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Kamikochi, Nakanose
上高地・中ノ瀬
No one else was walking this route, and since the snowshoeing only caused me to sink about 10cm, I decided to go this way.
このルート、誰も歩いていなかった。スノーシューで沈みは10cm程度だったので、ここを行く事にしました。
Matsumoto city, Nagano pref, Japan
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BERLIJN (ANP/RTR) - Duitsland looft 1 miljoen euro uit voor de gouden tip rond de brandstichting die begin januari leidde tot grootschalige en langdurige stroomuitval in Berlijn. Dat meldt minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Alexander Dobrindt. De kabelsabotage werd opgeëist door de links-extremistische Vulkangruppe. Tot nu toe is nog niet vastgesteld wie achter de aanslag zit.
Door de brand in een brug met stroomkabels over het Teltowkanaal kwamen ruim 45.000 woningen en zo'n 2200 bedrijven zonder stroom te zitten. Het duurde dagen voordat de stroomvoorziening via tijdelijke bekabeling weer was hersteld.
Het Duitse OM heeft een onderzoek ingesteld naar het voorval. Het ging om de langste stroomuitval in Berlijn sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
BERLIJN (ANP/RTR) - De topmannen van de Duitse autobouwers Volkswagen, BMW en Mercedes-Benz hebben positief gereageerd op het vrijhandelsakkoord tussen de Europese Unie en India. In het dinsdag gesloten verdrag zijn onder andere afspraken gemaakt dat de importtarieven op Europese auto's van 110 procent naar 10 procent dalen.
"We zien potentieel in India voor Volkswagen en zullen dit akkoord nauwkeurig bestuderen", reageert Volkswagen-topman Oliver Blume. Blume zegt elk initiatief voor handelsakkoorden met regio's over de hele wereld te steunen.
Ook de topman van Mercedes, Ola Källenius, is voor een handelsakkoord. "Elke stap richting het openen van markten en het versterken van handel is positief voor Duitsland." De topman van BMW, Oliver Zipse, wijst eveneens op de waarde van een verdrag voor Duitsland. "Voor Duitsland als exportland is dit van groot belang."
De importtarieven gaan naar beneden, maar er blijft wel een importquotum van 250.000 auto's van kracht. Daarboven zal een ander tarief gelden.
Wide-ranging deal will cut tariffs to zero over seven years as Modi hails ‘largest free trade agreement’ in India’s history
In other news, the prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland said they would visit Berlin and Paris to shore up support over US president Donald Trump’s recent push to take over the Arctic island that has been Danish territory for centuries, Reuters reported.
Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Jens-Frederik Nielsen will meet German chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday and French president Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, official schedules showed.
Continue reading...Meta, YouTube and TikTok accused of making products intentionally addictive and harmful to young people
For the first time, a massive group of parents, teens and school districts is taking on the world’s most powerful social media companies in open court, accusing the tech giants of intentionally designing their products to be addictive. The blockbuster legal proceedings may see multiple CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, face harsh questioning.
A long-awaited series of trials kicks off in Los Angeles superior court on Tuesday, in which hundreds of US families will allege that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube’s platforms harm children. Once young people are hooked, the plaintiffs allege, they fall prey to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and other mental health issues. Approximately 1,600 plaintiffs are included in the proceedings, involving more than 350 families and 250 school districts.
Continue reading...A country where safety is under threat from federal violence on the streets is not fit to stage soccer’s showpiece event
Removing the United States as co-host of the 2026 World Cup would hurt for pretty much everyone. Fans would miss out on seeing the sport’s pinnacle in their home towns (or somewhere nearby). Cities and businesses small and large would lose the financial benefits they had banked on. It would be a logistical and political nightmare on an international scale, the likes of which have never been seen before in sports. It would be eminently sad. And it would be entirely justified.
It brings me no pleasure to say this. The United States has been eager to host a men’s World Cup for more than a decade and a half. The desire survived and even grew after 2010’s failure to out-bid Russia and Qatar (in public and behind closed doors) for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. With hosting rights for 2026 later secured alongside Canada and Mexico, the US soccer scene prepared to show off that the sport is now part of the nation’s fabric, 32 years after hosting the tournament for the first time in 1994. Soccer’s growing popularity in America has helped inspire other US sports to try new formats, encouraged us to engage more fully with the world in a sporting context, and has been at the center of conversations about our society and culture. The 2026 World Cup was seen as the best chance for the world to fully experience not just how much the US has improved at soccer, but how much soccer has improved the US.
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In many ways, Alex Pretti and Renee Good could have been any of the dozens of Minneapolis residents I met last week. Among them were teachers, store clerks, Uber drivers, charity workers and clergymen – a patchwork of humanity withstanding what many have called the Trump administration’s siege on their city, which began in December last year and has led to 3,000 arrests, two fatal shootings, and routine rights violations in an operation defined by government brutality.
What the administration has attempted to laud as the largest immigration operation in US history has instead become a fully fledged crisis, and the sharpest test of American democracy under Trump’s second term.
Continue reading...