Lanchester Wines in north-east England uses heat from a disused coalmine to maintain wine temperatures and with 23,000 flooded mines in the UK, there’s huge potential for more businesses and homes to follow its lead

Shove them in a fridge, stash them in a cellar – this is how most people store their favourite bottles of wine. But if you have warehouses full of thousands of vintages, you have to think a little differently.

For the last eight winters, Lanchester Wines has used heat from a disused coalmine to maintain ideal storage temperatures at its facilities in the north-east of England, helping to prevent freezing or spoilage.

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The artist on his need for order, an embarrassing Christmas costume, and the people he hopes to meet in heaven

Born in British Guiana (now Guyana), Frank Bowling, 92, moved to the UK aged 19 and did national service in the RAF. In 1962, he graduated from the Royal College of Art with the silver medal for painting. He moved to New York in 1966, where he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and exhibited his “map paintings” at the Whitney Museum in 1971. In 2005, he became the first black artist to be elected a Royal Academician, and Tate Britain staged a retrospective in 2019. His exhibition, Seeking the Sublime, is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until January 2027. He lives in London with his wife.

When were you happiest?
Recently, as people began to understand what I am trying to do in my painting.

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Literary magazine will no longer engage in ‘external publishing partnerships’ after Commonwealth prize furore

The prominent literary magazine Granta will no longer publish the winning entries of the annual Commonwealth short story prize after one of this year’s winners drew widespread accusations of AI use.

The magazine said it would no longer be involved in “external publishing partnerships” in which it had no editorial control.

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Jess Phillips, who quit as a minister last month, says Andy Burnham has proven he can beat Reform UK

• Cabinet loyalists tell Starmer he has the weekend to set out timetable for exit

• ‘Within 10 mins, he’d nicked it’: illustrator on his ubiquitous image of Burnham

Jess Phillips, who quit as safeguarding minister last month, said Andy Burnham has “proved his hypothesis” that he could beat Reform in a constituency where many expected Reform to do very well.

“He beat off Reform absolutely soundly in an area that absolutely should have been delivered to Reform and if anyone else had stood there, we would not be having this conversation now,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

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Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Lars Sivertsen, Seb Hutchinson, Jack Snape, Alex Abnos and Ewan Murray as the USA progress to the round of 32

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Zoooo dat ging effe snoeihard gisteren hè. Van nul naar honderd in een minuut of vijf. Net (niet) op tijd boven om de ramen dicht te rammen en daarna maar hopen dat het goed zou gaan. Donkere lucht, harde woei, HAGEL, natte pannen, pannen van het dak, bomen knak, de hele mikmak. Drama in Drenthe: daar kwam een 25-jarige vrouw om het leven toen een boom op een auto viel. In Midden-Nederland werd een NL-Alert verstuurd: uw DHL-pakketje komt vandaag wat later, snelwegen geblokkeerd, treinverkeer (uiteraard) verstoord, bomen op huizen, boom op feesttent - vooral in het noorden was het effe spoken. Daar had wel effe een Code Rood voor mogen komen, TOCH KNMI? Hieronder een paar mooie pics en speciale aandacht voor deze banger van Rick Bekker. Vandaag is het gewoon weer lekker - met 19:00 uur in het vooruitzicht is er sprake van CODE ORANJE.

Wowwwwzers

WIJ. ZIJN. NEDERLAND.

Deze wolk uit de hemel

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The 26 Most American Books of All Time [Esquire; ungated]

1. American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster 2. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass 3. Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville 4. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant 5. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 6. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 7. The Naked And the Dead by Norman Mailer 8. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 9. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 10. On the Road by Jack Kerouac 11. The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer 12. True Grit by Charles Portis 13. Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion 14. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro 15. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music by Greil Marcus 16. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 17. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe 18. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy 19. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 20. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 21. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 22. It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium by John Ed Bradley 23. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 24. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward 25. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 26. There There by Tommy Orange

KYIV (ANP/RTR/DPA) - De stafchef van de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky doet uit protest afstand van een Poolse staatsonderscheiding. Hij maakte dat bekend nadat de nationalistische president van Polen had besloten Zelensky een hoge onderscheiding te ontnemen.

Polen en Oekraïne werken nauw samen, maar er is ruzie over de naam van een Oekraïense legereenheid. Die is vernoemd naar een nationalistisch-separatistische groep die zich tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog verzette tegen de Sovjet-Unie, maar ook gruweldaden tegen Poolse burgers wordt verweten.

De Poolse president Karol Nawrocki besloot Zelensky daarom de Orde van de Witte Adelaar af te nemen. De stafchef van de Oekraïense president noemde dat besluit een onvriendelijk gebaar en een cadeau voor Rusland.

"Onze landen hebben een langdurige band met zowel heroïsche als tragische bladzijden in de geschiedenis", aldus stafchef Kyrylo Boedanov op sociale media. Dat zou volgens hem vooral aanleiding moeten zijn voor "diepe reflectie".

COEVORDEN (ANP) - In Drenthe is een vrouw om het leven gekomen tijdens de storm die in de nacht van vrijdag op zaterdag over Nederland trok. Een boom viel bovenop de auto waar ze in zat. Ze stierf ter plekke.

Het ongeluk gebeurde bij het dorp 't Haantje. Dat ligt niet ver van Emmen, in de gemeente Coevorden. Het slachtoffer is een vrouw van 25 uit het Friese Joure, meldt de politie Drenthe. Het fatale incident gebeurde iets na middernacht.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Ook medewerkers van gezondheidswinkelketen Holland & Barrett doen zondag mee aan een staking in de retailsector, meldt FNV. Vrijdag werd al bekend dat medewerkers van tientallen winkels van slijterijketen Gall & Gall en drogisterijketens Kruidvat en Etos gaan staken.

Het personeel legt het werk neer om een betere cao af te dwingen. "Holland & Barrett is, net als Ahold en het concern waar Kruidvat onder valt (AS Watson), een multinational die heel ver gaat in het verrijken van de top en het laag houden van de lonen van de mensen die zorgen dat er omzet wordt gedraaid", meent FNV.

Volgens de vakbond voeren medewerkers van Gall & Gall, Etos en Kruidvat zondag om 14.00 uur actie bij het hoofdkantoor van Ahold in Zaandam. FNV wil onder meer dat een plan voor halvering van de zondagstoeslag van tafel gaat.

The Stop Killing Games movement was dealt a blow this week after the European Commission decided not to propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they are no longer commercially available. Users of licensed software that depends on online components may also find this development of interest – more on that later. The grievance concerns online video games that become unplayable when publishers shut down the servers they run on. Almost 1.3 million grumpy gamers signed a petition calling for publishers to ensure games enjoy an afterlife, leading to a public hearing in the European Parliament. It's a contentious issue. On one hand, customers who have purchased a game might feel aggrieved when it is rendered unplayable by a commercial decision. On the other, publishers argue that shutting down services must be an option when a game is no longer commercially viable. A middle path would be a patch that lets the game run standalone, or releasing software so enthusiasts can host their own. Ross Scott, founder of the Stop Killing Games movement, told The Register: "The behavior of the Commission seems to go beyond simply disagreeing this is a problem that needs solving. On the contrary, they haven't clarified how the law views this situation and are trying to pass the ambiguity off to individual nation states. This is a recipe for policy fragmentation, which is under the Commission's charter to prevent." Scott added that the group was not calling for "endless support" for online games. "All we can say is the Commission appears to have an agenda independent of the initiative's request and their charter." Business is not a game Software shutouts are a depressingly familiar scenario for users. Licensed software can stop working or suffer reduced functionality when online services are lost. A recent example is the impending demise of Microsoft Office 2019 for macOS, which will reach the end of the road in July due to a certificate expiration. If the application cannot reach the licensing servers, users can't edit or save documents – rendering it mostly useless. Scott told us the group was focused on video games for the time being because "they have an almost unique place under the law." "EU court rulings consider them more than 'just' software due to all the copyrighted content contained within them and thus subject to more laws than just those that pertain to software." The European Commission cited existing intellectual property protections for creators and publishers as one reason not to propose new rules. It also noted that EU consumer law already provides some safeguards. "Video game providers must inform consumers about the duration and the conditions for terminating the contract before the consumers sign up for the video game," it said. Instead, the Commission said it would work with the industry to draw up a code of conduct. Stop Killing Games posted on X: "This decision is not unexpected. But we were prepared. Hence, we're pushing forward with @Europarl_EN amending #StopKillingGames to the Digital Fairness Act." In other words, the next step is to try to get the group's suggestions into the Digital Fairness Act, a legislative proposal by the European Commission, which, according to Scott, "coincidentally is an excellent fit for it." ®

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