verdict

Opinions are divided on whether dog owners should allow their beloved pets to lick their faces or not – but Springwatch’s Chris Packham has some strong scientific backing for his take

It’s one of those questions that can divide even the closest friends: would you let a dog lick your face? Medical opinions vary.

Professor Graham Roberts, honorary consultant paediatrician in paediatric allergy and respiratory medicine, is quoted in medical journal The Hippocratic Post as saying that that babies brought up in homes with pets are far less likely to suffer from allergies than babies who grow up in pet-free homes. He states: “If you are born into a household where there is a pet, you are less likely to be allergic.”

But others, such as Professor John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology and bacteriology at Queen Mary University of London, is strongly opposed to excessively close contact with dogs.

He points out: “It is not just what is carried in saliva. Dogs spend half of their life with their noses in nasty corners or hovering over dog droppings so their muzzles are full of bacteria, viruses and germs of all sorts.”

But for BBC Springwatch’s Chris Packham, there’s no debate. Speaking on the Oh My Dog podcast, the naturalist told host Jack Dee: “When we cut our finger, what’s the first thing we do? We lick it. And you lick it because there are bacterial fauna in your saliva which have antiseptic and healing properties.”

Similarly, he says, there’s a health benefit to be gained from dogs’ saliva: “In days of old, when they were having medieval battles and doing unspeakable things to one another with swords, there were a lot of wounded people and they would allow the camp dogs to come and lick their wounds. They discovered that if the dog was licking the wound… it would be less less likely to get infected.”

All domestic dogs are ultimately descended from wolves, and Chris says that while a small amount of a dog’s saliva can be good for us, wolves’ saliva has even more healing power: “I’ve been licked by wolves, been kissed by wolves,” he says, “and they have even cleaner, or bacteriologically richer, saliva than than dogs.” They’ve never been treated with antibiotics or other medicines that might compromise their natural state, he says.

Chris adds that when wolves lick each other, it’s part of ensuring the survival of the pack: “When wolves go back to their their den, in order to carry the food which they may have caught many kilometres away, they eat it and swallow it, and partially digest it.

“So when they get back to the den, the pups lick their lips and that stimulates the adult wolves to regurgitate the food.”

“Now obviously,” Chris adds, “dogs have lost that habit – they don’t regurgitate for their young. But that licking is retained into adulthood in dogs because it’s a greeting.”

Similarly, he adds, when dogs eat each other’s poo, there is a valid reason for it. While it might seem disgusting to us – providing support for the opponents of face-licking – this also dates back to wolf behaviour.

“Research has been done recently in California,” Chris explains, “which shows that they will only eat faeces that are between one and two or three days old.”

Chris adds: “It was a relic to wolf behaviour. Because adult wolves will come back and eat all of the faeces in the den area when they’ve got cubs… because it’s a way of reducing parasite load because the eggs of those parasites are in the faeces, and they don’t want their young to get them.

“So that apparently appalling behaviour, because everyone’s nauseated by the fact that their dog eats other dogs’ faeces, that comes from the wolf and it’s about reducing parasites.”

Netflix is dropping a three-part docuseries that revisits Michael Jackson’s 2005 trial in which he was acquitted on charges of child molestation.

“Michael Jackson: The Verdict” drops June 3 and features archival footage and interviews with key players involved in the trial including jurors, figures from both the defense and the prosecution, journalists who were inside the courtroom and other eyewitnesses who saw the events unfold firsthand.

“It has been 20 years since the trial of Michael Jackson in which he was found not guilty. Yet, to this day, controversy still rages,” the filmmakers said. “No cameras were allowed in court, and so the public’s view of the facts at the time were filtered by commentators and presented piecemeal. It was time to take a forensic look at the trial as a whole.

“Anyone interested in the Michael Jackson story should feel this documentary gives them a window into what was largely a closed event and a chance to feel closer to what happened.”

The Santa Barbara Superior Court trial lasted 14 weeks, and the jury, which included eight women and four men, deliberated for more than 30 hours across seven days.

Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony charges: four counts of child molestation, four counts of plying a minor with alcohol in order to molest him, one count of attempted child molestation and one count of conspiracy to hold the boy and his family captive at the Neverland Ranch. He faced more than 20 years in prison.

Produced by Candle True Stories, the production company behind Netflix’s “Untold: The Liver King,” and directed by Nick Green, “Michael Jackson: The Verdict,” comes at a time of renewed interest in the “King of Pop.”

The Jackson-estate-approved biopic “Michael” hit theaters last month, and depicts the origin story of the hitmaker from childhood through his upward trajectory to superstar status in the 1980s. Notably, the movie omitted the slew of allegations that followed Jackson from the ’90s until his death in 2009.

On Monday morning, a jury in Oakland, California, announced its verdict in one of the most-watched tech feuds between billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The nine-member jury handed a decisive victory to Altman, saying Musk had waited too long to bring his claims against the artificial intelligence company and its top executives.

Musk, who cofounded OpenAI as a nonprofit, had filed a $150bn lawsuit against the organisation, Altman and its president, Greg Brockman, accusing them of turning it into a for-profit entity for personal enrichment.

The verdict, however, stopped short of resolving the central question at the heart of the case, whether OpenAI betrayed the nonprofit mission on which it was founded in 2015 as it transformed from a research lab focused on benefitting humanity into one of the world’s most powerful AI companies.

Instead, the case became focused on a procedural issue. After deliberating for less than two hours, the jury unanimously found that the statute of limitations had expired before Musk filed the lawsuit in 2024, meaning jurors concluded he had waited too long to bring his claims under the applicable legal deadline. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the finding and dismissed the case.

The ruling removes a major legal threat for OpenAI at a pivotal moment for the company, which is deepening its commercial partnerships, expanding its relationship with Microsoft and moving towards what could become one of the largest public offerings in Silicon Valley history; while for Musk, the ruling leaves room to argue that the case was lost on timing rather than substance.

Shortly after the verdict, Musk repeated his accusations on X. “Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it!” Musk wrote on X. “Creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America.”

Musk has decided to appeal, ensuring that the increasingly bitter feud between two of Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures is unlikely to end any time soon.

How did Musk and Altman fall out?

Musk and Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Brockman and other researchers at a time when concerns were growing over how AI could reshape society.

The idea, according to testimony and internal discussions presented during the trial, was that the company could focus on building safe AI systems that benefitted humanity rather than prioritising shareholder returns.

Musk and Altman also believed the nonprofit structure would help OpenAI compete with technology giants such as Google by attracting top researchers and positioning the organisation as a mission-driven alternative.

Musk claims he contributed roughly $38m to OpenAI during its early years, but relations between the founders later deteriorated sharply. He resigned from OpenAI’s board in February 2018, officially citing potential conflicts of interest as Tesla became more focused on AI.

But the split deepened after OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary and Microsoft invested heavily in the company. Microsoft has since committed tens of billions of dollars to its partnership with OpenAI, helping transform ChatGPT into one of the defining products of the global AI boom.

Musk became increasingly critical of the company, arguing that OpenAI had moved far beyond the nonprofit vision on which it was founded. In 2023, he launched a rival AI company, xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot, before filing his lawsuit against OpenAI the following year.

Why did the case collapse?

At the centre of the trial was a relatively technical legal question about when Musk became aware that OpenAI was moving towards a profit-driven structure.

Because the lawsuit was filed in 2024, Musk needed to convince jurors that the alleged wrongdoing occurred within the legal time limit for bringing his claims.

Musk argued that his concerns fully crystallised only in 2023, particularly after Microsoft’s big investments into OpenAI’s for-profit arm.

But OpenAI’s lawyers argued that Musk had known for years that the company planned to pursue a commercial structure and raise huge amounts of outside funding.

Evidence presented during the trial showed that discussions about creating a for-profit arm dated back to at least 2017. Jurors also heard testimony that Altman had sent Musk documents in 2018 outlining plans for OpenAI to raise billions of dollars through a for-profit structure.

Ultimately, the jury sided with OpenAI’s argument that Musk could have filed his lawsuit much earlier – and therefore waited too long.

That meant jurors never had to answer the more explosive question at the centre of the case about whether OpenAI had actually betrayed its founding mission.

What did OpenAI argue?

OpenAI maintained throughout the trial that there was never an agreement to remain a nonprofit indefinitely. Its lawyers argued that Musk understood from the beginning that developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence would require extraordinary levels of funding and computing power.

OpenAI also portrayed Musk’s lawsuit as partly motivated by rivalry. By the time the case reached court, Musk’s xAI had emerged as a direct competitor to OpenAI in the race to develop advanced AI systems.

Meanwhile, OpenAI had become one of the most powerful companies in the technology industry, reportedly valued at more than $800bn and moving towards what could eventually become one of the largest public offerings in history.

Lawyers for OpenAI argued that Musk became hostile only after losing influence within the company and watching Altman turn OpenAI into the dominant force in generative AI.

What questions did the trial leave unanswered?

Although the verdict was a clear legal victory for OpenAI, the trial never became the sweeping test case about the future of artificial intelligence that many had expected.

Because the case was resolved on procedural grounds, the court did not answer some of the biggest questions raised by the AI boom: how these systems should be governed, who should benefit economically from them, and whether companies developing increasingly powerful AI tools can still claim to act in the public interest while pursuing enormous commercial growth.

The trial also touched only briefly on broader concerns surrounding AI development, including transparency, labour and the extraction of data used to train AI systems.

Nicole Turner Lee, director of the Centre for Technology Innovation, told Al Jazeera that one of the central problems surrounding AI is that the technology is deeply “extractive”.

“It does undergo theft where people do not consent as to whether or not their information, their image, their voice, their text are actually being extracted,” she said, raising concerns about compensation and consent in AI training systems.

Those issues remained largely outside the scope of the trial due to it ultimately centring on procedural issues.

The ruling, therefore, also removed the possibility of a far more disruptive outcome that could have threatened OpenAI’s corporate structure, its partnership with Microsoft and the wider wave of investment pouring into the AI industry.

But the broader debate over AI’s future is far from settled. With Musk preparing an appeal, the courtroom battle between the two former allies looks set to continue alongside wider questions about how AI should be governed.

Look Mum No Computer will perform in the semi-final on Thursday night, but has already got a place in Saturday’s live grand final

She was parachuted in to take on the role vacated by Scott Mills – now new Eurovision Song Contest presenter Angela Scanlon is backing the UK to do well on Saturday.

The bookies have so far placed our act Look Mum No Computer way down in 18th place, with odds of 250-1 to triumph.

But everything could change after viewers get to see the full staging in Thursday’s semi-final, including some “risky moves” by performer Sam Battle, whose song is a fusion of synths and electronic-bass.

At one point he is rumoured to be standing on a table being carried by a team of four dancers. “There’s something really exciting about an act that feels completely original – and that’s what he brings in spades,” Angela told the Mirror. “Eins, Zwei, Drei has personality, energy, and that slightly unpredictable edge that Eurovision audiences love. If the performance lands the way it promises to, I think it could really connect. And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about – creating a moment people remember.”

The Your Home Made Perfect presenter, 42, is thrilled to be hosting the two semi-finals on BBC1 alongside Rylan Clark this year, describing the event as “the world’s biggest music festival, talent show, and theatrical spectacular all rolled into one.” But she admitted that the complicated voting system, which incorporates votes from national juries as well as viewers at home all over the world, would again “test your emotional resilience”.

One source who has seen the UK’s rehearsal said: “Sam could surprise everyone with his staging. He’s very cool and there are some risky elements with him dancing on top of things. It’s precarious and a bit dangerous.”

On Thursday Look Mum No Computer will take part in the second semi – even though the UK’s place in Saturday’s final is guaranteed. Others performing on the night include former Neighbours star and judge of The Voice Delta Goodrem, for Australia, and ex-Love Islander Antigoni Buxton, who is singing for Cyprus.

Other countries vying to get through the second semi-final include Ukraine, Bulgaria and Denmark.

Rylan, who has been part of the BBC’s Eurovision coverage since 2018, when he took over from Mel Giedroyc, said he loved getting into the commentary box and meeting up with international friends old and new. “There are commentary teams from all over Europe and in that week, you all get to know each other pretty well,” he explained. “After doing it for so long, the commentary box level is one big party, and I love seeing my fellow commentators from other countries.”

Rylan was said to have been “devastated” when Mills lost his job at the BBC in March, because they had become close friends outside of work. Mills was sacked from the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show over personal misconduct relating to “serious sexual offences against a teenage boy”. A police probe which ended in 2019 found insufficient evidence to bring charges.

But he was also informed that he will not work for the BBC again.

Despite this Rylan, 37, has vowed to enjoy himself while in Austria for the ESC. “This year we’re heading to Vienna to have some fun.,” he insisted. “Is there anything that’s not been done? We’ve had butter churning, singing in the rain, and even Bonnie Tyler singing on a mechanical lift. It’s unique. And that’s what Eurovision is all about – the unexpected.”

The current favourite to triumph on Saturday is Finland, with Greece, Denmark, France and Australia also looking strong.

The UK has not won for 29 years, but came close in 2022 when Sam Ryder finished in second place with Space Man, drawing 466 points. Last year’s UK entry Remember Monday came 19 ^th with 88 points and the previous year Olly Alexander finished 18th with 46 points.

– Eurovision Song Contest, BBC1, Thursday 8pm and Saturday 8pm

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NEW YORK — President Trump won’t have to pay an $83-million defamation award to a longtime advice columnist until the U.S. Supreme Court gets a chance to review the case or reject an appeal, according to a court entry Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a request by one of Trump’s lawyers to let the president delay the payment to E. Jean Carroll, though it required that Trump post a $7.4-million bond to cover any additional interest costs, a request Carroll’s attorney had made.

The appeals court late last month refused Trump’s request for a rare meeting of the full 2nd Circuit to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel’s affirmation of the January 2024 verdict.

Afterward, Trump attorney Justin D. Smith asked the 2nd Circuit to stay the effect of its decision upholding the award so that the president would not be forced to pay the judgment before the high court has a chance to consider an appeal.

Smith said last week there was a “fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will find in favor of Trump, who has called Carroll’s claims — first made publicly in 2019 — that she was sexually attacked by Trump in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996, a “made-up scam.”

The $83-million award to Carroll, 82, came from a jury that briefly heard Trump testify and observed his animated behavior for several days.

In upholding the verdict, a 2nd Circuit panel wrote in September 2025 that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them “more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself,” the appeals court said. “In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’ ”

The jury had been instructed to accept the findings of a jury that in May 2023 awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding Trump sexually abused her in the department store and then defamed her after she published her account of it in a 2019 memoir.

Trump is challenging the $83-million award on several grounds, asserting “absolute immunity” for comments he made while president as he disavowed knowing Carroll and attacked her motivations, saying they were politically driven or arose from a desire to promote her memoir.

Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press.