Composers have harnessed TV and cinema since Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors pulled in five million viewers 75 years ago but for my money Kombat Opera’s satire showed us how to do it best

It’s not even Halloween, but here’s an operatic Christmas story for you. This is the 75th anniversary of the first opera made for television: Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, broadcast at Yuletide in 1951 and watched by five million people across the US in a production sponsored by Hallmark. You can watch the original broadcast on YouTube: it was introduced with wit, self-deprecation and early 50s elegance by Menotti himself (vastly less charmingly, the role of King Balthazar was played by a singer in blackface). Chet Allen’s performance as the boy, Amahl, is staggering, and even more moving is Rosemary Kuhlmann’s Mother, especially in her aria, All That gold!.

Amahl is “an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood”, Menotti said. It was played on US TV every Christmastime throughout the 50s, and was recorded and remade in new productions the next decade, while the BBC picked it up in 1953, and there was even an Australian TV version. Less than an hour long, Menotti’s festive fable works because of the intimacy of its story, and its refusal to patronise its intended audience.

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With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?

In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of “radical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. “The best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, “is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market “Theranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s “being real” with him. “I’m always being real,” she says.

That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?

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Measures would remove some penalties for those who help women access abortion but are ‘small-scale step’, say campaigners

Poland’s lower house of parliament has approved two bills aimed at loosening a near-total ban on abortions, in what campaigners have described as a “small-scale step” ahead of protests calling on the government to fulfil its promises to overhaul the country’s laws.

The new measures, which are likely to be vetoed by Poland’s nationalist president, would remove some of the criminal penalties for those who help women to access abortion care and allow terminations in cases of foetal abnormalities.

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European Commission calls accommodation website’s approach to fraudulent listings and phishing scams as ‘absolutely substandard’

EU regulators have opened an investigation into Booking.com, alleging that the accommodation website has not done enough to protect consumers from fake listings and scams.

The European Commission, which regulates the world’s biggest tech companies operating in the EU, said Booking.com may have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) with its “absolutely substandard” approach to tackling fraudulent listings and phishing scams, where criminals impersonate a third party to trick people to hand over money.

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After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMs

A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.

The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.

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Onder president Prabowo Subianto mislukt het ene economische initiatief na het andere. Na een waarschuwing uit de VS nam ook de Indonesische beurs een duikvlucht.

Na het herfstreces moet het kabinet verder met de zoektocht naar steun voor het plan dat regelt hoe de overheid aan inkomsten komt. Hiervoor lijken twee opties te zijn: ‘over rechts’ met JA21 en SGP of ‘over links’ met Pro en Volt. Van beide kanten komt eventuele steun met stevige eisen.

Een stukje Waddenkust is gebruikt om te testen hoe vegetatie de golven kan dempen bij een extreme storm. Met twintig vrachtwagens zijn de blokken uit de kwelder naar Delft gereden.

De routekaart die Nederland heeft gepubliceerd is geen plan, omdat er geen harde toezeggingen in staan, ziet Ernst Hobma. Europese buren kunnen het wel.

PHP developers have released emergency updates for two critical vulnerabilities after cybersecurity authorities warned organizations to patch immediately or consider taking exposed applications offline. PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35 address CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, which can allow unauthenticated remote code execution. The project's developers urged users to update immediately. All PHP installations serving web requests are potentially affected, including deployments using PHP-FPM, Apache's mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP, and LiteSpeed, the developers said. "We consider the risk highest for mod_php, with a demonstrated exploit where an unauthenticated request can trigger the attack before any application code runs." Jake Knott, head of threat intelligence at watchTowr, said: "As expected, watchTowr Intel is already observing in-the-wild exploitation of the latest PHP vulnerabilities, with a variety of vibecoded PoCs already hitting our sensors featuring a variety of 'php2shell' User-Agents. Whilst nobody has been successful to date, we don't expect that will last long." "Where immediate patching is not feasible, organizations should consider isolating internet-facing applications from public networks until a fix is available," CERT-EU said in an advisory issued ahead of the patches. The body lists both vulnerabilities with CVSS scores of 9.2. Finnish government services and websites belonging to the Dutch parliament, cybersecurity authorities, and data protection regulator were taken offline as a precaution. Privacy campaign group noyb also temporarily withdrew its website. PHP "powers WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento sites, shared hosting platforms, control panels, and an awful lot of software that doesn't even advertise that it runs PHP under the hood," infosec vendor Huntress noted. That makes identifying exposed installations a substantial job. "The number of places you have to go looking to identify vulnerable PHP versions gets very big, very fast," said John Hammond, Huntress's senior principal security researcher. ®

Cute robots stole the show at Nvidia's GTC keynote in Berlin, where Jensen Huang pitched a future powered by AI agents – and, naturally, plenty of his company's hardware. The Nvidia chief remained his usual ebullient self despite environmental protesters interrupting his presentation at Berlin's tent-shaped Tempodrom. "Why don't you clean up your act?" they demanded, holding up banners that partially obscured the presentation screen behind Huang. "All important issues, but let me get through my keynote," he joked, adding: "I'll talk to you guys later," as security swiftly removed them. Huang was discussing Vera Rubin systems before unveiling DSX POD, a reference design for factory-built, containerized AI infrastructure. DSX POD combines seven liquid-cooled Vera Rubin compute racks using Nvidia's Spectrum-X networking. Partners will cable, integrate, and test the systems in modular containers before delivery, with availability expected in early 2027. Nvidia claims deployment could shrink from six months to as little as 14 days at a prepared site. That excludes the not insignificant matter of getting power, connectivity, and other site infrastructure ready first. He was keen to add that Vera Rubin systems are designed for closed-loop liquid cooling with coolant temperatures up to 45°C, while outdoor dry coolers release heat into the air without needing to evaporate water. "At 2 gigawatts, DSX can save 54 million litres of water a day," Huang claimed, perhaps thinking of those environmental protesters. Yet much of the leather-jacketed leader's attention was focused on physical AI: robots, autonomous vehicles, and other machinery Nvidia hopes to supply with its hardware and software. The Microducks from Pollen Robotics are small, two-legged robots with cameras for faces. Huang interacted with them on stage, getting them to lie down and roll over by voice command, and the little robots all beeped back at him in response. The robo ducks demonstrated a workflow in which AI was trained in the cloud, evaluated on an Nvidia RTX Spark PC, then deployed on the robots. Huang also unveiled Agile ONE SN, a humanoid robot reference platform from German robotics startup Agile Robots, based on Nvidia's Isaac GR00T technology and a Jetson Thor compute module. Scheduled for early 2027, the platform is intended to give robotics researchers and developers a ready-made system for developing and testing capabilities. "This is going to be the next major industry, the next great industry," Huang claimed. Beyond robots, Nvidia is pushing its AI hardware and software into cars and telecoms networks. Huang boasted that Nvidia's Hyperion car system is being adopted by more vendors, saying: "We turned this into an industry standard, and now it's being designed into one car fleet after another." Europe's telecoms operators are also deploying Nvidia-powered computing in their networks to deliver advanced services using AI-RAN, according to Huang. "After working on this for nearly eight years, Nvidia made the first commercial phone call on the T-Mobile network with Nokia, and so now CUDA makes phone calls," he said. Far from slowing down the progression of AI, it seems Nvidia is determined to push its technology into every corner of the world. "Everyone will become an AI company," Huang claimed. He also took care to praise Europe and its technology efforts while he was in Berlin. "As expected, Jensen positioned Nvidia as a strong supporter of – and enabler for – Europe's sovereign tech ambitions. Nvidia has invested almost $10 billion into Europe in the past year, including 14 investments into European startups during Jensen's current trip," said Forrester principal analyst Paul Miller. But Miller pointed out that Nvidia itself is not European. "Anything with critical ongoing dependencies on Nvidia (or any other non-European firm) is unlikely to meet the purest definitions of European tech sovereignty," he added. Huang closed with a CGI video of robots performing a Eurovision-style song recapping his keynote. Yes, it was as bad as you imagine. ®

Op de parallelbaan van de A16 op de Van Brienenoordbrug in Rotterdam is woensdagmiddag een ongeluk gebeurd. Daarbij is iemand gewond geraakt. Twee rijstroken in de richting van Dordrecht waren afgesloten en er was een flinke file ontstaan.

HILVERSUM (ANP) - De app en website van RTL Nieuws zijn na een paar uur offline te zijn geweest weer online. De website was net als vele anderen uit voorzorg offline gehaald vanwege kwetsbaarheden in de programmeertaal PHP.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De politie doet onderzoek in een pand aan De Klencke in Buitenveldert (Amsterdam-Zuid) en dat heeft te maken met de zaak-Hajar. Volgens de politie is het de locatie waar de 29-jarige Amsterdamse vermoedelijk om het leven is gekomen. Forensische opsporing en de recherche doen er uitgebreid onderzoek, aldus de politie.

Volgens Het Parool is het een voormalig kantoorpand, waar nu bedrijfjes antikraak zitten. De Klencke loopt parallel aan de De Boelelaan.

Op de avond dat ze als vermist werd opgegeven, werd Hajar bij de RAI gespot met een man, zo bleek later uit camerabeelden. Ze zouden zijn vertrokken naar Buitenveldert. Het lichaam van Hajar werd afgelopen vrijdag gevonden in een koffer, in het water aan de Amsteldijk in Amsterdam-Zuid. De man, een 23-jarige Somaliër zonder vaste woon- of verblijfplaats, is dinsdag aangehouden.

AUSTIN (ANP) - Max Verstappen hoopt dit weekend op het circuit van Austin in Texas in de winning mood te blijven. Dat zegt de viervoudig wereldkampioen in de Formule 1 in aanloop naar de Grote Prijs van de Verenigde Staten. De coureur van Red Bull won de afgelopen twee grands prix, in Maleisië en Singapore.

"De focus ligt op het vasthouden van het momentum, het optimaal benutten van onze kansen en het verzamelen van zoveel mogelijk punten voor het constructeurskampioenschap", aldus de Nederlander in een persbericht van Red Bull.

Verstappen kan bogen op goede resultaten in het verleden. Hij is zelfs de succesvolste Formule 1-coureur op Amerikaanse bodem met in totaal acht zeges (vier keer in Austin, twee keer in Miami en twee keer in Las Vegas). Hij won ook vorig jaar in Austin op het Circuit of the Americas. "Dit circuit is weer heel anders om op te rijden, maar ondanks de vele hobbels is het altijd erg leuk. Het heeft lange bochten en hoogteverschillen, dus we moeten zorgen dat we direct bij de start van het weekend de juiste afstelling voor de auto vinden."

De Grote Prijs van de Verenigde Staten is de achttiende race van het seizoen. Na Austin zijn er nog vijf races. De Italiaan Kimi Antonelli van Mercedes is de leider in het kampioenschap met 102 punten voorsprong op zijn Britse teamgenoot George Russell. Antonelli kan in theorie in Austin al zijn eerste wereldtitel veiligstellen, hoewel dat vrij onwaarschijnlijk is. Hij moet namelijk 23 punten meer scoren dan Russell. Het scenario waarin dat lukt, is wanneer Antonelli de race wint en Russell niet hoger dan negende finisht.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het feit dat veel websites offline zijn gehaald vanwege twee kwetsbaarheden in programmeertaal PHP "heeft impact in onze digitale samenleving", aldus justitieminister David van Weel. Het is de eerste reactie van het kabinet, op het moment dat er al een oplossing beschikbaar is gesteld door PHP.

"Er zijn op dit moment gelukkig nog geen signalen dat de kwetsbaarheden actief misbruikt worden", laat Van Weel ook weten via een woordvoerder. De kwetsbaarheden in de programmeertaal werden woensdagochtend ontdekt.

Veel websites zijn voor de zekerheid offline gehaald, ook veel websites van overheden. Websites van rijksoverheidsorganisaties zijn wel bereikbaar.

VEENENDAAL (ANP) - Webwinkels moeten woensdag nog contact opnemen met hun technische beheerder, hostingpartij of softwareleverancier. Dat is het advies van Thuiswinkel.org, de brancheorganisatie voor webwinkels, aan haar leden na waarschuwingen over kwetsbaarheden in de programmeertaal PHP. Webwinkels kunnen zo laten controleren of hun systemen PHP gebruiken, of ze worden geraakt en welke maatregelen er nodig zijn.

De brancheorganisatie heeft zelf het goede voorbeeld gegeven en bepaalde eigen websites tijdelijk offline gehaald. Voor webwinkeliers die zelf een server beheren, adviseert Thuiswinkel om te kijken of de betreffende PHP-beveiligingsupdate beschikbaar is en deze dan zo snel mogelijk te installeren. Daarnaast zegt de organisatie dat leden niet alleen WordPress, WooCommerce of een ander systeem, maar elke versie moeten laten vervangen.

Mocht het mogelijk kwetsbare systeem niet direct worden bijgewerkt of voldoende worden beschermd, dan moeten webwinkeliers de betreffende omgeving tijdelijk offline halen, aldus de organisatie.

Yesim Candan (CDA/D66/FVD) wilde zóóóó graag de spotlights van het drama rond Hajar, sloeg aan het dichten, kroop naast professioneel Renze-gast Tom van 't Einde (over hem vanavond meer) om te mijmeren over ene Anne-Fleur en had voor maximale publiciteit zélfs al de route van een stille tocht uitgedacht (van de Pijp naar de RAI). En toen was daar zojuist onderstaand 'Gemaakt met AI'-berichtje op Twitter: de familie heeft helemaal geen zin in een massale tocht met Yesim Candan als eerste poppetje achter het spandoek, de familie heeft behoefte aan RUST. Yesim doodsreutelde nog 1x dat er ECHT WEL 'overeenstemming' was met de familie en heeft nu haar account gegenocideerd. Lekker 'gewerkt' weer, Yesim.

Ja nou okee doei