MILAAN (ANP) - Jorrit Bergsma heeft bij de Olympische Spelen in Milaan brons veroverd op de 10 kilometer. De 40-jarige schaatser moest in het Milano Speed Skating met 12.40,48 het goud laten aan Metodej Jilek uit Tsjechië in een tijd van 12.33,43. Vladimir Semirunniy uit Polen veroverde met 12.39,08 het zilver.

Bergsma won olympisch goud op de 10 kilometer bij de Spelen van Sotsji in 2014 en greep vier jaar later het zilver. Bij de Spelen van Beijing in 2022 eindigde hij als vierde. De Zweed Nils van der Poel won.

MILAAN (ANP/RTR) - De Oekraïense skeletonner Vladyslav Jeraskevitsj is door het internationale sporttribunaal CAS in het ongelijk gesteld. Daarmee blijft zijn diskwalificatie, die het IOC hem had opgelegd om het dragen van een helm met afbeeldingen van in de oorlog met Rusland overleden Oekraïense sporters, van kracht.

Jeraskevitsj kwam vrijdag, de tweede dag van het skeletontoernooi, voor bij het sporttribunaal, omdat hij zijn diskwalificatie had aangevochten. Hij miste donderdag de eerste twee runs op de baan in Cortina d'Ampezzo al door de schorsing, en zal ook vrijdag niet in actie komen.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het oordeel van de Hoge Raad vorige maand dat de rente voor belastingschulden van bedrijven niet verhoogd mag worden, kost de schatkist dit jaar 264 miljoen euro. Dat schrijft demissionair staatssecretaris Eugène Heijnen (Fiscaliteit) vrijdag aan de Tweede Kamer.

Dit jaar worden de bezwaarmakers gecompenseerd. Dat kost 119 miljoen euro. De uitspraak betekent volgens de bewindsman structureel een tegenvaller van naar schatting 145 miljoen euro per jaar voor Financiën.

Ondernemers hadden de afgelopen jaren bezwaar gemaakt tegen de hogere rente. Het gaat om rente die bedrijven moeten voldoen als ze te laat de vennootschapsbelasting betalen. Sinds 2022 moeten ondernemers een hoger percentage betalen, terwijl dat niet geldt voor andere belastingen. Volgens de Hoge Raad is het hogere rentepercentage in strijd met het gelijkheidsbeginsel.

• French judge marked French duo higher than US pair

• Petition calling for probe approaches 15,000 signatures

• ISU says it has ‘full confidence’ in scoring system

The International Skating Union (ISU) has defended the integrity of Olympic ice dance judging after a single judge’s scoring gap became central to the outcome of the gold medal contest, insisting variations across panels are expected and that safeguards exist to prevent bias from determining results.

In a statement released on Friday, the governing body rejected suggestions that the judging system failed during the competition, in which France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron narrowly defeated Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates in one of the closest and most disputed finishes of the Milano Cortina Games.

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• Vladyslav Heraskevych reacts to say: ‘Cas has failed us’

• Lizzy Yarnold: Olympic chiefs have got it badly wrong

The Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych has lost his appeal to compete at the Winter Olympics after the court of arbitration for sport ruled that the IOC guidelines banning his “helmet of memory” were fair and proportionate.

Heraskevych had gone to Cas after being dramatically removed from the men’s competition on Thursday just 45 minutes it was due to start because of his helmet, which depicts 24 athletes and children killed by Russia.

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With their profile and vile words, these malign provocateurs are tearing down decency’s guardrails

It lacks the elegance of “greed is good”, but as a distillation of the spirit of the age, it’s right up there. “I feel liberated,” a top banker told the Financial Times shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.”

So that’s what they meant by “vibe shift”. Though, as the Epstein files reveal daily, the top 0.01% were hardly primly biting their tongues before Trump’s win, at least not in private. Those with telephone-number fortunes and great power felt able to speak, and write, to each other about women in language so vicious, so filled with hate – women discussed as body parts, as “less than human”, in Gordon Brown’s apt phrase – that they didn’t need the encouragement of a “grab ’em by the pussy” president to cast off their inhibitions.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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German chancellor rebuts idea of American unilateralism and says ‘democracies have partners and allies’

The US acting alone has reached the limits of its power and may already have lost its role as global leader, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, warned Donald Trump at the opening of the Munich Security Conference.

He also urged the US president to recognise it is still possible to exhaust Russia economically and militarily, to the point where it is willing to come to the negotiating table over Ukraine.

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Feyenoord haalde deze week met Raheem Sterling een grote speler in huis. Toch is het de vraag wat de 82-voudig Engels international kan brengen in Rotterdam. "Daar schuilt het gevaar. Hij is niet wedstrijdfit. Dan heb je zo een blessure, en zeker bij Feyenoord", zegt Harry van der Laan in FC Rijnmond.

Na een paar zachte dagen met temperaturen in de dubbele cijfers keert de winter weer terug in onze regio. Vooral zondag kan een opvallende dag worden: de nieuwste berekeningen laten serieuze sneeuwkansen zien voor Zuid-Holland.

De opsporingsdienst heeft 28 januari een grote partij illegale sigaretten in beslag genomen in de Botlek, Rotterdam. De sigaretten zaten verstopt in een container die geladen was met plastic bakken.

De politie heeft donderdagavond rond 19:00 uur een man aangehouden aan de Prinses Beatrixstraat in Ridderkerk. De 40-jarige Ridderkerker kreeg door een fout van de politie onbedoeld toegang tot vertrouwelijke politiedocumenten.

Waymo's autonomous vehicles can transport passengers across six cities without a human driver, but the Alphabet-owned company has discovered that its cars become completely inert if a passenger accidentally leaves a door open. The company confirmed that it is now paying DoorDash drivers in Atlanta to close these doors as part of a pilot program.

A Reddit post from a DoorDash driver showed an offer of $6.25 to drive less than one mile to a Waymo vehicle and close its door, plus an additional $5 after verified completion. Waymo and DoorDash told TechCrunch the post is legitimate. The door-closing partnership began earlier this year and is separate from the autonomous delivery service the two companies launched in Phoenix in October. Waymo has also worked with Honk, a towing service app, in Los Angeles on the same problem. Honk users in L.A. have been offered up to $24 to close a Waymo door. Future Waymo vehicles will have automated door closures.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, no earlier than Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time). Sophie flies as Mission Specialist 1 on the Dragon spacecraft. The other Crew-12 members are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, respectively commander and pilot of the mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, Mission Specialist 2. The French ESA astronaut is the first of her class, the Hoppers, to fly. Only two years and ten months separate the start of her astronaut training from the launch of her first long-duration mission – a record! Sophie has chosen the name εpsilon for her mission, which may last up to nine months. On board the Station, she will conduct a wide range of tasks, including European-led scientific experiments and medical research, support Earth observation activities, and contribute to operations and maintenance on the Station.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Hieu Chau compares his dense, dynamic compositions to his always active mind. Playing with scale and proportion, the Vietnamese artist renders surreal scenes in which flora and fauna converge and figures interact with the outside world as if in a dream. Chau, who was trained as a painter, now works digitally, although his pieces capture the grainy textures and gestures of a physical medium.

The artist recently published a book collecting his projects from the last decade, and you can find explore an archive of these pieces on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Surreal Dreams Reign in Hieu Chau’s Digital Illustrations appeared first on Colossal.

Rosstat has also removed data on the share of women among municipal employees.