Russian state agencies and oil companies are now finalizing supply contracts with U.S. counterparts, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said.
The blaze at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery’s terminal has spread to eight of its 12 storage tanks, the independent news outlet Astra reported.
Het Nederlandse elftal heeft zich met gemak geplaatst voor de volgende ronde van de play-offs voor het WK in Brazilië. Het vertoonde spel is veelbelovend, maar de vraag is of het genoeg is tegen een sterkere tegenstander.
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De muziekprojecten De Niemanders en Orchestre Partout houden regelmatig jamsessies met asielzoekers in azc’s. Er ontstaat nieuw materiaal, mengelmoesmuziek waarin de hele wereld doorklinkt. „Zonder muziek wil ik niet leven.”
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Jean-Noël Barrot criticises X owner in speech attacking foreign efforts to destabilise France before 2027 election
France’s foreign minister has accused Elon Musk of using his social media platform to orchestrate “massive online harassment campaigns” against European leaders as he took aim at foreign efforts to destabilise the country before next year’s presidential election.
Speaking at an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development conference on Tuesday, Jean-Noël Barrot pointed to the role that social media had come to play in the global battle over democracy. “The forces seeking to undermine democracy now dominate the information landscape, where they employ tactics designed to polarise public debate,” he said.
Continue reading...Think boucle jackets with low-waisted jeans, silk blouses with masculine trousers, pencil skirts with wellies …
It always makes me feel a tiny bit queasy when looking “ladylike”, as a trend or a vibe or whatever, comes into fashion. How does it make sense to spend our hard-earned paychecks cosplaying as women of lunches and leisure?
You can’t deny these clothes are cute, though. A boucle jacket can make you feel as if the Eiffel Tower might come into view around the next corner, even though you are in the wrong country. A mini-heel lets you imagine you might be having a glass of sancerre with your lunch, when in reality a can of San Pellegrino is as exciting as it is going to get. There is an air of gentle charm, of courtesy, to lady-adjacent style that can take the edge off a tough day.
Continue reading...The kingdom of Hyrule has been prettified, the soundtrack is newly orchestrated and our hero feels strikingly different under the thumbs … we play a hands-on demo of Nintendo’s Switch 2 remake of a 1998 game-changer
When beloved art is revisited and revised, a familiar cry is often heard: “You’re ruining my childhood!” But with Nintendo’s Switch 2 remake of Ocarina of Time, there are also livelihoods at risk: specifically, the man running the shooting gallery in Castle Town. In the original 1998 version of the game, he’d rip off players as they funnelled rupees and fudged the then still novel analogue-stick aiming. But in 2026 we have more responsive frame rates and a motion-controlled slingshot that allows precision adjustments. His targets tumble on the first go, and with them his entire business model. Even in Hyrule, the death of the high street seems inevitable.
Bad news for him but great news for Link, a child of the forest who, as in 1998, steps into a vast fantasy kingdom to vanquish a great evil, but now does so with a number of improvements. The boy can now sprint, preventing the ignominy of endless roly-polies to zip across grassy plains. He has a manual jump, free-rotating camera, a scrolling inventory bar that replaces menu screen faff and, crucially, a fatter wallet for holding all those gems he fleeces from struggling shooting gallery owners. Yes, we are being asked to applaud features that have been the norm for decades elsewhere, but it’s undeniably striking to enter familiar territory with a hero who feels this different under the thumbs.
Continue reading...Organisations such as 180 Project and Prison Run are helping to prepare prisoners for release with a fresh view on life on the outside
On the day 700 prisoners in England and Wales were released early, I was driving to Wolverhampton for an event organised by the not-for-profit group ConnectSport. It was to celebrate local sports clubs and initiatives that “help young people believe in themselves and realise what they’re capable of” as described by Ranjit Singh, a local legend in the world of wrestling, martial arts and Kabaddi.
I listened to several news cycles that detailed the risks of early release pitched against the intractable challenge of insufficient prison capacity. It was presented as a hopeless logjam with no solutions. Tagging was the only option mentioned as a way of reducing reoffending rates.
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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
In één nacht zijn vier bedrijfswagens van familiebedrijf Erik Fruit in Rotterdam-West in vlammen opgegaan. Op camerabeelden is te zien dat iemand het vuur heeft aangestoken. "Het is heel erg moeilijk om te zien, omdat we heel hard ervoor werken", reageert medewerkster Neva bedroefd.
BRUSSEL (ANP) - De Europese Unie voert gesprekken met China om vrijstelling te krijgen van sancties die het voortbestaan van het Duitse bedrijf Sindlhauser Materials bedreigen. Dat zeggen ingewijden die bekend zijn met de onderhandelingen tegen persbureau Bloomberg. Het bedrijf is een belangrijke toeleverancier van de Nederlandse chipmachinefabrikant ASML.
In ruil daarvoor zou de EU de handelsbeperkingen willen opheffen die zij heeft opgelegd aan een niet nader genoemd Chinees bedrijf dat ervan wordt beschuldigd Rusland te helpen bij de oorlog tegen Oekraïne.
China legde in juli sancties op aan Sindlhauser, een klein Duits bedrijf dat gespecialiseerd is in precisieproductie en geavanceerde coatings voor de halfgeleiderindustrie en andere sectoren. Ook dertien andere Europese bedrijven werden hierdoor geraakt. De Chinese maatregelen waren een reactie op een nieuw sanctiepakket van de EU tegen Rusland.
Afhankelijkheid
Sindlhauser is afhankelijk van Chinese leveringen van zeldzame aardmetalen en andere kritieke mineralen. Als de Chinese sancties van kracht blijven, dreigt het bedrijf de komende maanden failliet te gaan, aldus de ingewijden.
Dat China juist een minder bekend bedrijf als Sindlhauser aanpakt, laat zien hoe ver Beijing gaat om te ontdekken waar de Europese economie kwetsbaar is. De Europese Commissie, Sindlhauser en het Chinese ministerie van Handel hebben niet direct gereageerd op verzoeken om commentaar van Bloomberg.
ROERMOND (ANP) - De rechtbank in Roermond heeft woensdag Janus K. veroordeeld tot vijf jaar cel, omdat hij in maart in Maastricht een 4-jarig jongetje doodreed. De moeder van het kind raakte daarbij zwaargewond. Het rijbewijs van de 30-jarige K. wordt voor vijf jaar ingenomen.
De man reed op 27 maart rond 19.10 uur met alcohol op, door de Dorpstraat in de wijk Heer met een snelheid van 112 kilometer per uur, waar 50 is toegestaan. K. raakte de vrouw met de buggy tijdens het oversteken. Het jongetje werd uit de wagen geslingerd en belandde tientallen meters verderop op het wegdek. Hij overleed enkele uren na het ongeluk. De vrouw had botbreuken en lag een week in coma.
Bij de verdachte werd een alcoholpercentage van 1,8 promille gemeten, terwijl 0,5 het wettelijk maximum is. Volgens de verdachte had hij die avond zeven glazen bier op.
De opgelegde straf is gelijk aan de eis van het Openbaar Ministerie.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - In Noorwegen zijn vijf mensen opgepakt in het onderzoek naar grootschalige fraude met diensten voor NAVO-schepen, meldt EU-justitiedienst Eurojust. Het bedrijf dat die diensten had moeten leveren, zou meer dan 1 miljoen euro hebben verdiend door valse facturen te versturen.
Behalve in Noorwegen werden gelijktijdig ook in Duitsland en Roemenië woningen en bedrijven doorzocht. Ook het centrale inkoopbureau van de NAVO (NSPA) was betrokken bij het onderzoek.
De facturen gingen over diensten die in havens in Noordwest-Europa geleverd werden aan militaire schepen van de NAVO en hun bemanning. Het is niet bekend om welk bedrijf het gaat en voor welke diensten er precies betaald is.
Boven op de facturenfraude wordt het bedrijf ook verdacht van omkoping. Ambtenaren zouden via een tussenpersoon zijn omgekocht om te helpen de contracten van de NSPA binnen te halen.
Some of America's biggest tech companies have a warning for Europe: curb your reliance on US cloud providers, and it could cost you €115 billion. That's the finding of a new study commissioned by CCIA Europe, a lobbying group whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta, companies that have plenty of reasons to want European governments to keep buying American cloud services. The research, conducted by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), claims the European Commission's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) could saddle Europe with €115 billion in costs over the next decade, more than six times the Commission's upper estimate of €18 billion. The report argues that restrictions favoring European cloud providers would leave governments and businesses facing hefty bills to migrate workloads and rewrite software. It puts direct public-sector costs at €33.3 billion, with a further €80 billion potentially falling on private companies in sectors including banking, healthcare, energy, and transport. However, a rather large asterisk is attached to that €80 billion figure. It assumes the Commission extends sovereignty requirements beyond public procurement to cover 25 percent of cloud workloads in essential private-sector industries. In other words, it's a modeled scenario, not a bill Brussels has already handed European businesses. The study also comes with some baggage of its own. CCIA represents several US technology giants that dominate the European cloud market, including Amazon and Google. Both have spent years selling European customers cloud services while more recently developing sovereign cloud offerings designed to address concerns about foreign ownership, data access, and regulatory control. Amazon, for example, has been developing its AWS European Sovereign Cloud, while Google markets a range of sovereign cloud solutions. Apparently, sovereignty is an attractive proposition when it comes with a hyperscaler logo attached. Meta, another CCIA member, has its own interests in European AI infrastructure, although it is not a commercial cloud provider on the scale of AWS or Google Cloud. The report specifically targets Article 31 of the proposed legislation, which it says could allow the Commission to extend sovereignty requirements into essential private-sector services. CCIA argues that forcing businesses to move away from existing cloud infrastructure could trigger expensive software redevelopment projects, with code rewriting and re-architecting accounting for 69 percent of its estimated costs. Luxembourg would apparently take the biggest hit, with the study putting the cost at €1,711 per worker over ten years. Denmark (€905), Austria (€900), and Finland (€864) also face hefty bills, as does Ireland (€856), which hosts the European headquarters of several US tech giants. CCIA is urging EU governments to overhaul the proposed legislation, limit sovereignty restrictions to sensitive workloads, and abandon requirements based on corporate origin or personnel nationality in favor of what it calls risk-based technical safeguards. "Member States cannot rely on the Commission's incomplete estimates when deciding CADA's strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers," said Mitchell Rutledge, CCIA Europe's policy manager. "Taxpayers and businesses will foot the bill, yet the official assessment missed 70 percent of CADA's true impact." For AWS and Google, offering European customers greater control over their data also helps retain business that might otherwise migrate to European competitors. It's a rather convenient arrangement: sell customers sovereignty on one hand, while an industry association representing your interests warns governments against imposing too much of it on the other. Neither company responded to The Register's questions. Whether Europe's sovereignty ambitions will prove as expensive as CCIA predicts is unclear. What's easier to establish is that the companies warning Brussels about the cost of reducing its dependence on US technology have plenty to gain if Europe decides to keep buying American. ®
