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The barista behind the counter handed Montelli the water bottle and turned the point-of-sale (POS) machine — with large tip prompts for up to  20 per cent — to him.

Bruce McAdams, an associate professor at the University of Guelph’s school of business and economics who researches tipping, isn’t surprised that customers are starting to rebel against tip-flation.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, McAdams says average tip amounts left by customers increased by about five per cent in an effort to help service workers whose jobs were hit hard by lockdowns.

The reaction to tipflation — which could be described as tip-deflation — is probably driven by a mix of factors, in particular the rising cost of goods and services making it more difficult to leave any tip at all, according to McAdams.

McAdams says consumers are also beginning to see tips less as a bonus given for good service, and more as an expectation to help low-wage workers, which shifts the responsibility of paying them fairly onto the customer.

A 2023 Angus Reid poll found that 59 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they’d prefer a “service-included” model, which would see an end to tipping and employees wages increase instead to compensate them.

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Boris Johnson says Nigel Farage played a “significant” role in the “destruction” of the Tories – while taking a swipe at those who ousted him from Number 10 back in 2022.

Former prime minister Mr Johnson has dissected his party’s performance in his Daily Mail column, saying the reasons why the Tories lost so many MPs were “complex” - but “the Yucatan asteroid in this catastrophe was obvious: it was Reform”.

He wrote: “I am afraid that the cheroot-puffing Pied Piper of Clacton has played a significant part - as he no doubt intended - in the destruction of the Tory government.”

Speaking on Sky News, Conservative peer Lord Patten said: "This is the oldest party in democratic history and it’s now been reduced to rubble by awful fractures and lousy policies and a collapse of any sense of values.

As Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party settle into government, the Tories are facing a leadership election after Rishi Sunak announced his resignation.

Candidates are yet to officially declare if they’ll run to replace Mr Sunak, but MPs expected to put themselves forward include former cabinet ministers Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman and James Cleverly.

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The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based clean-energy think tank, first intervened in a coal plant regulatory process in the late 1990s and, in 2009, published the first major proposal that showed the province could move to an unabated coal-free grid by 2030.

When the New Democratic Party came to power after the 2015 provincial election, they got to work delivering on a plan to accelerate the elimination of coal.

Federal and provincial programs to support workers during this transition were made available, while community economic diversification and growth in jobs in other sectors have helped to offset some of this change.

Phasing out coal in Alberta was supported by good policy design driven by carbon pricing and regulations with clear targets that offered necessary certainty to the industry and stakeholders.

Neither Albertans nor our climate can afford to be locked in to burning greenhouse gas-emitting natural gas when we have better, lower-cost alternatives.

Canada is also behind on building interties between jurisdictions – an approach that supports resilient systems and allows us to benefit from our complementary strengths across the country in hydro and other renewables.

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The government has ruled out the introduction of digital ID cards, after former Labour Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair said they could help control immigration.

Sir Tony brought in legislation for compulsory identity cards when he was in office but the scheme was scrapped by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

"However, asked about the possibility of introducing digital ID cards, Mr Reynolds told Times Radio: "We can rule that out, that’s not something that’s part of our plans.

"Opponents of identity cards have raised concerns about the potential impact on civil liberties and what they see as unnecessary data collection by the state.

The previous Conservative government had hoped to send people who arrived in the UK illegally to Rwanda to deter small boat crossings.

The last Labour government got as far as issuing the first ID cards to UK citizens and 15,000 were in circulation when the scheme was scrapped by the coalition government in 2011 and the database destroyed.Compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals were issued to about 200,000 people before being rebranded as biometric residence permits.Lord Blunkett, who launched the ID cards plan when he was home secretary, claimed they had already started to make a difference to illegal immigration when they were scrapped.Earlier this year, he told The Daily Mail, external: “The gangs realised it wasn’t worth their while to traffic people into the UK if migrants found they were unable to work or claim benefits without an ID card, and thus would be liable to deportation.”

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Thousands of anime fans were shocked Thursday when the popular piracy site Animeflix voluntarily shut down without explaining why, TorrentFreak reported.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix,” the site’s operators told users in a Discord with 35,000 members.

Although Animeflix operators did not connect the dots for users, TorrentFreak suggested that the piracy site chose to shut down after facing “considerable legal pressure in recent months.”

Then in mid-May, rightsholders—including Netflix, Disney, Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.—won an injunction through the High Court of India against several piracy sites, including Animeflix.

On Reddit, some fans also complained after relying exclusively on Animeflix to keep track of where they left off on anime shows that often span hundreds of episodes.

“We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms," Animeflix’s Discord message said.

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They set off a chain of events which saw him trying to avoid extradition to Sweden by seeking asylum in a London embassy for seven years.In 2019 the Swedish authorities ended their investigation.

If this was the case, he probably would have committed an offence under Swedish law.Later, Ardin writes that she heard from another woman - named in legal papers as SW - who had attended the seminar.

In a 2016 statement to Swedish prosecutors, Assange maintained that his sexual relationship with SW was entirely consensual, and that in texts seen by his lawyers, she told a friend that she had been “half asleep”.Both women filed police reports - Ardin’s case was categorised as alleged sexual misconduct, and SW’s as alleged rape.The press got hold of the reports, setting off an extraordinary series of events.

Now we have the first one.”Another post followed the next day: “Reminder: US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks as far back as 2008.”Assange’s UK lawyer Mark Stephens claimed that a “honeytrap” had been sprung and that “dark forces” were at work.A social media furore erupted which Ardin describes as “hell” – she tells me the amount of harassment and death threats forced her to leave Sweden at one point.“I couldn’t work.

Greece’s former Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, a long-time supporter of Assange, last week described her claims as “mud” and “innuendo”.No evidence has ever been found to link Ardin with US intelligence.

Months after the incidents, an international arrest warrant was issued for Assange, who was in London at that point.In December 2010, he admitted to the BBC that it was “not probable” he was part of a classic honey-trap operation - but he still denied any wrongdoing.Assange was convinced that if he went to Sweden he would then be extradited to the US - where he feared the death penalty awaited.

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Suella Braverman has issued a scathing verdict as to why the Conservatives lost the election, blaming Rishi Sunak for pursuing an “idiotic strategy” that treated voters like “mugs”.

In an intervention that will be seen as her teeing up a potential leadership bid, the former home secretary said her party “failed in office and deserved this result”.

Ms Braverman’s article comes after she ducked questions as to whether she would launch her bid to be the next Conservative leader after Mr Sunak confirmed he would step down following the result.

In a hint that she too will run for leader, Ms Braverman said the Conservatives needed to “overhaul our party organisation so that MPs listen to members”.

Speaking on the steps of Downing Street after losing the election, Mr Sunak apologised for the result and said he would not leave his role immediately but would do so once a Tory leadership race begins.

In an indication of the platform she will run on if she succeeds Mr Sunak as Conservative Party leader, Ms Braverman said the Tories must leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and scrap the Human Rights Act to facilitate a crackdown on migration as well as “fix Labour’s Equality Act”.

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Three years ago Sir Keir Starmer seriously considered quitting as Labour leader.It was 2021 and his party had just lost the Hartlepool by-election to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

His party has gone from a historic thumping at the general election in 2019 – to victory in 2024.The Hartlepool result though, is a reminder that Sir Keir’s journey to Downing Street was far from straightforward.

At Leeds, he was influenced by the indie music of the 1980s, from The Smiths and The Wedding Present to Orange Juice and Aztec Camera.His biographer, Tom Baldwin, notes his favourite drink as a student was a mix of beer and cider - or Snakebite - and he had a taste for curry and chips.For a while after graduating, Sir Keir lived above a brothel in north London.

While others refused to serve under Mr Corbyn, Sir Keir stayed in the tent and helped persuade the leader to back a second Brexit referendum at the 2019 election.That election was a disaster for Labour.

But that started to change after the first reports of Downing Street parties during the pandemic, when strict restrictions were in place around social gatherings.There is a clear point in the polls where Labour overtakes the Conservatives in November 2021.

But she is unlikely to play as prominent a role in public life as some partners have in the past.Sir Keir though has been candid about the impact high office could have, particularly on his teenage son and daughter.

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But the funds to pay for it all are due to come from a relatively thin wedge of tax rises worth around £8.5 billion, a sum experts say is nowhere near enough to fix a state groaning from years of austerity under the last Conservative government.

While former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak began the campaign with eye-catching new policies, Labour Leader Keir Starmer — desperate not to look profligate — largely harked back to and re-confirmed items his party had already agreed.

The Conservative government’s levy, which focuses on profits made by oil and gas companies, will be extended from March 2029 to the end of the parliament, and the tax is raised by 3 percentage points.

Labour would back a special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Russia, and “work with allies” to seize and use frozen Russian state assets to support Ukraine … the party backs an “immediate ceasefire in Gaza , the release of all hostages, the upholding of international law, and a rapid increase of aid” … and would recognize a Palestinian state “as a contribution to a renewed peace process,” meaning U.K. recognition could come before a full and final peace settlement with Israel.

Labour re-states its plan to rename it the “growth and skills levy,” with firms given more freedom to use up to half of government funding to cover apprenticeships or provide training for existing staff.

Keir Starmer promised to pass the Football Governance Bill, which fell when parliament was dissolved, but said the idea of 10 percent levies on Premier League transfers would not be made law.

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Officials concluded that this “additional breakdown of the tax gap should not be released within the election period” in line with guidance for civil servants.

Election guidance for civil servants says that statistical activities should “avoid competition with parliamentary candidates for the attention of the public”.

Claire Aston, director of TaxWatch, said: “The main political parties pledged in their election manifestos to raise more revenue by closing the tax gap, and given that, these figures should not have been held back.”

A common reporting standard approved by the OECD in 2014 now enables the automatic exchange of financial information between partner countries to combat tax evasion.

The standard under which nearly all UK residents with overseas bank accounts have the balance and interest reported annually to HMRC has provided an invaluable resource of new information to officials.

It said in a briefing last month: “Ambitious targets are to be applauded but our advice to politicians of all parties is not to spend the money before it’s been collected.”

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So, when we finally obtained the sequence of their genome and discovered that we share a genetic legacy with them, it was easy to place the discoveries into context.

By contrast, we had no idea Denisovans existed until sequencing DNA from a small finger bone revealed that yet another relative of modern humans had roamed Asia in the recent past.

On Wednesday, an international group of researchers described finds from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau that had been occupied by Denisovans, which tell us a bit more about these relatives: what they ate.

The finds come from a site called the Baishiya Karst Cave, which is perched on a cliff on the northeast of the Tibetan Plateau.

Oddly, it came to the attention of the paleontology community because the cave was a pilgrimage site for Tibetan monks, one of whom discovered a portion of a lower jaw that eventually was given to a university.

There, people struggled to understand exactly how it fit with human populations until eventually analysis of proteins preserved within it indicated it belonged to a Denisovan.

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A cash machine has appeared overnight on the side of a bridge.The device on Sonning Bridge in Berkshire visually bears all the hallmarks of a regular cash machine, including a screen, buttons, and slots for bank cards and the dispensing of cash.But it is adorned with Impro Solutions logos, indicating that a real bank is not behind the bridge’s new look.Impro is an artist behind a range of confounding previous installations on the bridge, including a phone, a postbox, and a door.

Other japes have included a large Google Maps pin at Playhatch Roundabout.Regarding his latest work, he simply said: "Banks have reacted to complaints about branch closures and accessibility by opening cashpoints on river bridges for boaters within minutes of Keir Starmer walking into No 10.

"As yet there have been no sightings of other bridge cash machines.

Little personal information is known about Impro, other than he lives in Oxfordshire.In a rare interview with the BBC in 2014 he said his art was inspired by his belief that people are encouraged to take life seriously “despite the fact that it’s absurd and tragic”.His postbox gag drew international attention when it caught the eye of famous spoonbender Uri Geller.Mr Geller said: "I have never seen anything like this anywhere in the world.

"He even suggested a possible culprit - the “ghost of a mischievous little girl” who had apparently been seen walking on the bridge.

Follow BBC South on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American.

The shooting of the unarmed, wounded Russian soldier is one of several killings that have unsettled the Chosen Company, one of the best-known units of international troops fighting on behalf of Ukraine.

In a second episode, a Chosen member lobbed a grenade at and killed a surrendering Russian soldier who had his hands raised, video footage reviewed by The Times shows.

In a third episode, Chosen members boasted in a group chat about killing Russian prisoners of war during a mission in October, text messages show.

A Greek soldier known as Zeus was at the center of all three episodes — tossing the grenade and, Mr. Grosse says, firing at the wounded Russian in the trench and bragging about another kill.

But in the United States military, a video showing the killing of a surrendering soldier, regardless of the circumstances, would prompt an immediate investigation, said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former U.S. Air Force lawyer.

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Members of the Front Électronique (FE) have organised live debates on video streaming service Twitch and free concerts, and released a fund-raising album Siamo Tutti Antifascisti Vol.1 (We are all Anti-Fascists) featuring 38 artists.

Speakers at the event included Brazilian former footballer Raí, who talked about his experience of living under a far-right government headed by Jair Bolsonaro in his homeland.

Some of the most established figures from French electronic music privately expressed their opposition to the rise of Le Pen’s party but have not spoken out, a reticence that Voyou disagrees with.

A “dangerous wave of racism and homophobia” is already being felt in the wake of the far-right’s rise in France, according to musicians Le Kaiju and Sujigashira of Grand Remplacement Records, a collective which supports artists from diasporas of the global south.

Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece, has spoken of her desire to halt the intermittent du spectacle: the scheme that ensures those working in the arts – from musicians and directors to sound engineers and stage managers – are paid a basic income.

Polling last Sunday showed a preference among the 18-34 demographic for the leftwing coalition over the far right, but around a quarter opted for Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party, significantly more than for Macron’s centrist Ensemble pour la République.

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Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American.

The shooting of the unarmed, wounded Russian soldier is one of several killings that have unsettled the Chosen Company, one of the best-known units of international troops fighting on behalf of Ukraine.

In a second episode, a Chosen member lobbed a grenade at and killed a surrendering Russian soldier who had his hands raised, video footage reviewed by The Times shows.

In a third episode, Chosen members boasted in a group chat about killing Russian prisoners of war during a mission in October, text messages show.

A Greek soldier known as Zeus was at the center of all three episodes — tossing the grenade and, Mr. Grosse says, firing at the wounded Russian in the trench and bragging about another kill.

But in the United States military, a video showing the killing of a surrendering soldier, regardless of the circumstances, would prompt an immediate investigation, said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former U.S. Air Force lawyer.

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The Register reports that security researchers at Pen Test Partners recently got access to a British Airways 747, after the airline decided to retire its fleet following a plummet in travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

The team was able to inspect the full avionics bay beneath the passenger deck, with its data center-like racks of modular black boxes that perform different functions for the plane.

Pen Test Partners discovered a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive in the cockpit, which is used to load important navigation databases.

A cybersecurity professor discovered a buffer overflow exploit onboard a British Airways flight last year.

It’s more of a traditional network like you’d find inside an office building, and some of the latest airliners even receive software updates over the air.

Boeing only just resumed production of its troubled 737 Max airplane after software glitches led to two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 passengers and crew members.

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A Russian attack on a power facility in Ukraine has left 100,000 people without power in the north-western region of Sumy.Work is under way to restore power, National grid operator Ukrenergo said, following the strikes, which caused emergency shut-offs for consumers in the city and region of Sumy, which borders Russia.There were no reports of casualties or damage apart from the energy facility, Reuters reports.Russia continues to pummel energy facilities across Ukraine, often plunging the country into extended blackouts with people enduring sweltering summer conditions without running water, air conditioning, or life-saving medical equipment.

Over the past three months alone, Ukraine has lost nine gigawatts of generating capacity, the national energy company Ukrenergo says, losing all of its thermal power plants to enemy action and seeing all hydroelectric sites damaged by drones or missile strikes.

This is enough to power the whole of the Netherlands during peak hours of consumption, and more than a third of the capacity Ukraine had before Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to the national grid operator.Poland has been diverting surplus electricity to Ukraine to help it cope with the Russian strikes, but Ukrenego has scheduled cut-offs of electricity throughout the day across the country as domestic generation and electricity imports could not cover the deficit.Maria Tsaturian from Ukrenergo told the BBC she is aware that a lot of anger is directed at her company for cutting electricity so often, for so long and for so many customers.

The energy sector is one of the goals for the Russian terrorists.

And it is obvious why: all our life, all our civilisation, is built on electricity,” she says.“This is the price we pay for freedom.

"Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defences shot down 24 out of 27 Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched on the night of 5-6 July, the Air Force Command has reported on Telegram.The drones were intercepted over areas including the Sumy region, using electronic jamming and anti-air defences, it said.

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As two astronauts remain stuck aboard the International Space Station thanks to a barrage of issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule, NASA is praising the aerospace company for getting them there in one piece.

As Space.com reports, NASA said that despite the several issues that arose during its first days in space, the Starliner is now performing well enough that it and former naval pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts who hitched a ride to the ISS on the capsule, will be able to stay there for as long as it takes the agency and Boeing to figure out how to fix those problems.

Despite repeated delays, warnings that the Boeing capsule craft would likely have issues, and the discovery of helium leaks prior to liftoff, NASA nevertheless went ahead with the first crewed Starliner launch in early June.

If you’re keeping tabs, that jargon-y explanation for the American astronauts being stranded aboard the ISS for an indeterminate amount of time has a NASA official admitting that they could be there for 90 days total — nine times longer than the 10 days than Wilmore and Williams were originally allotted for the mission.

And as Space.com notes, Starliner is technically rated to stay in orbit as long as 210 days, which would be 21 times longer than that initial 10-day window.

It’s a disastrous state of affairs for everyone involved — but hey, at least the capsule didn’t blow up!

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Watched carefully by a double row of police officers, the several hundred protesters chanted slogans and repeated the words crackling through the microphones mounted on the truck leading the procession.

Such sentiments are widespread across Jordan: in the shady compounds of the Royal Palaces, the five-star hotels where the elite drink and dance, the crowded poorer neighbourhoods of the capital and dusty provincial towns alike.

Since the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, few regional states have faced challenges as acute as those confronting Jordan, with its substantial Palestinian-origin population, prominent roles within the Arab and Muslim worlds, economic difficulties and war-racked neighbours.

A key moment came in April when Iran retaliated to an Israeli strike on its consular buildings in Syria that killed senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders.

Adam Coogle, the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at the campaign group Human Rights Watch, said: “There is a more and more limited space for any expression, tight policing of social media, arrests of journalists.”

Qadr, the trader on Rainbow Street, said sales of her health products made with salt and mud from the Dead Sea were a tenth of what they were a year ago, making it hard to put food on the table for her extended family of seven.

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Apate’s aim is to defeat global phone scams with conversational AI, taking advantage of systems already in place where telecommunications companies divert calls they can identify as coming from scammers.

Kafaar was inspired to turn the tables on telephone fraudsters after he played a “dad’s joke” on a scam caller in front of his two kids while they enjoyed a picnic in the sun.

Kafaar hopes Apate will disrupt the scam-calling business model – which is often run by large, multi-billion dollar criminal organisations.

Richard Buckland, a cybercrime professor at the University of NSW, says technology like Apate is distinct from other types of scambaiting, which can be amateur, or amount to vigilantism.

“Criminals may already have some details about their intended victims, such as their name or address, which they illegally obtained or purchased from a data breach, phishing, or other scam.”

The spokesperson said it was aware of “technology initiatives to productionise scambaiting using AI voice personas” including Apate, and would be interested in reviewing any evaluation of the platform.

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