Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
President Vladimir Putin ordered the icon to be transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church in 2023.
Club want explanation after spot-kick given against them
They are likely to raise penalty not awarded at Aston Villa
Arsenal are seeking an explanation from Pro Ref over the penalty awarded to Sunderland on Saturday that Mikel Arteta described as “unacceptable at this level”.
It is understood the Premier League champions contacted Pro Ref on Monday to request a meeting after Ezri Konsa was penalised after an incident involving Dan Ballard at the Stadium of Light. David Raya made a brilliant save to deny Enzo Le Fée’s spot-kick before Arsenal went on to win 1-0 thanks to a goal from Bruno Guimarães.
Continue reading...Sebastian Stan says he pitched Marvel a mid-budget thriller starring his Winter Soldier character. Perhaps the studio should give it – and other modestly scaled vehicles – the green light
Blink a little and you might think we are back in 2019. The latest Spider-Man film, Brand New Day, has just passed $2.4bn at the global box office, to become the third-highest grossing film of all time behind Avatar and Avengers: Endgame. Meanwhile Avengers: Doomsday is reported to have already earned more than $50m in US ticket presales alone, despite the fact that it doesn’t come out until December. Clearly we are in the middle of a superhero renaissance.
And yet it doesn’t really feel like it, largely because it is something of a turnaround for Marvel, after a pretty disappointing 2025 in which all three of the studio’s releases underperformed. Captain America: Brave New World took $415m worldwide, Thunderbolts* managed $382m and even the well-reviewed The Fantastic Four: First Steps stalled at $521m, against a reported $200m budget. These are hardly Madame Web numbers but they do suggest there is still a problem about what to do with all those superheroes who cannot sustain a $300m multiversal extravaganza.
Continue reading...Prime minister had been due to speak at the TUC conference in Brighton
Andy Burnham has cancelled his engagements for Monday and Tuesday after his father, Roy, died.
Among other plans, the prime minister had been due to speak to the TUC conference in Brighton on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Despite an impressive start under Gennaro Gattuso, supporters are boycotting the Stadio Olimpico to wage war against Claudio Lotito
Gennaro Gattuso has given some memorable post-game interviews down the years. Who could forget his “sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit” rant at OFI Crete, or the face of the beleaguered interpreter tasked with translating it? Last year, not long before taking charge of the Italian national team, Gattuso got into a finger-jabbing, language-swapping, almost-nose-to-nose shouting match with Josko Jelicic on Croatian television.
And yet there was something more affecting about the soft way he spoke this Saturday, in Calabrian-accented Italian. Without anger, but with an air of melancholy. “For me, football without fans is shit,” he said. “What do you think? I’d say it’s better to stay home. Better to go for a walk with the dogs.”
Continue reading...Public offering of Aliko Dangote’s Nigerian oil refinery business could swell his net wealth by two-thirds
The fortune of Africa’s richest person could swell by two thirds to nearly $60bn (£44bn) after his refinery in Nigeria listed publicly in the continent’s biggest-ever initial public offering.
If Monday’s flotation of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals on the Nigerian exchange goes to plan, then Aliko Dangote will add a further $23bn (£17bn) to his $35bn net worth.
Continue reading...Impasse comes amid growing Saudi anger with Tehran over Houthi advances and strikes on airbase and pipeline
Gulf states have postponed a critical meeting with Iran on the future of the strait of Hormuz owing to a lack of Arab consensus and growing Saudi Arabian anger with Tehran for helping the Houthis loosen Riyadh’s grip in Yemen.
The stalemate over the vital waterway came as Houthi rebels launched a fresh barrage of missile and drone attacks on Saudi military targets. A Houthi military spokesperson claimed its forces had attacked the King Khalid airbase in Khamis Mushait, hitting fighter-jet hangars, radar systems, runways and landing strips, ammunition depots and additional targets.
Continue reading...The Sweden Democrats slipped to third after decades of growth, but their hardline positions have already reshaped the political mainstream
Since the party was founded in 1988, the story of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) has been one of such continuous growth that a triumph in Sunday’s general election seemed inevitable.
In 2022, the party capitalised on electoral gains – and the desperation of right-leaning parties to form a minority administration – and almost made its way into government. A supporting role in prime minister Ulf Kristersson’s Tidö coalition earned the party, which has neo-Nazi roots, huge influence and mainstream acceptance by the political establishment.
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richtebw has added a photo to the pool:
Caladenia arenicola, commonly known as the carousel spider orchid, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It has a single erect, hairy leaf and up to three red, white and green flowers on a flowering stem up to 60 cm high.
Wikepedia
Huawei wants near-packaged optics (NPO) standardized for AI networks, pitching it as a replacement for conventional pluggable modules without the cost and maintenance headaches it attributes to co-packaged optics. The Chinese tech giant showcased an NPO module with a capacity of 7.2 terabits per second (Tbps) at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) held in Shenzhen over September 9-11, and said this will form part of the company's next-gen SuperPOD AI systems. NPO refers to the placement of the optical engine in a network switch as close as possible to the switch's application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), but still as a separate package plugged into the mainboard. This is one potential option to supersede the pluggable modules now widely used to terminate optical fiber links to a switch. Pluggable modules typically contain a digital signal processor (DSP) to clean up the incoming signal, and their power consumption and heat output increase with network speed. With AI infrastructure pushing network connections to 800 Gbps and even 1.6 Tbps, this is becoming a problem. Another upgrade path for switches is co-packaged optics (CPO), where the optical engine sits even closer – on the same substrate as the switch ASIC silicon. This is expected to deliver low latency and power consumption, but Huawei says the advanced packaging is expensive and makes failed optical engines difficult to replace in the datacenter. This is why Huawei says it is pushing NPO as the pragmatic choice for the near future. "When it comes to optical interconnects, there are two technical choices. One is NPO, near package optics. The other is CPO, co-packaged optics. Compared with CPO, the NPO technology is more mature, making it easier for production ramp up and it's easier for maintenance. So NPO stands as the most mature technology at the moment, and it is also a practical choice in this day and age," said Dr Man Jiangwei, director of Huawei's Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory. Huawei says its NPO design eliminates the module's separate DSP by integrating those functions into the ASIC. Man claims this cuts latency from 100 nanoseconds to 10 nanoseconds and reduces power consumption by around 60 percent. "When you put all these factors together, we're able to bring down the cost by a large margin," he claimed. But a project to define NPO standards was officially started only in May this year, at the Q2 meeting of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF). Its members include Cisco, HPE, Arista, and Nvidia. The members there were focused on defining a 6.4 Tbps NPO interface with a future extension to 12.8 Tbps, while Huawei is already demonstrating its 7.2 Tbps product. Asked about this at a roundtable to discuss NPO, Dr Man said 6.4T and 7.2T represent the fan-out bandwidth capabilities required by different vendors and system players. "I believe this kind of technical divergence or differing opinions is quite common in standardization. Looking ahead on the standards platform, I'm confident we'll find an appropriate way to ensure compatibility between 6.4T and 7.2T, meeting the needs of the entire industry chain," he said. One of the goals of the OIF NPO project is to come up with common electrical interfaces, mechanical form factors and connectors. Huawei's NPO is understood to employ 200 gigabits per second per lane across a total of 36 lanes, while the proposed 6.4 Tbps OIF interface would use 32 lanes. The company has already committed to using its own NPO in the upcoming third generation of its SuperPOD AI infrastructure platform, an analog of Nvidia's NVL rack-scale systems. The SuperPOD platform links large numbers of Huawei's Ascend neural processing units (NPUs). Huawei declined to say when this SuperPOD will be available, but Dr Man hinted more will be revealed at the Huawei Connect event in Shanghai later this week. He also said Huawei will be "more than happy to share this product with our customers in the downstream, and not only downstream, but we also like to share this technology with the suppliers on the upstream, including various vendors from different countries and regions." Huawei's exposure to US export restrictions, imposed on national security and foreign policy grounds, raises a related question. One roundtable participant asked whether industry adoption could suffer if the Trump administration perceives NPO as Huawei-driven technology. Man said he wasn't the right person to discuss the political environment and reiterated Huawei's commitment to openness and collaboration. "We are happy to work with vendors from different regions, including vendors from the United States, from China, and from Japan. So together we can advance the development of the NPO ecosystem and ultimately contribute to the booming AI ecosystem," he said. NPO isn't the only alternative to CPO. Earlier this year, Arista Networks unveiled its eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics (XPO) concept, which proposes updating pluggable modules to include cooling via an integrated liquid cooling cold plate, and offering up to 12.8 Tbps per module (64 lanes at 200 Gbps each). Huawei pitches NPO as the most mature option; XPO retains the front-panel plug-in module format. Which format will get the widest adoption will depend on switch vendor support as well as customer priorities, and it is likely that NPO, CPO and XPO will coexist for some time. ®
Oscar Piastri had a race to forget in Madrid, a first lap incident derailing his afternoon on a day where Lando Norris showed the McLaren had the pace to fight for the win. The Australian finished down in eighth place behind the Alpine of Franco Colapinto, while his team mate took yet another rostrum.
SCHIPHOL (ANP) - Schiphol en KLM zijn blij dat het kabinet met het advies van de Raad van State nieuwe regels voor de luchthaven kan vaststellen. De luchthaven en de luchtvaartmaatschappij noemen het advies maandag over nieuwe regels die Schiphol op papier stiller moeten maken "een belangrijke stap" daarnaartoe.
Het kabinet wil de regels vanaf 1 november laten ingaan. In eerste instantie geldt een grens van 478.000 vluchten van en naar Schiphol. Later moet "gefaseerde terugkeer" naar 500.000 vluchten mogelijk worden. Als het volgens de berekeningen stiller wordt rond Schiphol, zou het maximumaantal vluchten deels automatisch omhooggaan. Maar dat moet dan wel echt zeker zijn, aldus de Raad van State.
Met dit advies komt goede rechtsbescherming voor omwonenden en de luchtvaartsector dichterbij, aldus Schiphol. "We blijven werken aan een goede balans met de omgeving. Zo stimuleren we het gebruik van stillere vliegtuigen."