What’s Carol Vorderman moaning about? All I said was how fit she was … must be going through the menopause or something

Another sweltering sub-Saharan summer’s day in late spring. If this is global warming, I say: “Bring it on.” I go outside to the van, turn on the engine and leave it running. This is the kind of day you want to burn as many fossil fuels as possible. Back indoors, I turn on the radio where Tony Blair is talking. There’s a politician who talks sense.

Bollocks to net zero. That’s what I say. It stands to reason. I mean, think back to the ice age. Let’s face it, there weren’t that many international flights a day while the Neanderthals were alive – five or six at most – and the world still got a whole lot hotter. So it’s all just woke nonsense. Make a note in my diary to ask if Tony is free to come up to Makerfield to do some door-knocking.

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With Oliver Glasner departing and key players coveted by big clubs, Conference League winners’ future is unclear

After everything Steve Parish has been through over the past 12 months, he was just about able to compose himself. The man who fell in love with Crystal Palace as an 11-year-old schoolboy when they reached the FA Cup semi-final for the first time in 1976 from the old Third Division and stepped in to save his club from administration in 2010 reflected with pride on the journey that has taken them to three trophies under the shrewd management of Oliver Glasner.

“It’s incredible,” said Parish after Jean-Philippe Mateta’s goal against Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig sealed their triumph in the Conference League. “An amazing achievement. All the ups and downs … To get to the Europa League, where we deserve to be. It just shows you: sometimes the good guys win. When I bought the club I wasn’t sure we’d ever play in Europe, let alone win a trophy. It’s a dream come true.”

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Jurriën Timber’s likely unavailability means a reshuffle that will affect selections in all areas of the side

It would be easy to look at Saturday’s Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal and see it as a battle of attack versus defence, of beauty against pragmatism, of French elan against English doughtiness, as some sort of tussle for the soul of football. But it would not entirely be true. And where, after all, was the honour at Agincourt? In the vainglorious charges of the dashing French cavalry or the stoic defiance of the British archers arrayed, naked from the waist down, behind their defensive stakes?

On the one hand, the stats look stark. In the Champions League this season, Paris Saint-Germain have averaged 63.4% possession, higher than anybody apart from Barcelona; Arsenal’s figure is 52.6%, the 11th-highest of the 36 sides who made the league stage. PSG’s pass completion has been 89.3% to Arsenal’s 85.7% (third-highest to 14th-highest). PSG have scored 44 goals to Arsenal’s 29. But on the flip side, Arsenal have conceded six goals to PSG’s 22 and won 13.4 aerial duels per game to PSG’s 9.4 (sixth-highest to 29th-highest).

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White House made lengthy post about gorilla shot dead at Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure in 2016

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The White House has posted on social media a tribute to mark Thursday’s 10th anniversary of the death of a figure it called “a true patriot”.

The hero was not a human, however; it concerned the infamous case of the 400lb western lowland gorilla that had been named Harambe, which was shot dead at the Cincinnati zoo after a toddler entered his enclosure and interacted with the animal.

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DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Consumentenbond is kritisch op prijsverhogingen die telecomaanbieders KPN en Ziggo hebben aangekondigd. De belangenbehartiger betwijfelt of die rechtmatig zijn en wil beide bedrijven erover spreken.

De Consumentenbond zegt tientallen klachten te hebben gekregen over de prijsverhogingen. KPN verhoogt de prijs van veel bestaande mobiele abonnementen in juni met 1 euro per maand vanwege het toevoegen van een veiligheidsfunctie die klanten zelf moeten aanzetten. Vanaf die maand gelden ook nieuwe algemene voorwaarden. De Consumentenbond vraagt zich af of KPN de prijsverhoging kan baseren op nieuwe algemene voorwaarden die tegelijk met de prijsverhoging ingaan.

Daarnaast onderzoekt de Consumentenbond Ziggo omdat klanten vanaf 1 juli de ESPN-zenders 2, 3 en 4 in hun digitale tv-pakketten krijgen. Daarvoor betalen sommige klanten 2,50 euro per maand extra.

De Consumentenbond is al langer kritisch op KPN en Ziggo vanwege hun dominante posities en spreekt van een duopolie.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het kabinet gaat in hoger beroep tegen recente uitspraken over de vliegvelden bij Eindhoven, Rotterdam en Lelystad. Minister Jaimi van Essen (Landbouw, D66) wil daarmee "verdere juridische helderheid" over de stikstofcrisis krijgen, schrijft hij in een brief aan de Tweede Kamer. "Die helderheid helpt vervolgens om beleid op te baseren."

De rechter bepaalde vorige maand dat Rotterdam Airport en Eindhoven Airport toch natuurvergunningen nodig hebben. Binnen acht weken, halverwege juni, moet hij besluiten of hij misschien gaat ingrijpen bij de luchthavens. Dat laatste moet hij ook doen bij Lelystad Airport, waar een natuurvergunning al ontbreekt.

Om de onderliggende juridische problemen op te lossen, is herstel van de natuur nodig, schrijft Van Essen. "Daardoor lopen we vast op alles wat we juist wel willen: het legaliseren van PAS-melders, verduurzaming in de landbouw en projecten voor de energietransitie." Hij verwijst naar de stikstofplannen waar hij aan werkt, die volgende maand bekend moeten worden.

Datacenters zijn menig Nederlander een doorn in het oog: ze kosten bakken met energie en de Nederlandse economie heeft er weinig aan. Toch staan er in ons land bijzonder veel van dit soort gebouwen, waarin computersystemen en opslaginfrastructuur zijn ondergebracht.

Ze spelen een cruciale rol in het verwerken van enorme hoeveelheden data en het draaiende houden van internetdiensten, cloudopslag en telecommunicatie. In het tijdperk van Big Data zijn datacenters daardoor niet alleen onmisbaar voor bedrijven, maar ook strategisch belangrijk voor overheden.

Volgens cijfers van het platform Cloudscene zijn er wereldwijd inmiddels meer dan 11.700 operationele datacenters. De Verenigde Staten domineren die markt met afstand. In mei 2026 telde het land 5.427 datacenters, goed voor bijna 46 procent van het wereldwijde totaal.

Duitsland volgt op ruime afstand met 529 datacenters, net voor het Verenigd Koninkrijk met 523. China staat op de vierde plaats met 449 locaties, gevolgd door Canada met 337 datacenters. India neemt met 155 datacenters de veertiende positie wereldwijd in.

De cijfers geven een indruk van de wereldwijde spreiding van datacenters, maar zeggen niet alles over de daadwerkelijke capaciteit. Datacenters verschillen namelijk sterk in omvang en opslagvermogen. Sommige locaties verwerken aanzienlijk grotere hoeveelheden data dan andere, waardoor het aantal vestigingen niet automatisch gelijkstaat aan marktmacht of technologische capaciteit.

Bron: Statista

LIMASSOL (ANP) - Volgens EU-buitenlandchef Kaja Kallas zal Europa nooit een neutrale bemiddelaar zijn tussen Rusland en Oekraïne, "omdat we aan de kant van Oekraïne staan ​​en onze eigen fundamentele veiligheidsbelangen verdedigen". Dat zei Kallas donderdag op een persconferentie na een informele vergadering met de EU-ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken in Cyprus.

De ministers bespraken daar de rode lijnen voor een EU-onderhandelingsmandaat over vrede tussen Oekraïne en Rusland. De ministers zijn het er volgens Kallas over eens dat een onvoorwaardelijk staakt-het-vuren een voorwaarde is voor elke vorm van vredesonderhandelingen.

Daarnaast moet Rusland "stoppen met sabotageacties, cyberaanvallen, verkiezingsbemoeienis en schendingen van het Europese luchtruim", zei Kallas.

Het door Rusland bezette Oekraïense gebied kan niet wettelijk worden erkend, zo vervolgde de topdiplomaat. Rusland moet daarnaast verantwoording afleggen over zijn agressieoorlog tegen Oekraïne.

De Europese Commissie heeft donderdag een diepgravend onderzoek ingesteld naar de overname van MediaMarkt-moederbedrijf Ceconomy door het Chinese JD.com. Centraal staat de vraag of dat laatste bedrijf profiteert van staatssteun.

In opdracht van koning Willem-Alexander en koningin Máxima werd de herkomst van ruim duizend koloniale voorwerpen uit de paleizen onderzocht. Het overgrote deel werd geschonken, een aantal is „mogelijk niet rechtmatig en rechtvaardig” verkregen.

the password is hallucinate dot site don't forget to stay hydrated

I, Sisyphus, Am Ninety-Five Percent of the Way There. “Honestly, folks, we are so, so close. The summit is largely visible. It is nearly visible. There is a concept of visibility at play here that is impossible to ignore.”

Chip giant Qualcomm is launching new Snapdragon silicon aimed at entry-level laptops, right in the midst of a memory supply crunch that will make it very difficult for any vendors to hit the target $300 starting price. The San Diego-based biz is adding to its line-up of Arm-based system-on-chip (SoC) processors with the Snapdragon C platform. This is designed to power entry-tier laptops targeting buyers such as students, families, and small businesses, with a starting price stated as "about $300 or so." Qualcomm started its push into the Windows laptop market a couple of years ago, with its Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips. Many of these were priced around $600. It was aided by Microsoft, which was trying to promote the "Copilot+ PC" brand for Windows 11 systems that feature a built-in neural processor (NPU) for AI tasks. The firm unveiled new additions, the Snapdragon X2 Plus chips for budget and mainstream systems, at the CES trade show earlier this year. "With Snapdragon C, we're now raising the bar of what budget-conscious laptop buyers should expect," said senior director of product management Mandar Deshpande, promising all-day battery life, lag-free performance, and fanless, cool-running designs. Qualcomm is curiously tight-lipped about the chip's specifications, declining to disclose CPU core count or GPU details. Deshpande confirmed only that the cores are a custom design based on the Kryo architecture from its smartphone chips rather than the Oryon cores used in its higher-end laptop silicon. A full spec sheet is expected and may land as early as next week when vendor partners unveil products at Computex in Taipei. Snapdragon C includes an integrated NPU, though Deshpande said this "is not built to scale up to the Copilot+ requirements," something budget buyers are unlikely to lose sleep over. They may, however, lose sleep over memory prices. DRAM component costs have more than quadrupled since this time last year, and some analysts predict entry-level systems could effectively disappear as a result. "Because the price of memory is increasing so much, vendors lose the ability to provide entry-level PCs – those below about $500," Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal told The Register. On the $300 price point, Deshpande claimed that "everyone is interested in buying laptops at this price." "There is a lot of momentum still in the lower tier price points, given how things are turning out for the memories and everything. So it's a great opportunity for Qualcomm to bring all the great technology that we have built for the Snapdragon X, and again make it a purpose-built platform for the entry user." That said, Qualcomm doesn't set the price of systems – the PC makers do. Deshpande said that products from HP, Lenovo, and Acer will be "launching soon," and are expected to hit shelves later this year. ®

In the future, AI agents will be able to find one another using the Domain Name System (DNS), instead of crawling about and probing ports or checking configured resources. That future begins now with DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID), an open source project intended to facilitate agent-to-agent discovery using existing internet infrastructure. The system has been built atop DNS to avoid the creation of yet another registry that has the potential to become a competitive chokepoint. "Current approaches to agent connectivity are fragmented and often rely on fragile, hardcoded configurations,” said Ingmar Van Glabbeek, project maintainer for DNS-AID, in a statement. "With DNS-AID, we are moving toward a 'web-native' model for AI. By utilizing the existing DNS hierarchy, we enable developers to publish and discover agents with the same reliability and ubiquity that we’ve used to navigate the internet for decades." DNS already provides various capabilities beyond domain name resolution. For example, websites expose their DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records via DNS TXT entries. And more recently, Service Binding (SVCB) and HTTPS RR (HTTPS Resource Records) were adopted to make it easier for clients to discover services and associated parameters. DNS-AID utilizes SVCB (with TXT as a fallback) and optionally DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) TLSA records. These provide agents with a way to connect without a mediating entity, additional infrastructure, or a preferred protocol. DNS-AID supports MCP, A2A, HTTPS, and anything addressable via SVCB and ALPN. The system allows agents to be searched by name, by function, and by domain. The Linux Foundation promises vendor-neutral governance for the project, which was initially developed by Infoblox. "The Internet already solved the discovery problem decades ago with DNS – it's fast, it scales globally, and every network on earth understands it," said Dane Knecht, CTO of Cloudflare, in a statement. "By extending this proven architecture to the agentic web, DNS-AID provides the foundational routing layer that autonomous systems need to operate safely and efficiently." There are various ways to get started, the simplest of which is to install dns-aid and then issue the command dns-aid init. There is already a Python SDK, and presumably it won't be long before other languages have a reference implementation. The setup process involves publishing an SVCB record for your agent to your site's DNS zone and signing the zone with DNSSEC as a verification of provenance. Thereafter, attempts to resolve the agent record _{agent-name}._{protocol}._agents.{your-domain} will return the relevant details, which can then be verified via DNSSEC, optional JWS signatures, and DANE policy before agents connect to one another. Several DNS providers currently offer DNS-AID support, including AWS Route 53, Azure DNS, Cloudflare, Google Cloud DNS, Infoblox NIOS and UDDI, NS1, and any standards-compliant DNS service (RFC 2136 DDNS). Developers experimenting locally have the option to use a Docker BIND9 playground. Global consultancy McKinsey argues that agent-to-agent commerce could be meaningful someday, calling it a "projected $3 trillion to $5 trillion economic opportunity." We note that McKinsey's 1980s prediction about the size of the mobile phone market in 2000 was off by about 100x. ®

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Adelaide CBD

elian_fotografo has added a photo to the pool:

“A veces el cielo también merece una foto.”

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous to blur the distinction between abstraction and reality?” asks actress Olivia Vinall in her role as the Surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). The heady line is one of the standout statements in the new biopic documenting Carrington’s life and work.

Directed by Thor Klein and Lena Vurma and produced by Modern Films, Leonora in the Morning Light opens in 1930s Paris, when the artist was enmeshed in an avant-garde community that included luminaries like Salvador Dalí and André Breton, along with her partner Max Ernst. When World War II begins, Carrington flees to Spain before eventually re-settling in Mexico, perhaps the location most associated with her work.

The film is based on the biographical novel by Elena Poniatowska and comes at a time when Carrington’s oeuvre is in the spotlight, particularly the fantastical work made while she was confined to a psychiatric hospital in Spain which had been lost for 80 years.

Modern Films is also behind the documentary about pioneering artist Hilma af Klint, along with Boom For Real, which chronicles Jean-Michel Basquiat’s teenage years. Leonora in the Morning Light is slated for release on May 29 in the U.K. and Ireland.

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 A Leonora Carrington Biopic Traces the Surrealist Icon’s Life and Work appeared first on Colossal.

The restrictions on fruit and vegetable imports come a day after Moscow threatened to rip up a natural gas agreement with Yerevan.