MANAMA (ANP) - De Spaanse wielrenner Pello Bilbao zal in zijn afscheidsjaar geen Tour de France rijden. De 36-jarige klimspecialist is niet op tijd hersteld van een virale infectie die hij opliep in de Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (voorheen het Critérium du Dauphiné). Dat meldde zijn ploeg Bahrain-Victorious op X.

Bilbao zou normaal gesproken een van de kopmannen zijn in de ploeg voor de Tour de France. Hij won in 2023 een etappe in de Tour en eindigde twee keer bij de eerste tien in het algemeen klassement. Dit jaar liet hij goede resultaten zien: zesde in de Ronde van het Baskenland, zesde in Luik-Bastenaken-Luik en vierde in Eschborn-Frankfurt.

Bilbao kondigde in april aan dat hij stopt na dit wielerseizoen. Hij werd in 2011 profrenner. Op zijn erelijst prijken ook twee etappezeges in de Ronde van Italië van 2019.

(Dead Oceans)
The US singer took years off after becoming ‘world-weary’ of public life – and in the meantime, her silvery balladry reshaped pop. Her return is an ornate reinvention

In the press materials for Phoebe Bridgers’ return, the 31-year-old US singer talks about taking time to make her third album after coming to feel “a little world-weary” about public life. Who could blame her? Bridgers became a figure of invasive parasocial behaviour from fans after her spooked, sad second album, 2020’s Punisher, resonated with life under lockdown and made her a superstar. In recent years, young women making introspective and ornate indie-rock songs have risen to startling, pop star levels of fame and scrutiny – and none more so than Bridgers,her Boygenius supergroup with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and their peer Mitski. When Bridgers was rumoured to be engaged in 2022, fans possessed by her devastating music rued her happiness; when she started a new relationship, the gossip mill churned. In 2023, she castigated the so-called fans who aggressed her in an airport while on the way to her father’s funeral.

Even her recent analogue return has prompted reactions that might have a less self-possessed artist wondering why they bother. Last month, mysterious posters started appearing in small towns across the US advertising surprise $1 Bridgers shows in intimate venues later that night, before a concluding gig at New York’s gigantic Madison Square Garden. Phones were banned, along with any kind of recording device, including pen and paper, to stop audience members from writing down lyrics from her third album and sharing them online. The backlash to this – some fans accused her of ableism – prompted its own backlash, a tiresome Russian doll of discourse that’s still dragging on.

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The surreal comedian struggles to sell a middling and mostly conventional film about an uptight realtor whose life is upturned by an unpredictable figure from his past

The specific, unforced strangeness of Eric André’s comedy hasn’t been an easy fit for Hollywood. His surreal and frequently hilarious late-night series The Eric André Show was an unpredictably odd and often violently catastrophic mix of awkward celebrity interviews and daring, dangerous on-the-street pranks and his manic, anything-for-the-bit energy marked him as someone execs would be unwise to entirely ignore.

But André didn’t really feel like someone who desperately needed industry approval and broader acceptance or the inevitable comedy vehicle that would come with it (those projects are also admittedly far less common than they once were). There was an attempt in 2020, a hidden camera hybrid comedy called Bad Trip that saw André lead a fictional narrative playing out in real locations with real people unwittingly cast alongside. But Covid forced a theatrical play into a Netflix premiere and while it had its moments (the zoo-based sexual assault is a work of crude genius), the format was a gamble that, for me, didn’t completely pay off (it was as hit-and-miss as a sketch show). The film’s looseness did at least feel like a more natural fit for André than his follow-up for the streamer, the far more conventional and far less amusing comedy Little Brother, the closest he has come to “fitting in”.

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Apple has sharply raised prices across its Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV lineups as surging AI-driven demand creates a global memory and storage shortage. Increases range from $30 for the HomePod mini to $1,300 for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, with Apple CEO Tim Cook saying efforts to shield customers from higher costs had become "unsustainable." The Verge reports: On Thursday, the company adjusted the price of its new MacBook Neo, which will now start at $699 instead of $599, while the base MacBook Air will jump to $1,299 from $1,099, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is getting an increase as well, going from $1,699 to $1,999. Meanwhile, the iPad Air will now start at $749 instead of $599, while the iPad Pro is increasing to $1,199 from $999.

As spotted by MacRumors, the M4 Max Mac Studio will now cost $2,499, a big jump from $1,999. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio is now priced at $5,299, up from $3,999. Apple is even raising the prices of its HomePod, which now costs $349 instead of $299, as well as bumping the price of the HomePod mini to $129 instead of $99. The Apple TV also now costs $199 instead of $129.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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