circles: the president's own. Continue reading......

Spirit Airlines helped turn flying into a fee-based nightmare. Now it's gone, and fuel prices are soaringForgive me for not mourning last week's demise of Spirit Airlines, the company responsible for making flying absolutely terrible. Due to rising expenses and billions of dollars in debt, Spirit shut down abruptly last Saturday, stranding thousands of customers who were unaware that an entire business meant to transport them through the sky was about to shutter for good.Spirit was struggling for years, but it all got so much worse thanks to the soaring cost of jet fuel caused by the war in Iran and the crisis in the strait of Hormuz that halted the shipment of oil. It was bad enough being the country's most ridiculed mode of conveyance outside of the Segway. But now it costs even more to suck that badly.Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading......

Trump administration urges US Postal Service to scrap 100-year-old rule as Democratic state attorneys general protestHandguns could be mailed through the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the first time in nearly 100 years if a proposed Trump administration rule takes effect.Democratic attorneys general in two dozen states have sent a letter in opposition. Continue reading......

Soaring oil prices have left many Americans with higher costs and fewer options for travel amid the Iran warTell us: have your holiday plans changed in light of recent world events?Chelsea Blackmore saves up every year for an annual vacation with her 58-year-old mother. This year, after landing an especially good deal, they made plans to embark on a Disney cruise from Orlando.To keep costs low, she bought the least expensive plane tickets she could find: a $500 round trip fare on Spirit Airlines. Continue reading......

Ambitious plans are being scaled back – but film and TV industry point to big existing investments in British productionHollywood blockbusters including the eagerly anticipated Beatles biopics and big-budget TV series such as Bridgerton have been keeping the UK's film and TV studio facilities packed.But as the streaming wars recalibrate having passed “peak TV”, a slowdown in the content arms race is prompting property developers to switch to building datacentres amid the AI boom. Continue reading......

Oxfordshire's Ray Valley Solar already generates clean energy for 7,000 homes, and is now crowdfunding storage to marry daylight with evening demandTucked away among hedgerows on a large field between a motorway and the River Ray, one of the UK's largest community-owned solar parks is hard to spot from the surrounding country lanes.But the nearly 36,000 solar panels installed on the site are literally a shining example of what can be achieved when a renewable energy project is co-owned by local people. Continue reading......

The company's UK and Europe boss has become a lightning rod for the British public's fear of a US tech takeoverThe hall was packed with rightwing radicals when Louis Mosley heralded a coming revolution. Just as Oliver Cromwell – that “crusader for Christ and liberty” – routed King Charles I's royalists, “a similar revolution is brewing today”, said the UK and Europe boss of Palantir. Globalism's “twilight” was upon us, he said in a speech dotted with admiring mentions of the podcaster Joe Rogan and “Elon's Doge”.It was not a typical peroration for a big UK government contractor with more than £600m in deals with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and police. But Palantir, the world's most controversial tech company, is no typical contractor. In recent years it has gained firm footholds across Britain's public sector while appalling critics with its leadership's rightwing rhetoric and its work for the US and Israeli militaries and Donald Trump's ICE immigration crackdown. Contin...

Article about second-tier rugby club last December piqued interest of American private equity firm “I think my family already thought I was crazy so this is nothing new,” says Kenn Moritz from his home office in faraway Pittsburgh. The Moritz family may have a point. Given all those baseball, football, ice hockey and basketball franchises in the United States, why opt instead to invest in a second-tier English rugby club in Cornwall that almost folded less than two years ago?The catalyst turns out, ahem, to have been your correspondent's article about the Cornish Pirates in the Guardian last December. Moritz was sitting where he is now, trawling through his trusted worldwide news sources when he stumbled across the Pirates' quest for fresh investment. Somewhere inside him a light flicked on. “Without that article I wouldn't have called,” says Moritz, the president of the private equity firm Stonewood Capital. “It gave me an insight into what was going on in English rugby and piqued my interes...

Brown will advise on global finance, while Harman will focus on tackling violence against women and girls and improving economic opportunitiesUK politics live – latest updatesKeir Starmer has brought in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as advisersin a move to ease the mounting pressure on the prime minister to resign after the disastrous May election results for Labour.Brown, the former prime minister and long-serving chancellor under Tony Blair, has been made Starmer's envoy on global finance, with a brief to advise on finance partnerships to help defence-related investments, particularly with Europe. Continue reading......

Deprivation and inequality are behind the fall in healthy life expectancy, writes George Binette. Plus letters from Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Dr Louise Lawson and Chris PhillipsonHelen McCarthy writes that today's struggle “is the right to live a good, meaningful life, and to live it right to the end” (Britain pioneered the comfortable retirement – but that golden age is coming to an end, 2 May). Ironically, her column appeared days after the Health Foundation reported a notable fall of roughly two years in healthy life expectancy across the UK in the decade between 2012-14 and 2022-24 to below 61 years for both men and women – significantly below the state pension age. Among 21 high-income countries, Britain's ranking slumped from 14th to 20th against this measure, ahead only of the US.The reasons for this relative and absolute decline are, of course, multifaceted, but there is an undeniable link to relative deprivation. With the state pension age continuing to rise and the Tony Blair Ins...

In the coming days I will be setting out our path to break with the status quo once and for all by building a stronger and fairer UKThese were very tough election results. It hurts to lose brilliant local candidates and leaders – friends and colleagues who represent the best of the Labour party. I take responsibility for that and feel it very deeply. It is right we reflect and learn the right lessons.While the results will understandably lead to much debate about what's changed in British politics, that should not overshadow the fact that for years voters have been deeply frustrated with the status quo – constantly hoping that things will get better and that politics will deliver real change in their lives.Keir Starmer is the UK prime ministerDo 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 gentle French garment is now as cursed as the infamous megacorp, which has accumulated $80m in government contracts in Australia alone It's taken me years to find a chore coat with a cut that flatters my big tits but, now that I finally own one, I want to incinerate it.Such is the power of brand contamination; infamous data surveillance megacorp Palantir has decided to bang a logo on a chore coat to sell as corporate merch. Continue reading......

Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decisionsSince the surreal scene at the 2024 presidential inauguration, when a row of big tech titans took their VIP seats and signaled their new alliance with Maga, the Trump administration has rolled out the red carpet for Silicon Valley's AI ambitions and shareholder priorities.Washington has doled out billions in lucrative federal subsidies and contracts to the cash-rich sector, bloating an AI bubble that experts warn may imperil the entire economy while prohibiting any guardrails on the fast-moving technology. Continue reading......

Reform leader irritated when asked about money from Christopher Harborne on day of party's election gainsElection 2026 live: latest news updatesNigel Farage has repeatedly refused to answer questions about a personal gift of £5m he received from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, as the Reform UK leader sought on Friday to focus attention on the party's election gains.Farage was clearly irritated when asked on a number of occasions on Friday about the money, which the Guardian revealed he had received shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 general election and which was not declared. Continue reading......

The system's power is comparable to others – but it still has frightening implications for the future of hackingLast month, Anthropic made a remarkable announcement about its new model, Claude Mythos Preview: it was so good at finding security vulnerabilities in software that the company would not release it to the general public. Instead, it would only be available to a select group of companies to scan and fix their own software.The announcement requires context – but it contained an essential truth. Continue reading......