ACJC.S posted a photo:

Sakura in full bloom over a slow flowing stream.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

namhdyk has added a photo to the pool:

Residents describe the constant disruption of life under fire and whether military action should wind down

It is a day after Israel killed more than 300 in a ceasefire-defying attack in Lebanon, and five miles from the border, at kibbutz Cabri in northern Israel, the quiet of the early Thursday evening has been disrupted.

Three times, as the Guardian tries to leave, air raid sirens sound, and twice Iron Dome interceptors are launched. The last of the rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon is sufficiently close that the Moria family and their visitors head promptly to a reinforced safe room, shutting a heavy metal door behind them. The family dog is there too, knowing the drill.

Iran war drives demand for solar panels, heat pumps and EVs, with energy bills expected to rise 18% from July

British households are turning to green home energy upgrades in record numbers to try to keep bills down as the Iran crisis sends global oil and gas prices soaring, data from leading energy suppliers suggests.

Figures show demand for solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps in Great Britain has leapt since the war began on 28 February, as households brace for a sharp increase in monthly payments when the next energy price cap takes effect in the summer.

Amid death, threats, obliterated buildings and wasted money, the administration’s remarks have been head-spinning to witness

Trump threatened to commit genocide and Iran came to the table. A little threat – plus the deaths of thousands of Iranians and 13 Americans, the obliteration of schools, homes, hospitals and mosques, the waste of $40bn by the US and losses to the Gulf nations of as much as $200bn – is all it took. Ergo: threatening genocide works.

That, anyway, is what the “secretary of war”, Pete Hegseth, strongly suggested in a press briefing on Wednesday, the day after the president vowed to wipe Iran’s “whole civilization” off the map and then a few hours later announced a ceasefire, obviating the need to wipe Iran’s civilization off the map, at least for two weeks.

Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age

Native American hunter gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years before the practice appeared anywhere else, a new study argues.

It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago.

A Guardian investigation reveals how the prediction market can shape news – and how it rules on ‘the truth’

“Horekunden” was rapidly losing patience.

His frustration was with the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank which produces a daily map of the frontline in Ukraine.

The Bombay Beach Biennale started as an intimate event and has grown dramatically – but some question whether it sustain its DIY atmosphere

It is hard to imagine a stranger place for a large outdoor art festival than Bombay Beach – a tiny, visibly impoverished California desert town over 150 miles east of Los Angeles and 235ft below sea level. The heat is scorching even in March, and the smell of decay wafts over from the nearby Salton Sea; a dying inland lake created by an irrigation engineering disaster over 100 years ago.

But the Bombay Beach Biennale is not your ordinary art festival.