Author: staff
Published on 17/09/2026 – 15:12 GMT+2 When Germany’s finance minister chose Volkswagen’s headquarters to deliver a warning about China, the symbolism wasn’t subtle. Standing in the shadow of the carmaker’s flagship plant on Thursday, Lars Klingbeil told Brussels it was time to stop pulling punches with Beijing — a message aimed less at EU trade officials than at the tens of thousands of German autoworkers watching their jobs disappear. “We cannot, when all is said and done, be naive in our dealings with China,” Klingbeil said, fresh from meetings with VW staff representatives and local politicians. Germany, he added, needs…
Flooded streets, submerged cars and disrupted transport were reported across parts of Valencia and Catalonia on 17 September as torrential rain swept through eastern Spain. In Valencia province, Avamet recorded more than 70 millimetres of rain in just 30 minutes in several municipalities. Officials described the accumulations as rarely seen, while emergency services recorded 478 incidents involving mainly property damage, leaks and traffic disruption. In Moncada, near Valencia, civil protection crews pumped water from a flooded supermarket. Firefighters dealt with hundreds of other calls across the province. Valencia’s metro services were suspended and the city’s airport closed for several hours,…
If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up free here. ESSENTIALS — Tony Burke’s migration reveal — Labor’s ‘Anyone but Shoebridge’ ultimatum to Greens — The inevitable veterans’ health cap backflip DRIVING THE DAY MIGRATION VIBE CHECK Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke treated his National Press Club audience like adults. And we all learned something. For example, the substantial impact that shrinking household size has on our housing shortage. (The average household shrinking from 2.9 people in the 1980s to 2.5 today generated a need for 1.6 million extra homes to house the same population — something for…
By Akis Tatsis with ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ, AFP Published on 17/09/2026 – 22:43 GMT+2 The Greek parliament on Thursday voted to lift the parliamentary immunity of former European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, clearing the way for Belgian authorities to continue their actions in the investigation into the affair known as Qatargate. Of the 266 MPs present, 264 voted in favour of lifting his immunity, while two declared themselves “present”. The parliament’s Ethics Committee had earlier unanimously recommended the move. The procedure followed the issuing of a European arrest warrant by a Belgian investigating judge in June. The 73-year-old Dimitris Avramopoulos, an MP for the ruling New…
Tripoli government’s security forces have seized some 100,000 ecstasy tablets in the shape of Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, as a separate drug bust in the rival-controlled east discovered a shipment of captagon, the ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad regime’s narcotic of choice. The tablets in Tripoli, intercepted on Saturday by the Deterrence Apparatus for Combating Terrorism and Organised Crime known as Rada, featured Gaddafi’s bust decked out in his characteristic garb, according to Libyan news agency LANA. Rada said investigators received information about a criminal network pushing the pills through an undisclosed European country. The shipment came by sea…
Under NATO’s Article 5, an armed attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all. Russian hybrid attacks, espionage and stray drones have probed the threshold of what constitutes an armed attack. “There is a real risk that drones or other types of missiles could enter the territory of one or several NATO countries on the eastern flank and cause damage. And the official narrative will be that it was an accident and that there is no reason for anyone to consider any kind of NATO response,” Tusk said. He also said that “not all politicians in the West, in the…
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a special address to the Sejm, said he was presenting the public and MPs with “the most probable scenario for the coming few months”. “It is a scenario involving serious events and requiring us to be focused, serious and, above all, mentally ready to pass difficult tests,” Tusk said. He stressed that such tests “certainly lie ahead for all Poles”. The head of government pointed out that his comments refer to the period up to early spring, “because, according to all sources, it is late autumn and winter that will be the most critical phase…
In Torrent, a city of around 85,000 people in the Horta Sud area, streets were covered in mud, with several vehicles damaged or left unusable, and emergency crews in the town rescued 15 people blocked inside a fast‑food restaurant as water poured in. Local residents told the AFP news agency that similar flooding had occurred previously and criticised the absence of structural measures to prevent it. Residents also questioned the timing of Spain’s ES‑Alert emergency warning system. The ES‑Alert, sent at 10:08 pm by the regional emergency centre, urged people to avoid travel, stay away from streams and ravines and…
For the first time since worries about AI eradicating humanity sparked a wave of calls for immediate regulation, the companies were all under one roof. Charles addressed the dire warnings in his remarks to his guests. “There seems urgency in adequately considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands and being used in potentially catastrophic ways,” he said. “Surely, then, we need sufficient means of control before it is all too late.” But after weeks of fervent debate about the need to increase oversight and slow the pace of development, tech leaders at the event were…
Once considered a niche, the space economy is now a major, mature industrial force supporting innovation, public policy goals, and services in Europe and beyond. EU countries currently invest a bit more than 0.04% of their GDP in space, but some countries are moving faster than others. Regarding civilian space projects, Italy now spends more relative to its GDP than any other European country except Luxembourg, overtaking France after a major spending boost over the past 15 years. The OECD’s latest Space Economy at a Glance report claims that Rome’s space economy “is now a strategic high-value industrial and digital…