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Matthias Vollert has formally begun his posting as Germany’s new ambassador to Uzbekistan, having presented copies of his credentials to Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov.

«We highly value Germany as one of our reliable and time-tested partners in Europe. Recently, Uzbekistan–Germany relations have been steadily developing through high-level visits and regular political dialogue,» Saidov commented earlier on Wednesday.

The foreign minister and the new ambassador «discussed key issues on the bilateral agenda and emphasised the importance of the timely and effective implementation of the agreements reached at the highest level.»

Before moving to Tashkent, Vollert headed

Warner Bros. is launching the largest official Harry Potter retail space in the U.K. on central London’s Oxford Street this November. The opening arrives just weeks before a highly anticipated television adaptation premieres on HBO on December 25, capitalising on a renewed surge of interest in the beloved fantasy franchise ahead of Christmas.

Spanning more than 21,000 square feet across two floors, the flagship destination draws heavy inspiration from the wizarding shopping district known as Diagon Alley. Visitors will encounter immersive sets integrated directly into the retail environment. Features include a massive dragon perched above a Gringotts bank replica...

Former Chinese PM Zhu Rongji, a blunt reformer who drove China’s explosive economic growth in the 1990s and engineered its entry into the World Trade Organisation, died in Beijing on Wednesday.

State news agency Xinhua reported that Zhu died of an unspecified illness at 11:06 a.m.
As premier from 1998 to 2003 under President Jiang Zemin, Zhu served as the country’s economic tsar. He tackled systemic corruption, shook up the centrally planned economy and overhauled state-owned enterprises. His policies unleashed new market dynamics that set the stage for over a decade of rapid national growth.

Revitalising a state-controlled economy

The Senate of Uzbekistan unanimously approved a constitutional law on August 7 that formalises the legal status and functions of the Presidential Administration for the first time.

Previously regulated entirely by secondary legislation, the new 34-article document officially establishes the body as a state organ. It clearly outlines the administration’s structure and its working relationships with parliament, the Cabinet of Ministers and regional executive authorities.

Main takeaways from the new framework:

Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain, and a little portion of Portugal will experience total darkness on Wednesday, August 12, as a solar eclipse crosses portions of Europe and the North Atlantic. For mainland Western Europe, the event will be the first total solar eclipse seen since 1999.

As it makes its way toward the Iberian Peninsula, the Moon’s shadow will first pass over the Arctic and northern Russia, then make its way across Iceland and Greenland. West of Iceland, in the North Atlantic, the eclipse will reach its maximum intensity. In Reykjavík, the maximum eclipse comes at about 5.49pm local time.

The HONOR Robot Phone is scheduled to launch in China on August 12, 2026, following its earlier appearance as a concept at MWC 2026. The device has since evolved into a production smartphone built around one standout feature: a physically moving robotic camera.

A smartphone with a robotic camera

The Robot Phone’s defining feature is its 4DoF robotic gimbal camera. Instead of keeping the camera fixed inside the handset, HONOR has developed a compact motorised mechanism that allows the camera to move and adjust its position.

The system is designed to provide gimbal-style stabilisation while also supporting AI-powered...

Snezhnaya is finally open to exploration in Genshin Impact Version 7.0, Everwinter Without Mercy, bringing a frozen landscape, a railway network and a completely new exploration tool called the Eye of Graeae. Unlike previous regions, where gadgets were usually designed for one specific task, the Eye of Graeae is effectively a multi-purpose exploration system that lets you manage the cold, manipulate the environment and create objects to solve puzzles.

If you are heading into Snezhnaya for the first time, the most important thing is to learn the region’s exploration systems before trying to clear the map. Many puzzles...

Apple employees are internally referring to the company’s upcoming foldable device as the “iPhone Ultra,” according to a recent post by technology journalist Mark Gurman.

The highly anticipated smartphone is slated for a September unveiling alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup. Initially rumoured as the “iPhone Fold” by industry analysts, the Ultra moniker began circulating among tech leakers earlier this year. Gurman noted on X on August 11 that the name has gained widespread traction within Apple itself.

However, internal use does not guarantee the branding will appear on retail packaging. Apple maintains strict corporate secrecy protocols regarding product...

Football’s biggest stars have often had weddings that attracted almost as much attention as their performances on the pitch. From David and Victoria Beckham’s celebrity spectacle in an Irish castle to Lionel Messi’s star-studded celebration in Argentina, these five weddings combined sporting fame, celebrity guests, luxury and plenty of memorable details.

David Beckham and Victoria Beckham

David Beckham was already one of football’s biggest names when he married Victoria Adams, then known as Posh Spice from the Spice Girls, on July 4, 1999.

Beckham had just played a major role in Manchester United’s historic 1998-99 Treble, when the...

At least five people have died after a landslide struck homes in Mumbai early on Wednesday, with several others feared trapped under debris. Rescue teams are searching the site as heavy monsoon rain continues to disrupt parts of the city.

The landslide hit Gaushiya Chawl in the Chirag Nagar area at about 3.48am, according to Mumbai’s fire brigade, cited by local media outlet NDTV. Officials said part of a hillside gave way and debris crashed onto two to three homes.

Emergency crews from the fire brigade, police and the National Disaster Response Force are using specialised victim-detection cameras to...

With days to go until major US-South Korea military exercises, North Korea has fired a ballistic missile off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. The missile traversed about 700km (435 miles) before landing in the sea.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was fired from the Wonsan area at around 6am local time on Wednesday, Reuters reported. South Korean assessments showed it was the second launch from the same area in six days and the 11th suspected North Korean ballistic missile test of 2026.

Seoul has yet to identify the missile type. The projectile’s range...

The historic city of Khiva set a Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous melon tasting on August 9, with 259 participants sampling over a dozen varieties during the annual Melon Festival.

Seyda Subasi Gemici, Guinness World Records adjudicator for Turkey and Central Asia, officially verified the achievement.

Held across the Ichan-Kala historical complex and Arda Khiva tourist centre from August 7 to August 9, the event drew 186,000 attendees. Domestic visitors accounted for 150,000 of the crowd, alongside 36,000 foreign tourists.

Other activities at the festival

Farmers and agricultural workers from across the Khorezm region showcased local...

Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodriguez have married in a private ceremony in Portugal, bringing a decade-long romance that began in a Madrid Gucci store to the altar. The couple tied the knot in Cascais on August 11, exactly one year after announcing their engagement.

The 41-year-old football star and Rodriguez, 32, kept the ceremony intimate. They confirmed the marriage on Instagram with a photograph of their wedding rings, opting for a remarkably low-key reveal given the global attention that has followed their relationship.

Ronaldo and Rodriguez met in Madrid in 2016 while she was working at...

After peak passport lines at several of Europe’s largest airports doubled this summer, Ryanair‘s CEO unloaded on the European Union‘s new biometric border checks designed to make servicing inbound travellers easier.

“Only the Europeans would invent s**t like this,” Michael O’Leary told investors last month, criticising the Entry/Exit System as “misdesigned” and advocating for online registration.

According to the Financial Times, O’Leary stated that fifteen airports had experienced substantial lines at Ryanair. He previously voiced fears that travellers would be badly inconvenienced by the rollout and warned flights would not be held up to wait...

Reality television personality Helena Ford has disclosed details regarding her swift separation from Carrington Rodriguez following their departure from the “Love Island: All Stars” villa, citing unfaithfulness and fundamental personality clashes as the main drivers behind the decision.

Speaking on the “Private Parts” podcast hosted by Liv Bentley, the 30-year-old former flight attendant revealed that she initiated the split after discovering Rodriguez was secretly seeing other women. During the interview, Ford initially joked that the romance endured for only two days before clarifying that they officially parted ways after a month.

The couple exited the reality dating show together...

NASA has proposed a major expansion of its extraterrestrial partnership with New Delhi, inviting the Indian Space Research Organisation to participate in its upcoming Moon Base programme.

The offer emerged during the ninth India-US Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting held at ISRO headquarters on August 5-6. According to the US Embassy in India, discussions spanned human spaceflight technology, commercial sector collaboration and open scientific data sharing under the Artemis Accords framework.

Commercial partnershps fuel lunar expansion

If accepted, the partnership would integrate India into a multinational consortium developing infrastructure for a sustained human presence on the Moon...

Kazakhstan’s Kseniya Prozorova set three world records on her way to two gold medals at the Asian Youth and Junior Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The 61kg lifter also broke three Asian records in a dominant performance.

Prozorova lifted 94 kg in the snatch, which set a world and Asian record in her category. She then added 110 kg in the clean and jerk, finishing with a combined total of 204 kg.

Those results gave the Kazakh athlete two gold medals and three world records across the competition’s record categories. She also set three Asian records, according to the...

The high-profile relationship between 19-year-old Spanish football sensation Lamine Yamal and social media influencer Inés García Santos has recently become the subject of intense online scrutiny. Over the past week, the couple has faced a barrage of fabricated cheating allegations and manipulated media across social platforms.

Despite attempting to maintain a private personal life, the pair’s romance has drawn massive public attention following Yamal’s breakout performances at the 2026 World Cup. This elevated visibility has unfortunately made them targets for internet trolls who have repeatedly circulated unverified claims about their relationship status. Neither Yamal nor García Santos has publicly commented...

Content generated by Anthropic’s newest Claude artificial intelligence models now carries a hidden signature detectable by software even after it has been copied or lightly edited. The company implemented these invisible text watermarks to comply with transparency mandates outlined in the European Union AI Act.

The mechanism weaves an imperceptible pattern directly into the token generation process. Unlike basic file metadata that can be easily stripped, this statistical signature forms a structural part of the text itself. Anthropic confirmed the feature applies to all Claude models launched since Aug. 2. The system alters the mathematical distribution of word choices without...

Investment in Uzbekistan’s economy rose by 17.5% year on year to $28.4 billion in the first six months of 2026, according to official data. The manufacturing sector attracted by far the largest share of the total.

According to Uzbekistan’s National Statistics Committee, fixed-capital investment from all financing sources totalled 338.9 trillion soums ($28.4 billion) between January and June, which included spending on economic development and the social sector.

Manufacturing accounted for 100.5 trillion soums ($8.4 billion), followed by agriculture, forestry, and fishing ($2.76 billion) and construction ($2.72 billion). Energy-related investment totalled around $2.51 billion, while...

The International Atomic Energy Agency is preparing to remove uranium concentrate from a secretive storage site in Syria after the US helped broker an agreement involving Damascus and Jerusalem, Axios reported. 

The arrangement followed months of concern that the site could trigger a wider confrontation involving Israel and potentially Türkiye.

The facility, known as Site 99, was used during the rule of Bashar al-Assad to store material related to Syria’s former Al-Kibar nuclear programme, US and Israeli officials told Axios. But the material has not been taken out, and a deal between the IAEA and Syria was signed about three...

Google is experimenting with an artificial intelligence-centric homepage interface targeting visitors who are not logged into an account.

The trial replaces the traditional Google Search button with three distinct AI prompts: Create images, Ask about files and Brainstorm. An additional AI Mode toggle now appears directly inside the main search bar, while the legacy I’m Feeling Lucky button remains in its usual position.

These new controls function primarily without requiring user authentication. During independent testing across various web browsers, including stable builds of Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Perplexity’s Comet, the brainstorming and document analysis features operated seamlessly for signed-out...

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has instructed his justice secretary to find a mechanism to block the early release of two men convicted of killing PC Harper.

The intervention follows severe backlash over a government scheme designed to alleviate prison overcrowding, which could have seen Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers freed in January. The pair were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter in 2020.

Under recent changes to the Sentencing Act, inmates convicted of certain violent crimes become eligible for release after serving half their sentences rather than the previously mandated two-thirds.

Public outrage and petition

The prospective release...

Samsung is preparing to release the Galaxy S26 FE in early September, but a comprehensive leak has already exposed the smartphone’s complete hardware specifications. The upcoming Fan Edition device follows the company’s traditional strategy of blending older flagship components with the design language of the current S26 series.

According to a newly leaked datasheet, the S26 FE will run on the Exynos 2500 processor. This is the same 10-core, 3.3 GHz chip used in last year’s Galaxy S25 lineup. The processor is paired with 8 gigabytes of RAM and buyers can choose between 128 GB or 256 GB of internal...