Canada’s curling war of words with Sweden escalates after warning over ‘F-bomb’
The Canadian curler at the centre of a cheating row at the Winter Olympics has denied any wrongdoing, accusing the Swedish team of deliberately trying to “catch us in the act”.On Saturday, World Curling confirmed that Canada had escaped punishment despite being accused of breaking the rules in the 8-6 victory over Sweden on Friday night.However, the sport’s governing body did warn Canada about their abusive langugage and introduced emergency spot checks on Saturday afternoon to make sure teams were not cheating when releasing the stone.A bad-tempered game erupted when Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson told Canada’s Marc Kennedy he was double-touching the stone on the penultimate end, which led to Kennedy responding with an expletive.Speaking after Canada had lost 9-5 to Switzerland on Saturday afternoon, Kennedy insisted he was innocent of any wrongdoing.
“I can’t think of once in my entire career where I’ve done something to gain a competitive advantage by cheating,” he said,“And I take that very seriously,And it’s been a really long career,So when you get called out, my instinct was to be a little bit of a bulldog,I don’t regret defending myself or my teammates in that moment.
I just probably regret the language I used.”The Curling Canada chief, Nolan Thiessen, said it was a poor choice of words from Kennedy.“I think heat of the moment, I would allow for as well,” Thiessen said.“Something was said in his ear which got him going.Head games get played in a lot of sports and things get said in competitive sport and I think this was one of those situations.
Do I wish Mark didn’t drop an F-bomb? Yeah.”World Curling has introduced electronic handles on the stones at these Games, which flash red if players are still making contact with the stone beyond the hog line, the point where curlers must let go of the stone during delivery.However, the Swedes believed Kennedy was touching the stone and not the handle containing the sensor, meaning the red lights did not flash.Replays seemed to back Eriksson up, although officials did not intervene during the contest.“We told the officials,” said Eriksson.
“They came out and they misread the rules, sadly.Because they thought double-touching any part of the rock is OK.And then they found out that was wrong.You can only touch the electronic part of the handle.”In a statement, World Curling confirmed it did not currently use video replay to re-umpire game decisions and would not change the result.
“Decisions made during a game are final,” it added.However, on Saturday, Kennedy vented his anger at the Swedish team for calling him out.“I know we’re not the only team that they’ve done that to,” he said.“They have come up with a plan here at the Olympics, as far as I know, to catch teams in the act at the hog line.It was planned right from the word go yesterday, from the words that were being said by their coaches and the way they were running to the officials.
”Eriksson hit back by saying he was confident that Kennedy had not followed the rules – having watched the video.“I don’t think he has slept too well, while I slept like a baby,” he added.World Curling did, however, say it would be introducing spot checks to ensure the rules were followed.It also sent an email to every team in the Winter Olympics, reminding them that not using the handle was illegal.Canada was also warned that any repeat of the bad language would result in sanctions.
Anthropic raises $30bn in latest round, valuing Claude bot maker at $380bn
Anthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (£22bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.The company’s previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest.The fundraising was announced amid a series of stock market moves against industries that face disruption from the latest models, including software, trucking and logistics, wealth management and commercial property services.The funding round, led by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and the hedge fund Coatue Management, is among the largest private fundraising deals on record.“Anthropic is the clear category leader in enterprise AI,” said Choo Yong Cheen, the chief investment officer of private equity at GIC
How to deal with the “Claude crash”: Relx should keep buying back shares, then buy more | Nils Pratley
As the FTSE 100 index bobs along close to all-time highs, it is easy to miss the quiet share price crash in one corner of the market. It’s got a name – the “Claude crash”, referencing the plug-in legal products added by the AI firm Anthropic to its Claude Cowork office assistant.This launch, or so you would think from the panicked stock market reaction in the past few weeks, marks the moment when the AI revolution rips chunks out of some of the UK’s biggest public companies – those in the dull but successful “data” game, including Relx, the London Stock Exchange Group, Experian, Sage and Informa.Relx, the former Reed Elsevier, whose brands include the Lancet and LexisNexis, is the most intriguing in that list. The company’s description of itself contains at least five words to provoke a yawn – “a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers” – but the pre-Claude share price was a thing of wonder
Share values of property services firms tumble over fears of AI disruption
Shares in commercial property services companies have tumbled, in the latest sell-off driven by fears over disruption from artificial intelligence.After steep declines on Wall Street, European stocks in the sector were hit on Thursday.The estate agent Savills’ shares fell 7.5% in London, while the serviced office provider International Workplace Group, which owns the Regus brand, lost 9%.The UK’s two biggest property developers, British Land and Landsec, dropped 2
Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January
Elon Musk’s longtime fixation on a white racial majority is intensifying. The richest man in the world posted about how the white race was under threat, made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January, according to the Guardian’s analysis of his social media output. The posts, made on his platform X, reflect a renewed embrace of what extremism experts describe as white supremacist material.“Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk said on 22 January, a short time before taking the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, while reposting an Irish anti-immigrant influencer’s video about demographic change.Musk’s posts included him repeatedly claiming white people face systemic discrimination, endorsing the conspiracy that there is an ongoing genocide against white people in countries around the world and promoting a claim that white people would be “slaughtered” by non-whites if they become a demographic minority
The big AI job swap: why white-collar workers are ditching their careers
As AI job losses rise in the professional sector, many are switching to more traditional trades. But how do they feel about accepting lower pay – and, in some cases, giving up their vocation?California-based Jacqueline Bowman had been dead set on becoming a writer since she was a child. At 14 she got her first internship at her local newspaper, and later she studied journalism at university. Though she hadn’t been able to make a full-time living from her favourite pastime – fiction writing – post-university, she consistently got writing work (mostly content marketing, some journalism) and went freelance full-time when she was 26. Sure, content marketing wasn’t exactly the dream, but she was writing every day, and it was paying the bills – she was happy enough
Is it possible to develop AI without the US?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we’re discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants’ plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.I spent most of last week in Doha at the Web Summit Qatar, the Gulf’s new version of the popular annual tech conference. One theme stood out among the speeches I watched and the conversations I had: sovereignty
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