BOEDAPEST (ANP/AFP/RTR) - Hongarije heeft zijn enige kerncentrale volledig stilgelegd vanwege de hittegolf in het land waardoor het waterpeil in de Donau sterk is gedaald. Door die extreem lage waterstand van de rivier is er te weinig koelwater voor de PAKS-kerncentrale ten zuiden van hoofdstad Boedapest.

Het is voor het eerst in 44 jaar dat de centrale helemaal wordt uitgezet. De kerncentrale draaide eerder al op verminderde capaciteit. De Hongaarse premier Péter Magyar had burgers daarom al opgeroepen minder stroom te verbruiken. Ook aan grootverbruikers in het bedrijfsleven werd gevraagd het stroomverbruik te verminderen.

De centrale levert normaal gesproken bijna de helft van alle elektriciteit in Hongarije. Het land moet nu extra stroom importeren, wat duurder is. Premier Robert Fico van buurland Slowakije heeft al hulp aangeboden aan Hongarije bij de stroomvoorziening. Volgens Fico draaien de kerncentrales in Slowakije volgens geplande capaciteit.

ARNHEM (ANP) - Ondanks de chronische droogte in Nederland zijn er in de afgelopen weken nog geen grote natuurbranden geweest. Maar dat kan veranderen als de wind draait. Daarvoor waarschuwt Edwin Kok, landelijk coördinator natuurbrandbeheersing van de brandweer. "De risico's zijn nog niet geweken zolang er geen significante regen valt. En dan heb ik het over wekenlange neerslag", aldus Kok.

In april waren er enkele grote branden, onder meer bij 't Harde en de Ederheide in Gelderland, op de Oirschotse Heide in Noord-Brabant en op de Weerterheide in Limburg. De omstandigheden waren toen extreem, aldus Kok. Zo was de fijne vegetatie, zoals grassen, dood na de winter. Die was daardoor heel brandbaar.

In juni heeft het veel geregend en hebben planten kunnen groeien. Daardoor zijn de omstandigheden nu minder slecht dan in april. Volgens Kok is er "meer buffer, het duurt langer om de vegetatie uit te drogen. Bovendien is de luchtvochtigheid nu hoger en waait het minder hard. Maar planten beginnen wel te lijden onder de hitte en de langdurige droogte. Hittegolf na hittegolf, met het uitblijven van regen, zorgt voor grote uitdagingen." De brandweercoördinator waarschuwt daarom: "Als we nu drie of vier dagen wind uit het oosten zouden krijgen met een lage luchtvochtigheid, zou ik me nog meer zorgen maken dan ik nu al doe. De risico's zijn zeker nog niet geweken."

Veenbrand

Kok is de komende tijd in Catalonië, om te leren van de brandweermensen daar. In het gebied woeden nu geen grote branden, maar ongeveer een maand geleden wel. "In Nederland zijn we gewend om iedere centimeter van een brand uit te willen maken. Dat kost veel menskracht. Hier zeggen ze: laat het gebied in het midden gerust nasmeulen, maar zorg ervoor dat je aan de randen alles doet om te voorkomen dat een brand daar oplaait", heeft Kok van ze geleerd. Dat kan bijvoorbeeld door het weghalen van bomen en struiken die nog niet afgebrand zijn. "Dan is er geen brandstof meer voor een nieuw vuur. Wanneer er brandstof is, kan het vuur eindeloos doorgaan."

De brandweercoördinator noemt een veenbrand op de Deurnese Peel in 2020 als voorbeeld. "Die heeft ondergronds twee maanden lang doorgewoed. Als er een laag organisch materiaal op de grond ligt, en dat heb je in Nederland veel meer dan in Zuid-Europa, kan een brand weken of maanden duren. Je bent soms verbaasd waar het vuur weer boven de grond uit komt."

SARATOV (ANP/AFP) - Bij een Oekraïense droneaanval op de regio Saratov in het zuidwesten van Rusland zijn twee doden gevallen, meldt de gouverneur van dat gebied. De regio ligt zo'n 750 kilometer van de grens.

Door het hele land werden in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag 635 drones onderschept, zegt het Russische ministerie van Defensie. Dat zou zijn gebeurd boven verschillende regio's, waaronder de door Rusland geannexeerde Krim.

In onze regio zijn in 2026 al 637 dieren aangereden in het verkeer. Het echte aantal ligt veel hoger, meestal wordt het niet gemerkt of niet gemeld. Egeltjes, huisdieren, wild en vogels zijn met zoveel asfalt vaak niet veilig. Wie een dier raakt, moet volgens de wet stoppen en hulp inschakelen. Per ongeluk aanrijden is niet strafbaar, doorrijden wel. Hoe zit dat precies?

Een 48-jarige man uit Alblasserdam is zaterdagavond met zijn auto tegen een hekwerk langs het Westeinde in Oud-Alblas gebotst. De politie en een ambulance kwamen ter plaatse.

Een 48-jarige man uit Alblasserdam is zaterdagavond met zijn auto tegen een hekwerk langs het Westeinde in Oud-Alblas gebotst. De politie en een ambulance kwamen ter plaatse.

De Amerikaanse wereldster Madonna gaf zaterdagnacht een verrassingsoptreden tijdens World Pride Music Festival in de Amsterdamse Afas Live, met Kylie Minogue als mystery guest. Bezoekers ontvangen Madonna als queer-icoon: „Het feit dat zij hier nu is zet ons gewoon even goed op de kaart.”

Tom Evslin drove the WorldNet project at AT&T and helped develop what became Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. He was at Microsoft when the company was still working out what to do about this newfangled internet thing. Evslin describes himself as one of Microsoft's "internet radicals" in the early 1990s, when the company was developing Exchange Server to fend off the threat from Lotus Notes. "Bill Gates was willing to put lots of effort and money into Exchange because he was very afraid of Lotus Notes," Evslin says. "He felt that Lotus Notes could become a platform the way that Windows was, which would be an enormous threat to Microsoft. And so he saw Exchange as a Notes killer." Evslin saw Exchange differently "because I was an email guy." He and Microsoft's other "internet radicals" wanted the upcoming products delayed until they had been made relevant to the internet. Gates disagreed. "Bill said, with some truth, that we were probably behind schedule anyway, always looking for an excuse to be late. So we go ahead with the next launch of products, including Office, Exchange, and NT, then worry about the internet afterward, which I thought was a mistake." Evslin was fascinated by the internet's potential and disappointed by Gates' stance. He was responsible for gateways in Exchange, services that connect one mail system to another. Some did things like connecting to CompuServe. Others linked to MCI Mail, one of the first commercial email services in the US, "which I had done a client for," Evslin says. "We had one little gateway that we hadn't put much work into, which was called an SMTP gateway, which connected SMTP mail, which was used on the internet. Which itself wasn't widely used." So, was Gates right? Only briefly. While Microsoft's corporate clients insisted communication over the internet was "not safe" and "not secure," Evslin says: "All of a sudden we got a huge number of requests for this SMTP gateway. And when I looked into it, I found that more and more email was going over the internet." The official corporate stance might have been one of "nope," but employees had other ideas. "Their engineers were communicating on the internet, and they never understood that, or didn't understand that at the time," Evslin says. And then there was what would become Outlook. "From the beginning, we wanted the client for Exchange to be able to support graphics, to be able to support fonts, so that you could format an email in the same way that you could format a Word document. "Where we didn't go far enough is we still had two separate formatting engines, so the Word and Outlook client never merged as I thought they should have." Soon after Gates chose to launch the products before adding deeper internet integration, AT&T invited Evslin "to come and develop their internet strategy." Back then, Evslin says, AT&T didn't really have a clear plan for the internet. The company had tinkered with proprietary networks, but Evslin reckoned AT&T should become an ISP. "AT&T always had illusions about being a content provider," he says. Evslin also favored all-you-can-eat pricing, which smaller providers had attempted but AT&T had yet to try. "There was a lot of debate internally, people saying 'you can't launch a new service in less than seven years.'" Considering how quickly things were moving – and still are – seven years was a lifetime. "I said, 'the solution to that is launch it fast and then adapt.'" WorldNet offered straightforward internet access to customers accustomed to portals, proprietary networks, and some heart-stopping telephone bills. Demand grew so quickly that AT&T had to control sign-ups lest the service earn the "America On Hold" nickname occasionally and unkindly applied to America Online. With the internet in the ascendant, Evslin became interested in another technology: voice over IP. This, he acknowledges, "was an impossible sale inside AT&T." And so, in 1997, Evslin moved on again to found ITXC, a wholesale VoIP carrier. ®

CNN tells the unfortunate tale of hedge fund Situational Awareness, "founded in 2024 by German-born Leopold Aschenbrenner when he was in his early 20s."

Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee, founded the hedge fund on the premise that "AI will be the dominant driver of global market returns over the next decade," according to the firm's site... Aschenbrenner managed to turn hundreds of millions of dollars into tens of billions of dollars over the course of roughly two years... That streak ended on Thursday, though, when the fund was forced to sell the bulk of its public holdings to a bigger rival after many of its investments went south.

But that's only part of the story. The fund employed a risky strategy of borrowing money to purchase stocks. When the investments appreciate, the payoff can be massive. But when the investments sour, the losses can be catastrophic. The downturn in AI stocks over the course of this month, like chip makers and cloud computing providers, hit the hedge fund extra hard. It was forced to sell off many investments at a steep discount to rival hedge fund Citadel in what Aschenbrenner reportedly compared to a "bank run" in a letter to investors.

"Critics pointed out that Aschenbrenner had no experience running money prior to launching his fund in July 2024, calling him more lucky than smart," writes CNBC:

Some noted that his early work experience was at the doomed crypto firm FTX, where he helped now-disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried run a charity out of a Bahamas penthouse. Others on Wall Street, including former traders at global investment banks, noted that in light of reports Situational Awareness used as much as 400% leverage, the collapse wasn't shocking.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Situational Awareness "also used options to amplify its returns. That meant that even small declines in individual names could have big impacts on Situational's portfolio."

And so, as the New York Post put it, "The celebrated crystal ball of the 'Nostradamus of AI' hasn't merely gone cloudy — it has rolled off the table and shattered on the parlor floor."
Wall Street breathed a huge sigh of relief last week as an AI-focused hedge fund called Situational Awareness reportedly sold most of its portfolio — reportedly down 67% last month on the backfiring of debt-fueled bets on chipmakers and assorted artificial-intelligence firms — to billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel...
The prevailing sentiment was best summed up by a veteran Wall Street sage who has seen a lot of flameouts in his day. Let's just say he wasn't impressed by Leopold Aschenbrenner, the 25-year-old German-born "Nostradamus" figure who is the founder of Situational Awareness... "Just your typical leveraged Âidiot who was right until he was wrong," the source said, adding that the implosion is a "one-off..."

[Another trusted source] felt there was room for conversation: "A significant issue. Not viewed as systemic right now. I wonder if that changes as more problems arise." Indeed, the fact is that most of Wall Street is closely monitoring the Situational Awareness situation because they were holding many of the same positions as ÂAschenbrenner. Another top hedge fund manager I won't name tells me he has been getting crushed on similar investments in chipmakers essential to the AI supply chain, as well as other companies feeding off this technology.

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta is perhaps best placed to fill the void but the coaching contenders are legion as another season looms

This used to be a land of giants. This used to be a land where big men fought. This used to be a land where Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger tussled, then José Mourinho joined the fray. This used to be a land where Jürgen Klopp made Pep Guardiola reconsider, and he changed his style and won anyway.

Not any more. Next season will be the first since the inaugural Premier League in 1992 not to feature any of the five big managerial beasts – not Ferguson, not Wenger, not Mourinho, not Klopp and not Guardiola.

Continue reading...

As Pokémon Go celebrates its 10th anniversary, its devoted players explain how the game has created a vibrant intergenerational community spanning the globe

Most Pokémon obsessives count rare, absurdly expensive playing cards or pristine, fully boxed game cartridges that have survived decades in the attic among their most prized possessions. But for Mairead Ralph, her Pokémon-related crown jewel is a bit different. “Technically, it’s my husband!” she says.

The pair first locked eyes amid decks of Pokémon playing cards and Pokéballs at a fan event 16 years ago and the rest is history. Ralph was among hundreds of Pokémon fans who flocked to Shoreditch, east London, on Saturday afternoon for a pop-up celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokémon Go, the massively successful augmented reality smartphone game that has seen millions of players physically venture to all corners of the earth to catch ’em all in person. In that spirit, the surrounding area was full of Pokéheads wandering the streets, their heads in their phones, seeking to catch exclusive Pokémon that had been released.

Continue reading...

• Council wants to trigger emergency general meeting

• Members demand review of Balogun decision

Gianni Infantino is facing a rebellion from members of the Fifa Council who are attempting to force an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) that could develop into a full blown leadership challenge.

The Guardian has learned that moves to call an EGM were already under way before the emergence of Infantino’s abortive plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup, with council members demanding an independent review into the unprecedented decision to lift Folarin Balogun’s suspension during the World Cup, which involved multiple phone calls from Donald Trump.

Continue reading...

Some parents are sticklers for the rules, yet mass civil disobedience by parents in England and Wales suggests many agree with me

Perhaps it’s my stage of parenthood, or the fact that I’ve been lying awake at night, but I think I have an idea that could secure the electoral future of the Labour party. All Andy Burnham needs to do to win a landslide at the next general election is abolish fines for parents who take their children on term-time holidays. More than 2 million – around a fifth – have taken their children out of school because they could not afford to travel during holidays, according to a national survey released this month. A record 459,288 fines were issued to parents last year.

This issue has recently become relevant to me because my son starts school in September, so this year will be the last in which we will be allowed to take term-time trips. Obviously, as I contemplate the preposterous costs for summer holidays, I have developed a new and vested interest in being able to get away with my family. It’s deeper than that, though: I didn’t get many childhood holidays, for financial and circumstantial reasons. As a result I feel very passionately that all small people need leisure time away. Without wanting to turn this into a big sob story, I was so desperate to go on holiday like my friends that I used to collect brochures from high street travel agents and spend hours poring over the different hotels, with kids’ clubs, beaches, swimming pools and waterslides that I could only dream of.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Puy du Fou worked with under-sanctions oligarch on plans for Crimea resort longer than disclosed, and later courted Iran and China

In February 2014, thousands of “little green men” – Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms – flooded into Crimea, seizing control of military bases and infrastructure.

Their arrival marked the opening salvo of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the peninsula, an operation that ultimately escalated into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Continue reading...

The EU is using a currency redesign as an opportunity to be less neutral and try some finely balanced identity-building

Is Europe best represented by the bold intellect of Marie Curie, the sprawling imagination of Miguel de Cervantes and the intense musical genius of Ludwig van Beethoven? Or by a migrating stork and a bee-eater, swooping across borderless plains and enjoying freedom of movement across European countries?

The quest to settle this issue has engaged a surprising number of people across the continent, after more than 6 million people voted in a survey within just a week of its launch to determine whether the newly redesigned euro bank notes should depict either cultural figures or birds and waterways.

Continue reading...

Falling in love with a novel motivated these five travel writers to immerse themselves in locations from the Yukon and Kyrgyzstan to the Côte d’Azur

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express

Continue reading...

Some blame social media and the behaviour of world leaders for a perceived decline in honesty

When a cricket team in North Yorkshire became the centre of a cheating scandal that made headlines around the world, it made many think – is this a very British form of cheating?

Cricket in England is regarded as a genteel sport, so allegations of cheating tend to reverberate. A video of Saturday’s game between Saltburn second XI and Norton second XI has been viewed more than 7m times after viewers spotted a fielder clicking his fingers as the batter swings for the ball. The fielder has been accused of trying to use the clicking noise to trick the umpire into thinking the ball clipped the edge of the bat before being caught.

Continue reading...

Colin_Bates has added a photo to the pool: