Harvard University was accused by minority groups of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by giving preferential

A huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years, according to the mining company that controls it. Norge Mining said up to 70 billion tonnes of the non-renewable resource may have been uncovered in south-western Norway, alongside deposits of other strategic minerals like titanium and vanadium. Phosphate rock contains high concentrates of phosphorus, which is a key component for building green technologies but currently faces significant supply issues. Phosphorus was first discovered in 1669 by German scientist Hennig Brandt, who was searching for the philosopher’s stone. While it proved ineffective in turning ordinary metals into gold, it has become an essential component in lithium-iron phosphate batteries in electric cars, as well as for solar panels and computer chips. Russia previously controlled the world’s largest ultra-pure phosphate rock deposits, with the European Union warning that these “critical raw materials” have a high supply risk. The EU is currently almost entirely dependent on imports of phosphate rock from the rest of the world, according to a report from The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, with China, Iraq and Syria also home to large deposits. The report, which was published before the discovery of the massive Norwegian deposit, warned that the EU should be “concerned about phosphate rock shortages”. An article in the scientific journal Nature last year warned of imminent supply disruptions of phosphorus, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent economic sanctions as a potential cause of market volatility. The global economy consumes an estimated 50 million tonnes of phosphorus each year, with scientists warning earlier this year that the planet could face a “phosphogeddon” if supply trends continue. “The buyers’ market is becoming increasingly crowded by limited trade – due to political instability in several source countries, as well as international sanctions imposed on others,” Norge Mining noted in a June blog post. “This is forcing importers to fear an impending crisis.” Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Jan Christian Vestre, said last month that the government was considering fast-tracking a giant mine in Helleland once analysis is completed on 76 kilometres of drill cores. If approval is given, the first major mine could begin operation by 2028. The politician said Norway’s “obligation” was to develop “the world’s most sustainable mineral industry” following the discovery of the minerals. The mining plans already have the support of the European Raw Materials Alliance, according to local reports, while local consultations continue. A spokesperson for the European Commission described the discovery as “great news” for meeting the objectives of the Commission’s raw material objectives, with Norge Mining telling Euractiv that the projected 4,500-metre-deep ore body would theoretically be capable of meeting global demand for the next century. Read More Solar trees offer unique solution to charging electric cars ‘Miracle material’ solar panels to finally enter production Twitter is breaking more and more iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted

TweetDeck, a major Twitter client, has stopped working properly. The app is seemingly a victim of the same problems that have meant that Twitter has not been loading properly in recent days. Over the weekend, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that the site would be limiting the number of posts that users could see. He indicated that the change was meant to stop bots scraping the tweets posted on the platform, though some have suggested that the problem could have other causes. The site also cut off the ability to read tweets without a login. The changes were described as a “temporary emergency measure” by Mr Musk, who said that bots on the platform had degraded the user experience. It has plunged the site into chaos as users look to deal with the ration on the number of posts, as well as a number of apparently linked problems. One of those issues is that TweetDeck is failing to work properly. Some reported that the app was unable to load tweets at all, while others found that they might initially show and then disappear, or that specific columns were not working. TweetDeck is a power user tool that is used by companies to manage multiple accounts, and by those who look to follow updates on the site through its columns and other tools. While a relatively small number of people may use the site, that includes some of those who post and follow prolifically. It is unclear whether the outage is linked to either the restrictions on the number of posts, or removing the option to view posts without being logged in. Experts have suggested that both changes appear to have been made in a rushed and haphazard way, and so might have accidentally broken other parts of the site. TweetDeck does not have an official status account. While Mr Musk has been giving ongoing updates on the situation on the main Twitter site in recent days, he has not mentioned the outage on TweetDeck. The app has been largely neglected for years. The last major announcement was that the TweetDeck Mac app would be closed down, in June 2022, before Mr Musk took over the site. In the time since, Mr Musk has made changes that have taken other third-party clients offline. Though TweetDeck was founded as an independent service, it has since been bought by and integrated into Twitter, presumably meaning it was able to avoid those initial problems in accessing Twitter’s data. Some rumours have also suggested that TweetDeck could become paid-for, or part of Twitter’s premium “Blue” offering. But the company has offered few official updates on its future at all. Read More What Twitter’s ‘rate limit’ message means and why Elon Musk has imposed restrictions Jack Dorsey calls for ‘open internet’ as Musk imposes new reading limits on Twitter Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day

Electric-vehicle maker Rivian Automotive said on Monday it delivered 12,640 vehicles in the second quarter, a 59% jump

Apple's Vision Pro augmented reality headset hasn't even been released yet, and it's already in

BYD outpaced Tesla in the second quarter as the Chinese carmaker posted record sales of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Will.i.am has hailed artificial intelligence (AI) as a “new renaissance” in music. The 48-year-old musician and member of the Black Eyed Peas expressed an optimistic view of new music software, which can be used to produce and create songs. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “People have to decide what types of songs they want to write because, although I wrote songs like Boom Boom Pow and I Gotta Feeling and Where Is the Love?, the machine is going to write amazing versions or original Boom Boom Pows.” He added that people “desire” songs which can be a “social commentary” on the news, something AI is “going to be able to do”. “It’s a very, very, very unique world that we’re entering into. It’s a new renaissance.” He said new technology does not just “mimic” what he does but creates something new. “It was a brand new song and it wrote it the way I would have written it.” He went on: “The concern is what we do as people and the regulation and guidelines that we put on folks that are building the models. “The fact that AI mimics, but at the same time we haven’t put in clauses for where people own their likeness in their essence… well, that’s one thing. AI’s not deciding that, people are.” However, other famous faces such as Dolly Parton and Charlie Brooker have raised concerns about AI. Black Mirror creator Brooker told Empire Magazine that using the ChatGPT tool had produced something which read plausibly “at first glance” but did not contain “any real original thought”. He also told the PA news agency that the AI advances explored in the latest episode of the Netflix series could be used in a “frankly terrifying way”. Brooker was referring to an episode of the dystopian anthology show in which a woman finds her life replicated by streaming platform Streamberry. Parton was asked at a press event last week about living on in an artificial form in the future. She said: “I think I’ve left a great body of work behind. “I have to decide how much of that high-tech stuff I want to be involved because I don’t want to leave my soul here on this Earth.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Heart transplant woman’s daughter twice saved her life using Alexa Dolly Parton on AI and not wanting to leave her soul ‘here on earth’ Glastonbury festival-goers use data equivalent to 400 HD film downloads an hour

A shakeup at China’s central bank has poured cold water on speculation that the nation may be about

Listen to The Big Take podcast on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Terminal. Record temperatures in Texas and across

Thousands of Twitter users reported problems with the social media platform this weekend, with many receiving a message saying “rate-limit exceeded” on their personal feed page meant for curated content. Many users complained of several issues over the weekend, such as disappearing timelines, an inability to retrieve or send out their own tweets or even send a direct message. Users could scroll only a limited number of times on their curated “For You” personal feed pages before hitting limits. Twitter owner and chief technology officer Elon Musk explained on Saturday that the platform was issuing temporary reading limits with verified accounts being restricted to reading 6,000 posts a day. Mr Musk said the new restriction was applied “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”. The Tesla chief then later added that the “rate limits” were increasing to “8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified and 400 for new unverified”. He then followed it with another update, raising the limits to 10,000, 1,000 and 500 respectively. It remains unclear for how long the new restrictions will be in place as many users continue to face the “Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again” message. Mr Musk has been attempting to generate more revenue for Twitter by making changes to the platform’s policy regarding the use of its API – the system used to communicate with other services. The Tesla and SpaceX chief has previously expressed displeasure with third-party clients, including artificial intelligence firms, using Twitter’s data to train their AI models. The company has been cutting its free API support, which has effectively killed off third-party services that rely on it. Commenting on the outage, Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the UK’s professional IT body, said while data scraping may be “part of the reason”, there are likely to be “underlying technical problems” on the platform. “The alleged data scraping could well be caused by Twitter now charging exorbitant fees for API access, which may have led to a secondary market for tweet data,” he said. Mr Musk retweeted an Elon Musk parody account that said “we are all Twitter addicts and need to go outside”. “I’m doing a good deed for the world here. Also, that’s another view you just used,” the tweet read. Read More Jack Dorsey calls for ‘open internet’ as Musk imposes new reading limits on Twitter Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day, Elon Musk announces Is Twitter down? Thousands of users complain of issues with social media website and app Jack Dorsey calls for ‘open internet’ as Musk imposes new reading limits on Twitter Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day Twitter applies temporary reading limits amid ongoing problems with platform

Jack Dorsey has said it is “critical to preserve the open internet” after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced controversial new “rate limits” for viewing tweets on the social media platform. The Twitter co-founder and former chief said “running Twitter is hard” after widespread backlash against Mr Musk’s temporary limits on the number of tweets people can read on the microblogging site. He, however, expressed hopes that the platform would build on “censorship-resistant open protocols” that would be “good for all, and critical to preserve the open internet”. Thousands of Twitter users took to the platform to report problems with the site over the weekend, with complaints of inability in retrieving tweets, missing timelines and disappearing followers. Reports of outages began flooding Down Detector, peaking on Sunday and extending to Monday. The backlash started after Twitter declared on Saturday that verified accounts were being limited to reading 6,000 posts a day. Mr Musk later said “rate limits” were increasing to “8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified”. He reasoned that the limits were being imposed to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Many users expressed their frustration with the new move as they got a notification that said, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again”. Industry experts were also baffled at such a move by a social media company to put people off its platform, especially as Twitter has battled with retaining advertisers on the platform ever since Mr Musk took over last November. “Never have I seen a social network try so hard to put people off using a platform and to completely curtail any potential future for its business,” Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst told PA, adding that the move was “yet another crazy decision by Elon Musk”. Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, said the new move could be “catastrophic” for Twitter’s ad business, that has already reeled from dwindling revenues. The company even roped in former NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino to be its new chief to repair relationships with advertisers who pulled away from the platform. The latest “reading limits”, according to Lou Paskalis, the founder of advertising consultancy AJL Advisory, “signals to the marketplace that he’s not capable of empowering her to save him from himself”. Mr Dorsey acknowledged that running Twitter was “hard”, adding that he trusted the team was “doing their best under the constraints they have”. “It’s easy to critique the decisions from afar... which I’m guilty of... but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will,” he said. It remains unclear how long the restrictions will last, as thousands continue to report about outages on the platform. Twitter did not reply to requests for comment as it had earlier this year changed its policy for interacting with reporters. Read More Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day, Elon Musk announces Pete Buttigieg blames severe weather for Fourth of July travel chaos Explosive devices and ‘Molotov cocktail-style object’ detonated in Washington DC Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day Heart transplant woman’s daughter twice saved her life using Alexa iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted

A court has fined Twitter $61,000 for not complying with a government order to take down tweets.