Latest News

Last updated 01 Apr, 06:57 PM

BBC News

Scott Mills confirms he was investigated by police in first statement since sacking - Mills says the announcement of his sacking from the BBC had led "to the publication of rumour and speculation".

UK will seek closer ties with EU in light of Iran war, Starmer says - It comes as UK-US relations have been strained by the PM's refusal to be dragged further into the Iran war.

CPS giving 'investigative advice' to police over Andrew and Mandelson probes - Police are carrying out inquiries into Lord Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

My daughter has childhood dementia and may not live past 16 - Diagnosed just before her fourth birthday, Sophia, now 15, can no longer speak and cannot walk unaided.

Stella McCartney's clifftop 'forever home' gets planning consent - The fashion designer and her husband plan to build the house overlooking a sea loch in the Highlands.

The Register

Japanese shipper MOL wants a floating datacenter, and Hitachi just climbed aboard - Second-hand ship, seawater cooling, with operations eyed for 2027 Japan is getting more serious about floating datacenters, as Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) has agreed to a deal with Hitachi to develop one with operations targeted for 2027 or later.…

Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year - Cool, but fossil-fuel additions and AI-era power demand still muddy the climate math It was a strong year for renewable power expansion in 2025, with solar installations helping push renewables to nearly half of global electricity capacity, but that does not mean the world is yet on pace to meet its renewable energy commitments.…

OpenAI gets $122B to 'just build things' as the world blows them up - War, oil shocks, and market nerves could yet knock the AI boom off course Opinion OpenAI has secured an additional $122 billion in capital from a diverse group of investors and reached a nominal $852 billion valuation, the highest of any pre-IPO tech company.…

Ruby Central report reopens wounds over RubyGems repo takeover - Board-backed account of maintainer ouster is unlikely to settle row over governance, control, and trust Ruby Central, a nonprofit that supports the Ruby programming language ecosystem, just published an incident report regarding what it calls the September 2025 RubyGems fracture, when ownership of the GitHub code repository behind the RubyGems package manager was wrested from existing maintainers.…

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K - We could tell you no for free The UK government will spend about £630,000 running a discussion panel on its digital identity card plans, which minister James Frith said will "consider different perspectives and debate trade-offs" alongside a formal consultation.…

New Scientist - Home

The best new popular science books of April 2026 - April has a lot to offer when it comes to popular science reading, promising to help us do everything from future-proof our brains courtesy of Hannah Critchlow, to get to grips with really big numbers, thanks to Richard Elwes

Virus from marine animals is causing weird eye problems in people - A virus seems to have jumped from marine animals into people for the first time ever, and it is causing serious vision problems

Plug-in solar is coming – how dangerous is it and is it worth it? - Plug-in solar panels are a cheaper, simpler alternative to professionally installed panels. But can they really reduce energy bills and are they safe? Matthew Sparkes investigates

Historians dispute link between drought and rebellion in Roman Britain - A study based on tree rings claimed that droughts played a role in events that led to the Roman withdrawal from Britain, but other researchers say that isn't backed up by historical evidence

Attacks from our immune system are a cause of long covid - The immune system going rogue and attacking healthy tissue seems to behind some cases of long covid, a discovery that could open doors towards treatments

Hacker News

EmDash – a spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security - Comments

AI for American-Produced Cement and Concrete - Comments

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2026) - Comments

The AI Marketing BS Index - Comments

StepFun 3.5 Flash is #1 cost-effective model for OpenClaw tasks (300 battles) - Comments

Slashdot

OnlyOffice Suspends Nextcloud Partnership For Forking Its Project Without Approval - darwinmac writes: OnlyOffice has suspended its partnership with Nextcloud after the latter forked its editors into a new project called Euro-Office, according to a report from Neowin. The move comes just days after Nextcloud and partners like IONOS announced the fork as part of a broader push for European digital sovereignty. In a statement, the company accused the project of violating its licensing terms and international intellectual property law, claiming that Euro-Office uses its technology without proper compliance. OnlyOffice also pointed to missing attribution requirements and branding obligations tied to its AGPL-based licensing model. As a result, its 8-year-old partnership, which allowed Nextcloud users to edit and collaborate on office documents right inside their own instance, has been suspended. OnlyOffice also accused Nextcloud of not behaving in a manner expected of a partner, alleging attempts to poach its employees and influence customers against the company. Nextcloud said it forked the OnlyOffice repository instead of collaborating with the company because the project is notoriously difficult to contribute to. It also pointed out that OnlyOffice is a Russian company with Russian employees who leave code comments in Russian. In addition to that, some users may feel uncomfortable using software that could be linked to the Russian government. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic Issues Copyright Takedown Requests To Remove 8,000+ Copies of Claude Code Source Code - Anthropic is using copyright takedown notices to try to contain an accidental leak of the underlying instructions for its Claude Code AI agent. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Anthropic representatives had used a copyright takedown request to force the removal of more than 8,000 copies and adaptations of the raw Claude Code instructions ... that developers had shared on programming platform GitHub." From the report: Programmers combing through the source code so far have marveled on social media at some of Anthropic's tricks for getting its Claude AI models to operate as Claude Code. One feature asks the models to go back periodically through tasks and consolidate their memories -- a process it calls dreaming. Another appears to instruct Claude Code in some cases to go "undercover" and not reveal that it is an AI when publishing code to platforms like GitHub. Others found tags in the code that appeared pointed at future product releases. The code even included a Tamagotchi-style pet called "Buddy" that users could interact with. After Anthropic requested that GitHub remove copies of its proprietary code, another programmer used other AI tools to rewrite the Claude Code functionality in other programming languages. Writing on GitHub, the programmer said the effort was aimed at keeping the information available without risking a takedown. That new version has itself become popular on the programming platform. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CEO of America's Largest Public Hospital System Says He's Ready To Replace Radiologists With AI - Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said hospitals could already replace many radiologists with AI for some imaging tasks -- if regulators allowed it. He argued the technology presents an opportunity to simultaneously cut costs and expand access. Radiology Business reports: Katz -- who has led the 11-hospital organization since 2018 -- said he sees great potential for AI to increase access to breast cancer screening. Hospitals could potentially produce "major savings" by letting the technology handle first reads, with radiologists then double-checking any abnormal screenings. Fellow panelist David Lubarsky, MD, MBA, president and CEO of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said his system is already seeing great success in deploying such technology. The AI Westchester uses misses very few breast cancers and is "actually better than human beings," he told the audience. "For women who aren't considered high risk, if the test comes back negative, it's wrong only about 3 times out of 10,000," Lubarsky said. Katz asked fellow hospital CEOs if there is any reason why they shouldn't be pushing for changes to New York state regulations, allowing AI to read images "without a radiologist," Crain's reported. In this scenario, rads could then provide second opinions, if AI flags any images as abnormal. Sandra Scott, MD, CEO of the One Brooklyn Health, a small hospital facing tight margins, agreed with this line of thinking, according to Crain's. "I mean, I'm in charge of a safety-net institution. It would be a game-changer," Scott said about AI being used to replace rads. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robotaxi Outage In China Leaves Passengers Stranded On Highways - An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: An unknown technical problem caused a number of robotaxis owned by the Chinese tech giant Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the middle of traffic, trapping some passengers in the vehicles for more than an hour. In Wuhan, a city in central China where Baidu has deployed hundreds of its Apollo Go self-driving taxis, people on Chinese social media reported witnessing the cars suddenly malfunction and stop operating. Photos and videos shared online show the Baidu cars halted on busy highways, often in the fast lane. [...] Local police in Wuhan issued a statement around midnight in China that said the situation was "likely caused by a system malfunction," but the incident is still under investigation. No one was injured, and all passengers have exited the vehicles, the police added. It's unclear how many of Baidu's robotaxis may have been impacted. [...] There were at least two other collisions on the same day, according to photos and videos posted on Chinese social media. A RedNote user in Wuhan confirmed to WIRED that she drove past a white minivan that had gotten into a rear-end collision with a parked robotaxi. The back of the Baidu car was badly damaged, but the two people standing beside the scene looked unharmed, she says. She added that she estimates she also saw at least a dozen more parked robotaxies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Startup Pitches 'Brainless Clones' To Serve the Role of Backup Human Bodies - MIT Technology Review discovered that startup R3 Bio has pitched an ethically and scientifically explosive long-term vision beyond its public work on non-sentient monkey "organ sacks": creating human "brainless clones" or replacement bodies for organs as part of an extreme life-extension agenda. From the report: Imagine it like this: a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need a new kidney or liver. Or, alternatively, he has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant. The fuller context of R3's proposals, as well as activities of another stealth startup with related goals, have not previously been reported. They've been kept secret by a circle of extreme life-extension proponents who fear that their plans for immortality could be derailed by clickbait headlines and public backlash. And that's because the idea can sound like something straight from a creepy science fiction film. One person who heard R3's clone presentation, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, was left reeling by its implications and shaken by [R3 founder John Schloendorn's] enthusiastic delivery. The briefing, this person said, was like a "close encounter of the third kind" with "Dr. Strangelove." [...] MIT Technology Review found no evidence that R3 has cloned anyone, or even any animal bigger than a rodent. What we did find were documents, additional meeting agendas, and other sources outlining a technical road map for what R3 called "body replacement cloning" in a 2023 letter to supporters. That road map involved improvements to the cloning process and genetic wiring diagrams for how to create animals without complete brains. A main purpose of the fundraising, investors say, was to support efforts to try these techniques in monkeys from a base in the Caribbean. That offered a path to a nearer-term business plan for more ethical medical experiments and toxicology testing -- if the company could develop what it now calls monkey "organ sacks." However, this work would clearly inform any possible human version. Read more of this story at Slashdot.