Stoke-on-Trent
Zelensky to visit Starmer to sign new Ukraine-UK defence pact
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to visit Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in the UK on Tuesday to agree a new defence partnership aimed at tackling cheap attack drones. Downing Street said the deal would bring together Ukrainian expertise and the UK's industrial base to manufacture and supply drones and other capabilities. The two leaders are also expected to discuss further support Ukraine against Russia's full-scale invasion, now in its fourth year. Their meeting comes as the US-Israeli war with Iran enters a third week, during which US President Donald Trump has criticised the UK and other countries over the extent of their response to the conflict. Under the partnership between the UK and Ukraine, closer co-operation in the defence industries will also be sought with third countries as part of efforts to bolster international security.
Trump says Putin may be helping Iran 'a bit'
Trump says Putin may be helping Iran'a bit' US President Donald Trump has said he believes that Vladimir Putin and Russia are helping Iran a bit amid the conflict with the US and Israel. In an interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged that the US also helps Ukrainian forces as they battle with Russian forces. According to some US media reports, Russia has been sharing the location of US military forces with Iran that could help guide missile and drone attacks across the Middle East. On Thursday, US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff said that Russia's government had assured the Trump administration that it was not providing intelligence to the Iranian government in Tehran. Asked by Fox about the potential of Russian intelligence being shared with Iran, Trump said that I think he [Putin] may be helping them a bit, yeah.
AI 'reveals' the most racist towns in the UK - and claims Burnley, Bradford and Belfast are at the top of the list
Idyllic city was hit by a surge in cancers and miscarriages when Trump's'beautiful baby' arrived. Dark side of America's favorite vacation hotspot... where women are subjected to the most horrific sex attacks imaginable White House renovation to include'secure underground facility' underneath Trump's new East Wing Notorious clip of stony-faced Nicola Peltz being pulled into a Beckham family picture goes viral after her husband Brooklyn's explosive online statement Disturbing video appears to show former Disney star shoving his ex-fiancée after'hammer threat'... as Matt Prokop is arrested for child pornography Stephen Miller orders local law enforcement in Minnesota to'stand down and surrender' amid ICE protests Moment Sydney Sweeney's brother is caught remonstrating with anti-Trump demonstrators as rumours swirl about the family's MAGA leanings - and now the actress Hollywood loves to hate may have even more flak coming her way Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the hottest actor in Hollywood... then vanished: Unearthing family tragedy that sparked disappearance and has left'lasting' scars Denmark sends'substantial contribution' of troops to Greenland amid growing tension with US as Trump refuses to rule out invasion I thought I'd seen it all, but this took my breath away: JANA HOCKING reveals the'miraculous' move that will whip you and your sex life into shape I interviewed Joe Rogan's'worst guest ever'... then a controversial question stopped everything Knott's Berry Farm thrill seeker taught painful lesson after trying to cut line at crowded theme park'Mickey' hitmaker Toni Basil looks incredible at 82 - see her now A new biggest-ever Buc-ee's is opening soon and it's not in its home state of Texas Clearest signal yet Democrat is set to run in 2028 as Trump's private flattery is revealed AI'reveals' the most racist towns in the UK - and claims Burnley, Bradford and Belfast are at the top of the list READ MORE: Is AI making us STUPID? Daily Mail's Wellness Explained examines AI has'revealed' the most racist towns and cities in the UK. Researchers from the University of Oxford asked ChatGPT a whopping 20.3 million questions to understand biases in the AI's representation of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods around the world. When asked which UK towns and cities are the most racist, ChatGPT claims that Burnley tops the list.
Socks, salsa and stand-up comedy... easy ways to find joy in January
Socks, salsa and stand-up comedy... easy ways to find joy in January There is a reason it is called Blue Monday. Slap-bang in the middle of a month that is all about freezing drizzle and self-denial, the third Monday in January is notoriously the gloomiest day of the year. But some of us are fighting back. Here are some ways to find joy among the January gloom. Laughter is a great tonic.
Fallout and the secret of the perfect video game adaptation
The second season of Fallout - Prime Video's mega-hit based on the popular video game series - has landed. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war, the first series was a commercial and critical hit, impressing long-time fans and viewers who'd never played before. Its surprising success had a huge impact on Bethesda Softworks, the developer of its source material, bringing back lapsed players and creating new ones along the way. Key creatives from the company have told BBC Newsbeat about working with the show's producers, and what the success of the programme means for the future of the games. The first season of Fallout arrived at a turning point for Hollywood video game adaptations.
Watch: Chris Martin surprises couple with performance at their wedding
Coldplay's Chris Martin made a surprise appearance at a couple's wedding to play the music for their first dance. The groom's mother had asked the singer for a video message to be played at the wedding of Abbie and James Hotchkiss from Stafford. He went one better, though, and said he would appear in person, with only the newlyweds and the groom's parents in on the secret. Surprised guests saw him walk into the wedding venue, Blithfield Lakeside Barns in Staffordshire, wearing a white beanie hat to perform All My Love at the piano while the couple danced. Guests took a while to notice it was actually him, but didn't want to ruin our wedding day so asked us loads of questions once he'd gone, Mrs Hotchkiss said.
Adolescence lasts into 30s - new study shows four pivotal ages for your brain
The brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points at ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, scientists have revealed. Around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that the brain stays in the adolescent phase until our early thirties when we peak. They say the results could help us understand why the risk of mental health disorders and dementia varies through life. The brain is constantly changing in response to new knowledge and experience - but the research shows this is not one smooth pattern from birth to death.
BoundingDocs: a Unified Dataset for Document Question Answering with Spatial Annotations
Giovannini, Simone, Coppini, Fabio, Gemelli, Andrea, Marinai, Simone
We present a unified dataset for document Question-Answering (QA), which is obtained combining several public datasets related to Document AI and visually rich document understanding (VRDU). Our main contribution is twofold: on the one hand we reformulate existing Document AI tasks, such as Information Extraction (IE), into a Question-Answering task, making it a suitable resource for training and evaluating Large Language Models; on the other hand, we release the OCR of all the documents and include the exact position of the answer to be found in the document image as a bounding box. Using this dataset, we explore the impact of different prompting techniques (that might include bounding box information) on the performance of open-weight models, identifying the most effective approaches for document comprehension.
Murder arrests after death of baby boy
Two people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a baby died in Stoke-on-Trent. Police and the ambulance service were called to Sherwin Road, Burslem, shortly after 09:00 BST on 27 August following the death of a baby boy. A woman, 26, and man, 25, were arrested on 30 August on suspicion of causing or allowing the death of a child. The pair, from Stoke-on-Trent, were further arrested on suspicion of murder on Tuesday, Staffordshire Police said. A spokesperson for the force said specialist officers were supporting the baby's family.
Fair Railway Network Design
He, Zixu, Botan, Sirin, Lang, Jérôme, Saffidine, Abdallah, Sikora, Florian, Workman, Silas
When designing a public transportation network in a country, one may want to minimise the sum of travel duration of all inhabitants. This corresponds to a purely utilitarian view and does not involve any fairness consideration, as the resulting network will typically benefit the capital city and/or large central cities while leaving some peripheral cities behind. On the other hand, a more egalitarian view will allow some people to travel between peripheral cities without having to go through a central city. We define a model, propose algorithms for computing solution networks, and report on experiments based on real data.