BRUSSEL (ANP/RTR) - Europese luchtvaartmaatschappijen roepen Brussel op noodmaatregelen te nemen om de schade van de oorlog met Iran aan te pakken. De sector kampt met wijdverbreide luchtruimsluitingen en groeiende zorgen over tekorten aan vliegtuigbrandstof.

Volgens een door Reuters ingezien document roept brancheorganisatie Airlines for Europe (A4E) de EU op tot een pakket crisismaatregelen, waaronder monitoring van de voorraden vliegtuigbrandstof op EU-niveau. Daarnaast pleit de branche ervoor om de Europese CO2-regels voor de luchtvaart tijdelijk stil te leggen. A4E wil ook dat bepaalde luchtvaartbelastingen worden geschrapt, staat in het document.

De luchtvaartsector wordt getroffen door luchtruimsluitingen sinds het begin van de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten op 28 februari. De Europese Unie heeft luchtvaartmaatschappijen voor langere tijd verboden om door het luchtruim van verschillende Golfstaten te vliegen, waaronder de VAE en Qatar.

Het cliëntenportaal van het Albert Schweitzer ziekenhuis in Dordrecht ligt al een week plat. Volgens het ziekenhuis komt dat door een ransomware-aanval bij de leverancier van het digitale systeem. "Deze maatregel is genomen uit voorzorg om de veiligheid van patiëntgegevens te waarborgen."

Bij ‘Radar’ werd een verhuurder van studentenhuisvesting ter verantwoording geroepen. Met succes, maar daar ging van de kant van de directeur van de vastgoedmaatschappij wel veel kaderen aan vooraf.

Holders may have more style but Bath showed in their arm wrestle with Saints they can go the distance with anybody

Last week Northampton’s director of rugby, Phil Dowson, made an interesting comparison between boxing and rugby. He suggested there was a decent chance his side’s Champions Cup quarter-final against Bath would prove good viewing because of the clubs’ contrasting philosophies around how best to play the game. “Styles make fights” is a familiar ring mantra and the same is increasingly true in top-level rugby.

On the one hand you had Northampton, all razor-sharp angles and dextrous hands. On the other was Bath, renowned for their knack of wearing their rivals down and then picking them off in the closing stages. The upshot on Friday night, just as Dowson had predicted, was a truly classic knockout tie in which Bath overcame an early 28-7 deficit to win 43-41 and reach their first European Cup semi-final in 20 years.

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When I looked around that room, at all the marriages, love affairs and divorces, everything and everyone was as you would have expected back in 2001 ...

An army dude once told me, “A speech should be like a lady’s skirt: short enough to be interesting, long enough to cover the main points”, and I said, “Wait, can we just clarify what the main points of a lady are – is it her butt or some other, nearby part?”. He pretended not to hear me. Or to be fair, maybe he was a bit deaf and that’s how feminism came to pass him by. Few would disagree with the principle, though – whatever you want to say, keep it brief.

But yesterday I went to a 25th wedding anniversary, where I would have loved for the speeches to be 10 times as long. I could have listened to them all day. The couple looked pretty much exactly the same as they did 25 years ago, which was mysterious and diverting, but that’s not what gave heft to what they said. Rather, whatever endearing thing they said about each another, the quarter century that just flew by was proof that it was real. Comparing it to a wedding speech, it was like the difference between a huckster at a Ted Talk telling you that one day you wouldn’t need to sleep because you’d have a sleep-robot inside your brain, and a real scientist explaining how she’d discovered the cure for cancer.

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The 11-time Grammy winner had a net favorability of 65%, Obama came second with 14%, while Zelenskyy had 12%

For the US public, the feeling that Dolly Parton expressed in her country music chart-topping 1974 classic I Will Always Love You is clearly mutual.

A poll of Americans’ opinions about more than 20 international luminaries established as much, with the 11-time Grammy winner and philanthropist leaving her two closest competitors – Barack Obama and Volodymyr Zelenskyy – in the dust by more than 50 percentage points.

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An animator records the shaggy dog stories of his Indigenous brother in a loopy, hallucinatory animation

The call for better self-representation for minorities in cinema has been loud and long over the last decade, and if it means more left-field work like this loopy, brain-fried but thoroughly affable animation about the lives of a Canadian Cree Indigenous family, then keep it coming. Roughly describable as Cheech and Chong meet Tristram Shandy, Endless Cookie consistently interrupts itself and lampoons the methods of its own creation – especially the fact it took half-brothers Seth and Peter Scriver nine years to finish the thing. At one point Seth, in the post-apocalyptic ruins of Toronto, announces he has another deadline extension: “Cool!”

Animator Seth (who voices himself) heads up to the Shamattawa First Nation community in Manitoba to tape his half-brother Peter (also voicing himself, as do other family members); Peter’s mother, unlike Seth’s, was First Nations. His tales are of the shaggy-dog variety – featuring the 12 pooches on their property, two of whom actually are called Cheech and Chong – as well as the seven kids in residence. The stories are manifold and strange: teepee construction; a botched murder stakeout involving a caribou; Peter’s angry-punk stint in 80s Toronto; a friend accosted by a clingy snowy owl; a drawn-out saga about the embarrassment of mangling his hand in his own animal trap.

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Decisions at the latest Democratic National Committee meeting emphasized the disconnect between the party’s leadership and its base

When the Democratic party’s governing body adjourned its meeting on Saturday in New Orleans, supporters of Palestine and an end of the genocide in Gaza had few reasons to celebrate. The Democratic National Committee had refused to give any ground to the large majority of the party’s voters with distinctly negative views of Israel.

Last summer, a Quinnipiac Poll found that 77% of Democrats agreed that “Israel is committing genocide.” Last month, an NBC poll found that registered Democrats – by a margin of 67-17% – were more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis.

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