Researchers say popular performers covertly market OnlyFans content and tell followers about wealthy lifestyle TikTok is helping to promote and normalise the sex industry, allowing “sexfluencers” to post videos aimed at marketing pornographic content they have uploaded elsewhere on sites such as OnlyFans, a report indicates. After studying non-explicit content posted on TikTok over the course of a year by some of OnlyFans’ most popular young female performers, researchers said the women buried coded references to pornography in “girly lifestyle content” that showed them shopping, playing with their pets, baking or offering skincare advice. Continue reading...
Trump Exposed Reactor Core Syndrome very much in play after Democrat landslide – and Fifa’s president may pay a price Oh baby, clamp me in your repulsive mouthparts. Sink your unusually large and venomous fangs into my abdomen. And yes, we are doing this in the White House cabinet rooms, out there in plain sight of the watching world, just a gleaming golden ball between us. But it’s fine. Probably. Now take a sip of those sweet, sweet tiny male arachnoid entrails. An exciting new study was published over the summer into the habits of the Australian redback spider. The research made headlines for its focus on reproductive behaviour, specifically the male’s urgent and very willing engagement in what is known as sexual cannibalism, AKA copulatory suicide. Continue reading...
Samuel Gibbs doubted he could cut costs and still keep warm by putting tech in control. The results surprised him Can smart thermostats and AI reduce your heating bills? Every manufacturer claims the answer is yes, quoting average savings in the 25%, or £180 a year range. But all of these promises are heavily caveated and, with energy costs changing regularly, it can be very difficult to tell what is having an impact. To find out if technology can really help, I spent the last two years comparing my miserly manual control and basic heating schedule to an AI-governed system. The results surprised me. Continue reading...
Many experts think fixed rate on 30-month term will still look good after Bank of England raised base rate A savings account paying “market-leading” 5.3% interest was launched this week by Nationwide building society. It’s only for Nationwide members – but there are more than 19 million of them. The account was launched just a couple of days before the Bank of England pushed up the main base rate to 4%, a move that will be welcomed by many savers. Continue reading...
Susan Lawrence, elected to Wolverhampton city council, sits on committee overseeing financial reporting of multimillion-pound budget A woman who promoted a notorious cryptocurrency scam has been elected as a Reform UK councillor and now sits on the audit and risk committee of a major city council. Susan Lawrence was one of the main UK promoters of the HyperVerse cryptocurrency scheme, which was named in US court documents as an alleged “pyramid and Ponzi scheme” that cheated investors worldwide out of a “staggering” $1.89bn (£1.41bn). Continue reading...
Trump still considering new assault on Iran nuclear sites – though threats less credible after Vance remarks Qatar, the lead mediator in the US-Iran conflict, is seeking to persuade Tehran to allow UN nuclear weapons inspectors to visit Iran’s bombed nuclear sites, including those housing the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran would not be required to make any commitment that the stockpile would be removed from the country, with other options on the table, including reducing the uranium content by down-blending it. Continue reading...
E-bikes, noisy headphones, flytipping: Burnham is weighing in on areas that make a difference to how people feel about life Imagine waking up one morning to find a humiliating video of you, filmed without your knowledge or control, plastered all over social media. Maybe you were sweating at the gym; or maybe at work, in a bar, or walking down the street, where you never realised the stranger hassling you for your number was covertly filming for his social media channel dedicated to shaming women who won’t date him. This week ministers hinted at a potential crackdown on so-called pervert glasses, wifi-enabled spectacles that let the wearer capture video of people around them, after multiple reports of men using them to harass women. (Though a small flashing light on the frame is meant to warn that the user is filming, it’s easily missed and worryingly easily disabled.) If so, it would be a small win, admittedly, in the context of what feels like an endless losing battle against big tech. But it would give young women back some small sense of control in life, and that matters perhaps more than we think. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Acts of greyzone aggression aim to spread panic. Europe has to show the saboteurs that we are resilient It was as though a ghostly hand had switched the settings on supermarket freezers across Europe from “freeze” to “defrost”. From Finland to Ireland, they suddenly began heating up, many reaching 50C and food worth millions of euros had to be thrown away. But no actual hand was needed to cause the meltdown. This was a cyber-attack, or rather a chain of attacks. Like pretty much everything else in 2026, supermarket freezers are digitally enabled. That makes them smarter and more efficient, but like everything else that is connected to the internet, it also makes them more vulnerable. Russian hacktivists claimed they were behind some of the supermarket sabotage, but no one knows for sure. It could also be Iran, Iranian proxies, North Korea – or unaffiliated bedroom hackers. When Transport for London suffered a devastating hack two years ago, the culprits turned out to be two British teenagers. Governments regularly warn retailers and other companies about cyber-attacks and even provide cyber-defence training to businesses. The lessons of costly ransomware and cyber-attacks also mean many big organisations and retailers have become much better at keeping their payments and logistics systems safe. Elisabeth Braw is a Swedish security expert and the author of The Undersea War: The International Battle for Supremacy at the Bottom of the World Continue reading...
Its key temperature goal has been missed but experts say the agreement is still proving a vital moral compass for progress It was a curious way of conducting negotiations. Ahead of the 2025 climate summit, in the Amazonian port of Belém last year, the Brazilian hosts had taken off the table the issue that most had assumed would be at its heart: concrete plans from each country laying out exactly what they would be doing to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil was insisting, instead, that these plans – the bedrock of the Paris agreement – were the business of national governments and not up for negotiation. “In that case, it will be a very short Cop,” one seasoned global south negotiator told the Guardian shortly before, reflecting a widespread unease. “There is nothing to negotiate.” Continue reading...
Santiago Peña was detained minutes after he was impeached by Congress, as protesters took to the streets demanding answers after the suspension of the Ueno bank Paraguay’s rightwing president has been placed under house arrest minutes after he was impeached by Congress, amid a severe crisis that left more than half the country’s population unable to access their bank accounts. Santiago Peña is being investigated about allegations he used his political influence to favour a bank that expanded exponentially under his government and was suspended this week after irregularities. Continue reading...
Tech stocks have lost trillions while voters have rejected the industry’s political champions. The billionaire-led boom is facing a democratic reckoning This week’s midterms showed that the political bill for the AI boom is falling due. The Democratic sweep intensified fears over runaway spending, mounting debt and resistance to datacentres, sending tech shares tumbling. On Thursday Wall Street suffered its worst day since the pandemic as $3.2tn was wiped from markets. Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot, is hoping to float within the next fortnight for $1.5tn (£1.1tn), but it may not now get even a trillion dollars. The dominant AI chipmaker Nvidia saw its value crash by more than $400bn. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, lost $113bn in two days. While a few very rich people may be a little less wealthy, the sell-off may not be a bad thing. It brings a needed dose of reality to an industry whose spending plans and valuations depend on heroic expectations of future profits. That is a view held by many influential figures – from Goldman Sachs’ research boss to Nobel laureate Daron Acemoğlu. AI may transform the economy. That does not guarantee investors will earn back the sums being poured into it. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Mississippi Senate election could be determined by the mail-in ballots received after Election Day, whose legality was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Asian and European markets follow US tech rout with many analysts predicting more waves of selling to come European and Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday after the Democrats’ decisive victory in the midterms triggered a rout in US tech stocks a day earlier. A sell-off on Wall Street on Thursday was followed by sharp falls in Asian stock markets on Friday. The investor sentiment then reached London, where the market was, at one stage, poised for its worst day since March. Continue reading...
Men allegedly impersonated voices and images of executives to convince employees to send large payments Three foreign nationals were arrested and charged with using AI to allegedly impersonate corporate CEOs and attorneys to steal over $100m, according to an indictment that was newly unsealed by the US Department of Justice. According to a press release from the United States attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, three men – Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan, and Guy Sheetrit – were arrested for using AI to alter and impersonate the voices and images of executives and attorneys at various companies in order to convince employees to send over large payments. Soall and Hazan were arrested in Spain over the summer, while Sheetrit was arrested in the United Kingdom in September. The alleged fraud took place between 2024 and 2026. Continue reading...
Groups and strategists advising Democrats are warning them to use their investigative tools on corporate interests, rather than on President Donald Trump.
Ty Pinkins said he avoided campaigning in heavily Black areas of Mississippi to avoid harming chances for Democrat Scott Colom, who, like him, is Black.
With Democrats set to take control of the House in January, Rep. Robert Garcia is promising sweeping probes into Trump, his family and his administration.
Binance lost more than $6 billion in a hack partly caused by fake job interviews. Here's what job seekers can learn from it, and tips to avoid job search scams.
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly called Friday's jobs report "good news for American workers," but noted the pressure inflation is exerting on household finances
Data centers are a crucial part of President Donald Trump's push to win the global artificial intelligence race, which he continues despite the midterm results.
Executives of major tech companies are largely projecting optimism about continued growth in the artificial intelligence sector despite a post-midterm sell-off.
Media organisations in Ireland and UK also affected as apparently coordinated effort to cause chaos continues A fresh wave of bomb threats disrupted air traffic across Europe on Friday but the affected aircraft landed safely and searches revealed no explosive devices. The latest alerts affected at least 18 flights to or from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania and the UK. Continue reading...
European and Asia-Pacific markets slide after Wall Street rout, while latest US jobs report beats forecasts Despite the sharp losses suffered on global stock markets around the world, most indices are still up for the year. The Nasdaq Composite index, for example, is still up 4.6% since the start of January – even though it’s more than 10% below its peak. “The tech sell-off has intensified, with the pain of the brutal sell-off on Wall Street carried straight through to Asia and knocking sentiment in Europe. Big worries are colliding – the build-out of data centres looks set to slow, which risks shredding the spending spree underpinning the boom, right at the time that investors have become super nervous about returns on this massive investment. Continue reading...
Montana voters approved a novel strategy to restrict corporate political spending, setting up a constitutional fight that could reach the Supreme Court.
‘Fan’ mail | Lessons from history | Natural fabrics | Perthshire pirate Thank you, Joe Dunthorne, for your dogged investigation of the book club scam (Like many authors, I’m bombarded by scam fanmail. I wasn’t prepared for what would happen when I wrote back, 1 November). I get two or three emails like this a month, promising me attentive reading of one or other of my books from 500 members. Then will follow a request for a modest fee, for “distribution” of my text. I know this, because I once replied. Last week I told “Anna” from Amherst (or was it “Vanessa” from Vancouver?) that I had forwarded her email to [email protected]. She thanked me for my interest. Carolyn Steedman Leamington Spa, Warwickshire • John Crace – who is always stimulating – says we are in “what is forecast to be the toughest decade for the country on record” (Digested week, 30 October). Oh, really? What about 1925-35 with the general strike, the great depression and the hunger marches? Or 1939-49 with the second world war and its aftermath? Or the soaring inflation of 1970s? Peter Coltman Leeds Continue reading...
Freshways lowers price paid to producers by 7p a litre, prompting warnings confidence in the sector is ‘at rock bottom’ “Milk is leaving the farm at a loss,” says dairy farmer Ian Harvey, as he warns confidence in the sector is “at rock bottom”. Most of the UK’s dairy producers were already being paid less for their milk than it costs to produce it after a year of volatile farmgate milk prices, combined with the impact of the summer’s drought and soaring costs of vital fuel and fertiliser triggered by the conflict in Iran. Continue reading...
After Thursday’s share price plunge on Wall Street, could the volatility be the start of a huge market meltdown? Global financial markets have been thrown into a tailspin as investors bet on an AI slowdown after the US midterm elections. This is not the first time stock markets have wobbled in recent months due to concerns over a tech bubble. But could this volatility be the start of a huge market meltdown? Continue reading...
Oil prices fell Friday as investors weighed the risk of renewed Iran war escalation after the midterms, alongside prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough.
