Author: staff

The European Commission’s long-awaited wildfire strategy, unveiled in March, was presented as a major shift in approach: moving away from simply fighting fires once they break out towards prioritising prevention measures. Four months later, Spain and France are facing one of their worst wildfire seasons in years, exposing the gap between Brussels’ ambitions and the limited progress made on the ground. As flames spread across southern Europe, the Commission is facing growing scrutiny over whether its promise to put wildfire prevention ahead of emergency response came too late to make any difference this summer. The strategy unveiled in March marked…

Published on 28/07/2026 – 17:15 GMT+2 Newly released audio recordings appear to show former US President Joe Biden discussing classified information with his memoir ghostwriter and at times struggling to recall details during interviews conducted before his 2020 election. Around three hours of audio and 117 pages of partially redacted transcripts were released by the Oversight Project, a conservative group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, after Biden lost a lengthy legal battle to keep his conversations with ghostwriter Mark Lewis Zwonitzer private. “They didn’t even know I had this,” Biden told Zwonitzer in October 2016, near the end of his…

“It does look like some of the valuations … are quite up for the markets overall and for some of these companies. But I’m not a stock market prognosticator. I can’t tell you how much further they’ll go, whether they’re justified or not. But it is something we monitor and discuss and work on trying to make sure that things don’t go badly,” Schindler said. The “central bank for central banks,” the Bank for International Settlements, warned that disappointing returns for the AI hyperscalers could result in a “protracted investment bust” which could trigger a “sudden pullback in financing.” The…

If the European Union wants to reach energy sovereignty, it should accelerate renewable energy and heat pumps rather than locking itself into new gas imports, according to a new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The think tank contends that expanding wind, solar power and heat pumps is the most effective long-term answer, estimating that in 2024, these technologies displaced 8.8 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) – roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the EU’s imports of Qatari LNG that year. According to the study, if the bloc meets its existing deployment targets…

Residents in Le Porge, in France’s southwestern Gironde region, are working to stop a devastating wildfire from reigniting by finding smouldering embers in the forest and dousing them with water. Using pickup trucks fitted with water tanks and hoses, locals are targeting lingering hotspots as smoke continues to rise from the burned landscape. At least 170 homes were destroyed by the wildfire, leaving widespread damage behind it and a long recovery effort ahead.

Wildfires in France’s south-western Gironde department have forced evacuations and protective measures at strategically important defence and aerospace sites around Bordeaux, disrupting one of the country’s most important industrial clusters. Among the affected companies are ArianeGroup, Dassault Aviation, Airbus Atlantic and missile-propulsion specialist Roxel. The French Defence Ministry said 1,500 military personnel had been deployed since Saturday to support the emergency response. It added that “experts and resources” had been sent to help secure industrial sites in coordination with other government departments. ArianeGroup, whose facilities in the area produce propulsion systems for Europe’s Ariane rockets and France’s M51 ballistic missiles,…

Hungary’s former prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has accused the judiciary of a politically motivated probe targeting his far-right Fidesz party. The claims followed a raid on 21 July at a Budapest data centre hosting servers linked to Fidesz. The Bács-Kiskun County Prosecutor’s Office said the operation was part of an investigation into alleged irregularities at Hungary’s state-run National Cultural Fund. Investigators suspect the fund’s decision-making body of unlawfully awarding 1,079 grants worth more than 17 billion forints (€47 million), in breach of funding rules. But speaking outside Fidesz headquarters, Viktor Orbán said the corruption investigation had been used to justify…

Iran said it would not allow the US to determine when the two countries go to war or make peace, as four consecutive nights without new exchanges of fire raised hopes that Qatar and Pakistan-led mediation could revive the collapsed interim agreement. “We will not allow the United States to determine the timing of war and peace,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said at his weekly press briefing on Monday. He said any decision on future talks would be based solely on Iran’s national interests and that Tehran would continue defending itself “for as long as necessary”. Speaking to Austria’s…

Zinedine Zidane will take charge of France on a four-year contract from 1 August, ending Didier Deschamps’ 14-year reign as head coach. “I’m excited,” Zidane said. “The France team makes you dream. We have extraordinary players, an extraordinary team.” More than 20 years after leaving Les Bleus as a player, Zinedine Zidane is taking over from Didier Deschamps. The decision was made official on Tuesday by Philippe Diallo, president of the French Football Federation (FFF), who opened the press conference by thanking “DD” for taking the France team “to the very top.” “Zinedine is a legend of French football and…

From this Sunday, AI companies will be subject to new obligations under the EU’s AI Act requiring them to make deepfakes and other AI-generated content clearly recognisable as artificial. However, technical challenges raise doubts about how effective the rules will be. Two years ago, the EU adopted sweeping rules to regulate artificial intelligence and created a dedicated AI Office to oversee the landmark legislation’s implementation. Among its many provisions, the AI Act includes the world’s first transparency regimes for synthetic media, requiring providers of generative AI systems like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to ensure that artificially generated or manipulated…