Donald Trump has said the growing financial pressure inflicted on Americans by the war on Iran is “not even a little bit” motivating him to make a peace deal with Tehran.
With US inflation at a three-year high, and fuel costs still climbing after a sharp rise in oil prices, the US president said on Tuesday that he is not focused on the economic hardship sparked by the conflict.
Organizers are concerned Fifa tournament will deepen housing crisis as short-term listings spawn and unhoused people are further displaced in sweeps
More than 10 million people are expected to visit the US for the World Cup this summer. However, where and how to accommodate these visitors has been a concern among residents and affordable housing advocates in host cities from Seattle to Atlanta.
Hotels remain under-booked in America’s 11 host cities, while short-term rental listings in some cities have increased by as much as 30% in recent weeks. To incentivize homeowners and landlords to become hosts during the World Cup, platforms such as Airbnb are offering a $750 sign-up bonus, with some rental listings already reaching $6,000 a night. Advocates worry that an increase in short-term listings will lead to a tighter rental market and higher rents for residents in host cities.
A new book by linguistics professor Valerie Fridland, who was raised in Memphis by French parents, explores the power behind the way we speak
Valerie Fridland writes in her new book, Why We Talk Funny: the Real Story Behind Our Accents, that humans instinctively to use accents to categorize those around us. “We learn to recognize other people as being like us through the way that they sound,” Fridland says. It happens early: studies suggest small children, when choosing friends, favor those who share their accent.
In one study, for instance, five- and six-year-olds were shown pairs of kids on a computer screen, one with a local Canadian accent and one with a British accent. Asked who they wanted to be friends with, they picked the kid with the local accent – even though they lived in Toronto and are exposed to a huge range of accents every day.
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan
It’s a common problem: you buy something new and start wearing and washing it regularly, only to find that it has developed a slightly grey tinge or faded colours after just a few months. Most clothes aren’t fragile, but they’re not indestructible either – and the way we wear, wash and store them makes more of a difference than we think.
Looking after your clothes properly can mean they last longer, hold their shape and don’t need replacing nearly as often, which is better for both your bank balance and the planet. And while investing in well-made pieces is important, what you do afterwards matters just as much.
Pioneering environmentalist Charles Waterton enclosed his parkland and lake near Wakefield in the 1820s
Over four years in the 1820s, Charles Waterton built a 9ft-high, 3-mile-long wall around the parkland and lake of Walton Hall. The fox- and poacher-proof boundary enclosed what could be the world’s first nature reserve, completed in Yorkshire 200 years ago.
Waterton, an eccentric, controversial and pioneering environmentalist, built nest boxes, special banks for sand martins and innovative bird hides, and offered local people sixpence for every hedgehog they brought into his reserve.
Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?
The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.
If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake.
All kinds of musical riches by formerly overlooked composers may be languishing in lofts and dusty archives.
The discovery of a new work by Ralph Vaughan Williams has set the world alight this week. Well, not quite, but it’s a great story. In a box in the archives of London’s Morley College Elaine Andrews came across a previously unknown Vaughan Williams song. Titled Before the Mirror, it sets a Swinburne poem that itself was inspired by a Whistler painting.
Hearing it played on Radio 4’s PM on Monday [58 mins in] reveals music of surprising tonal adventure and expressive ambiguity, written shortly after Vaughan Williams married Adeline Fisher in 1897. And the manuscript’s workings, its crossings-out and corrections, are a fascinating insight into Vaughan Williams’s creative process.
Outrage is mounting about the Gulf country’s complicity in Sudan’s catastrophic civil war – and it might be starting to hit them where it hurts
There are certain states whose reputations in the global community are tainted. For habitual violations of international law, they are shunned, boycotted or slammed with economic sanctions. Reading these words, perhaps you’re thinking of Russia, Israel, Iran or North Korea. But there is one country that is rarely considered an outlaw, even if its actions increasingly fit the bill.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is belatedly starting to draw some scrutiny over mounting evidence that it is backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that have been terrorising Sudan for years. Since the beginning of the civil war in 2023, which was triggered by a contest for power between the RSF militia and the Sudanese army, the RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing and sexual violence. A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that its assault on non-Arab populations in the west of the country carried “the hallmarks of genocide”.
US authorities arrested French citizen Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé after she missed an immigration appointment
The wailing at the Louisiana immigration detention facility began at night, Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé remembered, back at home in France. “Children crying, and even babies.”
The 85-year-old’s detention last month as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown made international headlines. Now, nearly a month after her release, she was ready to talk about it – and the late-in-life love story that had brought her to the US.
Voormalig asielminister Marjolein Faber (PVV) heeft altijd gezegd dat ze een „dragende motivering” had voor haar asielnoodwet, maar haar ambtenaren stonden daar niet achter, blijkt uit ambtelijke notities die woensdag openbaar zijn gemaakt.
Debbie Lawson is known for her large-scale sculptures of life-size animals cloaked in ornamental carpets. Starting with an armature of wire mesh, masking tape, and Jesmonite resin, she meticulously cuts and tucks Persian carpet around every limb, building a surface that looks unbroken. As if the animals have materialized from within the textiles and are temporarily frozen in a stage of metamorphosis, we encounter them on the verge of making a move.
In the artist’s solo exhibition, In a Cowslip’s Bell I Lie at Sargent’s Daughters, she provokes “questions about the relationships between decoration and nature, craft and camouflage,” the gallery says. The title is a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, when the spirit Ariel sings about freedom and the carefree, even charmed connection to nature following his release from forced servitude to the sorcerer Prospero. Several of the works seen here, including “Wild Dog Sundown,” “Red Eagle,” and “Black Cougar,” are included in the show.
“Wild Dog Sundown” (2025), carpet and mixed media, 92 1/2 x 61 3/4 x 24 3/4 inches
Lawson draws on the lineage of nature motifs in art, especially wildlife. She alludes to “the natural and animal forms hidden within decorative forms and patterns, from the frescoes of Pompeii to French Rococo moldings to Venetian stone carvings—the designs of William Morris and even the New York Public Library’s lions,” says a statement. Think clawfoot tubs, heraldic animals carved into hearths and other decorative interior elements, and the more modern form-meets-function works of Les Lalannes, which often incorporate birds and mammals into designs for benches and lamps.
The dialogue between art and decor parallels inherent tensions between interiors and the outside world—refinement and domesticity versus nature or indeed, the wilderness. Lawson also thinks about the gendered history of home life and craft, which has long been been associated with “women’s work.” This is deeply personal for the artist, as textile- and art-making go back generations in both her family and her hometown of Dundee, Scotland. She says, “I’m also thinking about women, including some of my near ancestors, so often confined by the constraints of the patriarchal society in which they/we lived, trapped in the daily grind and unable to pursue their own considerable creative talents or fully inhabit the world.”
Lawson’s camouflaged animals manifest from the backgrounds of carpets, emphasizing emergence itself. As these wild animals—leopards, cougars, bears, and more—are more clearly defined, they don’t break free from their patterns. Rather, they are indelibly characterized by the textile and can be clearly recognized for their unique individual traits. It’s not unlike how craft, especially textiles that were historically relegated to domestic settings and considered at least a notch or two below “high art,” has intently disrupted the art canon in recent decades.
In a Cowslip’s Bell I Lie continues through May 30 in New York. See more on Lawson’s Instagram.
“Red Eagle” (2026), carpet, steel, and mixed media, 116 1/8 x 78 3/4 x 21 5/8 inches“Arabian Leopard” (2024), carpet and mixed media, 63 x 90 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches“Black Cougar” (2025), carpet and mixed media, 70 7/8 x 29 1/8 x 13 3/8 inches“Prospero” (2026), carpet and mixed media, 52 x 19 3/4 x 18 1/2 inches“Alligator” (2025), carpet and mixed media, 30 x 43 x 16 inchesDetail of “Alligator”“Red Cougar” (2025), carpet, table, and mixed media, 90 1/2 x 63 x 31 7/8 inches“Gold Cougar” (2026), carpet and mixed media, 70 7/8 x 28 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches
Reisgidsen zetten de Canarische Eilanden op een ‘no‑go’ lijst voor 2026. Geen verbod, wel een waarschuwing voor de gevolgen van massatoerisme.
De Canarische Eilanden krijgen voor 2026 een plek op internationale ‘no‑go’ lijsten van reisgidsen, maar er is geen sprake van een officieel reisverbod. De bekendste is de jaarlijkse “No List” van Fodor’s Travel, een invloedrijke Amerikaanse uitgever van reisgidsen, die reizigers vraagt hun vakantiekeuze te heroverwegen in plaats van de eilanden volledig te mijden.
Geen vliegverbod, wel een signaal
Toch zorgt de term “no travel list” voor verwarring. Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote en de andere eilanden staan niet op een zwarte lijst van overheden: vluchten gaan gewoon door, er zijn geen EU‑sancties en geen officieel negatief reisadvies. Het gaat om een redactionele lijst, bedoeld als moreel signaal over bestemmingen waar de druk van toerisme volgens Fodor’s uit de bocht vliegt.
Overtourisme en woningnood
De Canarische Eilanden ontvingen de afgelopen jaren recordaantallen bezoekers, vooral uit Noord‑ en West‑Europa. Fodor’s en andere media wijzen op een reeks problemen die daarmee samenhangt: een acute woningcrisis doordat veel appartementen worden omgezet in (soms illegale) vakantieverhuur, steeds vollere wegen, watertekorten en toenemende milieuschade. Lokale media spreken van eilanden die “onder het gewicht van het toerisme bezwijken”.
Protest tegen massatoerisme
Sinds 2024 is het protest op straat zichtbaar. Op meerdere eilanden trokken duizenden mensen de straat op met leuzen als “Canarias tiene un límite”. Bewoners eisen een rem op nieuwe hotel‑ en resortprojecten, strengere regels voor vakantieverhuur en beter beschermde natuurgebieden. Volgens Fodor’s is juist die lokale weerstand een belangrijke reden om reizigers tot nadenken aan te zetten.
Bewust reizen of een andere bestemming
De “No List” is nadrukkelijk geen oproep tot boycot, benadrukt Fodor’s. Wie toch naar de Canarische Eilanden reist, zou volgens de reisgids moeten kiezen voor kleinschalige, duurzame accommodaties, water besparen en lokale regels respecteren. Voor andere vakantiegangers is de boodschap simpel: er zijn in 2026 genoeg alternatieve zonbestemmingen die minder onder massatoerisme gebukt gaan.
My next image captures two trains passing each other in near-perfect symmetry, photographed from a pedestrian bridge in Osaka.
Finding this spot turned out to be more of a challenge than expected, but after some searching I eventually tracked it down. The only downside was the lack of nearby parking — in hindsight, taking the train would probably have been the smarter option. But once you get used to having a rental car in Japan, it’s hard to give it up.
There’s something comforting about it. A kind of private cocoon that allows you to move through the city while observing everything from your own small bubble. It’s something I often notice with locals as well. For many, the car becomes an extension of home — a place to eat, to rest, or simply to disconnect for a moment from the constant pull of the city.
Back to this image though: it was absolutely worth the effort. What drew me to this composition was the perspective — the centrally positioned tracks pulling your eye straight into the distance, while the two trains pass each other in a brief moment of perfect balance. One of those scenes where timing and composition came together exactly as I had hoped.
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Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: CERN, a longtime Open Source pioneer, has made several contributions over the years to KiCad ("KEE-kad"), an Open Source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) package widely used in the hobbyist and professional electronics communities. It's gotten so widely used that users can now submit their KiCad design files directly to several electronics fabricators (rather than the traditional step of converting the layouts to Gerber files). Over the years, CERN has also developed their own symbol and footprint libraries to support their own internal electronic designs. Last week, CERN released those KiCad component libraries, containing over 17,000 symbols, under the CERN Open Hardware License.
Nederland en België hebben officieel vastgelegd dat ze intensiever gaan samenwerken op het gebied van kernenergie. De samenwerking moet bijdragen aan betere kennisuitwisseling en een sterkere toeleveringsketen. Zo willen beide landen het nucleaire ecosysteem versterken. De samenwerking benadrukt daarnaast het belang van kernenergie in de energietransitie en de energieonafhankelijkheid van beide landen.
Microsoft claims to have achieved a "leap forward" in performance for WinUI 3, the current native framework for Windows apps, with a 25 percent improvement for the parts of File Explorer coded using this framework. Software engineer lead Beth Pan posted figures for the WinUI portion of File Explorer, showing 41 percent fewer memory allocations and 45 percent fewer function calls. She added that some optimizations "involve small or large breaking changes," so they will be opt-in at first for developers using the framework. The plan is for the optimizations to become the default in future versions of WinUI and the Windows App SDK, with opt-out available when needed. The new optimizations are part of a push to make Windows more responsive. In March, Windows boss Pavan Davuluri promised to improve the quality of the operating system, including a commitment to a "faster and more dependable File Explorer." His post noted that Microsoft intends to "move more experiences to WinUI 3" for faster responsiveness. Pan's post is bittersweet for developers. Performance issues with WinUI 3 have been well known for years. Although Microsoft calls it a native framework, that is a stretch. WinUI 3 is based on WinRT (Windows Runtime), a component interface first used in Windows 8 that sits between application code and the underlying Win32 API, which has a better claim to being native. An advantage of WinUI 3 is its support for Fluent UI, the Windows design system. Developers using WinUI 3 get the Windows 11 look and feel, but not the best performance. "WinUI 3 is currently measurably slower than both WPF [Windows Presentation Foundation] and UWP [Universal Windows Platform]… this is NOT OK," said one comment. Another said that "you can't build a WinUI app and call it smooth at the same time." Component vendor DevExpress has also posted about WinUI 3 performance issues. The company stated that WinUI component architecture has the potential for fast rendering and animation, but that "unfortunately, each action within a component requires WinRT interop, which is slow." These concerns undermine Davuluri's hope that using more WinUI 3 will fix Windows 11 performance, unless the framework itself is improved, as Pan now claims. Another longstanding gripe among Windows devs is that Microsoft's developer division has created frameworks that the Windows and Office teams have not always adopted consistently. Internal tensions go back many years. Some may still remember early builds of "Longhorn," the code name for Windows Vista, having to be reworked before Vista's eventual release in 2007 because of performance issues with .NET. This caused distrust of .NET in the Windows team. "What you need to do is actually use your framework across the company," said another comment. Pan replied, insisting "that's the push." This is exactly what developers using WinUI 3 want to hear, but the long and tangled history of Windows UI frameworks suggests that a consistent and enduring company-wide approach is unlikely. ®
Hij is al veertig jaar schipper, nooit problemen. Nu zit hij ineens in het beklaagdenbankje voor het laten weglopen van een potentieel gevaarlijke stof in de haven. Alles is opgeruimd, er zijn geen slachtoffers. Toch is er een rechtszaak. “Ik weet waar ik mee bezig ben. Dit raakt me echt.”
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