Reopening strait of Hormuz would have limited impact on cargo flows, says Maersk

The boss of the shipping company Maersk has said the reopening of the strait of Hormuz would have a “limited impact” on cargo flows, as the industry grapples with a sharp rise in energy costs.Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of the Danish shipping group, said its fuel bill had nearly doubled since the start of the conflict, adding as much as $500m (£367m) in costs per month, but it had passed this on to its customers through higher freight rates.“The reopening of the strait of Hormuz, whether it happens in the days to come or the months to come, will have limited impact on cargo flows,” he said in an interview with BBC News.The strait, a key shipping channel through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, has been effectively shut since late February, triggering the increase in energy prices.On Wednesday, the US president, Donald Trump, wrote on social media that “assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to… the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran

Powerful US utilities secretly fund ‘grassroots’ groups to sway cities away from switch to public power

The utility industry is quietly dispatching a network of front groups to thwart the growing push for public power across the US – a push that comes amid mounting frustration over sky-high utility bills, electric outages, a slow transition to clean energy and private utilities’ soaring profits.Communities from Ann Arbor, Michigan to San Diego, California and St Petersburg, Florida are exploring municipalizing their grids to join the country’s approximately 2,000 public power companies.Municipal utilities – or “munis” – are owned and operated by local authorities and broadly have lower rates, better reliability scores and are structurally more accountable to customers.The industry front group operations aim to counter that narrative in a high-stakes fight – private utilities stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue should communities municipalize.The latest front is in Michigan, where the Ann Arbor Responsible Energy Coalition (A2rec) appears to be a local, grassroots organization opposing a public power campaign in the upper midwest city of about 123,000 people

Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, testifies in OpenAI trial

Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI from 2016 to 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm

No flattery please, Claude: I’m British | Brief letters

The otherwise admirable Richard Dawkins should adjust the local settings of the chatbot or tell it to be less obsequious (Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it, 6 May). Such bots are initially geared to American overenthusiasm and egregiously flattering reinforcement, but just tell them you want British attitude. They’re only simulating you know.Brian Reffin SmithBerlin, Germany With artificial intelligence bringing “large language models” into everyday use, the LLM after my name has acquired a new meaning. For 70 years I assumed that it referred to my Cambridge master of laws

Virtual cyclists face random drug tests to compete on MyWhoosh app

First came the boom in virtual cycling, with thousands of people from across the globe competing against each other. Then came cash prizes. Now one major online platform has taken the next logical step by launching anti-doping testing for e-racers.MyWhoosh, which hosts the UCI Esports World Championships, has told the Guardian that the top riders in its weekly Sunday Race Club competition will now face random drug tests after they compete.The event offers prizes ranging from $2,170 (£1,593) to $20 (£14) to serious cyclists and beginner-level racers, most of whom compete at home or in a garage

Uar Bernard: the ‘rarest physical specimen’ who exposes the NFL’s scouting flaws

The Philadelphia Eagles selected the Nigerian defensive lineman before he had even played a down of football. More teams should take risks on global talentUar Bernard has become a source of borderline indecent fascination in the NFL – the kind of prospect who underscores how athletes are identified and the inherent limits of pro football scouting itself. A swole 6ft 4in and 306lbs, Uar (pronounced OO-ar) Bernard doesn’t just look the part of a fearsome defensive lineman; fans post his shirtless photos next to ones of Myles Garrett, the game-wrecking Cleveland Browns pass rusher who set the regular-season sack record last year. Veteran NFL analyst Lance Zierlein described Bernard as “one of the rarest of physical specimens I’ve seen in the sport”. Other people who have spent their lifetimes in football say Bernard looks like a Marvel creation