No longer able to rely on traditional lobbying, Israel is pouring huge funds into ‘cognitive warfare’ aimed at manipulating the responses of AI platforms.
Pedro Sánchez has turned a parliamentary defeat over housing into a general election on 29th November.
The calculation is clear: force Spain’s political argument onto territory more favourable to the left before migration, corruption allegations and parliamentary paralysis return to the foreground. But the polls suggest that the gamble could still deliver power to the centre-right People’s Party and Vox.
Pedro Sánchez’s decision to dissolve Spain’s parliament nine months ahead of schedule is more than an admission that his minority government had reached the limits of what it could achieve in the Congress of Deputies. It is an attempt to choose the terms on which his government will be judged.
The immediate trigger was the defeat of two emergency housing decrees after the conservative People’s Party (PP), Vox and Catalan separatist Junts voted against them. Housing had already moved rapidly to the centre of Spanish politics following the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat where she had lived for 71 years, followed by large demonstrations across the country. EU Today has previously reported on both the housing protests across Spain and Sánchez’s subsequent decision to call the election.
The prime minister is now attempting to convert legislative weakness into electoral advantage.
In his announcement on 5 October, Sánchez presented the election as a choice between a broader progressive majority capable of advancing social legislation and an opposition that had obstructed measures on housing and other domestic priorities. The government reinforced that strategy a day later by approving revised versions of the two housing decrees, containing 21 measures including tax incentives, assistance for first-time buyers and measures intended to increase supply. They will require validation by the Diputación Permanente, the standing parliamentary body that remains after dissolution.
The political calculation is straightforward. Housing offers Sánchez an issue on which anger is directed not only at government but at landlords, property investors, regional authorities and political parties opposing stronger regulation. The eviction of Abascal gave that argument a human symbol and transformed a long-running affordability problem into an immediate political confrontation.
That does not mean the strategy will work.
Most polling continues to place the PSOE behind the PP. Surveys put the Socialists at roughly 28 per cent, while Vox has risen to around 18 per cent. A PP-Vox combination is currently the only bloc consistently projected to command an outright parliamentary majority. One Sigma Dos survey published after the election announcement projected the two parties winning 203 of the Congress’s 350 seats.
Sánchez therefore appears to be playing less for immediate dominance than for mobilisation.
His problem before the housing protests was not simply the strength of the right. The broader left had become fragmented, while the government was being damaged by disputes over migration, particularly following the crisis in Ceuta, as well as corruption investigations involving figures associated with the PSOE. At the same time, Junts had become an increasingly unreliable parliamentary partner, leaving the government unable to guarantee major legislation or a new budget.
Housing changes the subject.
It allows Sánchez to argue that the central question is not whether his coalition has governed smoothly, but whether voters want a parliament prepared to intervene more aggressively in the housing market. The PP, however, is contesting precisely that framing. Alberto Núñez Feijóo argues that the housing shortage is itself a product of Sánchez’s eight years in government and has promised to raise annual construction towards 200,000 homes while reducing taxes.
The election may therefore develop into a dispute over responsibility rather than diagnosis. Both sides accept that housing has become a major national problem; they differ sharply over whether regulation or additional supply should dominate the response.
There is also a wider European dimension. Housing affordability is increasingly politically disruptive across the EU, including in major cities where construction has failed to keep pace with household formation, migration and demand for short-term accommodation. EU Today has examined similar pressures in Berlin’s housing market. Spain could now provide a test of whether housing can become powerful enough as an electoral issue to reverse the wider European movement towards the right.
For Ukraine, however, the consequences are likely to be less dramatic than Spain’s domestic political contest might suggest.
Sánchez committed €1 billion in bilateral military support to Ukraine for 2026, with Spain putting its cumulative bilateral military assistance since Russia’s full-scale invasion at almost €4 billion. Madrid has also trained more than 9,000 Ukrainian military personnel.
Spain is also home to a considerably larger Ukrainian community than the roughly 300,000 figure frequently cited. Government data showed 353,009 Ukrainian nationals holding valid residence documentation at the end of June, including 262,782 under temporary protection.
A PP-led government would alter Madrid’s domestic priorities and potentially its approach to defence spending and migration, particularly if Vox were required to sustain a parliamentary majority. Yet there is little basis at present for assuming that a change of government would produce a reversal of Spain’s fundamental position on Russia’s invasion or membership of the European and Atlantic security structures supporting Ukraine.
The more immediate question is whether Sánchez can make housing important enough to overcome the electoral arithmetic confronting him.
Calling the election has allowed him to escape a parliament in which his legislative coalition was steadily disintegrating and to enter a campaign around an issue capable of mobilising his electorate. It has not changed the fact that the PP and Vox begin that campaign with the stronger numbers.
Sánchez has chosen the battlefield. On 29th November, Spain will decide whether that was enough.
For decades, the Indonesia Stock Exchange has run like a members’ club, where the brokers who trade on the IDX also own it. But that cozy arrangement is about to end under an amended financial sector law that requires the exchange to demutualize. The Financial Services Authority, or OJK, has issued a new regulation on […]
A British tourist’s hike in the Imbros Gorge in Sfakia turned into an adventure with a happy ending Tuesday afternoon. The 73-year-old decided to walk through the gorge, with his last contact with his wife taking place on Sunday afternoon, October 4, 2026. Since then, there had been no signs of life, and his wife, […]
Germany is expanding drone detection at its airports with a new system operated by German air traffic control provider Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS), the German Federal Ministry for Transport (BMV) announced on 5 October.
Germany has accused Russia of attempting a hybrid attack at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport near a Ukrainian An-124 aircraft using a drone carrying explosives. Earlier, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Europe must be prepared for “continued hybrid and sabotage attacks” by Russia, adding that Russia seeks to sow panic through such actions.
On Monday, two more sites were added—Stuttgart and Hamburg. As of Monday, seven of Germany’s eight largest airports were equipped with the new drone detection system in their approach and departure areas.
Germany seeks responses to new hybrid threats
The Federal Ministry cited the reason for the new measure: drones near airports can affect air traffic very quickly.
Federal Transport Minister Steffen Bilger and Baden-Württemberg Transport Minister Nicole Razavi were briefed on the new system at Stuttgart Airport, where it is being put into operation, the ministry said. The system creates “an important technical basis for detecting potential threats at an early stage and quickly informing the competent authorities,” Bilger said.
“With today’s commissioning of the drone detection system at Stuttgart Airport, the federal government is fulfilling a key promise: it is not only talking about the dangers posed by unmanned aircraft, but is also following through with very concrete action. Protecting critical infrastructure and ensuring the safety of passengers at Stuttgart Airport require continuous adaptation to a changing security situation,” Razavi said, according to the ministry.
The new DFS system allows drones near airports to be detected at an early stage and information about possible threats to air traffic to be passed more quickly to the relevant authorities. This helps them assess risks and respond to them more quickly, the statement said.
DFS is responsible for detecting drones in approach and departure areas, while the Federal Police and other security services are responsible for preventing threats and defending against drones. The BMV, Federal Ministry of the Interior, DFS, Federal Police and airports coordinate their work to exchange information quickly and maintain a shared picture of the situation.
No further details about how the system operates have been disclosed.
The first stage of the expansion at Germany’s eight major commercial airports will be fully implemented this week, with the systems in Stuttgart and Hamburg being put into operation, the statement said.
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A drone came down beside a Bundeswehr air base, weeks after Berlin blamed Moscow for the Leipzig airport attack
The system will also be installed at the airport where a bomb-laden drone was found
The system will also be put into operation at Leipzig/Halle Airport this week, meaning that the first stage will be fully implemented at all eight of Germany’s largest commercial airports, according to the press release.
A quadcopter drone carrying a Semtex explosive flew directly toward a parked Ukrainian An-124 Ruslan cargo aircraft and struck its wing at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany on the evening of 4 August, Die Zeit reported on 10 August. The drone hit the aircraft at around 19:30 local time, bounced off the wing, and fell to the ground without detonating, according to the media outlet.
Ukrainian An-124 at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany, 5 August 2026. Photo: screenshot from Bild video
Germany has accused Russia of attempting the drone attack and announced further sanctions against Russian citizens and institutions, Tagesschau reported on 1 September.
At the crime scene, investigators found the drone configuration, explosives and detonation technology that had already appeared in other Russian hybrid operations and in Russia’s war against Ukraine, Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said during a joint press conference with Federal Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, the media outlet reported.
The German government assumes that Germany has been and will be a target of further such Russian attacks. Germany is not at war with Russia but is a “target of war,” Foreign Minister Wadephul said, according to the outlet.
The enemy to be feared is the habit of deciding on the most serious matters without discussing them, and of presenting them as if they were inevitable.
There are phrases which, on their own, say more about a state than a Defence White Paper. One such phrase appeared in the Corriere della Sera on 4 October, in an interview with the Chief of the Army General Staff, Lieutenant General Carmine Masiello: “On the eastern flank, we were asked to deploy units capable of providing a real deterrent: we are leading the multinational battlegroup in Bulgaria and are present in Latvia and Hungary. War does not ask for permission, and the contingent must be ready to respond.”
A few lines earlier, the same general had opened the interview as follows: “We are at war. A hybrid war, but war nonetheless.” The attentive reader will pause to consider three words. We have been asked. By whom? Real deterrence. Compared to what deterrence, until now, has been unreal? We are at war. Who has declared it? These are questions that the Italian public debate should ask itself seriously, without indulging either in the caricature of the warmongering military or in the conditioned reflex that treats every doubt as enemy propaganda. The argument put forward in these pages is simple: the idea of direct involvement by Italy and European countries in an armed conflict with Russia is strategic folly, and the bellicose rhetoric that is making it seem conceivable protects no one. It makes the situation worse.
It is best to start with the facts, because the controversy surrounding the interview has misrepresented some of them. The contingents mentioned by Masiello are not a development from the past week. Italy has been participating in NATO’s forward presence in Latvia since 2017 and, since 2022, has been leading the multinational battlegroup in Bulgaria – established following Russia’s conflict with Ukraine alongside those from Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The Madrid Summit in June 2022 then committed the allies to strengthening these groups to brigade level ‘where and when required’. The general’s statement that ‘we were asked’ therefore has a clear source: the Alliance’s planning, approved by the North Atlantic Council, to which the Italian government has given its consent.
Parliament, too, has formally expressed its view. Law 145 of 2016 stipulates that the government must approve international missions annually and that Parliament must authorise them. For 2026, the Council of Ministers’ resolution is dated 14 May; the Chamber of Deputies approved the authorisation resolution on 28 July, for missions valid from 1 January to 31 December. On closer inspection, this situation is more serious than the mere omission denounced by many commentators. Parliament was not bypassed: it was called upon at the end of July to ratify what had been in progress for seven months, as part of a single package bringing together dozens of different missions, from Lebanon to the Horn of Africa. Voting against the eastern flank means, in this context, voting against the whole package. It is a procedure that produces consensus without generating debate.
The problem, then, is not strictly legal. It is political, and concerns the quality of the decision. It is one thing to maintain a contingent in an allied country for reassurance purposes. It is quite another to publicly declare that that contingent must provide ‘real deterrence’ and be ‘ready to respond’ to a war that ‘does not ask for permission’. This shift in function – from a symbolic presence to combat readiness – has not been the subject of any specific parliamentary debate. Italians learnt of it from an interview published at the weekend, in a tone one might use to describe the modernisation of barracks.
A war that no one has authorised
Article 78 of the Constitution is so clear that it sounds almost embarrassing today: ‘The Chambers shall declare a state of war and confer upon the Government the necessary powers.’ Article 11 adds that Italy repudiates war as an instrument of aggression and as a means of resolving international disputes. In this context, the phrase ‘we are at war’, uttered by the head of the Armed Forces, is not merely a lexical detail. Neither House has declared a state of war. No government has been granted extraordinary powers. If words have any meaning, that phrase describes a condition that is not recognised by the legal system.
The contrast with Masiello’s own words from two and a half years ago is striking. In May 2024, in another interview, the general had been unequivocal in the opposite sense: ‘Let’s be clear: we are not at war,’ he had said, referring to a ‘sub-threshold’ conflict. The material reality described then and now is essentially the same: cyber-attacks, sabotage, disinformation, airspace violations. What has changed is the verbal framework. And in international politics, the framework is never neutral. Those who repeat every day that we are already at war accustom public opinion to the idea that actual war is merely the next step on a path that has already begun. This is precisely the process that the literature on threat construction describes as securitisation: a problem is shifted from the ordinary political sphere to that of emergency, where the usual rules – including debate – appear to be a luxury.
It is no coincidence that, in that very interview, the priority highlighted is the distribution to military personnel of a ‘cognitive self-defence manual’ against disinformation. The stated aim is to protect personnel. The side effect is to delimit the scope of what is conceivable: if every voice that questions the necessity of conflict can be interpreted as an emotional lever wielded by the enemy, dissent becomes a security issue. A democracy that fears manipulation should respond with more debate, not less.
Deterrence that produces what it fears
The strategic crux of the matter is the very concept of deterrence. Deterrence works when the adversary perceives our stance as both defensive and credible. It ceases to work – and indeed becomes counterproductive – when the measures a state adopts to feel secure are interpreted by the other as offensive preparations. This is the security dilemma: in a system without a higher authority, many of the means by which a state increases its own security reduce that of others, triggering a spiral that neither actor had intended.
The eastern flank is where this spiral is most visible. From Moscow’s perspective, allied brigades permanently deployed a few hundred kilometres from St Petersburg and the Belarusian border, exercises in the Baltic and attempts to stop Russian ships in transit are signs of encirclement. Putin stated this explicitly at the Valdai Forum in early October, describing the Western manoeuvres in the Baltic as an escalation. One might regard that interpretation as self-serving, and in part it is. But deterrence is not measured by our intentions: it is measured by the perceptions of those who are to be deterred. Ignoring them does not make them go away.
There is also one factor that should be of the greatest concern, and it is Masiello himself who articulates it. In hybrid warfare, the general explains, the risk is ‘not only to suffer, but to slip, by mistake, into an open confrontation’. This is a valuable admission. It means that the Italian military leadership considers the possibility of an unintended war – arising from an accident, a misinterpretation or a chain of automatic responses – to be very real. Thomas Schelling referred to this mechanism as ‘the threat that leaves something to chance’: the more forces are in contact and ready to react, the more control over the crisis slips from the hands of political decision-makers. If the main risk is error, the rational response is to reduce friction and increase the number of communication channels. Yet whilst the readiness of troops near the border is being stepped up, the tone of rhetoric is moving in the opposite direction.
In Moscow, Putin spoke clearly
At the Valdai Forum, Putin reiterated that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone ‘neither in 2029, nor in 2030, nor in 2050’, adding that in the event of an attack, Moscow would respond with all means at its disposal, including nuclear weapons. A few days earlier, in St Petersburg, he had said that Russia is in no way preparing to go to war with Europe. The usual response in the Italian press is that these reassurances are worthless: Formiche pointed out, for example, that even the 1994 Budapest Memorandum contained written commitments that were subsequently breached.
This argument deserves a serious response, not a slogan. No one is obliged to take the statements of a head of state – be they Russian or American – at face value. But mistrust of others’ words does not justify abandoning diplomacy: it makes it all the more necessary. Public statements serve precisely this purpose: to establish commitments that can be verified, negotiated, translated into measures of mutual trust, limits on troop deployments, notifications of military exercises, and direct military lines of communication. This is precisely what Europe did during the decades of the Cold War, with the Helsinki Final Act and the subsequent Vienna documents, when mistrust of Moscow was at least as great as it is today. Responding to every overture by increasing military readiness amounts to choosing not to verify. And those who fail to verify their adversary’s intentions end up planning for the worst-case scenario, which, by dint of being planned for, becomes the most likely outcome.
The reverse is also true. If it is genuinely believed that Russia is preparing an act of aggression against an EU member state, then the matter is of such gravity as to demand a public and parliamentary debate commensurate with its importance, based on the available evidence, intelligence assessments and the alternatives under consideration. Not an interview. The two things are mutually exclusive: either the threat is existential, in which case the nation must be mobilised; or it is not, in which case the language of imminence is a mistake.
To die for whom and for what?
The question currently circulating on social media – whether Italians are prepared to die for the Baltic states or for Zelensky – is phrased brutally, but it hits upon a real issue. European public opinion, and Italian public opinion in particular, has never given an explicit mandate for direct military confrontation with Russia. Surveys in recent years have consistently ranked Italy amongst the European countries most opposed to sending troops and most in favour of a negotiated solution. A democratic system that prepares for war against the prevailing will of its citizens, without even consulting them, accumulates a debt of legitimacy that would be called in at the worst possible moment: precisely when national cohesion is most needed.
Nor is there any need to demonise the Baltic states to recognise the problem. Their perception of the threat has historical roots that a Western European struggles to fully comprehend. The point is another: in a thirty-two-member alliance, the most hardline positions tend to set the tone for the whole, because no government wants to appear the least supportive. Italy has different geopolitical interests, focused on the Mediterranean, Africa, the Balkans and its energy ties with the East. A country in that position has everything to lose from a conflict in the Baltic and nothing to gain. Its historical role, from Andreotti to Prodi, has been that of a mediator, not an outpost. To abandon this role in order to align with the hardline stance is a choice that someone should openly advocate, rather than letting it seep out through an interview.
Finally, there is the practical reality, which the general himself does not hide. Masiello speaks of the return of the ‘importance of mass’: forces are quickly worn down, and without the capacity to replenish them, a prolonged conflict cannot be sustained. In short: a conventional war with Russia would be a war of attrition, fought with ammunition stocks that Europe does not possess and with an industrial base that would take years to reconvert. Against a nuclear power that has just reiterated that it regards nuclear weapons as part of its defence. There is no rational interpretation of Italy’s national interest in which this scenario is acceptable.
Alternatives do exist and do not require naivety. The first is institutional: to separate missions on the eastern flank from the annual budget and subject them to a specific vote, preceded by a public hearing of military and government leaders on the nature of the mandate. If Italian soldiers are asked to be ‘ready to respond’, Parliament has the right and the duty to know to what, under what rules of engagement, and within what limits.
The second concerns language. The military leadership has a responsibility to prepare the forces, not to influence public opinion on the underlying political judgement – namely, whether or not Italy is at war. That assessment is the remit of the constitutional bodies. A return to verbal restraint is not a concession: it is the condition for deterrence to remain defensive even in the eyes of those observing it from Moscow.
The third is diplomatic. Any Russian declaration of non-aggression should be taken at face value in the technical sense of the term: put to the test with concrete proposals for risk reduction, starting with the Baltic, where the density of ships, aircraft and units in close proximity makes an incident more likely than elsewhere. Rome has the credibility and the history to champion such an initiative at European level. The fact that it is not doing so, and that the issue emerges only from the words of a general, is the real cause for alarm in this affair.
The enemy to be feared is not a country a thousand kilometres from our borders. It is the habit – which is taking root here – of deciding on the most serious matters without discussing them, and of presenting them as if they were inevitable; a psychopathology that is dramatically eroding the last remnants of common sense.
Steve Rose investigates a catastrophic pollution incident at Furnace Brook, a fishing lake in East Sussex, where thousands of fish suddenly died and the local ecosystem collapsed. Neighbours suspect pollution from nearby Morgans Farm, and Rose examines whether their concerns are justified. In doing so, he uncovers broader national problems with water pollution, illegal waste dumping, and the limited power and resources councils and regulators have to tackle them.
He headed about half a mile up the valley to a tributary joining the stream from a neighbouring property named Morgans Farm. “You could clearly see the water upstream [of the tributary] was totally normal, a sandy colour with clay silt in it, and what was below it had gone a blue-black colour. You could see dead brook trout, wild eels, and there was a dead crow or raven, which may well have eaten something poisonous from the river.” In some places, he says, there was a thick layer of blue-grey scum on the water, which he later learned is sometimes called “bacterial cheese”. “There’s so much nutrient [sic] in the water that it allows for a bacterial colonisation explosion.” The bacteria take up all the oxygen, which causes most of the fish, especially the older, larger ones, to die.
Traffic bans, closed metro stations and a ban of gatherings and protest rallies are being imposed in the entire center of Greek capital Athens during the visit of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Following a decision of by the head of the Athens Police Directorate, all outdoor public gatherings […]
The White House press secretary is one of the most exposed jobs in the world, but with a $195,200 salary it is not among the highest paid. In Washington it is assumed to be a thankless task that often, like many roles that require rolling up your sleeves in the administration, serves as a prelude to more lucrative work: million-dollar book deals, senior private-sector posts, or a jump to the media. This Monday Karoline Leavitt, who resigned her post last August, chose the latter option: she will join Fox News, the conservative network confirmed.
There are moments in the life of democracies when parliament, because of its divisions and deadlocks, is unable to respond to the urgent needs of a country — and when that happens, it means it is time to give citizens a voice. Spain is living through one of those moments.
Elon Musk is stepping on the gas with Starship. His flagship spacecraft, the largest ever built, entered orbit for the first time on Monday, and his space company, SpaceX, has already received approval from the U.S. federal government to accelerate the current testing phase and launch it twice more in October if it wishes.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez delivered an institutional address from La Moncloa, the seat of government in Spain, to announce that a snap general election will be held on November 29.
Certain ideas define us. Some earned names of our own along the way. Others have run through nearly 240 pieces without ever being formally christened. Put together, they amount to a worldview. That worldview has been assembled one essay at a time since 2023. Many readers have walked in mid-conversation. Mention the hardware/software flip, super […]
Five months ago, four excited girls walked into a maximum-security area with their mother wearing the same black T-shirt printed with a photo of their father. Minutes later, he emerged from a building guarded by the military, amid camera flashes and television cameras, and looked at them with moist eyes from the other side of the fence. He could not approach or touch them. He had to respect quarantine, because in a few hours he would board the most powerful crewed rocket in history and head to the Moon. Without speaking, they said everything to each other, and the rest of the world understood them.
by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense: For decades, health departments have sprayed pesticides to curb diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes. Critics argue that repeated, broad-area spraying, which sometimes uses chemicals banned in other countries, needlessly exposes people and wildlife, particularly in communities where it happens often. Some also question whether it works at […]
Her life could inspire one of those biopics about personal triumph, but Jahel Queralt, 43, says her fate is pure chance. The jurist, PhD and professor of political law at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona went from growing up in an isolated house without water or electricity to feeling “like you’ve gatecrashed a party in the wrong shoes” when she arrived in the world of academia. It happened in 2007, in Oxford, when she met Gerald A. Cohen, a leading figure in analytical Marxism and one of the mentors of her theses. He was so approachable that the young woman let her guard down while eating with the other fellows in the All Souls dining hall, inside the most elitist of the Oxford colleges. There she uttered the forbidden word that starts with F: “You do this in Spain and you are totally fucked,” she stated, and immediately heard the rest of the diners clear their throats. People still ask her at parties if she is “the girl who said fucked in the All Souls dining hall.” That, she says near her son’s public school a few yards from the Barcelona zoo, is what happens when “you learned English watching The Wire.”
TOKYO – China gave global investors one of 2026’s biggest AI thrills. Yet the country that helped ignite excitement about artificial intelligence is home to one of the worst-performing major stock markets. While AI fever has propelled Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo higher, Chinese shares are stuck in reverse.
So what gives? Several forces, actually. Weak household demand, for one. Consumer spending continues to disappoint, weighing on the earnings potential of mainland internet companies, automakers, and retailers.
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