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In Taiwan and China, young people turn to AI chatbots for ‘cheaper, easier’ therapy
The Guardian by Helen Davidson in Taipei 1 h and 33 min ago
Experts say there is huge potential for AI in the mental health sector, but there are risks of turning to technology, rather than human beings when in distress
In the pre-dawn hours, Ann Li’s anxieties felt overwhelming. She’d recently been diagnosed with a serious health problem, and she just wanted to talk to someone about it. But she hadn’t told her family, and all her friends were asleep. So instead, she turned to ChatGPT.
“It’s easier to talk to AI during those nights,” the 30-year-old Taiwanese woman, tells the Guardian.
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Shabana Mahmood considers chemical castration for serious sex offenders
The Guardian by Rajeev Syal Home affairs editor 2 h and 44 min ago
Justice secretary expected to back radical sentencing reforms, including use of libido-suppressing drugs in England and Wales
Shabana Mahmood, the lord chancellor, is considering mandatory chemical castration for the most serious sex offenders, according to government sources.
The minister’s department is planning to expand a pilot to 20 regions as part of a package of “radical” measures to free thousands of prisoners and ease prison overcrowding in England and Wales.
Ensure custodial sentences under 12 months are only used in exceptional circumstances.
Extend suspended sentences to up to three years and encourage greater use of deferred sentences for low-risk offenders.
Give courts greater flexibility to use fines and ancillary orders like travel, driving and football bans.
Allow probation officers to adjust the level of supervision based on risk and compliance with licence conditions.
Expand specialist domestic abuse courts to improve support for victims.
Expand tagging for all perpetrators of violence against women and girls.
Improve training for practitioners and the judiciary on violence against women and girls.
Change the statutory purposes of sentencing so judges and magistrates must consider protecting victims as much as they consider punishment and rehabilitation when passing sentences.
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Sure Start centres saved UK government £2 for every £1 spent, study finds
The Guardian by Richard Adams Education editor 3 h and 2 min ago
New Labour initiative created ‘remarkably long-lasting’ health and education improvements, says report
Sure Start children’s centres provided £2 of savings for every £1 in costs, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), prompting calls for the government to look at such services as potentially paying for themselves.
The centres, championed by the last Labour government, created £2.8bn in savings and revenues at the scheme’s peak in England, according to the IFS study.
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New report says ‘government must act’ to ease pressures on British theatres
The Guardian by Chris Wiegand Stage editor 3 h and 2 min ago
Attendances are up and average ticket prices down, even in the West End, but the sector faces mounting and unsustainable strain
A report by the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre, released on Thursday, puts the spotlight on an industry struggling with rocketing production costs and in need of urgent funding. The sister trade associations have called for the government’s comprehensive spending review to dramatically increase public investment, including £500m for infrastructure, and to support its Theatre for Every Child initiative which aims to ensure all pupils attend a professional theatre production before leaving school.
The organisations’ co-CEOs, Claire Walker and Hannah Essex, said: “Theatres are doing more with less – and the strain is showing. Rising costs, shrinking support and ageing infrastructure are putting the sector under unsustainable pressure. We are seeing world-class organisations forced to cut programmes, delay maintenance and scale back outreach. If we want to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in theatre – and continue to inspire the next generation of actors, writers, and technicians – then government must act.”
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Sentimental Value review – Stellan Skarsgård is an egomaniac director in act of ancestor worship
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw 3 h and 18 min ago
Cannes film festival
Joachim Trier’s entertaining drama sees Norwegian auteur-on-the-slide Skarsgård putting his showbiz family through the wringer in the service of his fading career
Here is an exuberant, garrulous, self-aware picture about an ageing and egomaniac film director and his two grownup daughters; it comes from Norwegian film-maker Joachim Trier, who gave Cannes the marvellous romantic drama The Worst Person in the World in 2021, starring the award-winning Renate Reinsve, who stars in this one as well. The film cycles through a range of moods and ideas, and finally delivers a fair bit of that sentimentality from the title; it’s a movie of daddy issues and cinematic adventures in the manner of Fellini and Bergman, with a gag about overhearing a therapist’s session through the heating pipes, pinched from Woody Allen’s Another Woman.
Stellan Skarsgård plays preening auteur Gustav Borg, whose career is on the slide; many years ago he left his wife, Sissel, a psychotherapist, and two grownup daughters, abandoning the family home – the house where Gustav himself was brought up. Now their mother has died and Gustav’s daughter Nora (Reinsve), a famous stage actor starring in a production of A Doll’s House, is suffering anxiety attacks – and to snap out of it, she asks to be slapped backstage by the (married) actor with whom she is having an affair, played by longtime Trier player Anders Danielsen Lie.
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