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It was all eco: Coldplay beats emissions target for world tour – via kinetic dancefloors and trains
Tue, 04 Jun 2024 04:15:37 GMT
Band announces their carbon footprint after two years of touring is 59% lower than what was generated on their previous tour, thanks to some creative solutions
Coldplay has announced that they have reduced their touring carbon footprint by 59% compared with their previous world tour – via some creative methods that include kinetic dancefloors that allow dancing fans to generate electricity, recyclable LED wristbands and the band travelling by train.
On Monday the British band announced that they were “happy to report that direct CO2e emissions from the first two years of this tour are 59% less than our previous stadium tour (2016-17), on a show-by-show comparison”.
Continue reading...Parent company says P&O would be integrated into its sister line Carnival Cruise Line in March 2025
P&O Cruises Australia will shut down early next year after nearly a century of voyages.
The cruise ship liner’s parent company, Carnival Corporation & plc, made the announcement on Tuesday, confirming that P&O would be integrated into its sister line, Carnival Cruise Line, in March 2025 and cease to exist.
Continue reading...Barrage destroyed Russian air defences in Belgorod, US thinktank says; Kamala Harris to attend Swiss peace conference. What we know on day 832
Ukrainian forces have destroyed air defences inside Russia, “likely” with the American-supplied Himars rocket system, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said. The barrage struck a Russian S-300/400 air defence battery in Belgorod oblast on 1 or 2 June, said the US-based thinktank. It added: “Russian sources have increasingly claimed that Ukrainian forces are using Himars to strike Belgorod oblast since the US partially lifted its restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use US-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russian border areas with Kharkiv oblast. Russian sources will likely continue to characterise any successful strike in Belgorod Oblast as a Himars strike regardless of the system used.” The Russian system was located about 60km from the frontline in northern Kharkiv oblast and over 80km from Kharkiv city, the ISW said. This was within the range of Himars while exceeding the range of other systems thought to be used by Ukrainian forces to hit Belgorod oblast. Ukrainian officials were yet to comment on the strike.
Ukraine will ask its allies to further lift restrictions on using their weapons against targets inside Russia, the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said. The Institute for the Study of War wrote in an assessment on Tuesday that western air defence systems and permission to strike targets in Russia with western weapons “remain crucial for Ukraine to repel Russian glide bomb and missile strikes against Kharkiv city”.
Italy will send a second Samp/T air defence system to Ukraine, its foreign minister has said. The Italian-French system also known as Mamba can track dozens of targets and intercept 10 at once. It is the only European-made system that can intercept ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian field commanders are reportedly compensating for training difficulties that mobilisation has exacerbated by training new personnel on the frontline, the ISW has said. “Ukrainian field commanders’ decisions to train newly deployed personnel on the front before committing them to combat indicates that the overall quality of Ukrainian forces will likely remain higher than that of Russian forces in the near- to mid-term,” it said.
Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, will travel to Switzerland for the Ukraine peace summit on 15 June, White House officials have said. Harris will be accompanied by Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. The White House defended Biden’s decision to skip the summit in favour of attending an election fundraiser. “There hasn’t been any single leader around the world who has supported Ukraine more and more stridently than Joe Biden,” said John Kirby, national security council spokesperson.
A group of about 20 women held a rare protest outside Russia’s defence ministry on Monday demanding the return of their mobilised husbands and sons from Ukraine. Russian authorities have labelled at least one such group as a “foreign agent”, a tactic used to silence dissent.
French police are investigating whether the placing of five full-sized coffins covered with the French tricolour at the Eiffel Tower at the weekend was another act of Russian interference.
Poland has arrested 18 people on allegations of pursuing pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian hostile actions, including a person alleged to have been involved in a plan to assassinate Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Polish interior minister said. Ten arrested since December were directly involved in planning sabotage across Poland, said the interior minister, Tomasz Siemoniak.
Continue reading...Across Europe, saturation tourism has had an environmental and social impact that needs to be addressed
In 2021, as the easing of Covid restrictions prompted a tentative recovery in Europe’s shell-shocked tourist industry, Spain’s Balearic Islands welcomed back holidaymakers with enthusiasm and relief. During the pandemic, overall numbers of visitors dropped by around 80%, laying waste to the local economy. Three years on, however, Mallorca and Ibiza are on the frontline of a different crisis – one that is less dramatic in scale, but growing in profile.
To mark the beginning of this year’s summer holiday season, an estimated 10,000 locals marched through Mallorca’s capital, Palma, last week, protesting against the saturation tourism that they say has rendered their city unliveable. Demonstrations are expected to continue through the summer.
Continue reading...Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
A hundred years after his death, the author’s presence is as strong as ever in the Czech capital – from his childhood homes and the literary cafes he frequented to the remarkable buildings immortalised in his work
It’s a boiling summer’s day in Prague and I’m staring into the austere face of Franz Kafka. Not the real Kafka, of course – he died exactly a century ago, which is why I’m here – but a cast-iron plaque on the wall of his birthplace. The house, a replica as it turns out, sits pretty much on Old Town Square, which as usual is thronged with tourists snapping pics of its fairytale architecture, sipping drinks on terraces and gawking at its 15th-century astronomical clock. It’s impossible to imagine Kafka – 6ft tall and skinny, with dark, intense eyes – in this vibrant, carefree milieu. But then the Prague that Kafka was born into, in 1883 – the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire – was a very different city. And Kafka himself, alienated both as a Jew and a minority German speaker, had a sensitive imagination that interpreted the city’s narrow, winding streets as claustrophobic and its looming spires as threatening.
I’m here on the Kafka trail because the city is celebrating the centenary of the author’s death throughout 2024, with events, lectures, exhibitions, tours and more. There’s a forthcoming biopic, Franz, being made here too, by Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, Green Border), starring German actor Idan Weiss as the enigmatic author. Local artist David Černý’s famous 11-metre kinetic sculpture, Head of Franz Kafka, outside the Quadrio shopping centre, has also been refurbished for the occasion.
Continue reading...When she was sworn in, aged 20, she was the youngest MP to be appointed since 1832. Now the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, she looks back on 10 years of hard work and ‘hellish’ travel
For some MPs, the general election announcement came as a shock; for others, a starting pistol. But for Mhairi Black it was the end of “a sort of purgatory”, as she prepared to step down as MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, a position she has held for almost a decade. She will turn 30 in September. “I’m about to be exactly where I was 10 years ago, asking: ‘What am I going to do with my life?’”
The Scottish National party’s deputy leader at Westminster announced last summer that she intended to leave the Commons, a place she has variously described as “defunct”, “depressing”, “sexist”, “poisonous” and “one of the most unhealthy workplaces that you could ever be in”.
Continue reading...Israel warns against travel to archipelago and calls for citizens there to consider leaving after president’s announcement
The Maldives says it will ban Israelis from entering the country, known for its luxury resorts, with the office of the president making the announcement as public anger rises over the war in Gaza.
The Maldives president, Mohamed Muizzu, has “resolved to impose a ban on Israeli passports”, a spokesperson for his office said in a statement, without giving details of when the new law would take effect. The country is visited by thousands of Israelis every year.
Continue reading...The photographer’s shot of girls at the Highland Games was taken during five years visiting traditional gatherings
I’m not aware of a Highland Games prize for the neatest hair bun, but if there were one, this row of contenders would take on all-comers. The picture is included in Robbie Lawrence’s Long Walk Home, a double volume of photographs that are the result of five years of travels in Scotland and Scottish outposts in the US in search of the true tartan spirit of Highland gatherings. “Every event I photographed,” Lawrence writes by way of introduction, “whether on a dusty sports field in Denver, or at the local park in Burntisland, is at its core a coming together of friends and family to enjoy sports, dance and music.”
To begin with, on this quest, Lawrence hoped to strip away the myth-making, to look beneath the kilt of the games, to capture something like their authentic nature. He abandoned that idea, however. Instead, his pictures of grunting caber tossers and spry country dancers, and pipe bands emerging from dreich summer weather, became an attempt “to engage with the myriad of fabricated ideas surrounding the modern Highland Games”, the ways in which those rooted in glens by daily fact or inherited memory find joy in their Scottishness.
Long Walk Home is published at the end of the month by Stanley/Barker (£75 for a double volume)
Continue reading...India is in the final stages of a general election, and almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister ,Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
The Guardian’s video team travelled through India to explore how fake news and censorship might be shaping the outcome of the election
Brian Krebs reports on research into geolocating routers:
Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geolocate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally—including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems—and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops...
Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
ICC warrants against Israeli officials would mean they can’t travel — and their patrons in the U.S. would be pressured over continued arms sales.
The post Can a U.S. Ally Actually Be Held Accountable for War Crimes in the ICC? appeared first on The Intercept.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
All over the country, architecture firms make the case for bigger jails — then get hired to design them.
The post The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms appeared first on The Intercept.
The megadonor’s plan for a $25 million research center at Cornell fell apart. So he took his money to Texas A&M.
The post Leonard Leo Built the Conservative Court. Now He’s Funneling Dark Money Into Law Schools. appeared first on The Intercept.
Israel warns against travel to archipelago and calls for citizens there to consider leaving after president’s announcement
The Maldives says it will ban Israelis from entering the country, known for its luxury resorts, with the office of the president making the announcement as public anger rises over the war in Gaza.
The Maldives president, Mohamed Muizzu, has “resolved to impose a ban on Israeli passports”, a spokesperson for his office said in a statement, without giving details of when the new law would take effect. The country is visited by thousands of Israelis every year.
Continue reading...Far-right conspiracy theorist, who was forced to pay $1.5bn in damages over false hoax claim, complains of unfair treatment
Relatives of the Sandy Hook elementary school victims who won more than $1.5bn against the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false claim that the 2012 mass shooting was a hoax to force Americans to accept gun control are demanding his businesses be liquidated.
In a letter to a bankruptcy court judge on Sunday, relatives of those killed in the shooting, which left 20 children and six educators dead, requested the rejection of Jones’s petition to financially reorganize his company, which includes Infowars.
Continue reading...Jailed tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried believed altruism justified his actions. Was he right?
Earlier this year, the cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on seven counts of wire fraud. It’s safe to say that his life has not gone according to plan. But was the plan itself immoral?
By his own account, Bankman-Fried aimed to accumulate wealth for philanthropic causes: “earning to give”, in the idiom of the effective altruist movement, of which he was a supporter. Billboards for his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, proclaimed: “I’m in on crypto because I want to make the biggest global impact for good.” Effective altruists often advocate utilitarianism, according to which we should promote the greatest net balance of benefits over harms, by any means necessary. In other words, we are justified in harming some – for instance, by wire fraud – if the harms are outweighed by benefits to others. According to the judge who sentenced Bankman-Fried: “He knew it was wrong; he knew it was criminal.” But even if he knew the law, Bankman-Fried may not have believed he was doing anything wrong. After all, he planned to donate billions to help those in need. He may have thought he had the answer to that age-old moral quandary: whether it’s OK to cause harm for the greater good.
Continue reading...Government prosecutors claimed they didn’t know a former detainee recanted his testimony in interviews with the government.
The post Guantánamo Prosecutors Accused of “Outrageous” Misconduct for Trying to Use Torture Testimony appeared first on The Intercept.
Found guilty on 34 counts by a New York jury, Trump might find himself campaigning behind bars.
The post These Convictions Thwart Trump’s Plan to Pardon Himself appeared first on The Intercept.
The Israeli PM’s invitation comes amid deep differences with the Biden administration
Benjamin Netanyahu is set to become the first foreign leader to address a joint session of the US Congress four times, despite deep differences with the Biden administration.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that a date for his address to Congress had yet to be set, but that it would not take place on 13 June as had been reported, due to a Jewish holiday.
Continue reading...Doctor, who was head of infectious diseases unit during height of the pandemic, tells Congress he and his family still get harassed
Anthony Fauci, the former head of the US infectious diseases unit, has received “credible death threats” stemming from his time overseeing the nation’s fight against Covid-19, he has told Congress.
Fauci, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the height of attempts to halt the spread of the virus, told a hearing on Capitol Hill that the threats had continued until the present day, even though he retired in 2022.
Continue reading...The leader of the Morena party could pass legislation and budgets unopposed through congress
Claudia Sheinbaum seems poised to cement her historic victory as Mexico’s first female president with a supermajority in congress that would let her party pass legislation and budgets unopposed – and perhaps even change the constitution without need for compromise.
Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with 59.5% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority.
Continue reading...Party will have to pick coalition partners and then try to reform itself in response to declining support
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its three-decade electoral majority in devastating fashion. As the former liberation movement faces the task of building a coalition government, it remains to be seen how it will respond to the message sent to it by voters.
The ANC’s vote share collapsed from 57.5% in 2019 to 40.2% in last week’s elections, amid chronic unemployment, degraded public services and high rates of violent crime.
Continue reading...Former Mexico City mayor’s Morena party also on track for possible two-thirds supermajority in Congress
Claudia Sheinbaum has won a landslide victory to become Mexico’s first female president, inheriting the project of her mentor and outgoing leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose popularity among the poor helped drive her triumph.
Sheinbaum, a leftwing climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority.
Continue reading...ANC says demands that President Cyril Ramaphosa must step down is ‘no-go area’ as rival Jacob Zuma stokes fears of violence
Final results from Wednesday’s seismic South Africa elections have confirmed that the African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy, firing the starting gun on unprecedented coalition talks.
The ANC, which led the fight to free South Africa from apartheid, won just 159 seats in the 400-member national assembly on a vote share of just over 40%. High unemployment, power cuts, violent crime and crumbling infrastructure have contributed to a haemorrhaging of support for the former liberation movement.
Continue reading...After 30 years in power, the African National Congress, which took 40.2% of the vote, must engage in tricky coalition talks with rivals
The African National Congress’s (ANC) three decades of political dominance in South Africa has come to an end after it was announced that it had won just 40.2% of the vote in last week’s general election.
The ANC’s dramatic decline – the first time it has failed to win a majority of the votes since Nelson Mandela led it to victory in the first democratic election in 1994 – will lead to a chaotic round of coalition negotiations, with all of its potential partners posing difficulties.
Continue reading...Collapse in support means ANC may not reach 50% vote share needed to rule alone. Which parties are contenders for coalition?
South Africa is facing the uncertain possibility of a coalition government after a collapse in support for the ruling African National Congress party in Wednesday’s election meant it probably will not reach the 50% vote share needed for it to rule on its own. Here is a guide to the three main contenders for coalition partners:
Continue reading...The Intercept’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft shows how digital outlets are uniquely vulnerable.
The post Scarlett Johansson Isn’t Alone. The Intercept Is Getting Ripped Off by OpenAI Too. appeared first on The Intercept.
He tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?
The post The Media Still Doesn’t Grasp the Danger of Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
The U.S. held Saeed Bakhouch at Guantánamo Bay for 20 years without charge, then sent him to have his rights violated in Algeria.
The post After Torturing Him, U.S. Breaks Guarantees of Safety to Former Guantánamo Detainee appeared first on The Intercept.
ICC warrants against Israeli officials would mean they can’t travel — and their patrons in the U.S. would be pressured over continued arms sales.
The post Can a U.S. Ally Actually Be Held Accountable for War Crimes in the ICC? appeared first on The Intercept.
The battalion has a dedicated U.S. nonprofit to support its operations — whose president is supporting AIPAC’s political agenda.
The post This AIPAC Donor Funnels Millions to an IDF Unit Accused of Violating Human Rights appeared first on The Intercept.
In the survey of Democrats and independents in five battleground states, 2 in 5 voters said a ceasefire and conditioning aid would make them more likely to vote for Biden.
The post Conditioning Aid to Israel Would Boost Support for Biden in Key States, New Poll Finds appeared first on The Intercept.
Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
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