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Festivals and events not to be missed in Mechelen

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Festivals and events not to be missed in Mechelen

Mechelen, a charming city located in Belgium, is known for its rich history and lively atmosphere. Every year, the city holds various festivals and events that attract locals and tourists. Here are some of the festivals and events not to be missed in Mechelen.

One of the most popular events in Mechelen is the “Maanrock” festival. Every year, in August, the city center is transformed into a giant stage to welcome renowned local and international artists. The festival offers a varied program with live music concerts in different genres such as rock, pop, reggae and jazz. The streets are filled with food and drink stalls, creating a festive atmosphere for visitors of all ages.

Another event not to be missed is the “Mechelen Bierfestival” beer festival. This event usually takes place in the spring and allows beer lovers to discover a wide variety of craft Belgian beers. Local and international breweries present their products and offer tastings. It’s the perfect opportunity for beer lovers to discover new flavors and chat with experts in the field.

For art lovers, the “Contour” festival is an unmissable event. Held every two years, this contemporary art festival offers exhibitions, performances and film screenings in different locations across the city. Local and international artists exhibit their works, offering visitors a unique and immersive artistic experience.

Classical music lovers will not be disappointed in Mechelen. Every year, the city organizes the “Ars Musica” music festival. This event highlights high-quality classical music concerts at historic venues such as St. Rumbold’s Cathedral and the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Brabant. Renowned orchestras and virtuoso soloists perform at this festival, attracting music lovers from all over.

In addition to annual festivals, Mechelen also offers regular cultural events throughout the year. For example, the Sunday morning market is a popular meeting place for locals and visitors. The stalls offer a variety of fresh produce such as vegetables, fruits, cheeses and flowers. This is a great opportunity to taste local products and meet the producers.

The Christmas market is another event not to be missed in Mechelen. During the festive period, the town transforms into a real Christmas village with decorated chalets, food and hot drink stalls, and attractions for children. Visitors can purchase unique handcrafted gifts and enjoy the festive atmosphere.

In conclusion, Mechelen is a city that is full of interesting festivals and events throughout the year. Whether you’re a music lover, art lover, beer lover or just looking for a party atmosphere, Mechelen has something to offer everyone. Don’t miss these events and discover everything this charming city has to offer.

Originally published at Almouwatin.com

More and more priests in Moldova are leaving the Russian Orthodox Church and moving to the Romanian Patriarchate

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Newsroom
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A large part of the Orthodox parishes of the ROC in Moldova left this jurisdiction and joined the Romanian Orthodox Church, which also has its own jurisdiction in the country.

During the past week, the founder and rector of the Chisinau Seminary and Theological Academy, Father Vyacheslav Kazak, moved to the Romanian Church, together with the local parish. Thirteen more priests followed his example. Among them is Father Andrei Oistrich, dean of the Faculty of Pastoral Theology and clergyman of the seminary. In the immediate future, another fifty parishes are expected to leave the Moscow Patriarchate and join the Romanian Church.

Father Andrei Oistrich motivated his decision by stating that the Russian Church is the “stepmother” of the Orthodox in Moldova, and that more and more of his parishioners have a problem of conscience because of the Russian Church’s active support for the war in Ukraine. At the end of October, he left his post at the academy.

The mass exodus to the Romanian jurisdiction came about after last month the leadership of the Metropolitanate of Moldova (Moscow Patriarchate) deposed six priests because they had transferred to the Bessarabian Metropolitanate of the Romanian Church. The Bessarabian Metropolis defined this decision as canonically void, as it was not based on canonical and theological arguments, and called on all clerics and monks who feel repressed by the Russian dioceses “to have courage and abandon this slavery and return to tradition and the community of the Romanian Orthodox Church”.

From the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine to this moment, over sixty parishes have passed from the ROC to the Romanian Orthodox Church. The new wave of change of jurisdiction comes after an alarming letter of the head of the Metropolitanate of Moldova (MP) Metropolitan Vladimir to the Russian Patriarch Kirill from September of this year, which received publicity. In it, Metropolitan Vladimir complains that the Russian Church in Moldova is losing ground in the country because of the war in Ukraine, and more and more priests and laymen are moving to the Romanian Patriarchate, attracted by the high state salaries and other social benefits offered by the Romanian state. He says that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Metropolitanate of Moldova, as part of the Russian Orthodox Church, is perceived as a “front post of the Kremlin” and a “supporter” of the war, which threatens its existence: “For the Orthodox Church of Moldova, this association is equivalent to our disappearance from the religious and social scene of the country, because of the categorical rejection by our fellow citizens of the aggressive interference of Russia both in the affairs of our neighboring and friendly country Ukraine, and in our internal affairs”.

In the Republic of Moldova, there are two Orthodox churches, subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Romanian Orthodox Church, respectively, which have been disputing their canonical status since 2007, when three dioceses of the Bessarabian Metropolitanate of the Romanian Orthodox Church, restored after the collapse of the USSR, were registered in the country. A curious detail is that in the same year, representatives of the Russian Church and the Romanian Church had a meeting in the Troyan Monastery in Bulgaria, in an attempt to overcome the tension caused by the opening of the Romanian dioceses in Moldova.

The change of jurisdiction in Moldova is regulated by law. All parishes that have changed their jurisdiction receive registration and documents from the Public Service Agency.

Meanwhile, today it became clear that the chairman of the church “St. Dimitar” in Chisinau, Father Pavel Borsevski has sent a letter to the Primate of the Moldovan Archdiocese, Metropolitan Vladimir, to initiate the transfer of the entire church in Moldova to the jurisdiction of the Romanian Patriarchate. The open letter claims he has the support of the majority of priests in the capital.

How much money of the coins thrown into the Trevi Fountain is collected?

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Gaston de Persigny
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There are many sights in Europe that attract millions of tourists from all over the world every year.

A great example is the Trevi Fountain in Rome. On an annual basis, the capital of Italy is visited by about 2.78 million tourists, and we can draw our own conclusions as to how many of them stop by the fountain.

And also how many of them observe the established tradition of making a wish and then throwing a coin into the fountain. Because of all this, the responsible authorities have organized the cleaning of Di Trevi twice a week – on Mondays and Fridays.

Thus, in a few hours, the fountain is emptied, and workers collect the thousands of coins found at the bottom. Videos can be seen on social media showing workers raking the coins with shovels and pouring them into special sacks.

According to delicious.com.au, €1.5 million worth of coins are collected from the Trevi Fountain each year and donated to charities.

Photo by Henry Acevedo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fountain-di-trevi-in-rome-19009237/

Boats, engines and vests detained at Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint in Bulgaria

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Inflatable boats, motors and vests, which can be used to transport illegal migrants, were detained at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. This became clear today at the point where Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov welcomed a British delegation led by State Minister for Immigration Robert Jenkir. He thanked our country for its efforts. The detained boats and engines for them had to pass through Bulgaria in transit.

It has become clear that the two countries have been working together for months in the fight against illegal goods. We have made significant progress in terms of cargo in transit, inspection procedures and the corresponding seizure of illegally transported boats, engines and accessories for them that do not meet European standards. This proves the ongoing efforts of our country to fight against illegal migration, the interior minister stressed. Great Britain is the country that gives us serious and extremely active support. Minister Stoyanov thanked the British minister for the announced package of support, which will also help Bulgaria’s quest to join Schengen. I believe today’s signing is the right time because we are in the final stages and look forward to our acceptance in December. As a result of your initiative, we realize a serious opportunity for the prevention of illegal migration, added the Bulgarian interior minister.

The British were shown the seized boats and other goods found some time ago. The British delegation was given a demonstration of how tracking dogs are used to check vehicles. A “Statement on enhanced cooperation” was also signed.

An exhibition in Marseille offers a change of perspective on history

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Newsroom
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An exhibition organized by the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, France, offers a new look at history, reported AFP, quoted by BTA.

The aim is to introduce visitors to the point of view of African, Asian, American and other peoples.

It is important to understand that Europeans managed to place themselves at the center of the world, but other nations and empires did it too, explained the organizers of the exhibition.

“Europe does not have a monopoly on historiography either in terms of the narrative or the perspective on the past,” said historian Pierre Sengaravelou, who is among the exhibition’s curators.

The exhibition is a journey through space and time thanks to more than 150 exhibits – geographical maps, manuscripts, archaeological finds, paintings, textiles. Many of them are on public display for the first time.

With nearly 45,000 sqm spreaded over three sites, the Mucem is a must-see in Marseille.

It is located at the entrance to the port, on the J4 harbor mole and in Fort Saint-Jean: two places highly symbolic of the city’s current development and its age.

A government project supported by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, the first major national museum dedicated to the civilizations of the Mediterranean for the 21st century and directed by Bruno Suzzarelli, opened its doors in Marseille on the 7th of June 2013. It has quickly become one of the most visited museums in Marseille. The museum’s collections are preserved at the ‘Belle de Mai’ in the Conservation and Resource Center.

Photo: MUCEM Musée des Civilisations, de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée /

https://www.marseille-congres.com/en/mucem

A gene for insomnia that haunts us throughout our lives discovered

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Newsroom
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The studies will help scientists to prevent night waking problems

A new study shows that specific patterns in DNA may determine whether we develop insomnia, reports MailOnline.

Researchers in the Netherlands collected genetic information from 2,500 unborn babies and followed them up to age 15, measuring their sleep patterns.

They found that teenagers with genes known to affect sleep were more likely to wake up during the night than their peers without these DNA configurations.

A genetic predisposition to poor sleep patterns has already been demonstrated in adults. Scientists have identified mutations in genes such as NPSR1 and ADRB1 that can lead to sleepless nights.

However, the latest findings show that the gene for “bad sleep” is active throughout a person’s life, BTA informs

Researchers from Rotterdam University Medical Center and the Netherlands’ Erasmus University Medical Center are using their findings to highlight the importance of identifying poor sleep in early childhood – as early as infancy – to prevent lifelong insomnia.

DNA samples were collected from 2,458 European children born between April 2002 and January 2006, using cord blood and blood from the same children at age six.

In parallel with the DNA analysis, the mothers reported on their children’s sleep patterns at ages one and a half, three and six years, and then at ages 10 to 15. A subset of 975 teenagers wore sleep-tracking devices for about two weeks.

The researchers generated DNA risk markers for each teenager and found more insomnia-related sleep problems, such as night waking and trouble falling asleep during childhood, in those with high genetic predisposition markers. The scientists explained:

“We provide indirect evidence for the persistence of the poor sleep phenotype across the lifespan. This opens the door to further research into the genetically based early detection and prevention of sleep problems.” Their findings were published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

It has been established that solving sleep problems at an early age of the child leads to better conditions for his development and academic success.

Another 2022 study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, found that nearly 93 percent of low-achieving students had sleep disorders, compared with 83 percent of average students and 36 percent of high-achieving students.

The importance of sleep should not be overstated, yet a study by the National Sleep Foundation in the US found that over 87 percent of American high school students sleep less than the recommended eight to ten hours a night.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has described the problem of poor sleep quality among teenagers as an “epidemic” driven by “electronic media use, caffeine consumption and early school starts.”

That data helped fuel a movement of parents and sleep experts lobbying state legislatures to introduce later school start times.

California and Florida are the only two states that have adopted later start time rules, requiring classes in public high schools to begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

Transformation Europe Lab in Kolding (Denmark)

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Petar Gramatikov
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The “Europe Transformation Lab” gathered (between 25th of October 2023 – 2nd of November 2023) 26 participants from different European Countries who agreed with the founding values of the European Union on human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights.

The organisation and facilitation team came from Brazil, Vatican City, Greece, Denmark.

The goal of “Transformation Europe Lab” (Co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union) is to provide an overview on how to build communities via community organising and non-violent direct actions (NVDA).

In the modern age with the migration crisis, climate crisis, post-pandemic recovery, international war and extremism on the rise across Europe, and there is the urge of equipping youth workers with skills of community development, which they can transfer to youth.

The hosting organization – Food Reformers are committed to engaging in the activities, taking ownership of their tasks and to collaborate with other members and external stakeholders while always respecting the community, the members and the environment. We encourage clear communication for creating a safe space; with a value system based on three solid pillars; commitment, respect and openness.

The aims of the training:

  • promoting peace building by introducing past successful non-violent actions, that made real impact
  • providing participants with skills and tools necessary for transforming social and inter-group conflicts
  • making participants aware of their role in civic society and promote activism and social responsibility
  • making participants able to spread the ideas and knowledge on community building and NVDA to young people all across Europe.

Food Reformers respect the personal needs and professional endeavours of each member, and are open to anyone who wants to be a Food Reformers or join the activities regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or background, focusd on the Zero waste philosophy, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Social Responsibility, Up-cycling and circular economy, Participatory Entrepreneurship and Desing Methods among others.

Food Reformers is a food waste organisation that cooks mainly with surplus vegetables and promotes meatless meals. This action is informed by the huge impact that the meat industry has on our planet and how it contributes to climate change. Additionally, they approach meatless meals as a way to provide more inclusive meal solutions while accommodating most people’s dietary restrictions / preferences. To further contribute to food waste management, their aim to cook using surplus vegetables, that the volunteers gather from different sources eg: supermarkets. Surplus food is food that is supposted to be thown out, but is still eatable and fresh.

Participants from eleven partner countries including Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Turkey and Bulgaria, joined the Erasmus+ training course in Kolding, Denmark.

They have been selected to participate in the training course because of theit eagerness to receive a vivid and rich intercultural experience and to benefit from the project activity while having a lot of experiences to share and valuable insights to exchange with the rest of the group.

AI Drones Help Farmers Optimize Vegetable Yields

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Newsdesk
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AI Drones Help Farmers Optimize Vegetable Yields


A six-rotor drone in flight – illustrative photo. Image credit: Richard Unten via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

For reasons of food security and economic incentive, farmers continuously seek to maximize their marketable crop yields. As plants grow inconsistently, at the time of harvesting, there will inevitably be variations in quality and size of individual crops. Therefore, Finding the optimal harvest time is a priority for farmers.

A new approach of using drones and artificial intelligence demonstrably improves this estimation by carefully and accurately analyzing individual crops to assess their likely growth characteristics.

Drone-based AI pipeline. A visual overview of the system to capture and analyze image data about crops, which then informs a model to help farmers know the best time to harvest their fields.

Drone-based AI pipeline. A visual overview of the system to capture and analyze image data about crops, which then informs a model to help farmers know the best time to harvest their fields. Image credit: Guo et al. CC-BY

Some optimistic science fiction stories talk about a post-scarcity future, where human needs are catered for and hard labor is provided by machines. There are some ways in which this vision appears to predict some elements of current technological progress. One such area is in agricultural research, where automation has been making an impact.

For the first time, researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, have demonstrated a largely automated system to improve crop yields, which can benefit many and may help pave the way for future systems that could one day harvest crops directly.

“The idea is relatively simple, but the design, implementation and execution is extraordinarily complex,” said Associate Professor Wei Guo from the Laboratory of Field Phenomics.

“If farmers know the ideal time to harvest crop fields, they can reduce waste, which is good for them, for consumers and the environment. But optimum harvest times are not an easy thing to predict and ideally require detailed knowledge of each plant; such data would be cost and time prohibitive if people were employed to collect it. This is where the drones come in.”

Guo has a background in both computer science and agricultural science, so is ideally suited to finding ways cutting-edge hardware and software could aid agriculture. He and his team have demonstrated that some low-cost drones with specialized software can image and analyze young plants — broccoli in the case of this study — and accurately predict their expected growth characteristics.

The drones carry out the imaging process multiple times and do so without human interaction, meaning the system requires little in terms of labor costs.

Data visualization on aerial photos. The cost of human labor and time involved prohibits manual cataloging of individual plants in a field. Here, the catalog data collected by the drones and produced by a deep learning system is superimposed onto photos of the fields.

Data visualization on aerial photos. The cost of human labor and time involved prohibits manual cataloging of individual plants in a field. Here, the catalog data collected by the drones and produced by a deep learning system is superimposed onto photos of the fields. Image credit: Guo et al. CC-BY

“It might surprise some to know that by harvesting a field as little as a day before or after the optimal time could reduce the potential income of that field for the farmer by 3.7% to as much as 20.4%,” said Guo.

“But with our system, drones identify and catalog every plant in the field, and their imaging data feeds a model that uses deep learning to produce easy-to-understand visual data for farmers. Given the current relative low costs of drones and computers, a commercial version of this system should be within reach to many farmers.”

The team’s main challenge was in the image analysis and deep learning aspects. Collecting the image data itself is relatively trivial, but given the way plants move in the wind and how the light changes with time and the seasons, the image data contains a lot of variation that machines often find hard to compensate for.

So, when training their system, the team had to invest a huge amount of time labeling various aspects of images the drones might see, in order to help the system learn to identify what it was seeing correctly. The vast data throughput was also challenging — image data was often of the order of trillions of pixels, tens of thousands of times larger than even a high-end smartphone camera.

“I’m inspired to find more ways that plant phenotyping (measuring of plant growth traits) can go from the lab to the field in order to help solve the major problems we face,” said Guo.

Source:University of Tokyo

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At Rafah crossing, Türk says both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes

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United Nations News
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At Rafah crossing, Türk says both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes

Volker Türk highlighted the dichotomy at the border crossing, describing it as a “lifeline” for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza over the past month, although “unjustly, outrageously thin.”

But it is also “the gates to a living nightmare”, he continued, as people in Gaza “have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel.”

Unprecedented danger

The human rights chief is the latest senior UN official to travel to the region since Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240 others who were taken inside the enclave.

In response, Israel has been repeatedly bombarding the Gaza Strip, in addition to imposing a total siege on the enclave and launching a ground invasion, ordering civilians in the north to move south.

Mr. Türk said the atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups, and the continued holding of hostages, were heinous and constitute war crimes.

“The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians is also a war crime, as is unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he added.

Warning that “we have fallen off a precipice,” he stated that “even in the context of a 56-year occupation, the situation is the most dangerous we have faced for people in Gaza, in Israel, in the West Bank but also regionally.”  

Mr. Türk issued an urgent appeal for the parties to agree to a ceasefire now so that three “critical human rights imperatives” can be met.

He called for sufficient aid deliveries into Gaza, the release of all hostages and enabling “the political space to finally implement a durable end to the occupation, based on the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to self-determination.”

Distinguish between Hamas and Palestinians: Guterres

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday that the number of civilians killed in Gaza shows that something is “clearly wrong” with Israel’s operations against Hamas.

“There are violations by Hamas when they have human shields. But when one looks at the number of civilians that were killed with the military operations, there is something that is clearly wrong,” he told the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, hosted by the news agency.

“It is also important to make Israel understand that it is against the interests of Israel to see every day the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people,” he said. “That doesn’t help Israel in relation to the global public opinion.”

While he strongly condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, Mr. Guterres said “we need to distinguish – Hamas is one thing, the Palestinian people (are) another”, adding “if we don’t make that distinction, I think it’s humanity itself that will lose its meaning.” 

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Victor Negrescu elected European Parliament Quaestor

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Newsdesk
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Victor Negrescu elected European Parliament Quaestor

On Thursday, MEPs elected Victor Negrescu (S&D, Romania) by acclamation to replace outgoing Quaestor Monika Beňová (Non-Attached, Slovakia).

Victor Negrescu

Mr Negrescu was the sole candidate. Based on Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, a new Quaestor is elected to fill a vacancy in the existing order of precedence – so he has become Parliament’s third Quaestor.

The College of Quaestors (five in total) are primarily responsible for administrative and financial matters directly concerning MEPs. MEPs aim to ensure that the composition of the Bureau (comprising the President and Vice-Presidents, with Quaestors participating in an advisory capacity) broadly reflects the size of the political groups in Parliament.

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