Ben & Jerry’s owner stopped brand developing flavour for peace in Gaza

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s has accused its owner of being part of a movement of “corporate butt kissing” of Donald Trump and says management blocked the ice-cream brand from producing a flavour in support of peace in Gaza.Ben Cohen told the Guardian that Unilever was pursuing a “corporate attack on free speech” by blocking the development of a special flavour in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is understood the flavour had been approved by Ben & Jerry’s independent board and first mooted about a year ago.Magnum, the group’s ice-cream arm, confirmed it had not gone ahead with the board’s suggestion for a Palestine product this summer.Cohen has mounted a “Free Ben & Jerry’s” campaign to persuade Unilever to sell the brand to a group of socially minded investors who he says have pledged to allow it to continue its “social mission

BT ‘considering low-cost mobile brand’ as Revolut and Monzo plan launches

BT is reportedly considering the launch of new a low-cost mobile brand, as the telecoms group explores ways to compete with new rivals in the market including the fintech companies Revolut and Monzo.The group is exploring options to enter the budget market, which could involve creating a new brand in-house or buying an existing virtual network operator, according to the Financial Times.The move would mark a strategy shift from the former state-owned company, which now only offers mobile services through its premium EE brand. BT owns Plusnet, but decided last year to use the low-cost brand only for its broadband services.However, it is now looking at how it can stay competitive as new rivals, including from the fintech sector, start taking slices of the UK mobile market as virtual network operators, which piggyback on the existing networks of other mobile services

Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks

Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chief executive resigned amid ministerial pressure.The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction

Tech chiefs tell Trump to call off troops – will Firefox go ‘full AI’?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, confounded by the ending of Bugonia and looking forward to seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.In this week’s newsletter: the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers; the tech billionaires’ support of Trump and their successful request to defer national guard deployment to San Francisco; and the growing prevalence of face-scanning in online dating. Thank you for reading.Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations

England expect Ecclestone to play through pain in Cricket World Cup semi-final

Nat Sciver-Brunt says she expects Sophie Ecclestone to play in Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final against South Africa, despite the shoulder injury sustained in their match against New Zealand on Sunday.A subsequent MRI scan on Ecclestone’s left shoulder revealed a minor injury to the joint next to her collar bone, but the left-arm spinner was due to train with England on Tuesday evening.Sciver-Brunt, the England captain, did acknowledge that Ecclestone might struggle to bowl her full allocation of 10 overs, but said the team were confident they had the options in their lineup to deal with that situation if it arose. Ecclestone bowled only four balls on Sunday, leaving England dependent on the part-time off-spin of Alice Capsey and the barely-ever-seen leg-spin of Sophia Dunkley to fill the void.“I’m pretty confident that she’ll be ready for tomorrow’s game,” Sciver-Brunt said “She [Ecclestone] might not be 100%

$54m to walk: getting fired as a college football coach is a booming industry

Brian Kelly’s departure from LSU is just the latest in a series of big money firings. It’s also a jarring state of affairs for many struggling fansAt a time when millions are at risk of going hungry and losing their medical insurance benefits, struggling Americans can at least take solace in knowing that the nation’s college football coaches are doing just fine – especially Brian Kelly.On Sunday LSU relieved Kelly of his coaching duties after his Tigers suffered a resounding home loss to Texas A&M that dropped them out of the AP’s ranking of college football’s top 25 teams. (This is after LSU was ranked as high as third in September and firmly in the top 10 for most of the season.) Kelly, who was in the fourth year of a decade-long contract worth about $100m, will be going home with more than just a box full of purple and gold office trinkets