PARIJS (ANP/AFP) - In Frankrijk zijn demonstraties van start gegaan tegen onder meer de stijgende kosten van het levensonderhoud en de bezuinigingen op openbare diensten. Een van de betrokken groepen, de Gele Hesjes, heeft al opgeroepen tot een nieuwe protestdag op 31 oktober.
De politie dreef in Lyon zo'n 150 betogers bij het stadscentrum, waar demonstraties zijn verboden, uiteen met traangas. In Parijs zijn verschillende "verboden voorwerpen" in beslag genomen, maar is de situatie "kalm", aldus de politie. Het Louvre en Musée d'Orsay blijven zaterdag dicht.
De oproep van de Gele Hesjes komt na een wijziging die op het laatste moment is aangebracht aan de route van een vakbondsdemonstratie in Parijs. Ze zeggen volgende week zaterdag te zullen demonstreren "voor het recht om te demonstreren en al onze vrijheden". De mars mag niet meer tussen de pleinen Bastille en Nation lopen, maar moet een alternatieve route volgen aan de zuidoostelijke rand van de stad.
Plunderingen
Vorige week zaterdag vonden ook protesten in Frankrijk plaats. Op meerdere plekken vonden grote rellen en plunderingen plaats. Om dit weekend chaos te voorkomen, zijn de autoriteiten overgegaan op extra veiligheidsmaatregelen. Er worden 70.000 politieagenten en gendarmes ingezet om de orde te bewaren. Daarnaast zijn verschillende demonstraties verboden, wat tot kritiek leidde van mensenrechtenorganisatie Amnesty International.
In Marseille, waar vorige week plunderingen plaatsvonden, staan onder meer gepantserde wagens en een waterkanon klaar. De lokale autoriteiten hebben er demonstraties verboden, maar staan een door een vakbond georganiseerde betoging wel toe. Dit is de enige demonstratie die is toegestaan in het departement Bouches-du-Rhône.
Het KNMI waarschuwt voor zware windstoten in de kustgebieden, het westelijk Waddengebied en de Limburgse heuvels vanaf zaterdagavond tot ten minste zondagochtend. Op die plekken geldt code geel en worden met plaatselijke verschillen windstoten tussen de 75 en de 100 kilometer per uur verwacht.
Sinds vrijdagavond waait het op veel plekken in het land al geregeld flink hard en daardoor is ook stormschade ontstaan, onder meer door het omvallen van bomen op auto's, woningen en op het spoor. Vanaf zaterdagavond zorgt het lagedrukgebied Boelo voor een voortzetting van die harde wind. Het KNMI waarschuwt voor verkeershinder en afbrekende takken. Doordat bomen nog "volop in blad staan" kunnen er veel en ook kleinere takken afbreken, aldus het weerinstituut.
De wind rukt op vanaf het zuiden en trekt op naar het zuidwesten en het westen van het land.
ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Zevenvoudig olympisch turnkampioene Simone Biles (29) is zaterdag te gast bij de eerste dag van de toestelfinales bij de WK turnen in Rotterdam. De Amerikaanse werd vlak voor de finales het podium opgeroepen en gepresenteerd aan het publiek.
Biles greep twee jaar geleden tijdens de Spelen van Parijs drie gouden medailles en turnde sindsdien geen wedstrijd meer. De Amerikaanse heeft nog niet besloten of ze een comeback maakt met het oog op de Olympische Spelen in Los Angeles van 2028. Samen met de Nederlandse turner Casimir Schmidt gaf Biles zaterdagochtend een kinderpersconferentie.
Naast Biles is ook oud-turner Fabian Hambüchen, de olympisch rekstokkampioen van 2016, aanwezig. De Duitser gaat met zijn oud-concurrent en toernooidirecteur Epke Zonderland een aantal 'challenges' doen in de wedstrijdhal.
In Rotterdam is Naomi Visser de enige Nederlandse die in actie komt in de toestelfinales. Visser staat in de brugfinale.
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that invaded our brains, thought fast, swapped coffins, and hit the art gallery.
First, an ancient viral pandemic that afflicted many of our primate relatives—but somehow missed humans—may help explain how we got so smart (relatively speaking). Then: mammal brains eat crow, an upcycled sarcophagus, and a trip to the starry Provençal summer of 1889.
A virus that infected chimpanzees millions of years ago shaped the divergence of human and chimp brain development, shedding light on how our own species came to be more cognitively complex than our closest living relatives, according to a new study.
Retroviruses are infectious agents that can invade the genomes of their hosts and insert copies of their own genetic material, producing long-term evolutionary effects. Researchers have now discovered a family of these endogenous retroviruses called PTERV1—which are abundant in chimpanzees, but absent in humans—that influence brain development.
“Among primates, the human brain stands out as the largest and most complex due in part to an increase in cortical neurons and increase in synaptic connectivity,” said a team led by researchers from Lund University. “With a size roughly three times that of our closest living evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, it has unique cognitive capabilities.”
Sketches of gorilla, chimp, and human skulls. Image: kaiwei zhang
“The underlying genetic divergences responsible for these differences are still poorly understood,” the researchers continued, noting that their new findings “reveal a mechanism by which endogenous retroviral insertions contributed to human-chimpanzee brain divergence.”
The team discovered the mechanism using human and chimpanzee brain organoids, which are miniature clusters of neurons grown from stem cells that can model some aspects of brain development. The results revealed chimpanzee-specific PTERV1 insertions on chromosome 19 that silences a gene called LINC00662. In contrast, this gene is active during human brain development, and affects neuronal maturation, development, and outgrowth.
“These PTERV1 insertions are thought to have originated from infections that occurred in the ancestors of African apes about 5 to 7 million years ago,” said the team. “PTERV1 elements are found in chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas…Notably, the absence of PTERV1 insertions from the human genome suggests that either the human and chimpanzee lineages did not occupy the same habitat at the time or that germline-competent cells of the human ancestor were resistant to this infection.”
“In summary, this study describes how retroviral insertions contributed to the functional divergence of the human and chimpanzee brain, providing a mechanism by which retroviral infections influenced primate brain speciation,” they added.
In other words, early humans appear to have dodged consequential pandemics that widely infected our primate brethren simply because they had a random immunity to it, or roamed different ranges. While retroviruses are far from the only factor in our cognitive development, it’s still eerie to think that our human brain—that brilliant lump you are using to read these words—is shaped by dumb luck.
Speaking of interspecies brain-offs, it seems the birds have got us beat—at least when it comes to snap decisions. Scientists have discovered that carrion crows (Corvus corone) can make ultrafast choices in “approximately 235 milliseconds on average, which is roughly twice as fast as has been observed in monkeys or humans and without sacrificing accuracy,” according to a new study.
Crow acing the test. Image: Andreas Nieder
A pair of researchers observed two crows performing a common discrimination task in which dots on a screen move left, right, up, or down. The crows selected the predominant direction by pecking a target circle on a touchscreen, after which they were rewarded with promptly dispensed treats. The crows performed the task dozens of times at extremely high speeds, achieving an overall choice accuracy of 75 percent (crow 1) and 73 percent (crow 2).
“Having diverged from mammals more than 360 million years ago, birds evolved a distinct nuclear pallium”—a part of the vertebrate forebrain—”that lacks the layered neocortex yet retains key organizational and computational principles characteristic of mammalian brains,” said study authors Philipp Schmidbauer and Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen.
“These findings highlight the extraordinary efficiency of avian decisionmaking circuitry, possibly shaped by evolutionary pressures for rapid visuomotor control,” the team added.
So if anyone ever calls you a birdbrain, the correct response is “thanks.”
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Archaeologists may have finally discovered the mysterious identity of an ancient skeleton buried in a Roman-era sarcophagus that was first unearthed on the grounds of Westminster Abbey more than 200 years ago.
Despite an inscription on the sarcophagus identifying the occupant as Valerius Amandinus—a wealthy Londoner who lived between 300 to 400 AD—the bones likely belong to a medieval monk named Ælfwig, born centuries later in the year 993.
Interior of the sarcophagus, as found upon opening in 2016. Image: Rodwell, Warwick, 2026.
“The burial was of a male, probably in his late forties, and was radiocarbon dated to around the turn of the 11th century,” said study author Rodwell Warwick of Westminster Abbey. “The corpse had been laid in a timber coffin and covered with lime; it was then placed inside the sarcophagus. It is argued that this was the prestigious burial of Abbot Ælfwig.”
The sarcophagus was exhumed and moved to a northern courtyard during King Henry III’s reconstruction of the abbey in the mid-1200s, where it laid for about six centuries. On Easter Monday 1820, the coffin was “wantonly broke by workmen” according to a note from an unknown contemporary archivist. Any grave goods were likely plundered by this crew and the sarcophagus was hastily put back together and reburied with the bones all jumbled up inside. It was then re-discovered in 1869 with a note that the burial “‘had been subjected to violence by a previous examination.”
It turns out anything is recyclable—even sarcophagi. The discovery that this Roman coffin at some point took on another tenant now raises the new question of how the earthly remains of Valerius Amandinus got evicted and where they ultimately wound up.
With its vibrant colors and psychedelic swirls, Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is one of the most beloved and recognizable paintings in art history. For years, experts and admirers have debated whether the mesmerizing skyscape, which van Gogh painted during an asylum stay in Provence, was a fantastical portrayal or if the artist included realistic renderings of astronomical phenomena.
Now, a team has proposed that the celestial elements of the painting match with a specific night—July 22, 1889—when “the waning-crescent Moon, Venus, and the Hyades cluster gather within that narrow frame,” according to a new study. This date conflicts with the conventional timeline of van Gogh painting “The Starry Night” weeks earlier in June.
“The question dividing fantasy from observation remained a matter of qualitative interpretation and was never treated in a physically decidable form,” said researchers led by Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim of Kyung Hee University. “The approach of this study shifts the burden of proof: if the celestial arrangement on the canvas matches a specific dawn sky, that match itself becomes what the imaginative reading must explain.”
The Pepe Silvia meme meets “The Starry Night.” Image: Kim et al., Scientific Reports (2026)
The team’s findings “suggest that the night sky in ‘The Starry Night’ originated from observation of a specific celestial arrangement, and call for reconsidering the June dating,” they continued. “This framework can extend to historical night paintings as a reproducible scientific art history.”
I love a hyper-niche new subfield—let’s call this one “forensic astroartistry.” Regardless of the painting’s exact date of origin, it has inspired wonder and fascination for more than a century—including these new stellaria of long-lost summer nights.
Een gezellig weekendje Parijs met twee vriendinnen verliep voor de Rotterdamse Jade heel anders dan verwacht. Vanuit haar appartement, vlak bij de Place de la République, zag ze hoe demonstraties uitliepen op rellen, vernielingen en plunderingen. De onrust kwam zelfs tot in het gebouw waar ze verbleef. "Ze stonden op de trap. Dat was echt heel intens."
Arsenal hit back! Alessia Russo picks out Georgia Stanway as she advances into the box and the ex-Bayern midfielder guides her shot on target. Lize Kop should probably do better in the Spurs goal – she palmed it into the top corner to make it look better than it was.
What a leap from Tandberg, who is a lifelong Spurs fan. She beat several Arsenal defenders to Victoria Pelova’s corner and Misa didn’t have much chance of stopping the header.
Dom Phillips warned that Jair Bolsonaro would make life more dangerous for reporters and the Amazon rainforest, and that his sons were even more extreme
“Bolso shows all signs of fascism, as do his supporters,” the murdered British journalist Dom Phillips told me before his death. “His sons are all more extreme if anything.”
These words were written in 2018 by the Guardian contributor shortly before the election of the far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil – a prospect that Dom viewed with dread.
Traffic blurs beneath an elevated road near the Kototoi Bridge intersection in Tokyo, Japan. Photographed on July 28, 2026, with a Leica Q3 43 and APO-SUMMICRON 1:2/43 ASPH. lens, using a one-second exposure.
