One of child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein's many roles was as a powerbroker and connector of far-right and fascist individuals globally. Messages now show how former Trump advisor Steve Bannon sought the sex-trafficker and paedophile's help to support the European far-right.

The Irish Times reported on 5 February:

The messages mostly date from 2018 and 2019, when Bannon, after being sacked by Trump, regularly visited Europe in his quest to forge a movement in the European Parliament uniting ultra-right wing and Eurosceptic forces from several countries including Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Austria.

Italy's Matteo Salvini and France's Marine Le Pen, both leaders of far-right and fascist-adjacent political parties, were among those Bannon wanted to see flourish:

Bannon especially set his sights on Matteo Salvini, the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League party, who at the time was at the height of his political power.

Opposition parties in Italy have called for investigations:

to clarify whether Epstein influenced the rise of the League after Salvini's name was cited several times in messages exchanged between Bannon and Epstein.

But it wasn't just Italy…

Much the same process happened in France, left-wing party La France Insoumise has now called:

for a cross-party parliament inquiry after several French figures, including Jack Lang, a former minister for culture, and his daughter appeared in the latest Epstein trove

The vast trove of Epstein file also featured:

exchanges between Epstein and Bannon in which Bannon spoke of his desire to raise money for the far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Germany was also effected. Messages to Epstein showed how Steve Bannon sought to promote the  far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD):

In texts from 2018, Bannon bragged about his influence as an "adviser" to the new right-wing populists and saw the parties' gains in Europe as a chance to use them to his and Epstein's benefit.

The files show:

Epstein's interest in European nationalists.

While a message from March 2019, just before the EU elections, has Bannon saying he is:

 focused on raising money for Le Pen and Salvini so they can actually run full slates.

Epstein courted and engaged with figures from both liberal - Peter Mandelson being a case in point - and conservative global elites. But his own politics were those of a far-right Zionist. On many occasions the files show how the billionaire sex predator had an interest in helping some of the most extreme political forces in the world in their bids for power.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

A new British intelligence agency chief was just announced. Major General Matthew Jones will be Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI). Jones will start the role when he is promoted to Lieutenant General in summer 2026. He will run the revamped Military Intelligence Services (MIS). MIS was announced in December 2015.

The BBC reported in December 2025:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will unify all of its intelligence services under a single organisation, as part of its strategy to combat "escalating threats" from adversaries of the UK.

That command now belongs to Jones. Jones is an officer in the British Army's Intelligence Corps. His bio describes a long career in imperialism:

His operational service has included deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the wider Middle East. He currently serves as Director Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, overseeing intelligence collection, capabilities, training, and counter-intelligence.

MIS will work with other agencies:

including GCHQ, MI5 and SIS. Most notably to provide intelligence products for policy makers in the Ministry of Defence and UK Government.

At least one sycophantic right-wing newspaper got a little excited about the appointment…

Military intelligence is distinct in some ways from civilian-run intelligence agencies. Military intelligence personnel are not 'spies' or 'spooks' in the commonly held 'James Bond' sense. Their role is to gather, analyse, and collate information relevant to military operations.

If you want to know the nature of a military intelligence soldier look no further than Labour MP and Intelligence Corps veteran Mike Tapp of dog cutlery fame. Grim.

This seems to have been lost on some journalists. The Telegraph giddily described Jones as a "spymaster" known for being "ferociously intelligent".

The slightly more measured Labour defence secretary John Healey said:

Matt has the right skills and experience to lead our Military Intelligence Services as the organisation transforms to raise our war-fighting readiness to help keep the nation safe in this era of rising threats.

Will MIS and the new defence counter-intelligence unit be subject to FOI?

They'll be subject to the usual FOI rules around intelligence and matters of national security.

"National security" is often used to cover up embarrassment rather than genuine, serious threats to the country.

The MOD announcement in December said MIS would cover areas like biometrics, chemical weapons, critical national infrastructure, counter proliferation, UK export controls, medical and biosecurity and more.

Pretty broad then…

MIS will also work with open source, human and geospatial intelligence and counter-intelligence around both state and non-state groups. This focuses:

on the understanding of terrorism, espionage, sabotage, subversion and organised crime threats and vectors, and contests the operating space through proactive and reactive counter-intelligence activities. It entails collection of information, analysis and investigation of both state and non-state actors' intelligence methods, capabilities and activities.

Whether the UK needs a new 'spy' chief or not, it is getting one as the military tries to reorganise its intelligence gathering capabilities. There is no sense of the cost of the new reforms and few hints at how accountable it will be to the public. Business as usual then.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

After almost a year's silence on the matter, author Neil Gaiman released a statement this week to once again deny the allegations of sexual assault against him.

The allegations against Gaiman date back to 2024. They were first reported on the Tortoise Media podcast Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman. The New York Vulture then published a more lengthy - and widely read - article in 2025 entitled:

There Is No Safe Word

How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.

Beginning with an initial two, eventually nine women would come forward with allegations including rape, other forms of sexual assault, and non-consensual and un-negotiated BDSM practices. Many of the descriptions are graphic in the extreme, and I try not to repeat them here without need.

At the time, 14 January 2025, Gaiman put out a statement on his blog denying the accusations. He described re-reading messages from the accusers on the dates of the situations they described as assault - messages which displayed consent.

These messages are now a matter of public record. They do appear to display consent, although the Vulture article framed this as a product of being scared to upset Gaiman.

In his statement, Gaiman also wrote:

And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been.

However, he also stated unambiguously that all of his relationships were consensual, and that:

Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I'm not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn't do.

However, production companies moved quickly to cancel adaptations of Gaiman's works across stage and screen. These projects included a musical version of Coraline, a Disney production of The Graveyard Book, and the Netflix adaptation of Dead Boy Detectives. 

Gaiman then remained relatively removed from the public eye for over a year. However, on 2 February 2026, he posted a new statement. Again, he denied all of the allegations against himself:

I've learned firsthand how effective a smear campaign can be, so to be clear:

The allegations against me are completely and simply untrue. There are emails, text messages and video evidence that flatly contradict them.

In particular, Gaiman decried the "echo chamber" of journalism reporting on the allegations. He spoke about his conviction that the "truth would, eventually, come out":

I expected that when the allegations were first made there would be journalism, and that the journalism would take the (mountains of) evidence into account, and was astonished to see how much of the reporting was simply an echo chamber, and how the actual evidence was dismissed or ignored.

Then, he went on to single out one blogger whom he believed exemplified the journalistic rigor he'd expected:

I was a journalist once, and I have enormous respect for journalists, so I've been hugely heartened by the meticulous fact and evidence-based investigative writing of one particular journalist, whom some of you recently brought to my attention, who writes under the name of TechnoPathology.

This investigator, Technopathology, produced pages and pages of reporting on Gaiman, under the umbrella title of "Neil Gaiman is Innocent". Gaiman actually linked to the introductory page of the Substack blog in his statement.

For full disclosure, in writing this article I read a lot of Technopathology's blog, but not all of it. There is an awful lot to get through, and I have other articles to write. The author makes some valid points about the overall timbre of the reporting and its motivations, and some that I found reaching or off-mark. I'll get to them later.

Technopathology's introduction to their extensive project contained a complaint that there was "no room for nuance" in the reporting on Gaiman:

Even requiring evidence was deemed to be ''victim blaming''. No deviation from the party line, (that is to say - utter and complete condemnation) went unpunished.

This type of complaint will be familiar to anyone who observed public reactions to the MeToo movement. Technopathology talks about the importance of the MeToo movement, but couples that with their disbelief in the specific allegations against Gaiman.

In the introduction, the author mentioned something that made me sit up in my seat:

I wasn't completely unprepared, I am after all a journalist and make all of my paltry income from writing. I have a steady beat with technology trade magazines, and used to pen a lot of political articles for The Canary. But I had no idea what form the investigation should take. It was new territory.

So, a fellow (ex-)Canary writer. One other mention of the Canary on the blog indicated that they were around for the inception of the site, long before my time or that of most of the current employees. After a bit of digging, we're confident in our guess on who they are, but that's not terribly important for this article.

Some of the points that Technopathology raises in their articles are valid. In particular, they highlight that the allegations against Gaiman were gleefully seized upon and amplified by elements of the far-right, including Nazi-types and transphobes, due to Gaiman's Jewish heritage and outspoken support for LGBTQ+ causes.

However, other conclusions that they draw are much more of a stretch. This includes speculation that one accuser, Caroline Wallner, could in fact have known another, Scarlet Pavlovich, before they made their allegations, which could potentially cast doubt on the similarities in their accounts of Gaiman's behavior.

The problem is that Technopathology's speculation rests on the fact that Wallner is a friend of Michael Stipe, the lead singer of REM:

Interestingly, Michael Stipe is good friends with Tilda Swinton, who Scarlett Pavlovich says personally gave her a scholarship to her school in Scotland. I'm not altogether convinced that there was no prior contact between the accusers, so these degrees of separation are interesting.

This is quite an extraordinary reach, even if it is framed as a speculation.

However, and most importantly, I feel that Technopathology elides some of the features of the cases that simply shouldn't be ignored. For example, the blogger highlights one exchange between Pavlovich and Gaiman, and the way the Master podcast framed it. Pavlovich told Gaiman that:

I have told Amanda [Palmer, Gaiman's then-wife] that even though it began questionably eventually it was undoubtedly consensual and I enjoyed it.

Technopathology then highlighted their problems with the the reporting of the exchange:

Master of course zooms in on ''questionably'' rather than ''undoubtedly consensual''. Questionable does not mean non-consensual, and it's not certain what element is questionable. There's always ways to do better.

I would point out that if the very first sexual encounter between two people features 'questionable' consent, then that's no consent at all. If consent isn't firmly and unambiguously established beforehand, it can't be gained retroactively when people are left to decide what happened. That's not how this is meant to work.

Pavlovich's relationship with Gaiman began the day she arrived at his house to work informally as a nanny. Gaiman ran her a bath in the middle of the garden. He then later climbed in with her. Technopathology quotes from Pavlovich's interview on Master regarding the encounter:

"He ended up sort of asking me to put my legs down and I ignored him."

We should note that he is 'asking', she is not compelled to put her legs down, thus revealing her body.

But the next time he asks, she does. There is no force here. This is an action freely taken, at Gaiman's request.

"He asked me again and sort of gestured, so I put them down."

Again, the problem with Technopathology's framing here is that when Gaiman made a sexual advance that Pavlovich didn't take up, that should have been the end of it. Anything after that point carries an implicit threat, because it doesn't take a lack of 'yes' as an answer in itself.

Technopathology later writes that:

Reluctant consent vs enthusiastic consent is a big topic of discussion, but its a lot to go into here. Suffice to say, in legal terms, even reluctant consent is still consent - and it's not clear if she was reluctant at the time or if this a later reframing. Certainly the WhatsApp messages affirm an enthusiastic consent, effusively and repeatedly.

Definitions of sexual assault and rape vary from country to country. As such, I'm not particularly concerned with guilt or innocence in the law, and I won't make pronouncements on it.

However, what I will say with confidence is that anyone who was particularly concerned with consent probably wouldn't show up naked to a bathtub someone else was in without asking first.

Even if they missed that detail, making requests that the other person doesn't acquiesce to isn't a prompt to ask again.

Technopathology, among their many articles on Gaiman's purported innocence, analyses a lot of situations and exchanges around Gaiman in similar detail. You can go read them if you like.

However, I chose the bathtub scene as an illustrative example. The fact that Gaiman pointed specifically to Technopathology's Substack as the kind of journalistic integrity he expects is a point that I find damning in itself.

Yes, Technopathology poured at length over the reporting and some of the dubious motivations behind it. They also took it upon themself to scour the accusers' stories for inconsistencies. However, the blogger's actual understanding of consent is very, very different to mine, and - I would hope - most everyone else's, too.

If that's what Gaiman thinks is proof of his innocence, I'd hate to see his definition of guilt.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Spectators at an All Elite Wrestling (AEW( Dynamite wrestling match in Las Vegas had a message for Donald Trump. It was certainly not one that he will have enjoyed, particularly from a sport popular with what's left of his base.

As the wrestlers posed and glared at each other before the start, a chant from the crowd quickly grew to a volume where the message couldn't be missed - "Fuck ICE".

The commentators were silenced. The wrestlers' glares turned to raised eyebrows. But not in disapproval - at least in one corner of the ring. Challenger Brody King is a vocal opponent of Trump's Gestapo thugs, organises anti-ICE fundraising and community organising and wore an "Abolish ICE" t-shirt before a recent match.

His opponent 'MJF' - real name Maxwell Friedman - might be more of a mixed bag. He has described Palestinian resistance as terrorism - but at the same time said that:

I don't support terrorism, Zionism, genocide [or] genocidal governments, dead innocent Palestinians [and] dead innocent Israelis. I don't support people — any people — dying because of hate.

However, he then repeated typical Israel lobby talking points, claiming that:

people are calling for the death of Jews over something that's happening on the other side of the world.

Given ICE's strong links to Israeli terrorist forces, who knows what he made of the chanting.

You'll definitely enjoy it though:

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/All Elite Wrestling

By Skwawkbox

The Met Police is refusing to admit the existence of a classified document, which pro-Israel groups used to lobby the government over the proscription of Palestine Action.

In a document produced by We Believe in Israel, Stop the Hate UK, and The Shield of David, it states:

In July 2022, the group was investigated under counter-terrorism protocols following intelligence suggesting contact between some of its members and individuals linked to Hamas-aligned networks abroad (see:Metropolitan Police briefing, classified)

It's well documented that the Zionist lobby group We Believe in Israel (WBII) was a primary actor among those lobbying for the proscription of Palestine Action. It published a report in June 2025, titled 'Palestine Action: A Case for Proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000'. Notably, the Guardian pointed out how Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's statement on the decision to proscribe Palestine Action was "similar" to the wording from this report.

Of course, The Canary's least favourite MP - Luke Akehhurst is the former director of WBII. The self-proclaimed 'Zionist shitlord' previously claimed Israel's actions in Gaza were 'proportionate'.

Importantly, one of the other organisations involved in authoring the most recent report is Stop the Hate UK. This is the same group that has been attacking pro-Palestine activists and journalists.

The Canary wanted to know whether the Met Police had shared classified documents with these pro-genocide hate groups, or whether someone had leaked them. We sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Met Police. In it, we asked if the Met had authorised the disclosure of the briefing to the three pro-Israel lobby groups. If it confirmed this, we wanted any documents related to the Met signing this off.

Additionally, we stipulated that if the document was not shared, whether the Met was aware of a leak, and whether they had taken action.

It took the Met over two months to respond to the initial FOI request, which is double the legal limit. In it, they stated:

The MPS is aware of a recent newspaper article which contained an allegation. As a result, the following press lines were issued:

IF ASKED: re alleged info shared about CT[counter-terror] investigations linked to Palestine Action with We Believe in Israel? No knowledge of any such information being shared with this group. Refer back to the group for clarification over this reference in their report.

It went on to say:

The Metropolitan Police Service can neither confirm nor deny whether it holds any information of relevance as the duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) does not apply by virtue of the following exemptions:

• Section 23(5) - Information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters
• Section 24(2) - National Security
• Section 30(3) - Criminal Investigations
• Section 31(3) - Law Enforcement
• Section 40(5)(B)(a)(i) - Personal Information

We then asked for an internal review. Specifically, we asked them to reply to the part of our original FOI where we asked:

whether the MPS has investigated/is investigating how this classified document came to be in the possession of the three aforementioned third parties.

It then took them a further three months to reply. When they did, the Met said:

To clarify the MPS is neither confirming nor denying that any documentation i.e. this briefing document, is held. To answer the second part of your request, namely "if the Met was aware of the leak and b) if it has taken any action over it…providing details of this (how it became aware, what action it is taking, procedures going forward)" would inadvertently be confirming that a document existed, had been leaked and the MPS were investigating how this occurred and this is the very matter we are seeking to neither confirm nor deny that the MPS held this information.

So the Met is refusing to say whether a) it shared information with the three pro-Israeli groups or b) information was leaked to the same groups. Additionally, it's also refusing to say whether this 'classified briefing' mentioned by the groups even exists.

It's also unclear what role this report, which mentioned the classified briefing, then played in Yvette Cooper's case for proscribing Palestine Action.

Of course, it's arguably strongly in the public interest to know what the Met knows about this. There's no world in which pro-Israel lobby groups should have access to classified police documents. The Met has questions to answer - but naturally it's refusing.

Collusion with pro-Israel lobby groups certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. In fact, the Met's constant raids and arrests of pro-Palestine activists and the links with Zionist auditors targeting them make it seem all the more likely.

Feature image via HG

By HG

Soft left New Statesman digital editor Oli Dugmore was a guest on BBC Question Time on 5 February 2026. And he had a scathing verdict on the normalisation of paedophilia at the top of the Labour Party.

Oli Dugmore said that he generally doesn't like to dismiss people according to the worst thing they've ever done - but wouldn't want to be friends with, let alone work with, someone who rapes children. But he said that view is "fringe" among senior Labour figures. Instead, they look at Epstein fanboy Peter Mandelson and think "that's our man in Washington":

He was also clear that Starmer knew all along about Mandelson's closeness to serial child-rapist and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Starmer didn't need the security services to tell him, because a quick Google search revealed plenty.

Of course he knew.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Anti-genocide direct action activist Drew Robson has today, 6 February 2025, won his appeal to quash his conviction for criminal damage. Robson occupied the Manchester office of Fisher German, at the time property manager for Israeli weapons firm Elbit Systems. The firm eventually cut all ties with Elbit after a sustained pressure campaign.

Drew Robson's appeal victory comes hot on the heels of a jury's refusal to convict six members of the 'Filton 24' group of anti-genocide direct action activists. They were the first of their group to face trial and won despite the attempts of a judge to pressure the jury into convicting. If found guilty, all could have faced sentences of up to 20 years prison. The 24 have been jailed for up to 19 months without trial. Some face more than a year's further wait as Starmer seeks to protect Israel by punishing protest and free speech against genocide.

 

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Featured image via screengrab

By Skwawkbox

A jury decided on 4 February to acquit anti-genocide protesters. But because establishment mouthpieces like Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch have a problem with people protesting against Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, they have chimed in. And many believe they're in contempt of court as a result.

The decision was a "huge victory" for people opposing genocide. But it was also a clear critique of the government's highly controversial and wasteful political decision to proscribe non-violent direct-action group Palestine Action.

The establishment's anger was clear, though. It had done all it could to influence proceedings and moved to attack jury trials. But its efforts to stop fairness prevailing failed.

Entirely reasonable that there's so much fury that a jury of 12 ordinary people, having heard all the evidence, has reached a verdict that does not accord with the directions of the judge, Starmer's government and the billionaire-owned media.

Who do these people think they are?

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 5, 2026

In this context, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch gave her thoughts. Despite not having been in court, not seeing all the evidence the jurors saw, and no court finding an activist guilty of injuring a police officer, she repeated a dangerous smear relating to the ongoing legal case:

Nothing to see here, just the leader of the opposition committing contempt of court live on national television.

This accusation lead to no conviction after a jury were given the full context. Nobody was "attacked viciously" or has "[gotten] away with it".

The case is ongoing. pic.twitter.com/I5mmlMS0bg

— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) February 5, 2026

Kemi Badenoch has expressed very pro-Israel views and maintained close ties with the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby group.

Tory Chris Philp, who is also close to the Israel lobby, added his dodgy take too:

Coming from the same man which met with Elbit Systems when he was a minister

The meeting in April 2023 was to discuss Palestine Action, and involved the police, a representative of the CPS and arms manufacturers.

Isn't the judiciary supposed to be free from political influence? https://t.co/7WozMKNBw8

— Huda Ammori (@HudaAmmori) February 5, 2026

Five defendants admitted to destroying weapons and equipment of Israeli arms dealer Elbit Systems, which has been profiting from Israel's genocide. And the jury accepted that they had acted according to their conscience.

After over 500 days in jail. https://t.co/NWkMnzsGcd

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) February 4, 2026

The government uses remand to imprison those it knows it can't convict. https://t.co/Br4qimBi64

— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) February 4, 2026

This has left the proscription case against Palestine Action in tatters.

It is only a matter of time before the ban will be lifted.

— Huda Ammori (@HudaAmmori) February 5, 2026

BREAKING: Jury unwilling to find guilty 6 Palestine Action activists

Today's judgments are hugely important.

The unwillingness of the jury to find Palestine Action activists guilty further highlights how disproportionate the decision to proscribe the organization was.… pic.twitter.com/GHQEEBLsD3

— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) February 4, 2026

The police, meanwhile, also complained:

Police apparently attempting to undermine judicial process…

Officers gave a very questionable account of an incident that had already been sensationalised in the press. A jury didn't convict, because they weren't convinced.

The jury saw all of the evidence.
These lot did not. https://t.co/37MhX5GJK0

— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) February 5, 2026

The serious injuries lie https://t.co/BaZR9bzbaU pic.twitter.com/4tf6CkDipW

— Dr Iain Darcy

AIpocolypse Four tech megacorps intend to collectively fork out roughly $635 billion this year on capex, much of it for datacenters and AI infrastructure - more than the entire output of Israel's economy and well beyond all global cloud infrastructure services revenue generated last year.…

Menopause is linked to reductions in grey matter volume in key brain regions as well as increased levels of anxiety and depression and difficulties with sleep, according to new research from the University of Cambridge.

The study, published in Psychological Medicine, found that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) does not appear to mitigate these effects, though it can slow the decline in reaction times.

Menopause is a key period in a woman's life when her periods stop, due to lower hormone levels. It typically affects women between the ages of 45 and 55, during which time they may experience hot flushes, low mood and sleep problems. Menopause has previously been linked to cognitive decline, such as memory, attention and language deficits.

To counter the effects of menopause - particularly depressive symptoms and sleep problems - many women are prescribed HRT. In England, in 2023, 15% of women were prescribed the treatment. However, there is limited understanding of the effects of menopause and subsequent HRT use on the brain, cognition and mental health.

To address this question, researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from UK Biobank of almost 125,000 women, who were classified into three categories: pre-menopause, post-menopause who have never used HRT, or post-menopause who have used HRT.

As well as answering questionnaires that included questions related to their experience of menopause, self-reported mental health, sleep patterns and overall health, some participants took part in tests of cognition, including tests of memory and reaction times. Around 11,000 participants also underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, allowing the researchers to look at the structure of their brains.

The average age of onset of menopause among the participants was around 49.5 years, and the average age that women prescribed HRT began their treatment was around 49 years.

Post-menopausal women were more likely than those pre-menopause to have sought help from their GP or a psychiatrist for anxiety, nerves or depression, and to score more highly on questionnaires for symptoms of depression. Similarly, they were more likely to have been prescribed antidepressants.

Although women in the HRT group had greater anxiety and depression compared with the non-HRT group, further analysis showed that these differences in symptoms were already present before menopause. It is possible, say the researchers, that in some cases, a woman's GP may have prescribed HRT in anticipation of menopause worsening her symptoms.

Women post-menopause were more likely to report insomnia, get less sleep, and feel tired. Those on HRT reported feeling the most tired of all three groups, even though there was no difference in sleep duration between these women and those women post-menopause not on the medication.

Dr Christelle Langley from the Department of Psychiatry said: "When women will go through menopause, it can be a life-changing event whether they take HRT or not. A healthy lifestyle - exercising, keeping active and eating a healthy diet, for example - is particularly important during this period to help mitigate some of its effects.

"We all need to be more sensitive to not only the physical, but also the mental health of women during menopause, however, and recognise when they are struggling. There should be no embarrassment in letting others know what you're going through and asking for help."

Menopause also appeared to have an impact on cognition. Post-menopausal women who were not on HRT had slower reaction times than those yet to start menopause or who were on HRT. However, there were no significant differences between the three groups when it came to memory tasks.

Dr Katharina Zühlsdorff from the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, said: "As we age, our reaction times tend to get slower - it's just a part of the natural ageing process and it happens to both women and men. You can imagine being asked a question at a quiz - while you might still arrive at the correct answer as your younger self, younger people would no doubt get there much faster. Menopause seems to accelerate this process, but HRT appears to put the brakes on, slowing the ageing process slightly."

In both groups of women post-menopause, the researchers found significant reductions in volume of grey matter - brain tissue that contains nerve cell bodies and helps process information, control movement and manage memory and emotions.

In particular, these differences occurred in the hippocampus (responsible for forming and storing memories); entorhinal cortex (the 'gateway' for passing information between the hippocampus and the rest of the brain); and the anterior cingulate cortex (part of the brain that helps you manage emotions, make decisions, and focus your attention).

Professor Barbara Sahakian, the study's senior author from the Department of Psychiatry, added: "The brain regions where we saw these differences are ones that tend to be affected by Alzheimer's disease. Menopause could make these women vulnerable further down the line. While not the whole story, it may help explain why we see almost twice as many cases of dementia in women than in men."

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, with additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

This article from the University of Cambridge is republished under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Read the original here.

With a thematic issue on a vital topic - the rise child poverty, ending on a hopeful note. You will find sharp analyses on the effect of poverty on children's lives, with a spotlight on the communities that are on the front line of deprivation, with personal stories and shared solutions. Click on the image to gain access to it, or find us on Substack.

Journalism by the people, for the people.

The post New research shows menopause linked to cognitive decline first appeared on East Anglia Bylines.

What mundane pleasures will I be robbed of by domestic robots?

Sometimes I feel like my job at home is putting things into machines and taking things out of machines.

I don't mean to sound unappreciative about "modern conveniences" (modern being the 1950s) because I take care of laundry and emptying the dishwasher, and I love both. We have a two drawer dishwasher so that is a conveyer belt. And I particularly love laundry. We generate a lot of laundry it seems.

There was a tweet in 2025: "woodworking sounds really cool until you find out it's 90% sanding"

And it became an idiom because 90% of everything is sanding. See this reddit thread… 90% of photography is file management; 90% of baking is measuring; etc.

So when I say that I love laundry I don't mean that I love clean clothes (everyone loves clean clothes) but I love the sanding. I love the sorting into piles for different washes, I love reading the little labels, especially finding the hidden ones; I love the sequencing so we don't run out of room on the racks, I love folding, I love the rare peak moments when everything comes together and there are no dirty clothes anywhere in the house nor clean clothes waiting to be returned. (I hate ironing. But fortunately I love my dry cleaner and I feel all neighbourhood-y when I visit and we talk about the cricket.)

Soon! Domestic robots will take it all away.

Whether in 6 months or 6 years.

I don't know what my tipping point will be…

I imagine robots will be priced like a car and not like a dishwasher? It'll be worth it, assuming reliability. RELATED: I was thinking about what my price cap would be for Claude Code. I pay $100/mo for Claude right now and I would pay $1,500/mo personally for the same functionality. Beyond that I'd complain and have to find new ways to earn, but I'm elastic till that point.

Because I don't doubt that domestic robots will be reliable. Waymo has remote operators that drop in for ambiguous situations so that's the reliability solve.

But in a home setting? The open mic, open camera, and a robot arms on wheels - required for tele-operators - gives me pause.

(Remember that smart home hack where you could stand outside and yell through the letterbox, hey Alexa unlock the front door? Pranks aplenty if your voice-operated assistant can also dismantle the kitchen table.)

So let's say I've still got a few years before trust+reliability is at a point where the robot is unloading the dishwasher for me and stacking the dishes in the cupboard, and doing the laundry for me and also sorting and loading and folding and stacking and…

i.e. taking care of the sanding.

In Fraggle Rock the Fraggles live in their underground caves generally playing and singing and swimming (with occasional visits to an oracular sentient compost heap, look the 80s were a whole thing), and also they live alongside tiny Doozers who spend their days in hard hats industriously constructing sprawling yet intricate miniature cities.

Which the Fraggles eat. (The cities are delicious.)

Far from being distressed, the Doozers appreciate the destruction as it gives them more room to go on constructing.

Me and laundry. Same same.

Being good at something is all about loving the sanding.

Here's a quote about Olympic swimmers:

The very features of the sport that the 'C' swimmer finds unpleasant, the top level swimmer enjoys. What others see as boring-swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, say-they find peaceful, even meditative, often challenging, or therapeutic. … It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don't see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it.

From The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers (1989) by Daniel Chambliss (PDF).

But remember that 90% of everything is sanding.

With domestic appliances, sanding is preparing to put things into machines and handling things when you take them out of the machines.

This "drudgery" will be taken away.

So then there will be new sanding. Inevitably!

With domestic robots, what will the new continuous repetitive micro task be? Will I have to empty its lint trap? Will I have to polish its eyes every night? Will I have to go shopping for it, day after day, or just endlessly answer the door to Amazon deliveries of floor polish and laundry tabs? Maybe the future is me carrying my robot up the stairs and down the stairs and up the stairs and down the stairs, forever.

I worry that I won't love future sanding as much as I love today sanding.

More posts tagged: laundry (4), robots (11).

Greater awareness of healthy diets and concerns over 'trusted' food mean sales are growing at fastest pace in two decades

When household finances were plunged into turmoil during the credit crunch, one of the first things that Britons cancelled was their veg box delivery.

But although the cost of living crisis persists, the organic market is enjoying its biggest boom in two decades, according to the veg box seller Riverford. It is not just fruit and veg, with a "massive" increase in sales of organic meat. Organic chicken was up 13% year on year, despite costing three times as much as other birds.

People who are interested in a live TV streaming service are probably looking for one (or all three) of the following: current sports matchups, breaking news and cable-like channels. We tried all the major providers to see what you get for your monthly bill — particularly in light of the fact that every live TV streamer has raised prices over the past year or two. That said, in most markets, a live TV streaming service is still more cost-effective than cable. And you still don't have to sign a contract. Right now, we think YouTube TV is the most well-rounded option — but the others might have more of what you're looking for. Here are the best live TV streaming services based on our testing.

Editor's note: The blackout of NBC channels on Fubo's service continues, with no end in sight. That means fans hoping to catch the Super Bowl will need to look elsewhere. We've detailed your options below. 

This year, the Super Bowl will take place on Sunday, February 8, 2026 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. NBC has the rights to air the broadcast, which means you can watch it with a live TV streaming subscription to YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV or DirecTV. Sling Blue plans include NBC in certain markets only. NBC channels are dark on Fubo as the company and NBC are still in negotiations. The traditional streaming service Peacock, which is owned by NBC, will also air the game. Those plans start at just $8 per month, which is nearly the cheapest way to watch. However, if you have a digital antenna, you can pick up the game's broadcast signal from your local NBC affiliate for free.

If you have a digital antenna hooked up to your TV, you can grab games that are broadcast over the airways for your region by tuning into your local CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC stations. You can buy a digital antenna for between $20 and $60. 

Alternatively, you can check out your local sports bar and watch the game for the price of a soda and maybe some nachos. As it turns out, bars and restaurants that provide those games to customers have to pay a ton of cash to do so, so you may as well take advantage of the opportunity.

Yes. Peacock is owned by NBC Universal, which holds the rights to stream the big game this year. The Super Bowl will stream on both Peacock (all tiers) and local NBC stations (Premium Plus tier). The cheapest tier of Peacock's service starts at $8 per month. 

September 5, 2025 marked the first time YouTube was an official live NFL broadcaster when it aired the Friday night, week-one game of the 2025 NFL season from São Paulo, Brazil. It pit the Los Angeles Chargers against the Kansas City Chiefs (LA won 21-27) and aired worldwide on YouTube for free as well as for subscribers to YouTube TV.

There are no other plans for YouTube to air live NFL games for the 2025-6 season for free.

There are loads of ways to get free TV these days. To start, many standard streaming apps have added live components to their lineups — even Netflix. Peacock Premium Plus subscriptions include regional NBC stations. Paramount+ Premium subscribers can watch on-air CBS programming. The new Fox One service includes multiple live Fox stations. True, if you're already paying for a service it's not technically "free" but at least the live content isn't extra.

The smart TV operating system (OS) you use likely provides free live content too: Amazon's Fire TV, Google/Android TV, Roku's built-in Roku Channel and Samsung's TV Plus all have hundreds of live channels and original programming. Some of the paid services we recommend above have a free version — namely Sling Freestream, Fubo Free (available after you cancel) and DirecTV's MyFree. But if you're looking for more, here are the best free ad-supported TV (FAST) apps with live TV that we tried:

Streaming live TV is a lot like using Netflix. You get access through apps on your phone, tablet, smart TV or streaming device and the signal arrives over the internet. A faster and more stable connection tends to give you a better experience. Most live TV apps require you to sign up and pay via a web browser. After that, you can activate the app on all of your devices.

When I started testing these cord-cutting alternatives, I was struck by the price difference between live TV and a standard video streaming app. Where the latter cost between $5 and $20 per month, most live TV services hit the $80 mark and can go higher than $200 with additional perks, channel packages and premium extras. The higher starting price is mostly due to the cost of providing multiple networks — particularly sports and local stations. And, in the past year or so, every service has raised base plan prices.

Only two of the services I tried don't include full local channel coverage for subscribers and one of those makes no effort to carry sports at all. That would be Philo and, as you might guess, it's the cheapest. The next most affordable option, Sling, only carries three local stations — and only in larger markets — but it still manages to include some of the top sports channels.

When you sign up with any provider that handles local TV, you'll enter your zip code, ensuring you get your area's broadcast affiliates for ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Of course, you can also get those stations for free. Nearly all modern television sets support a radio frequency (RF) connection, also known as the coaxial port, which means if you buy an HD antenna, you'll receive locally broadcast stations like ABC, CBS, PBS, FOX and NBC. And since the signal is digital, reception is much improved over the staticky rabbit-ears era.

But local channel access is another area where traditional streaming services, like Netflix, are bleeding into broadcast territory. For example, you can watch your local NBC station with a Peacock subscription and you can tune into your area's CBS station through your Paramount+ subscription. Netflix is even getting into the mix with a recently announced deal with one of France's broadcast companies, TF1. The streaming service will now air TF1's live TV channels and on-demand content inside the Netflix app. No word if the concept will expand to other regions, but it's an interesting move to anyone interested in the future of streaming.

One reality that spun my head was the sheer number and iterations of sports networks in existence. Trying to figure out which network will carry the match-up you want to see can be tricky. I found that Google makes it a little easier for sports fans by listing out upcoming games (just swap in NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL and so on in the search bar). When you click an event, the "TV & streaming" button will tell you which network is covering it.

That just leaves figuring out if your chosen service carries the RSNs (regional sports networks) you want. Unfortunately, even with add-ons and extra packages, some providers simply don't have certain channels in their lineups. It would take a lawyer to understand the ins and outs of streaming rights negotiations, and networks leave and return to live TV carriers all the time. That said, most major sporting events in the US are covered by ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, USA and local affiliates.

I should also point out that traditional streaming services have started adding live sports to their lineups. Peacock carries live Premier League matches, Sunday Night Football games and aired the 2024 Olympic Games from Paris. Thursday Night Football as well as NBA and WNBA games are on Amazon Prime and Christmas Day Football airs on Netflix. HBO Max (formerly, er, HBO Max) now airs select, regular season games from the NHL, MLB, NCAA and NBA with a $10-per-month add-on. 

You can watch MLS games with an add-on through the Apple TV app, and Apple TV+ (now just called Apple TV) includes some MLB games. Roku users can watch the just-added free sports channel and those who subscribe to Paramount Plus can see many of the matches aired on CBS Sports, including live NFL games. In 2025, January's Super Bowl was live-streamed for free on Tubi. While all of these alternatives may not cover as much ground as live TV streamers, they could end up being cheaper avenues to the sports you want.

And if sports is all you're after, there are sports-only plans that are a touch cheaper, too. The promised sports streaming service from ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. called Venu was cancelled early this year. But on August 21, ESPN launched its own streaming service that includes all ESPN channels and costs $30 per month. Fubo Sports is $56 monthly and includes local broadcast stations from ABC, CBS and FOX plus a slew of sports networks (CBS Sport and FS1 among them) as well as all networks included with ESPN Unlimited.  

Fox launched its own standalone service in August as well and it includes Fox Sports and all other Fox properties (News, Business, Weather) for $20 monthly. DirecTV also has a $70-per-month, sports-only streaming package called MySports and Comcast has a sports and news bundle for that same price (as long as you're an Xfinity customer with auto-pay, otherwise it's more expensive).

Traditional cable networks

Dozens of linear programming networks were once only available with cable TV, like Bravo, BET, Food Network, HGTV, CNN, Lifetime, SYFY and MTV. If you only subscribe to, say, Netflix or Apple TV+, you won't have access to those. But as with sports, standard streamers are starting to incorporate this content into their offerings. After the Warner Bros. merger, Max incorporated some content from HGTV, Discovery and TLC. Peacock has Bravo and Hallmark shows, and Paramount+ has material from Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central.

Other entertainment channels like AMC+ have stand-alone apps. The Discovery+ app gives you 15 channels ad-free for $10 per month (or with ads for $6 monthly). And a service called Frndly TV starts at a mere $7 per month and streams A&E, Lifetime, Game Show Network, Outdoor Channel and about 35 others. Of course, most live TV streaming options will deliver more sizable lists of cable networks, but just note that you may already be paying for some of them — and if all you need is a certain channel, you could get it cheaper by subscribing directly.

Most live TV subscriptions include access to a selection of video-on-demand (VOD) content, like you would get with a traditional streaming service. Much of this content is made up of the movies and TV series that have recently aired on your subscribed networks. This typically doesn't cover live events and news programming, but I was able to watch specific episodes of ongoing shows like Top Chef or BET's Diarra from Detroit. Just search the on-demand library for the program, pick an episode and hit play.

Partnerships, like Hulu's relationship with Disney, and add-ons, such as bundling Max with your YouTube TV subscription or Starz with your Sling plan, will let you watch even larger libraries of on-demand content. But again, if VOD is all you're after, paying for those networks directly instead of through a live TV plan will be far cheaper.

Every option I tried offers some cloud DVR storage without needing a separate physical device. You'll either get unlimited storage for recordings that expires after nine months or a year, or you'll get a set number of hours (between 50 and 1,000) that you can keep indefinitely. Typically, all you need to do is designate what ongoing TV series you want to record and the DVR component will do all the hard work of saving subsequent episodes for you to watch later. You can do the same thing with sports events.

Aside from being able to watch whenever it's most convenient, you can also fast-forward through commercials in recorded content. In contrast, you can't skip them on live TV or VOD.

Each plan gives you a certain number of simultaneous streams, aka how many screens can play content at the same time. And while most providers will let you travel with your subscription, there are usually location restrictions that require you to sign in from your home IP address periodically. Stream allowances range from one at a time to unlimited screens (or as many as your ISP's bandwidth can handle). Some plans require add-ons to get more screens.

Most services also let you set up a few profiles so I was able to give different people in my family the ability to build their own watch histories and libraries, set their favorite channels and get individual recommendations.

Picture-in-picture (PiP) usually refers to shrinking a video window on a mobile device or computer browser so you can watch it while using other apps. Sling, YouTube TV, FuboTV, Philo, DirecTV Stream and Hulu + Live TV all have PiP modes on computers and mobile devices. 

Another feature, multiview, lets you view multiple (usually four) sports matches or other live content at once on your TV screen. YouTube TV, FuboTV and now DirecTV all let you do this. With YouTube TV, you can select up to four views from a few preset selection of streams. FuboTV offers the same feature, but only if you're using an Apple TV or Roku streaming device. DirecTV lets you do so through "mixes" which include sports, news, business and kids variants with a set four channels in each mix.

Right now, just FuboTV, YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream offer 4K live streams — but with caveats. YouTube TV requires a $20-per-month add-on, after which you'll only be able to watch certain live content in 4K. DirecTV Stream has three channels that show live 4K content — one with shows and original series, and two with occasional sporting events. You don't have to pay extra for these but you do need to have either DirecTV's Gemini receiver, or a device from Fire TV, Apple TV or Roku. You'll need those same streaming devices to watch the select 4K programming on Sling as well. FuboTV shows certain live events in 4K but access is limited to the Elite and Premier packages, not the base-level Pro plan.

Of course, watching any 4K content also requires equipment that can handle it: a 4K smart TV or 4K streaming device paired with a cord and screen that can handle 4K resolution.

Comparing price-to-offering ratios is a task for a spreadsheet. I… made three. The base plans range from $28 to $85 per month. From there, you can add packages, which are usually groups of live TV channels bundled by themes like news, sports, entertainment or international content. Premium VOD extras like Max, AMC+ and Starz are also available. Add-ons cost an extra $5 to $20 each per month and simply show up in the guide where you find the rest of your live TV. This is where streaming can quickly get expensive, pushing an $80 subscription to $200 monthly, depending on what you choose.

I also downloaded and tried out a few apps that offer free ad-supported TV (FAST) including Freevee, Tubi, PlutoTV and Sling Freestream. These let you drop in and watch a more limited selection of live networks at zero cost. Most don't even require an email address, let alone a credit card. And if you have a Roku device, an Amazon Fire TV or Stick, a Samsung TV, a Chromecast device or a Google TV, you already have access to hundreds of live channels via the Roku Channel, the live tab in Fire TV, through the Samsung TV Plus app or through Google TV.

When I begin testing for a guide, I research the most popular and well-reviewed players in the category and narrow down which are worth trying. For the paid plans, just six services dominate so I tried them all. There are considerably more free live TV contenders so I tested the four most popular. After getting accounts set up using my laptop, I downloaded the apps on a Samsung smart TV running the latest version of Tizen OS. I counted the local stations and regional sports coverage, and noted how many of the top cable networks were available. I then weighed the prices, base packages and available add-ons.

I then looked at how the programming was organized in each app's UI and judged how easy everything was to navigate, from the top navigation to the settings. To test the search function, I searched for the same few TV shows on BET, Food Network, HGTV and Comedy Central, since all six providers carry those channels. I noted how helpful the searches were and how quickly they got me to season 6, episode 13 of Home Town.

I used DVR to record entire series and single movies and watched VOD shows, making sure to test the pause and scan functions. On each service with sports, I searched for the same four upcoming NHL, NBA, MLS and NCAA basketball matches and used the record option to save the games and play them back a day or two later. Finally, I noted any extra perks or irritating quirks.

All live TV streaming services we've tested:

• Philo

• Sling

• YouTube TV

• Hulu + Live TV

• DirecTV Stream

• FuboTV

• Freevee

• Tubi

• PlutoTV

• Sling Freestream

• Plex

Streaming simply refers to video content that is delivered to your screen over the internet. Live streaming can be split into two categories: linear programming and simultaneous transmission. That first one is similar to what you get with cable or broadcast TV, with channels that play a constant flow of movies and shows (sort of what TV looked like before Netflix). Simultaneous streaming lets you watch live events (like a basketball game) or a program (like the evening news) as they happen.

Standard streaming, the most popular example being Netflix, lets you pick what you want to watch from a menu of choices. It's also referred to as "video on demand." Live streaming refers to sports and news events that you can stream as they happen in real time. It also refers to channels that show a continuous, linear flow of programming.

FuboTV does the best job of letting you organize live channels to help you find just what you want to watch. The interface is uncluttered and when you search for something, the UI clearly tells you whether something is live now or on-demand. YouTube TV also does a good job making that info clear. Both have just over 100 live channels on offer.

Free TV streaming services like PlutoTV, Plex, Tubi and FreeVee show plenty of ad-supported TV shows and movies without charging you anything. Of course, they won't have the same channels or content that more premium subscriptions have. Ultimately it depends on what you want to watch and finding the service that can supply that to you in the most streamlined form so you're not paying for stuff you don't need.

A basic cable package used to be more expensive than the base-level live TV streaming service. But now that nearly all major providers have raised their prices to over $75 per month, that's no longer the case. And with add-ons and other premiums, you can easily pay over $200 a month for either cable or a live TV streaming service. But those who want to cut the cord will appreciate that streaming services don't have contracts. 

No service that we tested had every available channel. Hulu + Live TV and DirecTV Stream carry the the highest number of the top rated channels, according to Neilsen. Hulu's service also gets you Disney+ fare, which you can't get elsewhere. FuboTV has the most sports channels and YouTube TV gives you the widest selection of add-ons.

YouTube TV has the most paying customers. According to 2024's

Finding a gift for the tech nerd in your life can be tough. They likely have all the tech they need and then some, but you can add to their kit with the right accessories. Apple, Samsung, Sony and other big tech companies all have affordable gear that comes in at $100 or less, you just have to know where to look. Below are some of our favorites, but it's worth remembering: you can often find alternatives that are just as good (and sometimes better) than these. But for the people in your life for which brand names really do matter, these gifts will speak to them.

Check out the rest of our gift ideas here.

Over the last few months, I've found Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold to be a pretty sweet productivity machine, which, as an added bonus, makes my music sound better than it ever did on any iPhone or iPad I can recollect. — Read the rest

The post I love my Pixel Fold but hate its on-screen keyboard appeared first on Boing Boing.

Colossal Biosciences, the genetic engineering company that claimed to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf, is creating a biovault to preserve the genetic material of endangered species. The tissue and cells of up to 10,000 species will be sequenced and preserved, and the genomic data will be open-sourced. — Read the rest

The post The "dire wolf" company is building a genetic biovault in Dubai appeared first on Boing Boing.

A watchdog group is asking the Justice Department to explain why communications from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel don't appear anywhere in the 2 million+ pages of Epstein files released to the public, Axios reports. — Read the rest

The post DOJ omitted Bondi, Patel, Blanche communications in Epstein files appeared first on Boing Boing.

It is tempting to leap to conclusions about the 2026 MotoGP season after the first preseason test at Sepang. Five Ducatis in the top seven? Marco Bezzecchi in second? A Honda in fifth? That must mean we are in for a repeat of 2025, right?

As tempting as it is, that would be a mistake. The Sepang MotoGP test has traditionally been not so much a poor guide to the season to come as a deceptive one. It always overstates the strengths of some factories and the weaknesses of others. There might be one rider who emerges from the test as favorite, but that rider rarely wins the title. In the past 15 years, since 2011, the rider who topped the timesheets at Sepang has ended the season as champion only twice: Casey Stoner in 2011, and Marc Márquez in 2014.

• Read more about Sepang MotoGP Test Analysis, Part 1: A Photo Essay Deep Dive Into Ducati's Aero And Ride-Height
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Legacy image-sharing website Flickr suffered a data breach, according to customers emails seen by The Register.…

Wylie's Baths in Coogee turns away swimmers for the first time in memory. But people will head back into open waters soon, experts say

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

At Wylie's Baths in Sydney's east, the blue and yellow-ringed upper deck has never been busier.

On the concrete below, towels are crowded together. In the water, regular lap swimmers have to contend with an onslaught of first-timers.

Spotify is rolling out a feature called About the Song which lets fans learn a bit more about their favorite tunes. This "brings stories and context" into the listening experience, sort of like that old VH1 show Pop Up Video.

How does it work? The Now Playing View houses short, swipeable story cards that "explore the meaning" behind the music. This information is sourced from third parties and the company promises "interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments." All you have to do is scroll down until you see the card and then swipe.

This is rolling out right now to Premium users on both iOS and Android, but it's not everywhere just yet. The beta tool is currently available in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

Spotify has been busy lately, as this is just the latest new feature. The platform recently introduced a group messaging feature and prompt-based playlists.

Good deals on Apple products aren't as frequent as we'd like them to be, but if there's one of the company's products that does seem to enjoy pretty regular price cuts, it's the AirTag. Right now you can pick up a four-pack of Apple's diminutive first-generation Bluetooth trackers for $64, which translates to 35 percent off and a near record low price.

Bear in mind that this deal brings the price per AirTag down to about $16 if you were to buy them individually, and when not on sale they usually cost $29. The single first-gen AirTags are also on sale right now, and you can pick one up for 41 percent off at $17.

If you use Apple devices and consider yourself to be a serial thing-misplacer, AirTags are extremely useful. Adding one to your account takes a single tap, and with Apple's Find My network so well established, locating missing items has never been easier.

Using your iPhone you can trigger a sound from the AirTag's built-in speaker, or alternatively Precision Finding can be used to pinpoint its location via Find My. You just follow the instructions on your iPhone, paying attention to the vibrations that signal you're getting closer.

A reminder again that the above deals apply to the first-generation AirTag only. Apple introduced a refreshed tracker with greater range and a louder speaker last month, which retails at the same price as its predecessor. For deals on the new AirTag, you may have to wait a bit.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

That's my question. Are men ready to let women lead?

Did you scoff? Let's go with that.

I'm an American millennial neurodivergent woman.

Women in my family were lobotomized just two generations ago, in cases I know of. The missing and dead women of my family will always speak through me.

All my life, I've worked in male-controlled fields and areas. High level science; corporations; international affairs.

I've often dumbed myself down for the men around me, for my own safety.

It's like speaking a different language, learning their sycophantic and hierarchical norms and codes.

It's not the language of nature, of seasons and cycles and balance.

I learned a long time ago that I could foresee trouble, but I learned that sociopathic men don't want to prevent trouble.

Cassandra was cursed, but then Cassandra was trafficked and abused after her city was destroyed.

Non-sociopath men don't want any trouble. These are the "nice guys." They still speak the same language.

Yes, I know there are enabler women. The fear and self-hate of women are the tent poles of patriarchy.

Are men ready to accept that women are more closely tied to the cycles of nature, and thus to life?

That creating life is a literal metaphysical process that has not yet been fully explained by science, and women do it every day, often under extreme duress?

Are men ready to admit that their brains are limited by man-made constructions that cause violence to proliferate across humanity?

We can share the throne of this beautiful earth.

But are men ready to let us?

Cloudflare says DDoS crews ended 2025 by pushing traffic floods to new extremes, while Britain made an unwelcome leap of 36 places to become the world's sixth-most targeted location.…

As Zach recently posted, BYD's sales were down 30.7% in January. BYD sold 210,051 NEVs, which still put it in first place, well ahead of Geely with 124,252. Geely, however, also sells ICE vehicles, which saw significant sales growth to bring their total to 270,167. Due to selling primarily ICE ... [continued]

The post What's Going On With BYD January Sales? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Mark Ruffalo has taken to Threads to issue a brutal takedown of Kevin O'Leary after the billionaire mocked Billie Eilish's recent Grammy's speech in which she condemned ICE federal agents in the US.

O'Leary appeared on Fox News slating famous people who decide to 'get political'. However, the right-wing pundit might consider that their political decisions shape the lives of every citizen they govern, and that democracy demands people have a voice. Including celebrities.

Of course, it can't possibly be that the super-rich old white guy has vested interests in the current hostile immigration policy in the US:

Israel have been accused of spraying mysterious chemicals inside Lebanon.  Now the Lebanese PM and rights groups have called the attack a 'crime' after it emerged the chemicals were a potentially cancer-causing compound.

Prime minister Joseph Aoun called it an act of "aggression":

This is an environmental and health crime against Lebanese citizens and their land.

These dangerous practices that target agricultural lands and the livelihoods of citizens and threaten their health and environment require the international community and relevant United Nations organisations to assume their responsibilities to stop these attacks.

Unifil, the UN mission in Lebanon, said shortly after the attack that they'd been told about the airborne operation. They also said that it had stopped peacekeepers carrying out their duties:

Peacekeepers could not perform normal operations near the Blue Line along about a third of its length and were only able to resume normal activities after over nine hours.

The Blue Line is a 120km strip which marks the line of Israel withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000. The UN and Lebanese army tested the chemicals. Those tests now seem to have come to a conclusion.

The Guardian said:

Lebanese authorities said that laboratory analysis identified that the spray contained glyphosate, a potent herbicide that was in 2015 classified by the World Health Organization as "probably carcinogenic to humans".

Lebanon's ministries of agriculture and the environment said some samples showed glyphosate at:

20 and 30 times higher than normal [use].

They said such high concentrations would:

damage vegetation in the targeted areas, with direct repercussions on agricultural production, soil fertility and ecological balance.

Others said this was another example of Israel's scorched earth policy.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the "deeply alarming" attack may constitute a war crime:

The deliberate targeting of civilian farmland violates international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition on attacking or destroying objects indispensable to civilian survival.

They added:

Large-scale destruction of private property without specific military necessity amounts to a war crime and undermines food security and basic livelihoods in the affected areas.

Euro-Med said they directly observed the spraying, which they considered part of

a systematic destruction of agricultural land.

The NGO warned:

This incident cannot be viewed in isolation from the scorched-earth policy pursued by the Israeli army.

Israel sprayed farmland with "pesticides of unknown composition in Syria in January 2026, causing:

widespread crop destruction, posing a serious threat to economic and food security and violating farmers' rights to work and to an adequate standard of living by destroying their primary sources of income without military justification.

Strip aways Zionist claims about birthright and indigeneity and you'll find nothing more mystical, historical or religiously motivated than an old-fashioned settler land grab. From Syria to Lebanon, Gaza to the West Back, the Israeli state will keep displacing locals and expanding its territory by whatever means it can, for as long as it can, until someone stops it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Zack Polanski has called out Wes Streeting for his relentless social media attacks during an interview with The London Standard.

Polanski pointed out that, unlike Streeting, he's a gay man who is not willing to throw the trans community under a bus.

 

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In an interview with The London Standard, Polanski said:

Wes Streeting is attacking me every day on social media because I'm another gay man in politics who is not willing to throw the trans community under the bus and that exposes his abject immorality.

Polanski, a consistent vocal ally to trans communities, showed what sets him and the likes of right-wing brown-nosing cunt Streeting apart. He told the Evening Standard:

He must know what it's like to be othered but he's more bothered about power than protecting the other. It's disgraceful.

Of course, Streeting could use his lived experience of othering as a gay man in politics to recognise and challenge shared oppressions. Instead, he's sold out and used his privilege to demonise an already besieged group of people.

As Health Secretary, he's in the prime position to shape policies to improve healthcare access for trans people. Despite this, though, he's so far only surrendered to the transphobes.

Separately, Polanski also pointed out Streetings' links to Palantir, Peter Mandelson, and his lobbying company, as well as Palantir's new £330m NHS contract.

Respect. Zack Polanski on the urgent questions that need asking about Palantir, Peter Mandelson and his lobbying company, Wes Streeting and Palantir's £330 million NHS contract. https://t.co/MmZ0iviBBZ

— Andy Worthington (@GuantanamoAndy) February 5, 2026

Streeting's partner, Joe Dancey, also used to work as Peter Mandelson's assistant when he was an MP. He attempted to scrub that from his LinkedIn profile this week. Luckily, social media users have the receipts.

Then and now: Joe Dancey's LinkedIn profile on 18 Sept 2025 and today.
Spot the difference!

[Dancey is Wes Streeting's partner] pic.twitter.com/LCxQ2DwHFd

— Labour Right Watch (@LabourRightWtch) February 4, 2026

Previously, Polanski has also pointed out that Streeting has taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from private healthcare companies. Polanski has taken zero.

Murdering children is bad, Louis.

Wes Streeting may have taken over a quarter of a million pounds in private healthcare donations - but I haven't.

So it's quite simple to tell the truth. pic.twitter.com/RIgWEXmwgc

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) January 22, 2026

The fact that Streeting feels the need to attack him on social media surely shows just how much the Green leader has him rattled.

From his vile transphobia to his links to Palantir and Epstein-pedo-bestie Peter Mandelson, Polanski is showing Streeting for the power-shielding wanker he is. We're very much here for it.

Featured image via HG

By HG

Get The Art of Spending Money

From the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, The Art of Spending Money explores the overlooked side of personal finance — arguing that true wealth isn't about what you accumulate, but how you use money to build freedom, meaning, and joy.

Wealth is not about luxury — it's about control. The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up and do whatever you want. Money is a tool that buys you time, allows you to make choices about where and how you live, and provides peace of mind. As Housel puts it: "I'd rather wake up and be able to do anything I want than try to impress you with nice stuff."

There are two ways to use money: as a tool to live a better life, or as a yardstick to measure yourself against others. Many people aspire for the former but spend their lives chasing the latter. Spending to impress others rarely leads to happiness because there's always something more to strive toward — and disappointment is often the outcome.

Spend on things that either resist adaptation or that you can repeatedly rediscover. You adapt to your new couch almost immediately, but a meaningful trip creates memories that bring pleasure for years. The best spending often looks invisible — living in a modest home you love, cultivating friendships, preserving mental health — things you can't display but deeply feel.

The goal isn't extreme frugality — hoarding money for its own sake is another trap. Instead, spend extravagantly on the things you truly love while mercilessly cutting the things you don't. Think about spending in terms of minimizing future regret: no one gets a prize for dying with the highest account balance.

1. List your top 5 purchases from the past month. For each one, ask: "Did this bring me lasting satisfaction, or was it forgotten within days?"
2. Identify one recurring expense that doesn't actually improve your life. Cancel or reduce it this week.
3. Think of one thing you've been denying yourself that would genuinely increase your daily happiness. Permit yourself to spend on it.
4. Write down what "enough" looks like for you — the point where more money wouldn't meaningfully improve your life.
5. For your next purchase over $50, wait 48 hours and ask: "Am I buying this for me, or to impress someone else?"

"There are two ways to use money. One is as a tool to live a better life. The other is as a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others. Many people aspire for the former but spend their life chasing the latter."

I've been researching Yemen for a video I just made, and honestly I learned some pretty disturbing things that don't get talked about much.

The country was already running out of groundwater before the war even started.

By the early 2000s, experts were warning Sana'a could become the first capital city to physically run out of water.

Most of Yemen's water goes to agriculture, especially qat — a cash crop that's extremely water-intensive. Farmers grow it to survive, but it just accelerates the collapse.

Once water disappears, everything else follows — people move, hygiene breaks down, disease spreads, and whoever controls wells or water trucks gains power.

The war didn't cause this. The water crisis made Yemen fragile.

What's happening now isn't recovery — it's people adapting to permanent scarcity.

Yemen isn't unique because it's dry.

It's unique because it hit the wall first.

I made a short documentary-style video breaking this down if anyone's interested. Just wanted to share because this feels like one of those slow disasters we don't really notice until it starts showing up everywhere.

The Trump administration keeps demonstrating that it really hates affordable broadband. It particularly hates it when the government tries to make broadband affordable to poor people or rural school kids.

In just the last year the Trump administration has:

• Rewritten the infrastructure Act at the behest of telecom giants, ensuring that they can take $42.5 billion in taxpayer money without worrying about making sure the resulting broadband is affordable.
• Illegally threatened to withhold broadband grants from states that try to hold telecom monopolies accountable for overbilling or anti-competitive behavior.
• Destroyed a popular program that provided free broadband to poor rural school children.
• Tried relentlessly to destroy an FCC program that provides cheaper broadband to schools and rural communities (many of which voted for Trump).
• Dismantled the FCC's ability to stop telecom giants from ripping you off with hidden fees and usage caps.
• Illegally destroyed a law passed by Congress mandating the fair deployment of broadband to poor people and minority communities.
• Hijacked a program aimed at providing affordable fiber in order to slather Elon Musk with subsidies.

I'm sure I missed a few.

This week, the administration's war on affordable broadband shifted back to attacking the FCC Lifeline program, a traditionally uncontroversial, bipartisan effort to try and extend broadband to low income Americans. Brendan Carr (R, AT&T) has been ramping up his attacks on these programs, claiming (falsely) that they're riddled with state-sanctioned fraud:

"Carr's office said this week that the FCC will vote next month on rule changes to ensure that Lifeline money goes to "only living and lawful Americans" who meet low-income eligibility guidelines. Lifeline spends nearly $1 billion a year and gives eligible households up to $9.25 per month toward phone and Internet bills, or up to $34.25 per month in tribal areas."

For one, $9.25 is a pittance. It barely offsets the incredibly high prices U.S. telecom monopolies charge. Monopolies, it should be noted, only exist thanks to the coddling of decades of corrupt lawmakers like Carr, who've effectively exempted them from all accountability. That's resulted in heavy monopolization, limited competition, high prices, and low-quality service.

Two, there's lots of fraud in telecom. Most of it, unfortunately, is conducted by our biggest companies with the tacit approval of folks like FCC boss Brendan Carr. AT&T, for example, has spent decades ripping off U.S. schools and various subsidy programs, and you'll never see Carr make a peep about that. Fraud is, in MAGA world, only something involving minorities and poor people.

The irony is that the lion's share of the fraud in the Lifeline program has involved big telecom giants, like AT&T or Verizon, which, time and time again, take taxpayer money for poor people that the just made up. This sort of fraud, where corporations are involved, isn't of interest to Brendan Carr.

In this case, Carr is alleging (without evidence) that certain left wing states are intentionally ripping off the federal government, throwing untold millions of dollars at dead people for Lifeline broadband access. Something the California Public Utilities Commission has had to spend the week debunking:

"The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) this week said that "people pass away while enrolled in Lifeline—in California and in red states like Texas. That's not fraud. That's the reality of administering a large public program serving millions of Americans over many years. The FCC's own advisory acknowledges that the vast majority of California subscribers were eligible and enrolled while alive, and that any improper payments largely reflect lag time between a death and account closure, not failures at enrollment."

Brendan Carr can't overtly admit this (because he's a corrupt zealot), but his ideal telecom policy agenda involves throwing billions of dollars at AT&T and Comcast in exchange for doing nothing. That's it. That's the grand Republican plan for U.S. telecom. It gets dressed up as something more ideologically rigid, but coddling predatory monopolies has always been the foundational belief structure.

This latest effort by Carr and Trump largely appears to be a political gambit targeting California Governor Gavin Newsom, suggesting they're worried about his chances in the next presidential election. This isn't to defend Newsom; I've certainly noted how his state has a mixed track record on broadband affordability. But it appears this is mostly about painting a picture of Newsom, as they did with Walz in Minnesota, as a political opponent that just really loves taxpayer fraud.

Again though, actually policing fraud is genuinely the last thing on Brendan Carr's mind. If it was, he'd actually target the worst culprits on this front: corporate America.

The latest news from Foxconn, BYD, and Nigeria shows that the transition to electric mobility is happening all around the world.

The post EV News From Foxconn, BYD, & Nigeria appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Government plans to protect species by increasing woodland and removing greys, but campaigners say it needs to go further

When Sam Beaumont sees a flash of red up a tree on his Lake District farm, he feels a swell of pride. He's one of the few people in England who gets to see red squirrels in his back garden.

"I feel very lucky to have them on the farm. It's an important thing to try and keep a healthy population of them. They are absolutely beautiful," he said.

The Alaska, a simple mix of gin, yellow Chartreuse and orange bitters, hails from the beginning of the 20th century. The "delectable potion," as it was described in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, has all the trappings of modern success: It's essentially a Martini riff, made with the liqueur everyone can't stop talking about. It looks both demure in a Nick & Nora and, thanks to its golden hue, a little playful in a V-shaped glass. Yet for all its appeal, it has taken nearly a century for the drink to finally get its due. Now it dots menus at top bars, and there's never been a better time to order one—or to make one at home. Here are some of our favorite recipes for the drink.