US'watching closely' after plague researcher dies in Russia, Rubio says To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The US says it is closely monitoring the case of a Russian lab technician who died at a plague research centre in Siberia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there was concern the incident could have led to the spread of pneumonic plague, but that there was no cause for alarm. Announcing the cause of death as pneumonia of undetermined etiology, Irkutsk's governor said that no micro-organisms linked to the woman's work had been found in her biological samples. Unconfirmed reports had suggested the woman fell ill either after breaking a test tube containing the pathogen or following a field trip to a region where plague is found naturally among wild rodents. No other cases of staff from the plague institute seeking medical attention since her death had been reported, Irkutsk governor Igor Kobzev said, quoting Russia's consumer and health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor.

It's been a terrible year for farming, Jeremy Clarkson tells Tory conference To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Figure caption, Jeremy Clarkson: Farming this year was'an absolute disaster' Jeremy Clarkson has said it had been a terrible year for farming due to the hot weather, at a surprise appearance at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. The former Top Gear presenter and star of Clarkson's Farm also said farmers were being attacked from every angle by rising costs, but he was optimistic about the future. He was greeted by loud applause from the Tory faithful, but joked that a lot of people have come dressed as seats, I notice, around the edges there. In a question and answer session alongside land agent Charlie Ireland, he also criticised the economic conditions faced by business owners, asking: Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now? Clarkson - who also hosts ITV's Who Wants to be a Millionaire - was introduced to the stage by the Conservative shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins. Asked what kind of year he had had on the farm, Clarkson said: We worked really hard all year and we ended up with, I think I'm right in saying, three ounces of hen food.

Twelve men have been arrested in Vietnam after allegedly confessing to stealing and selling around 2,700 cats, Ho Chi Minh City police have said. Cat traps, fur removal machines and measuring scales were among the items seized during the investigation. The men are suspected of taking the pets to be slaughtered for food. Police allege the suspects roamed through residential areas in small groups on motorbikes at night to steal the cats. The men reportedly used pieces of fish as bait, placing traps outside houses where they knew cats were kept, state media reported.

Pickford'almost caused crash' with careless driving England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford nearly caused a crash with two other cars during a bout of careless driving in his £200,000 Lamborghini supercar, a court has heard. The 32-year-old was pulled over by police after ignoring a give way sign, forcing two cars to slam on the brakes, and then speeding off into the distance. The incident happened in the Cheshire town of Knutsford on 14 April, sparking a criminal prosecution for driving without due care or attention. Pickford, who has 336 appearances for Everton and 92 England caps, has pleaded guilty to the charge and will next appear at Chester Magistrates' Court on 7 December. According to court documents, PC Cecil Ricardo, from Cheshire Police, said he had just left the station when he saw Pickford's blue Lamborghini Urus complete with personalised number plates.

A man who killed a dog walker and attacked two other people in a frenzy of violence in west London has been given an indefinite hospital order for manslaughter. Dawood Safi, 28, fatally stabbed Wayne Broadhurst, 49, in the street during a series of knife attacks which began at Safi's home in Uxbridge on 27 October last year. Safi, who was having paranoid delusions and hearing voices, attacked his landlord Shahzad Farrukh minutes before killing Broadhurst, and also stabbed a 14-year-old boy. At Southwark Crown Court, Mrs Justice Cutts said Safi, an Afghan refugee, had been in a psychotic state and recommended that he be deported, but said the final decision rests with the Home Secretary. This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

A man who tried to break into the Israeli embassy in London to carry out a knife attack has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years. Abdullah Albadri was carrying two knives when he attempted to get inside the embassy in Kensington on 28 April 2025, before being detained by armed police. The 34-year-old from Kuwait had arrived in the UK on a small boat 16 days earlier. He was previously found guilty by a majority verdict of preparation of terrorist acts and possession of two bladed articles. Albadri's trial at the Old Bailey heard how he was motivated to plot the attack by the death of Palestinians in Gaza.

The UK's biggest broadband provider, BT, has agreed to rescue rival operator TalkTalk in a takeover. The deal, which will need to be approved by the UK's competition regulator, would mark end of months of speculation over the future for TalkTalk, which has been on the brink of administration because of its debts. TalkTalk has 1.5 million retail customers and one million wholesale customers across the UK. Some have raised concerns about the increased control BT will have over the broadband market as a result of the deal. BT chief executive Alison Kirkby said the deal provided a safety net for the households and businesses who rely on TalkTalk.

The job interview question you don't have to answer To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Figure caption, Watch: How much is your salary? Prepare all you like, but there is often still one job interview question that leaves you feeling uncomfortable. While employers in the UK are within their rights to ask you how much you get paid in your current role, applicants are not obliged to tell them. Recruiters have been encouraged to stop posing questions about salary history and, in the EU, new rules will prevent them doing so.

Generative AI models continue to become more powerful. The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 has ushered in a new era of AI. ChatGPT and other similar chatbots have a range of capabilities, from answering student homework questions to creating music and art. There are already concerns that humans may be replaced by chatbots for a variety of jobs. Because of the wide spectrum of data chatbots are built on, we know that they will have human errors and human biases built into them. These biases may cause significant harm and/or inequity toward different subpopulations. To understand the strengths and weakness of chatbot responses, we present a position paper that explores different use cases of ChatGPT to determine the types of questions that are answered fairly and the types that still need improvement. We find that ChatGPT is a fair search engine for the tasks we tested; however, it has biases on both text generation and code generation. We find that ChatGPT is very sensitive to changes in the prompt, where small changes lead to different levels of fairness. This suggests that we need to immediately implement "corrections" or mitigation strategies in order to improve fairness of these systems. We suggest different strategies to improve chatbots and also advocate for an impartial review panel that has access to the model parameters to measure the levels of different types of biases and then recommends safeguards that move toward responses that are less discriminatory and more accurate.

This volume is designed as an excellent reference for graduates of such programs.