Category: News

Assigning female genders to digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa is helping entrench harmful gender biases, according to a UN agency. Research released by Unesco claims that the often submissive and flirty responses offered by the systems to many queries – including outright abusive ones – reinforce ideas of women as subservient….

I am sitting at a huge table at the Ministry of Culture in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as officials explain what sounds like a wonderful opportunity. There’s currently an international call-out to find someone to run a gallery in the country, one housing the world’s second-largest collection of Russian avant garde art. What an amazing job, I…

A web of far-right Facebook accounts spreading fake news and hate speech to millions of people across Europe has been uncovered by the campaign group Avaaz. Facebook, which is struggling to clean up the platform and salvage its reputation, has already taken down accounts with about 6 million followers before voting in the European elections…

It’s tricky to explain Renee Zellweger’s new Netflix show What/If to somebody who hasn’t seen it, because it’s an exercise in diametrically opposed contradictions. It’s a sexy thriller, even though it’s about as sexy as slow-transit constipation. Its unique selling point is that it follows the consequences of actions, even though that also describes every…

A corseted Japanese denim minidress ($810), a cotton canvas blazer belted with a coordinating bumbag ($1,100), oversized sunglasses ($460) and a brass-and-crystal earcuff ($420) will go on sale at a pop-up boutique in the Marais district of Paris on Wednesday evening, when Rihanna launches her luxury fashion house, Fenty. Rihanna’s arrival in the luxury fashion…

Does it always pay to be polite? Dear reader, the answer very much depends. Academics in the US have analysed hundreds of thousands of answers on the Q&A website Stack Exchange, where users ask such vital questions as: “What is to the west of Westeros?” and “Are there any German nonsense poems?” They discovered that…

Delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr, the billionaire technology investor and philanthropist Robert F Smith made a surprise announcement: his family would wipe out the student debt of the entire class of 2019. Smith’s words to nearly 400 graduating seniors were greeted with a…

A week after enduring a sustained beating in front of a jeering crowd, Muhlaysia Booker spoke out about her ordeal in the hope of raising awareness about violence faced by transgender women. “This time I can stand before you whereas in other scenarios we are at a memorial,” she said. A month later, Booker is…

A shadowy “deep state” secretly runs the country. A smart immigration policy is “blacks go back”. Nazi Germany wasn’t all bad. None of these statements would be out of place in the darker corners of far-right blogs anywhere in the world. But in Estonia as of last month, they are among the views of government…

Alabama Public Television has refused to air a recent episode of a children’s program that featured a same-sex wedding. An episode of the popular animated series Arthur, titled Mr Ratburn and the Special Someone, was deemed inappropriate for the state’s young viewers by Mike McKenzie, the director of programming for the station, saying broadcasting it…