Judges uphold decision to dismiss case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh for allegedly displaying Hezbollah flag at gig

The Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh will not face a terrorism charge over allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a gig after the high court in London upheld a decision to throw out the case.

Ó hAnnaidh, 28, who performs under the name Mo Chara, had been charged with the offence for allegedly displaying the flag of the proscribed group during a performance at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north London, in November 2024.

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The revival of this 90s favourite is a retro-futuristic fever dream that is first incomprehensible, then thrillingly evocative. Plus, Donald Glover’s Yoshi debut

Back in the mid-1990s, when I was a staff writer for Edge magazine, Marathon was our multiplayer shooter of choice. We all worked on Apple Macs, not PCs, so Bungie’s sci-fi opus was one of the only networked shooters we could all play together. At the end of every day, staff from magazines around the company loaded it up and played for hours (usually with Chemical Brothers or Orbital blasting from the stereo). This was the era in which video games discovered club culture – Sony employed the legendary Sheffield studio the Designers Republic to create its box art and licensed the latest dance tunes for its marketing and game soundtracks. Western developers swooned over cyberpunk anime, newly available thanks to video distributors such as Viz Media and Manga Entertainment, and the internet was emerging as a weird, wild global meeting place. It felt, for a while, as if we were living in a William Gibson novel.

I’m reminded of these things while playing the new version of Marathon, released this week by Bungie and heavily inspired by 1990s futurism. It’s now an online sci-fi extraction shooter in which players beam down to the planet Tau Ceti IV to scavenge for loot, carry out missions and potentially blast each other in the process. Its closest rival is Arc Raiders, which makes a similar use of stylised retro-futurism. In a recent Twitter exchange, Bungie’s global franchise director, Philip Asher, namechecked Sony’s Wipeout game, its Mental Wealth ads for PlayStation and its translucent Dual Shock controllers as inspirations.

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Due to the volatile cocoa market, companies like Hershey are using replacement ingredients such as sugar, oil, milk and nuts

Just before Valentine’s Day, Brad Reese bought a bag of Reese’s Unwrapped Peanut Butter Creme Mini Hearts from his local convenience store in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was a brand-new product, released especially for the holiday, tagline: “We’ll never break your heart.”

Reese is a Reese’s aficionado who makes a point of trying everything the company produces. This isn’t a coincidence: he’s one of the Reeses, a grandson of HB Reese, the former Hershey dairy farmer who invented the peanut butter cup in 1928. Although he’s never worked for Reese’s or Hershey, which acquired the peanut butter cup company in 1963, Reese considers himself a custodian of HB’s legacy. He also takes an avid interest in the Hershey company and its leadership.

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Content creators claim they’ve escaped the 9 to 5, yet as Louis Theroux’s new show reveals, they are mere serfs to algorithms and audiences

Who wouldn’t want to be an influencer? You’re famous and maybe even rich, just for doing what you’d be doing anyway: working out at the gym, hanging out with your mates and mucking about on the internet. You get paid to say what you think (or are at least sent free stuff), and no one’s telling you what to do. Surely only a sucker would do anything else.

At least that is the influencing dream, and many young men are buying into it. “Content creator” has for years been cited as the most desirable career by generation Z and now gen Alpha. The preferred platforms might have changed over time, with streaming on Twitch and Kick now supplanting posting on Instagram and YouTube, but the aspiration remains the same: to escape the drudgery of a desk job.

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Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under president Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs

The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts.

By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law.

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Business lobby groups say ‘taking the risk’ of employing less-experienced workers is being avoided

British companies are struggling to afford to hire young people after a long period of rising costs that have hit profit margins and derailed recruitment plans, business leaders have said.

Rising labour costs including increases to the minimum wage and employer’s national insurance by the government have put young people at the back of the queue when employers consider recruitment, business lobby groups have told MPs.

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Ex-peer sacked as US ambassador over Epstein links was offered £75,000, documents released by Cabinet Office show

• UK politics live – latest updates

Peter Mandelson was offered a severance payment of £75,000 after initially asking the Foreign Office to pay him more than £500,000 upon his sacking as US ambassador, newly released documents reveal.

Exchanges in the documents released by the Cabinet Office suggested that officials did “well to get this settlement down this low with minimal fuss”, after Mandelson was forced to resign as ambassador to the US because of newly disclosed details about his long friendship with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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Andris Nelsons is to leave the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The shock decision is strongly opposed by the players. What is going on, and what, should a music director’s role be? Plus: why Timothee Chalamet is an eejit

The Boston Symphony Orchestra ending its contract with Andris Nelsons, its music director since 2014, has come as a shock to players and conductor alike. “The BSO and Andris Nelsons were not aligned on future vision,” read a terse statement released last week by orchestra’s board and Chad Smith, its president and chief executive. Nelsons will leave the orchestra after the summer 2027 Tanglewood season. In the glacial world of conductorly handovers and orchestral music programming, where decisions are often taken years in advance (look at the LPO), this feels disconcertingly hasty.

The BSO is one of the US’s most distinguished and celebrated of orchestras, one of the so-called “Big Five”. Nelsons won two Grammys with the Boston Symphony players just last month (for Messiaen and Shostakovich), so why has the board decided to end the relationship? Is this a board v players and management spat? There’s no suggestion of any misconduct or breach of contract; perhaps the face-value interpretation is the right one: artistic differences over the orchestra’s “future vision”.

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Die Laughing

ARLINGTON (ANP) - De oorlog tegen Iran is volgens president Donald Trump snel voorbij, want er is "praktisch niets meer om aan te vallen". Hij zei dit woensdag in een kort vraaggesprek met de nieuwssite Axios.

Er is volgens Trump in Iran bijna niets meer om als doelwit aan te merken. "Er zijn nog wat kleine dingetjes en op ieder moment dat ik wil dat het ophoudt, houdt het op", aldus Trump.

De Iraanse Islamitische Revolutionaire Garde (IRG) heeft het woensdag juist over "een lange uitputtingsoorlog". Die zal de Amerikaanse economie en de wereldeconomie verwoesten.

Strijd voortzetten

Ook zullen volgens de garde de Amerikaanse militaire capaciteiten worden uitgehold en volkomen vernietigd. Iraanse leiders hebben herhaaldelijk betoogd dat zij de strijd voortzetten.

De Israëlische defensieminister Israel Katz zei dat de oorlog doorgaat zonder tijdslimiet tot alle doelen zijn bereikt. Amerikaanse en Israëlische functionarissen hebben aangegeven dat geen plannen bekend zijn over wanneer de aanvallen stoppen.

HAARLEM (ANP) - Huiseigenaren die bezwaar maken tegen de WOZ-waarde van hun huis, moeten goed letten op de tarieven van bezwaarbureaus. Volgens een reeks uitspraken bij de rechtbanken Noord-Holland en Zeeland-West-Brabant heeft een WOZ-bezwaarbureau veel te veel geld gevraagd voor het opstellen van taxatierapporten.

De WOZ-waarde bepaalt hoeveel onroerendezaakbelasting (ozb) iemand moet betalen. Huiseigenaren die het niet eens zijn met de hoogte van de WOZ-waarde kunnen hiertegen in beroep gaan bij de gemeente, maar dat kan ook via een bezwaarbureau. De uitspraken gaan over de kosten voor het maken van een taxatierapport in zo'n WOZ-zaak.

Het bureau in kwestie rekende ruim 182 euro per taxatierapport. Maar omdat de rapporten met computergegenereerde expertise zijn opgemaakt, hoeft dat volgens de rechtbanken hooguit 15 euro te kosten. De conclusie geldt niet alleen voor deze proefprocedures, maar wordt ook toegepast op de in totaal meer dan vijfhonderd ingediende zaken bij deze rechtbanken.

PARIJS (ANP) - Het Internationaal Energie Agentschap (IEA) bevestigt dat leden 400 miljoen vaten olie vrijgeven uit de noodreserves. Dat is de grootste vrijgave in de geschiedenis van de organisatie.

Directeur Fatih Birol benadrukte dat de oorlog in Iran voor onrust op de energiemarkten heeft gezorgd, met hoge prijzen en zelfs tekorten aan olie en gas als gevolg. De vrijgave moet helpen die druk te verlichten, maar het belangrijkste is dat het vervoer via de voor energie belangrijke Straat van Hormuz voor de Iraanse kust weer kan doorgaan, benadrukte hij.

Doordat het scheepsverkeer in die zeestraat is geblokkeerd door de oorlog, kunnen Qatar en de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten amper hun olie en gas vervoeren naar de rest van de wereld. "De wereldwijde toevoer van energie is met ongeveer 20 procent afgenomen", zei Birol daarover.

Azië zwaarst getroffen

Azië is de zwaarst getroffen regio door de schaarste aan gas, benadrukte Birol. "Hoge-inkomenslanden in Azië concurreren met Europese landen en andere importeurs om de beschikbare energieladingen. Maar opkomende economieën hebben simpelweg tekorten en zijn gedwongen te rantsoeneren", zei hij.

Nederland is een van de 32 leden van het IEA, dat als coördinator optreedt bij internationale energiecrises. Het draagt met 5,4 miljoen vaten olie bij aan de vrijgave van noodreserves, werd eerder op woensdag bekend.

VS grootste voorraad

Elk IEA-lid heeft de verplichting om het equivalent van minstens negentig dagen aan olie-import aan reserves te bezitten. De VS hebben van alle leden de grootste voorraad, van 415 miljoen vaten.

Het nieuws over de vrijgave veroorzaakte niet direct een daling van de olieprijzen. De prijs voor een vat Brentolie stond ongeveer 20 minuten na de bekendmaking 3,5 procent boven de eindstand van dinsdag, op ongeveer 91 dollar per vat.

Bij een douanecontrole op de Maasvlakte zijn begin maart miljoenen illegale sigaretten gevonden. De verdachte container werd later gevolgd naar een loods in Heinenoord, waar de politie naast de illegale sigaretten ook 6.000 kilo illegale waterpijptabak onderschepte. Er zijn twee mensen aangehouden.

This is amazing: PornHub has just introduced a new feature that will alert a random convenience store cashier in the US anytime you access PornHub. This is going to make the experience of using porn a lot more like it was in the 1980s, when you had to buy your porn from whoever was working behind the register at 7/11. Will this new hurdle help people fight porn addiction, or are you going to keep using PornHub just as much as before? Sound off in the comments!

Inspector general flags Starship risks and gaps in testing

The NASA Office of Inspector General has published a report on the agency's management of the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, highlighting the risks and arguments behind the scenes.…

Het is mei 1926. De zeppelin Norge bereikt als eerste ooit de geografische Noordpool. Maar de beroemde Noorse ontdekkingsreiziger Roald Amundsen en Italiaanse ingenieur Umberto…

Cultuur mag niet als „propagandaplatform” worden gebruikt, stelt de Europese Commissie. De commissie dreigt haar subsidie aan de Biënnale in Venetië, het tweejaarlijkse WK van de kunstwereld, stop te zetten als Rusland wordt toegelaten tot het tweejaarlijkse kunstevenement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. "The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," he said in an interview with WIRED.

The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build "a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe," the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025. [...]

LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability. LeCun says AMI will release its first AI models quickly, but he's not expecting most people to take notice. The company will first work with partners such as Toyota and Samsung, and then will learn how to apply its technology more broadly. Eventually, he says, AMI intends to develop a "universal world model," which would be the basis for a generally intelligent system that could help companies regardless of what industry they work in. "It's very ambitious," he says with a smile.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite the surge in Russian oil prices, analysts caution that this boost in revenues is unlikely to fully reverse Russia’s economic woes.