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It is worth noting that emergencies and unexpected events can occur in any industry, including the highly technical and intricate world of cloud computing. The ability of companies like Alibaba to swiftly address and resolve such incidents demonstrates their resilience and capacity to manage challenges effectively. By transparently communicating with stakeholders and providing timely updates, Alibaba showcases its commitment to accountability and customer trust.BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A top Romanian court on Friday annulled the first round of the country's presidential election, days after allegations that Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outside r who won the first round. The Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram. The intelligence files were from the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunication Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Despite being an outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on Nov. 24 . He was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party in a runoff on Sunday. A new date will now be set to rerun the vote from scratch. Some 951 voting stations had already opened abroad on Friday for the runoff for Romania's large diaspora but had to be halted. Lasconi strongly condemned the court's decision, saying it was “illegal, immoral, and crushes the very essence of democracy.” “We should have moved forward with the vote. We should have respected the will of the Romanian people. Whether we like it or not, from a legal and legitimate standpoint, 9 million Romanian citizens, both in the country and the diaspora, expressed their preference for a particular candidate through their votes. We cannot ignore their will!" she said. “I know I would have won. And I will win because the Romanian people know I will fight for them, that I will unite them for a better Romania,” she added. “I will defend our democracy. I will not give up.” She said the issue of Russian interference should have been tackled after the election was completed. Some 9.4 million people — about 52.5% of eligible voters — had cast ballots in the first round. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said in a statement the annulment was “the only correct solution” following the intelligence drop which revealed the “Romanian people’s vote was flagrantly distorted as a result of Russian interference.” “The presidential elections must be held again,” he said in a post on Facebook. “At the same time, investigations by the authorities must uncover who is responsible for the massive attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential election.” The same court last week ordered a recount of the first-round votes, which added to the myriad controversies that have engulfed a chaotic election cycle. Following a recount, the court then validated the first-round results on Monday. Many observers have expressed concerns that annulling the vote could trigger civil unrest. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, said the development was a “coup d’état in full swing” but urged people not to take to the streets. “We don’t let ourselves be provoked, this system has to fall democratically,” he said. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said the court's decision amounts to a “crisis mode situation for the Romanian democracy.” “In light of the information about the external interference, the massive interference in elections, I think this was not normal but predictable, because it’s not normal times at all, Romania is an uncharted territory,” he told The Associated Press. “The problem is here, do we have the institutions to manage such an interference in the future?” Thirteen candidates ran in the first round presidential vote in this European Union and NATO member country. The president serves a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security, foreign policy and judicial appointments. On Dec. 1, Romania also held a parliamentary election which saw pro-Western parties win the most votes, but also a surge of support for far-right nationalists. Before the first round vote, most surveys predicted the top three candidates would be Ciolacu, who came in third place, and Simion or Lasconi in second place. As the surprising results came in with Georgescu on top, and Lasconi narrowly beating Ciolacu, it sent shockwaves through the political establishment and plunged it into turmoil. Georgescu’s surprising success in the presidential race left many political observers wondering how most local surveys were so far off, putting him behind at least five other candidates before the vote. Many observers attributed his success to his TikTok account, which now has 6 million likes and 541,000 followers. But some experts suspect Georgescu’s online following was artificially inflated while Romania’s top security body alleged he was given preferential treatment by TikTok over other candidates. In the intelligence release, the secret services alleged that one TikTok user paid more $381,000 (361,000 euros) to other users to promote Georgescu content. Intelligence authorities said information they obtained “revealed an aggressive promotion campaign” to increase and accelerate his popularity. Georgescu, when asked by the AP in an interview Wednesday whether he believes the Chinese-owned TikTok poses a threat to democracy, defended social media platforms. “The most important existing function for promoting free speech and freedom of expression is social media,” he said.

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Trump promises to end birthright citizenship: What is it and could he do it?

In the midst of the chaos, emergency responders were on hand to assist those fleeing the scene, ensuring that everyone was safely evacuated and accounted for. Several individuals were treated for smoke inhalation and minor injuries at the scene, but fortunately, no serious casualties were reported.

Movie Review: Nicole Kidman commands the erotic office drama 'Babygirl' The demands of achieving both one-day shipping and a satisfying orgasm collide in Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” a kinky and darkly comic erotic thriller about sex in the Amazon era. Jake Coyle, The Associated Press Dec 23, 2024 1:14 PM Dec 23, 2024 1:20 PM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message This image released by A24 shows Nicole Kidman, left, and Harris Dickinson in a scene from "Babygirl." (Niko Tavernise/A24 via AP) The demands of achieving both one-day shipping and a satisfying orgasm collide in Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” a kinky and darkly comic erotic thriller about sex in the Amazon era. Nicole Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie’s opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight. Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (“Look up, smile and never show your weakness”) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( Antonio Banderas ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly). But the veneer of control is only that in “Babygirl,” a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like “Basic Instinct” and “9 1/2 Weeks.” Reijn, the Danish director of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make “Babygirl” seldom predictable — even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is. The opening moments of “Babygirl,” which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say “I love you,” she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film's main character. One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The young man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She doesn't disagree. Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in “Babygirl” comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger. “Babygirl,” which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she’s doing and doesn’t. Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel’s sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn’t necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy’s executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who's eager for her own promotion. Where “Babygirl” heads from here, I won’t say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they’re a little ludicrous. There’s genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as “two children playing.” As a kind of erotic parable of control, “Babygirl” is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that’s sometimes been accused of having a “house style,” here’s a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in. What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted “Babygirl.” Saucers of milk will do that. “Babygirl,” an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong sexual content, nudity and language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four. Jake Coyle, The Associated Press See a typo/mistake? Have a story/tip? This has been shared 0 times 0 Shares Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message Get your daily Victoria news briefing Email Sign Up More Science News Nissan and Honda to attempt a merger that would create the world's No. 3 automaker Dec 23, 2024 8:28 AM AI will eavesdrop on world's wildest places to track and help protect endangered wildlife Dec 23, 2024 7:51 AM Congress is looking to ban Chinese drones that are widely used in US. What to know about the debate Dec 23, 2024 5:30 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that's he's preparing to return to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony into a social media promo for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect's threat to impose a 25% tax on all Canadian products entering the U.S., the Republican tossed out the idea that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in a post Tuesday morning on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he posted an AI-generated image that showed him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park." Trudeau said earlier this week that when it comes to Trump, “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn't a trolling-free zone for Trump's adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, Trump posted a movie clip from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A." In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden's spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. Trump, true to form, turned his mocking into a spectacle by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns created and shared memes and launched other stunts to respond to Trump's taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.” Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.Electric heat pumps have emerged as heroes of the 21st century decarbonization movement, helping homes and businesses shake free of the fossil energy grip on heating and cooling systems. However, basic heat pump technology dates back to the 1850s. It is long overdue for a modern makeover. In particular, innovators have been looking for alternatives to the refrigerant challenge, including new magnetocaloric systems that do away with refrigerants entirely. As described in a handy explainer from Mitsubishi Electric, the Austrian scientist Peter von Rittinger established the inner workings of today’s heat pump all the way back in the 1850s. “His heat pump used the same basic concept as today’s heat pumps: heat absorbed from air, water or the ground is transferred indoors to heat a space, and heat absorbed from indoor air is transferred outdoors to provide air conditioning,” Mitsubishi explains. Heat pumps were originally applied to industrial operations before they entered residential use around the 1920s. A long series of energy efficiency and performance improvements followed, and the rest is history, with electric heat pumps for space heating now outselling gas-fired furnaces in recent years (see more heat pump background here ). Regardless of recent improvements in heat pump systems, the common denominator is the need for a refrigerant as an energy transfer medium. Earlier versions using chlorofluorocarbons were scotched by the 1987 Montreal Protocol , which identified CFCs as powerful agents of ozone layer destruction. One common CFC replacement, HCFC-22, is also being phased out in the US and elsewhere. The US Environmental Protection Agency notes that many alternative refrigerants are on the market, but EPA also offers an important caveat. “While these replacement refrigerants , primarily R-410A, do not deplete the ozone layer, they do lead to climate change and need to be handled responsibly to avoid releases to the atmosphere.” Refrigerants can be recovered and handled safely once a heat pump reaches the end of its useful life. However, accidents and leakage can happen, and the risk of a measurable impact can add up when tens of millions of units are in circulation. Last summer CleanTechnica took a look at one promising refrigerant-free solution in the form of elastocaloric technology. The working element is a compression-release cycle deploying tubes of nitinol (NiTi), an alloy developed by NASA . “In terms of the potential to replace heat pumps and other HVAC systems, nitinol generates a cooling effect simply by being stretched. It can also be tweaked to generate heat ,” CleanTechnica observed. However, the R&D timeline for an elastocaloric heating and cooling system of any appreciable size is fairly long. As of July, for example, researchers at the University of Saarland succeeded in demonstrating the technology on a cooler the size of a dorm room mini-fridge. In the meantime, another heat pump alternative began to gain traction about a dozen years or so, in the form of magnetocaloric technology. Back in 2012, the online publication ScienceNordic described a magnetocaloric project in prototype development at the Technical University of Denmark, called MagCool. “Using magnetism to create a cooling effect requires very little energy. It’s also possible to use water instead of harmful greenhouse gases to transport heat and cold,” ScienceNordic explains. “Magnetic refrigeration uses a magnetisable substance which heats up slightly when exposed to a strong magnetic field,” ScienceNordic elaborates. “The atoms behave like mini-magnets that are oriented in different directions. When they are affected by a magnet, they suddenly all face in the same direction and the substance heats up slightly.” “By cooling down the substance while it is still magnetised and then demagnetising it, which allows the atoms to return to their original random orientation, the substance becomes colder than it was before it was magnetised,” they add. There being no such thing as a free lunch, the MagCool project relies on gadolinium, an expensive rare earth metal commonly used in magnetism applications. The DTU research team was already working on a ceramic alternative using another rare earth, neodymium, with the aim of cutting costs. Over here in the US, a team of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory began working on a magnetoelectric refrigerator/freezer in partnership with General Electric Appliances back in 2013. “Refrigeration technologies based on [the magnetocaloric effect] are fluorocarbon-free and offer potential energy savings of 20%–30% over conventional vapor compression systems,” the Energy Department noted. The research involved testing different alloys of lanthanum, iron, silicon, and cobalt, with an occasional contribution from hydrogen, as alternatives to gadolinium. “By fine-tuning the alloy composition, the team can create materials with progressively lower Curie temperatures, allowing them to arrange the alloys to amplify cooling ,” the Oak Ridge Lab observed in an update posted back in 2016, with Curie temperature referring to the loss of magnetic effect. “Magnetocaloric materials are very touchy, though, so researchers had to overcome some serious practical challenges to take advantage of this oddity of physics,” Oak Ridge elaborated. More recently, a team lead by Ames National Laboratory researcher Julie Slaughter went off in a different direction. In a press release dated December 5 of this year, Ames lab reported that Slaughter and her team have developed a new energy efficient, refrigerant-free magnetocaloric heat pump that stacks up against conventional vapor-compression heat pumps on three key parameters: weight, cost, and performance. For complete details, check out the study titled, “ Scalable and compact magnetocaloric heat pump technology ” in the January 2025 online edition of the journal Applied Energy . Ames Lab also provided a plain-language summary under the headline, “ The future of more sustainable cooling and heating technology could be just around the corner .” How much farther around the corner remains to be seen. Slaughter and her team did give themselves a head-start by working off known magnetocaloric technology. “We first looked at what is out there, and how close the existing magnetocaloric devices are to matching compressors,” Slaughter explains. “Next we developed a baseline design and then asked, ‘Okay, now how far can we push the technology?’” In one of several departures from the Oak Ridge/GE project, the Ames team decided to deploy gadolinium-only technology while reducing overall costs by focusing on the permanent magnets and magnetic steel components. Though the lanthanum-iron-silicon formula is known for its high power density, the Ames researchers decided that the gadolinium supply chain is more dependable and less complicated in terms of commercial application. As for that Oak Ridge/GE project, as of 2016 the lab was aiming at a commercialization timeline of 2020 for a magnetoelectric refrigerator. If you can track that down, drop a note in the comment thread. Follow me via LinkTree , or @tinamcasey on Threads, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. Image (cropped): Researchers at Ames National Laboratory are have reportedly cracked the code for the energy efficient, refrigerant-free magnetoelectric heat pump of the future (courtesy of ANL via Eurekalert). CleanTechnica's Comment Policy LinkedIn WhatsApp Facebook Bluesky Email Reddit

PlayStation’s 2024 Spotify-esque Wrap-Up is hereFriends of the Marshall Public Library to hold holiday store throughout DecemberAs the energy storage industry grows, so does the need for skilled professionals and innovative technologies. This has led to a competitive environment where companies are vying for market share and technological leadership. However, unlike the intense competition and overwork culture often associated with other high-tech industries, the energy storage sector is taking a different approach.