• If in Argentina squad, Prestianni would miss two games

• Benfica winger banned for racial abuse of Vinícius Júnior

• Prestianni has one Argentina cap, from November

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Fifa confirmed a global ban Wednesday for Gianluca Prestianni that will rule the Benfica winger out of two World Cup games in the United States if he is selected in Argentina’s squad.

Uefa imposed a six-game ban – with three games deferred on probation – on Prestianni two weeks ago for his verbal abuse of Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior in the Champions League. Prestianni covered his mouth with his jersey while using the insult.

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Suit says director used Q’orianka Kilcher’s features without permission after seeing her in advert for The New World

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James Cameron and the Walt Disney Company are facing a lawsuit that claims the director based a key character in the Avatar franchise on a teenage actor without her permission.

The suit, filed by actor Q’orianka Kilcher, alleges that Cameron “extracted her facial features” and “directed his design team” to base the key Avatar character Neytiri on her appearance after seeing her in an LA Times advert for Terrence Malick’s 2005 film The New World. In the film Kilcher, who is Native Peruvian, played Pocahontas among a cast that also included Colin Farrell and Christian Bale.

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A follow-up to 2021’s gory big-screen adaptation of the much-played fighting game might finally show us the tournament but it’s all far too unexciting

A sequel to 2021’s gory, garish big-screen transfer of Mortal Kombat was an inevitability not just because of how the industry typically works and not just because video game IP is arguably hotter than ever right now but because of something far more crucial. While the film – the second attempt to bring the game to the big screen after a dodgy Christopher Lambert-led 1995 version - was a predictable string of fight scenes pieced together with what could generously be described as a plot, it pulled a major, and to some rather shocking, punch. For all of the fight scenes it did show, it stopped short of showing us those one would naturally expect, denying us an actual Mortal Kombat tournament.

It was all laboured scene-setting, one reason why it didn’t connect with many critics and fans, other than it also not being very good, another little problem. The film was part of Warner’s Christopher Nolan-alienating Covid year, when its slate was launched on both the big screen and HBO Max simultaneously, and while it did so-so theatrical numbers, it was the platform’s most-streamed movie of the year, beating out grander titles such as Dune. The sequel is receiving a splashier rollout but its predecessor’s outsized small-screen success wasn’t just a sign of that particular strange time but also where fans might best enjoy these films, on TV late at night, expectations that much lower. Treated like a premium format blockbuster does not do a film like Mortal Kombat II any favours, its junkiness less charming and more distracting, a street fighter suddenly forced to go pay-per-view. While this one might actually be true to its title – there is a Mortal Kombat in Mortal Kombat II - there’s still nowhere near enough here to warrant an Imax screen.

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Demonstrators, angered by Russia’s inclusion at arts festival, shouted ‘Curated by Putin, dead bodies included’

The Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale was forced temporarily to shut its doors on the second day of the preview after the activist group Pussy Riot staged a chaotic protest against the country’s inclusion in the art festival.

Wearing pink balaclavas, the protesters ran towards the Russian pavilion where they gathered outside and lit pink, blue and yellow flares while playing punk music and shouting slogans, including “Blood is Russia’s Art”.

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Defeat to Arsenal could usher in a period of intense change, but whether coach will stick around is an open question

“I love you,” Diego Simeone said, but they only had 14 games to save the season. It was the night before Atlético Madrid faced Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-final first leg in early April and the manager was sitting alongside Antoine Griezmann, unexpectedly opening up in a press conference of all places, emotion and admiration expressed publicly as the end drew near. “A player first, then a friend,” in the coach’s words. Griezmann had recently announced that he was leaving for Orlando City. That was the bad news; the good news was that he would do so at the close of a campaign that could be for ever, that he was still here at all.

The threat had been that Griezmann would go with immediate effect, departing in March before the season was even finished, his American contract already agreed and not easy to change, faced by a reluctance to release him. But how, Atlético’s coach, CEO and teammates insisted, could he leave when the pinnacle of his 10 years at the club unexpectedly still lay ahead? So meetings were held, pressure applied, a solution found that allowed him to stay a little longer and leave a legacy unlike anything else. “The best is still to come,” Griezmann said. “I love you, but if you don’t run, I’m taking you off,” Simeone reminded him. “There are eight league games, one in the cup [final] and, if God wills it, five more Champions League matches.”

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AMD expects its PC CPU shipments to decline in the second half of the year because of the memory supply crisis, but hopes that expanding corporate sales will pick up the slack. During a conference call for the chip firm’s Q1 2026 financial results, chair and CEO Lisa Su outlined the effects the memory shortage is having, even on some of the biggest firms in the industry. “We are planning for second half PC shipments to be lower due to higher memory and component costs,” Su told analysts on the call. “Against this backdrop, we still expect our Client revenue to grow year-over-year and outperform the market, driven by the strength of our Ryzen portfolio and expanding commercial adoption.” As Reg readers will be aware, some types of memory have more than quadrupled in price since last year, due to the makers switching their factory capacity to favor HBM and other AI server memory types, rather than the DRAM and NAND flash used in desktops and laptops. AMD has so far been doing well here, with revenue from its Client and Gaming segment up by 23 percent compared with the same period last year, to $3.6 billion. But this is set to change. “We expect second half demand in gaming to be impacted by higher memory and component costs. We now expect second half gaming revenue to decline more than 20 percent compared to the first half,” commented CFO Jean Hu. As previously reported by The Register, the huge hike in memory costs is having an impact on PC sales, with analyst Gartner estimating that we will see a drop in shipments of more than 10 percent during 2026. Worst affected will be budget models, because vendors won't be able to build them at a price that will satisfy cost-conscious buyers – those looking for systems below about the $500 mark. Conversely, the forecast price rises triggered a buying spree among corporate customers, as organizations bring forward any planned hardware refresh cycles in an effort to purchase before the cost gets too high. This, and increasing adoption of AMD’s Ryzen chips inside corporate PC boxes could explain the firm’s expectation of higher client revenue. Su indicated that AMD was happy with the deal it was getting from its memory vendor partners, and said the company has secured enough supply to meet and exceed its targets. “We are expecting that there could be some demand impact as a result of the memory price increases on things like the PC business in the second half of the year as well as the Gaming business. So we're taking that into account in our overall model,” she said. “And we continue to work closely with the memory providers as well as our customers to ensure that every time we ship a CPU or GPU, then it's paired with the memory on the other side so that we don't have compute that is not being deployed.” “What we're focused on is ensuring that we continue to make good progress on the Commercial business and the premium segments of the market. So we believe that we will continue to grow on a year-over-year basis for the Client business compared to last year,” she said. AMD’s overall revenue for Q1 was $10.25 billion, up roughly 38 percent on the same period last year, which the firm attributed to strong demand for AI infrastructure. ®

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, November 1972

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Wereldwijd leven naar schatting 2,9 miljoen mensen met Multiple Sclerosis (MS), een chronische aandoening waarbij het immuunsysteem de beschermlaag rond zenuwen aantast. Opvallend is dat ongeveer driekwart van de patiënten vrouw is. Waarom deze ziekte vrouwen zoveel vaker treft, is al jaren een raadsel, maar nieuw onderzoek biedt voorzichtig aanknopingspunten.

Wetenschappers van de University of Colorado hebben verschillen gevonden in de samenstelling van hersenvocht bij vrouwen met en zonder MS. Hoewel het onderzoek klein is, slechts zes deelnemers, kan het belangrijke inzichten opleveren in hoe de ziekte zich specifiek bij vrouwen ontwikkelt.

Het onderzoek richtte zich op het zogenoemde cerebrospinale vocht, de heldere vloeistof die de hersenen en het ruggenmerg omringt. Omdat dit vocht direct in contact staat met het centrale zenuwstelsel, kan het veranderingen in de hersenen weerspiegelen. Analyse van dit vocht liet zien dat bij vrouwen met MS 72 eiwitten verhoogd aanwezig waren, terwijl 46 eiwitten juist in lagere concentraties voorkwamen.

Opvallend is dat veel van de verhoogde eiwitten verband houden met immuunactiviteit, zoals de werking van microglia en macrofagen, cellen die betrokken zijn bij het opruimen van schadelijke stoffen en ziekteverwekkers. Tegelijkertijd bleken eiwitten die belangrijk zijn voor de aanmaak en het herstel van zenuwcellen juist afgenomen. Dat wijst erop dat niet alleen het immuunsysteem overactief is, maar ook het herstelvermogen van het zenuwstelsel wordt geremd.

Vaak sekseverschillen bij neurologische ziektes

Volgens endocrinoloog Kimberley Bruce passen deze bevindingen in een breder patroon. “Veel neurologische ziekten vertonen sekseverschillen”, zegt zij. “Door die beter te begrijpen, kunnen we ook de onderliggende mechanismen ontrafelen.”

Een mogelijke verklaring ligt in hormonale factoren. Vrouwen tussen de 30 en 40 jaar, een levensfase waarin hormonale schommelingen optreden door menstruatie en zwangerschap, krijgen drie keer zo vaak de diagnose MS als mannen. In het onderzoek werd onder meer een verhoogd niveau gevonden van een eiwit dat geslachtshormonen bindt, waardoor deze minder beschikbaar zijn voor het lichaam. Dat kan invloed hebben op het immuunsysteem en mogelijk bijdragen aan het ziekteproces.

Toch benadrukken onderzoekers dat het om voorlopige resultaten gaat. De steekproef is klein en de bevindingen moeten nog in grotere studies worden bevestigd. MS is bovendien een complexe aandoening waarbij genetische, omgevings- en immunologische factoren samenkomen. De hoop is dat deze inzichten uiteindelijk leiden tot gerichtere behandelingen, mogelijk zelfs therapieën die specifiek inspelen op sekseverschillen.

Bron: Science Alert

In de jacht op drugscrimineel Jos Leijdekkers wordt zijn familie 'uitgerookt'. Dat betoogden advocaten woensdag in de Rotterdamse rechtbank. Tegen de vader van Bolle Jos werd zeven maanden cel geëist, vanwege een 'klokkie' van 110 duizend euro.