The Seven Layers of Spanish Literacy from Real Fast Spanish. Each level illustrated by a non-native celebrity speaker:
Level 1 - A Few Set Phrases,
Level 2 - Some Back and Forth,
Level 3 - A Basic Conversation,
Level 4 - Complex Conversation,
Level 5 - Conversational Freedom,
Level 6 - Mastery,
Level 7 - Native Passing
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Nederland doet volgende maand mee aan een militaire oefening in Groenland. De oefening maakt deel uit van de NAVO-missie om het Noordpoolgebied beter te verdedigen. Die is opgetuigd om de ruzie tussen de VS en Europa over het strategische gebied bij te leggen.
NAVO-missie Arctic Sentry (Noordpoolschildwacht) moet het hoge noorden beschermen tegen de begerige blikken van Rusland en China. Maar volgens NAVO-diplomaten is zij ook bedoeld om de VS ervan te weerhouden Groenland van NAVO-bondgenoot Denemarken af te pakken, zoals president Donald Trump blijft opperen.
Toen Nederland en andere medestanders van Denemarken op het hoogtepunt van de ruzie met de VS militaire verkenners naar Groenland stuurden, kondigde een boze Trump prompt sancties aan. Die gingen van tafel toen de VS en Denemarken afspraken over de bescherming van Groenland te gaan onderhandelen.
Wie precies namens Nederland deelnemen aan de Arctic Shield-oefening laat Defensie nog in het midden.
UTRECHT (ANP) - Rijkswaterstaat gaat aanvullende maatregelen nemen om het aantal vrachtwagens en touringcars dat over de verzwakte Merwedebrug rijdt terug te dringen. Er worden borden geplaatst bij grensovergangen, boven en langs de weg en bij op- en afritten. Welke tekst er op die borden komt te staan is nog niet duidelijk, zegt een woordvoerder.
Sinds 18 juli is het voor vrachtwagens en touringcars verboden gebruik te maken van de brug, die Zuid-Holland en Noord-Brabant verbindt en waar de A27 overheen gaat.
Het daaropvolgende weekend installeerde RWS camera's om overtreders te registreren. In de eerste week werden er 1118 boetes uitgeschreven, meldde het Centraal Justitieel Incassobureau vrijdag. "Het doel is het aantal vrachtwagens en touringcars naar nul te krijgen", zegt de woordvoerder.
Via de activiteiten op Strava was privé-informatie van Reesink te achterhalen, bijvoorbeeld zijn adres, de stalplaats van zijn camper en wanneer en waar hij op vakantie ging.
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Vanaf maandag is de Algerabrug (N210) tussen Capelle aan den IJssel en Krimpen aan den IJssel dicht. De afsluiting duurt vier weken. Op de A16 en de A27 moet je dit weekeinde rekening houden met werkzaamheden. En er is een belangrijke afsluiting van een deel van de A16 bij Rotterdam.
Christopher Nolan’s film has made the Odyssey a bestselling book again, but a slew of new poets are breaking sales records, and have more in common with the ancient Greek than you might expect
The death of poetry – much anticipated, much prematurely mourned – has been put off again, this time by the Odyssey. Thanks to Christopher Nolan’s film, sales of Homer’s epic rose 1,400% in the weeks around release – and it’s not alone. Poetry collections are once again sailing up the charts: Lucas Jones, Donna Ashworth and Nikita Gill, among others, have all burst forth on to the bestseller lists.
The word bestseller, it must be said, conjures up certain images: a TV tie-in cookbook; a sexy thriller. It does not, generally speaking, imply poetry. Poetry is a genre more often relegated to the adolescent, the academic, or the words inside sentimental birthday cards: either over-emotional or elitist, depending on which poet and which perspective. What it certainly is not is a money-spinner: nobody gets into poetry to make the big bucks. Nobody gets into poetry – not these days, anyway, not since Byron’s day – for the fame or the fortune.
Continue reading...National Trust for Historic Preservation sued last year after Trump administration tore down East Wing
A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project.
Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.
Continue reading...This happily married gen Xer celebrates the fact marriage rates are down. It shows Australians have the freedom and opportunity to make the best decisions for them
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported last month that the marriage rate is declining. As someone who champions marriage, is married and thinks a wedding is lovely, I think it’s great news.
According to the data, the crude rate of registered marriages per 1,000 residents aged 16 and over fell from 5.5 in 2024 to 5.3 in 2025, with the largest falls occurring among the 25-29s and 30-34s.
Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
Continue reading...
N-able has confirmed attackers exploiting an N-central zero-day made it into customer networks, as the vendor pushes out a second mandatory hotfix just days after the first. The security shop published an update on Thursday detailing what happened after attackers exploited CVE-2026-18577, the critical N-central flaw that can hand an unauthenticated attacker administrative access to the remote monitoring and management platform. According to N-able, attackers exploited vulnerable N-central servers remotely, then used the platform's Take Control feature to connect to systems inside the environments being managed through them. Once there, they registered a new Cloudflare Tunnel service to keep their foothold even after being booted from the N-central server – behavior that Huntress had already observed in the wild. N-able has now confirmed that its own investigation found the same activity, and says a "limited number" of customers were affected. It hasn't said how many customers that means, how many downstream systems attackers reached, or what they did once they had established persistent access. N-Able didn’t answer these questions when asked by The Register, instead providing a statement saying it is “proactively expanding protections in response to ongoing monitoring of threat actors as they evolve their attack techniques.” The firm’s limited disclosure comes alongside Hotfix 2, version 2026.3.1.10, which N-able says customers running N-central on-premises must install immediately – including those that already installed the first emergency fix released on August 2. "This is not a duplicate of our previous communication," N-able warned. "Hotfix 2 is required, even if you already applied the earlier hotfix." The company says the new update supersedes Hotfix 1 and adds further hardening measures as it monitors threat actors and watches them "evolve their attack techniques." Exactly what prompted the second round of defenses isn't clear. N-able hasn't said whether attackers found a way around Hotfix 1, and its latest description says the exploited vulnerability affected N-central servers running versions prior to 2026.3.1.7, the first hotfix. Hosted N-central environments have already received the latest mitigations, according to the vendor. N-able first became aware of the attacks on July 31, after its Adlumin managed detection and response service picked up suspicious activity at a customer. Further digging uncovered a zero-day being actively exploited against an N-central server. CVE-2026-18577 was subsequently disclosed, and the first hotfix was released on August 2. CISA added the bug to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and gave US federal agencies until August 6 to fix it – an unusually short three-day deadline reserved for vulnerabilities the agency considers an urgent risk. N-central is particularly attractive territory for attackers because managed service providers use the software to administer large numbers of customer systems from one place. Compromising the management platform can therefore provide a route into machines belonging to the MSP's customers rather than leaving attackers stuck on the original server. Huntress previously described successful exploitation as giving an attacker the same level of N-central access normally reserved for trusted network operations and engineering staff. Its investigation found attackers using that access to launch remote-control sessions against managed endpoints. N-able has now published 10 IP addresses it says were used in the attacks and released a service template that customers can use to hunt for known indicators of compromise on Windows endpoints. The company is warning customers not to take a clean scan as an all-clear, however, saying the tool only checks for indicators identified so far and that more may emerge as its investigation continues. For anyone running N-central on-premises, the immediate instruction is pretty straightforward: install Hotfix 2, even if Hotfix 1 is already in place. ®
