from the what-are-you-hiding-peter? dept

Peter Mandelson—the former UK cabinet minister who was just sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the United States over newly revealed emails with Jeffrey Epstein—has found a novel way to avoid answering questions about why he told a convicted sex offender “your friends stay with you and love you” and urged him to “fight for early release.” He got the UK press regulator to send a memo to all UK media essentially telling them to leave him alone.

The National published what they describe as the “secret notice” that went out:

CONFIDENTIAL – STRICTLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION: Ipso has asked us to circulate the following advisory:

Ipso has today been contacted by a representative acting on behalf of Peter Mandelson.

Mr Mandelson’s representatives state that he does not wish to speak to the media at this time. He requests that the press do not take photos or film, approach, or contact him via phone, email, or in-person. His representatives ask that any requests for his comment are directed to [REDACTED]

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We are happy to make editors aware of his request. We note the terms of Clause 2 (Privacy) and 3 (Harassment) of the Editors’ Code, and in particular that Clause 3 states that journalists must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist, unless justified in the public interest.

Clauses 2 and 3 of the UK Editor’s Code—the privacy and harassment provisions—exist primarily to protect genuinely vulnerable people from press intrusion. Grieving families. Crime victims. People suffering genuine harassment.

Mandelson is invoking them to avoid answering questions about his documented friendship with one of history’s most notorious pedophiles—a friendship so extensive and problematic that it just cost him his job as ambassador to the United States, days before a presidential state visit.

According to Politico, the UK Foreign Office withdrew Mandelson “with immediate effect” after emails showed the relationship was far deeper than previously known:

In a statement the U.K. Foreign Office said Mandelson had been withdrawn as ambassador “with immediate effect” after emails showed “the depth and extent” of his relationship with Epstein was “materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”

“In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information,” the statement added.

So we have a senior political figure who just got fired over revelations that he told a convicted sex offender his prosecution was “wrongful” and should be challenged, who maintained this friendship for years longer than he’d admitted, and his response is to invoke press harassment protections?

The notice does include the important qualifier “unless justified in the public interest.” And it’s hard to imagine a clearer case of public interest: a senior diplomat, just sacked from his post, over previously undisclosed communications with a convicted pedophile, in which he expressed support for challenging that pedophile’s conviction. If that’s not public interest, the term has no meaning.

But the mere act of circulating this notice creates a chilling effect. It puts journalists on notice that pursuing this story could result in complaints to the regulator. It’s using the machinery of press regulation as a shield against legitimate accountability journalism.

Now, to be fair, one could imagine scenarios where even a disgraced public figure might legitimately invoke harassment protections—it wasn’t that long ago there was a whole scandal in the UK with journalists hacking the voicemails of famous people. But that’s not what’s happening here. Mandelson is invoking these provisions to avoid being asked questions at all. “Please don’t inquire about why I told a convicted pedophile his prosecution was wrongful” is not the kind of harm these rules were designed to prevent.

This is who Mandelson has always been: someone who sees regulatory and governmental machinery as tools to be deployed on behalf of whoever he’s serving at the moment. Back in 2009, we covered how he returned from a vacation with entertainment industry mogul David Geffen and almost immediately started pushing for aggressive new copyright enforcement measures, including kicking people off the internet for file sharing. As we wrote at the time, he had what we called a “sudden conversion” to Hollywood’s position on internet enforcement that happened to coincide suspiciously with his socializing with entertainment industry executives.

Back then, the machinery was deployed to serve entertainment executives who wanted harsher copyright enforcement. Now it’s being deployed to serve Mandelson himself.

There’s a broader pattern here that goes beyond one UK politician. The Epstein revelations have been remarkable not just for what they’ve revealed about who associated with him, but for how consistently the response from the powerful has been to deflect, deny, and deploy every available mechanism to avoid genuine accountability. Some have used their media platforms to try to reshape the narrative. Some have simply refused to comment.

Mandelson is trying to use the press regulatory system itself.

It’s worth noting that The National chose to publish the “confidential – strictly not for publication” memo anyway, explicitly citing the public interest. Good for them. Because if there’s one thing that absolutely serves the public interest, it’s shining a light on attempts by the powerful to use the systems meant to protect the vulnerable as shields for their own accountability.

Mandelson’s representatives say he “does not wish to speak to the media at this time.” That’s his right to request—but no media should have to agree to his terms. Weaponizing press regulation to create a cone of silence around questions of obvious public interest is something else entirely. It’s elite impunity dressed up in the language of press ethics.

Filed Under: free speech, harassment, ipso, jeffrey epstein, peter mandelson, press freedom, press regulations, uk

The organisation intends to create roles in software engineering, product, sales, customer success and marketing.

SciLeads, a market-intelligence solutions provider for the global life sciences sector, intends to create 60 new fully remote jobs over the course of the next three years. The company explained that a strong 2025 has set SciLeads up for “major growth as it approaches its 10-year anniversary”.

To meet increasing demand, SciLeads said, it has already expanded its workforce this year and will be welcoming new hires across multiple departments. Jobs are to be created for professionals in areas such as software engineering, product, sales, customer success and marketing.

Established in 2016 by friends Daniel McRitchie, Laura Haldane and James Campbell, SciLeads is headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The company aims to make lead generation and market research simpler and more streamlined.

“2025 was a transformational year for SciLeads,” said McRitchie, the company’s CEO. “We’re continuing to invest in our platform and data so we can deliver even greater value to our customers, and we’re looking forward to welcoming new talent, both here in the UK and across the Atlantic, as we scale globally in 2026.”

Haldane, a co-founder, added: “As a remote company, we’ve an excellent advantage in that we can recruit top talent from anywhere, so it means we not only have the best team but also the flexibility of working on our own terms.” 

There have been a number of key announcements from Northern Irish businesses since the beginning of 2026. 

In late January, Belfast health-tech start-up Eolas Medical announced it had raised $12m in Series A funding to further scale its existing AI functionality within the UK’s National Health Service and continue its plans for international expansion.

Also in January, TeamFeePay, a sports technology start-up based out of Belfast, closed a £9m equity funding round to help expand into new markets and fuel a recruitment drive.

The round was led by YFM Equity Partners, which invested £4.5m, and Investment Fund for Northern Ireland, which contributed £3m, with more funding of £800,000 from Techstart and £700,000 from private investors.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

• Tungsten carbide can now be printed without melting or ruining its strength
• A laser and heated wire soften metal just enough to bond layers
• Avoiding full melting reduces defects that previously blocked metal additive manufacturing

Most people are familiar with 3D printers making plastic parts, toys, or simple tools, but printing metal is far more difficult.

The reason is that metals require extremely high heat and react badly when heated and cooled too quickly.

On Wednesday, xAI took the rare step of publishing a full 45-minute all-hands meeting video on X, making it publicly accessible. Details of the Tuesday night meeting were previously reported by The New York Times, which may have influenced xAI’s decision to post the video online.

The full video reveals significant new details about Musk’s plans for the AI lab, including its product roadmap and its ongoing ties to the X platform.

The most immediate revelation concerned a string of departing employees, which Musk described as layoffs resulting from a changing organizational structure at the company. While reorganizations are common, the breadth of the departures has caused significant confusion, particularly as it has meant the loss of a significant portion of the founding team.

“As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve,” Musk said on X. “This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors.”

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The new organizational system splits xAI into four primary teams: one focused on the Grok chatbot (including voice), another for the app’s coding system, another for the Imagine video generator, and finally a team focused on the Macrohard project, which spans from simple computer use simulation to modeling entire corporations.

“[Macrohard] is able to do anything on a computer that a computer is able to do,” Toby Pohlen, who will lead the project under the new organizational structure, told his colleagues. “There should be rocket engines fully designed by AI.”

The all-hands also featured claims about new usage and revenue figures for xAI and X. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, said X had “just crossed” $1 billion in annual recurring revenue from subscriptions, which he attributed to a marketing push during the holidays.

Techcrunch event

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Additionally, executives said the xAI’s Imagine tool is generating 50 million videos a day, and more than 6 billion images over the past 30 days, according to their internal metrics.

But it’s difficult to separate those figures from the flood of deepfake pornography that overtook X during that same period. The X platform saw engagement skyrocket as AI-generated explicit images became more prevalent, and with an estimated 1.8 million sexualized images generated over just nine days, the image generation figures likely include substantial amounts of this controversial content.

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The most eye-catching part of the presentation came at the end, when Musk reemphasized the importance of space-based data centers despite the technical challenges involved. Musk went still further, envisioning a moon-based factory for AI satellites, including a lunar mass driver — essentially an electromagnetic catapult — to launch them. With such infrastructure, Musk said, one could launch an AI cluster capable of capturing significant portions of the sun’s total energy output or even expanding to other galaxies.

“It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about,” Musk said, “but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.”

Bluesky is rolling out Drafts, one of the most requested features since the social network opened to the public.

It’s a small update, but an important one — and a clear sign the platform is still playing catch-up with more established rivals like X and Threads.

The feature works exactly as you’d expect. When composing a new post, users can now tap the Drafts button in the top-right corner to save unfinished thoughts and return to them later. It’s a basic quality-of-life addition, but one that many users have been asking for since day one.