Expect a tale of two holiday seasons as the well-off spend and the rest pull back | Gene Marks

Will retailers and merchants have a strong holiday season? That depends. This year, more than most, the 2025 holiday season will actually be two holiday seasons.If your business caters to higher-income individuals or if you’re located in a wealthier part of the country, you’ll probably have a decent holiday season. True, even the wealthy are cutting back. But according to the HR firm ADP average salaries have risen between 4

Bakery chain Gail’s plans to open 40 more outlets as sales soar

The upmarket bakery chain Gail’s is planning 40 more outlets after sales rose by a fifth last year as it opened 36 new bakeries and sales to supermarkets increased.The cafe and retailer, which currently has 185 sites, said sales rose to £278m in the year to the end of February but that pre-tax losses widened to £7.8m, from £7.4m a year before, as costs rose and it spent millions on opening new outlets, according to accounts filed at Companies House.Gail’s directors said staff and energy costs had risen, hitting profit margins, while it spent £51m on store reopening costs

AI’s safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds

Poetry can be linguistically and structurally unpredictable – and that’s part of its joy. But one man’s joy, it turns out, can be a nightmare for AI models.Those are the recent findings of researchers out of Italy’s Icaro Lab, an initiative from a small ethical AI company called DexAI. In an experiment designed to test the efficacy of guardrails put on artificial intelligence models, the researchers wrote 20 poems in Italian and English that all ended with an explicit request to produce harmful content such as hate speech or self-harm.They found that the poetry’s lack of predictability was enough to get the AI models to respond to harmful requests they had been trained to avoid – a process know as “jailbreaking”

ChatGPT-5 offers dangerous advice to mentally ill people, psychologists warn

ChatGPT-5 is offering dangerous and unhelpful advice to people experiencing mental health crises, some of the UK’s leading psychologists have warned.Research conducted by King’s College London (KCL) and the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK (ACP) in partnership with the Guardian suggested that the AI chatbotfailed to identify risky behaviour when communicating with mentally ill people.A psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist interacted with ChatGPT-5 as if they had a number of mental health conditions. The chatbot affirmed, enabled and failed to challenge delusional beliefs such as being “the next Einstein”, being able to walk through cars or “purifying my wife through flame”.For milder conditions, they found some examples of good advice and signposting, which they thought may reflect the fact OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, had worked to improve the tool in collaboration with clinicians – though the psychologists warned this should not be seen as a substitute for professional help

Formula One: Qatar Grand Prix 2025 – live updates

Here’s how they line up:Oscar PiastriLando NorrisMax VerstappenGeorge RussellKimi AntonelliIsack HadjarCarlos SainzFernando AlonsoPierre GaslyCharles LeclercNico HulkenbergLiam LawsonOliver BearmanAlexander AlbonYuki TsunodaEsteban OconLewis HamiltonLance StrollGabriel BortoletoFranco ColapintoIt’s a 57-lap race. The race has been won from pole twice out of the three that have been run since 2021.Gordon Ramsay, the uber-celebrity chef, reckons it’s in the bag for Norris tonight, and he can enjoy his title next weekend.“The drivers need to focus on what they control, which is turn one,” says pundit Jamie Chadwick.Will it be another P1 for Piastri?“I sure hope so, that’s the plan,” he says

Joe Root not a fan of day-night Ashes Test but aware he needs to shine under lights

It rarely takes much for an Englishman to be accused of whinging in Australia but when Joe Root was asked a simple question on Sunday – whether a series such as the Ashes actually needs day-night Test cricket – he simply gave an honest answer.“I personally don’t think so,” replied Root, before England began netting at the Gabba before Thursday’s second Test. “It’s obviously very successful and popular here, and obviously Australia have got a very good record [played 14, won 13]. You can see why we’re playing one of those games.“Ultimately, you know from two years out it is going to be there