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Servische studenten dagen president Vucic uit, protestbeweging doet mee aan komende verkiezingen

Oekraïne dwarsboomt Russische plannen in de Donbas met eigen tegenoffensief

Maak van Prinsjesdag de Dag van de Democratie

Sydney Sweeney zorgt opnieuw voor ophef. Vrouwelijke topatleten slaan terug

Actrice Sydney Sweeney poseert in een reclame voor een gokbedrijf halfnaakt tussen de sportattributen. Vrouwelijke sporters voelen zich gekleineerd en geseksualiseerd en reageren woedend op sociale media. „Dít is hoe vrouwelijke sport eruitziet.”


Wat zei de koning in de Troonrede, wat bedoelde het kabinet daarmee en welke passages vielen op?

Koning Willem-Alexander sprak in de Troonrede namens het minderheidskabinet-Jetten veel over samenwerken, maar waarschuwde de volksvertegenwoordigers dat „niet alles tegelijk” kan worden opgelost.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation

In a class of their own

Hidden within this beautiful wispy star-forming nebula (captured by Webb in one of its largest images to date) are strange objects called brown dwarfs. They are generally less massive than stars and more massive than planets, but they are neither planets nor stars. They form the same way stars do, but unlike stars, they never quite “ignite” - that is, their cores never become hot enough to fuse ordinary hydrogen into helium. The question is, how small are the smallest objects created by the star-formation process?

The brown dwarfs found here within nebula IC 348 are just twice the mass of Jupiter, and the least massive brown dwarfs we’ve found to date. They are consistent with past Webb observations that suggest this as a possible lower limit on how small brown dwarfs can be. For comparison, brown dwarfs typically range from around 13 to 80 times Jupiter’s mass. Smaller ones are less common than more massive ones, but none have yet been spotted smaller than these are, though Webb has the ability to theoretically see brown dwarfs as low as half the mass of Jupiter. These are so small, their existence poses challenges to the models of how stars form.

Adding to their strangeness, one of these tiny brown dwarfs showed signs of a disk, suggesting small planets could be forming around an object that itself is only the mass of a planet.

In addition to the brown dwarfs and young stars scattered across the swirling nebula, this image provides a unique perspective on a handful of protostars, which can be seen in the upper-right corner. These protostars are ejecting powerful jets that have crashed into the gas and dust surrounding them, creating luminous regions called Herbig-Haro objects.

Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-dynamic...

Note - the full image to too large for Flickr, but you can download the full 6.6 GB panorama here: esawebb.org/images/weic2619a/

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)

Image Description: A star-forming region. The left two thirds of the image is blanketed in thick clouds of green and yellow gas and dust that form swirling patterns. Some of the gas is spread into thin, thready wisps. The right third of the image is the black background speckled with stars and multi-colored dots that represent distant galaxies. Bright stars are scattered throughout the clouds, with the densest cluster situated in the center of the scene. Each is crowned with six long spikes and two shorter spikes created by the optics of the telescope’s mirrors.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

The lion, the witch and the warblers: behind the scenes of Handel’s Alcina at the RBO – in pictures

The colourful and larger-than-life staging of the opera about an enchantress who transforms her lovers into beasts returns to the Royal Opera stage this week. We went behind the scenes on the final day of rehearsals

All photos: Tristram Kenton

• Alcina is at the Royal Opera House from 15 September to 3 October

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‘She went to her studio every day and no one was allowed near it’: the glorious nature paintings of Yasmin David

Her father was Laurie Lee, her mother the bohemian Lorna Garman, and the full extent of her talent wasn’t apparent until after her death. A revelatory exhibition places David at the heart of British landscape painting

When Clio David was growing up, her mother’s studio was off-limits. The wooden outbuilding where her mother, Yasmin, went to paint was in the apple orchards that surrounded her childhood home in south Devon. It had once been a dormitory for the students of Dartington Hall, a progressive school where Clio’s father taught during the 1960s.

“It was somewhere she went every day to paint and work, and no one was allowed near it,” says Clio. “The walls of our house were covered in her paintings, but the studio was a private place.”

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Gua sha looks good on Instagram – but is it worth the hype or a waste of time?

The practice does increase blood flow to parts of the body, but experts say this isn’t necessarily a health benefit: ‘A punch to the nose also increases blood flow’

The world of wellness fads is a cyclical place. Everything comes back into fashion when a new generation of influencers decides to switch it up. Pretty much every current hype was popular in decades past, from extreme juicing to genital sunning and everything in between.

Gua sha is the ancient practice of scraping the skin to form mild bruises – called petechiae – which are thought to do a variety of helpful things for your body. The practice has been around in China for centuries and has spread through the wonders of social media to all corners of the globe.

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Grey’s Anatomy: the steamy and often thrilling medical drama is still endlessly watchable

It launched the careers of Sandra Oh and Katherine Heigl, popularised terms like ‘vajayjay’ and even managed to make bowel obstruction sexy

From The Pitt to the recent Australian hit The F Ward, audiences just cannot get enough of shows about doctors who not only know how to conduct open heart surgery, but also mend their own broken hearts along the way.

In many ways you could say that Grey’s Anatomy, and other iconic medical dramas like ER, ran in dramatic slow motion through hospital corridors first so that The Pitt could also run (though in a slightly grittier and more realistic way).

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No Big Deal review – is this how AI ends humanity … with a sitcom so bad it bores you to death?

The characters are dead-eyed waxworks which speak with all the nuance of a satnav. But this AI-created workplace comedy is so bad that even the greatest actors alive couldn’t stop it being unwatchable

As you will no doubt be aware, one Anthropic researcher claimed there is a greater than one in 10 chance that AI will end all of humanity as we know it within the next decade. However, now that I’ve given it some thought, I think this statistic might actually be a little conservative. This is because I have just watched an episode of a sitcom created by AI, and if I ever have to do it again I’m genuinely going to die of boredom.

The show is No Big Deal, and it premiered on YouTube on Friday. I was apparently only the 376th person to watch it. This is by no means a recommendation that you become the 377th, more a warning to avoid it if your algorithm ever decides it hates you enough to suggest this.

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MetaFilter

The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

He deserves better than his obscurity

One of Anders's most important concepts was the "Promethean gap": the "growing asynchronicity between the human and the world of their own products." It is the difference, today widening into a chasm, "between our action and our imagination." Our technological prowess has grown stupendously, enabling us to incinerate millions in a moment; but our mental and moral capacity to contemplate the significance or meaning of our actions has not grown proportionately.

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Twitter workaround worked around again: X's lawyers cancel XCancel again

Nitter and XCancel, a pair of social media services which let you view posts on X without an X account, are down again after the latest round of legal wrangling. While the XCancel site now displays the message "Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice," Nitter's site is offline, and the code repository was archived on September 11, 2026. Things were not looking good in August for the services, which allowed a user to view posts on X (formerly Twitter) without an account or having to endure adverts and accept trackers. X's lawyers fired off a cease-and-desist letter, and the services acquiesced, going offline while the implications were digested. A few weeks later, the services were back up and running. At the time, zedeus, Nitter's maintainer, wrote, "an announcement will be made within a week, once we're able to reveal more information." Alas, that "more information" appears to be another cessation. XCancel wrote simply, "We can't share more details," and added a link to X for users keen for content. It is difficult to say for sure if and when the services might be back, or if users have headed elsewhere for their microblogging fix. Users not wishing to sign up for an X account have plenty of alternatives – Mastodon and Bluesky, for example. X has considerable form when it comes to rolling out the lawyers to fend off perceived threats or alleged abuses of its services, and is perfectly within its rights to do so. In the case of Nitter (and XCancel, which uses the project), the concern likely centered on how posts were viewed without an account, JavaScript, or ads. X also attempted to defend the Twitter and blue bird trademark and branding in a spat with tweet.app. It kept hold of Twitter (despite ditching the name after Musk's takeover), but tweet.app snapped up the word 'tweet' and the bird imagery. That's for the time being, at least. ®

Who's governing your AI? A trust framework for enterprise agents and models

Experienced IT leaders know that shadow IT is a persistent problem, but rapidly evolving AI and the proliferation of agents mean the potential threat - and cost - is greater than ever. AI agents are non-deterministic, autonomous, and adaptable. They excel at solving tasks in creative ways, often to the surprise of their creators. We've seen agents write blogs that criticize project maintainers that refused their pull requests. Another one hacked a McKinsey chatbot to gain read/write access without asking for permission. And agents are getting smarter all the time. As an industry veteran, DigiCert's senior vice president of product Brian Trzupek sees an old pattern. "When the promise of the technology is so good, people are willing to throw security out the window, and they just want to get to that promise real fast." CISOs should be worried about allowing these agents into their infrastructure without strict controls, but it's happening anyway. IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach report found that more organizations lacked governance to manage AI or detect shadow AI, at 68 percent compared to 63 percent last year. The number requiring IT approval to deploy AI had fallen to 38 percent from 45 percent. DigiCert is trying to solve this problem with its own approach to AI governance called AI Trust. The framework, outlined in this white paper, builds on what the company is good at: public key infrastructure, DNS, and attestation. The AI governance questions CISOs should ask AI Trust uses these tools to help organizations answer five AI governance questions: · What agents your employees are using · What regulated data is flowing to them · Whose credentials they hold · Whether a compromised agent can be stopped immediately · Whether an incident can be reconstructed with a tamper-evident trail Almost every enterprise fails at the first hurdle, warns Trzupek. Developers build agents or buy them from vendors and deploy them internally without asking. Users might also spawn agents from inside tools like Claude Desktop or OpenAI Codex that will then create sub-agents. "Those sub-agents don't assume the same rights and responsibilities and authorization as the parent agent," he says. "So they try to delegate tasks that can be wholly controlled." How to manage AI agent identity Most companies haven't developed the tools to keep track of all these different agent types yet. The first step is to identify them. This is where many organizations make their first mistake by bolting agents onto the human identity and access management (IAM) stack they already have. The idea is that if you give an agent a service account and a long-lived API key you can treat them like a super-fast employee. That's impractical. "IAM was built for a human sitting at a keyboard who can tap 'approve' on their phone," Trzupek says. "An agent can't do that. So you fall back to a static API key that never expires and has way more scope than it needs, and now you've undone everything zero trust was supposed to give you. It's the exact credential we've spent a decade telling people to get rid of." Industry bodies have started converging on a different answer. IDC now recommends treating agent identity as a workload identity problem rather than an extension of human IAM, aligning with the IETF's Workload Identity Management and Security Extensions (WIMSE) and NIST's Cybersecurity Framework version 2.0. They can then frame agents as governed workloads requiring runtime attestation and short-lived credentials . This idea also pushes teams toward the Service Profile Identity (SPIFFE) and its SPIFFE Registration Endpoint (SPIRE). This is an open workload identity standard already deployed inside many hyperscaler-hosted Kubernetes estates, and they're part of DigiCert's AI strategy. DNS is a governance tool for agentic AI Inventory and identity might get you visibility, but you still need somewhere to enforce policy. DigiCert has strong opinions about where, tied to its history managing DNS integrity. No matter whether an agent is resolving an API endpoint or connecting to an MCP server, it has to query DNS first. So why not make that a core verification point? DigiCert proposes a solution that looks a lot like the DMARC standard used for email. An organization would publish an agent policy record in DNS that declares several things: · Its authorized agent identities · The certificate authority that issued their credentials · The scopes they're allowed to act within A gateway can then query that record to verify whether an inbound agent is legit, and terminate the session if the check fails . And if an agent contacts an unauthorized domain mid-execution, DNS can block the query and the MCP gateway kills the session. IDC likes this idea but warns that scale is an issue. As the number of agents grows, DNS records might not keep up, and stale records might become a loophole. Overly permissive scope declarations are also still a potential problem. "The scale problem is real, but it's the same problem DNS has solved a hundred times before," Trzupek responds. "You automate the lifecycle, you tie the record to the certificate issuance, and when the cert expires the record goes with it." And operators writing wildcard scopes because they're in a hurry is a discipline problem, not an architecture problem, he adds. Inside DigiCert's AI Passport Agents built in-house live alongside third-party agents like Microsoft Copilot, Salesforce Agentforce and ServiceNow, and the control planes for the two categories are different. DigiCert's answer is a single SPIRE server anchored to a DigiCert CA for identity, with policy enforced centrally in an Open Policy Agent engine, and a unified kill switch that operates across both categories. The AI Agent Passport is the artifact that ties the identity to the authorization. It's a cryptographically protected record of approved systems and permitted operations. Each 'passport' also contains things like data sensitivity classifications and expiration state, along with an accountable human owner. Trzupek says the field that generates the most pushback in the design is policy itself, because customers typically have a complex web of policies already in GCP or AWS. "Trying to replace those or displace them is a fool's errand," he says. So the passport can hold pointers to those engines rather than replacing them. How to manage model integrity Governing agents is only half of the challenge. The models themselves are strategic assets, and they're subject to integrity and provenance controls too. That means encryption and cryptographic signing of model artifacts, Open Container Initiative-compliant packaging with tools like the Sigstore code signing initiative, and a cryptographically verifiable Model bill of materials describing weights, datasets and dependencies . It also means governing models at runtime, not just securing the supply chain. DigiCert's AI Trust framework advocates trusted hardware execution to help solve that problem. A model running inside a trusted execution environment on Intel TDX or AMD SEV-SNP stays encrypted in memory, isolated from the host OS. DigiCert operates a confidential computing attestation service that follows the IETF Remote ATtestation Procedures (RATS) architecture. The execution environment is the attester and DigiCert is the verifier. Downstream systems are the relying parties. This approach moves attestation from a neutral third party rather than the cloud operator running the workload, which serves regulated buyers. Hyperscalers shouldn't attest to their own integrity. Those regulated buyers face some heavy governance conversations. In healthcare, the question is whether the AI model cleared through an FDA 510(k) pathway is the exact algorithm running in clinical deployment. Cryptographic attestation lets these companies prove model integrity before every inference. That addresses the FDA's 2023 cybersecurity guidance on software integrity verification and SBOM enforcement. But while some regulated verticals have specific needs, AI governance is a cross-sector problem. Any organization storing customer data an agent can access or exfiltrate needs these controls. Why build in AI governance now This is agentic AI's moment, so companies are at a pivot point, and they've been here before. Many of them spent the last 25 years following a cybersecurity antipattern: move fast to grab an opportunity with a significant new technology development, and call in the security team later to clean up the loose ends. It hasn't gone well. With many organizations at the beginning of their agentic AI journey, they now have an opportunity to break that habit and do things right from the beginning using verifiable controls. As frontier model prices climb and AI crops up as a noticeable cost on enterprise budgets, this will become an increasingly visible choice, concludes Trzupek. Companies will hold people more accountable for their use of agentic technology. Wouldn't it be nice to have the controls in place and be ahead of the game for once? Sponsored by DigiCert

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Kabinet schetst scenario's box 3, kosten schatkist tot 20 miljard

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het kabinet heeft de Tweede Kamer vier verschillende scenario's voorgelegd voor de toekomst van de belasting op inkomsten uit vermogen (box 3). De nadelige gevolgen voor de schatkist in de jaren tot en met 2035 kunnen, afhankelijk van de gekozen richting, oplopen tot bijna 20 miljard euro.

In de Eerste Kamer ligt een veelbesproken wetsvoorstel voor een heffing op het daadwerkelijk behaalde rendement op spaargeld en beleggingen. Rechtse partijen, waaronder ook de coalitiepartij VVD, vallen er evenwel over dat beleggers daarin jaarlijks een aanslag krijgen over de waardestijging van hun portefeuille. Zij willen dat alleen de winst bij verkoop wordt belast.

In de senaat dreigt het voorstel daardoor te sneuvelen. Om dat te voorkomen, kan een wijzigingsvoorstel (novelle) uitkomst bieden. Als daarin alle wensen van dwarsliggende partijen worden meegenomen, ligt de opbrengst in de jaren tot en met 2035 al vele miljarden lager. Sneuvelt het wetsvoorstel en wordt per 2030 een vermogenswinstbelasting ingevoerd, dan loopt dat op tot bijna 20 miljard euro.


EU-rekenkamer: groenten- en fruittelers te weinig georganiseerd

LUXEMBURG (ANP) - Binnen de EU wordt te weinig gedaan om groenten- en fruittelers lid te laten zijn van een producentenorganisatie, waarmee ze de strijd kunnen aangaan met grote detailhandelaren. Dat concludeert de Europese Rekenkamer (ERK) dinsdag in een rapport. Alleen in Nederland en België zijn dit soort organisaties groot genoeg om vanuit een sterke positie te onderhandelen, aldus de rekenkamer.

Via producentenorganisaties kunnen groenten- en fruittelers gezamenlijk verkopen, investeren en onderhandelen met inkopers, is het idee. Vanuit Brussel wordt daar ook in geïnvesteerd: in 2023 kregen dit soort organisaties ruim 1 miljard aan EU-steun. Ondanks deze voordelen ziet de ERK producentenorganisaties terrein verliezen; tussen 2012 en 2023 is het aantal landbouwers dat is aangesloten bij zo'n organisatie met 39 procent gedaald.

"Als producentenorganisaties landbouwers moeten helpen om grote kopers te trotseren en om consumenten een breed scala aan Europese groenten en fruit te bieden, moeten de regels eenvoudiger, de nationale steun consistenter en het lidmaatschap aantrekkelijker worden", stelt verantwoordelijk ERK-lid Keit Pentus-Rosimannus.

Organisatie

Dat in Nederland en België dit soort organisaties wel voet aan de grond hebben, komt doordat dat historisch en cultureel zo gegroeid is. "Vooral in Nederland zijn landbouwbedrijven vrij groot en geconcentreerd. Dat heeft het organiseren makkelijker gemaakt", aldus een woordvoerder van de rekenkamer.

Volgens de ERK doen noch de lidstaten noch de Europese Commissie genoeg om landbouwproducenten aan te sporen om zich bij producentenorganisaties aan te sluiten. Daarmee blijven de verhoudingen met opkopers van die producten scheef en verliezen landbouwers kostbare tijd die ook gebruikt kan worden om producten te verbouwen of te innoveren. De rekenkamer roept onder meer de Commissie op om zelf actie te ondernemen of om lidstaten hierbij te helpen.


EU-rekenkamer: groenten- en fruittelers te weinig georganiseerd

LUXEMBURG (ANP) - Binnen de EU wordt te weinig gedaan om groenten- en fruittelers lid te laten zijn van een producentenorganisatie, waarmee ze de strijd kunnen aangaan met grote detailhandelaren. Dat concludeert de Europese Rekenkamer (ERK) dinsdag in een rapport. Alleen in Nederland en België zijn dit soort organisaties groot genoeg om vanuit een sterke positie te onderhandelen, aldus de rekenkamer.

Via producentenorganisaties kunnen groenten- en fruittelers gezamenlijk verkopen, investeren en onderhandelen met inkopers, is het idee. Vanuit Brussel wordt daar ook in geïnvesteerd: in 2023 kregen dit soort organisaties ruim 1 miljard aan EU-steun. Ondanks deze voordelen ziet de ERK producentenorganisaties terrein verliezen; tussen 2012 en 2023 is het aantal landbouwers dat is aangesloten bij zo'n organisatie met 39 procent gedaald.

"Als producentenorganisaties landbouwers moeten helpen om grote kopers te trotseren en om consumenten een breed scala aan Europese groenten en fruit te bieden, moeten de regels eenvoudiger, de nationale steun consistenter en het lidmaatschap aantrekkelijker worden", stelt verantwoordelijk ERK-lid Keit Pentus-Rosimannus.

Nederlandse landbouwbedrijven

Dat in Nederland en België dit soort organisaties wel voet aan de grond hebben, komt doordat dat historisch en cultureel zo gegroeid is. "Vooral in Nederland zijn landbouwbedrijven vrij groot en geconcentreerd. Dat heeft het organiseren makkelijker gemaakt", aldus een woordvoerder van de rekenkamer.

Volgens de ERK doen noch de lidstaten noch de Europese Commissie genoeg om landbouwproducenten aan te sporen om zich bij producentenorganisaties aan te sluiten. Daarmee blijven de verhoudingen met opkopers van die producten scheef en verliezen landbouwers kostbare tijd die ook gebruikt kan worden om producten te verbouwen of te innoveren. De rekenkamer roept onder meer de Commissie op om zelf actie te ondernemen of om lidstaten hierbij te helpen.


The Moscow Times - Independent News From Russia

The Moscow Times offers everything you need to know about Russia: Breaking news, top stories, business, analysis, opinion, multimedia

Russia Resumes Postal Service to North Korea After 6 Years

Russian Post had suspended regular mail deliveries to North Korea in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

第21回古河花火大会 The 21st Koga Fireworks Festival

ELCAN KE-7A has added a photo to the pool:

第21回古河花火大会 The 21st Koga Fireworks Festival

2026年8月1日に開催された第21回古河花火大会花火大会より、野村花火工業による第9章 音楽付き超特大ワイドスターマイン 「銀河形成」。The 9th chapter, super extra large and wide starmines to the music, “Galaxy Formation" by Nomura hanabi kogyo from the 21st Koga Fireworks Festival on August 1, 2026.

VS onthult 'ruimtewapens'

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Oke voor de duidelijkheid: het betreft dus geen 'orbital strike weapons' waarmee doelwitten op aarde vanuit de ruimte geraakt kunnen worden. Maar wat Air Force Secretary Troy Meink bovenstaand wel voor het eerst erkent is het bestaan van wapenplatformen in een baan om de aarde, om dingen als Amerikaanse satellieten te kunnen verdedigen - en als je de aanval als beste verdediging beschouwt, waarschijnlijk ook om andere satellieten/vijandige ruimtewapens aan te vallen. Het citaat even in het Engels, zodat de toch al vage betekenis niet nog verder vervaagt:

"It is critically important that we maintain our dominance not only in the air but in space, and so we’ve had to take steps to make sure that when we’re threatened, we can take care of that. And so we've had to take steps to make sure that when we're threatened, we can take care of that. Today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist. This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action." Verder gaf hij geen details en het is volstrekt onduidelijk of dit kinetische- of laserwapens zijn.

Maar sowieso handig, want dan hoeft het zoals in 1985 niet meer per een verticale F-15 afgeleverde speciale anti-satellietraket.

Zo ging dat vroeger: met een verticale F-15 en speciale anti-satellietraket

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Dit dus nog niet

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