BBC director-general Matt Brittin: ‘It’s worth fighting for’ ft.trib.al/MhSkZjQ

Michelle Obama warned that a culture of instant gratification was holding back the next generation from developing the resilience needed to become leaders 🔗: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06…

A famous math problem that stumped humans for the better part of a century has finally been toppled—by AI. 🔗 on.wsj.com/4vmMTeo

Thousands of supporters contributed around $10 million to create the first season of “The Chosen,” a television show about Jesus Christ and his disciples. More than 100,000 people donated over $70 million to produce Season 6, which will be released this fall. newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…

Leo XIV’s new encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” presents a remarkable case for placing moral concerns, and not profit, or competitive advantage, or efficiency, at the center of any discussion of artificial intelligence. newyorker.com/news/the-lede/…

The Palace is in severe PR trouble over the new Andrew e-mails: Who knew What and When in a crisis is ALWAYS the fan hitter killer. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002wv…

Vladimir Putin is on a $26 billion quest for immortality—and it involves harvesting human organs from tiny pigs on.wsj.com/4a3iVnp

Technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: “having more” without “being more.” There is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce. #MagnificaHumanitas vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/e…

The recent discoveries of AI hallucinations in nonfiction books has underscored the unique vulnerabilities of the publishing industry, reports Charlotte Klein. nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…

A rare albino buffalo in Bangladesh — nicknamed 'Donald Trump' for its distinctive blond tuft — has been spared from Eid al-Adha sacrifice after a last-minute government intervention, a Home Ministry official said reut.rs/4utVg7Q

Some veteran NPR journalists depart in buyouts & layoffs in aftershock of elimination of federal subsidies for public media. Editor in chief Tommy Evans: "Today has been incredibly heavy." Cuts amount to 4% of content division. My story: npr.org/2026/05/27/nx-s1-583…

New BBC director general Matt Brittin has reportedly told staff he wants to build a "sat nav around bias" analysing its news and other content to assess patterns like how often certain words or types of contributors are used deadline.com/2026/05/bbc-mat…

Can AI write literature and get away with it? On May 16, the Commonwealth Foundation announced the regional winners of its Short Story Prize. A few days later, the winning entry from the Caribbean, “The Serpent in the Grove,” by Jamir Nazir of Trinidad, was drawing attention online because some people thought it, and other prize-winning stories, reads uncomfortably like AI-generated text. The story, which was published on the literary magazine ‘Granta’’s site after being selected, is crammed with metaphor and simile. Some descriptions are even bizarre: “The girl smiled like sunrise over a sink”; “She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.” There are other hallmarks of AI writing, like negative parallelisms and anaphora, or the repetition of words at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses. Razmi Farook, director general of the Commonwealth Foundation, said that the prize committee does not use AI checkers in the judging process, calling those programs “not unfailing or infallible.” (Several people online said that AI-checking tools deemed “The Serpent in the Grove” to be 100 percent AI generated. ) “All shortlisted writers have personally stated that no AI was used and, upon further consultation, the Foundation has confirmed this,” her statement reads. A concurrent statement sent by ‘Granta’ publisher Sigrid Rausing was less sure, writing that she and her colleagues ran the story through Claude, which concluded that it was “almost certainly” written with the help of an AI tool, though it might have a “human core.” A representative from ‘Granta’ confirmed that its editors did not participate in the selection. Sign up for our Book Gossip newsletter to read more about the controversy and why this is the type of news story we’re regrettably about to see more of: nymag.visitlink.me/02GTsY

Gérard Lhéritier lured investors by selling shares in literary treasures. But after suspicions grew he was exposed as the architect of a massive fraud ft.com/content/56afc583-5e66…

👩‍✈️ The Royal Navy will change its female uniform after complaints that the design has “inappropriately placed buttons” 🔗 telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05…

“The Brothers Karamazov” asks what we are living for, and it “seeks the answer in the little life, among the small people, in the frail, the fragile, the fallible, the failed,” Karl Ove Knausgaard writes. nyer.cm/za7cz5U?utm_source=t…

I nearly fell off my chair when I found out that Gibraltar HAS NEVER HAD A SEWAGE PLANT and therefore ALL ITS RAW, UNTREATED SEWAGE (from a mere 40,000 people and their businesses) is dumped straight into the MEDITERRANEAN Sea. Great work, guys. theguardian.com/world/2026/m…

🎞️ Blake Lively’s legal war with Justin Baldoni was meant to be a victory lap. Instead, the fallout has made her and Ryan Reynolds pariahs Find out about the dirty laundry that dethroned Hollywood’s golden couple ⤵️ telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05…

Should news organisations out Banksy? Or is that the journalistic equivalent of telling kids there is no Father Christmas? It’s a dilemma we faced at the BBC when we reckoned we caught him, grey-paint-handed, on camera in New York. Here’s the story.

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