Gimme shelter, Lois Dodd
Tensions grow as Trump tells Fox News he is considering ‘wiping Iran out’ after attacks on Riyadh by Houthi rebels
Governments across the Middle East are bracing for an escalation of violence after Iran claimed it had received intelligence that the US was preparing for a renewed bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic.
In a potential sign of growing tensions before the UN general assembly in New York this week, Donald Trump cut short a weekend visit to the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday with no official explanation, and a new security alert was issued by the state department to all US citizens in the Middle East.
Continue reading...The PM hopes to be firmer with the US leader than his predecessor without provoking diplomatic warfare, as the Iran war weighs on the UK economy
No international relationship has more power to determine the success of Andy Burnham’s premiership. So you might imagine the stakes for the prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday would be high.
Yet Burnham may prove to be a lucky general. The balance of risk has shifted. Trump is unpopular at home, where inflation remains high, and is mired in an intractable conflict in Iran that has the potential to sink his midterm dreams.
Continue reading...Far-right AfD wins in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and leftwing Die Linke on course for victory in Berlin
Germany’s embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has vowed to stay in office and fight for future-proofing economic changes despite heavy losses for his conservatives in two state elections, one to the far right and the other to a leftwing party.
Preliminary results indicated Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tallied just over the 5% threshold to enter the state parliament in the coastal region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, its worst-ever state score, which he called a “disaster”.
Continue reading...World No 294 lets victory slip in agonising fashion
JJ Spaun triumphs by two shots at Wentworth
We will come to JJ Spaun and Jeremy Clarkson later. Only those without an ounce of compassion in their body could feel no sympathy for Manuel Elvira. The Spaniard, without a professional win to his name, stood on the 18th fairway at Wentworth’s West Course with one of golf’s most extraordinary stories in his grasp. Having just eagled the 71st hole and found the short grass on the friendly par five, the 30-year-old who began tournament week as the world’s 294th ranked player knew a birdie would seal the PGA Championship title. A par would force Spaun into a playoff.
What happened next was a form of sporting torture rather than the realisation of a fairytale. Elvira pulled his layup into a bunker, flew the green, fluffed a chip into another sand trap and missed a bogey putt from 4ft. He did exceptionally well not to burst into tears. The disastrous 18th meant Elvira finished in a four-way tie for second place. Even Spaun, a winner on his Wentworth debut, had to be bashful at the manner of success.
Continue reading...Diego Simeone said it had been a special week in Madrid, a “tremendous energy about the city”, and it closed the way he wanted. He had enjoyed the Formula One, he said, and he had enjoyed going to see Shakira. He enjoyed this even more, at least he did by the time the last of many, many blows on the referee’s whistle brought it to an end, sending him sprinting up the tunnel punching the air. Two-nil up against 10 men through goals from Álex Grimaldo and Jonathan David, seemingly in control, a late strike from Antonio Rüdiger awoke old ghosts and brought tension to the final minutes, but they had done it.
“A lot has happened in Madrid this week but this was the only thing that mattered in his mind and mine,” Atlético’s goalkeeper, Jan Oblak, said. José Mourinho’s first derby back ended in defeat and recriminations: he turned up at the press conference with a picture of two moments in which he felt that Atlético players – Lee Kang-in and Cristian Romero – should have been sent off, and insisting that the story of the derby was there. And yet there are other questions: over the way Dean Huijsen gave away the penalty and got the red card that tilted the game against them, and the way Real played. How little they did until that moment when, briefly, they appeared to have a lifeline.
Continue reading...
Aan het Stootblok in Rotterdam-Feijenoord is zondagavond een persoon gewond geraakt bij een steekpartij. Wat er precies is gebeurd is niet bekend. De politie doet onderzoek.
MOSKOU (ANP/RTR/AFP) - Met zo'n 14 procent van de stemmen geteld gaat de regeringspartij Verenigd Rusland van president Vladimir Poetin met 57,5 procent van de stemmen ruim aan de leiding in de Russische parlementsverkiezingen. Dat meldt de Centrale Kiescommissie van het land, die een opkomst van ruim 56 procent meldt.
Eerder voorspelde een exitpoll van het Russische staatsinstituut VCIOM dat Verenigd Rusland op 49,4 procent van de stemmen zal eindigen, ongeveer evenveel als bij de vorige verkiezingen in 2021. De Communistische Partij zou kunnen rekenen op 14,2 procent en de nationalistische LDPR op 10,7 procent. Beide partijen steunen doorgaans het beleid van het Kremlin.
Poetin heeft de verkiezingen bestempeld als een graadmeter voor de steun voor de oorlog in Oekraïne. Critici stellen dat het streng gecontroleerde politieke systeem van het land geen afwijkende meningen duldt.
De verkiezingen begonnen vrijdag en eindigden deze zondag. De Russen konden stemmen voor de Doema, het Russische lagerhuis.
UTRECHT (ANP) - Jongeren in Nederland zijn de afgelopen vier jaar negatiever gaan denken over homoseksualiteit. Dit concluderen het Trimbos-instituut en Universiteit Utrecht in het terugkerende HBSC-onderzoek (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children). Daarin kijken onderzoekers naar het mentale welzijn van jongeren uit het laatste jaar van de basisschool en het voortgezet onderwijs.
Het percentage jongens in het voortgezet onderwijs dat positief staat tegenover homoseksualiteit is in de periode 2021-2025 bijna gehalveerd van 40 naar 22 procent. Onder meisjes in het voortgezet onderwijs daalde dit percentage van 78 naar 51 procent. "Ongeveer vier op de tien jongeren staan positief ten opzichte van homoseksualiteit", schrijven de onderzoekers.
In het onderzoek, dat om de vier jaar wordt uitgevoerd, blijkt ook dat jongeren school minder vaak als een fijne plek zien. Ze rapporteren tussen 2017 en 2025 volgens onderzoekers vaker dat ze gepest worden en zijn in deze jaren negatiever geworden over school en de sfeer tussen klasgenoten. Jongens zijn positiever over de onderlinge sfeer dan meisjes. Zo daalde het percentage meisjes dat positief was over de sfeer van 84 procent naar 71 procent.
Veel meisjes hebben volgens de onderzoekers nog steeds te maken met mentale problemen. Vier jaar geleden luidden de onderzoekers daarover de noodklok. De situatie is er vier jaar later niet beter op geworden, schrijven de onderzoekers. Zo lag het percentage meisjes met emotionele problemen in 2017 op 29 procent en in 2025 op 43 procent. Het percentage meisjes met gedragsproblemen steeg in deze periode van 12 naar 21 procent.
Sergiy Galyonkin has added a photo to the pool:
A visitor beside the shaded temple entrance at Takahata Fudoson in Hino, Tokyo, Japan.
sz-da has added a photo to the pool:
山中湖明神山パノラマ台
Taken about 2 minutes before civil twilight, with the moon setting to the right of Mount Fuji (blocked by the clouds).
"New research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years," Stanford Medicine announced this week:
The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts' beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins. The discovery could help explain why scientists have struggled for decades to grow certain types of brain cells in the laboratory — and it opens new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the brain stem...
[S]cientists have struggled for decades to generate human hindbrain neurons in the laboratory. This gap has hampered research into devastating diseases affecting the brain stem, including spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis... The researchers' breakthrough came from studying the earliest moments of embryonic development... [Study co-authors Carolyn Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai] discovered that the hindbrain follows a separate developmental path, running in parallel to — rather than branching off from — the pathway that creates the forebrain and midbrain... This revelation explained decades of frustration in the field — scientists had been trying to turn one type of progenitor cell into another that it is fundamentally incapable of becoming... Armed with this knowledge, the researchers for the first time successfully coaxed human pluripotent stem cells (a kind of cell that can create any cell in the human body) to become functional hindbrain motor neurons in the laboratory...
Finally, the researchers looked back over 550 million years of evolutionary time. They found the same two-origin brain pattern in chickens; zebrafish; and, remarkably, in acorn worms, tiny creatures living on the ocean floor that share a distant common ancestor with humans. Jellyfish, which diverged from humans about 600 to 700 million years ago, have two nervous systems at different ends of their body. "Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially," Loh said. "Having the brain as one organ would probably be more efficient, but we rely on this primordial way to make the brain as two separate pieces."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Beeftopia for sharing the article.
The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts' beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins. The discovery could help explain why scientists have struggled for decades to grow certain types of brain cells in the laboratory — and it opens new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the brain stem...
[S]cientists have struggled for decades to generate human hindbrain neurons in the laboratory. This gap has hampered research into devastating diseases affecting the brain stem, including spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis... The researchers' breakthrough came from studying the earliest moments of embryonic development... [Study co-authors Carolyn Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai] discovered that the hindbrain follows a separate developmental path, running in parallel to — rather than branching off from — the pathway that creates the forebrain and midbrain... This revelation explained decades of frustration in the field — scientists had been trying to turn one type of progenitor cell into another that it is fundamentally incapable of becoming... Armed with this knowledge, the researchers for the first time successfully coaxed human pluripotent stem cells (a kind of cell that can create any cell in the human body) to become functional hindbrain motor neurons in the laboratory...
Finally, the researchers looked back over 550 million years of evolutionary time. They found the same two-origin brain pattern in chickens; zebrafish; and, remarkably, in acorn worms, tiny creatures living on the ocean floor that share a distant common ancestor with humans. Jellyfish, which diverged from humans about 600 to 700 million years ago, have two nervous systems at different ends of their body. "Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially," Loh said. "Having the brain as one organ would probably be more efficient, but we rely on this primordial way to make the brain as two separate pieces."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Beeftopia for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
