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  • Starbucks tells corporate staff in US and Canada to work in office at least four days a week | Starbucks

    Starbucks tells corporate staff in US and Canada to work in office at least four days a week | Starbucks

    Starbucks has ordered its corporate staff to work from the office at least four days a week from late September and is offering cash payments to those who choose to quit instead.

    Brian Niccol, the chief executive of the Seattle-headquartered coffee chain, said many of its employees would be required to work in the office for a minimum of four days a week, up from three, from Monday to Thursday. This will apply to its Seattle and Toronto support centres and regional offices in North America.

    “We do our best work when we’re together,” Niccol said in a message to employees, referred to as “partners”, on the company’s website on “re-establishing an in-office culture”. “We want leaders and people managers to be physically present with their teams.”

    He added: “Being in person also helps us build and strengthen our culture. As we work to turn the business around, all these things matter more than ever.”

    The four-day office policy will come into effect on 29 September. Niccol, who has been in the job for almost a year, has said he wants to take Starbucks back to its coffeehouse roots by improving customers’ experience in its cafes and reducing reliance on mobile and takeaway orders.

    He said: “We know we’re asking a lot of every partner as we work to turn the business around. And we understand that the updated in-office culture may not work for everyone.

    “To support those who decide to ‘opt out’, we’re offering a one-time voluntary exit programme with a cash payment for partners who make this choice.” The company did not state the size of the sum.

    In February, the company asked its vice-presidents who were working remotely to move to Seattle or Toronto. It is now extending this requirement to all support centre “people leaders”, who are expected to relocate within 12 months.

    In its previous announcement, Starbucks set out plans to lay off 1,100 corporate employees and close several hundred open or vacant job positions, the biggest job cuts in its history, in order to reduce costs as it struggled with rising inflation and economic uncertainty.

    Starbucks has 16,000 corporate support employees worldwide, including coffee roasters and warehouse staff.

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    Niccol faced environmental criticism last year for his 1,000-mile commute to work in the office three days a week. The company allowed him to travel in from his home in Newport Beach, California, to its head office in Seattle via a private jet instead of relocating.

    Since then, he has bought a home in Seattle and is frequently seen at the company’s headquarters, a spokesperson told the Associated Press.

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  • F1 Q&A: Christian Horner, Red Bull, Verstappens, Alpine, Hulkenberg, Sauber and wet tyres

    F1 Q&A: Christian Horner, Red Bull, Verstappens, Alpine, Hulkenberg, Sauber and wet tyres

    Do you think Christian Horner will join Alpine as team principal? He’s apparently a great friend of [executive adviser] Flavio Briatore. – Carol

    Since Horner was removed from his position at Red Bull, there have been suggestions in some quarters that he would be very attractive to a number of other teams in F1.

    Alpine is one idea that is doing the rounds, although they have just signed Steve Nielsen as managing director – ie, de facto team principal – to start work in September.

    Ferrari has come up again. And there is the question of whether he could return as a co-owner somewhere – Alpine, for example, is said to have about a 20% shareholding up for sale.

    But is Horner as attractive an option as some have suggested?

    He has been a very successful team principal at Red Bull – the team have won eight drivers’ titles, six constructors’ titles and 124 grands prix under his leadership.

    And there is no question that Red Bull under Horner had a fleetness of foot and improvisational aggression that quite often left their rivals trailing.

    But any team wanting to employ him will have to weigh that against potential downsides, many of which were involved in the reasons for Red Bull removing him.

    Firstly, Horner typically wants total control. But you can’t have total control as a team principal if the team you are running is part of a wider company.

    So, at Alpine, for example, he would ultimately be answerable to Renault’s board. At Ferrari, to chairman John Elkann and chief executive Benedetto Vigna. Ultimately, the power would rest with them, not Horner. Could he stomach that?

    Then there is the question as to whether a single leader is still as impactful in F1 these days.

    Look at McLaren, for example, and the success they have had with chief executive officer Zak Brown in charge, but focusing mainly on the commercial side, and Andrea Stella as team principal with responsibility for running the team itself.

    Horner wanted to do all that – and more – himself.

    Then there is the fact that Red Bull were clearly in decline under Horner.

    A Horner-led Red Bull without design chief Adrian Newey has not looked anywhere near the force it used to be.

    And then there are the allegations still hanging over Horner.

    Red Bull might have cleared him in two separate internal investigations. But outside Red Bull there has been no conclusion to that episode. Until the outcome of that is known, any company that employs Horner is taking a significant reputational risk.

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  • Impact of E-health Literacy on Diabetes Self-Care Activities Among People With Type 2 Diabetes Attending Primary Healthcare Centers in Makkah City, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study, 2025

    Impact of E-health Literacy on Diabetes Self-Care Activities Among People With Type 2 Diabetes Attending Primary Healthcare Centers in Makkah City, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study, 2025


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  • Burna Boy apologises for saying Afrobeats lacks substance

    Burna Boy apologises for saying Afrobeats lacks substance

    Riyah Collins

    BBC Newsbeat

    Getty Images Burna Boy performing at Wireless Festival in July. The singer wears a white Western-style shirt with a black bolo tie. He has braided dark hair and a short beard and is pictured wearing reflective sunglasses. He sings into a mic held in his left hand, his right outstretched towards the crowd. The staging behind him is lit pink and orange. Getty Images

    Burna Boy performed at Wireless Festival on Sunday, just after releasing his eighth studio album

    Burna Boy has apologised for comments he made distancing himself from Afrobeats.

    The Nigerian singer-songwriter is seen as a trailblazer who has helped to bring the genre to a global audience.

    But he faced backlash over a 2023 Apple Music interview where he said it “lacks substance” and most artists in the space had “almost no real-life experiences”.

    Speaking to 1Xtra’s Eddie Kadi, Burna says the reaction to his comments made him realise why it was important to have an umbrella term to advance the Afrobeats movement.

    Burna, real name Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, made history in 2023 when he became the first African artist to headline a stadium show in the UK.

    By that point, he already had a Grammy under his belt and was known for dominating the Official UK Afrobeats chart.

    But, he says, at the time he didn’t want his music, which he sees as a “mix of elements” to be defined by a single genre.

    “I didn’t understand why people wanted my music to be inside one box,” he says.

    “The way I saw it, if you just put everything into Afrobeats, you’re now comparing Socrates to Kendrick Lamar because they both said two things that rhyme so they both must be rappers.”

    Burna says he was “in a dark place mentally” when he made the comments.

    “I wasn’t the happiest man in the world,” he says.

    Getty Images Burna Boy at the 2025 Met Gala in New York. He wears a red leather cape over a red suit with black lapels, a bright yellow shirt and red tie. He poses with his hands held together, a large diamond ring on his left little finger. Photographers can be seen in the background as he walks the red carpet. Getty Images

    Burna Boy is one of the world’s most successful Afrobeats artists

    He says the “division” his words caused helped him to “come to terms” with his opinion.

    “I got the point of the Afrobeats tag in that moment,” he says.

    “I totally get it and I apologise for that confusion.”

    He says he’s now content to wear the label, which he leans into on his new album, No Sign of Weakness, released last week.

    “I learnt to embrace the fact that I will always be different,” he says.

    “I’m not going to be the favourite but I’m going to be the best.”

    Burna Boy, who has almost 24m monthly listeners on Spotify, performed at Wireless Festival on Sunday.

    He says performing live is his main passion.

    “I want to be able to do this until I die,” he says.

    “I want to be doing this the way someone like Coldplay has been doing it for a long time, or The Rolling Stones,” he says.

    “These people are still doing what I’m doing now, so why don’t I see anyone that looks like me, on those levels, at that age?

    “And it’s simple, it might sound crazy, it’s because they just don’t love it as much as I do.”

    He suspected – rightly – that his idol, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, might understand.

    So he asked him to feature on his new track, Empty Chairs.

    “Mick Jagger is the rock star,” he says.

    “I felt he, out of everyone in the world, would understand where I was coming from with this song lyrically and he did.”

    Working with the 81-year-old rocker was “one of the best experiences I’ve had,” says Burna.

    The singer’s just started his European and North American tour, which is due to wrap up at the end of the year.

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  • ESAs publish a guide on DORA Oversight activities

    The European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA, ESMA – the ESAs) today published a guide on oversight activities under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). The aim of this guide is to provide an overview of the processes used by the ESAs through the Joint Examination Teams (JET) to oversee critical Information and communication technology (ICT) third party service providers (CTPPs).

    This guide provides high-level explanations to external stakeholders regarding the CTPP Oversight framework. Furthermore, it provides an overview of the governance structure, the oversight processes, the founding principles and the tools available to the overseers.

    However, the guide is not a legally binding document and does not replace the legal requirements laid down in the relevant applicable EU law.

    The ESAs invite the public, financial entities and, crucially, third-party providers to use this document to prepare for the oversight implementation.

    Additional information on the oversight implementation:

    For more information on the implementation of the DORA Oversight framework, please refer to this presentation.

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  • Impact of diabetes mellitus on myocardial function and clinical outcomes in patients with significant aortic regurgitation | Cardiovascular Diabetology

    Impact of diabetes mellitus on myocardial function and clinical outcomes in patients with significant aortic regurgitation | Cardiovascular Diabetology

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  • Trump cleared by court to implement education cuts

    Trump cleared by court to implement education cuts

    A divided United States supreme court gave US President Donald Trump the green light on Monday to resume dismantling the Education Department.

    The conservative-dominated court, in an unsigned order, lifted a stay that had been placed by a federal district judge on mass layoffs at the department.

    The three liberal justices on the nine-member panel dissented.

    Trump pledged during his White House campaign to eliminate the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979, and he moved in March to slash its workforce by nearly half.

    Trump instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job”.

    Around 20 states joined teachers’ unions in challenging the move in court, arguing that the Republican president was violating the principle of separation of powers by encroaching on Congress’s prerogatives.

    In May, District Judge Myong Joun ordered the reinstatement of hundreds of fired Education Department employees.

    The supreme court lifted the judge’s order without explanation, just days after another ruling that cleared the way for Trump to carry out mass firings of federal workers in other government departments.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said in the Education ruling that “only Congress has the power to abolish the Department”.

    “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Sotomayor said.

    Traditionally, the federal government has had a limited role in education in the US, with only about 13 per cent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, the rest being funded by states and local communities.

    But federal funding is invaluable for low-income schools and students with special needs. And the federal government has been essential in enforcing key civil rights protections for students.

    After returning to the White House in January, Trump directed federal agencies to prepare sweeping workforce reduction plans as part of wider efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — previously headed by Elon Musk — to downsize the government.

    Trump has moved to fire tens of thousands of government employees and slash programmes — targeting diversity initiatives and abolishing the Education Department, the US humanitarian aid agency USAID and others.


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  • What ‘The Pitt’ Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths

    What ‘The Pitt’ Can Teach Us About Hospital Deaths

    When The Pitt first hit the airwaves last winter, it started a lot of conversations among clinical professionals, including the show’s clinically accurate and emotionally nuanced portrayal of the death.

    In particular it was the death of the character known as Mr. Hayes, whose adult children wrestled with whether or not to intubate him over the course of several episodes. The interaction among and between the fictional family and Noah Wyle’s character, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, are unflinching and honest — and they were informed by, among other things, resources developed by Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, and the End Well Project.

    Ungerleider, an internal medicine physician and the host and producer of the podcast Before We Go and the TED Health Podcasts, founded End Well in 2017 with the mission of making the end of life more dignified and human centered. When considering how death is portrayed in the media — on television, at least — Ungerleider and her team discovered that it is anything but: more than 80% of the deaths we see on the small screen are the result of violence, and that trend is only increasing. Depictions of gun violence on popular primetime dramas doubled from 2000 to 2018, while illness accounted for only 4.3% of deaths shown.

    “We looked at over 141,000 scripted TV episodes from 2010 to 2020 and found that what’s shown on screen rarely reflects how most people actually die,” Ungerleider said. “Most people will actually die in hospitals or other healthcare facilities or other institutions, isolated. But you wouldn’t know that from watching TV.”

    Shoshana Ungerleider, MD

    Not only is this overly violent TV landscape unrealistic but also it leaves audiences in the dark about what they themselves may encounter when met with the eventual decline of a loved one, Ungerleider said.

    “When we overrepresent violent deaths and really inaccurately portray the end of life experience, I think that this leaves audiences really of all ages unprepared for some of the decisions that they may one day face for themselves and the people that they love,” she said.

    “Shows like The Pitt, who really get it right with all the urgency that you see in a hospital setting, but also nuance and ethical complexity, helps close the gap between kind of the fiction of television and real life.”

    The team at End Well worked with the Hollywood, Health & Society program at the Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg, Los Angeles, for more than 3 years to produce the report and accompanying guidelines for the media to assist in portraying natural death accurately. Kate Langrall Folb, program director for Hollywood, Health & Society, said that while the program has been consulting on TV shows and movies since 2001 on “everything from diabetes to HIV to cancer and beyond,” they had never worked with shows on how to depict the end of life.

    photo of Kate Langrall Folb
    Kate Langrall Folb

    “We were delighted to partner with End Well to develop tools and resources for writers on that topic,” Langrall Folb said. “Hollywood was not asking for these tools, but I believe that is mainly because they didn’t know they needed them. Now that we have brought this topic to their attention, they’re all in.”

    Langrall Folb highlighted a second storyline from The Pitt for its relevance and realistic portrayal, driven by the tools developed by End Well and the Norman Lear Center group — an arc about a patient who is brain dead due to an overdose. She learned that, thanks in part to the contributions the Norman Lear Center and End Well made, at least one family was able to better process and make decisions during a tragedy.

    “There was an ER [emergency room] doc who wrote to the show saying that he was in a similar situation in real life with a brain-dead patient. He was preparing himself to speak to the family to discuss what they wanted to do, bracing himself because those conversations are usually so difficult — people not wanting to accept, etc.,” Langrall Folb said. “But when he entered the room to talk to the family, they told him not to worry, that they had watched The Pitt and already decided that they didn’t want to keep their loved one on life support any longer. It’s amazing to see this kind of real-world impact come from our work behind the scenes.”

    Langrall Folb believes that this impact will spread as more producers and writers pick up the guidelines and incorporate them into their work.

    “Audiences are affected by what they see on their favorite shows,” she said. “Accurately showing the myriad ways in which people’s lives come to an end will help them when they or a loved one are facing the end of their own lives.”

    Ungerleider is hoping that more, and more accurate, portrayals of natural death will help people understand the end of life better and be better prepared as individuals and as caregivers.

    “Media has the power to normalize what we so often avoid talking about — like grief, caregiving, and mortality. And when that’s done thoughtfully, it doesn’t just educate — it empowers,” Ungerleider said.

    Ungerleider pointed out that what the End Well team and the people at the Norman Lear Center have developed is not just a clinical resource, it opens up space for the emotions involved in death.

    “This isn’t just about getting the medical details right — it’s about honoring the human experience. When stories reflect the complexity of serious illness, families, caregivers, and patients at home feel seen,” Ungerleider said. “When a character on TV gets support from a palliative care team, it gives viewers permission to ask for the same in their real lives.”

    The Executive Director of End Well, Tracy Wheeler, who was also integral to the development of the report and the tools, framed the resources like a map to this fairly unexplored territory.

    “By helping Hollywood portray serious illness and death more accurately, we’re not just improving representation — we’re giving people the language and perspective to better navigate these experiences in real life,” Wheeler said. “This work reflects our shared belief that storytelling has the power to shift culture.”

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  • Google Says AI Won’t Replace The Need For SEO

    Google Says AI Won’t Replace The Need For SEO

    Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discussed the question of whether AI will replace the need for SEO. Mueller expressed a common-sense opinion about the reality of the web ecosystem and AI chatbots as they exist today.

    Context Of Discussion

    The context of the discussion was about SEO basics that a business needs to know. Mueller then mentioned that businesses might want to consider hiring an SEO who can help navigate the site through its SEO journey.

    Mueller observed:

    “…you also need someone like an SEO as a partner to give you updates along the way and say, ‘Okay, we did all of these things,’ and they can list them out and tell you exactly what they did, ‘These things are going to take a while, and I can show you when Google crawls, we can follow along to see like what is happening there.’”

    Is There Value In Learning SEO?

    It was at this point that Martin Splitt asked if generative AI will make having to learn SEO obsolete or whether entering a prompt will give all the answers a business person needs to know. Mueller’s answer was tethered to how things are right now and avoided speculating about how things will change in a year or more.

    Splitt asked:

    “Okay, I think that’s pretty good. Last but not least, with generative AI and chatbot AI things happening. Do you think there’s still a value in learning these kind of things? Or can I just enter a prompt and it’ll figure things out for me?”

    Mueller affirmed that knowing SEO will still be needed as long as there are websites because search engines and chat bots need the information that exists on websites. He offered examples of local businesses and ecommerce sites that still need to be found, regardless of whether that’s through an AI chatbot or search.

    He answered:

    “Absolutely value in learning these things and in making a good website. I think there are lots of things that all of these chatbots and other ways to get information, they don’t replace a website, especially for local search and ecommerce.

    So, especially if you’re a local business, maybe it’s fine if a chatbot mentions your business name and tells people how to get there. Maybe that’s perfectly fine, but oftentimes, they do that based on web content that they found.

    Having a website is the basis for being visible in all of these systems, and for a lot of other things where you offer a service or something, some other kind of functionality on a website where you have products to sell, where you have subscriptions or anything, a chat response can’t replace that.

    If you want a t shirt, you don’t want a description of how to make your own t-shirt. You want a link to a store where it’s like, ‘Oh, here’s t-shirt designs,’ maybe t-shirt designs in that specific style that you like, but you go to this website and buy those t-shirts there.”

    Martin acknowledged the common sense of that answer and they joked around a bit about Mueller hoping that an AI will be able to do his job once he retires.

    That’s the context for this part of their conversation:

    “Okay. That’s very fair. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so you think AI is not going to take it all away from us?”

    And Mueller answers with the comment about AI replacing him after he retires:

    “Well, we’ll see. I can’t make any promises. I think, at some point, I would like to retire, and then maybe AI takes over my work then. But, like, there’s lots of stuff to be done until then. There are lots of things that I imagine AI is not going to just replace.”

    What About CMS Platforms With AI?

    Something that wasn’t discussed is the trend of AI within content management systems. Many web hosts and WordPress plugins are already integrating AI into the workflow of creating and optimizing websites. Wix has already integrated AI into their workflow and it won’t be much longer until AI makes a stronger presence within WordPress, which is what the new WordPress AI team is working on.

    Screenshot Of ChatGPT Choosing Number 27

    Will AI ever replace the need for SEO? Many easy things that can be scaled are already automated. However, many of the best ideas for marketing and communicating with humans are still best handled by humans, not AI. The nature of generative AI, which is to generate the most likely answer or series of words in a sentence, precludes it from ever having an original idea. AI is so locked into being average that if you ask it to pick a number between one and fifty, it will choose the number 27 because the AI training binds it to picking the likeliest number, even when instructed to randomize the choice.

    Listen to Search Off The Record at about the 24 minute mark:

    Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi

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  • Formula E clear path for female drivers in test

    Formula E clear path for female drivers in test

    Jul 15, 2025, 05:17 AM ET

    Formula E would love to have a female driver back on the starting grid but, on times alone, the all-electric series’ rookie test in Berlin on Monday suggested that it remained some way off.

    Four women took part in the test after weekend races at Tempelhof but the highest in the overall classification was Abbi Pulling, last year’s F1 Academy champion and current GB3 competitor, in 17th with the Nissan team.

    Fellow-Briton Ella Lloyd, who competes in British F4 and F1 Academy, was 18th for McLaren and Jamie Chadwick, three-times winner of the now-defunct W Series and a Williams F1 development driver now racing in European Le Mans, was 19th for Jaguar.

    Bianca Bustamante of the Philippines, a GB3 racer with 1.7 million followers on Instagram, was 22nd and last for the Cupra Kiro team although the entire grid was separated by just 1.550 seconds.

    Italian Gabriele Mini was overall fastest for Nissan in a field that included former F1 racer Daniil Kvyat, Charles Leclerc’s younger brother Arthur and leading Formula Two drivers.

    Formula E chief executive Jeff Dodds told Reuters ahead of the test that he was optimistic a woman would make it back onto the grid before too long.

    “We went from no women testing really, to 20 women in the official women’s test last year and off the back of that we’ve actually got four women testing in the actual rookie test now in Berlin,” he said.

    “So that’s a big jump, we’ve made progress.

    “In the end the teams will make a choice based on what their objectives are in terms of building a fan base, promoting themselves as a team, bringing on sponsors and partners and being as successful as they can be.

    “It may not be next year but I would love over the next couple of years to see women back racing on that grid.”

    Three women have raced in the series, which is now in its 11th season — Britain’s Katherine Legge twice in 2014, Switzerland’s Simona de Silvestro started 12 times in 2015-16 and Michela Cerruti four times in 2014-15.

    De Silvestro is the only one to have scored points.

    Unlike Formula E, Formula 1 has not had a woman start a race since Lella Lombardi in 1976.

    Pulling, who was top in last year’s all-female test, told Reuters recently she saw Formula E as “a really viable career path in the future”.

    “For now I’m going to keep going up the ladder as far as possible and see where things take me,” she said. “I don’t have the finances to plan massively in advance so it all depends on how I perform this year.”

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