The chief executive of the UK’s leading artificial intelligence institute is stepping down in the wake of a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul.
Jean Innes has led the Alan Turing Institute since 2023, but her position has come under pressure amid widespread discontent within the organisation and a demand from the institute’s biggest funder – the UK government – for a change in direction.
Jean Innes with the foreign secretary, David Lammy, at the Alan Turing Institute in July 2025. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy
ATI said the search was already under way for a replacement for Innes, who held senior roles in the civil service and technology industry before her appointment.
Innes said on Thursday: “It has been a great honour to lead the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, implementing a new strategy and overseeing significant organisational transformation. With that work concluding, and a new chapter starting for the Institute, now is the right time for new leadership and I am excited about what it will achieve.”
ATI has been beset by internal strife since last year as staff protested against internal changes, culminating in a group of employees filing a whistleblower complaint to the Charity Commission last month.
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PARIS, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) — The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), based here, reported on Wednesday that highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus outbreaks have recently occurred on farms in Germany and Portugal, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 poultry.
On Sept. 1, an outbreak of avian influenza or bird flu occurred at a farm in Hadenfeld, northern Germany, affecting 2,800 laying hens. Of these, 100 died, and the rest were culled.
On Sept. 2, a farm in Samora Correia, near Lisbon, also reported an avian influenza outbreak, affecting over 250,000 fattening ducks, with 1,011 deaths, and the remaining ducks were culled.
The sources of infection in both outbreaks have not been determined.
The WOAH said that migratory birds, especially waterfowl, are natural hosts and carriers of the avian influenza virus. Avian influenza is also a major public health concern, as sporadic human cases of avian influenza have been reported. When outbreaks occur in domestic birds, the policy is often to cull all poultry, whether infected or not, in order to contain the spread of the virus. ■
MANILA, Philippines – In-form 2025 tournament winners Dean Burmester and Marc Leishman headline the latest wave of LIV Golf stars confirmed for International Series Philippines presented by BingoPlus, one of the region’s most anticipated events. The event takes place from Oct. 23–26.
Burmester of Stinger GC brings the momentum of a breakthrough victory at LIV Golf Miami, where he defeated heavyweights Jon Rahm, the captain of Legion XIII, and Joaquin Niemann, captain of Torque GC, in a dramatic playoff. His stellar 2025 season also included a runner-up finish at LIV Golf Hong Kong and two additional top three results, securing fifth place in the season standings and lifting Stinger GC to third overall.
Leishman, a member of the all-Australian Ripper GC, arrives in the Philippines on the back of a superb season that included both an individual and team win in Miami, plus five other top-15 finishes.
Adding further star power to the line-up is veteran Richard Bland of Cleeks Golf Club. The two-time Senior Major champion and top-10 finisher at International Series England last year recorded six top-15 finishes this season on LIV Golf, including an impressive fifth place in Adelaide.
Iron Heads GC standout Jinichiro Kozuma is also in the field. The Japanese player, who originally earned his spot through the LIV Golf Promotions event in 2023, has shown real promise this season with three top-10 finishes, including a runner-up result in Dallas.
Kozuma’s former teammate, Scott Vincent, will also join the line-up in excellent form following a commanding victory at International Series Morocco. On top of that, the Zimbabwean has also secured three additional top-10 finishes on the Asian Tour this season, putting him in strong contention and marking him as one of the players to watch.
The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England’s greatest artists would be significant enough. But a new work by Nicholas Hilliard that has come to light is all the more exciting because it has a possible link to William Shakespeare and a 400-year-old enigma of a defaced red heart on its reverse, suggesting a love scorned.
Hilliard was Queen Elizabeth I’s official limner, or miniature painter. His exquisite portraits, small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, are among the most revered masterpieces of 16th-century British and European art.
This example depicts an androgynous, bejewelled young sitter with long ringlets, thought to be the earliest known likeness of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend and patron – and possibly the “fair youth” of the sonnets, as some have speculated.
Shakespeare dedicated his two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, to Southampton, declaring: “The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end.”
Such miniatures were painted on onion skin-thin vellum that were pasted on to playing cards, as a stiff support. This portrait’s reverse reveals a card whose red heart had been painted over with a black spear or spade, seemingly indicating a broken heart.
Reverse of the miniature with a red heart defaced by a black spade or spear, suggesting a love scorned
The portrait has been identified by leading art historians Dr Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford, who were taken aback by the defacement.
Goldring, honorary reader at the University of Warwick and author of an award-winning Hilliard biography, told the Guardian: “You always know that there’s a chance that there could be a clue on the back or tucked inside the frame, but there almost never is. On this occasion, there was – and it was absolutely thrilling. Shivers down the spine. Someone had gone to great effort to spoil the back of this work.”
Rutherford, the founder of consultancy and dealership the Limner Company in London, said: “I can’t find any other evidence of this sort of vandalism. Everybody would have known that a miniature would be backed by a playing card, but the playing card back was never visible. Originally, this would have been encased in a very expensive, possibly jewelled locket. You’d have to get the miniature out of the locket in order to vandalise the back like this. So it is an extraordinary discovery, a 400-year-old mystery.”
Their research, jointly written with Prof Sir Jonathan Bate, a leading Shakespeare scholar, is published in the Times Literary Supplement on 5 September.
They write: “The fact that the heart has been painted over with a spade, or spear, inevitably calls to … mind thoughts of Shakespeare, whose coat of arms, drawn up c 1602, incorporated a spear as a pun on his surname – though virtually nothing is known, with certainty, of Shakespeare’s interactions with Southampton.”
Self-portrait at age 30 by Nicholas Hilliard. Photograph: Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy
Goldring said: “The discovery of this miniature will, I suspect, reignite debate about the nature of the relationship between Shakespeare and his patron Southampton, including the possibility that Southampton may have been an inspiration for some of the sonnets.”
There is, the historians suggest, the possibility that this portrait was a gift from Southampton to Shakespeare, who returned it, perhaps in 1598, the year that he married.
Within the late Elizabethan court, Southampton was known for his androgynous beauty, his vanity and his love of poetry.
In the 1590s, John Clapham’s Narcissus – a retelling of the Ovidian tale of a beautiful youth who falls in love with his own image – was dedicated to him, and in the dedication to The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe praised Southampton: “A dere lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves.”
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The portrait’s owners have a family connection to Southampton, but they were unaware of Hilliard’s hand or its significance, having long kept it in a box. They contacted Goldring and Rutherford after reading of their discovery of another Hilliard miniature.
Rutherford said: “This has never been published. It’s never been seen in public.”
They believe that it depicts Southampton in the early 1590s, when he was in his late teens, shortly before he attracted the patronage of Shakespeare.
Addressing the “endlessly debated” identity of the addressee of Shakespeare’s sonnets, they write: “Again and again, the sonnets return to the fair youth’s androgynous beauty. So, for example, in sonnet 99 his hair is compared to ‘marjoram’, the tendrils of which are long and curly: could this be an allusion to Southampton’s distinctive long ringlets?”
They argue that everything about this miniature – including the sitter’s gesture of clasping his cascading ringlets of auburn hair to his heart – suggests an intimate image.
Long hair was unusual at the late Elizabethan court, Rutherford said: “We know there was some criticism of how long hair made men ‘womanish’.”
Two pearl bracelets adorn the sitter’s wrist. Rutherford said that bracelets, though frequently encountered in portraits of women in this period, are rarely seen in portraits of men.
She added that, when someone first looks at the portrait, they struggle initially to determine whether it represents a man or a woman: “It’s just extraordinary. It has to be one of the earliest English homoerotic images.”
At least one phone in Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S26 range may look a little different to what we were expecting, and a lot more like Apple’s iPhone 17 series. That’s going by a photo of dummy phones shared by leaker and journalist Sonny Dickson, who has a pretty good track record for sourcing accurate Apple and Samsung phone designs.
Dickson’s photo shows three phones, which we’re expecting to be the Galaxy S26, S26 Edge, and S26 Ultra — rumor has it that next year’s Plus model will be replaced by the follow-up to this year’s extra-thin S25 Edge. While both the S26 and S26 Ultra feature slight design changes to include a small camera island around the main lenses, the middle phone is far stranger, with a camera bump that goes all the way across the phone.
With Man’s Best Friend out, Sabrina Carpenter’s singles surge on U.K. charts — “Manchild” enters the top three while “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” reappear. NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 05: Sabrina Carpenter attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend arrived in the final days of August, and as attention turns to one of the year’s most anticipated pop projects, several of the superstar’s career-making singles are bouncing back onto the charts in the United Kingdom, where the singer may score a new No. 1 full-length in just a few days.
“Please Please Please” Reenters the Top 10
“Please Please Please” mounts a strong comeback this frame. The track reenters the Official Vinyl Singles chart at No. 9 and nearly cracks the top 10 on another list as well, vaulting from No. 62 to No. 12 on the Official Physical Singles tally. The slowed-down pop tune has crowned both rankings before.
“Espresso” Returns to the Sales Lists
“Espresso,” the smash that turned Carpenter into a global star in 2024, reappears on the Official Singles Sales chart at No. 54. It also rises from No. 34 to No. 7 on the Official Physical Singles list, scoring a top 10 spot on a tally where it has previously peaked at No. 2.
Beyond sales and physical formats, the cut remains present on several tallies, though it dips slightly. “Espresso” falls to No. 70 on the Official Singles chart – the all-consumption roster of the biggest tracks in the U.K. – and to No. 55 on the Official Streaming ranking.
“Manchild” Lifts Ahead of Man’s Best Friend
Lead single “Manchild” continues to power Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend era, largely on sales rosters. The song climbs from No. 13 to No. 3 on the Official Physical Singles chart and from No. 9 to No. 3 on the Official Vinyl Singles ranking. “Manchild” also improves on the Official Singles Sales chart, moving from No. 45 to No. 17, leaping more than 20 spaces at once.
On the consumption-based tally, it slips slightly, as “Manchild” is down one space to No. 26 on the Official Singles chart, off by one spot to No. 15 on the Official Streaming roster, and the cut slides to No. 62 on the Official Singles Downloads chart.
“Taste” and “Nonsense” Also Live On
“Taste” continues its long chart life, though it falls slightly this frame in the U.K. The cut drops to No. 82 on the Official Singles chart and to No. 69 on the streaming-only list. The Short n’ Sweet single previously ruled both of them.
“Nonsense” moves in the opposite direction, as it rises to No. 15 on the Official Physical Singles chart and to No. 11 on the Official Vinyl Singles list. The song – taken from an earlier album – has peaked as high as No. 3 and No. 1 on those two tallies, respectively.
The nomination process for the World Athletics Coaches’ Commission is now open. Individuals interested in becoming members of the commission are invited to submit their nominations.
The Coaches’ Commission will ensure coaches’ voices shape World Athletics’ decisions, providing a forum to advance elite coaching initiatives through policies and projects advised to the World Athletics Council.
The commission will focus on elite-level coaching and related high-performance strategies and international competition environments.
The Coaches’ Commission will develop a plan through to 2027, aligned with both the World Athletics Pioneering Change Strategic Plan 2024-2027 and the World Plan for Athletics 2022-2030. The plan will set out the work and specific outcomes to be achieved during the commission’s initial two-year term.
The commission will have between eight and 14 members, including at least two Council Members. The World Athletics President will be an ex-officio member.
The initial term of appointment is for approximately two years from the date of appointment (expected to be November 2025) until the conclusion of the 2027 World Athletics Congress. All future terms of appointment, as applicable, will be four years.
The members will be appointed by the World Athletics Council, on the recommendation of the Nominations Panel.
Information on how to apply to become a commission member can be found in the information and nominations pack, available via the World Athletics Library.
The deadline for nomination submission is 30 September 2025.
