Real estate company alleges that the ‘Zillow ban’ prevents rivals from competing against it

The real estate brokerage company Compass has filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings.

In a filing with the US district court for the southern district of New York, Compass claims that “Zillow has sought to rely on anticompetitive tactics to protect its monopoly and revenues in violation of the antitrust laws.”

If only Republican presidents elected in my lifetime left the Middle East alone

Memo says cybersecurity office deemed WhatsApp a high risk due to ‘lack of transparency in how it protects user data’

The WhatsApp messaging service has been banned on all US House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to House staff on Monday.

The notice to all House staff said that the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.”

The Last Week Tonight host went deep on the creative bankruptcy and long-term concerns over AI images and videos flooding the internet

John Oliver covered the dangers of AI on his weekly HBO show, calling it “worryingly corrosive” for society.

On Last Week Tonight, Oliver said that the “spread of AI generation tools has made it very easy to flood social media sites with cheap, professional-looking, often deeply weird content” using the term AI slop to describe it all.

On a 200-acre site in Fayette County, Georgia, US Soccer hopes to build the best facility of its like in the world

Thirty minutes away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Atlanta, the land becomes greener, the trees are taller and builders are working in the intense Georgia sun to ensure US Soccer’s new National Training Center is ready for action in time for the men’s World Cup next year.

It is an enormous site, spanning more than 200 acres in Trilith, Fayette County, and the hope is it will be the best training facility in the world when it opens. Funding has partly come from Arthur M Blank, who owns three sports teams in Atlanta, and executives are confident everything is on schedule for the doors to open in April.

Admitting to being wrong can be difficult. But ‘intellectual humility’ is a trainable trait that deepens relationships

You may be familiar with the feeling. Someone factchecks you mid-conversation or discredits your dishwasher-loading technique. Heat rises to your face; you might feel defensive, embarrassed or angry. Do you insist you’re right or can you accept the correction?

Admitting to being wrong can be difficult and uncomfortable. But the ability to admit to incorrect ideas or beliefs – what psychologists call “intellectual humility” – is important. Research shows that people with higher intellectual humility think more critically, and are less biased and less prone to dogmatism.

Siân Berry says gig contravenes ‘city’s well-renowned values’ amid sexual assault allegations against singer

A senior British politician has called for a controversial Marilyn Manson concert in her city to be cancelled amid allegations of sexual assault by the singer.

Manson – whose real name is Brian Warner – is set to kickstart the UK leg of his new tour at the Brighton Centre in October. But the concert has become a topic of debate, with campaigners urging Brighton and Hove city council, which owns the venue, to cancel the performance.

Polite, considerate, and brilliant to watch, Oklahoma City’s team of champions helped produce one of the most absorbing postseasons in years

These were supposed to be the boring finals, a contest between two small-city teams with none of the media pull of Boston or New York or even Denver for that matter, featuring the (allegedly) most overrated guard in the NBA, no personalities, relentless fouling, and a Canadian MVP whose ascendancy seemed to indicate nothing more than the terminal decline of America as a stable of elite basketballing talent. Instead we were treated to the most thrilling and unpredictable finals since LeBron James came through with his famous rejection in 2016 – a bustling, punishing, seven-game exhibition of physical basketball whose outcome was genuinely unclear until the final quarter of the season. Denigrated and dismissed by a basketballing commentariat who’ve spent much of this season ruing the modern NBA’s dearth of charisma, Oklahoma City and Indiana played as if stung by the laugh lines, launching from both ends of the court with a kind of mad, symphonic intensity.

If the finals of the past few years were about punctuating a dynasty (Golden State in 2022), letting Nikola Jokić be Nikola Jokić (Denver in 2023), and mastering a technocratic synthesis of all the elements of the modern game (the Celtics last season), this was a victory built on turnovers, flops, dives, steals, slingshot passes, and snap threes from distance. It was grubby at times, but it was all the more beautiful for its lunging desperation. At the end of it all, the team with the best regular-season record and the best player in the league emerged victorious. In years to come this stat line alone may confer a sheen of inevitability over the season. But Oklahoma City’s victory in Sunday night’s decider – like these finals and the playoffs generally – was anything but predictable. Even after star guard Tyrese Haliburton, who played through the finals with a calf strain, exited the court with a ripped achilles late in the first quarter, the Pacers would not give up.

Author Sophie Quick spent five years tuning in to money mentors, divorce coaches and habit-stacking advisers. She has been life-coached into oblivion

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Some years ago, I started writing a novel. The novel satirises the world of executive coaching and, as part of my research, I began to follow some coaches and motivational speakers online.

It started with corporate leadership coaches preaching banal management advice. But it slid quickly into chaos as I surrendered – with dreadful compulsion – to the algorithm.

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Genetically modified E coli used to create painkillers from material produced from plastic bottles

Bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs.

Chemists have discovered E coli can be used to create paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles.