Waitrose under pressure to reinstate worker sacked after stopping shoplifter

Waitrose is under growing pressure to reinstate an employee of 17 years who was sacked after tackling a shoplifter who was trying to steal Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.The retailer has faced public outcry over its treatment of Walker Smith, who was fired two days after he stopped the shoplifter taking items from the Easter egg display.After Smith told the Guardian he had lost his job after the incident, a fundraiser was launched on his behalf and has since raised more than £4,000, with the organiser claiming he had “simply tried to do the right and noble thing”.On Sunday, Smith explained that a customer alerted him to someone filling a bag with Lindt chocolate eggs.The 54-year-old, who worked in the Clapham Junction branch in south London, said the shoplifter was a repeat offender

Jamie Dimon says US should strengthen allies economically, in veiled criticism of Trump

The head of the US’s largest bank has pressed the White House to strengthen Washington’s allies economically in order to “avoid truly adverse consequences”, in the latest intervention in an increasingly testy relationship with the Trump administration.As the Middle East conflict sparked by US and Israeli attacks on Iran enters its sixth week, Jamie Dimon, the chair and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said in his annual letter to shareholders that good US foreign policy should put America first “though not alone”.His remarks appear certain to be viewed as critical of Donald Trump, who in January announced he was suing the banker and the Wall Street institution for at least $5bn (£3.8bn) after accusing them of debanking him.The comments also come five days after Trump told governments to “go get your own oil” by force from the Gulf, as transatlantic relations further soured over soaring energy prices as a result of the war

An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night

Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.In early February, a class of new, powerful AI assistants went viral. The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents, they could be untethered from guardrails and set loose upon the world

Kurt Strauss obituary

My father, Kurt Strauss, who has died aged 95, was a senior engineer who worked for more than two decades at the Electricity Council, the government body that coordinated electricity supply in England and Wales before privatisation in 1990.He worked for all of that time within the council’s overseas relations branch, managing international relationships, technical exchanges and consultancy services while rising steadily through the ranks to associate director. German by birth but brought up in the UK, he was a passionate European who spoke French and German, and was therefore well suited to those responsibilities.Kurt was born in Degerloch, a suburb of Stuttgart, into a Jewish family. In 1937 his parents, Viktor, who worked in the family down and feather business, and Marianne (nee Melzer), sent Kurt’s older brother, Helmut, to safety in Britain, where he ended up at a boarding school, Sidcot, in Somerset

NCAA men’s national championship: UConn v Michigan – live updates

Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s what Bryan Armen Graham and Nicholas Levine think each team need to do to cut down the nets in Indianapolis.What do UConn need to do to win?The Huskies must lean on discipline and patience to avoid getting dragged into a high-possession shootout. They have to execute their off-ball actions cleanly, force Michigan to defend across the full shot clock and get efficient production from star center Tarris Reed Jr inside. If they can limit the Wolverines’ second-chance points and drill timely threes, the upset is there for the taking

‘You have to have a bit of heartache’: Justin Rose on his bid to avoid being Masters nearly man

Squint and you will see Justin Rose’s name twice on the tournament record boards at Augusta National. It’s there on the big bronze winner’s list at the water fountain by the entrance, beneath the entries marking Sergio García’s victory in 2017 and Rory McIlroy’s eight years later, both, as it says in the small print underneath, won in a playoff that Rose lost. Only one other player in Masters history lost two playoffs, and that was Ben Hogan, who had the consolation of winning it twice outright, in 1951 and 1953, in between finishing second in 1942, 1946, 1954 and 1955.Throw in Rose’s second-place finish behind Jordan Spieth in 2015, when he finished four shots back, and he has come just about as close as any man can to the greatest prize in the game. The only player who finished second more often without actually winning the thing was Tom Weiskopf, who was runner-up four times in the space of seven years