Latest news with #DF
Ya Libnan
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Israeli army arrests Iranian 'terror cell' in southern Syria, report
DF troops operate in southern Syria in a photo released on July 2, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces) sraeli troops arrested several members of a terror cell deployed by Iran in southern Syria in an overnight raid, the military says. The cell was operating in two locations near the border with Israel and was targeted based on intelligence gathered over recent weeks, according to the Israel Defense Forces. During the raid, troops from the 474th Golan Regional Brigade, who carried out the raid together with field investigators from Military Intelligence's Unit 504, also seized weapons, including firearms and grenades. The IDF says it will continue efforts to thwart the entrenchment of Iranian-linked terror groups in Syria, particularly near the Israeli border. Israeli troops have been stationed in Syria since the fall of the former Assad regime in December, where they are holding a small buffer zone near the border. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 after capturing the territory from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. While most of the international community regards it as occupied Syrian land, US President Donald Trump recognised Israeli sovereignty over it during his first term in office , a move that was described as illegal by the International community. Following the fall of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel moved further and invaded the UN buffer zone between the Golan Heights and southern Syria, and carried out an aerial campaign targeting the country's military capabilities. Israeli officials also approved the expansion of illegal settlements there. There are about 31,000 Israeli settlers spread across dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights. Iran had supported al-Assad since Syria's war erupted in 2011, providing him with fighters, weapons and military advice in the form of an IRGC presence that aimed to keep him in fall was a huge setback for Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, since the majority of Hezbollah arms were shipped via Syria to Lebanon Times of Israel/ Al Jazeera
The Courier
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
T in the Park founder Geoff Ellis on his love of Dundee, missing Balado and making business fun
Scottish music legend Geoff Ellis has a strong affinity with Dundee. It was in the City of Discovery that DF Concerts first flourished, with Geoff putting on shows at Fat Sam's and Bar Chevrolet with founder Stuart Clumpas. And Courier Country is where DF's T in the Park festival would expand into the world-renowned behemoth it became on the fields of Balado in Kinross. So, it is fitting Geoff will take centre stage at this year's Courier Business Conference as keynote speaker. This month's event takes place at Chris van der Kuyl's ground-breaking The Big Real at Water's Edge — a £9 million Hollywood-standard production studio. The conference is once again held in partnership with Henderson Loggie, with the theme of powering Scotland's creative economy. Geoff's company DF put on concerts in Dundee in the 80s, and he fondly recalls those early shows at Fatties and Chevy's — a 50s-style diner complete with an American muscle car built into its walls. He said: 'I feel a connection with Dundee as well, because the company started there, up in Denhead of Gray. It's where Stuart Clumpas formed the business.' 'Somebody wiser than me once said, 'if you do something you enjoy for a living, you'll never work for a day in your life'. 'But I think the fun comes from you enjoying what you do. 'And there's aspects of what you do when you're running an entertainment business, or a creative business, that can be fun as well. 'Because you work with a team of people who, by nature, are fairly creative, fairly inspirational and then you all gel together and that helps make work — even the boring stuff — enjoyable. 'That's because you're working with a team of people who have a spark and an enthusiasm for what they're doing. 'Nobody who works in the company doesn't like live music and events — they all love it. 'So while there might be aspects of the job that are not exciting, like with any job you have to pay the bills, raise invoices, deal with admin… there's plenty of enjoyable aspects of it as well.' T in the Park enjoyed its most successful years at Balado. It moved from Glasgow to the disused Kinross airfield in 1997, where it stayed until 2014. In that time, everyone from Oasis to Beyonce came to the festival. The festival was held for two years at Strathallan, in Perthshire, in 2015 and 2016, and was 'retired' by DF Concerts to make way for TRNSMT and Summer Sessions. How people attend festivals has changed in recent years, Geoff points out, not helped by global events like the Covid-19 pandemic. A shift in what people want from their music and gig experiences has contributed towards this too, he adds, as well as having to leave their beloved Balado site. When asked if he missed putting on Scotland's largest festival, T in the Park, at Balado, Geoff said: 'Oh yes! I think we always will and we look back very fondly. 'The most successful years T in the Park had were at Balado. 'It was a great event. There's a great community in Kinross and Milnathort, who really supported the event from day one 'I mean, everything has its day and it's really regrettable we were forced to move from the site and it was never quite the same once we had moved. 'That's not to say we'd still be going had we stayed on the site, but it was a perfect festival site and we had many great years there. 'I think the days of having 10 or 12 stages is probably not what people want so much these days. 'Tastes have changed a little bit, they want to see more of their favourite artists and want longer sets. 'And people like being at an event in the city too. They like having somewhere to go afterwards now.' Geoff agreed to be involved with The Courier's Business Conference after speaking with long-time friend Chris van der Kuyl. He and Chris, one of the city's leading lights in games design through his involvement with Minecraft, had discussed working together for a while. Geoff will share unique insights gathered from 40 years 'and counting' in the creative industry. 'Dundee is a great city, a creative city, with all of its design and history,' he said. 'And more recently, its gaming achievements, which obviously Chris has been at the forefront of. 'For me, I think it's important that you put something back in as well. 'I've been fortunate enough to have a career for a few decades and I'm not giving up any time soon. 'It's a privilege to work in the creative industries and we need to sell the creative industries to younger generations and help them be regarded as serious businesses. 'I think we're quite often viewed as people just having fun. When you see people like Chris, it's hard to deny he always seems to be having fun, but there is a serious business element to what we all do in the creative industries. 'Whether that's running a venue, being an author, a designer, or whether it's putting on concerts and festivals.' Held on June 24, The Courier Business Conference 2025 brings together pioneers of gaming, music, fashion, design, media, and digital innovation to explore the future of one of Scotland's fastest-growing sectors. Dundee games entrepreneur and Water's Edge owner Chris van der Kuyl will talk about the new virtual production facility and explain why it will draw businesses to the city. As the co-owner of 4J Studios, which helped make Minecraft a global phenomenon, he will also give his views on the games and tech sector. Jade Robertson, owner of Perthshire business Little Lies, which counts Taylor Swift among its customers, and Livehouse boss Angus Robb will also present to the captive audience on their experience as business leaders in Tayside. The Courier's editor David Clegg will chair a panel discussion featuring local businesses on 'monetising creativity in Scotland'. The conference runs from 8.15am to 2pm. Tickets are still available through the conference website
Irish Examiner
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Long-neglected Naval Service strength 'starts to creep up'
Naval Service strength is set to rise to over 760 as the next batch of recruits commences training this month. It marks an improvement on last year when numbers dropped to a low of 719 – but security sources stress it is 'early days' in the recovery of the service. Naval Service (NS) numbers are still more than 300 short of what they should be under department levels (1,094). And under Government plans – in line with the second Level of Ambition (LOA2) of three possible investment levels set out by the Commission on the Defence Forces (DF) in February 2022 – the establishment figure for the NS needs to reach 1,794, an increase of a further 700 people. This means the service is currently over 1,000 personnel short of the target under the Government's plan, which has five years to run. There were concerns on Monday when NS books showed its personnel number had dropped below 700, to 698. Inquiries revealed that numbers actually stood at 726, but that 28 personnel were in the Joint Induction Training Centre at Gormanston, so were temporarily on other DF's books. They are expected to return in two weeks. It does mean for those two weeks they are not available for operational sea duties. It is further understood that an additional 28 Navy personnel – which are not included in the 726 figure - are either serving overseas or in Joint appointments across the DF. One DF source said the figures can be a bit confusing as personnel can temporarily be under books of other services in the DF, but that numbers are increasing, albeit slowly. Official figures show that NS strength fell steadily in the last five years: 902 in 2020; 875 in 2021; 798 in 2022; 725 in 2023, hitting 719 in 2024. Last year was the first time since 2019 when more people were inducted into the NS than were discharged (97 inducted; 75 discharged), halting the haemorrhage from the service. So far in 2025, a further 37 personnel have been inducted and are set to begin training in two weeks. Former Army Ranger and ex-TD for Kildare, Cathal Berry, said: 'Things in the NS are starting to creep in the right direction. The increase is not as fast as we would like; really we need to get to the stage of 100-plus net increase per year.' He said neglect had created a 'spiral' in the NS, with numbers falling dramatically in just a few years, with a lack of instructors an issue. Mr Berry said it was encouraging to have general recruits, but said the retention of skilled, experienced staff was essential. He said the Defence Forces suffered a key issue in not having a full-time dedicated minister of defence or an empowered minister of state. 'Every EU country, bar Malta, has a full-time minister for defence, because it's an area that requires active supervision every day,' he said. Under LOA2, the Commission on the Defence Forces recommended that the fleet be increased to nine ships by 2030 and be double crewed, to allow for regular deployment and boost patrol days. In order to achieve these aims, it estimated that 'some 700 naval personnel at an estimated annual cost of €35m' would be required. It also called for "a minimum establishment' of 400 personnel for the NS Reserve.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Big Dunc - From Barlinnie hell to Goodison heaven
As the sunshine beats through the window in a studio by the River Clyde, Duncan Ferguson is talking about the darkness in his early life. Barlinnie Prison, where he spent 44 days and nights, is six miles away and 30 years in the distance, but right now, as he discusses the opening chapters of his autobiography, he's back there. The sights and sounds and smells - they don't go away. They stay. Forever, you sense. Ferguson's life story - the recently published Big Dunc - couldn't begin anywhere else. Rangers vs Raith Rovers, Ibrox, 1994. John McStay, a 'headbutt' while on probation for some fracas at a taxi rank and then a jail sentence in its wake. "Hell," as he calls it. Tom English: You were 23 when you went inside. Reading what you witnessed, I cannot believe that they sent you to a place like that. Duncan Ferguson: I'd locked it away until I started to do the book. It all comes flooding back. I couldn't do that time now. I don't think I could cope. Back then, it was frightening. Sometimes you look back and you think, how did you get through it? How did you actually get through that? Because you're on your own. There's nobody backing you up, there's nobody helping you. TE: You say there was also a bit of excitement involved. DF: I was upset. I was worried. I was frightened. Of course I was. But I was also a wee bit excited to see what the nick was like. Because I was young and stupid. You've seen the movies, haven't you? You've seen movies of prisons and you think, what's it like to be in there? So there was a wee bit of that, maybe not excitement, but certainly I was intrigued to what was actually going to happen in there. TE: How long did that last? DF: Not long. Because I realised it was hell. TE: You describe your first night inside - the lights go out and the voices in the dark. DF: Sitting at the end of that bed. Everything echoed. They're screaming at you. 'You're going to get cut in the morning'. That's what happened. They pinpoint where you are. It was like they were focusing on me. You're worried sick. You've got to face that in the morning. I never slept a wink all night. I was terrified. I'm going to walk out on this landing in the morning and you think someone's going to stick a knife in you. TE: You ended up working in the kitchen? DF: The hospital wing. You've got designated jobs. The first few days, I'd slop out on the wing. There was a block in the middle of the prison and there were about 12 cells in there for inmates who were getting cut or slashed or harming themselves. The paedophiles and that. Some of them get kept in there. It wasn't too bad, because you're away from the main population during the day. TE: And in there you were asked to go and counsel a young boy. DF: I can't remember his name, but he tried to take his own life. He'd come over to the hospital wing. The guards had found out that he'd played for the Rangers as a kid. They asked me to go and speak to him. TE: You were only a kid yourself. DF: You think you're a man, don't you? I thought I was a man. I've got everything boxed-off. I was just a baby. I had to go and speak to the boy and he was in a bad way. He told me a wee bit of his story. He was a good football player and it never quite happened for him. He got released. He ended up on drugs. I hope he's doing well now. I still think about the boy sometimes. As Ferguson recounts his spats in his early life, all the fighting and the endless grief, you ask him what he would say to his teenage self if he could sit him down now and talk to him. DF: Don't drink. That would be the first thing I'd say to myself. A lot of trouble in my life has been through booze. We were young. We'd come off the estates. Everybody drunk. If I wasn't drunk when these incidents happened, I might have walked away. TE: Your upbringing. You describe yourself as a stupid, daft laddie. But then you also say, I see myself as shy. Nobody really knows me. You look at the pages and stories you tell in your book, it doesn't look like the life of a shy young man. DF: To this day, I have no friends. Good friends. I was a loner. At school, I was on my own with my ball. I took my ball to school. I never mixed. I walked my dog. I had my ferrets. I wasn't a mixer. I never mixed with my team-mates. I had some friends, but not a lot. I was a bit shy. I'm coming out of my shell a wee bit now. TE: You're shy, but you were fond of a night out. Again, it goes back to the drinking. These fights at taxi ranks. This abusive guy who's on the crutches. DF: I can't remember him on a crutch. He swung at me a wee bit. I was daft. I was drunk. You're chasing girls. I was 16 or 17. Stirling's a small place. I became a target. I was Duncan Ferguson, the football player. Look at the way he walks. Look at the way he's drinking that beer. Look at the way he's dancing. He thinks he's gallus. People were approaching me. TE: I'll read you a quote from the book, after some sort of incident. The police came to see you. "I was laid out on the sofa, rotten, stinking drunk, buck naked, aside for a pink hat that someone had given me earlier. I had lipstick on, an earring and a silk glove." Now that's a picture. DF: I can't remember the police coming. I was on the couch, gone. That's right. It was one of those crazy nights. I got young player of the year for Dundee United. We went into Anstruther. Not a pretty sight. I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight for the police when they came to have a look at me. TE: Your parents at this time, they must have been worried sick about you. Is there guilt there? DF: Absolutely. My mum and dad, I put them through it. That phone rings in the morning. Somebody knocks on the door. I put my mum and dad through hell. TE: You're a dad now and you can put yourself in their shoes. DF: Yeah, they must have been worried sick. The police were starting to knock on the door all the time. Headlines everywhere. Journalists outside the house regularly. The press were a bit naughty, but I gave them plenty of ammunition. I must have put my mum and dad through hell. When Ferguson left Tannadice and joined Rangers for £4m, the move was the measure of his dreams. He was a Rangers boy. He revered the manager, Walter Smith. He idolised the iconic striker, Ally McCoist. The whole thing became a nightmare. Wild living, not enough game-time, scrutiny, trouble, minders, claustrophobia. And then he went for McStay. Smith sat him down and told him he had to leave Glasgow for his own good. Sentencing was coming - Barlinnie not far away - but in the meantime he needed a new start. He went to Everton for a three-month loan that became a love affair. TE: When Walter said you had to go, how did you feel? DF: I cried my eyes out when he said it. I'd let him down. He was telling me I was coming back after the loan and I'm sure he was genuine at the time. But I cried. I'd failed. I was drinking heavier. I was out of control. TE: The book is so honest. It's a terrific read. You weren't at Everton long and you got done for drink driving. DF: That's right. On my own. Middle of the city centre. Saturday night. What do you do? I went for a drink, stupidly. We've got a game on the Monday against Liverpool and I'm out on a Saturday night. Nuts. TE: This was Joe Royle's first match as Everton manager? DF: Yeah and I'm in the police station, 3am Sunday. Liverpool on Monday. The star striker's in the nick. TE: There's a good end to that story. DF: Yeah, they let me out. TE: Well, yeah, but you scored? DF: Of course. That's me, isn't it? That's me. No preparation. In the jail. Get out and the rest is history. I battered them. Second half particularly. Guilt. That's what I was running on. Guilt. TE: And you win the FA Cup? You scored 73 goals in 273 games for Everton across two spells spanning a decade. They love you down there. How long did it take for you to realise Everton - this is the place for me? DF: About a week. Once I was in that city, I wasn't coming back. I had no minders. Nobody was targeting me. They knew me, but it wasn't the Rangers-Celtic thing, was it? There's no sectarianism. I felt free. And I was fitter. And I was getting minutes. TE: Why does this club mean so much to you? DF: The fans took to me. There was never any trouble off the pitch, only the drink driving offence. They needed somebody like me at the club. The team wasn't very good. They had a good tradition of big Scottish number nines. I fitted that mould. TE: They could see the honesty. DF: I was aggressive. The fans liked that. They wanted somebody to get stuck in for them. It all turned for me then. You're playing against Liverpool, Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. You're playing against some serious teams. It brought the best out of me. I still love the city. I still live down there. It's a great place to be. TE: Striker, captain and then manager. That must have been cosmic for you? DF: What a feeling. It was an incredible moment in my life and my career. One that I'll never forget. I'd captained the team, I'd scored a lot of goals for the club and then to manage them. So I've done it all there, really. TE: You worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Everton and speak glowingly about him. DF: I was on my mate's boat in Croatia, right? And Carlo's in the vicinity on his own boat. He's on the phone. "I'm coming to see you." "OK, no problem, Carlo." I gave him the coordinates and he's coming out of the horizon in this big boat. He paid a right few quid for it. I could see him waving. As he's getting closer and closer, his boat is getting smaller. Our boat was about four times bigger than his. He spent his week on my mate's boat. His boat got left. It was really funny, like. A great fella. We just bonded. It's not hard to understand the reasons why Ferguson brought a madly premature end to his Scotland career. Everything goes back to the fateful McStay incident. The Scottish FA handed down a 12-match ban before his court case ever came around. He felt they sat as judge, jury and executioner. When he came out of Barlinnie, they went after him again, trying to force through that suspension even though he had done time in prison and was now at Everton. He thought it was a vindictive pursuit while reminding you that he went to jail for the McStay confrontation and "I didn't even get a yellow card". TE: You quit Scotland in December 1994. You say, "I fell out of love with Scotland. I felt bitter. I felt the Scottish press had done me in, so I chucked it". DF: I should have played. There's a massive regret. I should have played. I pulled out a lot of squads. Craig Brown, God bless him, protected me. He just said I was injured. I told him I didn't want to go and play for Scotland anymore. He said, "You're crazy man!" My heart wasn't in it. I went back a couple of times. I didn't like it. TE: You went back for Austria 96 and Estonia 97, but that was it. Stubborn? DF: My God. I wish I could go back, but you can't, can you? You're a young man. You're daft. You just don't listen. I was on my honeymoon in the Bahamas during the 1998 World Cup. We played Brazil, didn't we? I should have been kicking off the ball. Daft. I was in my prime then as well. They asked me every year for 14 years to go back. Bertie Vogts came to Everton. I brushed by him. Didn't even take him into a wee room, sit him down and listen to his spiel. There was more, of course. More on his early years, more on his Dundee United boss Jim McLean - who fined him so heavily once that Ferguson's pay packet was minus £10 - more on Barlinnie, Rangers, Everton, Newcastle, his financial bankruptcy, his stints in management and his desire to have another go. He's 53 and looking well. Is he happy? "No, not 100% happy, no. I don't think any of us are totally happy. I'm in a good place. You know, I've been in a lot worse place. I've been looking down the back of sofas for a few quid, you know what I mean? "So I'm not there. And I'm healthy. I'm off the booze. I suppose I'm happy as the next man. My dream is to be a manager at the top. That's what I want. And when that happens, I'll be a real happy man." If you are affected by the issues in this article, help and support is available at BBC Action Line
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Switch 2 specs have finally been confirmed after Nintendo spent months playing coy, and it's running a "miniaturised version" of a 30-series GPU
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. While Switch 2 is putting a bigger emphasis on technical power than we've seen from Nintendo in years, the publisher has still been oddly reticent to reveal the platform's actual technical specifications. Now we're finally getting some clarity on the system's specs. Switch 2 leaks have actually intensified in recent weeks as the supply chain for the console moves forward, and the folks at Digital Foundry have confirmed the specs. In short, the system features a custom Nvidia system on a chip called a T239, which features a GPU built on the same Ampere architecture that powered the RTX 30-series GPUs first released in 2020. Notably, this specification of a custom Nvidia chip called T239 featuring an Ampere-based GPU had been leaked as far back as 2021, and if the past four years of leaks have had some element of truth to them, it's clear that Switch 2 has been in the works for a long, long time. Nintendo released a Switch 2 spec sheet alongside the console's initial reveal in April, but that only mentioned a "custom processor" from Nvidia, with no accompanying specs. According to DF's rundown, we're looking at a CPU clock of 998MHz while docked or 1101MHz in handheld mode, with six cores available to game developers and two reserved for system resources. There's a theoretical maximum clock of 1.7GHz, but it's unclear in what circumstance that additional performance headroom might be unlocked. On the GPU side, it's rated for 1007MHz in docked mode, 561MHz in handheld, and a theoretical maximum of 1.4GHz. Digital Foundry suggests thinking "of it as a miniaturised version of a consumer GPU," similar to how the Switch 1 made use of a variant of the GTX 900 series. Here, though, we're dealing with something similar to an RTX 30-series card. Exactly what all this means in terms of concrete performance for Switch 2 is still difficult to measure without actually seeing games in action, and it's going to be doubly tough to compare the system's raw performance against other hardware when it's making use of Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS tech. In more concrete reveals, DF says that VRR – which helps match the screen refresh rate to the in-game frame rate for smoother video when performance fluctuates – is only supported for the built-in handheld screen. There's no support for VRR-enabled televisions over HDMI. Switch 2 also features a custom file decompression engine, which can offload some of the burden from the CPU, which "should be a lot faster and more power-efficient" when loading your games. GameChat also seems to be quite a serious part of the platform in Nintendo's eyes, though it's one that apparently eats quite a bit of system resources, to the point where "Nintendo actually provides developers with a GameChat testing tool" to measure the performance impact of the feature. DF notes that GameChat's impact on performance "does seem to be an area of developer concern." We're now just a few weeks out from the launch of Switch 2, so the answers to many of these questions will be clear soon enough. Here's hoping that the long, long wait for the new hardware proves worthwhile. If you're keeping up with all the Nintendo Switch 2 news, here are all the Switch 2 launch games and other upcoming Switch 2 games you need to know about.
