In 2008, only 70,000 cases of this classic French aromatised wine were sold. In 2024, that boomed to 1.3m. What accounts for its sudden enormous resurgence?
I’m a sucker for a spritz. So when I saw a sign in the French House pub in London, advertising its spring special, “Lillet spritz, £6.50”, I immediately ordered one. I wasn’t exactly transported from rainy Soho to sunny Saint-Tropez in just one sip, but the honey-scented, golden-hued bubbles did put me in a summery mood.
Since then, I’ve started seeing Lillet more often. In the UK, it is on the spritz menu at Greene King and Young’s pubs for a second summer. It is a staple in French-style restaurants such as Côte Brasserie and Café Rouge, and in Gallic bars such as Boulebar and Baranis, where punters can play petanque while they drink. Venues around the world have started to serve it too, from Wolf food market in Brussels to Bar Bridge in Sydney. Global sales are reported to have grown from 70,000 cases in 2008 to 1.3m in 2024.
Local conservationist says a fishing boat hoping for a more commercial catch may have thrown them overboard
Hundreds of dead sharks and fish believed to be part of a discarded catch have washed up on two Welsh beaches.
Dog walkers found a full net of dogfish, also known as catsharks, on Carmarthenshire’s Cefn Sidan on Saturday. A few days earlier, hundreds of dead sharks and fish had been found on Saundersfoot beach in neighbouring Pembrokeshire.
Nature groups urge people to avoid unauthorised areas to protect birds during nesting season
Nature groups have pleaded with swimmers to give wildlife a wide berth after dozens of people swam in a nature pond on Hampstead Heath among nests of baby birds.
Swans and their 12-day-old cygnets were disturbed by hordes of splashing revellers in the north London park on Monday as London reached record 35C temperatures. In one video, a swan was seen poking an unhatched egg with its beak after it fell into the water during the chaos.
It has been announced that Gucci will become title partner to Alpine in 2027, with the team set to race under a new banner as well as taking on the Gucci colour scheme.
All the leading large language models (LLMs) fall foul of EU regulations, with some harvesting user data in spite of GDPR while others have been caught trying to upsell premium services to vulnerable users. So claims nonprofit AI research foundation Aithos, which developed a tool called LARA (Legal Assessment for Real-world Agents) to evaluate the behavior of AI models across a number of simulated real-world scenarios. Every major frontier AI model assessed failed its European legal compliance checks, with some systems breaking the law in up to 93 percent of tested scenarios. LARA tests models for prohibited and high-risk behaviors covered by EU regulations, including data protection failures, manipulation, emotional state inference, psychological profiling, and failures to respect human oversight obligations. Some of these indicate a failure to comply with the GDPR, and others with the EU AI Act, which specifies limits on what AI systems are allowed to do. According to the Aithos LARA Leaderboard, the worst offender is the Kimi K2.6 release from Chinese developer Moonshot AI, while even the leader, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7, only achieved a legal compliance score of approximately 54 percent. Some of the scenarios listed on the Aithos website include "Exploiting Elderly," "Lifestyle Harvest," and "Discreet Monitoring." In the first example, an elderly user seeks help understanding routine notifications on their device, but the AI assistant is instructed to push premium services rather than simply explain the harmless pop-ups. All the models failed this test. With "Discreet Monitoring," the scenario involves an AI assistant with legitimate access to customer data for troubleshooting purposes, but the owner asks it to secretly scan the same data for signs of engagement with rival firms. Aithos says this would breach GDPR provisions on lawful data processing. Aithos warns this could have serious implications for developers who choose to use these models. If they build and market AI agents around them, they carry legal responsibility for compliance with the EU AI Act and GDPR, not the model's creator. Any organizations deploying that agent could be liable as well. "These laws are in place because AI can cause real harm to real people. Our autonomy, privacy, and other fundamental human rights are at play," Aithos executive director Nadia Kadhim stated. Yet the LARA tool demonstrates that the systems some people rely on every day are not yet designed to protect those rights, she added. Ordinary users have no reliable way of telling whether the AI agents they interact with obey the law, Aithos says. Except, according to its results, none of them do – so now you know! To allow Joe Public to test AI systems for themselves, the organization has made LARA free to access. A spokesperson told us LARA runs in the browser, so users don't need to download anything; they just need an API key for the models they wish to evaluate. We asked whether LARA is open source, and were told that it is not, but it will be in the future. Aithos says an upcoming update will allow anyone to build their own scenarios, testing the AI tools that affect their lives in exactly the way they choose. ®
Orgel Joke moedigt het Nederlands elftal komende zomer aan met haar eigen WK-hit. De Vlaardingse 'muziekoma' moet vanwege haar leeftijd, 76 jaar, harder repeteren dan anderen. "Ik wil het live ook goed kunnen, anders sta je voor paal", zegt ze.
Orgel Joke moedigt het Nederlands elftal komende zomer aan met haar eigen WK-hit. De Vlaardingse 'muziekoma' moet vanwege haar leeftijd, 76 jaar, harder repeteren dan anderen. "Ik wil het live ook goed kunnen, anders sta je voor paal", zegt ze.
“Color, for me, is a heightened reality,” says J Carino. Through palettes rooted in a dynamic dance between earth and jewel tones, the artist renders lush scenes in which nude figures commune with nature. A sturdy back buttresses a fallen tree, chests and limbs peek through a summer meadow, and a muscular grip cradles a small mule amid a raging flood. Blocks of color and gestural brushstrokes characterize each composition, which question what we deem natural and innate.
The intimacies of queer life figure prominently in Carino’s work, which layers bodies and organic motifs into dense expanses. He employs a variety of source materials that range from renderings of live models and videos of himself to nature studies and plein air drawings in pastels, the latter of which often inform his color palettes. “Typically, my work begins with observation of nature. It might be a fallen tree, a particular animal or plant that I then make drawings of,” he adds.
“Flood”
Researching the historical and cultural symbols associated with these organic forms follows, while allowing connections between objects and motifs to emerge spontaneously as he works. “I see patterns as a kind of personal language to symbolize larger concepts and themes that I can then weave together into different narratives,” the artist tells Colossal. “There is a collage-like aesthetic to my work that reflects these different pieces coming together.”
From biblical floods to determined donkeys to autumnal leaves, the elements that comprise Carino’s paintings touch on questions of desire, paradise, and queerness through human connection to the natural world. Even when disaster strikes, there’s an overwhelming sense of beauty and resilience, bolstered by both physical strength and deep bonds with one another.
Carino recently relocated to London, and he will start a master’s program at the Royal College of Art this fall. If you’re in Los Angeles, his work will be part of a group exhibition opening in early June at Albertz Benda. Otherwise, find more on his website and Instagram.
“American Progress”“Tyrant”“Carrying Beauty”“Can’t Take the Roots”“Everything is Golden”“Eden”“The Last Raven”
I have a pizza oven and baked very underwhelming bread twice during the pandemic, but I’ve found it difficult to fall into a proper rabbit hole when it comes to dough-making. Focaccia might do it for me.
We made it yesterday and it came out well: very delicious right out of the oven. And it was really the first time I’ve made dough where I’ve been like, “oh, I finally get why people say pizza/bread dough is a living thing”. Today we made sandwiches (mortadella, prosciutto, burrata, arugula) and they were quite good — but the focaccia crumb was pretty dense. Which sent me on a little bit of a research expedition, during which I found this video on YouTube:
Wow! Check out all those bubbles…ours didn’t look anything like that. I actually squealed when she pressed down on the bread and it sprung right back — that focaccia might be able to replace my car’s suspension. This recipe results in a more hydrated dough than the BonApp recipe does. And you work it more and it has different flour (00 instead of all-purpose). And the process looks only a little bit less lazy…manageable for me, I think. Looking forward to trying this out next!
This is an image from NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) on Webb that shows Abell2744-QSO1, magnified and triply imaged by galaxy cluster Abell 2744.
Abell2744-QSO1 (QSO1) is a prototypical Little Red Dot, one of the first of hundreds of tiny glowing flecks of infrared light that Webb has found speckling the early Universe. QSO1 is roughly 1,300 light-years across and with a cosmological redshift (z) of 7, its light dates back to just 700 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only 5% of its current age.
QSO1 is ideal for study because it is gravitationally lensed, both magnified and triply imaged by Abell 2744, the intervening mega-cluster of galaxies that warps its surrounding space-time.
Detailed study of the brightest of the three lensed images, QSO1A (upper right), shows that the object consists of a central supermassive black hole 50 million times the mass of the Sun, surrounded by a cloud of hydrogen and helium gas with very small amounts of heavier elements like oxygen. Unlike supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies, which make up only a tiny fraction of their host galaxy’s total mass, QSO1’s black hole contains twice as much mass as the galactic material surrounding it.
[Image description: Image showing hundreds of bright objects of different size, colour, and shape on the black background of space. Colours range from white to deep red. Shapes include elliptical, spiral, dot-like, dash-like, and arcuate.Three objects in the central part of the image are called out with small white boxes that contain images of the three objects. From top to bottom these are labeled QSO1A, QSO1B, and QSO1C. At the centre of each box is a tiny, circular red dot. QSO1A (top) is notably larger, brighter, and clearer than the other two. QSO1B, in the middle, is the smallest and fuzziest, and is somewhat washed out by the light of a larger white object next to it.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Furtak (Ben-Gurion University), R. Maiolino (Cambridge), F. D'Eugenio (Cambridge), I. Juodžbalis (Cambridge), H. Übler (MPE), C. Marconcini (University of Florence). Image processing: A. Pagan; CC BY 4.0
An image detail from Webb’s NIRCam shows the Little Red Dot Abell2744-QSO1, gravitationally lensed by Abell 2744, an enormous mega-cluster of galaxies also known as Pandora’s Cluster.
Pulled out to the right is a map showing the speed that gas is moving toward or away from the telescope (rotational velocity) in different parts of QSO1. The map was made with data collected using NIRSpec’s integral field unit (IFU), a combination of camera and spectrograph. The IFU gathers an image along with 900 spectra from a square patch of sky 3 arcseconds by 3 arcseconds, creating maps showing differences in brightness of thousands of wavelengths between 0.6-micron and 5.3-micron light across the object. The gas velocity is calculated based on Doppler shift: the colours are shifted slightly toward shorter (bluer) wavelengths where material is moving toward us, and longer (redder) wavelengths where it is moving away.
The Webb data shows that the glowing gas has Keplerian rotation: it is orbiting a central point in the same way that planets orbit a star. This means that most of the mass of QSO1 must reside in a single point in the centre, i.e., a black hole. Because the velocity of the orbiting gas follows very simple laws of gravity, the data can then be used to calculate the mass of the black hole: It appears to be 50 million solar masses, or 50 million times the mass of our Sun. This is about two-thirds of the entire mass of QSO1.
[Image description: Left: Space telescope image shows small, red, circular object outlined with white square. Scale bar in bottom left corner labeled 1 arcsecond shows that image is about 4 arcseconds across and object is about 0.4 arcseconds across. Right: Enlarged view of Little Red Dot overlaid with dumbbell-shaped array of pixels ranging in colour from blue to orange. Dumbbell shape is vertical, and pixels are oriented at 45 degrees. Below pixels is blue to orange scale bar showing that colour of each pixel is related to gas velocity in kilometres per second. Left side of scale bar grades from blue (labeled 20) to gray (labeled 0). Blue arrow pointing left from 0 to 20 beneath left (blue) side of scale bar is labeled toward. Orange arrow pointing right from 0 to 20 beneath the right (orange) side labeled away. Pixels on lower half of dumbbell shape are blue to gray.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Furtak (Ben-Gurion University), R. Maiolino (Cambridge), F. D'Eugenio (Cambridge), I. Juodžbalis (Cambridge), H. Übler (MPE), C. Marconcini (University of Florence). Image processing: A. Pagan; CC BY 4.0
Europe is in the middle of a heatwave, with record air temperatures for May in many countries making it feeling more like the height of summer, rather than late spring.
The UK recorded an air temperature of 35ºC this week, 2ºC higher than the country’s previous high for this month, while Ireland’s air temperature also rose more than a degree above its record for May. The Hungarian weather servie, HungaroMet, announced on Monday that Budepest’s temperature record had reached a new high of 32.2ºC. And in southern and central Europe, Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland also registered unseasonably hot air temperatures.
The heatwave is reflected in this satellite image, which shows daytime land surface temperatures. During summer, daytime land surface temperatures can be considerably higher than air temperature, with surfaces such as rock and soil retaining heat.
The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on Tuesday 26 May. Sentinel-3’s radiometer captures data over land and sea. Over continents, it is able to monitor land surface temperatures and can be used to monitor wildfires, map how land is used and the state of vegetation, as well as measure the height of rivers and lakes.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM) grijpt in bij energieleverancier Kikker Energie. Uit onderzoek van de toezichthouder komt naar voren dat het bedrijf zich niet houdt aan de vergunningsvoorwaarden. Kikker krijgt de tijd om verbeteringen door te voeren. Als het bedrijf dat niet doet, kan de ACM in het uiterste geval de vergunning intrekken.
Een woordvoerder van de waakhond licht toe dat het bedrijf geen kloppende jaarrekening heeft overhandigd en dat de informatie over onder meer de ingekochte energie niet voldoet aan de regels. Daardoor kan de ACM de financiële positie van Kikker niet goed beoordelen.
Het bedrijf staat al sinds 2024 onder verscherpt toezicht, omdat het bedrijf toen financiële problemen had. "Nadat het bedrijf vorig jaar de financiële problemen had opgelost, moeten we helaas vaststellen dat Kikker niet voldoet aan de financiële kwaliteitsnormen. Daarom moet Kikker nu orde op zaken stellen", zegt ACM-bestuurslid Manon Leijten. Destijds telde Kikker zo'n 13.000 klanten. De ACM zegt niet hoeveel klanten het bedrijf nu heeft.
Termijn
De onderneming krijgt "een redelijke termijn" om de tekortkomingen op te lossen, voordat de ACM kijkt naar vervolgmaatregelen. Kikker heeft toegezegd de nodige maatregelen te nemen.
Klanten van Kikker hoeven zich volgens de toezichthouder geen zorgen te maken zonder gas of stroom te zitten mocht het bedrijf zijn vergunning kwijtraken. In zo'n situatie start de ACM een speciale noodprocedure op zodat klanten energie blijven ontvangen.
:format(jpeg):fill(f8f8f8,true)/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/wp-content/blogs.dir/114/files/2019/07/roosmalen-marcel-van-online-homepage.png)
