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Spokesperson for Indian Ocean island nation says they will try to recover explorers in next couple of days

Rescuers have located the bodies of four Italian divers deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll in the Maldives, four days after they were reported missing.

Searches had resumed after being suspended following the death of a local military diver during a perilous mission to try to reach them.

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Cannes film festival: Na Hong-jin’s melee of running, chasing and shouting at the angry invaders is uproarious fun, mixing digital work with old-school spectacle

Some uproarious rock’n’roll moviemaking from Korean director Na Hong-jin, a sci-fi action thriller mixing digital work with old-school analogue entertainment values, serving up a spectacle with cheeky touches of Spielberg, Walter Hill and one other director and movie franchise that it would be unsporting to specify at this stage.

We are in the remote and sleepy retirees’ town of Hope in South Korea near the demilitarised zone (DMZ), where people already constitutionally used to the possibility of war and bloodshed, are astonished to hear of a farm animal killed and mangled – though not for food – by an unidentified beast.

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In hun voorstelling Klei ensceneren theatermaker Boukje Schweigman en beeldend kunstenaar Zoro Feigl een intense ontmoeting tussen mens en klei.

In Papendrecht was onrust over asielopvang bij winkels, de PVV won daar de verkiezingen. En nu? 'De overlast komt van onze eigen jongeren.'

NEW YORK (ANP) - De beurzen in New York zijn met verliezen begonnen aan de nieuwe week. Beleggers bleven voorzichtig door de aanhoudende spanningen in het Midden-Oosten. President Donald Trump waarschuwde dat "de klok tikt" en dat er "niets meer over zal zijn" van Iran als het land niet snel in actie komt. Hij lichtte niet toe welke stappen hij van Iran verwachtte of welke gevolgen dat zou kunnen hebben.

Trump spreekt naar verwachting dinsdag met zijn nationale veiligheidsteam over de militaire opties tegen Iran. Eerder sprak hij de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu over de oorlog. The New York Times en Israëlische media berichtten daarnaast dat de twee landen zich mogelijk opmaken voor een hervatting van de aanvallen op Iran.

De Dow-Jonesindex noteerde kort na opening van de markt 0,1 procent lager op 49.504 punten en de S&P 500-index stond een fractie lager op 7409 punten. Techbeurs Nasdaq ging wel iets omhoog, met 0,1 procent tot 26.233 punten.

STOCKHOLM (ANP) - Het Europees Centrum voor ziektepreventie en -bestrijding (ECDC) gaat experts sturen vanwege de recentste ebola-uitbraak in de Democratische Republiek Congo (DRC). De experts uit de EU gaan op verzoek van het Afrikaanse Centrum voor Ziektebestrijding en Preventie naar hun hoofdkantoor in de Ethiopische hoofdstad Addis Abeba. Ze gaan daar helpen bij coördinatie van de ziektebestrijding.

Tegelijk wordt gekeken of en waar het nodig is om experts van het ECDC eventueel te sturen naar de omgeving van DRC en Oeganda. Zaterdag was er sprake van 246 vermoedelijke besmettingen en 80 vermoedelijke sterftegevallen in de provincie Ituri in de DRC, aldus het EU-ziektecentrum. Ook twee mensen in Oeganda die door DRC hadden gereisd, waren besmet.

"Er blijven aanzienlijke onzekerheden bestaan ​​over de omvang van de verspreiding, en de uitbraak is mogelijk groter dan momenteel wordt vastgesteld", aldus het ECDC. Coördinatie is met name lastig vanwege de al bestaande onveilige situatie in de besmette gebieden.

John Lennon's last interview — just hours before he was shot on December 8, 1980 — has become a documentary directed by Steven Soderbergh, debuting Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a new interview with the Associated Press, Soderbergh defends the film's limited use of AI to visualize concepts from that two-hour interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono:

Soderbergh was resolved to let the audio play. He could finds ways to visualize much of the film, but that still left a large gap where the conversation grows more philosophical. "I worked on everything that could be solved except that for as long as I could," Soderbergh says. "Then there was the inevitable moment of: OK, but really what are we going to do? We just started playing and ran out of time and money. That's where the Meta piece came in." Soderbergh accepted an offer to use Meta's artificial intelligence software to conjure surreal imagery for those sections, which make up about 10% of the film.

When Soderbergh let the news out earlier this year, it prompted an uproar. One of America's leading filmmakers was using AI? In a film about a Beatle, no less? The AI parts (overwhelmingly slammed by critics in Cannes) are fairly banal and don't differ greatly from special effects — there are no deepfakes of Lennon. But they put Soderberg at the forefront of an industrywide debate about the uses of AI in moviemaking. It's a conversation the director, who has made movies on iPhones, is eager to have.

While the film follows John and Yoko's conversation, "I needed a way to follow them in flight visually," Soderbergh says, "or I'm not doing my job." Though when asked about the strong negative reaction, Soderbergh acknowleges that "I knew what was coming. I take it very seriously, and I understand why people have an emotional response to this subject. As I've said before, I feel like I owe people the best version of whatever art I'm trying to make and total transparency about how I'm doing it."
AP: Some fear generative AI will tear apart the film industry. You don't see it as a bogeyman, though.
SODERBERGH: I think most jobs that matter when you're making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech. As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection, then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting. We haven't seen yet someone with a certain amount of creative credibility go full-metal AI on something, and see how people react. I think it's necessary. How do you know where the line is until somebody crosses it?
"I don't think what I'm doing crosses it. Some people may disagree. I don't know where my line is yet. I'm waiting to see...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

​​De Speld Sport Quote van het weekend.

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Microsoft has begun rolling out tweaks to the Windows 11 experience to make good on its promise to "fix" the operating system, starting with the ability to move the taskbar around. The changes are only for Windows Insiders brave enough to be in the Experimental channel, but will be welcomed by customers left baffled by Microsoft's decision to strip features from its OS with Windows 11. The update allows the taskbar to be positioned at the top, bottom, left, or right of the screen, with icon alignment selectable for each position. Flyouts, including those for Start and Search, appear relative to the taskbar location, and it is also possible to "never combine" taskbar buttons, meaning each app window appears as a separate labeled button. Shifting the taskbar to the side opens up additional screen space at the bottom – which is handy for editing code or writing lengthy pieces complaining about Microsoft's approach to product quality. It's a good start, but it isn't all there yet. This is the Experimental channel after all. However, some omissions, such as auto-hide (which isn't yet supported in alternate positions) and Search boxes being just a search icon, are irritating. Microsoft is also pondering different taskbar positions per monitor and drag-and-drop, but wrote: "Our focus is to deliver the core functionality you need while keeping the experience simple, predictable." A cynic might suggest the company takes the same approach to testing its security updates. Other improvements include the ability to shrink the taskbar with smaller buttons, something that will be welcomed by users running on smaller screens where every pixel matters, and more control over the Start menu. Currently, the size of the Start menu is decided by Windows. The update means users can choose Small or Large themselves, and those choices will remain across displays. Microsoft is also simplifying control over the Start menu sections and recommendations, and adding the option to hide a user's profile picture – useful for those presentation moments when having something personal pop up unbidden might not suit the audience. The update will receive more polishing before reaching production – there are still some howlers, such as notifications, that seem to completely ignore the taskbar's position. But this is more of a preview than anything else at this stage, and an opportunity for enthusiasts to file feedback on the direction of travel. However, there is also the nagging feeling that Microsoft had all this in earlier versions of Windows, and it's taken half a decade for the company to reinvent what was working before. Windows Design Director Diego Baca explained: "The taskbar was modernized during Windows 11 to support better animations, more states, and several other features. So we could not reuse that old code." That "old code" should, coupled with user feedback, have given Microsoft a starting point for the Windows 11 user interface, which it chose to ignore. Now, as Windows 12 lurks in the shadows, Microsoft is reimplementing functionality that users have missed from previous versions. Better late than never. ®