00:00The Spanish government said on Thursday it will deploy the army to Ceuta after a massive
00:06surge in illegal migrant crossings from Morocco.
00:11Hamas says it has agreed to disarm completely in a deal that would include Israel's withdrawal
00:16from the Gaza Strip.
00:21FIFA has vowed to press ahead with a controversial private investment plan despite widespread
00:26opposition to the proposal.
00:30Eurozone GDP delivers a better than expected performance in the second quarter of 2026,
00:36ahead of economic expectations for a 0.2% increase.
00:41Spain and Morocco have reached an agreement for the urgent return of migrants who crossed
00:46the border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Thursday.
00:51Thousands of migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco on Thursday swimming or using inflatable
00:57devices.
00:58Ceuta's president Juan Jesus Vivas estimates that the recent average has been around 300
01:04sea arrivals per day and warns that the figure continues to rise.
01:09The Spanish Interior Ministry has suggested that human trafficking networks may be taking
01:15advantage of a recent court ruling to encourage the arrival of undocumented migrants.
01:21The ruling states that people who enter by swimming do not meet the legal requirements for immediate
01:27rejection at the border without an individual case being opened.
01:31As a result, many of those crossing cannot be immediately returned.
01:36Morocco's embassy in Madrid has attributed the mass entry to criminal organizations.
01:46Hamas says it has agreed to a deal announced on Thursday by US President Donald Trump to disarm
01:51the group and pave the way for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the reconstruction of the enclave.
01:57Trump earlier hailed the deal as historic and monumental, noting that the Board of Peace he
02:02created in January agreed to it to put to action his 20-point peace plan for Gaza.
02:08The deal, according to the US President, will be carefully structured in phases, first beginning
02:14with the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other groups, and then moving on to the IDF's
02:19retreat.
02:20After both those steps are completed, a technocratic government run by former UK Prime Minister
02:26Tony Blair will then be appointed to work alongside Palestinian officials to govern the territory
02:31and oversee its reconstruction.
02:34Trump did not detail a specific timeline in his announcement, but officials familiar with
02:39the matter have indicated that they expect the disarmament process to be completed within
02:43the coming two weeks.
02:45They added that Hamas's surrendering of heavy weapons and the decommissioning of its tunnels
02:50is a process expected to take between 200 and 350 days.
02:55Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that his country will not withdraw its troops
03:01from Gaza until all weapons are turned over and Hamas is dismantled.
03:10World football's governing body FIFA has vowed to press ahead with a controversial private investment
03:16plan despite widespread opposition to the proposal.
03:20On Thursday, Europe's football union UEFA declared it would boycott future FIFA World Cup competitions
03:26if it went ahead with Gianni Infantino's plan.
03:30Later, North and Central America's CONCACAF shared that all 41 of its member associations
03:35also rejected FIFA's proposal to sell a stake in the business operations of the World Cup.
03:41Infantino's project was announced on Tuesday when he wrote to members that if they approved
03:46of the proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise commercial subsidiary, 20% owned by private investors,
03:52their funding would double to $20 million for the next four years.
03:57Infantino has proposed FFE would run events such as the World Cup and Club World Cup.
04:02The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of
04:07US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. While FIFA said it would go ahead with the
04:13consultation process for the proposal, it appears to then back off from the commercial subsidiary,
04:19saying without the support of its 211 member associations, FFE would not be established.
04:30Spain is still on alert due to wildfires near Madrid. Huge areas have turned into ash and tens of thousands
04:38of people have been forced to leave their homes.
04:41We are in Villa del Prado, at a few kilometers away from Madrid.
04:46This area looks like this area.
04:48The trees are simply mistreated by flames along the trees that are still alive.
04:53The wild guards of the houses were destroyed.
05:09The people of Villa del Prado were allowed to return home where they found the disaster after the fire.
05:28Some houses in Villa del Prado were consumed by flames. Other escaped. In total, at least 77,000 hectares burned
05:38in the Madrid region.
05:40According to other estimates, it would actually be at least 100,000 hectares.
06:10The Spanish authorities have also sent an optimistic message. The wind is no longer blowing so hard,
06:17which means that the fire is no longer spreading so quickly. And the firefighters finally have an advantage.
06:23So far, more than 20,000 people have been given permission to return to their homes.
06:28The 9,500 from the Madrid area alone are still evacuated.
06:38Europe has faced increasingly severe heat waves in the past few weeks,
06:43causing wildfires in several countries such as Spain, France and Greece.
06:47But further impact has been emerging as key waterways such as the Rhine and the Danube
06:53have fallen to exceptionally low levels in some places breaking records.
06:58This could make cargo transport significantly more difficult,
07:02potentially forcing vessels to carry smaller loads, causing commercial shipping on parts of these routes
07:08to grind almost to heart, or requiring operators to adopt more cumbersome alternatives.
07:15Major European industries, including oil refining and chemicals, could therefore face severe disruption.
07:22Operators must instead divide cargo between several vessels or shift some freight to road or rail.
07:28For the chemical and petrochemical industries, reduced navigable depths restrict deliveries of essential materials,
07:36such as nafta or liquefied petroleum gas, from North Sea ports to inland factories.
07:43Raising water temperatures have also made industrial cooling systems less efficient,
07:49further increasing operational pressures. This is especially important for nuclear and thermal power plants.
07:56In Hungary, the low water levels have forced the PAC's nuclear power plant
08:01to reduce output and shut down one of its four reactors. Romania had to do the same.
08:14Brussels is racing to build infrastructure to train advanced AI models and catch up with global tech competitors.
08:21The European Commission has launched a call for tenders to publicly finance up to seven AI gigafactories in Europe.
08:29These large-scale computing facilities, equipped with highly specialized chips,
08:33are designed to train the next generation of AI technologies, notably the most advanced large language models.
08:40The move forms part of a broader tech sovereignty push to cut the EU's dependents and foreign suppliers of cloud
08:46services and chips.
08:47Europe wants to become the first AI continent, the European Commission said Thursday.
08:53All of this to also serve our tech sovereignty agenda, because we want advanced AI to be developed right here
09:01at home in Europe,
09:03and by European companies and European researchers in line with Europe's values and fundamental rights.
09:12Massive data center projects are already well underway in the US and China.
09:16In response, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a plan to build AI gigafactories in Europe
09:23at the AI Action Summit in Paris last year. Ten EU countries have expressed interest in hosting a gigafactory,
09:30yet critics warn that while gigafactories aim to build sovereign European infrastructure,
09:34the EU remains heavily reliant on foreign suppliers for specialized AI chips.
09:43The Eurozone delivered a better-than-expected performance in the second quarter of 2026,
09:49with the GDP expanding by 0.4 percent quarter-on-quarter, up from flat growth in the first quarter,
09:57and ahead of economists' expectations for a 0.2 percent increase. Across the EU,
10:04growth accelerated to 0.5 percent from 0.1 percent previously. Annual growth also strengthened,
10:12reaching 1.0 percent in the Euro area and 1.2 percent across the EU. According to Pantheon macroeconomics
10:20calculations, the rebound in Ireland alone added 0.1 percentage points to headline Eurozone growth.
10:28It was followed by Lithuania, where the economy grew by 1.7 percent, and Sweden, which expanded by 1.4
10:37percent.
10:38Europe's largest economies, Germany, France and Italy all expanded, but at a slower pace than previously.
10:45However, Belgium and Austria stagnated, recording no growth during the quarter. Economists say,
10:53although the figures suggest the bloc is proving more resilient than feared, despite higher energy
10:59prices and continued geopolitical uncertainty, recent preliminary July data show pressures are
11:06taking back-up in major economies due to renewed energy shocks.
Comments