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Xbox's former chief operating officer, Helen Chiang, suddenly left Microsoft less than two weeks ago after being promoted into the role in July. I wrote in my Notepad newsletter last week that it seemed very weird for Chiang to suddenly depart Microsoft after 21 years with a surprisingly short memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. […]

Anker announced a new indoor security camera that's designed to watch your yard, driveway, or front porch through a window, instead of monitoring what's inside your home. The new Anker Eufy Window Camera E10 takes a similar approach to the Wyze Window Cam that launched nearly a year ago. It installs right against a window […]

We cannot let the billionaire class take unprecedented risks with our future America is a divided country in crisis. Despite the sunny economic forecast coming from the Trump administration, millions of Americans are struggling to find and keep jobs, getting crushed under the rising cost of living, and losing health insurance when they need it the most. Meanwhile, via corporate consolidation and political corruption, the billionaire class is getting richer faster than ever before: a 40% increase in wealth in just the last two years. Today, the combined wealth of nearly 3,000 global billionaires equals one-fifth of the entire world’s yearly output. Nearly 1,000 billionaires live and do business in the United States. Continue reading...

MS NOW host Symone Sanders Townsend appeared to suggest Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds wasn't true "kinfolk" with other Black Americans because of his conservative policies.

When Kinnear was 10, his beloved father Roy died in an on-set accident. This affected how he now approaches his work as an actor, and also his understanding of life’s most important questions At first glance, Rory Kinnear is Mr Normal. Bald head, nice face, wholly unremarkable. As an actor, he’s not one for flashy tricks – no dramatic weight loss or gain, rarely disguising himself with prosthetics or CGI. Yet, somehow, whatever role Kinnear plays, he’s totally different. So here I am in his dressing room at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, face to face with the man I’ve just seen on stage, and whose films and TV shows I’ve pored over for the past week, failing to recognise him. For starters, at 6ft, he’s taller than he should be. And more hench. And, actually, hotter. Continue reading...

In a rare event, three American astronauts voted in Tuesday's US midterm elections from the International Space Station, using advanced links to send electronic ballots to officials on Earth.

Euronews held an EU Enlargement Summit in Brussels on Tuesday, hosting policymakers and political leaders from candidate countries to discuss how the next phase of the European Union's enlargement can be imagined.

Series two of this rambunctiously entertaining espionage drama might be implausible. But it’s a magnetically acted tale of friendship, with moments of genuine poignance Is Helen Webb Britain’s busiest mum? Or Britain’s least busy mum? On the one hand, she’s got two kids, is the wife of the recently promoted prime minister and also a deep cover spy, who spends her days passing information about her husband’s work to a shady intelligence organisation and her nights on covert missions which often involve acts of bloody slaughter. Yet the reason she can do all this is that nobody expects her to do anything at all: she doesn’t have to look after her children (she has an ever-present nanny – who, unbeknown to Helen, is in fact another spy), manage the household, hold down a job or even sleep in her own bed at night. Forget getting away with murder – how does she get away with not doing the school run?! I don’t think you’re meant to spend Black Doves obsessing over Helen’s domestic arrangements, but if you like cataloguing the ways spy dramas stretch credulity to its absolute limits, Joe Barton’s thriller will certainly scratch that itch. This is a show so relentlessly preposterous it’s practically nihilistic: not just because Black Doves’ excessive body count makes life itself look cheap and worthless, but because searching for coherence in its bewildering storylines quickly starts feeling like a waste of time too. Continue reading...

There are small pleasures to be had in this straightforward retelling of the boxing champ’s life but there’s not much most viewers haven’t seen before The Greatest is a new limited series that repackages the life of Muhammad Ali for generations born too late to remember when the sporting icon was the world’s most famous man, or too lazy to seek out one of the many books written about his boxing rise, his exile from the sport for refusing the draft, his improbable late-career comeback and his steely resilience in the face of a seismic Parkinson’s diagnosis. That this TV adaptation comes from Amazon is both a stroke of vertical integration and an indictment of a viewing public whose patience for source material wears thinner with every scroll. The Prime Video drama says it’s based on “the life of Muhammad Ali”, a credible claim given the extent to which Ali’s cultural ubiquity made him a public figure of eminent domain. The first-ever “authorized scripted series” also has the backing of Ali’s widow, Lonnie, who serves as an executive producer. But the show clearly takes its direction from the definitive tome authored by Muhammad Ali’s brother, Rahaman Ali. The younger brother was a lifelong sparring partner, sharing a room in their childhood Kentucky home and remaining a prominent member of his entourage until the champ’s death in 2016, aged 74 – an occasion for global mourning. Continue reading...

Harry Potter fans lining up to enter the franchise’s new Oxford Street store in London were greeted by trans rights protesters chanting that J.K. Rowling has “blood on her hands.” A group of around a dozen protesters stood to the side of the flagship store, wielding megaphones and placards with messages that included: “Trans kids […]

A riveting documentary following the rise of Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal. Plus: the live final of Big Brother. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, BBC Two “Gastronomy is the French Foreign Legion,” says Marco Pierre White. “They don’t question you too much.” In the 1980s, the culinary desert of the UK saw the rise of three difficult, brilliant chefs (Pierre White was joined by Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal) who triggered a foodie revolution. This three-parter doesn’t quite avoid presentational, era-specific cliches, but it does capture the energy generated by the trio’s rise. Phil Harrison Continue reading...

The former Bond actor has given his seal of approval to 007 hopeful Callum Turner, who is rumoured to be one of the frontrunners for the coveted role. An official announcement regarding the identity of the next Bond is expected to drop before the end of the year.

Daniel P Lewis stars in his own script as an isolated man beset by trauma as a helpline counsellor Walters tries to heal his pain While working for a helpline one night, counsellor Grace (a terrific Hannah Walters) gets a call from Walter (Daniel P Lewis, also the film’s screenwriter), an isolated working-class man beset by trauma and loneliness who is contemplating killing himself. Grace quickly ascertains that Walter is in profound emotional distress, and although he keeps hanging up on her when her probing questions become too painful, he also keeps calling back until he feels safe enough to speak about the root causes of his anguish and accept help. However, other factors threaten to destabilise Walter’s fragile recovery as the violence that’s always been a part of his life erupts once again. Even if you didn’t read up on any of the background to this intimate, microscale drama, you’d be likely to suss while watching that it’s a labour of love for some of the cast and crew, perhaps born of a desire to show people in pain that there is help out there for them. That manifest sincerity and altruistic intent is so strongly palpable here that it somewhat wards off negative criticism, but it has to be admitted that the film does have its weaknesses. For a start, confining the action to Grace and Walter’s conversations and then observing how he reacts increasingly self-destructively after each talk means we follow a repetitive cycle of confession-reaction rinse-and-repeat. Lewis’s performance is dialled up to the max from the start, so it doesn’t have anywhere to go over the long haul. Added to which, the film keeps cutting away to somewhat strident flashbacks to explain what happened to him, instead of letting the revelations emerge through speech. Continue reading...

Using a fake DOB or leaving the field blank when making an online account can offer protection from identity theft You get a call from your bank saying there has been suspicious activity on your account. They read out your name, address and date of birth so you are happy it is a legitimate caller. But you are talking to criminals who have used your date of birth as part of a web of verifying information to convince you they are someone else. Continue reading...

Australia’s Fair Work Commission heard that Davide Tamburella was sacked for refusing to use the controversial topping With its sea foam-green and white decor, exposed brick columns and “classic Italian dishes” served atop European oak tables, La Costa was billed as an elegant slice of Italy in the urban heart of Queensland, Australia’s sunshine state. “We promise, it’ll only take a moment to realize you’re not in Brisbane anymore, you’ve made it to the Italian Riviera,” the now closed restaurant’s website still reads. Continue reading...

Since 1954, the King of the Kaiju has been terrorizing the city of Tokyo. But it wasn't until the two most recent installments, Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla Minus Zero, that the franchise became prestige fare.

Millions viewed Lisa He’s post about her mother’s struggling business in Edinburgh. But internet fame created its own complications — and obscured bigger questions.

Grace Harper Brighouse's documentary 'Dependence' claimed the audience award for best British discovery as Los Javis' large-scale queer epic continues to steal hearts around the globe.

Irishwoman Kearns lauded for pulling off illegal double Gaelic ‘solo’ AFLW boss says league to look at changing rules after 2026 finals The AFL will look at rule changes in its women’s competition to make it easier for Irish players to add their own flair, in a nod to the almost 50 former Gaelic footballers in the AFLW. One of the main differences between the sister sports, apart from the shape of the ball and field, is the bounce explicitly required for players in Australian rules running more than 15 metres. Continue reading...

The foreign secretary added that the UK will not shift its position on reparations Good morning. Wednesdays are normally the most exciting day of the week at Westminster, because it’s PMQs, but today (unless we get some mega surprise) all the action is taking place somewhere else. In part, that’s because Andy Burnham is still at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua. But mostly because anyone in SW1 with even a passing interest in politics will be far more interested in the outcome of the US midterm elections. You can catch up with all the drama on our US politics live blog. While the US results are undoubtedly fascinating, quite how relevant they are to the UK is a bit harder to discern. Donald Trump is still president for the next two years, and none of the chaos he has caused for Britain and other European allies is going to go away; conceivably, he could end up even more disruptive. Trump was first elected president in 2016 only months after the UK voted for Brexit and there will be progressives in Britain hoping the US results show that what Ed Davey is this morning calling the “politics of hate, division and economic harm” might be on their way out this side of the pond too. Maybe? But it is probably too soon to get carried away. Our US coverage is all here. In so far as there is any interesting UK reaction, I will post it here. People have been honestly a bit bruised by the past, what happened in the past, the sense that we just really just wanted to sweep this issue under the carpet and not confront it. My sense is there’s a bit of a sigh of relief that, OK … at least there’s a sense of we’ve got a shared interest now in moving the Commonwealth on. No … For us, that’s never been what it’s about. And that’s why it’s been important that … I did have this conversation with our partners in advance. I said, ‘Look, we are going to say we are willing to say that we’re open to an apology, but we’re not going to shift our position on reparations.’ It’s not for…