Ben R

🇹🇷 ❤️ Shots from my August trip to Ayvalik, a town in Balikesir province on the Aegean coast of Turkey. An autonomous centre of Greek culture in the Ottoman Empire, it remained an almost entirely Greek settlement until the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

"The most blatant attempt to intimidate EPPO happened in Greece, where we had this issue with the renewal of the European delegated prosecutors." (re)actions from EU Comm and Council: None tbomk www.politico.eu/article/eppo...

Podcast time! Talking to @dimitarbechev.bsky.social about Europe's adaptation to a hostile world tomorrow. Let us know if you have any questions.

Famous Wolf warrior diplomacy with American characteristics. And diarrhea.

😱🥵⚡️ @electricfelix.eurosky.social

Battery electric vehicles just overtook pure petrol cars in the EU for the first quarter on record. In Q3-2026, over a quarter (27%) of new vehicle registrations were BEVs. Petrol's share dropped below 20% for the first time.

The death toll has risen to 30 people. The first train, which derailed, carried 147 passengers and the second, which hit the first from behind, carried 397.

Und wir kennen alle sein Rechtsverständnis bei den Fragen der Grenzkontrollen.

!!! This looks *grim* - crash between two high speed trains on the high speed line Madrid - Andalucía After the 18 January accident at Adamuz, damn this is terrible

Ron tells us his brother Charlie is studying dragons in Romania in Book 1 (1991). Is this because native Romanian dragon scholars were all purged by Ceaușescu?

Creating a mini-windfall for Cheesecake Factory is the closest Trump will come to reindustrializing America.

Exit polls are in. All three major channels have Netanyahu bloc at 50 and Jewish opposition at 52-3. Arab bloc at 17-18. Far right channels (mostly 14) give Netanyahu more but no idea how. Likud drained their partners and came out biggest but the media isn’t covering this as a victory for them.

Egypt cracks down on Mada Masr, one of its last independent press outlets. Heba Saleh, @financialtimes.com: www.ft.com/content/9ee4...

@miyhnea.bsky.social

6/ Es geht u.a. um mutmaßlich verdeckte PR für Katar, den Umgang mit geheimen Militärinformationen und die Manipulation der öffentlichen, politischen Debatten. Gegen Einhorn liegt inzwischen nach rumänischen Recherchen sogar ein israelischer Haftbefehl vor.

2/ Neue Recherchen von @fr-zeitung.bsky.social, @spiegel.de The7i Snoop.ro werfen eine brisante Frage auf: Wer versucht hier, warum und für wen, deutsche Politik zu beeinflussen? Ein langer (!) Thread zu Hintergründen & offenen Fragen.

Der DIG wünsche ich Besinnung auf das Wesentliche, nämlich die deutsch-israelischen Beziehungen und den Kampf gegen Antisemitismus, statt blindem Gewüte gegen Rot-Grün-Rot in Berlin. www.bodo-ramelow.de/2026/10/brie...

Repeat after me: Russia has no legitimate security concerns; only its neighbours do. Russia has been the only one invading others.

A look at where MBDA's missile programmes for long-range strike and air defence currently stand, based in large part on their press conference held during the EURONAVAL press trip.

2/ "We respect Russia both as a great power and as our historically important partner and, in many cases, protector. There will be no changes there (in the country's foreign policy)," said Bakić, appearing on the "Serbia Chooses" show on RT Balkan TV. ⬇️

2/2 ...dieser Stelle, an unsere deutschen Freunde gerichtet, auch ganz deutlich sagen: Europa muss aus der Vergangenheit Lehren ziehen. Unter keinen Umständen darf es jemals zu einem „Business as usual“ mit Russland zurückkehren. Dem wird Polen niemals zustimmen." #Zitat #Domański

Lmfao Glem was anti Lula.

Of course a win for non-authoritarian leaders or movements does not automatically mean all problems are solved or that authoritarian forces can't come back in future. But it is worth maintaining hope and optimism, because if people succumb to nihilism and apathy then democracy cannot survive.

Chinese automakers outsold Japanese rivals in Europe for the first time over a quarter Registrations of Chinese-branded cars doubled from a year earlier in the last quarter to make up 12.7% of total sales, ahead of Japanese manufacturers at 11.9%.

Their impact could be felt at every stage of the new political resistance forming, though it was stronger in Serbia, given the pluralist, dispersed nature of the Student List compared with the much more centralised, leader-based TISZA. Still, young voters were a key element for both.

In Serbia, the judiciary and law enforcement have been effectively pressured by Vučić and his allies to avoid investigating and prosecuting corruption and graft, leading to impunity not only for incompetence or negligence but also for petty and high-level corruption.

Both catalyst events paved the way for new opposition movements - the Student List in Serbia, built out of outrage over the Novi Sad catastrophe, and TISZA in Hungary, assembled by Varga's maverick ex-husband, Peter Magyar. While these parties differ in character, their origin stories are similar.

The Serbian railway station catastrophe claimed 16 lives and became a symbol of a country where infrastructure is collapsing despite being renovated with fat Chinese money (Serbia went all-in on the ill-fated Belt & Road Initiative). The investigation is still ongoing, two years later.

🇭🇺🇷🇸🗳️Three common themes in Hungarian and Serbian seismic elections (not gonna even try to analyse Brazil; I know my limits): 1. Catalyst Events 2. Rule of Law 3. Angry Young People. While both countries have their own peculiar characteristics, some elements appear in both stories - a thread.

Today's diversion: how the EU might handle UK non-participation in the Eurozone tl;dr understandings bump into obligations 1/

90% of global antibiotic active ingredients are now produced outside Europe, mainly in China. "This is something that you should worry about," warns @ruehlig.bsky.social in Reuters, because China's market power gives it leverage to defend strategic interests. www.reuters.com/business/hea...

Obrigado, povo brasileiro! 📸 Ricardo Stuckert

Bolsonaro and Vucic in one night. Well.

It’s OK to be a snob and think that people who treat the Cheesecake Factory as fine dining are sub-human rubes.

Ah! Jetzt um 19 Uhr haben sie das Programm gewechselt. Jetzt kommt was zum Angeln.

Germany should pay compensation to Polish WWII victims before it is too late, argues Philipp Fritz. Over 30,000 such survivors are still alive today. But, while Germany has spent years discussing how to compensate them, their number dwindles every week.

🇩🇪💶🇵🇱 Extremely important voice from my friend Philipp on the urgent need for Germany to, even symbolically, compensate the Polish (as in: Polish citizens, regardless of ethnicity) victims of WW2. Their numbers are dwindling, and the far right on both sides of the Oder is exploiting the issue.

Viele Leute standen schon vor Öffnung des Wahllokals um 7 Uhr Schlange, aus Angst es könnte später zu Problemen kommen, wegen denen sie nicht mehr abstimmen können. Da muss man dann halt auch mal im Bademantel mit Hund seine Stimme abgeben.

Es scheint, die CDU hat bei ihrer Nachwuchsorganisation ein Problem mit Verfassungstreue. (Der Post ist offenkundig echt und findet sich bei Instagram hier www.instagram.com/p/De41W3IMdHL/)