Er komt tijdens de jaarwisseling toch een grote vuurwerkshow bij de Erasmusbrug. Het nieuwe Rotterdamse stadsbestuur wilde eigenlijk een show met drones en lasers, maar er is te weinig tijd om dat te organiseren. Bovendien was het budget van vijf ton veel te laag en dus komt er flink wat geld bij.

Er komt tijdens de jaarwisseling toch een grote vuurwerkshow bij de Erasmusbrug. Het nieuwe Rotterdamse stadsbestuur wilde eigenlijk een show met drones en lasers, maar er is te weinig tijd om dat te organiseren. Bovendien was het budget van vijf ton veel te laag en dus komt er flink wat geld bij.

An old-fashioned smash-and-grab job on a photographer’s vehicle threatens the security of pupils’ data as a UK secondary school says it faces a potential data protection pickle. Jon Curtis-Brignell, headteacher at Priory School in Lewes, said in an email this week that a company the school hired to take pupils’ annual school photos has alerted it to a data theft case after a vehicle was broken into. “Pret-a-Portrait has informed us that, overnight between 6 and 7 October, one of its vehicles was broken into and a camera bag containing SD memory cards was stolen,” Curtis-Brignell wrote. “Some of these cards may have contained photographs taken at Priory School, together with images of the QR code cards used for school photographs, which show pupils’ names and class names.” The headteacher said that the same equipment used to take the photos at Priory School was also used for three additional photography jobs after Pret-a-Portrait visited the school on October 1. Pret-a-Portrait, which has offices in the UK, Qatar, and the UAE, told the school that it believes “most, if not all” of the files containing pupils’ data will have been overwritten as a result, but it cannot be certain. Curtis-Brignell said that the potentially affected information included photographs, pupils’ names, and their “class information associated with the photography process.” Other types of data, such as addresses, contact details, financial information, medical information, and safeguarding records stored in the school’s own systems remain untouched. Nick Kerr, owner of Pret-a-Portrait, told The Register that no physical, printed photos were stored in the vehicle at the time of the break-in, and that it was not possible to determine the potential scope of the data protection violation. “As the email from Priory School explains, it is likely to be somewhere between a small subset of their pictures and none of them,” said Kerr. On a positive note, he said that there is nothing to suggest the files have been improperly accessed. “Our analysis reveals that no improper access to pictures from this job occurred in between the time of the theft and the pictures being taken offline.” Per the headteacher’s email, Pret-a-Portrait confirmed that it took a number of steps to mitigate the potential damage, including taking all school photos offline, changing the IDs used to access them, and changing its procedures so that all SD cards are wiped at the end of each commission. The company also “reviewed and strengthened its procedures following the incident,” and reported the matter to both the police and the ICO. “I appreciate that receiving an email of this nature may understandably cause concern,” Curtis-Brignell added. “We have worked closely with our Data Protection Officer and Pret-a-Portrait to understand what happened, establish the potential risk and ensure that appropriate action has been taken. “We wanted to be open with families about what has happened, while also reassuring you that there is currently no evidence that the information has been accessed or misused and that a number of steps have now been taken to prevent access to the affected photographs and reduce the risk of a similar incident occurring again.” ®

The Breeders

The Breeders

TheGufotography has added a photo to the pool:

IMG_20260403_092530_DSC_2030-3

Nederland behoort tot de Europese kopgroep als het om de hoogte van pensioenen gaat. Met gemiddeld zo’n 2.118 euro bruto per maand staat ons land op de zevende plaats in een vergelijking van Europese ouderdomspensioenen. IJsland voert de lijst aan, gevolgd door Luxemburg en Denemarken. Maar achter die bedragen schuilt een belangrijk verschil: een hoger pensioen betekent niet automatisch dat je ook ruimer leeft.

Nederland ruim boven het Europese gemiddelde

Het gemiddelde Nederlandse ouderdomspensioen bedroeg in 2023 ongeveer 25.417 euro bruto per jaar. Omgerekend is dat circa 2.118 euro per maand. België staat daar met ongeveer 2.021 euro per maand vlak achter. Beide landen komen daarmee duidelijk boven het EU-gemiddelde van ongeveer 1.443 euro bruto per maand uit. De vergelijking gaat over cijfers uit 2023, niet over de pensioenbedragen van vandaag.finance.yahoo+1

De bovenkant van de Europese ranglijst ziet er als volgt uit:

Jaarbedragen over 2023, omgerekend naar twaalf maanden en afgerond. Het gaat om gemiddelden, niet om een gegarandeerd pensioenbedrag voor iedere inwoner.

Aan de onderkant zijn de bedragen veel lager

Binnen de Europese Unie staat Bulgarije onderaan, met gemiddeld 4.479 euro bruto ouderdomspensioen per jaar. Dat komt neer op ongeveer 373 euro per maand. Luxemburg zit als EU-koploper op 34.413 euro per jaar: bijna acht keer zoveel.

Ook buiten de EU zijn de verschillen groot. In de vergelijking van 34 Europese landen die Euronews op basis van Eurostat-cijfers maakte, komt Turkije uit op 3.377 euro per jaar, tegenover 38.031 euro in IJsland. Het hoogste bedrag is daarmee ruim elf keer zo groot als het laagste. Welke landen een ranglijst meeneemt, maakt dus uit voor de uitkomst.

Die 2.118 euro is niet alleen AOW

Een belangrijke kanttekening bij het Nederlandse bedrag: het gaat niet uitsluitend om de AOW. Ook aanvullende ouderdomspensioenen tellen mee. Wie het gemiddelde leest als ‘zoveel AOW krijgt een Nederlander’, trekt dus de verkeerde conclusie.

Nederland combineert een basisvoorziening met pensioenopbouw via werkgevers en individuele voorzieningen. Daardoor verschilt het pensioeninkomen sterk van persoon tot persoon. Iemand met alleen AOW zit in een andere financiële situatie dan iemand die daarnaast jarenlang een werkgeverspensioen heeft opgebouwd. Het landelijke gemiddelde maakt die verschillen niet zichtbaar.

Internationaal vergelijken blijft bovendien lastig. In landen als Frankrijk, Spanje en Duitsland speelt het wettelijke pensioen een grote rol, terwijl werkgeversregelingen anders zijn georganiseerd. Een vergelijkbaar eindbedrag kan dus via heel verschillende systemen tot stand komen.

Waarom Spanje stijgt zodra je naar koopkracht kijkt

Voor het dagelijks leven is niet alleen het pensioenbedrag belangrijk, maar vooral de koopkracht: hoeveel kun je ervan betalen?

Onderzoekers vergelijken pensioenen daarom ook met een maatstaf die rekening houdt met prijsverschillen tussen landen. In de Europese vergelijking wordt de afstand tussen het hoogste en laagste pensioen daardoor aanzienlijk kleiner: van ruim tien keer naar ongeveer 3,3 keer.

Spanje laat goed zien hoeveel dat uitmaakt. Het land stijgt in de aangehaalde vergelijking van plaats dertien op basis van bedragen in euro’s naar plaats vier na correctie voor koopkracht. Zwitserland beweegt juist de andere kant op: van de vijfde naar de vijftiende plaats. Een groot bedrag op de pensioenstrook levert dus niet overal dezelfde levensstandaard op.

Een hoge plek zegt niet alles over je oude dag

De ranglijst laat zien dat Nederland relatief hoge ouderdomspensioenen heeft. Maar ze vertelt niet hoeveel een individuele gepensioneerde na belasting overhoudt, hoe hoog diens woonlasten zijn of hoeveel aanvullend pensioen is opgebouwd. Ook kosten voor zorg en andere dagelijkse uitgaven bepalen hoeveel financiële ruimte iemand werkelijk heeft.

The Gunners’ title hopes look over after five games as draws continue from last season while the Seagulls, actually ninth, are third for expected points

The Women’s Super League table is taking shape for 2026-27. The defending champions, Manchester City, have five wins from five games but more intriguing stories lie elsewhere. Why are Arsenal struggling, who is performing better than results suggest, and in which way are two promoted teams smashing expectations? Here are three key data points.

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PC; Origame Digital
This odd but absorbing adventure sends you waddling across Antarctica in search of an eldritch entity – uncovering a world far stranger than it first appears

A Nazi kneels down on frozen snow, staring at an endless Antarctic horizon. Another holds a gun to his head, ready to end his own life. I direct a small waddling penguin up to them, trying to imagine what it could be thinking. Dismay, perhaps. Likely bewilderment. But then a faint smile seems to break out across its beaky face, as if amused by these silly humans and their misguided belief that they could ever best this howling, harsh landscape.

For most games, the idea of playing as a penguin observing Nazis losing the plot near the south pole would be weird enough. But Penguin Colony, developed by Origame Digital, pushes further. This is an audacious, frequently brilliant retelling of HP Lovecraft’s 1936 novella At the Mountains of Madness, in which eldritch horrors are just as common as Nazis. Further weirdness abounds: the many collectibles scattered about this place are not shiny gold objects à la Super Mario or Sonic. Rather, they are words. So tottering about as a semiaquatic bird, you have a unique mission: collect human language.

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The American author on being inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, coming late to Jane Austen, and the brilliance of Robert Penn Warren

My earliest reading memory
I remember learning to read with dull stories about Jane going up a hill, but my earliest thrilling reading memories are of series like The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High. In the highly gendered reading days of the 1980s, I knew those books were for girls, but I  devoured them.

My favourite book growing up
Besides the girls of The Baby-Sitters Club, I loved books about survival and perseverance, especially Gary Paulsen’s The Island, in which a boy discovers a secluded island and ventures there to learn about the natural world.

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The education secretary is right to focus on what students need most: the ability to express themselves. As for maths, grab a calculator

At last the fourth R is born. Articulation – speaking – is to join reading, writing and arithmetic in the education canon. What has become the mighty struggle against the dictatorship of the screen can begin in earnest. The spoken word, human-to-human communication, must finally be recognised by the gods of reactionary schooling. The pundits call it oracy.

On Thursday, the education secretary, Lucy Powell, called the academics’ bluff. She wants a radical reform of the national curriculum in England to reduce “desktop” working in favour of verbal fluency and practical skills. This will take courage. For decades, education’s senior leaders have been ramming easily forgotten “subjects”, such as maths and French, into children’s brains so they can be judged and measured in league tables. These tables have grown ever more dominant as ministers seek to climb “global rankings”.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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The lore of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, once bought by Martin Shkreli, is explored in a rambling film produced by RZA

For every reason except one, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the seventh album by the Wu-Tang Clan, should’ve been a commercial hit. The 31-track double album, recorded in secret between 2007 and 2013, reunited all of the remaining members of the hallowed Staten Island rap crew and featured eye-catching collaborators from the standard (Redman, offshoot group Wu-Tang Killa Bees) to the unexpected (Cher, Game of Thrones actor Carice van Houten). The sound, at least according to those involved, harkened back to the glory days of the group’s beginnings in the 90s.

But for years, almost no one heard it. The group only issued a single copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin – on CD, ensconced within layers of filigreed silver – with the stipulation, in legalese, that it could not be used for any commercial purposes for 88 years. The decree, either a stunt or a bold artistic statement on streaming’s devaluation of music, depending on your generosity and perhaps your net worth, succeeded in drumming up plenty of hype. And if you were anywhere around the blogosphere or cable news in 2015, you may recall that the beneficiary of that hype – the purchaser and thus single intended listener of this $2m musical treasure – was one Martin Shkreli, the “pharma bro” widely despised for gleefully hiking the costs of prescription drugs for profit.

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The media-savvy Democratic senator is defying predictions of a tight re-election battle. But he insists he has ‘zero interest’ in a presidential run in 2028

Jon Ossoff has “zero interest” in running for president in 2028, he declared during a debate this week. Jon Ossoff has “zero interest” in running for president in 2028, he told a local TV station last month. Jon Ossoff has “zero interest” in running for president in 2028, he told MS Now – twice – in August.

The Democratic US senator for Georgia said as much to CNN. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And MS Now, again. And in his second Senate debate on Tuesday night.

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Have you followed the big stories in football, rugby, tennis, boxing, basketball, skateboarding, F1 and the NFL?

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With support for far right politics well established across Europe, how might upcoming elections shape its future? Europe correspondents Jon Henley and Ashifa Kassam answered Reddit users’ questions about their reporting from the continent

Support for far-right parties has been growing across Europe, with radical right, populist parties in coalition governments in Croatia, Czechia, Italy and Finland, and leading in the polls in Austria, Belgium, France and Germany.

The Guardian reported this year that nearly a quarter of voters in Europe voted for far-right parties in their most recent national elections, a fivefold increase since 1995.

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The mixed martial arts organization has had links to the US president for years. Now it could be involved in training federal agents

In the lead-up to UFC Freedom 250 – the cagefighting spectacle that took place on the South Lawn of the White House to mark Donald Trump’s 80th birthday this past summer – the FBI announced that a handful of UFC fighters would visit the bureau for an exclusive training seminar for federal agents.

Taking place at the FBI Special Agent Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the March seminar put roughly 300 federal agents and academy students through specialized hand-to-hand combat training with seven past and current UFC fighters, including former middleweight champion Chris Weidman, who was pictured giving attendees advice on warding off attackers.

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• Backlash greeted award of prize to US president

• Fifa committee to make recommendations this year

Donald Trump is likely to end up as the only political leader awarded the Fifa peace prize after Gianni Infantino was told at Thursday’s meeting of Fifa council to make major changes or scrap the controversial award.

The Guardian has learned that several council members demanded the award be abolished and others called for the prize to be depoliticised, with Fifa’s football social responsibility committee to make a recommendation before the next council meeting in Doha on 16 December.

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Bas van Putten neemt de Wunderline, een onlangs heropend dieselelektrisch treintje van Groningen naar het Duitse Leer. Een snelle verbinding zal er niet komen, de Duitsers vinden het maar een trein van niks.

Voor deze rubriek sturen lezers een foto in van hun ouders. Deze keer stuurde Jos Schouten (1951) een foto van zijn moeder Mimi Arons (1920-1967) en vader Sjef Schouten (1916-1974).

Tomatensoep die nooit een verse tomaat had gezien, als kind was Janneke Vreugdenhil er dol op. Omdat ze nog steeds blij wordt van tomatensoep uit blik: recept voor homemade Heinz.