INGLEWOOD (ANP) - Gianni Infantino heeft gezegd dat de halftime-show bij de finale van het WK voetbal "de meest onvergetelijke show ooit" zal worden. Dat zei de FIFA-voorzitter tegen televisiezender Fox na afloop van de zestiende finale tussen Spanje en Oostenrijk in Inglewood. Volgens Infantino wordt er in de komende dagen nog een speciaal iemand aangekondigd die in de pauze van de eindstrijd op 19 juli in East Rutherford ook in actie zal komen.

Tot dusver hebben Madonna, Shakira en K-popgroep BTS verzekerd dat ze op zullen treden in de rust van de WK-finale. Het is de eerste keer in de geschiedenis van het WK dat er een zogeheten halftime-show zal zijn tijdens de finale. Volgens Infantino overtreft het huidige WK alle verwachtingen. "Dat geldt zowel voor binnen als buiten de lijnen", aldus Infantino.

De Colombiaanse Shakira heeft het officiële nummer Dai Dai speciaal voor het WK voetbal gemaakt, samen met de Nigeriaanse artiest Burna Boy. Ze scoorde in 2010 ook al een grote hit met Waka Waka voor het WK in Zuid-Afrika.

CARACAS (ANP/AFP) - De aardbevingen in Venezuela hebben zeker 2595 mensen het leven gekost. Dat meldde waarnemend president Delcy Rodríguez in een persconferentie, waarin ze verzekerde dat "niemand in massagraven terecht zal komen".

Rodríguez zei ook dat de zoektocht naar overlevenden nog gaande is. De Venezolaanse autoriteiten vermijden de term "vermist". De Verenigde Naties schatten dat er wel 50.000 mensen vermist zouden kunnen zijn.

Volgens satellietbeelden van de NASA zijn door de aardbevingen meer dan 50.000 gebouwen verwoest of beschadigd.

Powered by chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, South Korea is seeing a surge in wealth, but there are questions over who gets to share in the profits

When South Korea’s most high-profile divorce case returned to court last month, the lawyers were arguing not just about the breakdown of a relationship, but also the exact date at which to value shares in one specific company.

The judges’ decision in Seoul could change the value of business tycoon Chey Tae-won’s assets by billions of dollars. The shares were in the holding company behind SK Hynix, the manufacturer of chips powering AI systems around the world.

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As the mercury rises at this year’s World Cup, we asked former Republic of Ireland footballers Jason McAteer and John Aldridge about the infamous match in Orlando that was played in 43 degree heat

“Some of the boys were melting,” says Jason McAteer as he recalls one of the most notorious matches in World Cup history. “Especially Steve Staunton and Tommy Coyne, they really struggled in the heat.”

It was the group stage of the 1994 World Cup and the Republic of Ireland, having just defeated eventual finalists Italy in their opening match, were facing Mexico at the Citrus Bowl in Florida.

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Nearly 3,000 people have been evacuated in south-western France as the country swelters through a record-breaking heatwave. The fire started at a campsite, destroying dozens of mobile homes before spreading to the marina area, where thick, toxic smoke blanketed the boats. The fire broke out in the town of Sainte-Marie-la-Mer and spread to Canet-en-Roussillon on Thursday

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Amazon Web Services will stop accepting new customers for its Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing service, and not even AI can save it. Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing marketplace that allows users to post gigs, and workers to bid for the chance to do them. The service's name references an 18th-century machine that its inventor claimed could play chess - but which was actually operated remotely by a human. AWS launched Mechanical Turk in November 2005 – a time when the cloudy concern focused on giving developers access to the functions of Amazon’s retail operations. The outfit’s now-mainstream infrastructure-as-a-service offerings debuted in 2006. Amazon quickly claimed Mechanical Turk was a hit. The platform was arguably a pioneer as it pre-dated other crowdsourcing services like Freelancer and Fiverr. In 2018, AWS suggested a new reason to use the service: having humans review and annotate data used to train neural networks as part of its SageMaker service. Earlier this week, AWS added the Amazon SageMaker AI – Mechanical Turk service to its list of “Services in Maintenance” – AWS-speak for services it will soon retire. The Mechanical Turk website also added a warning that it will “be closed to new customers, effective July 30, 2026. Existing users will not be impacted by this change.” We checked with Amazon, and the cloud colossus told us that notice means Mechanical Turk will stop accepting jobs for SageMaker and all other tasks. The end of the OG crowdsourcing platform is therefore in sight. Amazon hasn’t explained why it’s decided to retire the Turk, although as is often the case it has developed competing services like SageMaker GroundTruth. AWS also allows integration with third party crowdsourcing services. On a subreddit dedicated to Mechanical Turk, posters suggest the service’s best days are a long way in the past, and that Amazon has been closing workers’ accounts on short notice and without offering detailed explanation for the decision. Shrinking the crowd of crowdsourced workers seems like a fine way to make Mechanical Turk useless for even its most dedicated customers. ®

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date stamped on slide October 1967