Artist said Man in a Black Scarf was not his but evidence has emerged to show he painted it when a student in Suffolk

An early portrait by Lucian Freud, which the artist denied was his for years, is to be exhibited for the first time after experts proved it was painted by him.

Man in a Black Scarf was created in 1939 by the British artist when he was still a student at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Hadleigh, Suffolk. The sitter is thought to be John Jameson, a friend of Freud’s and scion of the whiskey family.

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It’s natural to focus on breakthroughs, but there are many challenges in Britain and around the world. There is no magic bullet, but there’s room for optimism

Cancer causes nearly one in six deaths worldwide every year, some 10 million all told. That is a stunning number, but it also masks the reality that some cancers are more deadly than others. We have become remarkably good at detecting and treating melanoma and prostate cancer, for example, and today five-year survival rates for those cancers are well over 90% in most rich countries. Others, such as pancreatic cancer, are more difficult. In the UK, just over one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

That is why a new drug for pancreatic cancer, called daraxonrasib and announced at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago at the weekend, has been met with such jubilation. The drug – taken as a pill once a day – doubled the survival time of those enrolled in a 500-person trial, with fewer side effects compared to traditional chemotherapy. The drug works by shutting down a protein, Kras, that causes cancer cells to grow and divide. One longtime cancer researcher reported that she cried reading the results. With so few effective treatments for this cancer available, the drug is likely to be a real game-changer.

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Criticisms revealed in major release of files relating to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to US

• UK politics live – latest updates

Peter Mandelson exchanged WhatsApp messages with a senior cabinet minister criticising Keir Starmer’s lack of “verve” and tendency to buckle under pressure, suggesting the prime minister should behave in a more “Trumpian” fashion.

The former US ambassador said No 10 was “beleaguered and bereft” and that the public were “crying out for leadership”. In another exchange, he described both the advisers and policy coming out of No 10 as “rubbish in, rubbish out”.

McFadden complaining how Labour MPs wanted to raise taxes to pay for welfare.

Starmer’s chief of staff considered setting up an external No 10 unit to circumvent existing staff.

Mandelson venting his annoyance about Ed Miliband and net zero.

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As Israel threatens to bomb Beirut and the US and Iran trade missile strikes, Donald Trump insists it will ‘all work out well in the end’ and urges his critics to ‘sit back and relax’. So are we any closer to a deal? Lucy Hough speaks to diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour.

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• ‘The heat is a challenge but we are prepared already’

• Head coach believes team can go far at tournament

Heat and humidity will be obstacles to overcome but England have full belief in their ability and can go far at the World Cup, Thomas Tuchel has said. The head coach has received help from Team GB, drawing on their Olympic experiences, and other specialists to find solutions for the weather conditions.

Some of Tuchel’s 26-player squad flew from Birmingham to Miami on Monday for a 10-day hot-weather acclimatisation camp. Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze have been given more time to recover after Saturday’s Champions League final and Crystal Palace’s Dean Henderson, who played the Conference League final last week, is also expected to be a later arrival.

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Weer voor Rotterdam ☁️ - 01-06-2026 19:16 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 22.1°C · Bewolkt ☁️ | Min 16.9°C / Max 23.5°C | Kans op neerslag 7%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 16.9°C, Max 23.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 7%, 🧭 1012.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 17.3 km/u (4.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 242°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 20:00: 21.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1012.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.5 km/u (3.2 m/s), richting: → 291°
• 21:00: 20.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1012.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.6 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: → 284°
• 22:00: 19.5°C (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1012.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.3 km/u (2.3 m/s), richting: → 271°
• 23:00: 19.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1012.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.9 km/u (2.2 m/s), richting: ↗ 233°
• 00:00: 19.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1011.5 hPa ↘️ -0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.9 km/u (2.2 m/s), richting: ↗ 208°
• 01:00: 19.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1010.7 hPa ↘️ -0.8 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.2 km/u (2.0 m/s), richting: ↑ 199°
• 02:00: 19.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1010.0 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 6.5 km/u (1.8 m/s), richting: ↑ 199°
• 03:00: 19.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1009.2 hPa ↘️ -0.8 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.9 km/u (2.2 m/s), richting: ↖ 154°
• 04:00: 19.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 2%, 🧭 1008.4 hPa ↘️ -0.8 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.2 km/u (2.0 m/s), richting: ↖ 152°
• 05:00: 19.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 8%, 🧭 1007.8 hPa ↘️ -0.6 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 7.9 km/u (2.2 m/s), richting: ↖ 134°
• 06:00: 19.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 24%, 🧭 1006.8 hPa ↘️ -1.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.0 km/u (2.5 m/s), richting: ↖ 122°
• 07:00: 18.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 45%, 🧭 1006.1 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.6 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ↖ 125°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• dinsdag 02 juni: Min 15.6°C, Max 21.5°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 4.8 mm, Kans op neerslag 52%, 🧭 1005.8 hPa ↘️ -6.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 20.9 km/u (5.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 220°
• woensdag 03 juni: Min 14.4°C, Max 18.4°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 2.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 57%, 🧭 1005.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.5 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 218°
• donderdag 04 juni: Min 12.6°C, Max 18.0°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 11.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 71%, 🧭 999.5 hPa ↘️ -6.1 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 25.9 km/u (7.2 m/s), richting: ↗ 221°
• vrijdag 05 juni: Min 12.2°C, Max 16.0°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 7.9 mm, Kans op neerslag 60%, 🧭 1008.7 hPa ↗️ +9.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 18.5 km/u (5.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 243°
• zaterdag 06 juni: Min 10.9°C, Max 17.3°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 25%, 🧭 1019.8 hPa ↗️ +11.1 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 11.3 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 239°
• zondag 07 juni: Min 12.1°C, Max 19.7°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 20%, 🧭 1021.7 hPa ↗️ +1.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 6.1 km/u (1.7 m/s), richting: ↖ 128°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 19:15): 22.1°C (Bewolkt)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 20.0°C (-2.1°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 8.3 km/u (2.3 m/s), richting: → 276°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 23.0 km/h (6.4 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 56%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1012.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 27.6 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 1.1
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 05:28 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 21:51

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 41 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 5.2 μg/m³
• PM10: 10.7 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo

Amazon has shut down an internal company leaderboard which ranked employees based on how much they used AI tools at work. Amazon’s official announcement said that it ended the leaderboard because it had accomplished its goal of encouraging employees to use AI tools, but multiple Amazon employees told me they suspect the company shut down the leaderboard because it was easily cheated and because it encouraged wasteful and expensive use of AI tools. Some of those employees acknowledged to me they deliberately cheated to climb the leaderboard’s ranks; in one case, an employee said they cheated after being told by management they weren’t using AI enough. 

“The internal reasoning is ‘this leaderboard was to incentivize usage and adoption has reached a point where we've achieved our goal’ [...] but my theory is that management wants to crack down on incentivizing overconsumption,” one Amazon employee, who uses Amazon’s AI coding tool Kiro and finds it useful, told me before Amazon announced the leaderboard shutdown. “I wouldn't say ‘cheating’ is widespread but there are ways to use AI frugally and less frugally, and with the leaderboard there was an incentive to not bother trying to be efficient on token use.”

The Financial Times first reported Amazon’s scrapping of the leaderboard.

“The goal of the personal Kiro dashboard and the PhoneTool awards has been to create awareness about what AI can do to help accelerate development work,” Amazon’s internal announcement about shutting down the leaderboard said. “With so many people inside our organization now well versed into AI and [thousands] of total PhoneTool awards assigned, we believe the project reached its goals [...] Thank you Amazon for making this project a success and happy coding.”

PhoneTool is an internal company registry, and PhoneTool awards are badges employees can display next to their name, kind of like video game achievements. 

“Tokenmaxxing,” the idea held by some tech company executives that if employees are not maximizing their use of AI tools at work they are not being productive enough, has become common in the industry, with some bosses bragging about how they are spending more money on AI tool usage costs than actual human employees. This has resulted in a situation where some employees are running scripts that make it seem like they are using AI tools a lot to game metrics and appease their bosses, but the AI tools are not doing anything productive and are burning money and resources with no benefit to productivity. 

One Amazon employee said they “cheated” their way up Amazon’s internal AI usage leaderboard after they were told in a performance review that they’re not using AI enough at work. They told me it was trivial to do so. I’m not providing exact details of how this employee cheated in order to protect their anonymity, but essentially employees can automatically prompt the AI tools with an endless series of tasks that have nothing to do with their job. 

“Honestly, iterating on that and maximizing the throughput was the most fun I've had at work,” this employee said. “I also do not think I was the only one gaming the system to make the number go up. My manager's tone in that meeting made me think there were some internal discussions about the program driving waste.”

“One of the internal dashboards, called KiroRank, was recently created by a group of employees who wanted to drive awareness for how AI can accelerate work, and was never intended to promote the use of AI for usage's sake,” an Amazon spokesperson told 404 Media in a statement. “The beta dashboard was not a formal or approved tool, and has since been deprecated. We’re focused on AI adoption and sharing best practices to celebrate innovation and operational efficiency gains across the company, and we’re proud of the way our teams are embracing this technology.”

Amazon also said it does not mandate teams to use AI tools or track their usage, but that it does measure token utilization to understand the cost and efficiency patterns. 

The Amazon employees I talked to said that everyone at the company had access to the dashboard. One employee told me that many employee comments on the announcement called on Amazon to bring it back. 

In het Slavische theater waar men leeft van winter tot winter boekten de Russen tot voor kort langzaam maar gestaag (wat) terreinwinst, maar daar kwam de laatste maanden de klad in. Voor de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky misschien een opening tot onderhandelingen: omdat de Russische opmars stokt (volgens Zelensky af te lezen aan een intensivering van het gebruik van langeafstandsraketten) zijn 'ze' mogelijk bereid tot onderhandelingen. De president vestigt zijn hoop daarbij op hulp van Europa: Duitsland, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Frankrijk en mogelijke mediators als Turkije.

Correspondent Joost Bosman van het AD schrijft dat zelfs de Russische oorlogsbloggers beginnen te mopperen over de uitzichtloosheid van de meat grinder, nu Oekraïense drones de bevoorradingslijnen van Rusland richting het front platleggen. "De Z-bloggers zijn tot wanhoop gedreven, verwijten president Vladimir Poetin 'los van de werkelijkheid te staan' en noemen hem openlijk pypa, 'piemeltje' in Russische straattaal." Ook de denktank International Study of War beschrijft logistieke problemen bij de Russen door Oekraïense aanvallen op de transportlijnen. "These strikes have been creating logistics problems for Russian forces throughout southern Ukraine in recent weeks and are now also affecting Russian logistics in occupied Luhansk Oblast." Blyat, problemen! 

Tot slot uw aandacht voor een prachtige en indringende New York Times-reportage van meervoudig Pulitzer Prize-winnaar Tyler Hicks over het leven aan het front. Het handelt over de evacuatie van mensen uit het frontstadje Kostiantynivka, 67.000 inwoners vóór de oorlog tegen een handjevol inwoners nu, waar er door Russische bombardementen geen stroom, gas, water en voedsel meer is. 67.000 people used to live there, now it's a ghost town: wat er van Kostiantynivka over is ziet u in de dronevideo hieronder, opgenomen enkele weken geleden. De foto boven dit topic, uit december 2025, is eveneens genomen Kostiantynivka. Het is de hel. De oorlog is de hel. Tot volgende week.

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Dronedraad

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Het neerhalen van een Shahed / Geran

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Opdat we niet vergeten

Timur Fatkullin is a Ukrainian flying ace who uses his acrobatic flying skills honed before the war to shoot down Russian drones.

When I fly close to the target, I can’t engage because there’s houses or infrastructure underneath. So we keep flying, keeping it in the searchlight, in the spotlight. And we’re not even, because it’s like 200 kilos target and we’re six tons, and it’s black Shahed in the black night. But from my aerobatics, I brought formation flying. You have to be professional, you have to be confident, practice a lot, anticipate a lot, and trust completely each other. There’s no other way. So these skills help enormously, and with this aircraft, we can stay in the air up to 4.5 hours. It’s my devotion, not just to my country, but to aviation. That’s the truth.

As you can see in this video from the NY Times, planes like these shoot the drones down using low-fi techniques: with machine guns mounted in the planes’ doorways.

One of the drone-hunting pilots, who are civilian volunteers: “Standing aside and doing nothing is impossible. For our team, it’s impossible.”

And from a different perspective, here’s a WSJ video profile of a Ukrainian drone pilot:

Tags: drones · Russia · ukraine · war