(Nettwerk)
The quartet edge away from dream pop with louder guitars and bolder intentions – but their reinvention is more gradual than radical

Yumi Zouma are breaking up with dream pop. After a decade together, the New Zealand four-piece have honed an airy, lush, lightly melancholic sound – but now they want change. “More extreme everything, more boldness,” guitarist Charlie Ryder has said of fifth record No Love Lost to Kindness, written during the band’s “most friction-filled creative period” to date. While it’s true that their latest singles are faster, louder and more distorted, these bright, pretty tracks will rattle only their longest-serving fans.

Bashville on the Sugar locks eyes with an ex on the subway and rushes with Olivia Campion’s breathless drumming, while Blister flips the band’s knack for whistleable melodies into pogoing, enjoyably predictable pop punk that professes “venom and rage” but is far more fun than furious. Drag begins as a genuine switch-up, with threatening bass and an uncharacteristically deadpan performance from singer Christie Simpson as she picks apart an ADHD diagnosis, but soon blossoms into billowy, even dreamy, layered vocals and luminous guitar.

In the first part of our series on digital politics, we look at how centrists have lost ground fighting disinformation – when the real battle is over emotion and attention

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

There’s a strange tendency to describe social media as something other people use – those young people on TikTok, that conspiratorial uncle on Facebook, the rightwing trolls on X. In truth, we’re all online now. The number of global social media users surpassed 5 billion in 2024. To put that into perspective there are 8 billion people on the planet.

The internet has totally transformed the ways in which we communicate and share information. First the internet came for print. As free online content began outcompeting subscription newspapers, publishers briefly found new audiences on Facebook, only to see referral traffic plummet after the platform began suppressing posts with external links.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Ahead of the centenary of Davis’s birth, musicians including Terence Blanchard and John Scofield analyse his brilliance: from his soft phrasing and spiritual feel to his raspy cussing and leather outfits

The architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959’s Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to “cool” jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop. Always honing his ear for fresh talent, he turned his bands into incubators for rising artists, providing early starts for the pianists Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, saxophonists Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, and drummers Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette.

With 2026 marking the centenary of Davis’s birth, I asked several of his surviving collaborators to select his greatest recordings and discuss his enduring influence, including the 95-year-old Rollins, who played with Davis in the 1950s; the guitarist John Scofield and the saxophonist Bill Evans, who both played with Davis in his 80s fusion groups; and several contemporary jazz stars.

Four points separate first from eighth in the Ekstraklasa and the aim is to establish Europe’s most interesting league as its sixth biggest

The temperature will be far below zero when Zaglebie Lubin and GKS Katowice restart Poland’s top flight on Friday evening. A bitter new wave of winter is about to hit central and eastern Europe, forecasts suggesting this is only the start. When the surprise Ekstraklasa leaders, Wisla Plock, play Rakow Czestochowa two days later the thermometer may plummet to -12C. It will take serious resolve to make these games happen but, after a break of almost two months, appetites to get back up and running are strong.

Why would they not be? The Polish league is in its best shape for at least 30 years, feeling the benefit of a booming economy that is outperforming most of its European Union peers. Attendances are soaring and its football infrastructure, whose transformation was catalysed by co-hosting Euro 2012, sets standards for much of the continent. Then there is the remarkable way in which this season’s competition is poised. The gap between first and eighth is only four points; even Bruk-Bet Termalica Nieciecza, at the bottom, are only 11 points from the summit.

MELBOURNE (ANP/RTR) - Tennissers Olivia Gadecki en John Peers hebben op de Australian Open de titel in het gemengd dubbel gewonnen. De Australiërs waren vorig jaar ook al de beste in Melbourne en zijn het eerste gemengde duo in 37 jaar dat de titel bij het eerste grandslamtoernooi van het jaar met succes verdedigt.

In een spannende finale waren Gadecki en Peers met 4-6 6-3 10-8 te sterk voor het Franse tweetal Kristina Mladenovic en Manuel Guinard.

Voor de 23-jarige Gadecki betekende het haar tweede grandslamtitel in het gemengd dubbel. De 37-jarige Peers was, naast de twee titels op de Australian Open, in 2022 op de US Open al eens de beste in het gemengd dubbel.

Bij de Olympische Spelen van 2024 in Parijs won Peers goud in het mannendubbel en in 2017 deed hij dat op de Australian Open met de Fin Henri Kontinen.

PARIJS (ANP) - De economie van Frankrijk is in het laatste kwartaal van vorig jaar gegroeid, ondanks de moeizame politieke besluitvorming over de begroting en handelsspanningen met de Verenigde Staten. Het bruto binnenlands product (bbp) van het land steeg 0,2 procent.

Daarmee groeide de Franse economie minder hard dan in het derde kwartaal, toen het bbp met 0,5 procent steeg. In heel 2025 groeide de op een na grootste economie van de Europese Unie met 0,9 procent.

De vertraging in het vierde kwartaal had te maken met een kleinere stijging van de investeringen en een krimp van de voorraden. De uitgaven door consumenten stegen juist harder. Ook droeg buitenlandse handel extra bij aan de economische groei. De export steeg, terwijl de import hard omlaag ging.

De Franse regering heeft geen meerderheid in het parlement, wat het moeilijk maakt hervormingen en bezuinigingen door te voeren. Ondernemersorganisaties waarschuwden dat die politieke instabiliteit drukt op de economie.

60-minute SLA was effectively useless and the contractor admitted it

On Call  Welcome to another instalment of On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of weird and wonderful tech support jobs.…

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