Author: staff

A significant drop in migrant flows towards Greece’s sea borders has been recorded in the first half of 2026, according to figures presented by the Greek minister for maritime affairs, Vassilis Kikilias. As noted in a post on X, total arrivals from Turkey and Libya have fallen by 34% compared with the same period in 2025. Since the beginning of the year, 15,389 arrivals have been recorded, against 23,243 in the same period last year. The steepest decline was seen in migrant flows from Turkey, which are down 59%, while arrivals from Libya showed a smaller decrease of around 4%.…

Hiroshima marked the 81st anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the western Japanese city on Thursday, with its mayor criticising major powers for waging wars and urging them to stop justifying the possession of nuclear weapons as a method of deterrence. “Downplaying the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and accepting the use of force to pursue one’s own prosperity risk cycles of violent retaliation that could ultimately result in another Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” Kazumi Matsui said. Too many political leaders still consider nuclear deterrence a realistic approach and legitimise violence, which “simply pushes a world without nuclear weapons further into…

There’s been a lot of talk about set-jetting in recent years, with people booking stays in hotels made famous by TV shows and films like The White Lotus or Lost in Translation. But what if you could make a movie set your permanent address? This is exactly what you can do – assuming you have a cool €1.2 million-€1.4 million to spare. That’s because an apartment in the villa from Casino Royale has just gone up for sale on Italy Sotheby’s International Realty. Located on the shores of Lake Como, Villa La Gaeta was the setting of the 2006 movie’s…

Published on 06/08/2026 – 10:02 GMT+2 TikTok videos are coming to Disney+, meaning that Spider-Man and Moana are about to become TikTok stars. Officially. The tech giant and the entertainment behemoth have inked what they are calling a “first-of-its-kind” content sharing deal, which will allow Disney themed TikTok videos to live on both of their platforms. Creators will gain access to Disney assets, while a “thoughtfully curated” selection of videos from creators who opt-in will live on both TikTok and in Verts on Disney+ (the company’s vertical video products). The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. “The…

Published on 06/08/2026 – 10:20 GMT+2 Trees age very slowly. The reason is that they constantly renew their tissues: needles or leaves, bark, twigs, trunk and roots are continuously regenerated while older parts gradually die off. A remarkable fact: while trunk and crown are exposed to wind, weather, animals and loggers, a tree’s vast underground root system can continue to live on, hidden from view, for much longer. Germany’s probably oldest tree stands in complete seclusion on a grazed alpine meadow between Steibis and Balderschwang in the Upper Allgäu, at an altitude of 1,100 metres. The German Dendrological Society, an…

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…

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