Author: admin@primenews

Many of us of a certain age will remember the Alan Partridge scene where he is pitching to a TV executive in a bid to get a new series commissioned. Getting ever more desperate, the fictional British TV presenter suggests shows such as Inner City Sumo, Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubanks, and finally, Monkey Tennis. All were perhaps unsurprisingly rejected. Maybe Partridge, played by comedian and actor Steve Coogan, would have had better luck if he had let an artificial intelligence (AI) computer system pick the ideas. That may initially sound like a highly fanciful idea, but a number of…

“A major reset of the internet to make it much safer” is how Ofcom’s Gill Whitehead described the communications watchdog’s child safety announcements to me. But can it really deliver that kind of a sea-change in the protection of children online? Turning faulty tech off then on again is a tried and trusted fix, but “resetting the net” is considerably more challenging. First of all, consider the scale of the task: while the focus is on the largest and riskiest social media firms, over 150,000 services fall under the Online Safety Act, the new law Ofcom must enforce. According to Ms Whitehead,…

A major Japanese food supplier has recalled more than 100,000 packs of a popular brand of sliced white bread after rat parts were found inside some loaves. The latest scare adds to a raft of food safety scandals plaguing Asia’s second biggest economy, which has a longstanding reputation for the reliability of its food exports. In a statement on Wednesday, Pasco Shikishima Corporation said it was investigating how parts of “a small animal” found its way into two packets of sliced bread, adding that no one has fallen sick so far after consuming the product. It later confirmed to CNN that the remains belonged…

Public servants on the Isle of Man have been urged to be clear over whether their social media accounts are personal or affiliated to the government. The island’s information commissioner Stuart Haynes issued the advice after a review of a Freedom of Information request. The FOI asked for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to hand over copies of posts on X by minister Lawrie Hooper in response to those by an island-based journalist. In his ruling, Mr Haynes said the account was considered to be the possession of the minister, but said public servants should make it…

One big spender could get their hands on Dame Shirley Bassey’s diamonds forever with the singer set to auction some of her jewellery. The extensive jewellery collection up for grabs, estimated to be worth over £598,260, includes a diamond ring gifted to her from Sir Elton John. Dame Shirley, who grew up in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, famously sang about diamonds in the title track the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever starring Sir Sean Connery. She said she accepted the offer to sing the track as the lyrics “rang true” to her. Dame Shirley, whose other hits include Big…

British actor Ian Gelder, best known for his role as Kevan Lannister in “Game of Thrones,” has died at age 74, his husband and fellow actor Ben Daniels announced on Tuesday. “It is with huge huge sadness and a heavy heart broken into a million pieces that I’m leaving this post to announce the passing of my darling husband and life partner Ian Gelder,” Daniels wrote on Instagram. Gelder had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer in December and Daniels had stopped work to care for him, but “neither of us had any idea that it would all be so fast,” he added.…

Twitter may no longer be Twitter, but the presence of Black Twitter is still being felt. If you doubt that, just hop over to X (the platform formally known as Twitter) and search for the recent hip-hop beef involving Drake and Kendrick Lamar. That drama is just the type of thing that Black Twitter has sunk its teeth into with memes and pithy quotes. But there is also a history of serious cultural commentary that has spotlighted inequality and injustice, like the tragic deaths of teens Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. All of that is documented by producer and director Prentice Penny in the…

Over a decade after viewers said goodbye to beloved NBC series “The Office,” a new comedy set in the same universe as everyone’s favorite paper company Dunder Mifflin is coming to Peacock. “Ex Machina” star Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore from Season 2 of HBO’s “The White Lotus” will lead the ensemble cast in the still-untitled mockumentary series, according to a news release shared Wednesday. “The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is in search of a new subject when they discover a dying historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it with volunteer reporters,” the logline for the new…

A cyberattack has disrupted “clinical operations” at major health care nonprofit Ascension, forcing it to take steps to minimize any impact to patient care, an Ascension spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday. “There has been a disruption to clinical operations, and we continue to assess the impact and duration of the disruption,” said the statement from Ascension, a health system that includes 140 hospitals and 40 senior living facilities in 19 states. Ascension recommended that its health care clients temporarily cut off network connections to Ascension as the incident is being addressed, according to the statement. The nonprofit “detected unusual activity” on some…

When an ad goes viral, it’s usually for one of two reasons — it resonates so deeply with viewers that they can’t stop talking about it … or it makes people so upset they rush to social media to voice their outrage. An Apple ad for its new iPad Pro seems to fall into the latter category. Posted on social media Tuesday by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the ad starts off as a sort of time capsule for human creativity. There’s a metronome. A record player. Then the lights come on in a warehouse-like room, where you see those items and dozens of other creative…