DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ I got rid of Google Home and went back to pen and paper for my grocery list. I feel more in control now.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-17 | by ( Jack Hauen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

I would tell her to add things to my grocery shopping list as I needed them. "Hey Google, add rigatoni to the shopping list." "Add tomatoes to the shopping list!" My Google Home thought we were always talking to herSoon, Google started hallucinating that we were talking to her when we were two rooms away. AdvertisementA paper shopping list has been a revelationWe've never looked back.

Persons: —, Crisp, she'd, We'd, We've, I've Organizations: Service, Google, Twitter, gaslight Locations: of Verdun

☆ For Max Beckmann, Art’s Ironist, Crisis and Rediscovery
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-10 | by ( Jason Farago | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Before the war (the First World War, I mean; with so many wars one can lose count), Max Beckmann was painting clean, traditionalist self-portraits and lush pictures of bathers by the sea. Otto Dix, Beckmann’s fellow ironist, enlisted at once and served in the artillery corps. “I have been drawing,” Beckmann wrote to his wife one evening, after a day caring for men who’d survived the trenches. Though he never served at the front, Beckmann had a nervous breakdown by the end of 1915. A revolution would come to Germany, as it had already come to Beckmann’s easel.

Persons: Max Beckmann, Matisse, Picasso, Ypres, Otto Dix, Beckmann’s, Franz Marc, Beckmann, Umberto Boccioni, Wilfred Owen, “, ” Beckmann, who’d, ” Organizations: Imperial German Army, Allies Locations: Flanders, Belgian, Verdun, Frankfurt, Germany

☆ EU sends water bombers to battle Greece wildfires as Rome shatters temperature record
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Sam Meredith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

A Canadair CL-415 sprays water during a wildfire in the village of Pournari, near Athens, on July 18, 2023. The European Union sent four Canadair water bombers to help Greece fight wildfires that have been raging for a third day on Wednesday, while authorities warned of another extraordinary heatwave. It comes as scorching heat continues to grip southern Europe, with temperatures in Spain, France and Italy climbing to fresh record highs. Mercury levels in Girona in Spain's Catalonia region hit a record 45 degrees Celsius, while temperatures in Verdun in northeast France reached 40.6 degrees Celsius for the first time. Europe's hottest-ever recorded temperature is believed to have been 48.8 degrees Celsius, logged near the ancient city of Syracuse on the coast of Sicily in August 2021.

Organizations: Canadair CL, European Union, Canadair, Mercury, World Meteorological Organization Locations: Pournari, Athens, Greece, Europe, Spain, France, Italy, Rome, Girona, Spain's Catalonia, Verdun, Syracuse, Sicily

REUTERS/Lisi NiesnerBILOZERKA, Ukraine, March 1 (Reuters) - When Ukraine recaptured Kherson in November, Andrii Povod returned to find his grain farm in ruins. The institute's Baliuk said the war damage could lead to an alarming loss of fertility. ECHOES OF WORLD WAR ONEA working group of soil scientists created by the Ukrainian government estimates it would cost $15 billion to remove all mines and restore Ukraine's soil to its former health. If studies of damage to land during World War One are anything to go by, some areas will never recover. To be sure, World War One lasted four years, and the war in Ukraine only one year so far, but lead remains a key component of many modern munitions, Rintoul-Hynes said.

☆ Blackstone's Ike leaves to start new investment firm
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Chibuike Oguh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Melvin Ike, a managing director in Blackstone Inc's (BX.N) tactical opportunities group, has resigned to start his own investment firm, the private equity firm told Reuters. Ike's resignation was announced during a meeting of Blackstone's tactical opportunities fund investors held last week in New York, the firm said in a statement on Tuesday. Ike's transactions for Blackstone's tactical opportunities unit include the sale of a majority stake in Wisconsin-based home improvement lender Aqua Finance for $1 billion to Apollo Global Management (APO.N) in 2021. He also led Blackstone's acquisition of a majority stake in collectibles authentication firm Certified Collectibles Group as well as the minority investments in digital marketing firm Recurrent Ventures and Cybersecurity firm Geocomply. Blackstone's tactical opportunities unit, which is run by David Blitzer, invests in assets that typically fall outside the scope of the firm's other funds, from timber and mines to oil tankers and satellites.

These men were rushed from the frontline to a specialist trauma hospital in the city of Kramatorsk on Wednesday afternoon after being wounded in the bloody battle for the eastern town of Bakhmut. Crucial to the surgeons’ work is a single CT scanner that shows surgeons the damage to a patient’s brain and spinal cord. World War I and World War II. Jo Shelley/CNN“You understand that you are exhausted, you understand that there is a process of internal burnout,” the Dr. Malanchuk said. It seems that you are exhausted, and then the next patient comes along and the process does its work again.”

☆ Ukraine planning a 'powerful countermeasure' against Russia; losses from fierce fighting around Bakhmut high
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Holly Ellyatt | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Intense fighting around Bakhmut in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine is inflicting high losses on Russian forces, with a Ukrainian official telling CNBC Wednesday that there are "mountains of corpses of Russian invaders" in the area. "Both regular Russian troops, the newly mobilized as well as mercenaries of the Wagner group, they're all fighting [around Bakhmut]. The so-called "Battle of Bakhmut" has been likened to the Battle of Verdun in World War 1, with scenes of trenches and mass destruction being posted on social media. Russia is seen to want to capture Bakhmut and to then advance to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. It's hard to verify how many casualties both Ukraine and Russia have counted in the Battle of Bakhmut but both claim to have killed hundreds of each other's soldiers.

☆ Trenches, mud and death: One Ukrainian battlefield looks like something out of World War I
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Holly Ellyatt | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Ukrainian tankers man their positions atop a tank in a muddy field near an undisclosed frontline position in eastern Ukraine on November 28, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sight of trenches, endless mud and mass destruction — with just the stumps of trees emerging from a boggy, churned up landscape — is rightly associated with World War I. The Donbas is a region in eastern Ukraine that contains two pro-Russian, so-called "republics" that Russia says it wants to "liberate." The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense tweeted a video of trenches in the area, saying the Ukrainian infantry had been holding the line for several months under heavy fire from Russian forces. In the end, the French forces won the battle but it came to symbolize the immense destructiveness and human cost of war.

Search resuls for: "Verdun"

8 mentions found