“Russia has never interfered in the domestic affairs of other countries,” top spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

On Tuesday, 14 July 2026, at approximately 08:30 am local time, a LEGO Boeing 747 carrying a LEGO Space Shuttle was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident during a kinetic encounter with a Felis catus. The aircraft and shuttle fell from a desk and impacted the floor. There were no injuries. (flightradar24.com)

Vrouwen lezen vaker een roman, mannen zijn geneigd vooral te kiezen voor non-fictie. Maar wanneer mannen zich vaker zouden verdiepen in boeken vol plot en personages kunnen zij succesvoller zijn op universiteiten en de datingmarkt, betoogt Joshua Vissers.

‘Wanneer maak ik nou eens wat mee! Wanneer wordt het nou eens oorlog!’ De saaiheid van de Vinex-wijk waar ik in de jaren negentig opgroeide, had een raar kind van mij gemaakt.

Er is iets fundamenteel mis is met hoe wij de wereld hebben ingericht. Dat gaan we niet verhelpen met vaderschapsverlof, loontransparantie en discussies over de keuzes die vrouwen maken, stelt Maren Laterveer. Voor de oplossing hoeven we het wiel niet opnieuw uit te vinden.

Hoe oordelen drie familierechters over echtscheidingen, ouderlijk gezag en de omgang met kinderen? NRC mocht bij de rechtbank achttien zaken bijwonen die normaliter plaatsvinden achter gesloten deuren.

Actrice en schrijver Nadja Hüpscher probeert met haar twee zonen (13 en 14) over alles te praten. Alleen gaat dat nooit zoals ze wil.

Een zwangere vrouw die in mei tijdens een politieoptreden in een asielzoekerscentrum in Zeist hard tegen de grond werd getrokken, doet aangifte tegen de betrokken agenten. Volgens haar advocaat gaat het om mishandeling of poging tot zware mishandeling en schending van de geweldsinstructie. De vrouw stelt dat zij na het incident vroegtijdige weeën kreeg en psychisch letsel opliep.

Die aangifte is belangrijk, los van de vraag hoe een rechter uiteindelijk over deze zaak zal oordelen. Ze legt namelijk een fundamenteler probleem bloot: de manier waarop de politie reageert wanneer er serieuze vragen worden gesteld over het eigen geweldsgebruik.

Vrijwel direct na het incident volgde de boodschap dat het geweld “noodzakelijk” was. Later bleek dat een interne geweldscommissie tot dezelfde conclusie was gekomen. Op de vraag of het geweld ook proportioneel en volgens de regels was toegepast, gaf de politie geen inhoudelijk antwoord. Dat zou onderdeel zijn van een interne procedure die niet openbaar wordt gemaakt.

En dat is gek. De politie beschikt als enige organisatie over het wettelijke geweldsmonopolie. Dat is een uitzonderlijke positie, gebaseerd op vertrouwen. Burgers accepteren dat agenten geweld mogen gebruiken omdat zij ervan uit mogen gaan dat elk gebruik van geweld onafhankelijk, kritisch en transparant wordt beoordeeld.

Dat vraagt om een andere reflex dan de reflex die veel organisaties kennen: eerst de rijen sluiten, daarna pas kijken wat er precies is gebeurd. En dat laatste is wat de politie te vaak lijkt te doen.

Natuurlijk verdienen agenten bescherming tegen voorbarige veroordelingen. Politiewerk vindt plaats onder hoge druk, met onvolledige informatie en soms in gevaarlijke situaties. Niemand heeft er baat bij dat iedere agent na elk incident onmiddellijk publiekelijk wordt afgeschreven.

En daarom is transparantie zo belangrijk. Wie zorgvuldig onderzoek doet, hoeft een kritische beoordeling niet te vrezen. Wanneer de uitkomst luidt dat het optreden correct was, versterkt openheid juist het vertrouwen. Wanneer fouten zijn gemaakt, versterkt erkenning dat vertrouwen eveneens. De enige uitkomst die vrijwel altijd wantrouwen oproept, is: “vertrouw ons, we hebben onszelf onderzocht.”

Dat geldt des te sterker wanneer er videobeelden bestaan waarop het optreden voor veel mensen buitenproportioneel oogt. Dan is een summiere mededeling dat alles intern is beoordeeld simpelweg onvoldoende. Het publiek hoeft geen operationele details of persoonsgegevens te kennen, wel de afwegingen die hebben geleid tot de conclusie dat het geweld gerechtvaardigd was.

Een geweldsmonopolie is geen privilege dat alleen bevoegdheden geeft. Het legt ook een zwaardere verantwoordingsplicht op dan voor iedere andere organisatie geldt. Juist omdat de politie namens ons allemaal geweld mag gebruiken, hoort zij een hogere standaard van openheid na te streven.

Loyaliteit aan collega’s is een begrijpelijke menselijke reflex. Voor een organisatie met het geweldsmonopolie mag die reflex nooit belangrijker worden dan de zichtbare bereidheid om eigen handelen kritisch te onderzoeken en daar publiekelijk verantwoording over af te leggen.

Come into the garden for a sparkling summer spritz with flavours of elderflower, apples, eau-de-vie and a splash of absinthe

A bright, floral summer spritz, inspired by the gardens of France and simplified for home purposes.

Leon Gasco, bar manager, Bar Antoine, London W1

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She is shaking up showbiz and redefining the way disability is portrayed on screen. Ahead of her end-times thriller The Rapture, the star talks about being a Doctor Who badass and why her husband finds her job hysterical

The day I met Ruth Madeley in a hotel in central London was the peak of the last heatwave, the buttons on traffic lights almost too hot to touch. Eerily, this is a major theme of The Rapture, the BBC’s new adaptation of Liz Jensen’s 2009 bestseller. It’s set in a children’s secure psychiatric unit, and the 38-year-old actor plays Gabs, a clinical psychologist recently paralysed in a car accident that killed her husband. She becomes transfixed by the inmate Bethany – a surly, biting performance from India Amarteifio – who has been convicted of killing her own mother. Gabs is hard-boiled, as far from gullible as you could imagine, and Bethany’s “visions”, which pour out of her in frenetic drawings of faces, disasters, landscapes, don’t fall on fertile ground. Yet Gabs cannot help but notice when they start to come true.

In the background, the heat is stultifying and climate crisis activists are begging the world to take notice. “Yes, it’s feeling very timely,” she says wryly. This is on-brand; her first major role was in Russell T Davies’s Years and Years, the apocalyptic smash hit that ends with a monkey flu pandemic (sorry, spoiler), “and then a year later we were in lockdown. I told Russell: ‘You’re not allowed to write anything else, my nerves can’t take it.’”

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Meta touts safety features – but for women, the dangers of these recording devices are obvious

Imagine if every time you left the house, you couldn’t be sure that the stranger you met at a bar – or even the person walking by you in the street – wasn’t secretly recording you. It sounds like something out of a Black Mirror episode, but let’s face it, the era of wearable technology is fully upon us as everyday accessories have been developed to help track health and fitness data, receive smartphone notifications, and provide hands-free accessibility.

So when Meta announced their AI glasses a few years ago, it wasn’t too surprising that one of the biggest (and most embattled) tech companies on earth had begun cashing in on our obsession with watching others. And their AI glasses have already raised serious concerns over privacy, personal safety and even our sense of agency.

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Malmö Dockteater is adapting Jackie Collins’s debut novel about the swinging 60s using anatomically enhanced dolls. Puppets help you explore sex in a different way, they say

Erik Holmström holds up a naked, headless Ken doll. Most of the figure is as you’d expect: lean muscles, smooth skin. But lower down, something’s different. Between those hairless thighs is a small plastic penis nestled in a tuft of hair. “It’s real hair,” says Holmström, the director of Malmö Dockteater (that’s “puppet theatre” in Swedish). Performer and puppeteer Kajsa Ericsson jumps in. “Not real pubic hair,” she clarifies.

This doll is not just a prop of the company’s new show; it’s one of the stars. Malmö Dockteater has adapted Jackie Collins’s debut novel, The World Is Full of Married Men, into an experimental puppet production that leaps fearlessly into the explicit sex scenes that got the novel banned in several countries when it was first published in 1968. After performances in Malmö and Stockholm, the company is bringing the show to the newly refurbished Yard theatre in east London, where it will be performed in Swedish with English subtitles.

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Pete Hegseth wants to win the war on Iran with a secret weapon: testosterone. Meanwhile, JD Vance is worried about how to eat an ice-cream

Are the men of the Trump administration OK? Feels like it’s been a tricky week for some of them. On the one hand, you’ll note the US is already rebooting its Iran war. Clearly, many will feel this latest version of the conflict is coming too soon after the last one, with fans simply not given enough time to miss the IP. A lot like the live-action Moana currently falling off the screen in cinemas. On the other hand, defence secretary Pete Hegseth seems to have moved the defence department beyond even its latter-day renaming as the department of war, posting a video entitled “The High-T Department of War” in which he announced mandatory testosterone screening for US troops aged 30 and over. We’ll get to JD Vance being unintentionally aroused by footage of Joe Biden eating ice-cream in a minute. Or as soon as I can face it.

Even the lower-ranking White House operatives seem to be spinning out. You may remember the UK’s political betting scandal, where various police officers, campaign officials and aides to former prime minister Rishi Sunak were arrested or investigated for putting bets on the last general election date. Everything’s bigger in the US, of course, so in some ways it’s not a surprise to learn that the guy who operates Trump’s teleprompter has allegedly made $100,000 on Kalshi by placing bets on words or topics appearing in Trump’s speeches. He is currently on unpaid administrative leave, according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who yesterday added solemnly, “there are very strict ethical guidelines here at the White House”. A statement so hilarious that I refuse to believe Leavitt herself didn’t say it for a bet. Probably with Hegseth. “Dude, I know I can get it in. I back myself. And if I do say it, you owe me $1,000 and an off-the-books testosterone shot.”

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Je hebt nieuwe apen, je hebt oude apen. En dit is een NIEUWE! De Colobus congoensis, om specifiek te zijn. Al mogen wij als ingewijden 'Likweli' zeggen. Oranje lippen en een heerlijke aapsoonlijkheid, wat kun je nog meer wensen van de slechts vijfde nieuwe aapsoort die de afgelopen 75 jaar in Afrika ontdekt werd. En dan rijst toch de vraag: welke apen heeft de wereld nog meer voor ons in petto? Heerlijke screenshots onderstaand.

dit HEERLIJKE dier

Fortinet admins have two more reasons to clear their calendars after CISA confirmed a pair of critical FortiSandbox bugs are being actively exploited. The two bugs, tracked as CVE-2026-39808 and CVE-2026-25089, both carry CVSS scores of 9.1 and affect FortiSandbox, FortiSandbox Cloud, and FortiSandbox PaaS. According to Fortinet, they are OS command injection flaws that allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands via specially crafted HTTP requests, requiring neither valid credentials nor user interaction. Fortinet released fixes for CVE-2026-39808 in April and CVE-2026-25089 in June, warning in advisories published at the time that successful exploitation could lead to remote code execution via low-complexity attacks. Fortinet has not publicly confirmed that either flaw is being exploited in the wild, but CISA has now added both bugs to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Inclusion in the catalog means CISA has evidence that the vulnerabilities are being actively exploited, although the agency rarely attributes attacks or discloses how widespread they are. For federal civilian agencies, bugs landing in KEV come with homework. Binding Operational Directive 26-04 requires them to patch within CISA's deadlines or pull the plug on vulnerable products if they can't be adequately secured. Fortinet has not updated its advisories to mark either flaw as exploited and did not respond to The Register's questions. CISA isn't the only one reporting attackers poking at these vulnerabilities. Security firm Defused said it had observed exploitation attempts against both flaws this week alongside another FortiSandbox vulnerability, CVE-2026-39813. Not every exploit appears to be doing its job, though, as Defused described the one targeting CVE-2026-25089 as "vibecoded" and likely broken, adding that it has yet to see a working public exploit. CISA also used Thursday's KEV update to flag another fresh concern: Microsoft's newly patched SharePoint Server bug, CVE-2026-58644. The critical deserialization vulnerability, rated 9.8, allows authenticated attackers with Site Owner privileges to execute arbitrary code remotely against vulnerable SharePoint servers. Microsoft warned that the bug can be exploited remotely over the internet with relatively little effort, making it one to patch sooner rather than later. ®

Jaime_Lebre has added a photo to the pool:

A 34 years old photo, taken in Kamakura, Japan, in May 1992, the year I started with medium format photography. A Hasselblad 503 CX with the Planar CF 2.8/80 were then my companions.

I remember that, in order to get used to this camera, I sold all my 135 film format gear. So, medium format or nothing.

The system grew to a very elaborate one, which I sold sometime in 2020 because of weight. After going round many smaller cameras I ended up coming back to medium format film with the Fuji GW and GSW 6x9 cameras, and the Contax 645 system. Ironically, the heaviest Contax set up is heavier that the heaviest Hasselblad set up I had.

It's all so silly....

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Hasselblad 503 CX, Planar CF 2.8/80, Fujifilm Provia 100, EI 100 ISO, Epson V600, EpsonScan, Affinity Photo

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Your kind support is much appreciated

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide, December 1973