Yle: What annoys Finns the most? Wars, selfishness, and telemarketers
A survey commissioned by a Finnish communications agency has found what annoys Finns most: wars, selfishness and telemarketing cold calls. It also revealed generational differences — pensioners tend to be irritated by more things (three in four are angered by wars, and many are also bothered by boastfulness and tax evaders), while young people are twice as likely as others to be irked by the use of artificial intelligence at work, as well as by the lack of job opportunities and the activities of right-wing political parties. Despite it all, 89% of respondents said they feel happy at least from time to time.
The human-rights organisation First Department reports that in 2026 Russian courts have begun processing national-security cases and handing down sentences markedly faster. In the year’s first quarter, 143 cases of treason, espionage and similar offences reached the courts; 62 of them (43%) were decided before the quarter ended — against only 26% a year earlier. At least 107 verdicts were issued and 110 people convicted, with March, at 48 verdicts, becoming a record month in the whole observation history. The main charge is still treason, which accounts for 90% of convictions and an average sentence of 15 years and 5 months. That works out to courts convicting an average of two people every working day.
The New York Times: These Birds’ Backflips Are Fueled by Sugar
Manakins — colourful birds of South and Central America — are known for their flashy courtship displays: the males snap their wings, spin around their rivals and even do backflips to win over females. A new genetic study suggests these energy-hungry dances were made possible by an ancient dietary change. Birds had lost the receptor for sweet taste back in the days of the dinosaurs, but some fruit and nectar eaters regained the ability to taste sugar by repurposing the very receptor mammals use for the savoury (umami) flavour. It is precisely the ability to taste and digest fruit sugar that gives manakins the energy for their spectacular shows.
Wired: British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn’t Be Trusted
A Wired investigation reveals how England’s Avon and Somerset Police, with Bristol City Council, built a sprawling crime-prediction system: a database holds data on close to half a million Bristol residents, and machine-learning models assign risk scores to thousands of people. Bristol City Council quietly dropped two models that assessed the risk of child sexual or criminal exploitation in 2023: the police wanted to extend them across the whole region but could not agree data-sharing with the other councils, so the models were left with only police data and no social factors — becoming so inaccurate that some at-risk children no longer showed up in the results. An independent audit found most of the models had poor accuracy — yet the UK is preparing to roll such tools out even more widely.
NPR: When going to ‘camp’ meant Roman military lodgings — not summer fun
NPR’s “Word of the Week” looks at the origin of the word “camp”. Although today it brings to mind children’s summer camps, in the early 16th century it came from French and meant temporary military lodgings (from the Latin campus — a field where troops were mustered). Over the centuries the word passed into everyday use, but still meant a temporary dwelling — of nomads, lumbermen, hunters — rather than recreation. Only in the late 19th century did it start to be about fun: the first children’s summer camps grew out of the anxieties of well-off middle-class men that, as cities grew, boys without contact with nature would not grow into proper men. Camps later expanded to include girls and working-class immigrant children, and became places to “Americanise” children and teach them American values.
Politico: White House helped Mark Zuckerberg and the Google CEO dodge a Senate grilling
Politico reports that the White House stepped in to spare Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai from testifying at a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on their companies’ child-safety practices. Committee chair Chuck Grassley has agreed to let lower-ranking executives testify in their place — Instagram head Adam Mosseri and YouTube chief Neal Mohan — and in return the White House will back Grassley’s child-protection bill. It is a telling illustration of how the tech giants can leverage their close ties to the Trump administration even while under heightened scrutiny from lawmakers and the courts.
Le Monde: EU says Amazon, Microsoft cloud services should face stricter rules
The European Union has said that the cloud services of Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure) should face tougher Digital Markets Act rules because of their dominant position. They are the largest and second-largest cloud-computing providers in the EU respectively, while US firms together make up two-thirds of the market. Although neither meets the quantitative thresholds, such as user numbers, the EU considers that they have a “significant impact” and an entrenched position in the market. Google Cloud, the third-largest player, has not for now drawn a similar probe. The move risks further irritating Washington, which calls the rules an unfair trade barrier.
The New York Times: A Wikipedia Founder Is Barred From Editing Articles on the Site
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has sharply criticised the site for more than 20 years, has been barred indefinitely from editing its articles. The reason is not his complaints about Wikipedia’s left-wing bias, but a procedural violation: days after submitting a proposal for greater diversity of viewpoints on the site, Sanger publicised it to his 93,000 followers on X in order to sway internal votes — which was ruled forbidden canvassing. Sanger himself complained that there had been no hearing, no judge and no jury.
Financial Times: Anthropic has hired an economist with . . . interesting views on human survival
The Financial Times pokes fun at the fact that Anthropic — the AI company that likes to cast itself as the industry’s conscience — has hired Stanford economist Chad Jones, whose 2023 academic paper lays out a striking calculation: assuming so-called logarithmic utility, it would be “optimal” to take a one-in-three chance of ending human existence in exchange for a two-in-three chance of raising living standards 55-fold. The author does rather doubt that most of humanity would be willing to take that bet.