When John Davidson involuntarily shouted racial abuse at Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan it set off two sets of alarm bells that should have been heeded much quicker and better

• Bafta judge quits over ‘utterly unforgivable’ handling of Tourette N-word incident

• BBC producers say they ‘didn’t hear’ N-word slur as ‘working in a truck’

• With N-word incident, Bafta have shot themselves in the foot

If you wanted to write a scabrous, over-the-top satire on liberal attitudes, you could hardly do better than use this weekend’s Bafta ceremony. As the end result of progressive, sensitive intentions, a white man sat in the audience yelling the N-word at two highly respected performers of colour – who were then instantly burdened with expected forgiveness. It would make a great novel from Paul Beatty or film from Spike Lee. And yet, the problem was not just the N-word, but the S-word – sooorrr-eeee. Of which, more in a moment.

Of course, it is complicated. A case of competing sensitivities and the now livewire issue of omissions, snubs and complicity-through-silence.

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The Russo brothers produce a swashbuckling and often gory tale of 19th century buccaneers in the Caribbean

In a recent interview to promote her new film The Bluff, Priyanka Chopra Jonas put her pivot to Hollywood down to feeling “limited” by the Bollywood industry that first made her a star. In the decade since she began focusing on American film roles, it’s been hard to work out exactly what Chopra Jonas was being held back from. Aside from an acclaimed turn in 2021’s Bafta-nominated The White Tiger, the actor and sometime Pitbull collaborator has generally favored mindless, straight-down-the middle entertainment such as the Céline Dion-centered rom-com Love Again and the insipid spy series Citadel. I couldn’t get through the pilot of the latter, but it is Amazon Prime’s second most-watched show of all time.

The Bluff marks a return to Chopra Jonas in action heroine mode, 10 years after her western breakout TV show Quantico. The twist? This time, she is a 19th century pirate. Her character Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden grew up sailing the seven seas, but when we meet her she has long left her swashbuckling ways behind her. She lives an idyllic life on Cayman Brac, settled in a town with conch shell-lined walkways and where her neighbors happily cook up turtle soup for their colonial masters. She can still jerryrig a machete in five seconds flat, but these days it is used to chop down coconuts for her young family. Ercell is anxiously waiting for her husband TH (The Rings of Power’s Ismael Cruz Córdova) to return from sea, not knowing that he has been kidnapped by captain Connor (Star Trek’s Karl Urban), her former mentor and one of the most fearsome pirates of them all.

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Weer voor Rotterdam 🌫️ - 24-02-2026 13:15 CET

In één oogopslag:
• 10.8°C · Mist 🌫️ | Min 9.2°C / Max 12.1°C | Kans op neerslag 24%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 9.2°C, Max 12.1°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 24%, 🧭 1018.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 18.0 km/u (5.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 211°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 14:00: 11.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1019.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.1 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 216°
• 15:00: 11.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1018.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 216°
• 16:00: 11.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.8 km/u (3.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 213°
• 17:00: 11.4°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.3 km/u (2.3 m/s), richting: ↗ 210°
• 18:00: 11.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↑ 197°
• 19:00: 11.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.4 km/u (2.6 m/s), richting: ↑ 172°
• 20:00: 11.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.7 km/u (2.7 m/s), richting: ↑ 164°
• 21:00: 11.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1019.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↑ 165°
• 22:00: 12.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1019.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.9 km/u (3.3 m/s), richting: ↑ 165°
• 23:00: 12.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1019.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.5 km/u (3.2 m/s), richting: ↑ 171°
• 00:00: 12.1°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↑ 169°
• 01:00: 12.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.6 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 12.2 km/u (3.4 m/s), richting: ↑ 170°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• woensdag 25 februari: Min 11.6°C, Max 17.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1018.4 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↑ 167°
• donderdag 26 februari: Min 9.2°C, Max 12.2°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 1%, 🧭 1017.9 hPa ↘️ -0.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.5 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 219°
• vrijdag 27 februari: Min 8.4°C, Max 12.4°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 25%, 🧭 1014.6 hPa ↘️ -3.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 22.8 km/u (6.3 m/s), richting: ↗ 214°
• zaterdag 28 februari: Min 4.8°C, Max 11.1°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.5 mm, Kans op neerslag 8%, 🧭 1022.1 hPa ↗️ +7.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.5 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: → 271°
• zondag 01 maart: Min 3.6°C, Max 12.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 12%, 🧭 1025.1 hPa ↗️ +3.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 15.7 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ↑ 184°
• maandag 02 maart: Min 4.8°C, Max 13.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 3%, 🧭 1017.6 hPa ↘️ -7.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 12.9 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ↑ 163°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 13:15): 10.8°C (Mist)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 9.7°C (-1.1°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: ↗ 231°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 21.6 km/h (6.0 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 98%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1019.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 1.3 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 1.2
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 07:38 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 18:12

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 37 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 11.4 μg/m³
• PM10: 18.2 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

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

KYIV (ANP/AFP) - Het Russische leger boekte in het vierde jaar van de oorlog tegen Oekraïne meer terreinwinst dan in de twee jaar ervoor. Rusland nam nog eens 0,8 procent van het buurland in, maakt persbureau AFP op uit cijfers van een gezaghebbende denktank.

Rusland veroverde sinds 24 februari vorig jaar 4524 vierkante kilometer aan Oekraïens grondgebied, leest AFP in analyses van het Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Dat komt ongeveer overeen met de oppervlakte van Zuid-Holland en Zeeland samen. Oekraïne is een uitgestrekt land en de Russische invasietroepen hebben ook na vier jaar oorlog minder dan 20 procent ervan in handen.

De geboekte terreinwinst is niet veel groter dan die in het derde oorlogsjaar. Het jaar daarvoor verschoof het vele honderden kilometers lange front nauwelijks. De meeste terreinwinst boekte Rusland in de eerste weken nadat het op 24 februari 2022 de frontale aanval op Oekraïne had geopend, maar daarna verzandde de oorlog in een slijtageslag.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Het Openbaar Ministerie heeft dinsdag in hoger beroep vijftien jaar cel en tbs met dwangverpleging geëist tegen de 37-jarige Sander K. voor het verkrachten en doden van Arina Sasina (34) uit Amsterdam. K. sneed het lichaam van de vrouw daarna in stukken. Hij werd opgepakt voordat hij de lichaamsdelen kon laten verdwijnen.

Het slachtoffer, Oekraïense van geboorte, bezocht K. op 22 augustus 2022 in diens woning in IJmuiden voor een betaalde seksafspraak. Drie dagen later werd zij als vermist opgegeven. De politie vond bij een doorzoeking van K.'s woning het in stukken gesneden lichaam op zolder.

Volgens K. is de vrouw gestikt, nadat zij zich vrijwillig met tie-wraps had laten vastbinden op een fitnessbank, als onderdeel van de seks. Het OM gelooft daar niets van; Sasina is tegen haar wil en met geweld vastgebonden en vervolgens verkracht, aldus de advocaat-generaal. Zij is niet gestikt door de tie-wrap om haar hals, betoogde zij. K. heeft de vrouw gewurgd.

De rechtbank legde K. in juli 2024 tien jaar cel en tbs met dwangverpleging op.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De alarmcentrales van de ANWB en Eurocross hebben dit wintersportseizoen voorlopig meer hulpverzoeken gekregen na wintersportongelukken vergeleken met vorig jaar. De hulpdiensten staan Nederlandse wintersporters bij na ongevallen. Beide centrales repatrieerden dit jaar al meer dan tweehonderd onfortuinlijke wintersporters.

De ANWB meldt tot en met de eerste week van de voorjaarsvakantie een stijging van 20 procent in het aantal hulpverzoeken, maar benadrukt dat het gaat om een tussenstand. Volgens een woordvoerster zijn absolute cijfers nog niet te geven, omdat het wintersportseizoen nog bezig is. De bond verwacht volgende week een definitief beeld te kunnen geven.

Eurocross ziet dit seizoen tot en met 22 februari een stijging van 7 procent ten opzichte van dezelfde periode vorig jaar. In de specifieke maanden december en januari was de stijging vergeleken met vorig jaar nog groter: 23 procent. "Dat heeft waarschijnlijk te maken met de sneeuwkwaliteit in die maanden", licht een woordvoerster toe.

Vanillasludge posted a photo:

A surprise appearance in the countryside

Politicians fixate on the global race for technological supremacy between US and China. They debate geopolitical implications of chip exports, latest model releases from each country, and military applications of AI. Someday, they believe, we might see advancements in AI tip the scales in a superpower conflict.

But the most important arms race of the 21st century is already happening elsewhere and, while AI is definitely the weapon of choice, combatants are distributed across dozens of domains.

Academic journals are flooded with AI-generated papers, and are turning to AI to help review submissions. Brazil’s court system started using AI to triage cases, only to face an increasing volume of cases filed with AI help. Open source software developers are being overwhelmed with code contributions from bots. Newspapers, music, social media, education, investigative journalism, hiring, and procurement are all being disrupted by a massive expansion of AI use.

Each of these is an arms race. Adversaries within a system iteratively seeking an edge against their competition by continuously expanding their use of a common technology.

Beneficiaries of these arms races are US mega-corporations capturing wealth from the rest of us at an unprecedented rate. A substantial fraction of global economy has reoriented around AI in just the past few years, and that trend is accelerating. In parallel, this industry’s lobbying interests are quickly becoming the object, rather than the subject, of US government power.

To understand these arms races, let’s look at an example of particular interest to democracies worldwide: how AI is changing the relationship between democratic government and citizens. Interactions that used to happen between people and elected representatives are expanding to a massive scale, with AIs taking the roles that humans once did.

In a notorious example from 2017, US Federal Communications Commission opened a comment platform on the web to get public input on internet regulation. It was quickly flooded with millions of comments fraudulently orchestrated by broadband providers to oppose FCC regulation of their industry. From the other side, a 19-yearold college student responded by submitting millions of comments of his own supporting the regulation. Both sides were using software primitive by the standards of today’s AI.

Nearly a decade later, it is getting harder for citizens to tell when they’re talking to a government bot, or when an online conversation about public policy is just bots talking to bots. When constituents leverage AI to communicate better, faster, and more, it pressures government officials to do the same.

This may sound futuristic, but it’s become a familiar reality in US. Staff in US Congress are using AI to make their constituent email correspondence more efficient. Politicians campaigning for office are adopting AI tools to automate fundraising and voter outreach. By one 2025 estimate, a fifth of public submissions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were already being generated with AI assistance.

People and organizations are adopting AI here because it solves a real problem that has made mass advocacy campaigns ineffective in the past: quantity has been inversely proportional to both quality and relevance. It’s easy for government agencies to dismiss general comments in favour of more specific and actionable ones. That makes it hard for regular people to make their voices heard. Most of us don’t have the time to learn the specifics or to express ourselves in this kind of detail. AI makes that contextualization and personalization easy. And as the volume and length of constituent comments grow, agencies turn to AI to facilitate review and response.

That’s the arms race. People are using AI to submit comments, which requires those on the receiving end to use AI to wade through the comments received. To the extent that one side does attain an advantage, it will likely be temporary. And yet, there is real harm created when one side exploits another in these adversarial systems. Constituents of democracies lose out if their public servants use AI-generated responses to ignore and dismiss their voices rather than to listen to and include them. Scientific enterprise is weakened if fraudulent papers sloppily generated by AI overwhelm legitimate research.

As we write in our new book, Rewiring Democracy, the arms race dynamic is inevitable. Every actor in an adversarial system is incentivized and, in the absence of new regulation in this fast moving space, free to use new technologies to advance its own interests. Yet some of these examples are heartening. They signal that, even if you face an AI being used against you, there’s an opportunity to use the tech for your own benefit.

But, right now, it’s obvious who is benefiting most from AI. A handful of American Big Tech corps and their owners are extracting trillions of dollars from the manufacture of AI chips, development of AI data centers, and operation of so-called ‘frontier’ AI models. Regardless of which side pulls ahead in each arms race scenario, the house always wins. Corporate AI giants profit from the race dynamic itself.

As formidable as the near-monopoly positions of today’s Big Tech giants may seem, people and governments have substantial capability to fight back. Various democracies are resisting this concentration of wealth and power with tools of anti-trust regulation, protections for human rights, and public alternatives to corporate AI. All of us worried about the AI arms race and committed to preserving the interests of our communities and our democracies should think in both these terms: how to use the tech to our own advantage, and how to resist the concentration of power AI is being exploited to create.

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Times of India.