Sir Alec Reed obituary

Sir Alec Reed, who has died aged 91, built a hugely successful employment agency, one of the UK’s largest private businesses. But he will also be remembered as the man who changed the face of British philanthropy. His Big Give organisation – an imaginative way of involving rich donors in supporting charities – now raises more money at Christmas time than the BBC’s Children in Need or Comic Relief. His own foundation draws its funds from its holding of 18% of the Reed group. He used to joke that Reed employees worked one day a week for charity

Top economists call for halt to Sri Lanka debt repayments after Cyclone Ditwah

A group of the world’s top economists – including the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – have called for Sri Lanka’s debt payments to be suspended as it tackles the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed across the island, in what Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, called the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.The country’s $9bn (£6.8bn) national debt was restructured last year, after lengthy negotiations with creditors after the government defaulted on repayments in 2022. But development campaigners warned at the time that the burden on Sri Lankan taxpayers remained unsustainable

Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it’s helping them grow

While the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.“Earlier methods relied on human translators or rudimentary machine translation, often limited by language fidelity and stylistic nuance,” he said. “Now, with the rise of advanced generative AI tools, these groups are able to produce seamless, contextually accurate translations that preserve tone, emotion, and ideological intensity across multiple languages

A tape measure, a metal detector and a spirit level: 25 surprisingly useful things you can do with your phone

While many use our phones predominantly to doomscroll, smartphones have a range of little-known functions that could make life better and easier – from heart monitoring to even developing camera filmOur smartphones are magical things – far more than dopamine drip providers and a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Using the built-in features and easily available additional apps, there are plenty of clever things you can do with your smartphone.The iPhone’s Measure app uses augmented reality and the device’s camera to calculate everything from ceiling heights to room dimensions – handy for those DIY tasks that require a quick decision. And, good news for parents, Apple also points out that you can use it to measure a person’s height: the digital equivalent of etched markings on the wall.Metal detectors cost a pretty penny, but many modern devices have built-in magnetometers designed to help improve the accuracy of GPS within apps

NFL week 16: Broncos v Jaguars, Lions v Steelers, Panthers beat Bucs – live

Broncos 20-34 Jaguars 4:21, 4th quarterDenver get the stop but not until Jacksonville bleed some clock. They will have to speed things up. Touchback on the punt.TOUCHDOWN! Texans 23-14 Raiders 7:41, 4th quarterCJ Stroud to D Schultz for one yardBroncos 20-34 Jaguars 5:51, 4th quarterTrevor Lawrence is having a day. On a crucial 3rd down he goes for it and dives over the line for the 1st down

Wesley Plaisier claims ‘biggest victory’ in stunning upset of Gerwyn Price

By the end, all Gerwyn Price could do was applaud. There was no snarling and no sullenness from the former champion, just a nod of recognition, an admission that sometimes the other guy just plays darts from the gods. And here the other guy was Wesley Plaisier, the world No 92 from the Netherlands, a player of rich potential, but nothing that would ever have suggested he was capable of a shock of this magnitude.The talent has always been there: last year he joined a select group of players to have won a Pro Tour event despite not holding a tour card.After making his way through Q-School, this year has been harder