Author: BBC

Alcohol buyers will be able to use a digital ID app on their phones to prove their age under new rules introduced on Tuesday.Pubs and shops in England and Wales can use the tech in addition to current physical forms of ID – with the government saying a digital option will make age-checks quicker and more secure for customers and staff.Customers will be able to choose ID apps from a range of suppliers such as the Post Office, Yoti or Luciditi, provided they are on a government-approved list.The change means businesses will no longer be required to let people use…

Doctors we spoke to do point out that each episode of The Pitt brings together several urgent trauma cases which typically might be spread across 24 hours or more.But Prof Damian Roland, a practising emergency medicine consultant, notes that the drama does illustrate wider health challenges.He thinks it puts the problems of the NHS in perspective.”Virtually every emergency department in the world at the moment has not enough space to see patients,” he says.”It’s a very common theme in The Pitt about the central character arguing with hospital management saying ‘I need more flow, you can’t just leave these patients…

The issues surrounding AI have prompted fierce debate – and present a dilemma for many world leaders.On one hand, the sector is seen as a huge opportunity to boost economic growth and a way to improve outdated digital systems and ways of working.But there have also been a number of incidents where AI appears to have gone seriously wrong.In August, OpenAI said it had slowed down training some of its most advanced AI models to improve security.The ChatGPT-maker said it was adding new measures after its AI agents bypassed safeguards and hacked the tech start-up Hugging Face.And the same month…

While you can treat the symptoms – by wearing a mouthguard, for example – getting to the source of what’s causing your teeth grinding is just as important, says dental sleep specialist, Dr Aditi Desai.”Too often,” she says, “dentists give out mouthguards without checking why it is happening.”It’s vital that serious, underlying conditions like obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) are considered, she says. OSA is caused by a blocked airway, so a patient may grind their teeth to move the blockage in order to be able to breathe again.”That’s a very good example of why bruxism can keep you alive,” says…

It comes as the AI firm’s boss has called for the technology’s development to be slowed down, citing “serious” risks.

The campaign group Vaccine Injured and Bereaved UK (VIBUK), which was set up to support families affected, said the scheme was not fit for purpose.”It offers too little, too late, to too few and the cost of running it shows how inefficient it is,” said the group’s representative Kate Scott, whose husband Jamie was left severely disabled by the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.Scott called on the government to act on the recommendations from module four of the Covid public inquiry and reform the scheme.Earlier this year, the Covid inquiry’s chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, recommended increasing the payout and basing it on…

I’ll avoid discussing the story so as not to spoil it, but suffice to say I was engaged, even if at times I felt I was spending too long watching videos and not enough time using the controller.Clearly the developers were inspired by narrative adventures like Uncharted for this kind of storytelling, and the gameplay even feels similar at times with chase and climbing sequences.And while that game was genre-defining, it came out almost 20 years ago, so it’s hardly a favourable comparison.In fact, perhaps the biggest issue for Wolverine is that it doesn’t reinvent the wheel like Spider-Man did.It’s…

There are things that can be done, say both Simon and Johal. But first, it is important to distinguish whether your partner is simply snoring, or whether they have sleep apnoea.”What you don’t want to do is simply make someone quieter at night while potentially missing an underlying sleep-related breathing disorder,” Simon says. Signs of sleep apnoea, a disorder that causes a person’s breathing to repeatedly stop and start during sleep, include pauses in breathing, choking at night, waking frequently, and suffering from morning headaches. If this is what you are dealing with, you could be recommended a Continuous Positive…

Anthropic says it has identified and disrupted attempts to use its AI model for “malicious activity” which could support the development of biological weapons.The findings, made in the firm’s recent threat intelligence report, is the latest in a growing series of warnings from AI researchers and industry insiders about the technology’s potential risks to humanity.The warnings have prompted calls to action, with US Senator Bernie Sanders demanding a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence.President Donald Trump has so far rejected such fears, saying on Thursday he was concerned “if we don’t win AI, we’re going…

Radiotherapy UK analysis, shared exclusively with the BBC, suggests more than 2,800 extra patients would need to start treatment every month – a near 15% increase on current numbers – to achieve the March 2027 target.That is likely to grow as referrals keep rising across nearly every cancer type.Price says thousands of patients “are going to die unnecessarily, just because the government can’t get their act together to treat people on time”. For every month a cancer patient waits before starting treatment, their chance of survival falls by around 10% on average.By the time Alan had his operation, the cancer…