The guardian

Amazon workers speak to a lorry driver at a picket line during a strike over pay at the Coventry fulfilment centre in February. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Amazon workers speak to a lorry driver at a picket line during a strike over pay at the Coventry fulfilment centre in February. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Read more The GMB organiser Amanda Gearing said the vote showed staff were “in it for the long haul”, adding: “These workers are angry, they know their rights and they will not go away.” Strike votes at two other The fresh vote for strikes in With membership at about 800 after a recruitment drive, the union believed it had comfortably signed up more than half of the staff at the site. But the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), which can grant statutory recognition, accepted evidence from Amazon that there were up to 2,700 workers employed there. Amazon has rejected the GMB’s claim that it deliberately hired more than 1,000 staff in recent weeks to ensure the union would not be able to show that it had majority support. The GMB claims its strike action – which began in January when it had only a few dozen members in Coventry – is having a growing impact on Amazon’s operations. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our after newsletter promotion Since the industrial action began, Amazon has increased pay for UK-based staff to £11 an hour, and enhanced employment rights...

The new fees are in part intended to allow Reddit to monetise its popularity among AI researchers. Photograph: Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/Shutterstock The new fees are in part intended to allow Reddit to monetise its popularity among AI researchers. Photograph: Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/Shutterstock Reddit’s battle with its own users over new access fees will continue beyond the planned two-day protest, as hundreds of volunteer moderators declared their intention to maintain a blackout indefinitely. The social network, which intends to begin levying swingeing data charges against developers of third-party tools used to browse the site, says it has no intention of backing down from its plans in the wake of the campaign. The new fees, payable by any service that uses the site’s tools, or API, to access information, are in part intended to allow the company to monetise its popularity among artificial intelligence researchers, who use the database to train in tools such as GPT-4. “We’re not planning any changes to the API updates we’ve previously announced,” a Reddit spokesperson told the Guardian. “We’re in contact with a number of communities to clarify any confusion around our data API terms, platform-wide policies, community support resources, and timing for new moderator tools.” “Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved; we spend multimillions of dollars on hosting fees and Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps,” ...

Julie Barenson’s young husband left her two unexpected gifts before he died – a puppy named Singer and the promise that he would always be watching over her. Now, four years later, twenty-nine year-old Julie is far too young to have given up on love. She may be ready to risk caring for someone again. But who? Should it be Richard Franklin, the sophisticated, handsome engineer who treats her like a queen? Or Mike Harris, the down-to-earth nice guy who was her husband’s best friend? Choosing one of them should bring her more happiness than she’s had in years. Instead, Julie is soon fighting for her life in a nightmare spawned by a chilling deception and jealousy so poisonous that it has become a murderous desire . . . The Guardiancontains all the qualities readers expect from Nicholas Sparks. But here, he adds a new electrifying intensity – and page after page of riveting suspense. Inspiration For a long time, I’d wanted to write a love story that incorporated both love and danger. I suppose it’s partly due to the fact that I enjoy novels that keep me on the edge of my seat. Growing up, I enjoyed the works of many authors, and had read a variety of the classics while still in high school. While it would be wonderful to claim that I enjoyed everything about such novels as The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe or Moby Dick by Herman Melville, I must admit that I didn’t. Perhaps it was age related, but I found myself able to put those boo...

Read more On Tuesday, James Liang, an influential economist who is also the founder of Trip.com, one of the world’s largest travel service platforms, published Under the rule of But between 2010 and 2020, the average age for women to get married for the first time increased from 24 to nearly 29. In 2016, China abandoned its decades-old one child policy, and is now encouraging women to have up to three babies. Local governments have introduced a The government sees strong – and plentiful – marriages as the bedrock for boosting the fertility rate. Some provinces now offer paid marriage leave of up to 30 days for newlyweds. However, highly educated young women often “critique marriage as a patriarchal institution that oppresses women”, said Yun Zhou, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. The incentives have failed to convince a generation of young people who are facing record The data also showed that the number of divorces dropped to 2.1 million in 2022, a slight decrease on the previous year. China’s divorce rate has been declining from its peak in 2019. That partly reflects the fact that there are fewer marriages. In 2021, the government also introduced a But the restrictions on divorce may also be putting people off marriage. Responding to the news about last year’s marriage rate on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, one user wrote that by implementing “artificial obstacles” to divorce, “young people increasingly don’t dare to get married”.

New Zealand and Fiji have signed a defence agreement to strengthen military training and maritime security, that comes amid rising tensions over security in the region. The agreement, signed by New Zealand’s defence minister, Andrew Little, and Fijian minister for home affairs and immigration, Pio Tikoduadua, in Suva on Wednesday, sets a legal framework for military cooperation between the two countries in each other’s territories. The agreement will also address disaster and humanitarian response coordination, and the challenges of climate change. Read more It comes as the US, New Zealand and Australia push to build stronger security ties with Pacific nations, as they attempt to offer an alternative to In 2022, “Beijing’s success in signing the China-Solomon Islands security deal last year has kind of put a chill on other Pacific Island nations doing the same, especially if not balanced by deals with Australia, New Zealand, or the United States,” said Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. Last week, Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, signalled the country’s intention to shift away from a policing agreement reached with China more than a decade ago, that had been suspended since he came into office in January. During a visit to Wellington, Rabuka said the 2011 agreement was now “If our systems and our values differ, what cooperation can we get from them? We need to look at that again before we decide whether we go back to it, or if we conti...

J ordi Alba is scrolling through his phone. “There’s nothing, eh,” he says. The story breaks almost the moment he walks through the door and he hears it here first, told as he enters the room. It’s not official yet and he can’t find anything to confirm it, but it soon will be: “It’s too soon,” Alba says at Barcelona’s Sant Joan Despí training ground. “I’m still getting used to this; it’s not easy to go somewhere else.” A winner of 18 major trophies with club and country, he had never intended to leave the Camp Nou but after a summer when the hints were not exactly subtle and a season in which for the first time in a decade his role was reduced, starting 14 league games, a victim of finance as much as football, he decided the time had come to depart – even without a final destination. Read more His first stop is Las Rozas, the Spanish federation’s place 25km north-west of Madrid. After three days training with Barcelona’s B team at Sant Joan Despí he will be there with the country’s best players to prepare for the Nations League semi-final against Italy on Thursday. For the first time, at 34, he will be wearing the armband, leading a new era under a new manager, the fifth of his international career. “It was a surprise that Luis Enrique didn’t continue because he was a spectacular coach who built a great group with very young players, but people speak well of Luis de la Fuente and I’m looking forward to it,” Alba says. “And against Italy who, for good and bad, I’ve faced lo...

There was jubilation in Lagos on Thursday as leaders of over 150 Anti-Corruption Civil Society Organisations gathered with their supporters to celebrate what they termed the first step in the cleaning process for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. They hailed the President Bola Tinubu administration for showing a bold will to fix the wrongs… The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has paid a total sum of one billion, four hundred and seventy-eight million, four hundred and sixteen thousand naira (N1,478,416,000.00) only, to owners of Non-JAMB Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres nationwide for the services they rendered during the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). In response to the recent suspension of government officials by President Bola Tinubu's administration, a faction of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) known as the Progressive Foundational Movement (PFM) has demanded the immediate suspension of the chairmen of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) due to alleged… Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on Wednesday led a government delegation to Patigi to commiserate with families affected in the Monday night boat mishap, in which dozens have been confirmed dead. At least 106 persons, mostly from Patigi communities, have been confirmed killed while 144 survived in the accident, according to local authorities. Accompanied by…