De 81-jarige M. John Harrison, schrijver van sciencefiction, ontvangt ’s werelds invloedrijkste prijs voor Engelstalige romans. Zijn roman gaat over een post-apocalyptisch Engeland, waar de personages ook niet begrijpen wat hen overkomt.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De grote pensioenfondsen in de zorg (PFZW), metaal en techniek (PMT) en bouw (bpfBOUW) verhogen de uitkeringen volgend jaar beperkt, met rond de 0,8 procent. Dat is lang niet genoeg om de hoge inflatie bij te houden. De drie grote fondsen gingen begin dit jaar al over op het nieuwe stelsel en konden de pensioenen daardoor toen respectievelijk met 12, 8 en 21 procent verhogen.

In het nieuwe pensioenstelsel bouwen deelnemers pensioen op in een persoonlijk potje. Het verdelen van de buffers leidde begin dit jaar tot de flinke verhogingen. Door de kleinere verplichte buffers kunnen pensioenen eerder omhoog, maar ook sneller omlaag in slechte tijden.

De beleggings- en renteresultaten van PFZW, PMT en bpfBOUW waren de eerste negen maanden van dit jaar positief, maar twee derde ervan wordt achtergehouden om schokken in de komende jaren op te vangen. Daardoor blijft een beperkte verhoging van rond de 0,8 procent over in alle drie de gevallen, zo maakten de fondsen dinsdag afzonderlijk van elkaar bekend. PFZW verzorgt de pensioenen van ruim 3 miljoen mensen, PMT van 1,3 miljoen en bpfBOUW van zo'n 750.000.

Minder buffers

2026 is over het algemeen een goed beursjaar, maar de gestegen rente zorgt voor negatieve rendementen op onder meer obligaties. De hogere rente leidt er wel weer toe dat de fondsen minder buffers hoeven achter te houden, wat dan weer gunstig is voor de uitkeringen.

"Het is positief dat we de pensioeninkomens per 1 januari 2027 kunnen verhogen. Tegelijkertijd besef ik dat 0,75 procent bescheiden is, zeker gezien de huidige inflatie", reageert directeur John Landman van PFZW. "Ieder jaar gebruiken we een derde van het spreidingsvermogen voor aanpassing van de pensioeninkomens en bewaren we de rest voor volgende jaren. Daarmee beperken we schommelingen. Omdat dit het eerste jaar is, kunnen we nog niet profiteren van drie volledige jaren spreiding", zegt Landman over het verdelen van de rendementen.

Inflatie

Landman verwacht dat PFZW op de lange termijn wel de inflatie kan bijhouden. "Maar dat zal niet ieder jaar lukken. Daarom is onze communicatie wel een hele belangrijke. Daar besteden we veel aandacht aan."

Andere grote fondsen, zoals ambtenarenpensioenfonds ABP en PME voor de metalektro, gaan op 1 januari over op het nieuwe pensioenstelsel. PME rekent op een verhoging met 12,6 procent, ABP gaf nog geen inschatting.

PARIJS (ANP/AFP) - Emmanuel Macron vindt dat de inzet van AI een halt moet worden toegeroepen op het moment dat het een bedreiging vormt voor kinderen. Dat zei de Franse president in een interview met de krant Les Échos.

"Als er een risico is voor kinderen bij bepaalde AI-toepassingen, dan moet het worden verboden", aldus Macron, die daarbij vooral wees op risico's voor de mentale gezondheid van kinderen. De president maakt zich om die reden ook al langere tijd sterk voor een socialmediaverbod voor kinderen.

Dinsdag zal een expertcommissie Macron een reeks aanbevelingen voorleggen over beschermende maatregelen. Macron sorteert vast voor op strengere Europese regelgeving, waarin AI-modellen "eerst worden beoordeeld voordat kinderen ze kunnen gebruiken".

Maandag sprak Macron in een videoconferentie met "een vijftigtal actoren", onder wie regeringsleiders en topmensen uit de AI-sector als Sam Altman (OpenAI) en Dario Amodei (Anthropic). Volgens Macron werden zij het onder meer eens over de noodzaak van onafhankelijke beoordelaars.

President, after talks with Qatari PM, suggests end to war coming ‘fairly soon’ and military escalation not needed

Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “effectively over” as he played down concerns that the US would escalate its military campaign against Tehran after the midterm elections.

During a White House press conference, Trump said that Israel and Gulf allies in the region were well protected from Iran and that an escalation was not needed.

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Armed with an impressive academic record and experience as a rugby fly-half, the teenager is anything but typical

Josh King is talking with pride about how his mother, Michelle, a university lecturer, has almost finished her PhD in sickle cell disease. The Fulham attacking midfielder, who is in the England squad for the Nations League matches against Croatia and Spain this week, mentions that his father, Steve, is a lawyer and says he might have liked to follow in his footsteps if it had not worked out for him on the pitch.

King’s background is not that of a typical footballer. Privately educated at Hampton School in south-west London, he aced his GCSEs, achieving A or A* in his 10 subjects. He went on to study part-time for A-levels in French, maths and psychology, getting grades of A, C and D – pretty impressive, especially when you consider he sat the exams in a hotel suite in Romania in the summer of last year while playing for England at the European Under-19 Championship.

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France has turned up the heat on Iran over destructive cyberattacks targeting refrigeration controllers at more than 700 grocery stores in October, spoiling food and sparking fires. The country vowed to take action using “all available means of response.” The supermarket attacks, which affected Casino, Leclerc, Coopérative U, Metro, Carrefour, and Intermarché groups, started at least 15 fires and caused food losses in the tens of millions of euros, according to a Monday report by France’s Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre (C4). The C4 includes the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, the Directorate General for External Security, the Directorate General for Internal Security, the Directorate General for Armament, and the Cyber Defence Command. “This is an unprecedented campaign in terms of its scale and level of aggressiveness, thus constituting the first cyber offensive campaign carried out purely for the purpose of sabotage on national territory,” France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said in a statement. All signs point to CyberAv3ngers Both the report and the statement attributed the refrigeration controller hacks to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Shahid Kaveh cyber unit. The Shahid Kaveh unit, which French national security officials say is led by Reza Salarvand and Mahdi Lashgarian, is better known by its hacktivist personas, including CyberAv3ngers. This is the same crew suspected of involvement in the July attacks that targeted more than 100 internet-exposed water systems in America. While the US government hasn’t attributed the intrusions to any country or group, private-sector security analysts blamed Iran, and specifically CyberAv3ngers. The IRGC-affiliated hacking crew has been breaking into industrial controllers for years, and in 2023, American national security and law enforcement agencies attributed a series of cyberattacks against "multiple" US water facilities to CyberAv3ngers. “The Iranian cyber threat against French interests is not new,” according to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. “Iran has already carried out several destabilizing acts against us, notably targeting the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2023 and the organization of the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.” Since at least June 2024, the Shahid Kaveh unit has had the ability to scan, access, and control industrial control equipment from Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Rockwell, the French government said in its report. It pins the refrigeration controller hacks on this particular Iranian crew for a couple of reasons. Making the case for attribution First: the infrastructure used to carry out the October supermarket attacks was also used during this timeframe to conduct reconnaissance on Schneider Electric equipment, zeroing in on small- and medium-sized energy and water production units. “The techniques used during these actions are known to have been used by the Shahid Kaveh unit since at least April 2026,” the report says. It also notes that investigators found “traces of Farsi use” in the attack infrastructure. Plus, Iranian media outlet CyberbanNews, which is reportedly linked to the Shahid Kaveh unit, publicized the incidents that occurred late on October 11 and into October 12 extremely quickly: “as early as October 13.” In early November, similar cyberattacks on commercial refrigerators and freezers were reported across Europe, with grocery stores in Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Sweden reporting widespread food losses after miscreants spiked temperatures to as high as 122°F (50°C). Last week, the US federal government urged owners and operators to take security measures to prevent these types of attacks from spreading to America. France fights back The French government, for its part, said that it would “use all available means of response, including within the European Union and alongside its European and international partners, to anticipate, prevent, deter and respond to destabilizing and destructive actions targeting it in cyberspace.” This includes proposing additional EU sanctions against Iranian entities and individuals involved. France also vowed to express “its strongest condemnation of these cyberattacks” to the Iranian ambassador. However, the country didn’t rule out responding with more than just harsh words: “France reserves the right to take any additional measures, public and non-public, deemed necessary and proportionate to respond to these cyberattacks.” ®

France has accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of being behind last month's cyberattacks on fridges and freezers across the country. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the attack was "unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression," adding those who were responsible would be hit with sanctions "at the European level." The BBC reports: The cyber-attack last month saw fridges and freezers in hundreds of supermarkets across France heated up, which spoilt fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros. Then last week, dozens of supermarkets across several other European countries were also impacted by a cyber-attack that targeted fridges and freezers. It is not known if the instances are linked.

Barrot said the attack on France's supermarkets "marks the first large-scale cyber-attack aimed at sabotage on our national territory, and it constitutes a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people." He said the government had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Paris to "lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act." France will take "any other necessary and proportionate measures" to respond to the incident and "deter anyone who might seek to repeat it," Barrot added.

Separately on Monday, the Paris prosecutor said an investigation had been opened into the head of an offensive cyber unit associated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as his two deputies. Laure Beccuau named the unit as Shahid Kaveh, which she said had an affiliation with the electronic and cyber centre of the IRGC. Shahid Kaveh is the name given to a cluster of hackers thought to be directly employed by the Iranian regime. [...] The French government has not said how it reached the conclusion that Iran was responsible, and attribution of cyber attacks is extremely hard as hackers are able to hide their locations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

Son Lux’s newest music video is an atmospheric mini-epic. Last month, the video premiered at MASS MoCA—the piece is a joint commission by the museum and Pioneer Works and made in collaboration with Alex Cook—as an immersive, 17-minute installation titled “Out Into Us (Slow Down),” complementing the release of the band’s ninth studio album.

“In the last decade, social media has created a reality in which music is often eclipsed by visuals, served up in an endless buffet of bite-sized and contextless flavors,” says a statement. For this multimedia work, the artists leaned instead toward deeply felt human experiences, like how long it can take to do or understand something. Portraying a multigenerational family seated around a table and passing the time in one another’s company, the video transports us back at least a century as scenes of a giant dust cloud evoke the Dust Bowl.

Cook conjures tension, atmosphere, and moments of disrupted reality in a slippage of past and present. The Dust Bowl itself was inherently linked to an intense period when homesteaders, dreaming of prosperous lives for themselves, plowed vast swaths of prairie for their farms. In the process, they uprooted native grasses that held the topsoil in place. Then, exacerbated by drought, millions of acres of topsoil eroded completely from the Great Plains’ persistent and powerful winds, sending farms and habitats into ruin.

Taking surprisingly meta turns, the the sound and visuals provoke curiosity, togetherness, hope, and grief. The family passes delicious dishes around the table and works on a puzzle depicting an idealized landscape in the tradition of the Hudson River School—a far cry from their depicted reality, yet a type of historical propaganda that helped entice homesteaders to the plains. These bucolic tableaux and their romantic ideals could even be said to have functioned something like social media does today, as a way to spread information. Instead, Cook and Son Lux confront us—watch to the end—with quite another definition of a screen.

“Sound can create a sanctuary—a space in which we can remember what it feels like to be present in our bodies and lost in our thoughts,” says the band’s guitarist, Rafiq Bhatia. “When you decrease the playback speed of a piece of music, you can really linger in its hidden corners and shadows: passing tensions and moments of release become whole rooms you can step into and stay for a while.”

See more on Cook’s Vimeo.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Son Lux’s Music Video for ‘Out Into Us’ Is an Atmospheric Foray Between Past and Present appeared first on Colossal.