The South African photographer says this image of his ‘soulmate’ evokes feelings of sadness and longing in him

Arya the great dane was two years old when this image was taken. She was at home in Pretoria, South Africa, with Johan Van Aarde and three other dogs. “It was May 2021, which is our winter season,” van Aarde says. “The courtyard doors that lead to our pool would usually be open, but as the sun and the moon exchanged places and we started getting cosy inside, I closed them.”

That evening, as he prepared dinner, Van Aarde noticed Arya sitting on the sofa, gazing into the distance. “It was as if she was contemplating time and memory, admiring the reflection of the moon on the pool,” he says. “Great danes are majestic creatures with gentle souls who communicate their thoughts with their facial expressions – and, oh boy, do they tell a story.”

Experts warn about the risks of cave diving without proper training, planning and specialised equipment after deaths in Vaavu atoll

The diving tragedy in the Maldives – which claimed the lives of four Italian divers inside an underwater cave, followed by the death of a Maldivian navy diver – has renewed warnings from experts about the risks of cave diving without proper training, planning and specialised equipment.

On Thursday, the Divers Alert Network (DAN), which coordinated the complex search and recovery operation at the Dhekunu Kandu dive site in Vaavu atoll, announced all the divers’ dead bodies had been recovered.

Earlier this year, the city was hit by its longest power cut since the second world war. But were those responsible eco-terrorists, agents of the far-right, or even Russian proxies?

Sebastian Brandt, chief technician of the Immanuel hospital in the leafy, affluent Wannsee district of Berlin, guessed something was wrong as soon as he opened the window of his home and smelled diesel. It was 3 January, a freezing Saturday morning, and luckily the hospital opposite had relatively few patients on this post-holiday weekend. As he looked out, the diesel fumes told him that the emergency generator – a huge, deafening, decades-old machine in the basement – had kicked in. That meant the hospital was no longer getting power from the grid. And that meant Brandt was not going to have a quiet weekend.

Although an emergency generator keeps a hospital running, it has its limitations. Surgical procedures have to be cancelled, and though generators are tested regularly, no one can be certain what will happen when they are kept running for days on end. The generator tank in the Immanuel hospital contained about 3,000 litres of diesel, and Brandt had calculated it would burn about 550 litres a day; when the grid operator informed the hospital that the outage might last until the end of the following week, Brandt was quickly dispatched to fetch more diesel from the nearest petrol station that was still on the grid. Meanwhile, he’d heard that a neighbouring hospice was going to move its patients to the hospital, too.

With razor-thin majorities in Congress, the US president needs the votes of the very people whose careers he has destroyed

As Abba’s Dancing Queen played, Donald Trump walked across a lawn featuring cornhole, oversized Connect Four, a ferris wheel and a food tent offering short ribs, mac and cheese and apple pie. Members of Congress and their families had come for the annual White House picnic. But not every member of Congress.

Missing the fun was Thomas Massie, a longtime thorn in the US president’s side. Massie was at home in Kentucky, suffering a primary election defeat that made him the latest victim of Trump’s revenge tour. “We won the Massie thing,” the president told guests at the picnic on Tuesday evening. “He was a bad guy. He deserves to lose.”

As Europe’s leading donor countries slash budgets, the result could be more than 11.5m preventable deaths, report suggests

Cuts to foreign aid budgets by the UK, France and Germany could contribute to more than 11.5 million preventable deaths by the end of the decade, according to a new report, which warns that Europe is abandoning its role as a pillar of global health and development.

Three separate studies within the report reveal the extent to which the nations have slashed their foreign aid budgets, and illustrate the impact worldwide. UK official development assistance (ODA) spending is projected to fall by 45% between 2020 and 2026, Germany’s by 37% between 2023 and 2026, and France’s by 30% over the same period, according to the research.

This report was a collaboration with European newspapers El Pais and Le Monde

De winkeldief

De winkeldief volgens de Stentor

Een of andere schooier is al maanden bezig met het bestelen van supermarkten in Deventer. De ondernemers zijn er wel klaar mee en de politie is er ook klaar mee, dus zijn er herkenbare beelden online gegooid. Is gewoon nieuws en belangrijk ook, want die gozer wil je niet in je shop hebben, en hij moet opgepakt worden. Daar is BEREIK voor nodig. Gaat de plaatselijke DPG-bode de Stentor helemaal Code van Bordeaux op die politiefoto: "Alleen in uitzonderlijke gevallen – bijvoorbeeld bij een ernstig gevaar voor de maatschappij of een specifieke dreiging – brengen wij verdachten herkenbaar in beeld. Iedereen heeft recht op privacy, ook wie wordt verdacht van een misdrijf. Als journalisten laten wij dat zwaar wegen, zeker in het huidige tijdperk waarin het vrijwel onmogelijk is om eenmaal gepubliceerde gegevens ongedaan te maken." En dus krijgt de politiefoto waar een dader herkenbaar op te zien is een blur van een lokaal medium omdat de dader niet herkenbaar te zien mag zijn, vanwege, nou ja, morele journalistieke principes ofzo. Wat is dat toch met die maffe DPG-kranten?

Gelukkig is er RTV OOST

TER APEL (ANP) - Vrijdag hebben zo'n zestig mensen die voor het aanmeldcentrum in Ter Apel aan het wachten waren een plek in de opvanglocatie gekregen. Het gaat daarbij niet om kwetsbare mensen, voor wie ook de afgelopen dagen nog plek was. Dat is voor het eerst sinds woensdag werd besloten niet iedereen meer toe te laten, bevestigt een woordvoerder van het Centraal Orgaan opvang asielzoekers (COA).

Woensdag maakte het COA bekend dat niet iedere nieuwe asielzoeker die zich meldt bij de opvang in het Groningse Ter Apel daar een plek kon krijgen. Omdat het binnen te druk was, kregen de meest kwetsbare asielzoekers voorrang. Tientallen asielzoekers die niet tot die doelgroep behoren, verbleven afgelopen dagen voor de ingang van het aanmeldcentrum in afwachting van een plek.

Volgens het COA kwamen er vrijdag toch wat opvangplekken voor hen vrij, "omdat er elke dag mensen vanuit Ter Apel naar andere locaties in Nederland vertrekken". De organisatie benadrukt wel dat de "gecontroleerde toegang" voorlopig nog van kracht blijft.

takekazu has added a photo to the pool:

takekazu has added a photo to the pool: