Author: Liam Porter

Alina Rudya/bell Collective | Digitalvision | Getty ImagesI didn’t think much of my daily cell phone use during a vacation to Paris in May.But by the end of the five-day trip, I’d amassed almost $50 in extra charges — for fairly routine tasks like checking restaurant hours and menus, or researching neighborhood attractions after long, meandering walks.While not a bank-breaking sum of money, it was high enough to frustrate this personal finance reporter and make me rethink phone use (and the value of better pre-planning) for my next excursion.Luckily, there are many ways to potentially reduce or eliminate extra cell…

Microsoft is investigating how Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, is using its Azure cloud storage platform, amid concerns the company’s staff in Israel may have concealed key details about its work on sensitive military projects.Senior executives are scrambling to assess what data Unit 8200 holds in Azure after a Guardian investigation revealed how the spy agency has used the cloud platform to store a vast collection of intercepted Palestinian mobile phone calls.The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found Unit 8200 has used a customised and segregated area within Azure to store…

Before making his fourth feature film, the action revenge thriller One Spoon of Chocolate, legendary rapper and music producer RZA was still, he confesses, unsure of himself as a filmmaker, feeling that he hadn’t yet mastered the process, the “rhythms” as he calls it, of being a director, at least not to the same comfort level he had with music. After scaling the heights of hip hop as the de facto head of the Wu-Tang Clan, arguably the most influential rap group in history, RZA has found increasing success in film and television, firstly as an actor — he has…

His usual way of taking photos, Phil Stockbridge says, is like an angler waiting for a fish. The LA-based photographer had been working on a commercial shoot on the day he landed this image. “When I find something interesting to shoot, the main thing that starts to churn in my brain is light and composition. A lot of the time the subject’s missing and I’ll sit and wait like a fisherman for the right person or car to make the image. Luckily, for this scene, it was all laid out for me.”Stockbridge believes this to be a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, and…

Naina Mishra seemed to turn up at the yoga studio in Euston, north-west London, out of nowhere. She wasn’t referred by anyone; she didn’t come with a friend. A 21-year-old woman of Indian heritage with an American accent who grew up in Hong Kong and had recently arrived in London, Naina just “fell in” off the street in January 2022, say her yoga teachers, Hamish Hendry and Louise Newton. But it became part of her daily life. Every morning, she returned to practise there.Chatting after class, they learned that Naina had just graduated from university in the US and had…

When Alex Condon dove on the Alamodome floor for a loose ball as time expired on Florida’s 65-63 national-title game victory over Houston in April, it marked the culmination of a rapid return to prominence for the Gators under coach Todd Golden. Florida had not been past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2017 until it tore through the 2025 Big Dance and cut down the nets in San Antonio.Golden elevated Florida from 16-17 in his first season to 24-12 with a return to the NCAA Tournament in his second season. Then came a quantum leap that returned…

United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced that the US is to cut funding for mRNA vaccine development – a move that health experts say is “dangerous” and could make the US much more vulnerable to future outbreaks of respiratory viruses like COVID-19.Kennedy is known for his vaccine scepticism and recently ousted all 17 members of a scientific advisory panel on vaccines at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be replaced with his own selections. However, this latest announcement is just part of a series of moves by President Donald…

In mid-2023, if a user asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT for a recipe for artichoke pasta or instructions on how to make a ritual offering to the ancient Canaanite deity Moloch, its response might have taken – very roughly – 2 watt-hours, or about as much electricity as an incandescent bulb consumes in 2 minutes.OpenAI released a model on Thursday that will underpin the popular chatbot – GPT-5. Ask that version of the AI for an artichoke recipe, and the same amount of pasta-related text could take several times – even 20 times – that amount of energy, experts say.As it rolled…

Gaining access to iOS 26 on your iPhone is getting closer, but the release is still over a month away, coming this fall. But you can start testing the new features now by downloading and installing Apple’s public beta, which CEO Tim Cook recently said is (along with the other current beta operating systems) “by far the most popular developer betas we’ve had,” 9to5Mac reports. You can also take a look at our preview of the iOS 26 public beta release, which shows off the fresh home and lock screen redesign. Called Liquid Glass, the new translucent look will extend…

International film sales agency MoreThan Films has picked up sales rights to Ion de Sosa’s “Balearic” ahead of its world premiere as part of the Filmmakers of the Present section at the Locarno Film Festival (August 6-16).  “Balearic” begins with a group of teenagers on a Mediterranean island who stumble upon a big house with a pool and decide to take an illicit dip that takes a much darker turn once three large dogs come to guard the property. From there, Sosa moves the story a few miles away to follow a group of wealthy neighbors gathered at a luxurious…