A new sanctions bill is meant to pressure President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. But President Trump is taking another approach: offering enticements to Russia.
As the Alternative for Germany party seeks to control a state government for the first time, its push for “patriotic” art has drawn comparisons with Nazi policies.
Hard questions about AI in the classroom by Nathalia Alcantara
Mark Brilliant misses plagiarism.
The old kind, that is. Back when his students copied from Wikipedia, and when Turnitin, a text-matching software developed at Berkeley, could match plagiarized paragraphs to their original sources.
Brilliant has taught American history at Berkeley for more than two decades—before that, he taught high school—and for most of that time, catching a cheater was just a routine, though unpleasant, part of the job. What’s different now is not that students cheat. It’s what happens when he catches them.
UC faculty split over standardized test requirement by Margie Cullen
In the spring of 2023, UC Berkeley math professor Zvezdelina Stankova began to notice that about a third of her students were “in freefall.” They weren’t showing up to lectures or doing their homework, and, on tests, they scored far below the average. At first, she thought it was an anomaly, but her observations were reinforced by a 2025 UC San Diego report that found that 1 in 12 of the campus’s incoming students tested below middle school math standards.
The development comes after the UC Board of Regents dispensed with standardized testing as a requirement of admission in 2020. That decision has since caused a rupture between faculty who feel the tests are an important measure of college preparedness and those who feel they discriminate against underrepresented students.
IGI-affiliated researchers have spawned more than 30 startups. Here are just six of them. By James Pagett Tollen
Berkeley Professor Jennifer Doudna, who shared the Nobel Prize for developing the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, founded the Innovative Genomics Institute in 2015 to advance new applications of the revolutionary technology. Since then, IGI-affiliated researchers have spawned more than 30 startups. Here are just six of them.
Amber Bio
Basem Al-Shayeb, Ph.D. ’22, a graduate of the Banfield and Doudna Labs, cofounded Amber Bio in 2021 to address a limit of the gene-editing field: The current paradigm of genetic medicine relies on developing independent therapies for each separate mutation, the company says. Amber Bio’s RNA-writing platform will enable thousands of mutations to be edited simultaneously. Importantly, the company adds, these RNA-based edits will be reversible.
Editpep
The goal of Editpep, per the company’s website, is straightforward: “To bring life-changing genome-editing therapies to patients with devastating neurological diseases.” They will do so by safely delivering CRISPR straight into the brain. Ross Wilson, IGI’s director of therapeutic delivery and an assistant adjunct professor at Berkeley, cofounded the company in 2023.
Friedrich Merz is a man with few choices and little popular support as he faces the end of Germany’s postwar settlement and the collapse of all the checks and balances to maintain democratic norms after the second world war and reunification. While Alternative für Deutschland’s success in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt saw the party win 44% of the vote, they are three seats short of a governing majority and, so far, no other party has said they are prepared to work with them, which means that for the moment, at least, the threat of Germany’s first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period has not yet come to pass.
As Berlin correspondent Deborah Cole explains, Merz is seen as the wrong man to present and sell a political counterpoint to the AfD’s populist policies. Seen as lacking in empathy and political dexterity, his demeanour is in sharp contrast to Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. But as Deborah’s Berlin colleague, Kate Connolly, reports, some of Siegmund’s prospective new MPs have questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.
Spotlight | Stop, slow down and swerve the apocalypse Can the world heave a collective sigh of relief after fellow tech bosses heeded a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s to put the brakes on AI’s headlong rush to over take human intelligence? Nick Robins-Early weighs up our chances
Science | Can I borrow your coyote? Guardian US reporter Lois Beckett visits a one-of-a-kind California lending library where you can check out taxidermied animals and fossilised dinosaur bones.
Feature | Slime is not as simple as it seems Scientists are battling to determine whether supposedly simple organisms demonstrate a form of intelligence. If they do, what does it mean for our understanding of brain power, asks Samanth Subramanian
Opinion | Ethics make a return to UK foreign policy The evidence is Ed Miliband’s bold decision to label settler violence in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing” and institute a boycott, argues Steve Bloomfield
Culture | Shear fun Catherine Shoard is rounded up for a trip down to Mossy Bottom farm to get a behind-the-scenes preview of the latest Shaun the Sheep film
Republicans are putting up a costly defense of districts that President Trump won easily in 2024. In places like Georgia, strategists wonder if it’s too late.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told European lawmakers that an alliance would help to secure sovereignty and independence for his country. The moves come amid a historic low for U.S. ties with Canada.
The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 paved the way for Tehran to dominate its neighbor and whetted its appetite to expand its influence across the greater Middle East.
Estimates vary on how long it could take before a crucial pipeline is repaired, but a prolonged shutdown could push oil prices to their highest levels in months.
John Goodall finds a moving monument to Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire
Are you local?
How many generations does it take for a dynasty to be bona fide rather than blow-in? Mary Skipwith visits five Cotswolds estates in search of the answer
Property market
Renovated Cotswold manor houses with light-filled interiors and contemporary layouts catch the eye of Penny Churchill
Properties of the week
Julie Harding scours all corners of the Cotswolds as she show-cases a selection of the latest honey-hued homes for sale
Paint your garden
Tiffany Daneff is charmed by the colourful, considered palette of an artist’s garden at Ham Court in Gloucestershire
Jeremy Finnis’s favourite painting
The GWCT chairman chooses a purple-tinged landscape that evokes the spirit of the Highlands
A golden fleece
An array of parish churches are an enduring legacy of the wealth generated by Cotswolds sheep farming, reveals John Goodall
The legacy
Julie Harding travels back in time with the poetic prose of Laurie Lee’s classic Cider with Rosie
The artist’s way
The redstart’s striking looks and talent for mimicry make it a favourite for Mark Cocker
Don’t follow the lights
John Lewis-Stempel tries to avoid that sinking feeling as he ponders the precarious future of Britain’s precious peat bogs
Luxury
Justine Picardie celebrates the enduring appeal of the Burberry trench and Amie Elizabeth White rests easy with sleep essentials
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe reveals how to cook up an elegant kitchen look
Countryside mystery
John Wright debunks the myth surrounding the water-retention miracle of manmade dew ponds
Travel
A revived Ottoman masterpiece is the perfect retreat on Teresa Levonian Cole’s Greek odyssey
In a league of their own
Claire Jackson peers into curious British collections dedicated to everything from dog collars to canals and cuddly toys to clocks
Strike a posy
The Victorians were the original experts at saying it with flowers. Ashleigh Arnott reads the signs
It’s a stitch up!
Julie Harding traces the tale of the needle, a darn good creation made with pin-point precision
Arts & antiques
Feats of clay will always catch the eye of Will Gompertz, as he explains to Carla Passino
The play’s the thing
Turgenev and Sir Alan Ayckbourn supply the on-stage standouts for Michael Billington this month
The Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, but his fight to assert control over the election process is far from finished.
The 10-year Treasury yield breached levels last seen in 2007, with intensifying worries about energy-driven inflation contributing to investors’ angst.
The American presence in these countries has not shielded them from retaliation during the Iran war. Now they are hoping direct talks with Iran could help.
The two sides traded accusations of attacks as fighting inside Yemen remains fierce. The escalating conflict threatens to further destabilize the Middle East.
Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska has supported President Trump’s tariffs. His brother, the head of their family business, has described the economic volatility as a challenge.
Opponents derailed the agreement with a clandestine effort to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, regime insiders say. Iran’s president was furious when he found out.
Talks are expected tomorrow, officials said. Diplomacy to end the war with the United States has stalled and Iranian-allied forces have advanced in Yemen.
President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.
Hunger and disease have tormented Yemen for years. Now, fighting between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed Houthis is pushing it to the brink.
Communism, in the president’s hyperbolic telling, is a graver threat to the country than the Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attacks were. Whether this strategy works is an open question.
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