Author: staff
Published on 06/08/2026 – 8:52 GMT+2 Brace yourselves: There’s more Melania coming. After the critical and commercial flop of the Melania documentary earlier this year, it has been announced that US First Lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new Amazon Prime docuseries. The announcement was made by her senior adviser Marc Beckman on Real America’s Voice. “We are launching a docuseries, which is a total different experience, completely new, on Amazon Prime exclusively,” Beckman said. “That will be coming this fall. It’s confirmed, and I hope everybody tunes in, because it’s going to show a part of…
“We are now in a bit of a scenario of salami slicing, where you’re aggregating lots and lots of smaller bits,” he said. “There’s no one big thing that you can do that’s going to take over £100 off bills. So, it’s about accumulating all those things that you think you could possibly do in one go, so it becomes sizable and noticeable.” Decisions, decisions One of those options, proposed by the think tank Nesta and reportedly being considered by Burnham, involves shifting further green levies from electricity bills onto tax. It identified another £42 of savings from a yearly bill, costing the Treasury £1.7 billion per year for a decade. Every small cut helps consumers, insists Andrew Sissons, Nesta’s director of sustainable futures. The think tank has also proposed knocking £22…
More than 434,976 hectares have burned across the EU so far, according to the July 30th data from the European Forest Fires Information System (EFFIS). In 2025, more than one million hectares burned, making it the worst wildfire season since records began. This is why Brussels decided to rewrite the rulebook on how Europe deals with fire. For decades, EU wildfire policy meant buying more planes, trucks, and firefighters. Now, the emphasis is shifting toward something more consequential: stopping fires from becoming catastrophic in the first place. Why response alone was never going to work The logic is simple, says…
Published on 06/08/2026 – 8:34 GMT+2 An Australian politician has been left red-faced after being forced to admit on Thursday that he texted “my job is boring” and an expletive to a contact during a meeting. Mark Parton, who leads the opposition Liberal Party in the Australian Capital Territory, was subject this week to a complaint alleging he sent the message to a sex worker, local media reported. “And f**k my job is boring. Wanna swap,” Parton reportedly wrote, accompanied by a picture of a committee meeting last month, according to the Canberra Times. After initially denying the complaint in…
Wer regiert die Welt – und was treibt sie an? In unserem regelmäßigen Machthaber-Spezial geht es um die mächtigsten und umstrittensten Politikerinnen und Politiker unserer Zeit. Wir zeigen, wie sie denken, entscheiden – und was das für uns bedeutet. Eine Politikerin oder Politiker, ein Blick hinter die Kulissen der Macht. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon…
The European Union is rearming at an eye-watering pace not witnessed in decades. Yet as the continent invests billions into its military might, and confronts its most perilous environment since the Cold War, four EU countries cling to a defining principle: neutrality. Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus have each maintained policies of neutrality or military non-alignment — though they differ considerably in their legal status and interpretation. These concepts have adapted — or are adapting — to an increasingly volatile world, punctuated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a turbulent US presidency. For these countries, neutrality is a high-wire act…
Published on 06/08/2026 – 7:00 GMT+2 Children who start using social media at a young age appear to struggle more at school than those who open social media accounts only once they are older, a new study has found. The study was published in Nature Human Behaviour and analysed more than 5,000 pupils from northern Italy aged 7 to 16. The paper was built on a combination of data from a questionnaire on digital media habits with longitudinal standardised exam scores collected in grades 2, 5, 8 and 10 in Italian, mathematics and English. Specifically, when tested in grade 8…
The financial toll Globally, nearly three-quarters of passengers (73 percent) incurred additional expenses due to disruptions, with costs averaging €514 per person, although that figure masks wide differences. It also marks a clear increase from previous surveys, which found average costs of just €362.50 per passenger. UK and German travelers report the highest average costs, at roughly €708 and €619 respectively. Portuguese and Spanish travelers report the lowest, at approximately €277 and €340. The United States and Brazil sit in the mid-to-high range, at around €577 and €529. The spread likely reflects differing living and wage levels, but it also…
Working at the European Commission is one of the most coveted civil service jobs in Brussels. Yet, officials employed there describe high pressure, bureaucracy and burnout. Our colleague Seb Starcevic has interviewed dozen officials from different commissioners’ cabinets and directorates-general, varying in age, nationality and seniority. On the podcast, Zoya Sheftalovich and Sarah Wheaton parse through what these insiders had to say about their working conditions. Next, last week’s Ceuta crisis — when a surge of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave — has revived a basic question: Why does Spain still hold territory in North Africa? With…
The Commission — which has a workforce of some 30,000 — hired a chief confidential counsellor, Lene Naesager, to deal with staff harassment issues, in May 2024. She has a team of 40 counsellors across the Commission and its executive agencies. Since September 2024, the chief counsellor, who reports to Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin, has received 960 reports from “colleagues feeling harassed, alleged harassers, witnesses, managers and HR correspondents,” according to a Commission spokesperson. However, the chief counsellor “has no mandate to investigate and is not entitled legally to qualify the conduct as harassment as defined in the Staff Regulations,” the…