Strike in Shukeiri killed teachers and health care workers and is latest incident in three-year war

At least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed on Wednesday when an explosive-laden drone blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck a secondary school and a health care centre.

At least 10 people were wounded in the strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province, according to Dr Musa al-Majeri, director of Douiem hospital, the nearest major medical facility to the village.

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⚽️ Champions League news from the 8pm GMT kick-off
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Kylian Mbappé’s absence leaves a 13-goal-shaped hole in Real Madrid’s team. He’s the competition’s leading scorer by some considerable distance, give or take one 43-minute four-goal scoring burst during the Qarabag-Newcastle tie.

13: Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid)
10: Anthony Gordon (Newcastle United)
8: Harry Kane (Bayern Munich)
7: Julian Alvarez (Atletico Madrid), Erling Haaland (Manchester City), Victor Osimhen (Galatasaray)

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⚽️ Updates from Champions League last 16 and beyond
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João Pedro and Cole Palmer were at the heart of Chelsea’s Club World Cup win last summer. Pedro has since hit his stride under Liam Rosenior while Palmer is back after a groin injury but not yet at his best. Jacob Steinberg reckons the pair will be crucial in tonight’s game. Read his piece below.

Hello and welcome to another Champions League clockwatch. Tonight we’re following Paris Saint-Germain v Chelsea at the Parc des Princes and Bodø/Glimt v Sporting at Aspmyra Stadion.

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Payment for Inditex founder, the world’s 15 richest person, tops last year’s dividend of €3.1bn

The billionaire founder of Zara is to receive a company record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend this year from the world’s biggest fashion retailer.

Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now chair, will receive half his dividend in May and half in November – as will other shareholders.

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After silver medal success with his guide Robert Poth, the British duo aim for more glory in the slalom events

Neil Simpson and his guide Robert Poth won silver at the Winter Paralympics on Tuesday, the first medal for Great Britain at these Games. But to watch the athletes in visually impaired alpine skiing descend the slopes of the Dolomites at speeds of up to 100 km/h is to be strongly reminded that everyone needs at least another medal, just for being brave enough to do it in the first place.

Talk to the 23-year-old Simpson, however, and the concept of taking one’s life into one’s hands doesn’t come into the equation. Born with the condition nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movements, he has been skiing since he was four, first on the dry slopes in Aberdeen, then at the Glenshee resort, before competing in national competition aged 16. “I think it’s something that’s never really fazed me”, he says. “It’s just a really fun sport to participate in.”

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Lack of public appearances prompted speculation about new leader’s mortality after multiple family members perished

The confirmation that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the first wave of Israeli attacks underlines how desperate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (ICRG) was to ensure their wounded choice was elevated to high office, and how confident it is that the wartime machinery can operate almost on automatic pilot without him.

The full scale of Khamenei’s injuries and speed of his recovery remain unclear, but a broken leg and facial injuries are the minimum. It is not a medical bulletin on which the authorities are seeking to dwell, although Ali Larijani, the secretary of the supreme national security council, chose his words carefully in saying “his condition has not been reported as critical”, a phrasing that suggests he has not personally seen him.

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On the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, the Scottish philospher is still invoked by the right. Yet he worried about inequality, monopoly and the power of wealth

This week 250 years ago, Adam Smith published An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – and invented economics. The anniversary has been marked by opinion columns, new books and academic conferences. How different it was 50 years ago. The 1976 bicentenary produced the definitive scholarly edition and helped cast Smith as the father of free-market economics. This was an easy sell during the 1970s slow collapse of the postwar economic order. Smith was useful as a symbolic figure for the revival of free-market ideas. Yet the truth is more complicated.

Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate, recruited Smith as the patron saint of neoliberal economics in his 1980 book and television series Free to Choose – a manifesto that anticipated Reaganism in the US. He reduced Smith to two claims: that a voluntary exchange benefits both parties and that self-interest is led by an “invisible hand” that unintentionally promotes the public interest. In short: greed is good. In fact, Smith used the phrase “invisible hand” only once in The Wealth of Nations, to describe whether merchants invest their capital at home or abroad – and not, as Friedman claimed, as a general theory of markets.

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Grammy-winning singer is in advanced talks to lead an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s novel for Oscar-winning writer-director

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Billie Eilish is set to make her big screen acting debut in an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.

According to Deadline, the 24-year-old will take on the lead role for Sarah Polley, the writer-director who previously won an Oscar for her Women Talking screenplay. Eilish is reportedly in advanced talks for the part.

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Schiedam gaat al enige tijd gebukt onder een geweldsgolf waarbij opvallend jonge daders betrokken zijn. Een ruzie tussen rivaliserende jeugdbendes in Schiedam en Rotterdam ligt daaraan ten grondslag. Sommige jongeren durven daardoor zelfs niet meer de gemeentegrens over te gaan uit angst voor wraakacties.

Schiedam gaat al enige tijd gebukt onder een geweldsgolf waarbij opvallend jonge daders betrokken zijn. Een ruzie tussen rivaliserende jeugdbendes in Schiedam en Rotterdam ligt daaraan ten grondslag. Sommige jongeren durven daardoor zelfs niet meer de gemeentegrens over te gaan uit angst voor wraakacties.

Voetballen zonder de bal te zien klinkt onmogelijk, maar bij SV Ommoord in Rotterdam kan het nu echt. Daar is het eerste officiële blindenvoetbalveld van Nederland geopend. Achter het initiatief staat Khashayar ‘Gashi’ Taebi, die zelf een visuele beperking heeft en zijn liefde voor voetbal nooit verloor.

I've spent years dreaming with doing this experiment, and wondering how the geometry would turn out. I chose not to identify the pieces (except by their initial positions).

We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting his tongue stuck to the surface. It's practically a childhood rite of passage. A 1996 case study coined the term "tundra tongue" to describe the phenomenon. But how dangerous is it, really? And what's the best way to free one's tongue with minimal damage? (Ars Technica - CW: photos of injured tongues)

Papers: Demography and outcomes of frozen tongue: a scoping review of Scandinavian tundra tongue cases. The trauma of the tundra tongue: an experimental and computational study of lingual tissue damage following adhesion to a cold metal lamp post

De „defensieve” missie van het fregat Evertsen in de Middellandse Zee, vanwege de oorlog rond Iran, krijgt steun van vrijwel alle partijen in de Tweede Kamer. Alleen SP, PvdD en Denk spraken woensdagavond ernstige twijfel uit. Er waren vooral vragen over de randvoorwaarden.

Bij een droneaanval in de Congolese stad Goma, aan de grens met Rwanda, zijn drie mensen gedood. Onder hen ook een Franse medewerker van VN-organisatie Unicef. De rebellen die het gebied controleren, beschuldigen het leger van de aanval.

YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tools to a pilot group of politicians, government officials, and journalists, allowing them to identify and request removal of unauthorized AI-generated videos impersonating them. TechCrunch reports: The technology itself launched last year to roughly 4 million YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following earlier tests. Similar to YouTube's existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users' uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. These tools are sometimes used to try to spread misinformation and manipulate people's perception of reality, as they leverage the deepfaked personas of notable figures -- like politicians or other government officials -- to say and do things in these AI videos that they didn't in real life.

With the new pilot program, YouTube aims to balance users' free expression with the risks associated with AI technology that can generate a convincing likeness of a public figure. [...] [Leslie Miller, YouTube's vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy] explained that not all of the detected matches would be removed when requested. Instead, YouTube would evaluate each request under its existing privacy policy guidelines to determine whether the content is parody or political critique, which are protected forms of free expression. The company noted it's advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual's voice and visual likeness.

To use the new tool, eligible pilot testers must first prove their identity by uploading a selfie and a government ID. They can then create a profile, view the matches that show up, and optionally request their removal. YouTube says it plans to eventually give people the ability to prevent uploads of violating content before they go live or, possibly, allow them to monetize those videos, similar to how its Content ID system works. The company would not confirm which politicians or officials would be among its initial testers, but said the goal is to make the technology broadly available over time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SHANGHAI (ANP) - Cadillac heeft bewezen dat het de Formule 1 aankan. Dat zegt teambaas Graeme Lowdon in een vooruitblik op de Grote Prijs van China komend weekend. "Het was heel bijzonder om het Formule 1-team van Cadillac geschiedenis te zien schrijven door onze eerste race uit te rijden."

Het Amerikaanse Cadillac is vanaf 2026 het elfde team in de Formule 1. De renstal gebruikt motoren van Ferrari, maar stapt op termijn over naar een krachtbron van moederbedrijf General Motors. De Mexicaan Sergio Pérez eindigde zondag in de Grote Prijs van Australië als zestiende, de Fin Valtteri Bottas viel uit.

"We hebben enorm veel geleerd in Australië en we willen die kennis graag verder uitbouwen in China, tijdens ons eerste weekend met een sprintrace", zegt Lowdon. "Nu we hebben bewezen dat we kunnen presteren op het hoge niveau dat de Formule 1 vereist, is het ons doel om onze prestaties en betrouwbaarheid verder te verbeteren."

conspectus_bs posted a photo:

Kodak Portra 160 with Mamiya 645 Pro and Sekor 50 mm Shift

Wow, KDO pal and explorer Ariel Waldman has her own show on PBS! “LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman is a science-driven docu-series revealing Earth’s ecosystems through radical shifts in scale…”