Under the Radar New Zealand Wines to Seek Out Now
Only in the 1960s, at the same time Napa Valley in California was beginning its ascent, did New Zealand make it legal to drink wine in restaurants. In the 1970s, the government sponsored a program to transform vineyards, pulling out lackluster hybrid grapes that had been used to make cheap fortified wines, which accounted for the vast proportion of production, and to replace them with vinifera, the species of all the best-known wine grapes.
Still, by 1998, when Napa's cult cabernets were making themselves irresistible to wealthy consumers, only about 10 vineyards existed in Central Otago, a region better known for its access to winter sports in the mountain range known as the Southern Alps.
'Vineyards were met with a degree of incredulity,' said Duncan Forsyth, the proprietor of Mount Edward Winery in Gibbston in Central Otago, who arrived in the region in 1992 to ski and never left. 'There was a disbelief you could grow grapes.'
New Zealand today is best known for its sharp, pungent sauvignon blancs, particularly those from the Marlborough region in the northeastern-most part of the South Island. Those have proven wildly popular around the world, but they are most often mass-produced commodities and, to my mind, a rather limited calling card for a country capable of producing such distinctive wines.
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Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why are universal credit claims at a record high?
As the government reports a record rise in universal credit claimants, we look at the reality behind the figures. Warnings of a record number of universal credit claimants have been widely reported this week. The government's own data indicates that one million more people are claiming universal credit compared to this time last year — adding to its claims that the UK's benefits bill is "unsustainable". In reality, what is behind the increase is significantly more interesting and complex. Let's unpack how the government arrived at this figure — and what the experts say. People are being moved from legacy benefits onto universal credit When universal credit was introduced back in 2013, the government's aim was to simplify the benefits system and transfer every benefit claimant to universal credit. In reality, the process has been a lot more complicated than the government had hoped. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is still transferring some households from older benefits — dubbed legacy benefits — into the universal credit system. According to the government's own figures, between February 2024 and February 2025, a total of approximately 1,747,985 individuals in 1,259,480 households claiming legacy benefits were sent migration notices, notifying them that they would be transferred to universal credit. Of those, around 1.4 million people have moved onto universal credit 'The latest rise in the number of people receiving universal credit is due in part to people being moved across from legacy benefits," Beatrice Orchard, Senior Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the UK's largest foodbank charity, Trussell, told Yahoo News. "When universal credit was set up it was designed to streamline support into one means-tested payment and people are moving from other benefits onto the newer system." Jack Kellam, the head of communications at the Autonomy Institute, echoes this. "From July 2022 around 1.6 million people have claimed UC following a migration notice," he told Yahoo News. "While this clearly doesn't explain all of the current rise, it's a significant amount of people, and we need to keep this in mind when we see figures about growth in universal credit claimants." The TUC's general secretary, Paul Nowak, also believes this is a key factor behind the rise. He told Yahoo News: "The rise in claimants is likely to driven by more people now getting universal credit who would previously have received legacy benefits like job seekers allowance and incapacity benefit." The pension age has risen When the state pension age increases, those who would be claiming their pension earlier are entitled to other state support for longer. Additionally, people who previously would have started receiving the state pension and pension credit must now wait longer before they become eligible for those forms of support As the state pension age in the UK last increased from 65 to 66 for both men and women by October 2020, that knock-on effect will be felt in the system now. The next planned increase — raising the state pension age from 66 to 67 — is scheduled between 2026 and 2028, which is also likely to result in an uptick of claims. "Rising pension age also means that more people are eligible for working-age support for longer," Orchard explained. The cost of living is rising It is clear that so many of us are feeling the pinch due to the rising cost of living — and no-one is feeling that more than lower-income families. If we compare the cost of living to the same period where a record rise in universal credit claims has been measured, the cost of living in the UK has risen by approximately 3.6% in the 12 months from July 2024 to July 2025, according to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). This marks a continued increase in prices, driven mainly by higher costs in food, fuel, and other essential goods and services. The inflation rate remains above the Bank of England's 2% target. Food inflation reached 4.5% in June 2025, and energy and housing costs have also contributed significantly to the rise. It is worth noting that the average wage in the UK increased by approximately 4.6% year-on-year in the three months to June 2025. However, when adjusted for inflation, real earnings increased by only about 0.5%, making the weakest real wage growth since June 2023 — another challenging financial year in recent memory. Social security as a share of GDP is steady If we were to look at this figure in isolation, the experts are keen to point out that social security spending as a share of the UK's GDP is steady. According to the latest available figures displayed in this chart, the largest social security spend is on pensioners, indicating the government's spend on winter fuel payment, state pension and pension credit is more significant. Spending specifically on benefits for working-age adults (excluding health and housing-related support) declined from 2.8% of GDP in 2007-08 to about 1.9% in 2024-25, according to the Resolution Foundation. While total social security spending has moderately increased as a share of GDP, the composition has shifted notably, with reduced spending on general working-age benefits but increased spending on disability-related benefits. 'Spending on working-age social security as a share of GDP has been stable for the past decade, and is forecast to remain so in the years ahead," Orchard added. People in the UK are getting sicker A rise in disability benefits also gets at another factor: people in the UK are getting sicker. "Poverty is one of the leading causes of ill health," Kellam said. "Many have been trapped just above or below the poverty line for many years – bouncing in and out of work, just about keeping their heads above water. "We should not be surprised that an economy beset by low pay and chronic insecurity – alongside the existing issues the UK has in health and social care – has begun to generate a situation in which more and more individuals are too unwell to work, or need to care for others who are too unwell to work." Kellam explained this issue in detail, arguing that the government has not been proactive enough in tackling some of the biggest causes of ill health in the UK, pre and post the Covid-19 pandemic. "Rather than invest in social housing, successive governments have instead opted to use welfare to subsidise rising private rents," he told Yahoo News. "Rather than develop a robust social care system for an increasingly ageing population, governments have chosen to ground the system subsidising unpaid carers, who are then pushed out of employment and into universal credit. "Rather than tackle the explosion of novel forms of exploitative employment relations in recent decades – from bogus self-employment, to zero-hours contracts and algorithmic management – governments have instead topped up the low wages offered by employers. "At root, we have an economy in which, for many, employers do not pay enough, with anywhere near enough security, with very high housing and living costs," he added. Many people claiming universal credit are in work One other less explored factor accounting is the modest but steady increase in people claiming universal credit are in work. In July 2025, there were 2.2 million working people on universal credit, up from 2.1 million a year before. In reality, Trussell thinks that figure could be closer to 2.7 million. 'Work is not providing the reliable route out of hardship we might expect with 2.7 million people in work needing to top up their income with universal credit," Orchard told Yahoo News. "For many people, disabilities, health conditions and care responsibilities are major barriers to work." *Yahoo News has reached out to the DWP for comment.
The Verge
4 minutes ago
- The Verge
I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco
On Thursday, I had dinner with Sam Altman, a few other OpenAI executives, and a small group of reporters in San Francisco. Altman answered our questions for hours. No topic was off limits, and everything, with the exception of what was said over desert, was on the record. It's uncommon to have such an extended, wide-ranging interview with a major tech CEO over a meal. But there's nothing common about the situation Altman finds himself in. ChatGPT has quickly become one of the most widely used, influential products on earth. Now, Altman is plotting an aggressive expansion into consumer hardware, brain-computer interfaces, and social media. He's interested in buying Chrome if the US government forces Google to sell it. Oh, and he wants to raise trillions of dollars to build data centers. But first, he's focused on the response to last week's rollout of GPT-5. About an hour before the dinner started, OpenAI pushed an update to bring back the 'warmth' of 4o, its previous default model for ChatGPT. It was Altman who made the call to quickly bring back 4o as an option for paying subscribers after some protested its disappearance on Reddit and X. 'I think we totally screwed up some things on the rollout,' he said. 'On the other hand, our API traffic doubled in 48 hours and is growing. We're out of GPUs. ChatGPT has been hitting a new high of users every day. A lot of users really do love the model switcher. I think we've learned a lesson about what it means to upgrade a product for hundreds of millions of people in one day.' He pegged the percentage of ChatGPT users who have unhealthy relationships with the product at 'way under 1 percent,' but acknowledged that OpenAI employees are having 'a lot' of meetings about the topic. 'There are the people who actually felt like they had a relationship with ChatGPT, and those people we've been aware of and thinking about. And then there are hundreds of millions of other people who don't have a parasocial relationship with ChatGPT, but did get very used to the fact that it responded to them in a certain way, and would validate certain things, and would be supportive in certain ways.' 'You will definitely see some companies go make Japanese anime sex bots because they think that they've identified something here that works,' he said in a not-so-subtle dig at Grok. 'You will not see us do that. We will continue to work hard at making a useful app, and we will try to let users use it the way they want, but not so much that people who have really fragile mental states get exploited accidentally.' Altman wants ChatGPT to feel as personal as possible but not necessarily play to a specific ideology or political view. 'I don't think our products should be woke. I don't think they should be whatever the opposite of that is, either. I think our product should have a fairly center of the road, middle stance, and then you should be able to push it pretty far. If you're like, 'I want you to be super woke,' it should be super woke. And if you're like, 'I want you to be conservative,' it should reflect you.' ChatGPT has roughly quadrupled its user base in a year and is now reaching over 700 million people each week. 'Pretty soon, billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,' Altman said. 'We're the fifth biggest website in the world right now. I think we're on the clear path to the third.' (That means beating Instagram and Facebook.) 'Then it gets harder. For ChatGPT to be bigger than Google, that's really hard.' For its operation to keep scaling, OpenAI needs a lot more GPUs. This is one of Altman's top priorities. 'You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,' he confidently told the room. 'We have to make these horrible trade-offs right now,' he said. 'We have better models, and we just can't offer them because we don't have the capacity. We have other kinds of new products and services we'd love to offer.' He also thinks we're in an AI bubble. 'When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,' he explained. 'If you look at most of the bubbles in history, like the tech bubble, there was a real thing. Tech was really important. The internet was a really big deal. People got overexcited. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.' He confirmed recent reports that OpenAI is planning to fund a brain-computer interface startup to rival Elon Musk's Neuralink. 'I think neural interfaces are cool ideas to explore. I would like to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it.' Does Fidji Simo joining OpenAI to run 'applications' imply there will be other standalone apps besides ChatGPT? 'Yes, you should expect that from us.' He hinted at his social media ambitions: 'I am interested in whether or not it is possible to build a much cooler kind of social experience with AI.' He also said, 'If Chrome is really going to sell, we should take a look at it.' While Altman has a lot of interests, it's not actually clear that running OpenAI over the long run is one of them. 'I'm not a naturally well-suited person to be a public company CEO,' he said at one point. 'Can you imagine me on an earnings call?' I then asked if he would be CEO in a few years. 'I mean, maybe an AI is in three years. That's a long time.' Here are some other things Altman said: Interesting career moves this week: More to click on: If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal. Thanks for subscribing. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Alex Heath Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Command Line Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All OpenAI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
Forbes
4 minutes ago
- Forbes
Five Great Summer Road Trips In America
Summer is my jam, and yours too - windows down, snacks in hand, tunes blasting. What's not to love? Here are five personally tested scenic routes across America that'll either blow the blues from your soul or help you appreciate the season anew. All are gorgeous. Don't forget to hydrate. 17 Mile Drive, Pebble Beach, California This is wonderful road adjacent to white beaches, tall forests, stunning coastal cliffs, and it's only 17 miles. It's so exclusive that motorcycles are prohibited and there's a $10.25 cash fee per vehicle, although that can be reimbursed if you spend $36 or more at Pebble Beach Resort restaurants. (It's waived completely if you're staying at Casa Palmero, The Inn At Spanish Bay or The Lodge At Pebble Beach.) You'll behold the majesty of the Restless Sea at Point Joe, dwell amongst the gigantic trees at Cocker Grove, stroll the boardwalk above the beach at Spanish Bay, and so much more. A red line's painted on the road; follow it and you won't veer off the course. Historic Route 66 At 2,450 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, Route 66 is the longest trip on this list, but a must for anyone interested in old-school America. Along the way, you'll come across must-see roadside attractions like the world's second-largest rocking chair in Fanning, Missouri, the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, the Wigwam Hotel in San Bernardino, California, and so much more. Also, familiarize yourself with these lyrics: 'If you ever plan to motor west/Take my way/That's the highway that's the best.' Then get thee to Nat 'King' Cole, The Rolling Stones or any number of artists who've recorded 'Route 66' and you'll get the urge. Independence Pass, Colorado Colorado's full of sights most everywhere you drive or motorcycle that'll make you pull over and simply gape at nature's natural wonders. But Independence Pass is Colorado on steroids. It's 32 miles long and the highest paved pass in North America; at the Continental Divide between Aspen and Leadville, you're 12,095 feet above sea level. You can drive Independence Pass in about 45 minutes if need be, but you'll want to take your time and pull over for photos of the Roaring Fork River, groves of trees and majestic, jaw-dropping gorges. There aren't any guardrails and your path is narrow and twisty at times, so follow the speed limit. At the Aspen end, consider lodging at the Limelight, with its huge lobby complete with fireplace for guests and their friends to loiter at their leisure, the magnificent mountains in sight. Their complimentary breakfast is sumptuous and plentiful, and there's an Audi Q7 available for guests' use upon check-in. Palisades Parkway, NJ/NY Beginning at its southern point at the George Washington Bridge, the Palisades parkway is a 38.25 mile 2-lane limited access highway (meaning you won't see commercial trucks) eventually connecting New Jersey to upstate New York. Not only are its north and south roads home to acres of trees with gorgeous colorful leaves in the fall, there are three scenic lookout points along the way, and soon you'll find yourself cruising alongside historic Hudson River. Make your way up to the college town of New Paltz and eat, shop, stroll and experience some of the most vivid, colorful foliage the East coast has to offer. Spend a night at Mohonk Mountain House, whose acres of forest will provide a feast for the eyes and the nose; enjoy their world-class buffet, leisurely pace and many activities for guests if you so choose. The Strait of Juan de Fuca Scenic Byway The Strait of Juan de Fuca Scenic Byway in Washington winds through an ancient, mystical, alive landscape formed millennia ago underneath the ocean, subsequently carved by glaciers and then sprinkled with forests by Mama nature. Starting in the 1800s as a series of trails winging through forests and connecting the logging and fishing communities, the modern world brought roads with it for horses and wagons, the automobile, school buses, and you. Along your way along this 100-plus mile route, you'll find a plethora of parklands, wilderness preserves and national forests as well as hot springs, pristine mountain streams, many waterfalls, temperate rain forests, a large assortment of wildlife, snow capped mountain peaks and beautiful coastal beaches. Though it's possible to travel the byway in as little as four hours, many people end up staying overnight so as to properly absorb and appreciate its many wonders and Shore Drive, Minnesota The North Shore Scenic Drive stretches along the shore from Canal Park in Duluth, Minnesota, through lovely burgs and placid woodlands and onto to the international border at Grand Portage. A few of the highlights you can expect on your north shore scenic drive include unique, agate-studded black and pink cobblestone beaches, three lighthouses, two harbors and many Lake Superior bays, top fishing spots along the scenic north shore drive, historical landmarks and for-real ghost town. There's also a gondola, the Grand Portage National Monument and shops and eateries you won't find anywhere else.
