Google DeepMind workers in UK vote to unionize amid deal with US military

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Exclusive: Worker pointed to Iran war and Pentagon’s Anthropic feud as indications the department is ‘not a responsible partner’

Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the UK have voted to unionize, in part out of concerns about a deal between the company and the US military that was announced last week.

In a letter slated to go to management on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, workers at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research laboratory, requested recognition of the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives of the lab’s UK-based staff.

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Concierge firm co-founded by queen’s nephew went on ‘ill-timed’ hiring spree before Iran war

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Quintessentially almost quadrupled staff in Middle East and Asia less than year before wealthy began to flee Gulf

The embattled luxury concierge service co-founded by Queen Camilla’s nephew Ben Elliot embarked on what appeared to be an inopportune hiring spree in the Middle East and Asia before wealthy individuals began fleeing the region because of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Quintessentially almost quadrupled staff in the regions from 22 to 84 during its financial year to 30 April 2025, according to newly released annual accounts, which again reported multimillion-pound losses and warned of “material uncertainty” about its future.

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Vote Lib Dem or ‘regret it’ living under a Reform council, Davey tells voters

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Party leader says vote for Labour or Greens in closely run seats will result in Reform victory at local elections

Voters in the home counties will “regret it for a long time” if they do not back the Liberal Democrats and wake up to a Reform-led council, Ed Davey has said.

The Lib Dems leader has identified five councils – East Surrey, West Surrey, Hampshire, West Sussex and Huntingdonshire – where his party could win overall control, as well as swathes of the former “blue wall” where Davey said it was a “straight fight” between his party and Reform at the English local elections.

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‘Time the rest of us stepped up’: terror survivors’ group writes letter in support of UK Jews

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Letter coordinated by Survivors Against Terror, which includes bereaved relatives, after spate of attacks on Jewish community

Dozens of survivors and bereaved relatives of 19 separate terror attacks have written an open letter of solidarity to the Jewish community, saying: “Standing together in the face of hatred is not just the right thing to do – it’s the most effective way of defeating terrorism.”

The letter was coordinated by the group Survivors Against Terror (SAT), after terror attacks on two Jewish men in north London earlier this week, in what was the latest in a series of attacks on the community in the UK.

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Jaguar Land Rover could have shifted production from UK without £380m battery subsidy, officials warned

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Government officials said in December that Britain’s largest automotive employer could lead exodus from UK

Jaguar Land Rover would have considered moving car production out of the UK and slashing jobs if not for a £380m subsidy for its sister battery company, government officials claimed privately.

Officials at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) warned in December that Britain’s largest automotive employer may have triggered an exodus from the UK car industry, according to state aid documents prepared by the competition regulator.

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Australian author Craig Silvey pleads guilty to possessing and distributing child exploitation material

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Prosecutors drop two other charges against Jasper Jones author, 43, including allegations he produced child exploitation material

Award‑winning author Craig Silvey has pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child exploitation material, while a charge that he produced such material has been dropped.

Silvey, 43, was first charged in January after detectives from Western Australia police’s child abuse squad raided his Fremantle home, allegedly catching him communicating online with child exploitation offenders and seizing his electronic devices.

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‘They came to kill us’: royal commission hears horrific accounts of antisemitism faced by Jewish children in Australia

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Jewish children face antisemitic abuse, swastikas etched on school walls and other students performing Nazi salutes, hearing told

Jewish children in Australia face antisemitic abuse at school, see swastikas daubed on walls and witness classmates perform Nazi salutes: they live with antisemitism “all day, every day”, a Sydney Jewish mother has told a royal commission hearing.

The woman, known as Dina before the commission, said Australia had become a more hostile, more dangerous place for Jews, most horrifically demonstrated by the Bondi massacre in December in which 15 people were shot and killed.

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Two volunteers among three dead off NSW coast after rescue boat rolls while trying to help sinking yacht

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‘Hero’ rescuers aged 78 and 62 confirmed dead, while four others made it to shore after yacht broke up

Two marine volunteers who died while attempting a dangerous rescue mission have been remembered for their courage and heroism.

The men were deployed as part of a six-person Marine Rescue New South Wales team after a good Samaritan saw a yacht in distress near the breakwater at south Ballina, in the state’s north, on Monday night.

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Next Scottish government faces ‘really difficult’ spending choices, economists say

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Parties accused of ‘fiscal denial’ and failing to tell voters the scale of the challenge

The next Scottish government will need to make “really difficult” spending decisions soon after taking power, including tackling its large public sector pay bill, senior economists have said.

Economists with the Fraser of Allander Institute, at the University of Strathclyde, believe the manifestos published by Scotland’s political parties during the campaign failed to tell voters about the true scale of the challenge.

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Canadian fiddler sues Google after AI Overview wrongly claimed he was a sex offender

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Ashley MacIsaac, who is seeking $1.5m in civil lawsuit, says inaccurate information led to concert cancellation

An acclaimed Canadian fiddle player has launched a $1.5m civil lawsuit against Google, alleging that the online giant defamed him by falsely identifying him as a sex offender in an AI-generated summary of his life and career.

Ashley MacIsaac, a three-time Juno award-winning musician, filed the claim in the Ontario superior court of justice, asserting that Google was liable for the “foreseeable republication” of its AI-generated Overview feature, which previously published defamatory claims that he had been convicted of multiple criminal offences, including the sexual assault of a woman, internet luring involving a child with the intention of sexual assaulting the child, and assault causing bodily harm.

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US supreme court expedites Voting Rights Act ruling so Louisiana can redraw its maps for midterms

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Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the decision, saying the court has hastened it ruling only twice before in 25 years

The US supreme court went out of its way on Monday to help Louisiana Republicans redraw their congressional maps before this year’s midterm elections by allowing a recent ruling that gutted a key part of the Voting Rights Act to take effect ahead of schedule.

The procedural move comes less than a week after the court’s landmark decision striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Usually, the court waits 32 days to formally issue its judgment to the lower court. Last week, Louisiana asked the court to speed up that process, citing the urgency with which it needed to redraw its congressional maps. On Monday, the court agreed to do so.

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Trump’s World Liberty Financial venture sues crypto entrepreneur for defamation

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Suit alleges that Hong Kong-based Justin Sun engaged in a campaign to ‘torch’ the company’s reputation

World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Donald Trump and his sons, said on Monday it had filed a defamation lawsuit in Florida state court against the Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, as a dispute escalates between the project and one of its most prominent backers.

World Liberty posted a copy of its lawsuit on X in which it accused Sun of launching a “public smear campaign”. It alleged that Sun had improperly transferred some of his WLFI tokens that come with voting and governance rights to crypto exchange Binance and, separately, that he had placed bets that WLFI would decline in market value, known as short selling. That was part of a coordinated effort to push the token’s market price down as public trading began in September, the lawsuit alleged.

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California seeks millions in penalties from State Farm over alleged claims violations after LA wildfires

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State’s top insurance regulator says insurance company violated law while handling claims from 2025 wildfires

California is seeking millions of dollars in penalties from State Farm after an investigation found the insurance company was slow to investigate and underpaid claims from the 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires, regulators announced on Monday.

State Farm violated the law hundreds of times in a sampling of 220 cases, the state’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, said. The maximum penalty amount allowed by law would be about $4m if State Farm is found to be “willful” in violating state law. Regulators may also temporarily suspend the company’s license, effectively prohibiting the state’s largest home insurer from writing new policies for a year in California.

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Norwegian fish farms polluting fjords with waste likened to ‘raw sewage of millions of people’

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Exclusive: ‘Fish sludge’ in coastal waters now has nutrient levels equivalent to those in untreated effluent of country the size of Australia, report finds

Norwegian fish farms are filling fjords and other coastal waters with nutrient pollution equivalent to the raw sewage of tens of millions of people each year, a report has found.

Norway is the largest farmed salmon producer in the world, and nutrients in fish feed are excreted directly into coastal waters. Analysis from the Sunstone Institute found that Norwegian aquaculture released 75,000 tonnes of nitrogen, 13,000 tonnes of phosphorus and 360,000 tonnes of organic carbon in 2025.

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At Least 3 Dead After Suspected Rat-Borne Virus Outbreak On Cruise Ship – Forbes

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  1. At Least 3 Dead After Suspected Rat-Borne Virus Outbreak On Cruise Ship  Forbes
  2. 3 Dead in Hantavirus Outbreak Aboard Cruise Ship, W.H.O. Says  The New York Times
  3. What to know about hantavirus after 3 died in suspected cruise ship outbreak  The Washington Post
  4. Exclusive | Inside the deadly hantavirus-infected cruise ship, MV Hondius, where 3 passengers have died  New York Post
  5. Evacuations planned as suspected hantavirus outbreak traps 150 on ship off Cape Verde  Reuters
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UAE reports missile and drone strikes incoming from Iran – Al Jazeera

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  1. UAE reports missile and drone strikes incoming from Iran  Al Jazeera
  2. Iran War Takes a Dangerous Turn as Fighting Erupts in Hormuz  WSJ
  3. Despite rift, MBS calls Emirati counterpart to condemn Iranian strikes on UAE  The Times of Israel
  4. Global oil prices top $114 and settle at 4-year high after Iranian attacks on U.A.E. revive worries of further supply disruptions  MarketWatch
  5. Iran ceasefire in peril as UAE says it's under attack  Axios
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Europe will not submit to an ‘insular and brutal world’, says Carney – The Guardian

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  1. Europe will not submit to an ‘insular and brutal world’, says Carney  The Guardian
  2. Mark Carney Pulls Canada Closer to Europe as Both Struggle With Trump  The New York Times
  3. European leaders converge on Armenia as Russia looks on  BBC
  4. European and Canadian leaders hold security talks in Yerevan amid uncertainty over US policy  France 24
  5. European Leaders Meet as Trump Adds More Threats: What to Watch  Bloomberg.com
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