Nigel Farage admits breaching parliamentary rules over Trump event
Nigel Farage has admitted breaching parliamentary rules by failing to register a trip to Florida to headline a fundraising event for Donald Trump,The Reform UK leader was the main speaker at the $500-a-head Republican party dinner in Tallahassee in March,Guests could pay $25,000 (£18,445) for a VIP ticket, which included having a photograph with the Clacton MP, according to promotional material,Farage said on Sunday that he had failed to declare the trip in parliamentary transparency logs due to an error by his office,It came after details of the appearance were published by the Sunday Times.
In a statement, the MP said he had emailed details of the trip to his office but said: “Unfortunately, these submissions were not added to the register.This was an error … A correction to the record will be made tomorrow along with an apology to the registrar.”According to a parliamentary code of conduct, MPs must register any visits outside the UK that cost more than £300 and where the trip is not “wholly” paid for by the MP or by public funds.They must also separately report any “fees” or “payments in kind”.The deadline for doing so is 28 days.
In his statement, Farage said the trip was “remunerated in three separate instalments over the course of two months” but did not say who had paid for it.He added that he had paid for the travel arrangements himself.Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said: “Nigel Farage needs to come clean on who’s bankrolling his trips abroad to badmouth Britain.He uses every opportunity he can to talk down Britain and suck up to Trump while failing to represent his constituents in parliament.“The public deserve to know whether the Trump administration and their cronies are funding these trips, using Farage as a puppet to meddle in British politics.
”Farage missed prime minister’s questions the day before the “Disruptors’ dinner” in Tallahassee, which was organised by the Republican party, on 20 March,Farage has faced days of scrutiny over the purchase of a house in Clacton, Essex, which initially he said he had bought himself,He later said it was bought by his long-term partner, Laure Ferrari,This arrangement would have saved the MP an estimated £44,000 in the higher rate of stamp duty to which he would have been liable given that he already owns other properties,Farage’s lawyers, Grosvenor Law, said last week that they had received written advice from a senior barrister that “concludes that there is no underpayment of SDLT [stamp duty land tax], that SDLT paid was properly calculated and that there is no basis to suggest there has been any improper avoidance or evasion of tax in respect of the purchase”.
Anna Turley MP, the Labour party chair, said: “Nigel Farage has failed to disclose who funded this US trip, refused to answer questions about his tax affairs, and changed his story about where he lives,“Rather than representing his constituents in the UK parliament to which the people of Clacton elected him, he’s been jetting off abroad to call for sanctions against our country, putting British jobs at risk,”The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know,If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods,Secure Messaging in the Guardian appThe Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories.
Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs.This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu.Select ‘Secure Messaging’.SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and postIf you can safely use the Tor network without being observed or monitored, you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.
Finally, our guide at theguardian.com/tips lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.
AI content needs to be labelled to protect us | Letters
Marcus Beard’s article on artificial intelligence slopaganda (No, that wasn’t Angela Rayner dancing and rapping: you’ll need to understand AI slopaganda, 9 September) highlights a growing problem – what happens when we no longer know what is true? What will the erosion of trust do to our society?The rise of deepfakes is increasing at an ever faster rate due to the ease at which anyone can create realistic images, audio and even video. Generative AI models have now become so sophisticated that a recent survey showed that less than 1% of respondents could correctly identify the best deepfake images and videos.This content is being used to manipulate, defraud, abuse and mislead people. Fraud using AI cost the US $12.3bn in 2023 and Deloitte predicts that could reach $40bn by 2027
ChatGPT may start alerting authorities about youngsters considering suicide, says CEO
The company behind ChatGPT could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder has said.Sam Altman raised fears that as many as 1,500 people a week could be discussing taking their own lives with the chatbot before doing so.The chief executive of San Francisco-based OpenAI, which operates the chatbot with an estimated 700 million global users, said the decision to train the system so the authorities were alerted in such emergencies was not yet final. But he said it was “very reasonable for us to say in cases of, young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities”.Altman highlighted the possible change in an interview with the podcaster Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, which came after OpenAI and Altman were sued by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California who killed himself after what his family’s lawyer called “months of encouragement from ChatGPT”
Larry Ellison briefly overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person
US tech billionaire Larry Ellison is neck-and-neck with Elon Musk in the contest to be the world’s richest person after briefly overtaking the Tesla chief executive on WednesdayEllison’s wealth surged after Oracle, the business software company in which he owns a stake of 41%, reported better than expected financial results.Oracle shares rose by more than 40% in early trading, at one point valuing the business software company at approximately $960bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. However, Ellison’s lead was short-lived as the stock closed at $328, a rise of 36% valuing Ellison’s shareholding at $378bn and putting Musk back ahead.The pair sit comfortably ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.Ellison, 81, also has other sources of wealth, including a stake in electric carmaker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, a sailing team, the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, and an island in Hawaii, according to Bloomberg
Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs. However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames. It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”
Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
On Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone 17 series with the usual spate of new features, including a thinner design, improved displays and a camera with 4x optical zoom. If you’ve been getting frustrated with your old phone, or just tired of it, the lithe new model may look exactly like the device you need to launch your budding photographic career, reconnect with long-lost friends and maybe even save your life in an emergency.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
How to Save the Internet by Nick Clegg review – spinning Silicon Valley
Nick Clegg chooses difficult jobs. He was the UK’s deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015, a position from which he was surely pulled in multiple directions as he attempted to bridge the divide between David Cameron’s Conservatives and his own Liberal Democrats. A few years later he chose another challenging role, serving as Meta’s vice-president and then president of global affairs from 2018 until January 2025, where he was responsible for bridging the very different worlds of Silicon Valley and Washington DC (as well as other governments). How to Save the Internet is Clegg’s report on how he handled that Herculean task, along with his ideas for how to make the relationships between tech companies and regulators more cooperative and effective in the future.The main threat that Clegg addresses in the book is not one caused by the internet; it is the threat to the internet from those who would regulate it
Helen Goh’s recipe for plum and star anise frangipane tart | The sweet spot
Why Portuguese red blends fly off the shelves | Hannah Crosbie on drinks
Rachel Roddy’s recipe for fish baked with tomatoes, olives and capers | A kitchen in Rome
How to turn a single egg and rescued berries into a classic British dessert
Cracker Barrel suspends remodeling plans after backlash over logo change
Australian supermarket sausage rolls taste test: from ‘perfect, flaky casing’ to ‘bland’ and ‘mushy’