A Man of no Importance.

...pandemic treaty on Monday. WHO member states kicked off another attempt at finalising the missing piece of the pandemic treaty on Monday, with the Ebola outbreak injecting a fresh sense of urgency. Wealthy countries and developing nations are at loggerheads in talks at the World Health Organization's headquarters over how the pandemic agreement, adopted last year, will work in practice. Though the treaty was agreed in May 2025, how its key mechanism would operate was left out to get the deal over the line. The agreement's Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential, then sharing benefits derived from them such as vaccines, tests and treatments. It was meant to be finalised by May 2026, but progress has been agonisingly slow. Negotiations have often gone late into the night, producing slender advances and leaving diplomats drained. This two-week session until July 17 is the seventh such round of talks. As the number of confirmed Ebola deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo outbreak topped 500, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to grasp the nettle. "Keep the destination in sight," pleaded the UN health agency's director-general. "A future in which pathogen samples and information move quickly, without needless delay; and in which the benefits that come from them reach the people who need them most, fairly and in time."

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Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for multilateral measures to end the arms trade with Israel, including a push to suspend the EU–Israel Association Agreement. It is also the only EU country to have formally recalled its ambassador and, back in October 2023, announced it was halting arms sales to the country. According to a report by the Delas Centre for Peace Studies in Barcelona, military imports from Israel persisted after October 2023, amounting to €36.7m ($41.9m) by February 2025 under HS code 93 (arms and ammunition) and 8710 (tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles). In fact, “Spain has never imported more than after 7 October 2023,” the report claimed. This shifted on 23 September 2025, however, when Sanchez approved a law imposing an arms embargo against Israel and the prohibition of imports from the occupied Palestinian territories. Now “it is no longer merely a matter of withholding new licences, but of establishing a general legal rule of prohibition”, explained Eirene de Prada, a professor of international law and member of Juristas por Palestina (Lawyers for Palestine). But between pre-existing contracts, explicit exceptions and gaping loopholes, the law is only as strong as its weakest point. “In other words, the government has engaged in doublespeak,” De Prada told Middle East Eye. “At a rhetorical, discursive, and symbolic level, it sends a strong message regarding the arms embargo while, in practice, it has exploited loopholes in the Royal Decree-Law to continue doing business with Israel.”

...remove President Tamás Sulyok. Hungary's opposition Fidesz party has called for a demonstration on Thursday after Prime Minister Péter Magyar submitted a constitutional amendment to remove the country's president, Tamás Sulyok. Magyar, who won a landslide victory in April's election, ending Viktor Orbán's 16 years in power, has repeatedly called for the removal of the official appointed by his predecessor, whom he calls "Orbán's puppet". Magyar's amendment, filed on Saturday, states that "the mandate of the incumbent President of the Republic shall terminate on the day following the entry into force of the amendment to the Fundamental Law". The governing Tisza Party holds a supermajority in parliament, meaning the amendment is expected to pass. According to sources in the Hungarian parliament, the vote could take place as early as next week, but this has not been officially confirmed. The constitutional changes would also remove four constitutional judges by setting their retirement age at 70, and limit parliamentary deputies to a 12-year mandate. President Sulyok has said he has no intention of resigning, describing Magyar's move as a threat to democracy.

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Air pollution appears to alter how sperm genes function, one of the largest fertility studies of its kind has found. Men exposed to common air pollutants while sperm were developing showed subtle DNA changes that affected whether genes were switched on or off, raising fresh concerns air pollution may harm male fertility. The findings, presented on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in London, identified ozone and nitrogen dioxide as the pollutants most strongly linked to these so-called epigenetic changes. Dr Carrie Nobles, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the work, said: “Our findings suggest that air pollution exposure during key stages of sperm development may be associated with changes in sperm DNA.” The study followed more than 2,000 men in Salt Lake City, Utah, between 2013 and 2017. Participants provided semen samples when they enrolled and again after two, four and six months. Researchers estimated each participant’s exposure to outdoor air pollutants – including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and fine particulate matter – during the three months before each sample was collected, corresponding to the period of sperm production. Growing evidence suggests air pollution could reduce male fertility but the biological mechanisms have been unclear. The latest work points to DNA methylation – chemical tags attached to DNA that regulate whether genes are switched on or off without changing the genetic code – as one possible explanation.

The Indian government has directed Meta to immediately disable advertisements and content on Instagram that promote or facilitate child sexual abuse material, a senior official said. It comes after a BBC Eye investigation found that Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India, some of which linked users to Telegram channels where the material was offered for sale. The government has also sought an explanation within a week on how advertisements containing such material were allowed on the platform, the official said. Meta has said it has a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse material and is continuing to strengthen its detection and defences. Telegram said it had removed more than 274,000 groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026. "The government has issued a stern notice to Meta over child sexual exploitative and abuse material appearing in paid advertisements on Instagram," a senior official in India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told the BBC.

A small retrofit device – now sold through some of the major washing machine brands – could keep millions of tonnes of plastic fibres out of rivers and oceans each year. Euronews Earth spoke with Adam Root, CEO of Matter, to learn more about the innovation that made the company a finalist for the EarthShot Prize in 2025. Synthetic fabrics release invisible pollution Around 60 per cent of all fabric produced today is synthetic – made, in effect, from plastic. Each time a garment is washed, the machine wears away the fibres, releasing tiny fragments too small for existing filters to catch. "Think of your washing machine – if you rub your hand on the inside, it's kind of like a cheese grater," Root tells Euronews Earth. "Think of it abrading slowly all of these pieces of plastic and turning them into tiny little pieces that go down into our water." The scale of the problem is significant. Matter's research puts the figure at roughly a gram of microplastics released per wash. In the UK alone – with around 24 million homes, most with a washing machine – that amounts to an estimated 16 tonnes entering the water supply every day. Across Europe, with over 100 million households, the numbers climb further still. Once in waterways, the particles do not simply dilute. Root describes microplastics as acting like a pill, carrying chemical pollutants into the organisms that absorb them. "This material is adding into organisms like phytoplankton and zooplankton," he says. "These guys are the foundation for life on Earth. They sequester more carbon than all the plants and trees on Earth. They produce a majority of the world's oxygen."

The EU regulations are set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, and require gas suppliers to measure methane emissions. They could later allow the EU to block the most polluting imports from its market, NU.nl reports. The Netherlands is part of a 12-country coalition pushing for a three-year delay. This comes even as most EU members continue to support the climate policy. The push is unfolding amid growing concerns about gas availability. A recent disruption linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz reduced global supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG), a form of natural gas that has been cooled into liquid for transport by ship over long distances. At the same time, European gas storage levels are already relatively low heading into winter. Oil industry groups and analysts at Wood Mackenzie warn the rules could lead to shortages. Their research, commissioned by two industry associations, estimates that nearly 50% of gas imports and about 90% of oil imports would not comply with the standards next year. They say this raises risks for Europe’s energy security. The United States, under President Donald Trump, is also lobbying against the policy. U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told the Financial Times the rules “could still trigger an energy crisis at a time when Europe cannot afford it.” Environmental organizations strongly oppose any delay. A coalition of NGOs wrote to the European Commission in April. They said, “Stable regulation is essential for energy security.” They also said, “implementation, not renegotiation, is the only credible option.” They point to Rystad Energy analysis arguing that sufficient compliant global gas supply already exists.

Ministers will launch a crackdown on large political donations on Monday, as Nigel Farage faces a possible second investigation into gifts he received from a convicted fraudster before becoming an MP. The government will announce a series of measures to make political funding more transparent, including restrictions on donations from foreign-based benefactors. But it is under pressure to go further after the revelation that the Reform UK leader received a number of benefits from the crypto entrepreneur George Cottrell before the general election. Those benefits could also become the subject of a new investigation by Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary standards commissioner, who is already looking into a £5m donation to Farage from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. Announcing the new rules, the communities secretary, Steve Reed, said: “British democracy is not for sale. These tough new rules will shut down dodgy funding, stop foreign money influencing our elections and keep our democracy strong.” Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary, said: “We’re cracking down on those trying to buy – and sell – our democracy and putting the British people first.” The changes will apply a £100,000 donations cap to anyone who moves to the UK from abroad for a year after they have done so. Officials say this will stop donors from circumventing restrictions on foreign-based donations simply by registering to vote in this country. The government will also bring in new checks to assess whether companies making political donations are legitimate by measuring their profit as well as their revenues. This is designed to stop donors registering businesses in the UK in order to qualify under British elections law but funnelling the profits abroad. Finally, ministers are also planning to bring in disclosure requirements for political candidates for the first time, which will also apply to the period immediately before they became a candidate. Candidates will have to declare any donation above £2,230, though personal gifts will continue to be exempt. While MPs currently have to declare donations above £500, including for a year before they became an MP, unsuccessful candidates are not required to follow the same rules.

Europe’s infrastructure is embracing the renewables boom, with one company determined to transform the continent’s railway lines into mini solar farms. Last year, Swiss start-up Sun-Ways unveiled the world’s first-ever solar railway after rolling out 100 metres of photovoltaic (PV) panels in between active tracks in Buttes, a village in the Val-de-Travers district. Originally planned as just a three-year trial, the railway was fitted with 48 specially-designed solar panels with a combined power of 18 kWp. However, the positive results yielded just one year into the trial mean the installation of a permanent system along the railroad track is now likely, Euronews Earth has been told. Are solar railways efficient? Solar panels are often installed at a specific angle to ensure they absorb the maximum amount of sunlight throughout the year. In Spain, for example, the optimal angle for efficiency is between 30° and 35°. According to a 2022 study published in Science Direct, a 34° tilt on solar panels in the Iberian Peninsula resulted in annual production losses lower than one per cent. It’s why sloped rooftops are naturally convenient locations to install panels – while garden fences, balconies and flat roofs will generate less energy in comparison. Sun-Ways estimates that the loss of production due to the lack of inclination of the railway panels is only around 10 per cent. Still, in one year, the project has produced around 16,000 kWh.

Nearly three-quarters of Dutch submissions to a European Union consultation on stricter tobacco rules were fully written by artificial intelligence and submitted as apparent individual responses. Most were traced to an AI tool linked to tobacco company Philip Morris International, according to an investigation by NOS and Pointer. Nine in 10 Dutch-language responses appear to originate from the company’s system. The European Commission is reviewing two major tobacco laws covering tobacco products and tobacco advertising. It opened a public consultation before drafting new proposals. More than 80,000 responses were submitted in one month. By comparison, 97 percent of similar consultations receive fewer than 1,000 responses. Researchers analyzed more than 65,000 responses across 15 EU countries. They used the AI detector Pangram along with additional statistical models. They found that 35 percent were highly likely fully AI-generated. The Netherlands ranked second after Portugal and just above France. In the Netherlands, 786 responses were examined. Of those, 71 percent were assessed as almost certainly fully written by AI. Researchers attributed most of these to a Philip Morris International campaign tool called “Your Voice Your Choice.” The tool has since been taken offline. The campaign used yellow posters in tobacco shops and QR codes on the IQOS website. These directed users to a system that generated consultation responses. Participants answered questions about smoking status, product use, and policy preferences. The system then produced a first-person response ready for submission to the European Commission. Researchers said the tool was not a general chatbot. It functioned as a guided response generator. Eleven of 12 selectable “important aspects” produced arguments against stricter regulation. All optional “further concerns” were also negative toward regulation.

While Londoners scurried from building to building seeking shade on another baking hot day this week, one man paused in the shadow of the Royal Courts of Justice. The leader of Oxfordshire county council, Tim Bearder, was not only happy in the shade of the court’s gothic towers. He had just won a landmark legal victory. On the face of it, the case was an argument about local council permissions. But such is the febrile nature of British politics, the proceedings took on a whole new importance – one which strikes to the heart of raging debate in England over its most recognisable icon: the national flag. The court, one of the most important in England and Wales, had decided that hanging the English flag from lamp-posts without the council’s permission should not be allowed. Activists who have been hanging the flag of St George along roadsides in what has been a growing display of nationalist sentiment, were dismayed, accusing politicians such Bearder of “not liking the flag of their country”. Bearder, a public servant and proud Englishman, was delighted. “We’ve secured the first ever injunction [of its kind] in the country and this will serve as a blueprint for other councils wishing to stop this irresponsible behaviour,” he said. Tensions have been growing between the Raise the Colours group and the council since the former began its “nationwide campaign to cover Britain in flags” last summer.

... Their case could make Botswana the second country in Africa, after South Africa, to legalize same-sex marriage. Bonolo Selelo and Tsholofelo Kumile are preparing the arguments they will present on July 14 and 15 before six judges of Botswana’s High Court to argue that their marriage must be legally recognized. If they succeed, the two women will have helped make Botswana the second country in Africa — after South Africa — to allow same-sex marriage. The couple, who met in 2022 and became engaged in 2024, are seeking the same rights enjoyed by any heterosexual married couple. In March, Selelo, 41, and Kumile, 39, sat in the front row of Botswana’s High Court, offering each other gentle smiles and reassuring hand pats. It was the opening hearing for the couple’s potentially landmark case. According to LGBTQ+ organizations, no Black, lesbian couple had ever challenged a marriage law anywhere on the continent until Selelo and Kumile submitted their case last December. Clare Brown, legal and policy adviser at The PRIDE Center, explains that “all over Africa, queer people have been taking cases to court to claim their rights — usually their rights of freedom of expression, or to challenge colonial-era criminalization of same sex intimacy." But she stresses that this case “is unique in its courage and ambition.” “It is the first we know of since South Africa where a couple is litigating for their right to marry; and the first black lesbian couple to take such a case on the continent,” she says. This legal battle is unfolding as other African countries roll back LGBTQ+ rights. In mid-June, Niger’s military junta introduced a new penal code that criminalizes homosexuality with prison sentences of between five and 10 years. In late May, Ghana’s parliament approved a bill that would impose prison terms of up to three years on people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Senegal has also tightened penalties for homosexuality this year. Although roughly half of Africa’s 54 countries have legalized consensual relationships between same-sex partners, South Africa remains the only country where gay marriage can be legally performed on the continent. That ruling was initiated by a white, female couple who sued the government for the right to marry in 2005.

A macaque splashes in water at the Nanwan nature reserve on Hainan island, China. As the only island nature reserve for macaques globally, the site is home to about 1,600 of the little simians. They can move freely around the island, unlike the human visitors - Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

...Roberto Sánchez. The new president will inherit a country in the midst of a protracted political crisis. After three weeks of uncertainty, shifting trends during the vote count, and a margin of just a few tens of thousands of votes, Peru now has a president-elect. Far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori won the presidential runoff against Roberto Sánchez and will bring Fujimorism back to the Government Palace, twenty-six years after the fall of the regime led by her father, Alberto Fujimori. The National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) completed the count of 100 percent of the ballots on Monday, June 29 and confirmed her victory with 50.13 percent of the vote, compared to the 49.86 percent obtained by rival candidate Roberto Sánchez. The final margin was just 49,641 votes out of more than 18 million valid ballots, one of the narrowest margins in Peruvian electoral history. The result must be formally announced by the National Elections Jury, which will resolve the final administrative issues before officially declaring the victory. The presidential inauguration is scheduled for July 28, when Fujimori will replace interim President José María Balcázar to begin a five-year term. A Vote-by-Vote Count The election was marked by extreme parity throughout the process. For much of the count, both candidates took turns leading, and it was only in the final days that Fujimori’s lead began to solidify until it became irreversible. One of the decisive factors was the vote from Peruvians living abroad, where the conservative candidate received significantly more support than she did within the country. In fact, one statistic sums up the exceptional nature of this election: Keiko Fujimori became Peru’s first president to be elected despite receiving fewer votes within the country than her rival. Her victory was made possible by the weight of the overseas electorate, especially in the United States and Europe. Roberto Sánchez rejected the result and announced that he would not recognize a potential Fujimori administration, alleging fraud in the vote abroad. So far, he has not presented any evidence to support these accusations, while both electoral authorities and international observation missions have ruled out any irregularities that could have altered the result.

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...budget and the funding deficit “should spur him to take radical action on pensions and welfare.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer published his long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on June 30, committing an additional £15 billion to the armed forces over four years. It leaves Starmer’s successor-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, having to find tens of billions of pounds in cuts to social spending to pay for a hike in military funding. The DIP was meant to fund the Labour government’s 10-year Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in June last year, but its funding commitments extend only to the four-year spending review period ending in 2029/30. The plan takes total military spending to £298 billion in the period to 2029/30—almost £80 billion a year by the end of the decade. Speaking at a drone factory in Berkshire flanked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Starmer hailed “the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the 1980s”, raising spending from 2.3 percent of GDP in 2024 to 2.7 percent. However, he added, this would only put “us on a trajectory to reach 3 percent in the next Parliament [after a scheduled 2029 general election]”. Every line of the 80-page DIP is directed at preparing for war with Russia, declaring that “President Putin’s aggression is growing around our shores, in the High North, across Europe, and in Ukraine.” Ramping up military spending is required as “NATO is now warning that Russia could be ready to use military force against the Alliance by the end of this decade.” More than £63 billion over four years goes to the nuclear weapons programme—Dreadnought submarines, a new warhead and 12 nuclear-capable F-35A jets—alongside £11 billion for munitions and six new weapons factories, more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, and £8.6 billion for the Tempest fighter programme. To secure massive future profits for UK arms manufacturers such as BAE Systems, Babcock and MBDA, the government announced a taxpayer-backed £50 billion export finance facility—the largest allocation in UK Export Finance’s history—to underwrite foreign purchases of British weapons. The £15 billion includes £1.5 billion prised from the Treasury in the three weeks since Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns resigned over the earlier £13.5 billion settlement proposal. However, only £11.6 billion of the £15 billion is new money. For the military cabal and their backers in the media, who determine the policies of governments, the DIP confirms their verdict that the Starmer government had to go for refusing to stump up far more than £15 billion and pay for this by slashing welfare. Military chiefs had demanded at least £28 billion to fund a “black hole” in the Ministry of Defence’s budget—without which all 62 recommendations of last year’s Strategic Defence Review could not be met.

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Governments across Europe are slashing welfare funding to pay for the military buildup. The continuing austerity will ensure that the far-right gain power across the continent. They will fall into line behind Russia, making the military buildup pointless. Those arms will then be used to steal critical minerals from developing nations.

...its chief negotiators on a target list during April talks in Islamabad, the same talks that produced the framework deal signed on 17 June. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed media reports that officials in Washington believe Israel may have tried to kill Iran's top negotiators in an attempt to derail ceasefire talks with the United States that were to take place in Pakistan. The talks in Islamabad, mediated in part by US Vice President JD Vance, led to the framework deal Iran and the US signed on 17 June to halt their war. The two countries are now in a 60-day extended ceasefire meant to allow for negotiating sides to produce a final agreement. The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that US concern about threats to Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf spiked during the April negotiations, to the point that Washington asked regional allies to warn Tehran that Israel could target the two officials. Washington and Tehran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980 and typically communicate through intermediaries, which is why the US warning was relayed through regional allies rather than sent directly. The Wall Street Journal also reported in March that Israel may have had Araghchi and Ghalibaf on a target list during Israel's campaign of strikes against senior Iranian officials, but that Israel later temporarily removed them from the list.

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A £75,000 scheme by a Reform-led council to hang union flags at sites across the county, which the party said would “not cost the taxpayer a single penny” as it would be sponsored by local businesses, has failed to attract a single sponsor, it has emerged. The plan to attach the flags to brackets on about 180 lamp-posts and other places was agreed in the autumn by Nottinghamshire’s council, won by Nigel Farage’s party in last year’s May elections. A report by the authority justified the £75,000 cost as a way to “enhance civic pride”, saying the national flag was “seen as embodying national unity and the collective values of all the peoples and communities of the United Kingdom”. After some criticism of the scheme and its cost, in December last year Lee Anderson, the Reform MP whose Ashfield seat is in the county and who is close to the council’s leader, Mick Barton, posted a video to social media. Filming himself in Ashfield at one of the flag sites, along with Barton and James Walker-Gurley, another Nottinghamshire council cabinet member, Anderson said: “There’s been a few people moaning about these in … the usual third-rate media outlets, saying it’s cost £75,000 and it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.” He went on: “Let me tell you: yes, it has cost £75,000 to put these up all throughout Nottinghamshire, but the good news is, it will not cost the taxpayer a single penny because we want to get these sponsored by local businesses.

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