Author: staff
At least 306 people have been infected with salmonella in Belgium after they ate eggs, according to figures released by the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC). The outbreak has been linked to eggs produced by Laerco, a company based in Geel in northern Belgium. Salmonella was first detected at the facility at the end of April. The following month, a large-scale recall saw all eggs from the site withdrawn from the market. Contamination spreads At first, the contamination appeared to be confined to one of the company’s four henhouses, but the number of new…
Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) said on Tuesday that it had imposed a fine of 153.7 million reais (€25.57 million) on ByteDance, owner of the social network TikTok, for “irregularities in the processing of data belonging to children and adolescents”. In addition to the fine, the Chinese platform will be required to delete data collected irregularly and, according to the statement, “ByteDance has also committed to implementing a compliance plan to improve the protection of children and adolescents on TikTok”. The platform will have to automatically apply stricter privacy settings to accounts belonging to children under 16, strengthen systems…
Waymo will introduce its self-driving taxis in Munich by the end of 2027, the American autonomous driving company announced today. The Google subsidiary will start rolling out vehicles in the German city this year, which will be manually driven while the company “starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks” and testing with safety drivers, Waymo said in a statement. “Bavaria is determined to live up to its pioneering role and be an international leader in autonomous driving,” Florian Herrmann, the head of the Bavarian state chancellery, said in the statement. “Now we need to move quickly from testing to…
Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and his eldest son were detained Tuesday after law enforcement officers conducted searches at dozens of locations linked to the family, the country’s Anti-Corruption Committee said. Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it initiated criminal prosecution against Kocharyan, 71, on charges of abuse of authority, bribery, and large-scale money laundering. The office said it detained four other people besides Kocharyan and his eldest son Sedrak as part of the investigation. Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Committee said it was investigating allegations that state assets were illegally sold to private companies below market value during Kocharyan’s time in office from…
By Romain Gutkind with AFP Published on 25/08/2026 – 19:42 GMT+2•Updated 19:47 The mission began at 12:27 GMT. Twenty minutes later Sophie Adenot was once again out in open space around the ISS, accompanied by her crewmate, US astronaut Anil Menon. The 44-year-old Frenchwoman had already carried out her first spacewalk on 18 August with Anil Menon, and says she “loved working in the vacuum of space”. The two astronauts spent more than six hours outside the ISS, just long enough to dismantle the faulty Space-to-Ground antenna, known to NASA engineers as SGANT. The equipment allows the ISS to communicate with Houston. Sophie…
The MEP was summoned as a suspect to the Kraków branch of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a state body empowered to prosecute crimes related to the Nazi occupation and communist eras. The case stems from two interviews he gave in July 2025. In one, he declared that “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”; in another, he described accounts of their use as a “propaganda narrative” underpinning a “quasi-religious cult.” The existence and use of gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau is extensively documented. Around a million Jews were killed in the camp, along with around 100,000 Poles, Roma,…
Published on 25/08/2026 – 19:24 GMT+2•Updated 19:27 Three people have been arrested after Slovak police said they thwarted a planned arson attack on a drone manufacturer’s production facility in eastern Slovakia. In a statement posted to Facebook on Tuesday, police said two individuals were detained in Slovakia while a third person was arrested by German authorities after a European arrest warrant was issued. They are suspected of preparing the attack “as accomplices on someone else’s instructions.” None of those arrested were Slovak nationals, the force said, adding that it had acted on information provided by Slovak intelligence. It also did…
A tornado filmed from Verzeille, near Pomas in southern France, swept through the area on Monday. The footage shows the funnel forming beneath dark storm clouds before moving across the village. The storm damaged about 300 homes and injured 39 people, according to local authorities. Two of the injured were in a critical condition. Rescue teams searched damaged buildings, while emergency centres opened to accommodate residents whose homes were unsafe. The Aude region was under a thunderstorm alert when the tornado struck. Roofs were torn off, trees were damaged and debris was scattered across the affected villages. No people were…
Italian energy giant Eni is ramping up its investment in Egypt, with plans to drill 30 exploration wells and 200 development wells as it deepens its role in the country’s oil and gas sector. Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in El Alamein on Tuesday, along with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Karim Badawi, to discuss the company’s expanding footprint in Egyptian fields and its role in building out Egypt’s position as a regional gas hub. Eni has invested a total of $8.5 billion (approximately €7.3bn) in Egypt to…
Published on 25/08/2026 – 19:12 GMT+2•Updated 19:14 A strange new AI system called Ox Alpha has created a storm of confusion among tech analysts and users alike. Nobody knows who made this model, which dropped on OpenRouter as an anonymous proprietary stealth model on 20 August. While it is not open source, it is currently offering a free preview until 27 August, after which it is yet to be determined whether the model will be chargeable or not. Although the maker and owner of this model is currently unknown, there are suspicions of it potentially belonging to China-based Zhipu AI’s…