ŠENČUR (ANP) - Remco Evenepoel heeft zondag in Slovenië de Europese titel wielrennen veroverd. De Belg versloeg de Italiaan Giulio Ciccone in een spannende sprint à deux. Een andere Italiaan, Christian Scaroni, werd op een kleine minuut derde.
Het is de eerste Europese titel voor Evenepoel. Eerder werd hij al olympisch en wereldkampioen op zowel de wegwedstrijd als in de tijdrit, en won hij de tijdrit op de EK wielrennen.
Evenepoel is de opvolger van vijfvoudig Tourwinnaar en tweevoudig wereldkampioen Tadej Pogačar. Door een val in de Vuelta kon de Sloveen zijn Europese titel niet verdedigen in zijn thuisland. Hij was wel aanwezig bij de finish in Šenčur.
Koers
De Belgen controleerden de koers, die pas laat ontbrandde. De wedstrijd, die van start was gegaan in de Sloveense hoofdstad Ljubljana, telde 196,3 kilometer en 2571 hoogtemeters. Maar pas in de voorlaatste ronde van het lokale parcours rondom finishplaats Šenčur begon de finale.
Op de Možjanca, een steil klimmetje dat als scherprechter in de wedstrijd zou dienen, plaatste Ciccone zijn aanval. Evenepoel sprong direct naar zijn wiel en haalde de Italiaan in. In een bocht op de top kwam Evenepoel ten val en ging Ciccone er alleen vandoor. In de afdaling werd de Italiaan teruggegrepen door een elitegroepje, inclusief Evenepoel.
Onverwacht moment
De Belg koos een onverwacht moment uit om zijn aanval te plaatsen, op ruim 32 kilometer van de aankomst. Samen met Ciccone reed hij weg bij de rest. In de laatste ronde weigerde Ciccone lange tijd kopbeurten te doen, omdat Scaroni achtervolgde. De Italiaan had de beste aanzet in de eindsprint en pakte een voorsprong op de Belg. In de laatste meters wist Evenepoel langszij te komen. Een fotofinish wees uit dat de titel naar Evenepoel ging.
Wout Poels, die op 39-jarige leeftijd de kopman was van de Nederlandse ploeg, moest opgeven na een val. Het Nederlandse team speelde geen rol van betekenis. Zaterdag was dat bij de vrouwen wel het geval. De kersverse wereldkampioene Demi Vollering prolongeerde haar Europese titel. Woensdag worden de tijdritten verreden.
Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:
Porto, Portugal's famous Dom Luís I Bridge over the Douro River at night.
Een motorrijder is zondagmiddag zwaargewond geraakt bij een eenzijdig ongeval op de Maasvlakte. Door de klap kwam hij meters van de weg terecht op de zandvlakte. Met spoed is het slachtoffer vervoerd naar het ziekenhuis.
China heeft een té machtige positie in de Rotterdamse haven. Dat zegt haveneconoom Bart Kuipers bij zijn afscheid van de Erasmus Universiteit. “Veel van onze spullen komen uit China. Ook zijn de Rotterdamse containerterminals op dit moment voor ongeveer 60 procent in Chinese handen. Dat maakt ons kwetsbaar."
China heeft een té machtige positie in de Rotterdamse haven. Dat zegt haveneconoom Bart Kuipers bij zijn afscheid van de Erasmus Universiteit. “Veel van onze spullen komen uit China. Ook zijn de Rotterdamse containerterminals op dit moment voor ongeveer 60 procent in Chinese handen. Dat maakt ons kwetsbaar."
In de metro waarin Marcel van Roosmalen en zijn dochter (11) zaten, schreeuwde een man dat iedereen vijf minuten had om zijn telefoon en portemonnee bij hem in te leveren. De mensen keken de andere kant op en deden net alsof het niet gebeurde. Mijn dochter had per ongeluk wel oogcontact gemaakt en kon daar niet meer mee stoppen omdat ze dacht dat hij ons nu in de gaten hield.
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Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） has added a photo to the pool:
Antonelli and Hamilton led the criticism in Sepang
Race delayed for 53 minutes after software problems
Formula One drivers issued a damning condemnation of the sport’s current engine regulations that caused the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to open with farcical scenes of cars stopping on track and unable to accelerate because of software problems in the electronics that control the engines.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won in Sepang but only after F1 suffered the embarrassment of a host of cars barely able to complete two formation laps in the wet as they were making their way to the grid.
Continue reading...Calls for release of six Matsadaash staff after one is charged, while whereabouts of other five remain unknown
An Egyptian journalist has been charged with joining a terrorist group, days after an entire newsroom was detained in what rights groups have said is a crackdown on press freedoms.
Last week, authorities arrested six journalists from the independent fact-checking and investigative platform Matsadaash – literally meaning “don’t believe” – accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and publishing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Continue reading...Education minister says 24 schools have been burnt or ransacked and 78 staff members injured since student unrest began last week
More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for a second week of student protests.
Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.
Continue reading...
The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia ended in heartbreak for George Russell, with the Mercedes driver forced to retire late on due to a mechanical issue.
Lewis Hamilton finished P3 at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, despite dropping behind by a minute during the race.
Fulcrum faces an identity crisis, even as it works on creating one by enabling anyone to imitate another person's writing style. The AI startup, founded in 2025 and previously operating at fulcrumresearch.ai, now uses fulcrum.inc and could easily be confused with one of the handful of other companies named Fulcrum or some variation of that. There's Fulcrum (withfulcrum.com), Fulcrum (fulcrumapp.com), Fulcrum AI (fulcrumai.us), Fulcrum Digital (fulcrumdigital.com), Fulcrum Labs (fulcrumlabs.ai), Fulcrum (fulcrumpro.com), Fulcrum Insurance Technology (fulcruminsure.app), and perhaps more. This Fulcrum is offering a large language model called Echo, which allows you to generate text in the style of a well-known author. Fulcrum appears to have no issue with corporate echoes. It now falls to writers to decide whether they have an issue with non-corporeal imitation. "Echo can do any writing task, from literary fiction to casual chatting, in whatever style you choose," the company says, and then launches into an exploration of how the technology works without addressing whether imitating a person's writing style poses any problems. Suggestions in the Echo Playground, for generating sample text, include Paul Christiano, Emily Dickinson, and Donald Trump. So, the full gamut of literary achievement: from AI safety expert to acclaimed 19th-century poet to the wordsmith who brought us "covfefe." But Echo will echo even the style of not-so-famous scribes, such as this reporter. So I fed the model a recent op-ed to assess its copying capabilities. The result was mixed, but better than the AI-crafted pitches that have been hitting my inbox for the past few months. I asked the model, "What do you think about the possibility that AI is conscious?" Here's part of the response, notionally written in my writing style. I suspect the debate about whether AI is conscious is less consequential than the debate about whether AI is profitable. Consciousness is a word that invites philosophical speculation and TED Talk invitations. Profitability is a word that invites shareholder lawsuits if you get it wrong. If you ask Meta's latest model whether it's conscious, it will probably say something reassuringly vague, trained as it is on the corpus of human equivocation. If you ask Mark Zuckerberg whether Meta's AI is conscious, he will probably say something about how we need to focus on the future being for everyone, because that's a question that doesn't require him to discuss the ad targeting business. The evidence for AI consciousness at the moment is about as strong as the evidence for Zuck's credibility as a futurist. Which is to say, it exists mainly in press releases and earnings calls. What's clear is that software can simulate aspects of human conversation well enough to unsettle people, and that unsettled people are a valuable audience. If you can convince users that your chatbot understands them – or might, someday – you can sell them subscriptions, or better, harvest their attention for advertisers. The style is familiar but makes a lot of choices I wouldn't have made. I wouldn't begin with "I suspect…" – commit or go home. The consciousness/profitability parallel construction is clumsy. "TED Talk invitations" bets on alliteration at the expense of coherence – "discourse" or "chatter" would work better than "invitations." I wouldn't have written "corpus of human equivocation" – a nice turn of phrase, but an unnecessary shot at training data when the point is the model's response rather than the provenance of that response. Though off-topic, Echo did a passable job of reproducing my op-ed's skepticism of Meta and its CEO. The paragraph that begins "The evidence for AI consciousness at the moment…" is succinct and sounds good. It just doesn't make much sense because there's nothing in the text that addresses Zuckerberg's predictions about the future or whether they're credible. And that's not really relevant to the prompt about AI and consciousness – a subject about which I'd be far more dismissive if opining. As AI research, Echo is an improvement on the text emitted by many AI models. But whether the beneficial uses of this technology outweigh the harms is less clear. Generative AI models that imitate artists' visual styles remain controversial and are the subject of ongoing litigation. And voice imitation has also raised questions about publicity rights and the risk of deception. Such concerns have prompted US lawmakers to propose the NO FAKES Act, which would create federal protections against certain unauthorized AI-generated replicas of a person's voice or visual likeness. If writers generally have no copyright in their writing style itself, and limited practical means to stop unwanted automated imitation of it when their published work is publicly accessible, then the surest defense against Echo may be silence.®
