Bij een woning aan de Warnaar in Poortugaal is in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag een explosief afgegaan. Daarna is brand ontstaan. Voor de derde keer in een paar weken tijd is het raak in dezelfde straat.
Bij een woning aan de Warnaar in Poortugaal is in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag een explosief afgegaan. Daarna is brand ontstaan. Voor de derde keer in een paar weken tijd is het raak in dezelfde straat.
Vandaag is er een wisselende bewolking, dus er zijn ook zonnige momenten. Vooral vanochtend valt er plaatselijk een stevige bui met kans op hagel en een klap onweer. Vanmiddag eerst in het oosten van de regio nog kans op een bui, verder een droge middag met een middagtemperatuur van 17 graden. De wind waait matig tot vanmiddag vrij krachtig en komt vanmiddag overal uit het westen.
Donderdag begint in de VS, Canada en Mexico het grootste WK voetbal ooit: 48 landen, 104 wedstrijden, één maand lang. En nog nooit draaide een toernooi om zoveel geld. De FIFA verwacht alleen al uit dit WK bijna acht miljard euro op te halen, vooral uit tv-rechten (44 procent), tickets en hospitality (een derde) en sponsoring (20 procent), schrijft de Süddeutsche Zeitung.
De grootste winnaar is de bond zelf. De zestien gaststeden – elf Amerikaanse, drie Mexicaanse en twee Canadese – zien af van belastinginkomsten en accepteren kostbare FIFA-eisen rond fanzones en stadions. Steden als Chicago en Minneapolis haakten daarom af. Ook de zes mondiale topsponsors profiteren: Adidas (contract sinds 1970, verlengd tot 2030), Coca-Cola, Visa, Hyundai, Qatar Airways en het Saoedische Aramco betalen elk naar schatting 100 tot 150 miljoen euro per WK-cyclus. Adidas mikt op één miljard euro WK-omzet en acht miljoen verkochte wedstrijdballen.
Spelers en clubs delen voorzichtig mee. De prijzenpot stijgt van 625 naar bijna 750 miljoen euro; de wereldkampioen krijgt 43 miljoen, een Nederlandse speler zou bij winst circa 400.000 euro op zijn rekening zien. Ruim 500 clubs ontvangen compensatie – Manchester City int volgens de DKB-bank 4,5 miljoen, Bayern München 3,8 miljoen.
De grote verliezer: de fan. Een finaleticket kost tot 11.000 dollar, en de officiële wederverkoopplatformen drijven prijzen verder op. De procureurs-generaal van New York en New Jersey zijn onderzoeken gestart naar wat zij "een doolhof van verwarring, kunstmatige schaarste en woekerprijzen" noemen.
En de economie? FIFA belooft 35 miljard euro extra wereldwijde output, maar economen van Saxo Bank noemen dat fors overdreven – in de VS gaat het om minder dan 0,1 procent van het bbp.
Conservationists say cherished creatures such as whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers by fishing tackle
Thousands of Britain’s most charismatic and protected marine wildlife, including whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals and seabirds are being killed as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to the first-ever analysis of bycatch data.
The analysis, by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of voluntary conservation groups, reveals the devastating toll bycatch, the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, is having on marine species.
Continue reading...Nuclear submarines, gods in women’s bedrooms, a threadbare office carpet inside the World Trade Center … Thuring talks about painting the world on the brink of chaos – and letting you join the dots
‘We are living through a moment of hellish, mindless destruction,” Caragh Thuring tells me, shortly after offering me a cup of tea and a chocolate chip biscuit. We are sitting in the artist’s east London studio, surrounded by paintings, magazine cuttings and cryptic handwritten notes (“AWARENESS, TESTING”). There are metal racks littered with crumpled tubes of paint and bookshelves lined with artists’ monographs. “Making paintings at this moment is, on the one hand, total folly,” she admits. “On the other hand, it is utterly rebellious.”
Before us is a painting, around seven feet high and five wide, in which the shadowy silhouettes of US military airplanes are flanked by densely packed clusters of bombs. The tapering body of one plane transfigures into the effigy of a knight laid out on a table tomb, one hand clasped to the hilt of a sword, jointed greaves poking out from beneath the wing of a B-52. The confusion of medieval and contemporary imagery, religious art and martial technology, eternal peace and endless war, is bewildering.
Continue reading...Exclusive: poll across 15 countries finds ‘deep mistrust’, with majority doubting US would come to their aid in an attack
European confidence in an American “security guarantee” has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked.
The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed “deep European distrust in the US”, the authors said.
Continue reading...In Lithuania, and throughout the Baltic, we have lived for years with Russian hostility – but the tech now means that London, Berlin and Paris are just as vulnerable
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the streets of Vilnius, on my way to give a talk on geopolitics to a group of visiting Austrian business and academic leaders. It was a pleasant spring day: people were out and about, cafe tables were set outside – all the familiar tranquillity of a European capital that has grown used to talking about war in theory, but not to expecting it overhead.
Then an alarm blasted from my phone. Not a polite notification. Lithuania’s emergency alert system is designed to be impossible to ignore. The first message warned of a possible drone threat. The next was sharper: air danger – seek shelter.
Continue reading...Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London
To help her digest the grief of her mother’s death, a woman conjures the celebrity cook in this show written by Emily Rose Simons
A musical about Nigella Lawson makes sense – after all, the creamy-voiced, innuendo-spouting domestic goddess almost feels like a theatrical creation. Then again, inserting her indelible force into a production comes with challenges, especially when she isn’t the only star of the show – as in this fun but flawed two-hander written by Emily Rose Simons.
Anna’s estranged mother has just died and she is ignoring calls from her dad, who left when Anna was a child. As she opens his favourite cookbook, Nigella’s How to Eat, its exuberant author emerges from a spangly kitchen cupboard to help Anna process her grief, reconnect with her father and better care for herself – all by learning to cook.
At Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London, until 28 June
Continue reading...Cities see surge in attacks and extortion demands at clinics in townships, leaving patients and staff vulnerable
The three gunmen showed up just 10 minutes after the security guards had arrived for the early morning shift. Tshiamo Nere* admits he was “frozen” with shock and could only stare as the men aimed their weapons at him and two colleagues at Khayelitsha’s Town Two clinic in Cape Town, as screaming nurses and patients fled.
They had a message, the men told the unarmed guards. “They demanded a protection fee from the security company that employs us to guard the clinic,” Nere says. “The patients, frightened, scattered; and nurses ran for their lives.”
Continue reading...First lady and affected families in audience for highly charged performance of excerpts of Mothers of Kherson
It was hard to imagine an opera with a subject more potentially traumatic – or cathartic – for the assembled audience. The occasion, in the grand and gilded spaces of the National Opera of Ukraine, in Kyiv, was the premiere of excerpts of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers – a continuing, raw story of real-life loss and agony.
The opera was originally intended to be about the Maidan protests of 2013-14. But the American librettist George Brant, the author of the hit play Grounded, switched course in 2023 when the stories of abducted children hit the news.
Continue reading...2-8A Rutland Gate had jewel-encrusted bathroom suites and gold wastepaper bins in its 45 rooms, but has lain empty for years. With many people desperate for secure housing, what does the abandonment of this palace tell us about the UK?
When it last changed hands, in 2020, 2-8A Rutland Gate was Britain’s most expensive house, selling for £210m. The word “house” hardly does it justice; palace is probably more accurate. It is in Knightsbridge, one of the most glamorous parts of London, and has 45 rooms, four lifts, an indoor pool and 116 windows, 68 of which overlook Hyde Park.
But no one is enjoying those views. This palace has been empty for years.
Continue reading...Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps says it has targeted an airbase in Jordan hosting US forces, as well as Kuwait and Bahrain, in response to US strikes
US House speaker Mike Johnson is among the many senior American officials who have been playing down the significance of the strikes.
He called the strikes on Iran “targeted”, “proportional” and “defensive in nature.”
Continue reading...
Het WK boycotten? Slecht plan. Het biedt Trump misschien een podium om zich te profileren, maar geeft zijn tegenstanders net zo goed een kans om hem te bespotten. En voetbal brengt mensen samen – wereldwijd.
Patricia Woods has added a photo to the pool:
Fortitude Valley, or just The Valley, is an inner Brisbane suburb which had a different look today in the rain.