The US and China will have a red phone for AI emergencies, while Europe is left to watch

Headline of the day! Goes to whether Europe is a museum and a hoard of antiquities!

ZhōngHuá Mundus | The US and China will have a red phone for AI emergencies, while Europe is left to watch

Dutch ASML Says It's Selling Zero Chip Machines In Europe

This is stunning if not shocking news!

(2) ASML Says It's Selling Zero Chip Machines In Europe | Here's Why That's A Warning Sign - YouTube

 

Tesla Semi kommt 2027 nach Europa

Gute Nachrichten! Werden sich elektrische Lkw vielleicht schneller verbreiten als elektrische Pkws?

"Diesmal ist Tesla nicht der Pionier. Wenn 2027 die ersten Tesla Semi an europäische Kunden ausgeliefert werden, trifft der Elektro-Lkw auf einen Markt, den andere bereits besetzt haben.

Mercedes-Benz verkauft den eActros 600, MAN den eTGX,

Scania mehrere batterieelektrische Fernverkehrsmodelle.

Volvo hat gerade die Serienproduktion des FH Aero Electric Extended Range mit bis zu 700 km Reichweite gestartet. ...

Die Zugmaschine soll weniger als 9,1 t wiegen. Zum Vergleich: Mercedes-Benz gibt für den eActros 600 je nach Ausführung rund 11,4 t Leergewicht an. Seine drei Lithium-Eisenphosphat-Akkupakete speichern zusammen 621 kWh, rund 600 kWh davon sind nutzbar. Mit Standardauflieger nennt Mercedes etwa 22 t Nutzlast.

Tesla scheint den europäischen Semi damit stärker auf Nutzlast zu optimieren. Weniger Batterie bedeutet weniger Gewicht – und kann mehr Spielraum für Fracht schaffen. ..."

Tesla Semi kommt 2027 nach Europa – mit einer ungewöhnlichen Strategie

Indian Refineries Account For About 60% Diesel To Europe

Amazing stuff!

(171) Indian Refineries Account For About 60% Diesel To Europe | WION World DNA - YouTube

How Sweden built one of Europe’s hottest startup ecosystems

Recommendable!

"Sweden is perhaps one of the world’s hottest tech hubs right now. It has long been home to Spotify and Klarna, but this latest wave of companies — from legal AI startup Legora to vibe-coding tool company Lovable — has left everyone wondering what’s going on in one of the world’s happiest countries. ...

This year, the startup ecosystem has raised $2.8 billion in funding, according to Dealroom, and is projected to hit at least $5 billion.

Last year, the ecosystem raised $3.2 billion.

Nothing has quite matched the $8.5 billion raised in 2021 — a reflection of the hot venture market that later cooled and is now, per the data, starting to heat back up again. Other big emerging names from the ecosystem include Neko Health and autonomous freight company Einride. ...

the latest wave of startups in Stockholm is benefiting from the first generation of entrepreneurs, who are providing resources and mentorship to the latest generation — or, in some cases, becoming repeat founders themselves (Spotify founder Daniel Ek, for instance, is also the founder of Neko Health). ..."

How Sweden built one of Europe’s hottest startup ecosystems  | TechCrunch

What is not Lovable about Sophia Bendz (Source), a general partner at Cherry Ventures based in Stockholm. Just kidding!

Lichtenstein: Why Europe’s Most Powerful Monarchy Is Heading for a Constitutional Crisis

Recommendable! Lichtenstein & Luxembourg are two very small and special countries in Europe!

(155) Why Europe’s Most Powerful Monarchy Is Heading for a Constitutional Crisis - YouTube

Europeans are using a lot more air conditioning recently

Good news! Let cooler heads prevail! Just kidding!

Is it climate change or increased human sensitivity to warm temperatures (e.g. aging population etc.)?

"... The amount of energy used for household cooling in the EU has doubled since 2018, though from a low base.

In 2020, American households used around 914,000 terajoules to power air conditioning, compared to just 45,000 in Europe.

Chinese air-conditioner exports to the EU reached a record $3.76 billion in the first half of 2026, up 43 percent from a year earlier."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

China joins Europe in scrapping Windows for Linux

Headline of the day! However, it appears to be sensational!

As a Linux user myself, I get it! 😊

"... key takeaways

• The Chinese government is dumping Windows for some desktops.
• A Linux desktop version will replace Windows.
• The most likely candidates are Kylin OS or UOS.

According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China's Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. ..."

"China is pulling the plug on an older version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows tailored for government agencies, taking another step toward rooting out the world’s most popular PC software in a broader effort to reduce its dependence on foreign technology.

The Chinese Ministry of State Security recently told some state-linked entities to uninstall customized Windows 10 software from their machines, people familiar with the matter said. That moves up the schedule to discontinue the operating system by several months ..."

China joins Europe in scrapping Windows for Linux | ZDNET "The specialized Chinese version of Windows was already scheduled for retirement in February 2027, but now its end-of-life date has been moved up."

China Removes Microsoft Windows at State Users Ahead of Plan

How European countries implement gender equality in their militaries, e.g. Denmark

Recommendable!

Yes, gender equality means e.g. conscription for women!

However, soon robots will do the fighting! Lucky women!

(392) Why Europe Is Preparing for a New Era of War | WSJ - YouTube

Das nächste Atommüll Endlager könnten wir noch schneller bauen in Finnland

Gute Nachrichten!

Wann wird die Bananenrepublik D endlich wieder Kernkraftwerke bauen statt existierende, in Betrieb befindliche abzuschalten und abzureissen!

Finnlands Endlager: Was Deutschland von Posiva lernen kann | FAZ (behind paywall) "Als erstes Land der Welt hat Finnland ein Endlager für seinen Atommüll gebaut. Was kann Deutschland davon lernen?"

Albania Is in Trouble with a socialist government again

Concerning!

The country is still not part of the EU! What takes so long!

George Soros "established the Open Society Foundation for Albania in Tirana in 1991" (Google Search)

"The nation of Albania is in a crisis; America should be paying attention. Many will ask, “Why?” ...

Albania ... was trapped under horrific communist rule from the conclusion of World War II until the early 1990s—a nearly 50-year prison sentence for more than 3 million people.

After gaining freedom, the Albanian people overwhelmingly chose to develop stronger ties with the West while cultivating self-government and a free-market economy. The nation became an early signatory of the NATO Partnership for Peace and later a full member of NATO. 

Albania was quick to offer military assistance to the U.S. after the 9/11 terror attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Modern Albania has been a true friend to the U.S. in every way.

Today they are again trapped under a socialist party government that is playing fast and loose with the rules of free elections and weaponizing legitimate government functions to suppress dissent and jail political opponents. The heavily entrenched government of Prime Minister Edi Rama is moving the country away from conservatism and family values (long staples of Albanian culture) by using the country as an experiment for the collectivist ideas of George Soros and his ilk. ...

“Since May 31, protests have been taking place across the country. … [In June,] someone wearing a mask took the Israel’s flag down from the Israel Embassy. The country is suffering under rampant corruption, and … ministers of government and the mayor of Tirana are in jail for corruption. Over one million Albanians have left the country in the last [20 years] due to lack of hope.”

After spending more than two years as the first full-time American defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania, I can attest to the veracity of these statements. The speaker is not only a nonpolitical man of integrity, but I have had all of his comments confirmed by American citizens living in Albania. ..."

Albania Is in Trouble, and We Need to Pay Attention

Chinese trains packed with ACs speed into Europe to help with heat wave

Headline of the day! Why does Europe not produce enough ACs?

Chinese trains packed with ACs speed into Europe to help with heat wave - Nikkei Asia "Freight rail link helps shave 25 days off travel time compared with sea routes"

Unfazed by Iran’s threats, Bulgaria moves to aid U.S. military operations

Update: Iran warns Bulgaria against aiding US military operations

Good news! Bravo!

While the major European powers like UK, France, and Germany act like cowards refusing to support the US in its war against Iran (e.g. no navy minesweepers, no escorts for commercial ships etc.)! Shame on them!

 

"The Bulgarian parliament’s Defence Committee has voted to approve a draft decision enabling U.S. tanker aircraft to support military operations against Iran from an air base on the Balkan country’s territory. The decision comes despite thinly veiled threats from Iranian officials who warned Sofia against aiding Washington.

The committee’s July 21 vote follows a U.S. diplomatic note submitted to the Bulgarian government. In the note, Washington requested Sofia’s approval for the deployment of up to eight Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft and up to 250 U.S. troops with related gear at Bezmer Air Base in eastern Bulgaria between July 24 and Oct. 1, state-owned news agency BTA reported. ..."

Unfazed by Iran’s threats, Bulgaria moves to aid U.S. military operations

Nokia’s 14 Years of Mobile-Phone Supremacy Ended in an Afternoon

Recommendable! A chronicle of fast moving technological change!

What about Motorola?

"In 2005, Nokia sold its billionth mobile phone, a budget-friendly device that went to a customer in Nigeria. By then, the company, based in Espoo, Finland, was making one of every three cellphones globally.

But just nine years later, the mobile-device maker offloaded its entire handset division to Microsoft for pennies on the dollar, compared to what it had been worth at its peak. ...

On 9 January 2007, at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs made a characteristically bold claim. “Today, Apple is reinventing the phone,” he said, soon pulling one of the first iPhones out of his pocket. ...

multitouch [screen] technology ..

And yet it took Nokia years to develop a phone that used multitouch. “Remember, Nokia is based in Finland,” he says. “It’s very cold in Finland. They wear gloves for six months of the year, including the executives. They didn’t think a device like that would work.” ...

That similar product ended up being the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, known as the Tube, released in 2008. “The idea was to focus on streaming videos and television,” Partanen says. “So we made a phone with a similar form factor to the iPhone [that was] optimized for streaming content.” But the 5800 was “delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed,” he says. “It didn’t materialize in the way it was planned. It was released as a watered-down version.” ...

The 1200 kept the 1100’s dust-proofing, flashlight, and long-lasting battery, and added features aimed squarely at the developing world. ...

In September 2008, the first Android phone went on sale—the HTC Dream, which was also sold as the T-Mobile G1. ...

Released in 2009, the Nokia 5230 attempted to be a low-priced, touchscreen (though not multitouch) competitor to both the iPhone and Android. It sold an impressive 150 million units, doing especially well in developing countries.

But the 5230 didn’t have Wi-Fi—one of the biggest complaints at the time. In the developing world, Wi-Fi connections were still rare, so the lack of Wi-Fi made some sense. ..."

How Nokia’s Feature Phones Lost to the Smartphone Era - IEEE Spectrum "How the iPhone and then Android killed the feature phone"

Sweden Introduces Tough New Deportation Rules for imMigrants

Good news! Will other Western countries follow?

(30507) Sweden Introduces Tough New Deportation Rules for Migrants - YouTube

President Trump in Turkey: Greenland 'should be controlled' by U.S.

President Trump can be very persistent! Is Greenland an obsession of him? Or what is the strategic value of Greenland to the US? I am afraid the value is high.

I bet President Trump and Denmark can work out something regarding Greenland! The Danes are reasonable people! Perhaps, an outright purchase of the island is not possible!

I suppose since the Vikings discovered Greenland around 9th century, this island has been part of Denmark.

To all the global warming/climate change hoax purveyors: Why was Greenland called greenland by the Vikings? Hint: Medieval warming period, Greenland was much less ice covered.

Trump in Turkey: Greenland 'should be controlled' by U.S. | Just The News "Trump, in both his first and second terms, has attempted to secure a deal to purchase Greenland from Denmark, though both parties have balked at the prospect and NATO members have fumed over Trump's territorial aspirations."

Heatwave suffering Europe Looks to a more Air-Conditioned Future

About time! How much of this low residential A/C usage in Europe is due to the climate change ideology and demagoguery? 

"Air conditioning usage is rapidly growing across Europe, as intensifying heat waves strain infrastructure built for cooler climates.

~20% of European homes have AC units; but adoption is expanding even in historically cooler countries like the 

U.K., where homes with AC doubled over the past three years [from a very low level I suspect]; and 

Germany, where AC adoption jumped 6% between 2023–2024.  

Prioritizing health care: Britain’s Climate Change Committee warned that air conditioning is becoming urgently needed in hospitals. This week, medical machines broke down in sweltering UK hospital wards even as heat-related admissions surged.   

The cost of cooling: Higher electricity prices and aging power grids make widespread AC adoption especially challenge ..."

Global Health NOW: Pakistan’s Pediatric HIV Outbreak; and Overheated Europe Looks to an Air-Conditioned Future

Remediating PFAS pollution in Europe could cost €100 billion a year. Really!

The alarmism and hysteria about PFAS won't die! It is only a matter of time until we come up with better solutions!

Fact is that PFAS are extremely useful chemicals!

The first PFAS were introduced in the 1940s. If PFAS are so dangerous, then a large part of the world population should be severely affected or dead by now. 

Notice also this study included/mixed PFAS and precursors, which may or may not be dubious!

"A new study suggests Europe could spend more than €100 billion (£85 billion) a year remediating PFAS pollution while still capturing less than 2% of current emissions. Researchers say the findings reinforce the need to prioritise reducing PFAS use and releases at source rather than trying to clean up contamination after it occurs. ..."

EPA: "... Current scientific research suggests that exposure to certain PFAS may lead to adverse health outcomes. However, research is still ongoing to determine how different levels of exposure to different PFAS can lead to a variety of health effects.

Research is also underway to better understand the health effects associated with low levels of exposure to PFAS over long periods of time, especially in children. ..."

From the abstract:

"Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are widespread in environmental media. Concentrations are currently increasing due to substantial ongoing emissions. One approach to mitigating environmental PFAS exposure is the remediation of existing stocks, contaminated sites, landfills, and drinking water. However, the costs to achieve this on a regional scale and amounts of PFAS that could be addressed through remediation remain uncharacterized.

To address this, costs for “legacy” and “emerging” PFAS remediation scenarios in Europe were developed based on publicly available site data, remediation cost data, and an expert assessment of currently scalable technologies, through collaboration within a cross-border, collaborative investigation network entitled the “Forever Lobbying Project”. The “legacy” scenario reflects remediation to remove previously emitted, long-chain PFAS that are currently widely regulated in Europe from selected hotspot sites and drinking water. The “emerging” scenario targets nearly all PFAS, including ultra-short chain PFAS, across a wider range of intermediate receptors, including wastewater effluent and biosolids.

Legacy remediation costs across all 27 EU countries were estimated to be approximately €37 billion over 20 years (€1.8 billion per year), which would lead to a reduction in health impacts.

Emerging costs that address shorter chain PFAS in more media were estimated to be about 20 times more expensive at €100 billion per year. However, even this level of investment may be insufficient. This emerging scenario treating 1636 heavily contaminated European soil sites plus all large wastewater plant effluents, large drinking water zones, agriculturally applied sludges, and collected landfill leachate would only address 3 ton per year to 50 tons per year of PFAAs and precursors, which is less than 2% of current estimated EU emissions. The substantial difference in costs between scenarios and the low proportion of emissions that can be addressed with remediation highlight the urgency of implementing use restrictions and source control for PFAS. Preventing PFAS pollution would be less costly and more impactful than relying on remediation after release."

Remediating PFAS pollution in Europe could cost €100 billion a year | Research | Chemistry World

EPA: Our Current Understanding of the Human Health and Environmental Risks of PFAS

PFAS remediation across Europe: costs and limited impacts (open access)

Visual Abstract

Cleaner skies, sizzling summers: How less air pollution may amplify Europe's heat

This has been suggested multiple times in the last 1-2 years or so if I remember correctly!

Let's not forget we just came out of an ice age, i.e. the Little Ice Age from about 1300 AD to 1850 AD. Naturally, things warm up again! 😊

Something similar can also be said about Arizona: A cloudy summer day (rare) is a lot cooler than a blue sky summer day (most of the time).

This article is also another warning that so called climate models ought to be treated with a large dose of skepsis in the past and present and overall! Climate is a very complex natural phenomenon that we still poorly understand!

Probably, too many climate scientists have a strong love affair (emotional attachment, bias) with the cute term greenhouse gases (GHG)! Almost as if GHG was self explanatory!

"... A new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, reveals that recent European summers have been characterized by an increase in these "quasi-stationary" wave patterns, effectively trapping heat over the continent and creating what feels like a giant, unmoving heat dome. ...

For decades, sulfate aerosols from coal plants and smokestacks acted like a dimmer on the sunlight over Europe. One researcher notes these particles "have masked the warming…by just over one degree on average" in summer. But once clean-air laws kicked in and sulfates fell, "the temperature increased rapidly." ..."

From the abstract:

"Compared to observations, climate models underestimate the recent increase of European summer temperatures, due to an underestimation of Quasi-stationary Rossby Wave (QSW) trends over Europe. This is partially due to unpredictable internal variability and partially due to an underestimation of the predictable signal in response to external forcings. The analysis of a large ensemble of historical simulations shows that forcing factors generate changes in QSW and European summer temperatures consistent with those from observations but with a lower magnitude, making most of the observed changes predictable by the models through a signal adjustment.

The analysis of single forcing experiments shows a major contribution of aerosols starting from 1980, when the reduction of sulfate aerosol emissions over Europe is associated with a longitudinal temperature asymmetry, which alters the atmospheric circulation. These results further demonstrate the need to account for model errors to best estimate past and future changes in climate."

Cleaner skies, sizzling summers: How falling pollution may amplify Europe's heat

Accelerated European Summer Warming Driven by Atmospheric Circulation Changes in Response to Aerosol Forcing (open access)

Increase in European summer heatwaves driven by greenhouse gases and amplified by aerosol emission reductions (open access; it appears there is even a second, similar paper published almost at the same time)

Brazil plans to buy 20 more Swedish Gripen fighter aircraft

Good news for Sweden and the European defense industry!

"Brazilian Defense Minister José Múcio Monteiro Filho announced today that he wants to buy an additional 20 Gripen E jets, which would bring Brazil’s fleet to 56 fighters.

The announcement came during a press conference today, wrapping up the minister’s four-day visit to Sweden. ...

After Saab beat out the Boeing F/A-18 and Dassault Rafale in 2014, Brazil ordered a total of 36 Gripen fighters: 28 single-seat Gripen E models and eight two-seat Gripen F variants. Eleven aircraft have been delivered to date. ..."

Brazil plans to buy 20 more Gripen fighters - Breaking Defense "Gen. Marcelo Kanitz Damasceno, the Brazilian air chief, told Breaking Defense that the need for extra jets was born from a serious look at Brazil’s air power."

Saab Gripen