APELDOORN (ANP) - In de eerste zes maanden van dit jaar zijn 4,6 procent meer hypotheken afgesloten dan in dezelfde periode een jaar eerder, meldt het Kadaster. Van januari tot en met juni zijn bijna 217.000 nieuwe hypotheken afgesloten, tegenover ruim 207.000 een jaar eerder.

De totale waarde van alle hypotheken was 84,8 miljard euro. Dat is zo'n 8 procent hoger dan in de eerste zes maanden van 2025, maar minder dan het record van 95,2 miljard in de tweede helft van vorig jaar.

De meeste hypotheken worden gebruikt om een woning te kopen. Gemiddeld was de hypotheeksom voor een woning in het afgelopen halfjaar ruim 517.000 euro, zo'n 5 procent hoger dan in dezelfde periode een jaar eerder. Volgens het Kadaster hangt deze stijging samen met de gemiddelde woningprijs, die eveneens minder snel steeg.

Het Kadaster ziet ook dat steeds meer starters op de huizenmarkt een aansluitende starterslening afsluiten bij hun eerste woninghypotheek. Daarbij overbrugt een extra lening het verschil tussen de prijs van de koopwoning en het maximale leenbedrag voor starters. In de eerste zes maanden van 2026 sloot ruim 8 procent van de startende leners zo'n extra lening af. Een jaar eerder was dat nog ruim 6 procent. Deze lening had een gemiddelde waarde van zo'n 37.000 euro.

Koopwoningen worden volgens het Kadaster voor een steeds groter deel met eigen geld betaald. In het eerste halfjaar van dit jaar werden woningen voor 87 procent met een hypotheeklening betaald, tegenover 92 procent in de eerste helft van 2019. Het Kadaster stelt dat hoe duurder een woning is, hoe meer eigen geld eraan wordt besteed. Zo werden woningen met een prijs boven de 1 miljoen euro bijvoorbeeld voor net geen 70 procent met een hypotheek bekostigd.

CANBERRA (ANP) - Australië ontbiedt de Israëlische ambassadeur nadat Israël zei geen verder onderzoek te gaan doen naar de dood van zeven hulpverleners van World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Onder hen was een Australiër.

Volgens Australië bleek al eerder dat de aanvallen op de hulpverleners het resultaat waren van "ernstige schendingen van de IDF-procedures, verkeerde identificatie en fouten in de besluitvorming". Israël zei woensdag echter dat er geen aanwijzingen voor "strafbaar wangedrag" waren gevonden.

"Democratieën streven naar en accepteren hogere standaarden", aldus het Australische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken in een verklaring. Het land zegt diep verontwaardigd te zijn over de conclusie, die "ernstig tekortschiet ten opzichte van de verantwoordelijkheid" die het land verwacht.

Our expert betting writers have picked a four-leg early Bet Builder, including a podium finish, top-six finish and Virtual Safety Car.

Weer voor Rotterdam 🌧️ - 20-08-2026 01:16 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 17.4°C · Matige regen 🌧️ | Min 17.4°C / Max 19.8°C | Kans op neerslag 52%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 17.4°C, Max 19.8°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 3.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 52%, 🧭 1004.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 23.4 km/u (6.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 232°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 17.1°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 2.7 mm, Kans op neerslag 29%, 🧭 1004.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 12.2 km/u (3.4 m/s), richting: ↗ 209°
• 03:00: 16.7°C (Helder) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 38%, 🧭 1004.0 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ↑ 202°
• 04:00: 16.8°C (Helder) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 45%, 🧭 1003.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↑ 200°
• 05:00: 16.9°C (Licht bewolkt) 🌕, Kans op neerslag 49%, 🧭 1003.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 207°
• 06:00: 17.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 43%, 🧭 1003.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 17.6 km/u (4.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 209°
• 07:00: 16.9°C (Licht bewolkt) 🌤️, Kans op neerslag 32%, 🧭 1003.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 17.6 km/u (4.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 210°
• 08:00: 17.3°C (Zonnig) ☀️, Kans op neerslag 31%, 🧭 1004.2 hPa ↗️ +0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 18.4 km/u (5.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 211°
• 09:00: 17.8°C (Zonnig) ☀️, Kans op neerslag 49%, 🧭 1004.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 17.3 km/u (4.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 214°
• 10:00: 18.1°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 77%, 🧭 1004.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 19.1 km/u (5.3 m/s), richting: ↗ 219°
• 11:00: 17.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 98%, 🧭 1004.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 20.5 km/u (5.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 212°
• 12:00: 19.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 100%, 🧭 1004.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 22.0 km/u (6.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 217°
• 13:00: 18.2°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 100%, 🧭 1005.4 hPa ↗️ +0.6 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 20.9 km/u (5.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 220°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• vrijdag 21 augustus: Min 16.7°C, Max 21.7°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 8.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 75%, 🧭 1009.5 hPa ↗️ +4.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 23.4 km/u (6.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 220°
• zaterdag 22 augustus: Min 16.1°C, Max 20.3°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.4 mm, Kans op neerslag 44%, 🧭 1018.3 hPa ↗️ +8.8 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.5 km/u (4.3 m/s), richting: ↘ 298°
• zondag 23 augustus: Min 13.9°C, Max 18.8°C (Matige regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 10.0 mm, Kans op neerslag 41%, 🧭 1024.1 hPa ↗️ +5.8 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↘ 317°
• maandag 24 augustus: Min 13.7°C, Max 19.5°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 16%, 🧭 1019.8 hPa ↘️ -4.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.2 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↓ 340°
• dinsdag 25 augustus: Min 12.8°C, Max 20.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1010.4 hPa ↘️ -9.4 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 17.9 km/u (5.0 m/s), richting: ← 84°
• woensdag 26 augustus: Min 14.7°C, Max 23.9°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 4.4 mm, Kans op neerslag 16%, 🧭 1012.7 hPa ↗️ +2.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.0 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↖ 133°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 17.4°C (Matige regen)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 16.9°C (-0.5°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 12.6 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 209°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 29.9 km/h (8.3 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 86%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1004.7 hPa ↘️ -0.9 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 11.2 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 06:33 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 20:58

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 39 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 9.2 μg/m³
• PM10: 11.7 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

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

Amazon says its Prime Air drone delivery service will expand sixfold to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, including metro areas around Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise. According to Amazon Prime Air vice president David Carbon, the service has already delivered "hundreds of thousands of packages to customers" this year, typically within about an hour. The Verge reports: These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims to quickly deliver packages of up to 5 pounds or less [...]. Amazon reiterated its drone safety features alongside these expansion plans, including Prime Air's "industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system." That's likely an attempt to minimize any concerns raised by the communities where the service is expanding, given these drones have already been scrutinized for crashing into cranes, internet cables, gardens, and an apartment building.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Happy World Photography Day!

It felt right to send this one out today, a day the whole community shows up for, and this issue is packed with proof of that. We’ve got a contest closing tonight (still time!), a shoutout to a great cause, some eclipse photos that’ll stop your scroll, and a few small product updates along the way. Let’s get into it.

Today is World Photography Day and every year we celebrate the day by hosting our popular World Photography Day photo contest! The contest closes tonight but there is still time to get your submissions in and join the party.  This year’s winners will take home a MODE Festival Mystery Box that includes a 3-day VIP Interactive Pass for MODE, a brand new photography festival taking place in Minneapolis, MN Sept. 18th – 20th. Winners will also receive a year of Flickr Pro and have their photos featured at MODE for the community to enjoy. 

We celebrate photography everyday here at Flickr but taking some time out for World Photography Day and shouting out our love and appreciation for this community is something we’ll never pass up. Happy World Photography Day everyone! Join us over in the contest group today to get your submissions in by the end of the day, before the contest closes!

Product Updates

We’ve rolled out a few small design updates here and there on the desk top view and in the iOS app that you’ll start seeing. Nothing major, your workflow and the way you use Flickr on mobile stay exactly the same. Just some visual updates we wanted you to know about ahead of time. We’ll be sure to give you a heads up as new product updates are made so you know what to expect while we continue to make Flickr the best place to be a photographer online. 

Weekly Snapshot, your weekly round up

Have you heard about Weekly Snapshot? Every week, we spotlight some of our favorite shots from the Flickr Social group in a Flickr gallery and on our socials. Flickr Social is our home base for photo sharing, community discussions and Flickr announcements. If you’d like to see your own photos featured, head over to Flickr Social and share some of your favorite shots to the photo pool. You might just find your photos being enjoyed by an awesome photography community and even make some friends along the way. Stay tuned for this week’s Weekly Snapshot, dropping on Thursday, August 20th! 

Tagging your Photos

We recently published a refresher on tagging photos on Flickr. We know that tagging photos is one of the highest value things you can do when uploading your photos. It directly improves your photos’ discoverability, builds photo views and your community. If you’d like to learn about how tags work, tips for mixing broad and specific tags and more, then check out the Flickr blog.

Public Lands. Hand ’em down. Not over. 

 

We’re not the only ones hosting awesome photo contest opportunities this month. Our friends at The Wilderness Society have less than two weeks left for their photo contest celebrating the preservation of Public Lands and we don’t want you to miss a chance at taking home some amazing prizes while also supporting a cause that deserves our attention.

The Wilderness Society has a vision of creating, “A future where people and wild nature flourish together, meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing planet.” We know that photography serves an important role in this vision which is why we’re giving a special shout out to this photo contest opportunity. 

To learn more about them and the contest, ending on August 31st, visit: photocontest.wilderness.org.  

 

 

Solar Power 

Parts of the world were recently treated to a total solar eclipse and it did not disappoint. Last week’s total solar eclipse brought out some incredible shots from our community, from full totality in Greenland and Spain to partial views across Europe and North America. Check out our favorites in this gallery. Thanks to everyone who shared their photos with us.     Visit the gallery here!

That’s a wrap. See you next month!

The Prodigy

Vast

Hercules and Love Affair

Attackers are using AI-generated exploitation scripts to break into internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at water, manufacturing, energy, and other critical facilities, in what five US federal agencies on Wednesday called an “active threat.” In this latest round of intrusions against American critical infrastructure, the attackers use open source industrial automation libraries – specifically snap7.dll/python-snap7 – combined with AI coding assistants. Armed with the open source libraries and AI, the miscreants create custom tools that mimic operational technology (OT) monitoring software and provide read/write access to the PLC devices’ memory, configuration data, and ladder logic programs via the S7comm protocol. “This is not a theoretical risk – it is an active threat,” the feds warned. While the joint alert from the National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Energy (DOE), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t attribute the threats to a particular government or criminal group, Iranian cyber operatives are suspected of being behind recent attacks targeting PLCs at water and wastewater facilities across at least 12 states, including a cyberattack that disrupted more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota in late July. “This appears to be a continuation of the same suite of activity we suspect is affiliated with Iran targeting PLCs,” Cynthia Kaiser, Halcyon Ransomware Research Center SVP, told The Register. “Iran-affiliated actors and adversaries are actively targeting a wide swath of operational technology because these PLCs underpin essential health, safety, and critical infrastructure across society.” National security and infosec experts last week told The Register that while there is no indication that the water-system hackers used AI in their intrusions, they worried that attackers would soon add AI to their arsenals for attacks against critical infrastructure. Now, that threat appears to be here. “What the advisory highlights with regard to AI usage aligns with what we’ve expected: state-sponsored adversaries are leveraging AI across the board for discrete tasks, like code checks and scripting, to scale their operations and move faster,” Kaiser, a former FBI cyber division deputy assistant director, told us on Wednesday. “The advisory reflects the broader reality that threat actors are using AI to increase their efficiency.” Siemens S7 Series PLCs under fire According to the Wednesday security alert, the latest attacks specifically target internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series PLCs across critical manufacturing, energy, water and wastewater, chemical, food and agriculture, and commercial facilities – in other words: most of the critical industries providing goods and services that Americans use in their daily lives. “Additionally, Siemens S7 Series PLCs are used in other sectors, including the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and could be targeted there as well,” the feds warned. The Register reached out to the agencies for additional information about the attacks but did not receive any response to our questions. Attackers use internet-scanning services such as Censys and ZoomEye to find exposed, “poorly protected” PLCs running outdated software or using default passwords – and now they’ve got an AI boost. “Threat actors are using AI assistance to generate exploitation scripts using publicly available information on these Siemens S7 Series PLCs for initial access, credential access, denial of service, and other objectives,” the agencies said. “If these PLCs are exposed to the Internet or insufficiently segmented, then threat actors can exploit various critical and high severity known vulnerabilities in these PLCs.” The use of AI also indicates “an evolution in threat actor capabilities,” reducing the need for advanced technical knowledge about OT, and allowing the attacker to more rapidly develop working industrial control system malware and attack chains, the alert says. “I think that the bigger issue is still how exposed OT environments are,” Benny Czarny, CEO and founder of critical infrastructure security firm Opswat, told The Register in an email. “AI makes it much easier for an attacker to create and modify scripts targeting PLCs, so the barrier to attacking industrial systems continues to fall. But for me the answer is not simply better AI detection.” To mitigate this threat, the feds say critical infrastructure owners and operators should first – immediately – inventory all Siemens S7 Series PLCs in their environment, apply security patches as needed, and make sure no PLCs are accessible from the internet. It's also worth checking for anomalous S7comm behavior, including connections from non-engineering workstations, unusual data block access patterns, or write operations outside change windows, the feds suggest. Sequential IP scanning on port 102 and repeated connection attempts with varying parameters can indicate attackers conducting reconnaissance, and Snap7.dll library usage outside approved workstations may also indicate the presence of intruders on the network – so be sure to use these and the rest of the detection strategies detailed in the government security advisory to hunt for anomalies that may indicate a compromise. In addition to looking for indicators of compromise relevant to these intrusions, Czarny said it's critical to reduce the OT attack surface. “If data only needs to leave an OT network, use a data diode,” he said. “There should be no network path back to the PLC for an attacker to exploit. Yes, AI makes this more urgent. But the real lesson for me is still the same: stop giving attackers a path to the critical system in the first place. And do not rely on antivirus and sandboxes to protect your data flow.” ®