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Interest in all things Jane Austen remains high, following the celebrations of her 250th anniversary. In September, the museum based in her former home in Chawton, Hampshire, will host a Persuasion festival. But a less obvious beneficiary of this spike in interest is a museum dedicated to two writers she never met: William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The success of the BBC television series The Other Bennet Sister – which portrayed Mary, a minor character in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as a Wordsworth enthusiast – has led to an influx of visitors to Dove Cottage in Cumbria.This has been a big…

The Trump administration has led a campaign to ‘dismantle’ the court, calling it a threat to US national sovereignty.The administration of United States President Donald Trump has added the head of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as one of its senior lawyers to a list of sanctioned individuals.On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the widening sanctions as part of his campaign to “dismantle” the international court.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“The Trump Administration is sanctioning ICC President Tomoko Akane and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye in our unwavering mission to protect Americans from…

Ahead of the primaries in Florida on Tuesday, the only public poll of the Democratic primary for Senate between Angie Nixon, a progressive state representative, and Alex Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was retracted last month.It was not much better in the other statewide contests, where polls have been few and far between. The lone exception came in the Republican primary for governor, where pollsters have released 20 surveys this year. Representative Byron Donalds, who has been endorsed by President Trump, led in all of them.Mr. Donalds, who was already among the leading candidates in the race when polling…

Reform UK has suspended prominent former Conservative Tim Montgomerie after he criticised senior party figures, including Nigel Farage, in media interviews.Montgomerie, who defected to Reform 18 months ago after a long career as a Tory adviser and commentator, has said he plans to appeal against the suspension.On Friday, Montgomerie told the BBC he was frustrated at Farage’s “aggrieved” tone after the Clacton by-election – and on Monday he told The Spectator podcast, external that Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf was not a “team player”.Reform said he had been suspended “in line with party rules” after public criticism of the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Damascus and Ankara strongly condemned Israeli air strikes on the Abu al-Duhur military air base in north-western Syria on Tuesday, calling it a “violation” of the country’s sovereignty.Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Turkey and President Donald Trump’s envoy for Syria, also criticised the attacks, saying Washington was “deeply concerned” that what he described as “confirmed Israeli air strikes” were “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability”.The Israeli military declined to comment.Eight strikes hit the runway and storage facilities at Abu…

Over the past several weeks, two developments have underscored the growing risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems: the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident and, separately, preliminary evidence that one of our upcoming models, Astra, may meet the Critical cybersecurity capability threshold under our Preparedness Framework. Together, these developments, combined with rapid progress in our internal research, have added urgency to our work on strengthening our monitoring, alignment, and containment safeguards across all stages of the training process.As models become more capable, the risks associated with developing and testing them internally also grow. Our standards for monitoring, alignment, and security must stay…

Robin Williams’ children are taking over their father’s Instagram account after his daughter spoke out against the use of his AI likeness, as reported earlier by The Wrap. In a post on Tuesday, Zak, Zelda, and Cody Williams write that they want the late actor’s Instagram profile to be a “safe, trusted place where the stories, photos, videos, and memories shared reflect his legacy with authenticity, warmth, and care.”A story posted to Zelda Williams’ own Instagram account expands on the decision to bring back her father’s profile, saying that it’s meant to help combat “rampant AI abuse,” according to The…

An affiliate of political action committee (PAC) Fairshake, funded primarily by Coinbase and Ripple Labs, has poured more than $2 million into media opposing a Democratic candidate who did not appear to have taken any prominent position on digital assets before the ads were released.According to records with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as of Tuesday, the Protect Progress PAC had spent more than $2 million on ads opposing Democratic candidate Oliver Gilbert in Florida’s 24th congressional district. Notably, no candidate in the Democratic primary appeared to have taken a strong position on digital assets as part of their campaigns…

KANDERSTEG, Switzerland (AP) — An unstable mountain rock formation looming above the Swiss village of Kandersteg threatens a landslide that could rival the disaster that destroyed nearby Blatten last year, a collapse scientists linked to thawing permafrost and glacier dynamics. The 1,300 residents of Kandersteg, in Switzerland’s Bern canton, live amid a quintessential Alpine landscape of sharp peaks, white glaciers, steep green valleys and the distant sound of cowbells. But a catastrophe looms over the quiet village: a mountainside rock formation called Spitze Stei, part of a mountain landscape increasingly affected by thawing permafrost, threatens to collapse into the valley…

Elbridge Colby, the influential but polarizing U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, just completed a tour of Southeast Asia where he visited Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. His primary goal was clearly to clarify and promote the Trump administration’s new global defense strategy, underpinned by what it calls “flexible realism,” with U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. In a public speech in Manila, he reiterated the turn in U.S. alliance politics, much of which appears to carry his handwriting. Washington seeks “partners, not protectorates,” to increase burden-sharing while continuing to bolster deterrence by denial against China. Colby also…