Author: staff
Since it was built in the 10th century, the 28 towers and 1,200 metres of walls of the caliphate fortress of Gormaz, perched on a promontory overlooking the Castilian plateau, have witnessed six total solar eclipses. The one on 12 August 2026, the seventh, is for the first time drawing large numbers of domestic and international tourists who have travelled to Gormaz to observe this astronomical event, as the path of totality runs very close to the thousand-year-old monument. It is estimated that the first total solar eclipse visible over the Iberian Peninsula since 1912 could prompt between 400,000 and…
France’s presidential election is set for the spring of 2027, and it is already attracting instances of misinformation and alleged foreign interference that have since sparked criminal proceedings. Researchers from the bot-tracking network AntiBot4Navalny have detected a campaign linked to Matryoshka, a covert influence and disinformation operation aligned with Russia. At first, these posts focused on Gabriel Attal, the former prime minister of France who is running to succeed current president Emmanuel Macron. Attal filed a criminal complaint with French authorities “alleging foreign interference originating from Russian networks”, after fabricated videos impersonating French news outlets targeted him online. Fake videos…
Published on 12/08/2026 – 20:06 GMT+2 The organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest announced a rules change on Wednesday excluding any country in an armed conflict from hosting the competition. Eurovision is organised each year by the broadcaster from the country that won the previous edition and is a co-production of public broadcasters belonging to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Under the new rules, “the winning broadcaster will automatically be ineligible to host the Contest if an armed conflict, a sensitive geopolitical situation, or any other situation materially affects the security, safety or stability of their state or immediate region”,…
Despite this, Israel has come close to winning the 2025 and 2026 editions of the competition, garnering a strong public vote. Israel’s pubic broadcaster KAN has denied claims that results were unfairly influenced by mass voting campaigns. Eurovision is organized by the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of 113 public service media organizations across 56 countries. Typically, the national broadcaster that wins the competition hosts the following edition in their home country. There have been some exceptions. When Ukraine won the 2022 contest, the organizers said the country could not host the following year’s contest due to Russia’s ongoing invasion…
Published on 12/08/2026 – 10:25 GMT+2•Updated 12:13 The European Union will provide €2.1 million to Colombia to support its most affected areas following a deadly earthquake that tore through the South American country on Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in an online statement. “As search and rescue operations continue, the EU is supporting Colombia wherever possible,” she said in the statement posted on Tuesday. The funding will provide health, water, sanitation and hygiene material, as well as shelter, food, protection and cash assistance. The president of the EU executive added that Colombia has activated the bloc’s…
Published on 12/08/2026 – 16:50 GMT+2 Two of the most influential voices in energy markets set out opposing readings of the year on Wednesday. The IEA now expects the world to burn less oil in 2026 than it did in 2025, its first such call since Covid-19 ground the global economy to a near-halt, while OPEC still pencils in growth, leaving them more than two million barrels a day apart. The Paris-based IEA now expects global oil demand to fall by 1.6 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2026, a downgrade of 510,000 b/d from July. “The ongoing closure of…
Last February, Sophie Adenot made history by becoming the second French woman to travel into space, after Claudie Haigneré. Six months on, she is about to take another leap forward as she becomes the first French woman to carry out a spacewalk. On Instagram and X, the astronaut shared the news with her followers. On 18 August, she will perform her very first spacewalk from the ISS to help repair the station’s transmission system. She will be joined by American astronaut Anil Menon, who has already taken part in a spacewalk to work on a high-bandwidth antenna used for communications…
“Note: Poland is not included in the Europe region above. Accounts registered in Poland are treated as Poland-only for home-country use,” reads Starlink’s current guidance. Polish Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski also went after Musk, accusing Starlink’s parent company SpaceX of treating Poles as second-class customers and demanding it spell out the regulatory basis for the change. “Poland is not a second-tier market. Polish customers are not second-tier customers,” Gawkowski wrote on X. If SpaceX blames “local regulatory requirements,” Warsaw expects it to point to the specific rules rather than offer “general explanations,” he added. The new rules have applied…
The next European Parliament majority may not be a centrist coalition, according to new data. The three parties — the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the centrist Renew Europe, and the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) — which have formed a parliamentary majority since its creation would fail to secure one for the first time. The seat projection was published on Wednesday by Europe Elects, an election data platform, which drew on voting intentions from each EU member state and modelled seat allocations based on each country’s electoral law. In recent years, Europe’s mainstream political forces have been on a…
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