An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AT&T on Wednesday filed suit (PDF) against California officials seeking a court order declaring it does not have to continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers as it vowed to spend $19 billion on modern telecom services. California requires the U.S. wireless carrier to spend $1 billion annually to maintain a century-old telephone network that few use, AT&T said, saying the network now serves just 3% of households in AT&T's California territory.

AT&T's suit named the California Public Utilities Commission and the state attorney general. AT&T said it is committing to investing $19 billion in California as it works to connect more than 4 million additional households and businesses across California by 2030 and added IP-based networks are far more reliable and efficient. AT&T also Wednesday asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to discontinue traditional phone service in parts of California where it has faster, more reliable service available. It also filed a petition with the FCC to declare that California's rules that effectively require AT&T to power, repair and sell traditional phone service, even after the FCC has authorized the service to be phased out, are preempted by federal standards.

AT&T added that transitioning from copper will save an estimated 300 million kilowatt-hours annually by 2030 or the equivalent of eliminating emissions from 17 million gallons of gasoline. The company added that California has already suffered about 2,000 outages from copper thefts this year and it struggles to find replacement parts. The federal government and virtually all states where AT&T historically offered copper-wire service "have now eliminated outdated regulatory obstacles" allowing AT&T to begin powering down its old network and increasing its investments in modern communication technologies, the company said in its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in southern California.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lewis Hamilton has insisted that he plans to continue competing in F1 for a while to come.

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Haguromachi Touge, Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture , Japan

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, March 1960

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide August 1978

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The home in the village of Xingyi in Guizhou province had become a tourist attraction, but officials said it lacked the necessary building permits

A ramshackle 10-storey home that had become an offbeat tourist attraction in south-western China has been torn down, ending a years-long battle between the structure’s owner and local authorities.

Chen Tianming said local authorities took just hours to return the stone bungalow – which had been transformed into a pyramid-shaped structure of plywood rooms stacked upon one another – back down to its original single storey.

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Ukrainian drones ignite Syzran oil refinery deep inside Russia; ISW says Ukraine regaining the initiative on frontline. What we know on day 1,549

Ukrainian drones hit the Syzran oil refinery more than 800km (500 miles) inside Russia, setting it on fire, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday. The Ukrainian president posted a video of the aftermath. Russia’s independent Astra news outlet said Ukrainian drones struck the Syzran refinery owned by oil and gas company Rosneft. The governor of Russia’s Samara region, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, said two people were killed by Ukrainian drones in Syzran, but he did not mention the refinery.

Ukrainian drones hit another refinery the previous day, Zelenskyy said. “Overall, our long-range plan for May is being carried out largely in full. The key targets are Russian oil refineries, storage facilities and other infrastructure tied to these oil revenues.” The escalating attacks have hurt Moscow’s revenue at the same time as the economic pinch of international sanctions. With some attacks reaching more than 1,500km (900 miles) into Russia, the strikes have contributed to some Russians feeling unsafe and heaped pressure on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian troops along parts of the frontline, making their most significant battlefield gains since 2024, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Ukraine’s “intensified midrange strike campaign” since early 2026 “has also degraded Russian forces’ ability to conduct offensive operations across the theatre and has also likely supported recent Ukrainian advances”, the US thinktank said in an assessment on Wednesday.

Ukraine has slowed Russia’s battlefield advance and is gradually regaining the initiative along the frontline, said Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister, partly due to Russian forces being denied access to Starlink satellite services to steer drones towards targets. “Russia has since not been able to find a full replacement [for Starlink], giving Ukraine a critical battlefield advantage.”

Russia and neighbouring Belarus held the final stage of their joint nuclear drills. Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces launched a Yars ballistic missile and a Zircon hypersonic missile as part of missile tests. As part of the exercises, trucks carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbled over forest roads, atomic-powered submarines set sail from Arctic and Pacific ports, and crews scrambled into warplanes.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wants the EU to consider “associate membership” for Ukraine and revive talks aimed at ending the war, according to a letter he wrote to top EU officials that was seen by the Associated Press. Under Merz’s proposals, Ukraine would take part in EU meetings, but without voting rights, and would also have non-voting “associate members” of the bloc’s powerful executive branch, the European Commission, and the European parliament.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy welcomed signs of possible progress in the membership negotiations, saying in an address that it was “very important for us. Ukraine has fulfilled everything necessary for this progress.” On the war, Merz wrote that his proposal “will help facilitate the ongoing peace talks as part of a negotiated peace solution. This is essential not only for Ukraine’s but for the entire continent’s security.”

The former Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid on Wednesday offered a clear take on the EU membership question. “Question is: Ukraine is a military power with huge military production capability. Whose hands must it be in? In Russian hands [or] western hands? End of story. This is our question. This is our objective. Have Ukrainians with us, because imagine they started, like in Soviet Union times, to build all these things for Russia, not for us. And that gives you your answer. It’s very simple.”

The EU can freeze assets linked to sanctioned Russians even if those assets are held by a trust and there is no direct legal link to the persons involved, the EU’s court of justice ruled on Thursday. The court said assets can also be frozen if they are only indirectly linked to the person on the sanctions list. The ruling related to the seizure by Italian authorities of companies and a yacht held through complex ownership structures by trusts. The companies had challenged the freezing of those assets, but the EU court dismissed their claim, and said indications of ownership or control could also be inferred from circumstances or from “needlessly complex legal structures”.

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There are days when all we need is a nice bath while reading a book with a glass of wine, a good dinner, and spending the rest of the night on the couch playing a game with our cat! ?

Het is crisis in de Formule 1. Nieuwe regels hebben volgens fans de ziel uit het racen gehaald. Max Verstappen dreigt zelfs op te stappen.

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The Crown & Anchor Hotel, affectionately known as The Cranker, is a pub in Grenfell Street, Adelaide, South Australia, known for its longstanding live music scene. The current building was designed by noted colonial architect, former mayor of Adelaide, and parliamentarian Thomas English and built in 1879, but it was extensively remodelled and extended in 1928 to designs by Milne, Evans, and Russell.

In 2024 the pub was threatened with demolition and redevelopment into a tall residential building, with only the facade remaining. However, after extensive protests and intervention by the Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, the building was saved, and further legislation passed to protect other live music venues in the Adelaide city centre.

Not long after the establishment of the colony of South Australia and the city of Adelaide, in 1844 the Union Brewing & Malting Company began operations on Union Street, with the street being named after the brewery. It continued to operate until 1902. The Union Inn Arms Hotel (or just Union Inn) was built in 1847 on the site on the corner of Grenfell and Union Streets in Adelaide city centre, known as town acre 97.

A new building was built by 1853, when the Crown & Anchor Hotel was first licensed to sell alcohol. The hotel dug its own rock-lined well to use as a water source, and this is still in existence in the basement in May 2024, located in the north-east corner of the front bar, below the pool tables. On 28 March 1853 licensee James Ellery, who had for the previous six years hosted the Beresford Arms, announced his purchase of "Crown and Anchor, late the Union Inn, Grenfell-Street East", where "the extensive premises" would enable him to accommodate his old friends" and others, and that the premises included "good stabling and stockyards". From June of that year, a number of "select" balls were held at the inn.

In March 1879 it was reported that the Crown & Anchor, along with several other inns in Adelaide, had "insufficient or poor accommodation, and are also little or much out of repair: in need of repair". In August 1879, leading colonial architect Thomas English called for tenders to undertake the construction work to rebuild the hotel, and a new two-storey building was constructed to replace the former single-storey building later that year to English's designs, costing around £1,534. English & Soward advertised for tenders for stabling at the rear of the building in March 1880.

In October 1928, architects Milne, Evans, and Russell submitted their plans for extensions and alterations to the building.The work was completed in 1929, with the alterations costing £5,000.

In 1983, the interior was remodelled.

The design of the 1853 building designed by Thomas English is neo-classical style, with arched windows decorated by surrounding mouldings, and the facade is rendered. On the parapet above the corner entrance, it has a moulded crown and anchor insignia. However, the 1929 alterations were extensive, and included removal of many of the decorative features, as well as the addition of a long balcony along the Grenfell Street frontage.

There is a stone wall running northwards from Grenfell St along the boundary between Roxie's and Chateau Apollo, part of the original hotel stables that are listed on the hotel title.

Source: Wikipedia

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The Producers Hotel (formerly Old Exchange Hotel, Producers Club Hotel, Woodman's Inn), at no. 233-235 Grenfell Street was built on the site of the first pub built and licensed in the East End, the Woodman, in 1839. It was first licensed by John Ragless Jr, and so named because it was the first stop for timber merchants carting timber from "the Tiers" (as the Adelaide Hills were called). In 1900 it was renamed the Electric Light, after the power station. It was rebuilt for the South Australian Brewing Company in Queen Anne style in 1906 as the Producers. It was listed on the SA Heritage Register on 5 April 1984. After the East End markets moved away in 1986, the hotel became the East End Exchange Hotel for a short while before being renamed the Woodman's Inn in the mid-1990s. It became a major venue for live music of many genres, under its later name, the Producer's Bar, known simply as "The Producers". It also hosted Adelaide Fringe events, until its closure in 2018. It was functioning mainly as a nightclub in 2022, with a large knife fight reported in March of that year. In 2023 it was known as Friday's Lounge.
Source: Wikipedia

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Part of the old East End Markets, Adelaide CBD