DEN HAAG (ANP) - Ook klanten van Reaal kunnen definitief geld tegemoetzien als compensatie voor de woekerpolisaffaire. Meer dan 90 procent van de gedupeerden heeft ingestemd met de schikking die organisaties als de Consumentenbond en ConsumentenClaim ruim twee jaar geleden namens hen overeenkwamen. Daarmee kan het uitbetalen beginnen, meldt de Consumentenbond.

"Gelet op het grote aantal deelnemers is het controleren en uitbetalen van de claims een flinke uitdaging, maar we doen er alles aan om dit proces zo snel en soepel mogelijk te laten verlopen", reageert Stef Smit, directeur van ConsumentenClaim. Met de schikking was een bedrag van in ieder geval 70 miljoen euro gemoeid. Per aangemelde consument is dat zeker enkele honderden euro's per polis.

Ook met ASR, Nationale-Nederlanden, Achmea en De Goudse troffen claimorganisaties zo'n schikking als compensatie voor de veel te hoge kosten voor beleggingsverzekeringen vanaf de jaren negentig. Alleen de deelnemers van De Goudse moeten nog stemmen over hun voorstel, de rest ging al akkoord.

Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling book is adapted into an easily digestible, sweet-natured afternoon watch

Every now and then, a strange forgotten chapter of life during Covid will interrupt my thoughts. Remember when we used to fake happy hour merriment on the Houseparty app? Or when Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor made an unwatchably awful film about stealing diamonds from Harrods during lockdown? Or how about when people developed an unhealthy obsession with a Netflix documentary about a man with an unhealthy obsession with an octopus?

The unavoidability of My Octopus Teacher led to everything from a creepy spike in people googling “did octopus teacher sex with octopus” (time-saver: he didn’t) to an unforgivably undeserved Oscar win for best documentary (Collective, you were robbed) and then, while not a direct on-record inspiration, it at least paved the way for the success of Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling novel Remarkably Bright Creatures in 2022. The book, which hinges on the bond between an elderly cleaner and a grumpy octopus, gave those still yearning for more octopus teaching a gentle summer read with no weird questions needing to be asked and now, inevitably, the adaptation lands on Netflix to be filed in the growing “inspiring octopus movie” section.

Many of us struggle to not get sucked into the content machine, even if we simply say: ‘This doesn’t matter’

Last week a video did the rounds of Diego Simeone getting annoyed with Ben White for walking over an enormous Atlético Madrid crest-doormat placed literally in the middle of the tunnel entrance which Ben White had to walk into to get to the room Atlético Madrid had themselves selected for Ben White to get changed in.

Then on Tuesday night, Diego Simeone walked over an enormous Arsenal crest-doormat situated in the middle of the tunnel at the Emirates Stadium to get to the room Arsenal had themselves selected for Diego Simeone and the rest of his Atlético Madrid side to get changed in.

The great Mexican director is in England to pick up a BFI fellowship – and buy a haunted house. He talks gods, ghosts, monsters and almost being destroyed by the Weinsteins

When Guillermo del Toro goes to the cinema, he buys three seats. “I’m an expansive fellow,” he says, occupying one end of the sofa in the library of a London hotel. “Between the popcorn and my elbows and my girth, I need more than one seat. But I also like the feeling of being in company and yet alone. Everyone says how great the cinema is as a collective experience, and I agree. At the same time, I enjoy it the most when it’s not packed. I like being semi-alone.”

Those vacant seats must come in handy, too, if there are any ghosts in the vicinity. Ghosts and Del Toro go way back. The multi-Oscar-winning director was 11 when he first sensed a spectral presence at his family home in Guadalajara, Mexico. He insists this was his late uncle, who, before his death, had promised the young horror buff that he would pop back and tip him off if there were anything on the other side. Del Toro later heard a persistent sighing in his dead uncle’s room – a detail that inspired Santi, the sighing ghost-boy in The Devil’s Backbone, his 2001 horror set during the Spanish civil war. Decades later, when Del Toro was in New Zealand scouting locations for The Hobbit (which he co-wrote), his hotel room was filled with the cacophonous uproar of a murder in full swing, audible in a kind of surround-sound. And though there was no ghost as such when he stayed in an early-19th-century hotel in Aberdeen while filming Frankenstein two years ago, he felt “an oppressive vibe” about which he duly live-tweeted to his two-million-plus followers. Currently, he is looking to buy a haunted house in the UK. Presumably via Frightmove.

The world No 1 lost to Jorden van Foreest, but squeezed into a tie for first and won the blitz playoff

The world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, making a rare return to classical chess this week at the annual TePe Sigeman tournament in Malmö, Sweden, squeezed through to a blitz ­playoff in Thursday’s final round after ­Turkey’s 14-year-old ­talent Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus ­blundered fatally in the late stages after reaching a drawn position.

Carlsen tied on 5/7 with India’s Arjun Erigaisi and won the blitz playoff 2-1. This was the final sudden death game.