Author: staff

Published on 13/08/2026 – 15:01 GMT+2 Romania halted operations of its only nuclear power plant on Thursday, a rare shutdown due to a drought scorching Europe that has caused the Danube river, whose waters cool the plant, to fall to record lows. Much of Europe is facing another heatwave this summer amid droughts that have driven rivers to historic lows. The Cernavodă plant, which usually generates a fifth of Romania’s electricity, has been shut down just once before, in 2003, due to drought. The national nuclear energy company Nuclearelectrica had already shut down one of the plant’s two reactors last…

Azerbaijan exported €48.2 million worth of pomegranates and pomegranate products in 2025, making the fruit one of the country’s fastest-growing non-oil exports. Around 23,000 hectares of orchards now supply fresh fruit, juice, concentrate, wine and seed oil to 26 countries, from Gulf states to markets across Asia. That puts Azerbaijan up against established exporters such as Iran, Turkey and Spain, all of which sell pomegranates at scale. “For Azerbaijan, the pomegranate is an integral part of our nation’s cultural heritage, with a history spanning nearly 2,000 years, symbolising abundance, prosperity, and well-being,” Farhad Garashov, chairman of the Pomegranate Producers and…

For travellers to Lisbon, a new boutique hotel has opened offering a different kind of hospitality from most city centre accommodation. Villa Dorothéa lies in the Portuguese capital’s Lapa district, occupying a carefully restored 19th-century hamlet. It is spread across five interconnected houses set between cobbled pathways, quiet courtyards, and terraces scented with jasmine and bougainvillaea. The hotel has no formal lobby. Instead, guests follow footpaths paved with traditional Portuguese stonework, passing ceramic tributes to the area’s fishing heritage and historic tiled plaques that connect the house, hotel, and surrounding city. A micro-neighbourhood in busy Lisbon Villa Dorothéa is designed…

This year has seen her battle shared trauma through the exorcism of shimmering red fabric in Mother Mary. 2026 has also witnessed her navigate corporate threats to save a fashion magazine (The Devil Wears Prada 2) and fight off pesky suitors hungry for her husband’s throne (The Odyssey). Now, Anne Hathaway is striving to survive the suburban anxiety of 1980s America by taking a stotgun to a dinosaur’s face in David Robert Mitchell’s The End Of Oak Street. Seriously, what can’t this woman do? She’s certainly making it clear that while Tom Holland and Zendaya may be the ideal poster…

“Defence stocks make millionaires 95% of the time,” a man tells his followers in a TikTok video before pointing viewers towards a handful of companies in the defence sector. It’s one of several videos offering investment tips: some feature creators while others use AI-generated personas to offer stock picks and financial advice to users scrolling through social media in Europe. But how much of this advice should you actually trust? A new analysis of 150 popular finance-related TikTok videos by broker comparison website BrokerListings.com suggests that viewers should be cautious. The videos it studied amassed at least 100,000 views each,…

One of the founding figures of Iran’s IRGC Mohsen Rezaei has been appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council — giving one of the country’s most controversial senior figures formal authority over the institution responsible for Tehran’s strategic decisions. The appointment was made in a presidential decree signed by Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday. Hours earlier, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei had separately appointed Rezaei as his personal representative on the council. With nearly five decades at the top of the Islamic Republic’s security and military apparatus, Rezaei, 71, succeeds Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a veteran IRGC commander who resigned after around four…

China’s push into orbital data centres risks leaving Europe behind, according to a new policy brief from the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). Orbital data centres are increasingly seen as key strategic assets for processing the vast amounts of data generated by AI and satellite systems. The brief, titled “Constellating Compute: China’s Domestic Policy Towards Orbital Data Centre Leadership,” warns that if the technological gap widens significantly, Europe risks having to compute its own space data through third-party actors and losing access to orbital information. European efforts are under way but remain limited in scale. The EU-funded research project ASCEND,…

Many of us thought that Bulgaria winning the Eurovision Song Contest would mean the capital, Sofia, would be hosting in 2027. However, it’s now been revealed that Burgas will play host. Far less known internationally, it’s already one of the country’s best-loved seaside escapes and Eurovision’s arrival next May will put its beaches, buzzing waterfront and relaxed summer atmosphere firmly on the international map. While the contest will bring the crowds, there’s plenty here beyond the Eurovision bubble, from long sandy beaches and leafy parks to seafood restaurants, cultural sights and a lively arts scene. Whether you’re heading over for…

PARIS — France’s historically hot summer will end up costing the country €10 billion to €15 billion — the equivalent of as much as 0.5 percent of French gross domestic product — according to an estimate shared by Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut. Barbut said the preliminary estimate, which she advised treating “with great caution,” was based on an extrapolation of heat-related costs compiled by France’s official statistics agency, Insee, in past years. She added that the figure could rise as temperatures remain well above seasonal averages in many French regions. Eighty-five percent of the country was also under…

The leader of Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, Magdalena Andersson, is set to become the country’s next prime minister. But her centre-left credentials won’t make her any less of a “frugal” hardliner in the upcoming EU budget negotiations. The Swedish Social Democratic Party (S) is on course to win the 13 September election, currently polling at 32%, well ahead of the national-conservative Sweden Democrats on 20% and the centre-right Moderate Party of current Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on 17%, according to the latest data. That would make Sweden one of the few EU countries turning towards a progressive government, as centre-left…