Stills from unmade films, Brent Lukey
Stills from unmade films, Brent Lukey
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.
LANDGRAAF (ANP) - De gemeente Landgraaf gaat maximaal driehonderd asielzoekers tijdelijk opvangen op het evenemententerrein Megaland, waar jaarlijks het festival Pinkpop plaatsvindt. Volgens de Limburgse gemeente kwam het verzoek om het terrein te gebruiken voor tijdelijke noodopvang van de minister van Asiel en Migratie. "Daarmee voldoen we aan de wettelijke verplichting vanuit de Spreidingswet."
Landgraaf ving op het festivalterrein al eerder asielzoekers op. De gemeente zegt dat de opvang in 2023 veilig verliep en de ervaringen positief waren. "Mede daarom heeft de gemeente vertrouwen dat ook deze opvangperiode op een veilige en verantwoorde manier zal plaatsvinden." Daarom vroeg de minister specifiek om deze locatie.
Festivals en andere activiteiten kunnen in de zomermaanden gewoon doorgaan. Asielzoekers worden op het terrein opgevangen van komende november tot mei, en daarna weer van september tot mei 2028.
NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn woensdag lager geëindigd, na recordstanden een dag eerder. Nervositeit over de nog altijd hoge energieprijzen kreeg de overhand. De vrees is dat dure brandstoffen de inflatie stuwen, wat ook tot hogere rentes leidt. Beleggers keken daarom ook met veel interesse naar de publicatie van de notulen van de recentste rentevergadering van de Federal Reserve.
De Dow-Jonesindex ging 0,7 procent lager de handel uit op een stand van 51.179,87 punten. De S&P 500 verloor 0,2 procent tot 7801,77 punten en de door techbedrijven gedomineerde Nasdaq verloor ook 0,2 procent tot 27.538,69 punten.
Uit het verslag van de rentevergadering van de Fed in september werd duidelijk dat alle beleidsmakers bij de Amerikaanse centrale bank de eerste renteverhoging sinds 2023 steunden. Een aantal Fed-bestuurders vond ook dat verdere renteverhogingen noodzakelijk waren, omdat ze zorgen hadden over de blijvend hoge inflatie.
RIYAD (ANP/AFP) - De Saudische autoriteiten zeggen dat er drie mensen zijn omgekomen bij luchtaanvallen op internationale vliegvelden. Onder meer de luchthaven van de hoofdstad Riyad is geraakt. De Jemenitische Houthi's hebben de aanvallen opgeëist.
Op het vliegveld van Abha, in het zuidwesten van Saudi-Arabië, werden een Egyptenaar en een Algerijn gedood. In Riyad ging het om een Soedanese burger. In totaal raakten 36 mensen gewond bij aanvallen.
De door Saudi-Arabië geleide militaire coalitie die de regering in Jemen steunt, zegt het lanceerplatform te hebben vernietigd dat de Houthi's zouden hebben gebruikt om raketten af te vuren op Riyad.
De gevechten in Jemen zijn sinds juli weer opgelaaid, na een aanval op een vliegveld van de Houthi's. Die groepering gaf Saudi-Arabië daarvan de schuld, maar dat land ontkende. Daarna namen de Houthi's veel gebied in rond de Rode Zee. Vorige week kondigde het regeringsleger een tegenoffensief aan en claimde het succes.
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...‘Transparent information sharing’ from Moscow is required to conduct full risk assessment, UN agency says
The World Health Organization has said it does not have the “full picture” from Russia following the suspected death from plague last week of a 28-year-old laboratory worker in Siberia.
Darya Shipilova died two days after falling ill with cold-like symptoms. She was an employee at the anti-plague research institute in the eastern city of Irkutsk, with some reports suggesting she was infected after a workplace accident.
Continue reading...President floats firing Chris LaCivita and James Blair over any ‘conflict’ after reports of work in Republika Srpska
Donald Trump distanced himself from two top advisers on Wednesday, claiming he did not have “any idea who else they work for”, after it was reported they spent the weekend assisting a pro-Russia government in the Balkans.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of his 2024 presidential campaign, and James Blair, a campaign adviser and White House deputy chief of staff on leave of absence, “are outside consultants” and “do not work for me other than as outside consultants”.
Continue reading...Authorities say they arrested an 18-year-old who was planning a shooting attack at the Mall of America
FBI officials stopped a potential terrorist attack on the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, authorities announced Wednesday. An 18-year-old was arrested on one count of obtaining a firearm to carry out an act of terrorism.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud had been investigated over the last nearly two years by the FBI. He was arrested Tuesday in a public park after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of the Islamic State for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.
Continue reading...Bernadette Greene-Placentia says she is sharing her story in order to fight for victims of sexual assault
This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.
A congressional candidate in Arizona says she was attacked and raped in August while trying to repair one of her damaged campaign signs.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Continue reading...
When OpenAI introduced dots last month, it pitched them as "always-on agents" running in their own cloud computer, but that may be overstating the readiness of the technology and of the people trying to use it. Presently, multiple users are reporting task failures and connection issues with their dots. Others have flagged cloud connectivity problems, dots that disappear, and dot refusals that appear to be related to abuse prevention. And the OpenAI Developer Community forum shows several similar concerns. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment about the usage of dots. ABI Research argues that "AI claws" – always-on agents – will shape enterprise AI adoption. The biz sees "a market evolving from isolated assistants toward modular agent ecosystems built for longer-running, enterprise-grade automation." Despite the hiccups that have afflicted dots, some skepticism on social media forums, speculation that OpenAI rushed dots out in response to Meta Muse and Grok Bot, and security issues, dots have some enthusiastic users in addition to detractors who just don't see the point. They also have competition from companies and developers who believe they can deliver a similar service more affordably, with fewer restrictions. A company called Tawkit that makes an SDK called CopilotKit has released OpenDots. "OpenDots is completely open source and gives you the same thing [as OpenAI Dots] as a template you host yourself," the biz said in a post last week. "Bring any agent through AG-UI, use any OpenAI-compatible model, and make every part of it your own." The company previously released OpenMuse and OpenBot. These projects essentially separate the user interface, the AG-UI agent layer, and the backend to provide an alternative personal agent. This doesn't eliminate the token expense of whatever agent is deployed, but it does mean that OpenAI may not be doing the billing. Then there's a potentially lower cost option, called (confusingly) Open Dot, powered by AI models running on OpenRouter. And as it's open source, the code could be altered to run using a local model – a feature that we understand is planned. "Open Dot is an open source version [of OpenAI Dots] that runs on your own Mac with your own OpenAI key, or with open models like Kimi, DeepSeek and Qwen through OpenRouter," the project repo explains. It allows users to connect to various apps like Gmail, Calendar, Slack, Notion, and GitHub via Composio. Prathit Joshi, the project's creator, told The Register, "I enjoy building and shipping tools for developers, especially tools that can support use cases that closed model companies aren't necessarily incentivized to support, like allowing open source models." Joshi is based in Bangalore, India, and works as a growth engineer at Composio. He said he's been using Open Dot to handle personal tasks like setting "to do" lists for the day based on Slack messages and summarizing posts on social media. Open Dot is based on the Electron framework, Joshi said, because he wanted it to be a desktop app. Distinguishing between OpenAI dots, OpenDots, and Open Dot may be confusing, but don't expect things to get any better in the near future. Everyone is busy wrapping increasingly commoditized models in a gatekeeping layer, in the hope of developing a sustainable business. For example, Elon Musk said on Tuesday that Grok Bot would become a model router rather than a front-end for a specific model. "Going forward, SpaceX will use the best back end model for any given task, including Claude Opus 5.5, MidJourney, Suno and other leading APIs," he said. "Whatever is most likely to give you the best outcome." ®
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have plugged an agentic AI platform into an X-ray nanoprobe beamline, creating a system that can get a closer look at areas researchers ask it to focus on. Argonne reported the success of an experimental run of the agentic microscope this week, with the device initially tested on its ability to locate the interface between two regions on an integrated circuit device, and all by just telling the microscope what they wanted it to determine using natural language. “Microelectronics was simply the example used to showcase the technology,” Argonne computational scientist Mathew Cherukara said of the project. “The real achievement is developing a next‑generation, AI‑enhanced microscope that can benefit many scientific fields.” The microscope itself is part of Argonne’s 26-ID hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline, which uses a tightly focused X-ray beam to perform nanoscale imaging and measurements of target samples. Such devices are considered a prime use case for scientific applications of AI because they produce a massive amount of data that can take human researchers considerable time to comb through thanks to their use of a technique known as ptychography. The method collects multiple diffraction patterns as X-rays interact with a sample, with modern X-ray experiments capable of generating millions of images in just a few hours of beam time. Conventional ptychographic reconstruction and analysis can take hours or days, whereas Argonne says its AI system can reconstruct images in real time as the data arrives. Argonne’s X-ray nanoprobe beamline is the sort of scientific facility the Trump administration is looking to boost with AI through its Genesis Mission. Launched by President Trump in November 2025 and led by the Department of Energy, Genesis aims to find ways to use AI in scientific research, including the Synergistic Neutron and Photon Science - Intelligence (SYNAPS-I) project that Argonne is undertaking in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is leading the effort. Brookhaven National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are also participating in the project. The inclusion of agentic AI in the Argonne X-ray microscope is actually the second phase of the project; the first was simply to see if, as mentioned above, AI could be used to reduce ptychographic image processing time. That was a success, as the lab reported in April, and phase two’s addition of natural language agentic AI appears to have been a win as well. “Combined, these SYNAPS-I advances lay the groundwork for self-driving microscopes, closed-loop experimentation and automated defect-detection tools that promise to accelerate discovery across fields ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to advanced materials and national user facilities,” Cherukara said of the project’s work thus far. In addition to the speed at which the new machine can process data, the conversational AI added in phase two gives researchers the ability to just ask the microscope to examine an area of interest rather than having to figure out how to aim the beam themselves. The AI can not only handle data collection and processing, but also analyze the results itself and flag additional areas of interest, which it can then further investigate on its own. Tao Zhou, a scientist at Argonne, said in a video from the lab that the new, chattier version of the microscope could open up advanced scientific research to researchers who could benefit from X-ray nanoprobe beamline science but don’t know how to operate a complicated instrument like the one at his lab. “This can be a game changer for a lot of users,” Zhou said. “This kind of interactive chat interface allows them to do their scientific research, get excellent data, without having to spend too much time to learn about the beamline components.” “This will help us attract a lot of new users,” Zhou added. Just be sure not to mention toast. ®
