An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Solar generated more U.S. electricity than coal for the first month on record in May 2026, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember. Solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity during the month, while coal dropped to 12.2%. That's a dramatic shift in the U.S. power mix. Just five years ago, coal generated 19.7% of U.S. electricity in May, while solar accounted for only 5.4%. U.S. solar generation hit a record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May 2026, up 17% from May 2025 and higher than the previous record set last July. Ember says another record could be broken again this summer.

Solar output usually peaks in June or July, but its share of the electricity mix is often highest in spring, when strong sunshine lines up with milder temperatures before summer cooling demand ramps up. May was also the first time solar became the third-largest individual source of electricity in the U.S., behind only natural gas and nuclear. (If solar is included with all other renewables, then they're the second-largest source of electricity as an overall category of electricity.) Meanwhile, coal keeps sliding (and will continue to slide). Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Output rose slightly in May to 43.4 TWh, but it was still 11% lower than May 2025 levels. Even with that small rebound, coal couldn't keep pace with solar's rapid growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

US launches second round of airstrikes on Iran, and Tehran responds by targeting Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan

• US strikes Iran for second day, as ceasefire appears close to collapse

Kuwait has closed its airspace after Iran announced new attacks on the gulf country, with officials saying some flights were being diverted to alternative airports.

Flights had been circling outside Kuwait for some time before the announcement, after it said its air defences were firing at aerial targets.

It is Trump that is desperate for them to sign the agreement, as his statements reveal, and Iran that is dragging their feet.”

A deal that punts nuclear negotiations to a second phase and requires some sanctions relief is a lousy deal — and still the least bad available alternative.”

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Fifa president has prostrated the organisation before Donald Trump and lost control of his own tournament as a result

Even the Nazis tried to tone things down a bit. Before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, acutely conscious of how it might be perceived by foreign visitors, the Third Reich tried to soften some of its harder, more intolerant edges. Antisemitic signs and images were removed from shops and other public places. Der Stürmer was removed from newspaper kiosks. Paragraph 175, the country’s strict anti‑homosexuality law, was temporarily suspended.

By contrast, the 2026 men’s World Cup is being co-hosted in a country utterly indifferent to what a foreign visitor might think of it. In this respect, the US of Donald Trump is tonally different to any host of a major sporting event that has preceded it: a country that actively wants you to see the darkness in its heart, the inhumanity at its core, that gets off on your revulsion.

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The UCL study also found physically punished children were more likely to struggle in school

Children smacked by their parents struggle to get good exam results and are more likely to bully others, causing a negative impact on society, according to new research calling for smacking to be banned.

The study by University College London (UCL) found that children in England who were physically punished at the ages of three, five and seven were significantly less likely to pass GCSE exams compared with other children, even after factors such as family background were taken into account.

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He’s the perfect comedian to cool down these incendiary times. As Philly Philly takes his Uh Oh standup show on tour, he talks about woke traps, lefty blindspots – and gen Z’s lurch to the right

Born in Stoke-on-Trent to a British mother and Chinese-Malaysian father then raised in Borneo and educated in Brunei, Bath and Cambridge, Phil Wang – or “Old Wang”, as he refers to himself mock-imperiously on stage – has certainly been around. Today, the 36-year-old standup with the pleasantly befuddled air is in a cafe near his home in London, wearing high-waisted baggy black trousers, a blue shirt, salmon-coloured New Balances and a baseball cap bearing the word “Chump”. Most significantly, he is sporting a moustache.

Wang went public with his face furniture two years ago but the upcoming tour of his new show, Uh Oh, will mark the first time he has taken it out on the road. Is the tache here for good? “Well, I’ve got five minutes of standup on it now,” he says over coffee. “Until I come up with a better five minutes, it’s staying.”

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The military junta has detained thousands of political prisoners since the 2021 coup, and a pattern of gender-based abuses is becoming clear

In August 2021, news spread across a Myanmar protesters’ network that Thazin*, an activist and former university student, had been killed. The protest she attended that summer in Mandalay had been broken up by soldiers shooting and driving cars into the crowds.

Most of the demonstrators were able to jump on to their motorcycles and flee. Thazin was not among them, and word spread that a young woman had been seen shot dead.

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Remote aircraft targeting supply traffic on route connecting occupied regions to Russia

Russian forces call it the “Novorossiya” route, the crucial main supply line that snakes through the Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s occupation, linking Rostov-on-Don in Russia to Melitopol, Mariupol and Crimea via the Sea of Azov coastline.

In recent months, however, Ukrainian forces have given the R-280 a new name – “the highway of death” – in reference to the Ukrainian drones that dominate the airspace above the road, hunting down convoys of Russian military traffic.

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About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Those unemployed for a year or more explain how they are coping

Thomas doesn’t leave the house much. Apart from walking his dog, the only other excursion the 24-year-old regularly makes is a “humiliating” weekly trip to Iceland, where he stocks up on seven £1 frozen meals, usually an assortment of bland curries with the occasional garishly sweet, takeaway-style Chinese meal. “You’re going in and buying seven and the cashier is 100% thinking: oh, that’s one a day,” he says.

Half the time, he doesn’t bother eating them. “You just sit there and go: I don’t want it again. I’ve had it for two days on the trot.”

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As ICE-style deportation rules come into force, the unsavoury circle the EU wants migrant deals with includes the Afghan regime. This is a nadir

I sometimes think of the former EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, who just six years ago spoke of crafting a European migration policy with “cool heads and warm hearts”. What’s happened since is the exact opposite.

Governments across Europe – with the exception of Spain – are cracking down harder than ever before on migrants through measures they once dismissed as politically toxic. It is a dream come true not only for the EU’s far right but also for mainstream conservatives and centre-left politicians such as Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen.

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She started as an activist. Now she is Mexico’s president. Has she stayed true to her ideals?

The president’s dressmaker works at home, down a narrow road in a working-class neighbourhood on the southernmost edge of Mexico City. There is no sign, just the house number marked in chalk on a rusted metal door. In the brightly lit, pink-walled room at the back of her modest house, Olivia Trujillo sits at her sewing machine, piecing together the president’s signature suits and dresses. Trujillo sews everything here, accompanied only by her family, three dogs, and one green parrot. Once finished, an assistant spirits away the items by motorcycle straight to the National Palace, where the president lives. Claudia Sheinbaum’s clothing – tailored from modest fabrics produced in Mexico and featuring Indigenous motifs – is one of the many ways that her administration communicates its slogan: “For the good of all, first the poor.”

The dressmaker has just one problem with the president. People who wear made-to-measure clothes normally sit for the tailor twice: first, to have their measurements taken, then a second time for final adjustments. “Not once has she done a fitting for me, never!” says Trujillo, an exacting and neatly turned-out woman in her 60s. She knows the president is busy. “Still,” she objects, “any normal woman does a fitting for important clothes, like their wedding dress.”

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• Knicks erase 29-point deficit to win Game 4

• Anunoby scores winner with 2.3 seconds left

• New York take commanding 3-1 Finals lead

The New York Knicks stared into the abyss and somehow found a way out.

Facing a 29-point deficit in front of a shell-shocked Madison Square Garden crowd, New York completed the largest comeback in NBA finals history on Wednesday night when OG Anunoby’s tip-in off a Jalen Brunson missed three made the difference in a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4. The Knicks are within one win of their first NBA championship in 53 years.

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Op de Stadsbrug tussen Zwijndrecht en Dordrecht is woensdagavond laat een ongeluk gebeurd met een auto. De automobilist verloor de macht over het stuur en crashte. De bestuurder is door ambulancepersoneel gecontroleerd, maar zijn verwondingen vielen mee.

Het gebeurt al jaren, maar meestal buiten beeld: moord op Palestijnen door Israëlische soldaten

Maar meestal zijn er geen harde bewijzen, alleen lijken met kogelgaten.

Soms staat de moord op camera.

Beelden tonen hoe Israëlische soldaten afgelopen vrijdag een stilstaande gezinswagen in Hebron van vlakbij hebben beschoten. Daarbij viel één dode, een baby van zeven maanden, Sam Abu Haikal. De soldaten wandelden nadien weg.

LIMA (ANP/RTR) - De conservatieve kandidaat Keiko Fujimori heeft woensdag opnieuw de leiding genomen in de spannende Peruaanse presidentsverkiezingen. Volgens de Peruaanse kiesautoriteit ONPE staat Fujimori met 98,2 procent van de stemmen geteld op 50,001 procent, tegen 49,999 procent voor de linkse kandidaat Roberto Sánchez.

Dinsdag werd bekend dat Peru waarschijnlijk nog zo'n twee weken moet wachten op een definitieve uitslag van de stemming van afgelopen zondag. Vooral de stemmen van Peruanen in het buitenland moeten nog binnenkomen. Het is niet bekend hoeveel mensen daar gestemd hebben, maar het gaat vermoedelijk om zo'n 300.000 stemmen.

De presidentsverkiezingen in Peru waren in het recente verleden wel vaker spannend. Zo verloor Keiko Fujimori, dochter van voormalig president Alberto Fujimori, de verkiezingen in 2016 met een verschil van 41.000 stemmen.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Veilingsite Catawiki heeft vorig jaar voor het eerst in vijf jaar een nettowinst geboekt. Het Nederlandse internetbedrijf zegt dat dit te danken is aan investeringen in technologie, die schaalvergroting mogelijk maakten. Tegelijkertijd groeit volgens Catawiki de vraag naar luxe- en verzamelobjecten, waaronder Pokémonkaarten, postzegels, horloges en sieraden.

De omzet steeg in 2025 met 9 procent tot 111 miljoen euro. Daarop boekte Catawiki een nettowinst van 5,8 miljoen euro, terwijl het bedrijf in 2024 nog een verlies van 4,6 miljoen euro noteerde. Het gaat om de hoogste winst ooit voor het in 2008 opgerichte bedrijf.

Volgens Catawiki steeg het aantal nieuwe bieders vorig jaar met een vijfde, tot een totaal van 1,6 miljoen bieders, waarbij de bekendheid internationaal toenam. In Spanje en Portugal steeg het aantal nieuwe bieders bijvoorbeeld met de helft. Verzamelaars kochten via de veilingsite 3,7 miljoen objecten, 9 procent meer dan een jaar eerder.

De groei gaat gepaard met kritiek. Kopers en verkopers zeiden vorig jaar tegen actualiteitenprogramma EenVandaag dat de kwaliteit van het platform daalt. Daarbij was er veel kritiek op de Catawiki-experts, die op basis van ingestuurde informatie en foto's de echtheid van verzamelobjecten vaststellen. Een gecertificeerde taxateur stelde tegenover het programma dat dit onmogelijk is zonder de spullen fysiek te beoordelen.

De belangrijkste teksten uit drieduizend jaar Egyptische geschiedenis zijn vertaald in één machtig boek: 900 pagina’s vol sprookjes, spreuken, hymnen en liefdesgedichten. „Je weet ongeveer wat er staat, maar je moet verdomd goed kijken.”

Het Kadaster bekeek of deze vaak gehoorde stelling klopt. Wat in elk geval opvalt: de ‘verhuisafstand’ is de afgelopen jaren toegenomen.