AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Philips heeft in het eerste kwartaal de winst opgevoerd, ondanks geopolitieke problemen zoals Amerikaanse importheffingen en hoge energieprijzen door de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten. Het zorgtechnologieconcern verkocht meer en profiteerde van eerdere ingrepen om de kosten te verlagen.

De omzet kwam uit op 3,9 miljard euro. Gecorrigeerd voor zaken als wisselkoerseffecten en de verkoop van activiteiten is dat een stijging van 4 procent. Philips wist de winstmarges op te voeren, wat bijdroeg aan een nettowinst van 146 miljoen euro. Een jaar eerder was het resultaat nog 72 miljoen euro.

Philips verkoopt apparatuur voor diagnoses in ziekenhuizen, zoals scanners, en systemen voor zorg op afstand. Daarnaast biedt het Nederlandse bedrijf nog een aantal verzorgingsproducten voor consumenten aan, zoals scheerapparaten en elektrische tandenborstels. Al deze onderdelen groeiden in de eerste drie maanden van het jaar.

Het bedrijf blijft dan ook bij zijn verwachtingen voor het hele jaar. Daarbij rekent Philips onder andere op een omzetgroei tussen de 3 en 4,5 procent.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Nederlandse consumenten hebben in maart meer uitgegeven na de dalingen in de voorgaande twee maanden. Volgens het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) steeg de consumptie met 0,9 procent in vergelijking met een jaar eerder. In januari en februari zakten de consumentenuitgaven nog met respectievelijk 0,5 en 0,3 procent.

Volgens het CBS gingen de uitgaven aan duurzame goederen omhoog. Daarbij werd vooral meer besteed aan auto's, elektrische apparaten en spullen voor de woning. Verder werd meer geld uitgegeven aan vervoer en communicatie, medische diensten en huisvesting.

Aan voedingsmiddelen en overige goederen, zoals energie en motorbrandstoffen, werd juist minder besteed, aldus het CBS. Dat geldt ook voor de bestedingen aan horeca, recreatie en cultuur.

Het bureau meldt verder dat de omstandigheden voor de consumptie in april ongunstiger waren dan in maart. Dat komt vooral doordat consumenten negatiever waren over de financiële situatie in de komende twaalf maanden en de jaar-op-jaarstijging van de beurskoersen kleiner was.

Dear Lazyweb,

For an external USB 5GB+ spinning disk (not SSD), is HFS a better choice than APFS? Assume no weird edge cases like spanning volumes or RAID are involved. It's just a disk.

It is very easy to find either answer, but hard to find one that sounds like it's from someone who knows what they are talking about, and isn't just cargo-culting it or reading from a press release. So show your work.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Moon clam vies for Mollusc of the Year, thanks to CU researcher. A bizarre, perpetually-open clam from Australia is running for Mollusc of the Year, offering scientists a chance to study how unusual animal forms evolve. (University of Colorado Boulder)

Most clams have two-part shells that open and close to protect their soft tissues from predators and the environment. Unlike a typical clam, the moon clams' shells remain apart at nearly 180°, forming a moon-like shape. "I wasn't sure how these animals survive in the ocean, which is a very dangerous place with tons of predators," Li said. "It turns out they live in houses built by other animals." Smaller than a fingernail, moon clams live tucked inside burrows and cracks built by shrimp and sea sponges. They hide in these shelters, feeding on plankton that drifts by. Maintaining a thick hard shell takes a lot of energy, Li said. She suspects that by relying on such a symbiotic relationship with shrimp and sponges, moon clams no longer need to invest as much in building their shells. Instead, the clam seems to have redirected that energy to a different task: sensing the world. Their mantle, the soft flesh that typically lines a clam's shell, extends outward and folds over the shell surface. There are small bumps and tentacle-like structures all over the mantle, and Li said these may act as sensory organs, helping the animal detect changes in its environment through touch or chemical signals.

A history of the social and cultural impact of DH Lawrence’s novel shows how it inspired comedy as well as controversy

Not known for his humour, DH Lawrence thought of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a serious novel about the sacred nature of sex. But some of the activity between Connie and the gamekeeper Mellors is funny, either unintentionally (as in the scene where they garland each other’s naked bodies with flowers) or with a playful recognition of carnal absurdity: his penis is “farcical” and intercourse involves a “ridiculous bouncing of buttocks”. More comic still was the fallout from the book: customs officers seizing banned copies, high court jinks, innumerable skits and cartoons. As Guy Cuthbertson shows in his entertaining book, “It’s not a comic novel as such, but one way or another, it created laughter.”

On a steam railway in Devon, you can ride in a carriage called Lady Chatterley. Boots, blouses, thongs, earrings, pens, postcards and saris also bear her name and there have been endless jokey variations on the title: Lady Chatterley’s Pullover, Lady Chatterley’s Loofah, Lady Loverley’s Chatter and so on. Allusions to the novel turn up everywhere from lonely hearts ads to fancy dress parades. And as John Profumo and David Mellor discovered, if you were caught with your pants down in a sex scandal there’d be jokes about the new moral decrepitude that followed the unbanning of the book.

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Bargains are disappearing and the cost of gadgets such as MacBooks and PS5s is rising as AI competes for memory chips

The end of the cheap laptop, the bargain phone and affordable games consoles may be on the horizon. Not because new models are more hi-tech, but because the cost of computer components has shot up.

Recently, the biggest manufacturers of laptops and phones, including Microsoft, Samsung and Dell, started putting up prices and pulling cheaper models – which is going to make finding budget phones and laptops under £400 much harder.

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Butcher’s shops and dive bars sit side by side in a district where you can swap the touristy beer halls of the city centre for raw creative energy

In the south-west of Munich, Schlachthofviertel is an area in flux; a jarring district that is home to a theatre, a techno club and a controversial active slaughterhouse.

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The Melbourne declaration aims to direct funding and power to those most overlooked and affected by injustice. But for many its promise is a distant one

I first spoke to Shazia Khanum for a report I was writing on adolescent girls in informal jobs. The 16-year-old’s fingers moved swiftly as she talked, rolling bidis – tobacco in tendu leaves tied with string. She told me she rolls about 300 to 500 thin cigarettes daily, earning a little more than £1 on a good day (roughly 250 rupees for 1,000 bidis is the rate).

In the cramped workshop where she works in rural Yarab Nagar, in India’s Karnataka state, dozens of other girls do the same job. There are no toilets or sanitary facilities. When asked how she manages her period, Khanum just pointed to a makeshift curtained space where she changes and reuses cloth rags.

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Sophie Hyde’s semi-autobiographical tale about sexual identity and intergenerational dynamics falls flat, but is buoyed by Colman and Lithgow’s committed performances

Sophie Hyde has directed an earnestly intended but very indulgent film, somewhere between autobiography and autofiction; it blandly congratulates itself on its sensitivity and cathartic honesty, but is without the spark of her 2019 quarterlifecrisis comedy Animals. When the teen female lead takes soulful photos on a hipstery disposable roll-film camera instead of on a smartphone like anyone else, it is frankly a little bit insufferable. Yet there are focused and committed performances from Olivia Colman and John Lithgow.

Adelaide-based film-maker Hannah (Colman), based on Hyde, goes on a trip to Amsterdam with her smiley husband and non-binary child Frances, played by Hyde’s own child Aud Mason-Hyde; this is to visit Hannah’s charismatic, brilliant and impossibly life-affirming father, Jim (Lithgow), adorably calledJimpa. He is a man who came out as gay to his wife and daughters in the early 70s and left them to live in Amsterdam as a radical lecturer and campaigner on issues such as housing and HIV.

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From images exploring the depths of space and time to a series on life in war-torn Ukraine, this year’s photography festival celebrates 10 years uplifting new artists

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