LONDEN (ANP/AFP) - Koning Charles III gaat als eerste Britse vorst zijn persoonlijke belastingaangifte openbaar maken in een poging de transparantie van het koningshuis te verbeteren, maakte Buckingham Palace bekend. De koninklijke financiën liggen onder een steeds groter maatschappelijk vergrootglas.

"De beslissing om dit als vorst te doen, kwam op uitdrukkelijke wens van de koning zelf, als onderdeel van de aanpassingen die sinds zijn troonsbestijging zijn doorgevoerd", aldus een woordvoerder.

Britse vorsten zijn wettelijk vrijgesteld van het betalen van bepaalde belastingen, al betalen ze al decennialang op vrijwillige basis enkele belastingen. Het is dan ook niet verplicht om hun aangifte openbaar te maken, maar de recente schandalen rondom de in opspraak geraakte prins Andrew hebben de financiën van het koningshuis in de schijnwerpers gezet.

De belastinggegevens van Charles worden donderdag gedeeld als onderdeel van de jaarlijkse koninklijke financiële jaarrekening, meldt de BBC.

Een buurthuis beginnen is hard werken, weten ze in Schiebroek-Zuid, een kwetsbare buurt in Rotterdam. Komen er wel mensen? Waar blijft het geld? En soms is er ineens magie.

Curaçao heeft zaterdagnacht geschiedenis geschreven door voor het eerst een punt te pakken op het wereldkampioenschap.

photo-tez has added a photo to the pool:

HYDRANGEA

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Matsuyama Castle (松山城, Matsuyamajō) is one of Japan's twelve "original castles", i.e. castles which have survived the post-feudal era since 1868 intact. It is located on Mount Katsuyama, a steep hill in the city center that provides visitors with a bird's eye view of Matsuyama and the Seto Inland Sea. Matsuyama Castle was constructed between 1602 and 1628.

Matsuyama Castle provides an excellent example of a feudal castle. The main circle of defense (Honmaru) is located on the top of the hill, accessible through multiple, well defended gates. The main keep is one of only a few in the country that boast multiple wings. The complex also includes a secondary keep and multiple turrets, giving Matsuyama Castle a grand appearance and making it interesting to explore.

Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e5501.html

marikoroid has added a photo to the pool:

いただいたお花で生けました。
材料はバラ2本、ガーベラ2本、スプレーカーネーション、スターチス、レザーファン

jasohill has added a photo to the pool:

Rice paddies and clouds.

Reports from Siberia confirm attack, while Ukrainian president says new weapon has 3,000km range; occupied Crimea under attack. What we know on day 1,579

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has confirmed that Ukrainian drones attacked an oil refinery in Russia’s Tyumen region ⁠in western Siberia, ⁠more ​than 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from Ukraine. He said Ukrainian company Fire Point had developed new long-range drones capable of ⁠travelling more than 3,000km and they had been “successfully deployed”. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy thanked the Ukrainian ⁠military for special operations that “have reached Tyumen Region in Russia, including ​an oil refining facility. More ‌than 2,000km from ‌our state border. This is effective work.”

Unverified videos posted online showed smoke and flame rising over what was said to be the burning Tyumen refinery, also known as the Antipinsky refinery. The Tyumen governor, Alexander Moor, claimed emergency services were working at the site of “fallen [drone] debris” – a phrasing often used by Russian officials to play down successful Ukrainian attacks.

Ukraine’s forces struck an oil terminal at Kerch in occupied Crimea over Saturday night, according to Ukrainian media and online accounts monitoring the war. Nasa satellite monitoring showed a fire at the Kerch seaport where the terminal is located. In what appeared to be a broader wave of strikes against Russian-held targets in Crimea, an electrical substation at Bilohorsk was reportedly on fire, and there were other attacks at Yevpatoria and the main city of Sevastopol.

Russian ⁠forces struck the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of ​Zaporizhzhia with glide ⁠bombs on Saturday, killing five ⁠people ​and ‌injuring 10, said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor. Fedorov said there ‌had been nine strikes ​in the city. He ⁠said residents could ​be ​trapped ​in the ​rubble ‌of ​damaged buildings.

Near the Russian border, a bomb attack killed ​one person on the ​outskirts of the city of ​Sumy, local officials said. In the southern Kherson region, the regional ​governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said ‌one person had ​died in ​a drone attack on a village north of the region’s main city, also called Kherson. Three children were injured when the central city of Poltava came under Russian shelling, local officials said.

Russian bombs struck an apartment building on Saturday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing at least one person and wounding nine including a six-year-old child, authorities said.

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It’s doubtful whether many Ecuador supporters – or many others for that matter – had ever heard the name Eloy Room before this match. They will never forget it now.

Watched by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in the stands, the Curaçao goalkeeper etched his name into the pantheon of World Cup legends with what must rank as one of the most heroic performances in the long history of the competition.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Hij werd bekend als alleenstaande vader van vijf kinderen in het televisieprogramma Een Huis Vol. De op Curaçao geboren 'papa Jay', ondertussen weer getrouwd, keek met zijn grote gezin naar het historische gelijkspel tegen Ecuador. "KWOOT"

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The red soil plains and the alluvium of the flood plain are cultivated for a diversity of grains. The town (population 2000) is a service centre for the agricultural and grazing properties of this Orana Region.
Grain storage and handling facilities (white) and the large solar electricity farm (black) are evident west of the town.
The broad strip of forest running diagonally across the photo is evidence of the stock routes that once were very important on these western plains of NSW.

The Wall Street Journal reports on internet-connected devices — and how every year millions of them "can contain a secret digital backdoor that opens up access to your home internet, so that anyone... can surf the web as if they were you." (And this is especially true for "knockoffs that you buy online"...)

In a video report this week they tested two digital picture frames from Amazon and three streaming devices from Walmart "because we heard that they often ship with backdoor software used in cyberattacks. Security experts believe manufacturers are being paid to add this malware, but many people also get tricked into downloading the software onto their phones or computers... Within minutes of turning the devices on, there was a surge of internet traffic... Visits to gambling, porn, cryptocurrency and loads of other sketchy web sites started pouring in from users around the world." (And remote visitors also tried to access Outlook and Gmail accounts...)

Residential proxy companies even rent out access to "tens of millions of home networks around the world," according to the report. "But the problem is actually worse than that. Hackers figured out a way to seize control of these backdoors, and they started taking over these residential networks. Last month authorities arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man, saying he'd taken control of more than a million devices to launch some of the largest cyberattacks anyone had ever seen.."

After a couple months the Journal's reporter collected logs of all the traffic, and sent it to an investigator at Comcast, who said both were conducting DDoS attacks. But estimate for the number of infected devices are as low as tens of millions or as high 500 million-plus. "We've seen nation state attacks launched through these kind of endpoints, which means your device sitting in your house is part of a nation state attack against another nation state... We've seen ad fraud, we've seen ticket scalping, we've seen financial fraud."

But more importantly, "We have seen some of the largest computer attacks — meaning computers attacking other computers at human request — ever recorded in our digital history in the last several months." At cybersecurity conferences, some are warning "there are much larger ones on the horizon if we don't get a hold of this problem."

The company making the picture frame "couldn't be reached for comment," while Amazon said it's been out of stock since last year. Both Amazon and Walmart said they take action when they confirm malware on a third-party product.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.