Vanaf schepen op de Noordzee stegen Russische drones op om kwetsbaarheden rond kritieke infrastructuur in kaart te brengen, stellen de onderzoekers. Europese landen wisten zich er nauwelijks tegen te verweren.

Castles in the sand, Marcel Dzama

How to save someone from drowning

Breathing underwater, Cig Harvey

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn met een gemengd beeld een extra lang weekend ingegaan. Verliezen voor techaandelen drukten op de graadmeters, hoewel nieuwe banencijfers de aandelen van veel andere bedrijven juist hoger zetten.

De breed samengestelde S&P 500 sloot nagenoeg vlak op 7483,24 punten. De door techbedrijven gedomineerde Nasdaq zakte 0,8 procent tot 25.832,67 punten. De Dow-Jonesindex won juist 1,1 procent tot een nieuwe recordstand van 52.900,07 punten.

Beleggers reageerden op het banenrapport van de Amerikaanse overheid, dat wees op een zwakkere groei van het aantal banen in de Verenigde Staten dan verwacht. Aanvankelijk zorgde het voor een winst voor de S&P 500, omdat dit voor de Federal Reserve een reden kan zijn om voorzichtig te zijn met renteverhogingen.

Later drukten met name chipbedrijven op de graadmeter. Zo gingen AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Nvidia en Intel tot 5,5 procent omlaag. Op de Europese en Aziatische beurzen stonden chipfondsen ook al onder druk, na stevige koerswinsten in de afgelopen maanden.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - Een man die wordt verdacht van het beschadigen van de Reflecting Pool in Washington is aangeklaagd voor het vernielen van eigendom, maakte openbaar aanklager Jeanine Pirro donderdag bekend. De 67-jarige David Hearn, een voormalig olympisch kanoër, ontkende eerder met opzet iets kapot gemaakt te hebben.

Het waterbassin werd recent gerenoveerd, wat miljoenen dollars kostte. De blauwe verf liet echter al snel los en het water begon groen te zien van de algen. President Donald Trump gaf de schuld aan "vandalen met een mes".

Hearn zei alleen uit nieuwsgierigheid een deel van de loslatende verf te hebben aangeraakt, maar volgens Pirro heeft hij er "krachtig en agressief" met beide handen aan getrokken. Hearn riskeert hierdoor tien jaar gevangenisstraf, aldus Pirro.

Volgens Amerikaanse media zijn in totaal zeven mensen aangehouden voor het vernielen van de Reflecting Pool. Wie de anderen zijn, is niet bekend.

on the water photography has added a photo to the pool:

AI leads to job losses, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But a new survey of over 21,000 US firms implies the exact opposite: When companies invest in AI, they add positions, but not immediately. According to Ramp, an AI finance biz, and Revelio Labs, an HR biz, companies making a significant financial commitment to AI add jobs at a higher rate than low-intensity adopters. But job gains don't appear until six to 12 months later. One might be tempted to interpret this as the amount of time it takes to assess the resources required to clean up after AI mistakes, but the Ramp study argues that the lag reflects the time required for best practices to filter through organizations. "Firms that adopt AI grow headcount 10.2 percent over the two years following adoption, but these gains are entirely driven by high-intensity adopters," Ramp's report on the subject claims. "Low-intensity adopters see no statistically significant change." High-intensity adopter here means average per-employee AI spending of about $33.67 per month in the first three months of adoption (and rising over time), compared to low-intensity adopters spending just $2.78 per employee. That's far less than the roughly $86,000 in severance and restructuring charges Oracle incurred for each of the 21,000 employees laid off last year as a wage-shedding counterbalance to its AI capex costs. In a social media post, Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp, cautioned that some skepticism is warranted because companies adopting AI are already faster growing. But he insists that the analysis accounts for that by comparing early adopters against firms that haven't adopted yet, where the growth trajectory is assumed to be more similar. "Entry-level headcount grows even faster, 12 percent over two years," said Kharazian. "This is our first evidence that high-AI-adopting firms are hiring different kinds of employees. "We believe they are selecting for a new set of skills, specifically, people who know how to use AI and use it well. Entry-level workers, especially recent graduates and college students, are a natural place to look." That may be the case at the companies surveyed, but other sources suggest that the trend hasn't really improved the lot of those entering the job market. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates in March 2026 was 5.6 percent, compared to 4.3 percent for all workers, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US unemployment rate remained essentially flat since May, when it was 4.3 percent. "Both total nonfarm payroll employment (+57,000) and the unemployment rate (4.2 percent) changed little in June," the Labor Department said. While Ramp's data may suggest some upside to investing in AI, some businesses appear to be having second thoughts, based on concerns about cost and control. In a recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp argued that military and private sector enterprises share similar skepticism about the way frontier model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic do business. Technical customers, Karp said, want "control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their (investment) alpha. They want to know they own the means of production." Karp argues that the AI industry needs to rebuild trust, which will require answers to basic questions like who owns the data, where it is stored, and whether prompts are secure. Karp acknowledges that's a self-interested argument because Palantir is pushing a combination of mobile, application layer, and compute. But he's also correct in identifying an unresolved problem with frontier model providers. Government organizations and enterprises can't afford to be beholden to a capricious service provider, particularly if its AI models may not be available due to government restrictions, if its AI model may refuse to respond to what's asked of it, or if the price becomes excessive. When companies invest in AI, they add a job for model providers – make AI available, controllable, affordable, and worthwhile. That work still needs to be done. ®

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide August 1982

Thomas Hawk posted a photo: