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Ukrainian Naval Drone Attacked Russian-Flagged LNG Tanker Near Malta, Transportation Ministry Confirms

Officials described the incident as an “act of international terrorism and piracy,” adding that all crewmembers were brought to safety.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Louisiana mayor convicted of raping 16-year-old boy at her home while still in office

Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after July 2024 sexual assault at pool party

The former mayor of a Louisiana city has been convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy during a party at her house while she was still in office.

Misty Roberts, 43, faces sentences of up to 10 and seven years in prison after a jury in the municipality of DeRidder on Tuesday found her guilty of two felonies: carnal knowledge – or statutory rape – of a juvenile as well as indecent behavior with a minor.

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Outgunned review – action-thriller in Angola outstays its welcome

A sadistic child-hunting gang are out for revenge in this film that would be more exciting if its padded runtime was trimmed down

Here is an action-thriller that opens with some zesty Call of Duty-style military violence unfolding in Angola in 2013. A crack unit believe themselves to be in pursuit of poachers who kill protected animals for profit, but these baddies turn out to be all that and more: they kidnap children, burying them underground in coffins with a wifi connection so that they can broadcast live footage of the kids to their parents when they demand ransom money. In short, they’re not very nice people. Elite fighter Jessica (Danica De La Rey Jones) handily wrecks their operation and now, more than a decade later, they’re after revenge.

The revenge takes the form of hunting this resourceful single mother, whom they have finally located despite a change of identity, through the bushland of South Africa, with a motley crew of villains all loosely connected to the enterprise she took down back in the day. Their leader is a relentless sadist called Lazar, who is written as a fairly one-note character – and that note is simply, “he’s evil” – but full credit to actor Richard Lukunku for finding a way to smash that one note over and over again in a manner that’s actually pretty effective in a blunt-force trauma kind of way.

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Chasing Freedom by Simukai Chigudu review – a powerful memoir of postcolonial unease

A historian and exponent of ‘Rhodes must fall’ explores how political liberation doesn’t always bring personal freedom

To be part of Zimbabwe’s “Born Free” generation was to be handed a promise: that your life would no longer be shaped by colonial rule. Skin colour would not dictate the right to vote, learn or work. For Simukai Chigudu, born in 1986, six years after independence, that promise was stamped on him from the very beginning: “Your name, Simukai, it means to stand up,” his father, a former liberation fighter, tells him.

Yet, as Chigudu reflects in his compelling memoir, the end of colonial rule does not mean freedom from historical events and how they reverberate in everyday life. He tells two interlinked stories: Zimbabwe’s brutal war of independence, and his own search for belonging in the years that followed. It is a wide-ranging, restless book, passing through Uganda, Rwanda, Ireland and Mexico City. Yet at its centre are Zimbabwe and Britain, “former colony and metropole”, and the unfinished business between them.

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‘We never imagined this’: the Cypriot village on edge after RAF Akrotiri drone strike

Evacuations near RAF base have reignited debate as Cypriots question the risks of hosting western military sites

All his life, like his parents before him, Giorgos Konstantinos has learned to live next to RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus.

He has dealt with the roar of planes, the comings and going of military vehicles and the war games. But never has Konstantinos, the village’s vice-mayor, witnessed anything quite like the events of the past two days.

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VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Cuba klaagt zes mannen van onderschepte speedboot uit VS aan voor terrorisme

‘Landbouw­wetenschap is meer dan zaadjes in de grond stoppen’

Genetisch gereedschap kan kleine boeren wereldwijd helpen om hun oogsten te verbeteren. Maar hoe organiseer je zulke innovatie?


‘De Romeinen als vredesstichters of beschavingshelden in de Lage Landen? Dat is een pure mythe’

Caesar toonde zich in onze contreien een dictator met genocidale trekjes. En was Augustus wel een vredesstichter? In zijn boek fileert Robert Nouwen vijf eeuwen Romeinse dominantie in de Lage Landen.


Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Groot geldbedrag gevonden bij meerdere invallen, zes aanhoudingen

Zes verdachten zijn dinsdag aangehouden na invallen in panden aan de Oranjeboomstraat en de Laagjesweg in Rotterdam-Zuid. Daarbij werden ook een groot geldbedrag geld, voertuigen en een vuurwapen in beslag genomen.

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

NASA Repairs Artemis 2 Rocket, Continues Eyeing April Moon Launch

NASA is eyeing an April launch window for the upcoming Artemis II mission after it repaired a helium-flow issue on the Space Launch System upper stage rocket. "Work on the rocket and spacecraft will continue in the coming weeks as NASA prepares for rolling the rocket out to the launch pad again later this month ahead of a potential launch in April," NASA wrote in an update on Tuesday. Space.com reports: The repair work occurred inside the huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Artemis 2's SLS and Orion crew capsule have been in the VAB since Feb. 25, when they rolled back to the hangar from KSC's Launch Pad 39B. Just a few days earlier, the Artemis 2 stack successfully completed a wet dress rehearsal, a two-day-long practice run of the procedures leading up to launch.

In the wake of that test, however, NASA noticed an interruption in helium flow in the SLS' upper stage. That was a significant issue, because helium pressurizes the rocket's propellant tanks. Rollback was the only option, as the affected area in the upper stage was not accessible at the pad. The problem took a potential March launch out of play for Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day flight around the moon. It will be the first crewed flight to the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The next Artemis 2 launch window opens in April, with liftoff opportunities on April 1, April 3-6 and April 30. And those options apparently remain in play, thanks to recent work in the VAB. That work centered on a seal in an interface through which helium flows from ground equipment into the SLS upper stage. That seal was obstructing the interface, which is known as a quick disconnect.

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