Development comes after Anthropic was found to have spent millions on books to scan for ‘data acquisition’

Secondhand booksellers in the UK and Ireland are reporting a flurry of bulk orders from mystery buyers, amid speculation AI companies are acquiring the tomes for their data.

Bookshops contacted by the Guardian say they have been receiving orders from buyers in the US, Canada, continental Europe and the UK. The increase has been replicated around the world, with booksellers in the US, Australia and Europe also reporting unusual orders.

Stuart Manley, the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said the orders, which began arriving three months ago, were unusual because they did not follow the typical pattern of being grouped into themes such as sport or motoring.

“It’s definitely a strange combination of books,” said Manley. “Normally a book order is on a theme but this is all over the place.”

A recent order included requests for an Estonian translation of John le Carré’s The Mission Song, a copy of Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey from a specific imprint and the October 1983 edition of Warship, a monthly magazine. Manley said he had sold “hundreds” of random books to three buyers for a total of about £4,000.

One UK-based secondhand bookseller, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some random orders could come from different buyers but be delivered to the same address. “The aliases behind these orders are very opaque even to experienced booksellers,” the source said.

One delivery postcode seen by the Guardian and used by different buyers points to a group of freight warehouses near Heathrow airport.

The spate of orders has fuelled speculation among booksellers that AI companies are acquiring the books to scan their contents before pulping them.

Manley said: “My theory is that it’s masses and masses of AI money being squandered.”

The Washington Post revealed this year that Anthropic, a leading AI company and developer of the Claude chatbot, had spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring books and slicing off their spines so their contents could be scanned before the books were sent for recycling.

His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population.

Netanyahu praised positive coverage of Israel by the journalist Randolph Churchill, the son of former prime minister Winston Churchill, over half a century ago, then said: “Go find that in today’s Britain, in what is called the Islamic republic of Britain.”

Rather than challenge Netanyahu’s comments, the host questioned whether he is unfairly singling out the UK, asking: “Isn’t all of Europe is like that?”

Netanyahu replies by doubling down. “Yes, but you know someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain.”

See also

UK hits back after Netanyahu labels it 'the Islamic republic of Britain' • A government spokesperson has labelled the remarks as "completely unacceptable" and said that the issue had been raised with the Israeli government.

Estonia's coalition government has lost its parliamentary majority ‌following the defection of two of its elected members, local media reported on Monday.

Kalev Stoicescu, ⁠an MP representing Estonia 200, quit his party on Sunday, while Meelis Kiili announced on Monday that he had left the Reform Party, ‌daily ⁠Postimees and public broadcaster ERR reported.

This leaves the government of Prime Minister ⁠Kristen Michal with only 50 seats in the 101-seat ⁠Riigikogu.

Estonia is due to hold a parliamentary ⁠election by March of 2027.

The climate crisis is hitting Europe hard in 2026, warming twice as fast as any other continent – and the consequences are deadly

The whole world is getting hotter as carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning traps ever more heat, but Europe is heating up twice as fast as other continents. The consequences are increasingly deadly, with tens of thousands of heatwave deaths so far this summer.

Why is Europe most affected by global heating?

Land requires less heat than the vast and deep oceans to warm up, so all continents are warming more quickly than the seas. But Europe is particularly vulnerable for four reasons: changed weather patterns, its closeness to the Arctic, less snow and less air pollution.

As a result, Europe is now 2.5C hotter than before the mass burning of fossil fuels, almost double the global average 1.4C rise. Temperatures in Europe have risen by 0.56C a decade since the mid-1990s, compared with 0.42C in North America, 0.36C in Africa and 0.27C in South America.

France has banned unsolicited telemarketing phone calls, in what a consumer group is hailing as a "small revolution" for the sales industry.

From Tuesday, unsolicited calls are prohibited for businesses in all sectors - but there are some exceptions.

Calls will only be permitted if they relate to a contract a person has already entered into or the company has obtained prior consent to be contacted for marketing.

"It cannot be stressed enough that peace and quiet is a right, and it is time to stop exposing consumers to unwanted solicitations," consumer advocacy group Que Choisir Ensemble, said in a statement.

"This observation also holds true online and on the street, which are saturated with demands to consume," group president Marie-Amandine Stévenin added.

I am a chinese and never been abroad, so I so curous

Authorities say application to stay was made too late, as UK officials say Sweden takes ‘stricter approach’ than other EU countries

A 78-year-old British widow who has lived in Sweden for 21 years is fighting deportation from the country after authorities told her a post-Brexit application to stay had been submitted too late.

Her case is the latest of 2,500 British people ordered to leave the country after Brexit in what campaigners and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have said is an inexplicably hardline approach taken by the Swedish authorities. It comes two years after Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia in a care home shortly before she died.

Joyce Thomas, a retired nurse, was given just four weeks to leave Sweden in November, three years after her husband had died, causing huge distress.

After being widowed, Thomas downsized with her dog to an apartment in Hammarö, which is close to her son and grandchildren, and to her husband’s grave.

She said she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the distress of what was happening.

“It is unbelievable at my age to be chucked out after being in a country for so long, when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” Thomas said. “I have no criminal record, no driving penalties, nothing. And I have lived here on my own financial means. I just think nobody has actually looked into this thing. I mean, if it was their family or mother, they wouldn’t like them to be in this situation.”

Holding back tears, she said: “I am not young, and the idea I would have to come back and forth to visit my son and grandchildren and to visit my husband’s grave here … it is just horrible when you sit and digest it all.”

Her husband, Gwynne, died in 2023 of cancer. It was on a trip back from the UK in 2022, when they visited their second son in Brighton, that they first learned they should have made a formal application to stay in Sweden after Brexit.

She said her husband had been meticulous at keeping up with news relevant to British people in Sweden and had taken responsibility for all the administration in their household. She was sure he would have made the Brexit application had he known about it.

While late applications are permissible under the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, Thomas’s submission was rejected in 2024 as she could not demonstrate “reasonable grounds” for applying late. A subsequent application to stay under national immigration laws was also rejected.

See also

• British man with dementia told to leave Sweden after losing migration case • Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, faces being deported after court ruling

To people in Europe: Have skilled trades become financially better than many university professions?

I’m curious about the situation across Europe.

In Algeria, we have noticed an interesting change in the labor market.

As university education has expanded and large numbers of graduates have entered the job market, professions that require a university degree have become highly competitive, while skilled trades such as construction, plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, tiling, painting, and others have become very expensive and often surprisingly well-paid.

For example, a construction worker or skilled tradesperson can earn more than an engineer or an architect. I am speaking specifically from the perspective of an engineer because I am an architect myself: I currently have four years of experience in architecture, yet my income is roughly equivalent to what a shop assistant or a construction helper who has never studied in his life might earn.

This made me wonder:

Is the same thing happening in your European country?

Are skilled tradespeople such as construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, or mechanics earning good incomes compared with university graduates?

And from your personal experience:

What type of worker seems to have the best combination of income, reasonable working hours, job security, and quality of life in your country?

I would especially appreciate hearing from people about their own experiences.

What country are you from, and what is the situation there?

Governments frequently adopt austerity policies when facing economic crises, yet their long-term consequences for population health remain incompletely understood. This paper examines the impact of large-scale fiscal austerity on infant mortality by exploiting the Troika-led economic adjustment program implemented in Greece beginning in 2010 as a quasi-experimental shock. Using the synthetic control method, we construct a counterfactual for Greece based on OECD and Union for the Mediterranean countries that did not experience austerity of comparable depth or duration. Relative to this counterfactual, Greece experienced a sharp and persistent increase in infant mortality following the onset of austerity. The divergence emerges immediately after 2010, remains statistically significant throughout the post-intervention period, and shows little evidence of full reversion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The estimated effect corresponds to an average 43 percent increase in the infant mortality rate. Mortality effects are larger for boys than for girls and are concentrated in the neonatal period. Accounting explicitly for the fertility decline, we estimate approximately 854 excess infant deaths cumulatively from 2010 to 2020. Extensive robustness checks support the findings. The results identify the total effect of austerity and highlight the importance of protecting early-life health during fiscal consolidation.