Een vastgoedinvesteerder zette de hoogbejaarde Spaanse vrouw uit het appartement waar ze haar hele volwassen leven had gewoond. De uitzetting ontketende een golf van protesten en vervroegde verkiezingen.
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In the shadow of the Parthenon, the secretary of state gave a selective reading of history as he urged Europe to ‘awaken from its slumber’
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, delivered a classically inspired apologia for Donald Trump’s “America first” foreign policy on Wednesday, giving a sweeping speech to the backdrop of the Parthenon in Athens that appeared tailor-made for campaign ads if he runs for president in 2028.
In the speech, the top US diplomat drew historical parallels from the founders, philosophers and conquerers of antiquity to the modern American spirit – as well as his family’s own journey to the United States – as he called on Europe to “awaken from its long slumber” and reject a “future of atrophy and servitude and decline”.
Continue reading...Ethan Scott Brown died after being wrongly told he would not be eligible to graduate from the University of Glasgow
The family of a student who took his own life after being wrongly told he would not be eligible to graduate have said the University of Glasgow “will be held to account”.
Ethan Scott Brown, 23, was due to graduate in December 2024 after studying geography.
Continue reading...People tell of lives changed beyond recognition after the 7 October attacks by Hamas three years ago and the subsequent Israeli offensive
Ahmed Ishtaiwi has six chairs. They are cheap and plastic and battered, but they are among the 43-year-old driver and mechanic’s most valuable possessions.
Continue reading...Optogenetic therapy, based on Nobel prize-winning science, involves turning nerve cells on and off using light
A type of gene therapy based on Nobel prize-winning science is safe and can partly restore sight in blind people, researchers have revealed.
The approach, known as optogenetic therapy, harnesses the technique for turning nerve cells on and off using light that scooped the 2026 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.
Continue reading...Overhaul of special education in England could unravel, thinktank finds, because of ‘use it before you lose it’ dynamic
Labour’s flagship changes to special education in England are at risk of unravelling because parents are rushing to secure support for their children before the system changes, new analysis has found.
The Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank says the government’s plans to largely replace education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in England with more widespread support in mainstream schools may be too optimistic and take longer to complete than its 2030 timeline.
Continue reading...Maricarmen’s eviction from Madrid apartment after over seven decades set off wave of protests against housing crisis
‘Now is the moment’: housing activists at Madrid encampment pin wary hopes on Spain’s early election
María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old whose eviction set off a nationwide wave of protests against Spain’s housing crisis, has died.
News of her death came two weeks after Maricarmen, as she had come to be known across Spain, was evicted from the Madrid apartment where she had lived for more than seven decades.
Continue reading...
If you thought Windows Recall was creepy, buckle up. Microsoft is about to shoehorn even more AI into its desktop operating system, giving Copilot access to every file on your PC. But don't worry, Redmond insists it's totally secure and safe since the agents powering the functionality will run entirely on your PC — some of the time. Microsoft describes the new functionality, announced alongside a new Nvidia N1X powered Surface Laptop, as "hybrid intelligence." Built atop Microsoft's HydraFusion model router, Windows apps and Copilot features will soon be able to use local models when it makes sense and cloud-based models when it doesn't. For example, Windows might use a local model for simple or privacy-sensitive tasks, or decide complex or performance-sensitive requests need OpenAI's GPT-6 or Anthropic's Claude. Local agents will run in Microsoft's Execution Containers (MXCs), agent sandboxes with fine-grained permissions applied at runtime. According to Microsoft EVP of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri, MXCs mean Windows is now "the most secure platform for agents." (That claim will surely age well because models never escape their sandboxes and routers never misbehave.) To support this hybrid intelligence functionality, Microsoft is extending support for Windows ML, its inference framework built on the ONNX runtime, to Llama.cpp – one of the highest-performing inference engines for local AI inference. By adding support for Windows ML, Llama.cpp should be able to take advantage of a broader range of accelerators. Microsoft is rolling out its hybrid intelligence functionality to GitHub Copilot — its AI code assistant — next week and its Copilot app over the next few months. The new Copilot features look and sound suspiciously like OpenClaw in a business suit. Copilot's agentic functionality will not have access to your entire file system, opening the door to advanced search functionality and productivity tasks through integrations with Microsoft Office. In a demo, Microsoft showed how Copilot could be used to find and organize a user's tax documents, then draft an email with those files attached, addressed to an accountant. Microsoft insists it'll only go snooping through your docs if you ask it to. Windows is also getting AI-enhanced search functionality enabling users to surface settings like dark mode. The OS will also get a conversational interface to perform tasks like sending a text message to a friend. Finally, for those interested in coloring outside Microsoft's agentic lines, the company is rolling out a new onboarding experience to make deploying agent harnesses like OpenClaw a bit easier and more secure. Keeping sensitive tasks on device may help to assuage anxieties over privacy, which have dogged Microsoft since the first Copilot+ PCs arrived in 2024 alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoCs. It should also help to reduce the load on Microsoft's servers by keeping low-priority, low-complexity requests on devices. That said, the impact of running these models locally on battery life, fan noise, and workload quality could prove a turnoff for many users. ®
At a press event today, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Laptop Ultra featuring an NVIDIA RTX Spark platform with a Blackwell-based GPU capable of up to one petaflop of AI compute. The laptop supports up to 128GB of unified memory for running models as large as 120 billion parameters locally, while also adding a 15-inch mini-LED display, expanded ports, upgraded cooling, and support for hundreds of AAA games. It's available for pre-order today starting at $2,599. Neowin reports: To keep the device's temperature under control, Microsoft has also developed a new cooling system that offers up to 2.5 times the thermal capacity of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7th Edition. The Surface Laptop Ultra comes with a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra mini-LED touchscreen with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a pixel density of 262 PPI, and peak HDR brightness of up to 2,000 nits.
Despite its beefy specs, the Surface Laptop Ultra measures less than 18mm thick and weighs under 4.5 pounds (around 2kg). The laptop will be available in Platinum and Nightfall finishes. Microsoft has also increased the size of the precision haptic touchpad by more than 30% compared to the Surface Laptop 7th Edition for improved haptic input. The Surface Laptop Ultra includes a broader selection of ports, featuring USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. It also features the world's first built-in USB-C magnetic charging.
Despite its beefy specs, the Surface Laptop Ultra measures less than 18mm thick and weighs under 4.5 pounds (around 2kg). The laptop will be available in Platinum and Nightfall finishes. Microsoft has also increased the size of the precision haptic touchpad by more than 30% compared to the Surface Laptop 7th Edition for improved haptic input. The Surface Laptop Ultra includes a broader selection of ports, featuring USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. It also features the world's first built-in USB-C magnetic charging.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The skeptics, David De Beyter
AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De burgemeester van Amsterdam en de Amsterdamse politiechef hebben "met grote afschuw" gezien hoe demonstranten voor het monument op de Dam Hamas steunden. Dat meldt de woordvoerder van de burgemeester, Femke Halsema, woensdagavond. Op een pro-Palestijnse betoging hield een aantal demonstranten een groene vlag omhoog met daarop "we support Hamas".
Halsema en de politiechef melden dat ingrijpen niet mogelijk is, omdat de daad niet strafbaar is. Zij spreken van "verschrikkelijke uitingen" die "shockerend en onsmakelijk" zijn en spreken daarmee hun afkeer uit voor de manier waarop "de demonstranten de demonstratievrijheid gebruikten". "Het doet ons verdriet dat de Dam op deze dag hiervoor gebruikt is."
Na de betoging op de Dam liepen demonstranten gezamenlijk het Rokin op, waarna ze door de politie richting de Stopera werden begeleid. Daar ontbond Halsema de demonstratie. De mobiele eenheid was aanwezig om de demonstranten te verdrijven, maar hoefde uiteindelijk niet in te grijpen.
WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR/BLOOMBERG) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump gaat donderdag de National Medal of Science uitreiken aan SpaceX-topman Elon Musk. Dat meldt het Witte Huis. De medaille is de hoogste onderscheiding voor wetenschappers en ingenieurs in het land.
Ook Google-oprichter Sergey Brin, Nvidia-topman Jensen Huang en AMD-topvrouw Lisa Su ontvangen de onderscheiding.
De top zal Trump herenigen met veel vooraanstaande leiders uit de techindustrie, nog maar een week nadat hij hen in het Witte Huis ontving om te praten over de zorgen rond de ontwikkeling van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI). Aanleiding was een reeks opvallende beveiligingslekken, die de roep om strengere regels rondom AI aanwakkerden.
Nog voordat die bijeenkomst begon, had Trump de noodzaak van strengere veiligheidsmaatregelen echter grotendeels van de hand gewezen. De bestuurders kwamen in plaats daarvan een vrijwillig kader overeen, waarin zij afspraken om samen te werken met externe auditors die de veiligheid van geavanceerde modellen beoordelen.
NEW YORK (ANP) - Tegen de gevangengenomen Venezolaanse president Nicolás Maduro en zijn vrouw komen nieuwe aanklachten, meldt de Amerikaanse nieuwssite CNN. Het zou gaan om onder meer de vermeende marteling van Amerikanen die vastzaten in Venezuela toen Maduro daar aan de macht was.
Volgens de Amerikaanse regering werden meer dan tien Amerikanen onwettig vastgehouden door het toenmalige Venezolaanse regime, zeggen bronnen rond het onderzoek tegen CNN. Twee van hen zouden daarbij ook gemarteld zijn.
Maduro en zijn vrouw werden in januari opgepakt tijdens een Amerikaanse bliksemoperatie in Venezuela. Ze zijn overgebracht naar New York en worden daar vervolgd voor drugshandel, omdat hij banden zou hebben met drugsbendes. Maduro ontkent dat. Ook hebben nabestaanden van een aantal Venezolanen een zaak tegen hem aangespannen omdat hij als president verantwoordelijk zou zijn voor honderden politiemoorden.
Our expert betting writers have picked a four-leg Bet Builder for the Marina Bay night race, including a podium finish and top-six finish selections.
Where in the world are typefaces being designed? The US, Germany, and France…but also the UK, Netherlands, and Indonesia.
