Vice files for bankruptcy protection amid cut-price sale to consortium

Digital publisher and owner of Vice News and Vice TV was once valued at $6bn but has agreed sale for $225m

Vice, the once high-flying media startup that reached a peak valuation of nearly $6bn (£5bn), has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US as the digital publisher engineers a cut-price sale to a group of lenders.

The company, whose assets include Vice News, Motherboard, Refinery29 and Vice TV, has agreed a sale to a consortium that includes Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital for $225m in the form of a credit bid for its assets as well as assuming Vice’s “significant liabilities”.

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Irish Times apologises for hoax AI article about women’s use of fake tan

The piece ran on 11 May and accused people who use fake tan of mocking those with naturally dark skin

The Irish Times has apologised for running an article about Irish women’s use of fake tan that was submitted by a hoaxer who used artificial intelligence.

The editor, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, said on Sunday that it had fallen victim to “a deliberate and coordinated deception” that showed a need for stronger controls.

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CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

Network’s own reporters criticise decision to give ex-president platform in ‘town hall’ format that allowed him to spout freely

Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.

“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning.

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‘I kept my alcoholism secret on Mission: Impossible set,’ Simon Pegg reveals

The actor, now recovered, tells BBC’s Desert Island Discs he became ‘very sneaky’ about his drinking in the early 2000s

Simon Pegg faced his own mission impossible, tackling both his addiction and eventual recovery, while working on the major Hollywood film franchise alongside Tom Cruise, he will explain in a revealing radio interview on Sunday morning.

Speaking of a secret reliance upon alcohol that he hid while working on film sets in the early 2000s, Pegg admits: “You become very sneaky when you have something like that in your life.”

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Prince Harry has no evidence he was hacked by the Mirror, court told

Mirror Group’s lawyers suggest newspaper’s stories about prince were instead leaked by royal press officers

Prince Harry has no evidence he was the victim of phone hacking by Mirror journalists, the high court has heard, with stories about his private life instead secretly leaked by royal press officers.

The Duke of Sussex alleges that dozens of news stories published in the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and People were obtained through phone hacking or other illegal behaviour. The articles – published between 1995 and 2011 – detail his relationship with his family, his relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, his military service and allegations of drug use.

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Mirror Group: phone-hacking trial initiated by Prince Harry and others continues – live

Piers Morgan accused of knowing about illegal phone hacking when he was editor of Daily Mirror on day one of trial

Lawyers are going through documents they say will give background on evidence the court is due to hear later. We’ll bring you details of that evidence as the court hears it.

Good morning, welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of phone hacking claims against Mirror Group Newspapers at the high court in London.

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Disney+ loses 4m subscribers amid exodus in Indian market

Lost cricket rights prompts outflow but streaming service almost halves losses while theme parks boom

Disney, known for Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel movies, said its flagship streaming service lost 4 million subscribers in the first three months of the year.

Subscribers to Disney+ services, home to movies such as Toy Story, Monsters, Thor and Black Panther, fell to nearly 158m from January to March, the second quarter of customer losses after a 2.4 million drop in the previous three months. Analysts had expected Disney to add more than 1 million customers in the quarter. The shares fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading.

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ABC announces job losses amid biggest restructure since 2017

Managing director, David Anderson, told staff ‘this in no ways diminishes the importance of what we do’

A major ABC restructure will see the abolition of the separate regional and radio division and lead to redundancies of management and staff.

The managing director of the ABC, David Anderson, has moved to assure staff the biggest restructure since 2017 would not mean the importance of the regional bureaux or radio was being downgraded.

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Shireen Abu Akleh: friends and family call for justice on anniversary of killing

Israeli forces admit ‘high possibility’ Al Jazeera reporter was shot by sniper at West Bank refugee camp

Family members, friends and colleagues of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was almost certainly fatally shot by an Israeli sniper, have renewed calls for justice on the first anniversary of her killing, during a week of memorials and events celebrating her life.

Abu Akleh, a household name in the Arab world who worked for Qatar-based Al Jazeera, was shot in the head in the slumlike refugee camp on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on 11 May last year while covering an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid. International outrage at the reporter’s death was fuelled by scenes of violence at her funeral in Jerusalem, when Israeli police attacked pallbearers, almost causing them to drop the coffin.

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Prada fashion boss rescues historic newsstand in Tuscany

Piero Scartoni, 91, who has been running stand in Arezzo since 1953, can now retire after former customer Patrizio Bertelli steps in

The owner of a historic newsstand in a Tuscan city said he was “delighted” the business has been saved by one of his old customers – Patrizio Bertelli, the chair of the Italian fashion house Prada.

Piero Scartoni, 91, who has been getting up at 5am to run the newsstand in Piazza San Jacopo in the centre of Arezzo since 1953, can finally retire after it was bought by Bertelli, who was born in the city and is the husband of the fashion designer Miuccia Prada.

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Risk of cyber-attack is main Eurovision worry, says BBC executive

Cybersecurity experts drafted in to help thwart any sabotage attempt as UK stands in as host for Ukraine

The risk of a cyber-attack by pro-Russian hackers is the “main worry” for broadcasters staging the Eurovision song contest on behalf of war-torn Ukraine, a BBC executive has said.

Experts from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre have been drafted in to help thwart any attempts to sabotage the competition’s public vote on Saturday.

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French journalist killed in Russian rocket strike in Ukraine

AFP video coordinator Arman Soldin, 32, who was ‘totally dedicated to his craft’, died in attack near Bakhmut

A French journalist working for Agence France-Presse news agency has been killed in Ukraine in a Russian rocket strike near the battle-torn eastern city of Bakhmut.

Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video coordinator, died on Monday when a Grad missile landed close to where he was lying. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Chasiv Yar, six miles (10km) from Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.

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ABC coverage of King Charles III coronation tops Australian ratings despite being attacked by monarchists

After being accused of being ‘obsequious’ over Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, ABC included discussion of colonialism and monarchy’s relevance

The ABC’s broadcast of King Charles’ coronation was labelled “despicable” by monarchists, but viewers loved it and gave the national broadcaster an easy ratings win over the commercial networks.

The king’s procession averaged 1,182,000 viewers on the ABC, putting it ahead of Seven’s 1,096,000 and Nine’s 738,000, according to OzTAM which now measures viewing through broadcast TV and streaming devices.

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wins medals on jiu-jitsu debut

Tech billionaire, 38, surprises onlookers by winning gold and silver medal at tournament in Redwood City, California

Mark Zuckerberg is adding one more title to his résumé: medal-winning martial artist.

The Facebook and Meta founder won gold and silver medals at his very first Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament in Redwood City, California, to the shock of many in the martial arts community and probably more widely.

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EU lawyers say plan to scan private messages for child abuse may be unlawful

Under proposed ‘chat controls’ regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to screen for ‘identifiers’

An EU plan under which all WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat accounts could be screened for child abuse content has hit a significant obstacle after internal legal advice said it would probably be annulled by the courts for breaching users’ rights.

Under the proposed “chat controls” regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to survey billions of messages, videos and photos for “identifiers” of certain types of content where it was suspected a service was being used to disseminate harmful material.

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As 2024 elections near, US media grapples with how to cover Trump

CNN’s Wednesday town hall with the ex-president could be a warning bell for cable news to not repeat mistakes from 2016

It claims to be the most trusted name in news. But on Wednesday it will devote an hour of prime time to a serial liar who sought to overthrow American democracy.

CNN’s live town hall with Donald Trump, the former US president, has been condemned by critics as a marriage of convenience: an ailing network looking to boost ratings and a disgraced 76-year-old candidate seeking rehabilitation.

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The digital media bubble has burst. Where does the industry go from here?

Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker and Drudge Report are all traffic-war casualties, but they succeeded in shaking up the media landscape

Toward the end of Traffic, a new account of the early rock n roll years of internet publishing, Ben Smith writes that the failings of Buzzfeed News had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”.

No truer words, perhaps, for a digital-based business that for a decade paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a basic business requirement that applies to information as much as it does to selling lemonade in the school yard or fossil fuels.

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Bluey: scene removed from Exercise episode after complaints about fat-shaming

Re-edited version omits opening scene after claims of fatphobia and replaces original on ABC and BBC platforms

The ABC has removed part of a Bluey episode that sparked accusations of fat-shaming and fatphobia.

It has now republished a version of the popular cartoon without a bathroom scene that showed Bluey’s parents complaining about their weight.

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Finnish newspaper hides Ukraine news reports for Russians in online game

Newspaper uses secret room in first-person shooter game Counter-Strike to bypass Russian censorship

A Finnish newspaper is circumventing Russian media restrictions by hiding news reports about the war in Ukraine in an online game popular among Russian gamers.

“While Helsingin Sanomat and other foreign independent media are blocked in Russia, online games have not been banned so far,” said Antero Mukka, the editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat.

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‘Not how white men fight’: Tucker Carlson text reportedly worried Fox bosses

Fired Fox host allegedly described Trump supporters assaulting a man, while finding himself ‘rooting for the mob’

A racist text message allegedly sent by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson set off alarm bells at the top of the network and ultimately contributed to his firing, the New York Times reported.

The text, which remains redacted in court filings in Dominion Voter Systems’ defamation case against Fox News, included the line: “It’s not how white men fight.”

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