Category: 2. World

Beauty queen Nadeen Ayoub will become the first woman to represent the Palestinian people at the Miss Universe pageant.

The Miss Universe Organization (MUO) said in a statement sent to CNN on Sunday that it was “pleased to confirm” that Ayoub would compete in the Miss Universe 2025 competition, which takes place in November.

“The Miss Universe Organization proudly welcomes delegates from across the globe, celebrating diversity, cultural exchange, and the empowerment of women,” the statement reads.

“Ms. Ayoub, an accomplished advocate and model from Palestine, embodies the resilience and determination that define our platform,” it adds.

Ayoub will join competitors from more than 130 other countries and territories at the 74th Miss Universe final, which will be held on November 21 in Bangkok, Thailand.

“We look forward to welcoming Ms. Ayoub on the Miss Universe stage, where she will proudly represent Palestine, standing alongside contestants from every corner of the world,” MUO said in the statement.

Ayoub, now 27, was crowned Miss Palestine back in 2022, according to Abu Dhabi-based news outlet The National.

Posting on Instagram on Thursday, Ayoub said she wanted to be a voice for the Palestinian people.

“I am honored to announce that for the first time ever, Palestine will be represented at Miss Universe,” she wrote in the caption.

“As Palestine endures heartbreak — especially in Gaza — I carry the voice of a people who refuse to be silenced. I represent every Palestinian woman and child whose strength the world needs to see,” Ayoub added.

“We are more than our suffering — we are resilience, hope, and the heartbeat of a homeland that lives on through us.”

The decision to include a Palestinian entry in the beauty pageant comes amid growing international criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

At least 62,004 people have been killed in the strip since the start of the conflict in October 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement published Monday.

Authorities in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters when reporting casualty figures, but the health ministry and the United Nations say the majority of deaths are women and children.

As the war continues, a growing number of countries are pledging to recognize a Palestinian state, with more than 145 nations now joining the call for international recognition.

Most recently, Australia, Canada and France announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September, while the United Kingdom has conditionally said it will recognize it if Israel does not meet criteria that include agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Last week, the US president, Donald Trump, flew to Anchorage, Alaska, to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. All guns blazing, Trump promised there would be consequences if he did not get the ceasefire he had come for. But after spending three hours in the subartic chill with Putin, a former KGB handler, he seemed to change. He said he agreed with Putin that a long-term peace settlement was more urgent than a ceasefire, and ruled out Ukraine joining Nato.

Europe’s key leaders have responded by ripping up their schedules and insisting on joining Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he travels to Washington for his own meeting with Trump, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent Julian Borger explains. Helen Pidd asks what hope this “dream team” of leaders has of convincing Trump to listen to the Ukrainian president’s pleas for a ceasefire.

“Historic” pink diamond found

Dubai police said on Monday they caught three thieves just hours after they stole a precious pink diamond worth $25 million.

“The Dubai Police General Command has foiled the theft of a very rare pink diamond, valued at $25 million,” the police said in a statement shared by the United Arab Emirates’ official news agency WAM.

A diamond trader who had brought the jewel from Europe was lured to a villa by a crime gang under the pretense of a viewing by a potential wealthy client, police said. But the gem was stolen when the diamond dealer arrived for the bogus inspection, the statement added.

“I just had a problem,” a man can be heard saying on an emergency call released by the Dubai Media Office. “I came to meet a client to sell a diamond to them. They looked at the stone and now … it’s stolen.”

Within eight hours three people from an unspecified Asian country were arrested “thanks to the efforts of specialized and field teams, and by using the latest artificial intelligence technologies,” police said.

Video footage shared by the Dubai Media Office showed the three men with their faces blurred after their arrest as well as CCTV footage of the gang.

القيادة العامة لشرطة دبي تحبط جريمة سرقة ماسة وردية نادرة جداً على مستوى العالم، تبلغ قيمتها السوقية 25 مليون دولار أمريكي، حيث تم إلقاء القبض على العصابة المكونة من 3 أشخاص من جنسية آسيوية خلال 8 ساعات.

Dubai Police thwarts an attempted theft of an exceptionally rare pink diamond, valued at 25 million US dollars. The group of three individuals of Asian nationality, were apprehended within eight hours.

Posted by Government of Dubai Media Office on Monday, August 18, 2025

Dubai is an important hub for diamond trading. Tightly controlled and policed, the UAE prides itself on its security and stability.

The heist came just days after police said a group of thieves stole $2 million of merchandise from a family-owned jewelry store in Seattle in a daylight robbery that took only 90 seconds.

With a constant urge to explore something new, the Amberly Museum considered a remarkable fusion of vintage engineering and modern Artificial Intelligence, where the historians unveiled a unique interactive exhibit linking a 1974’s telex machine to ChatGPT.

According to the Sussex World, a few historians at Amberly Museum, West Sussex, had connected a 50-year-old message transferring a Telex machine to modern-day Artificial Intelligence (AI) app, creating a “conversation spanning a decade.”

Telex was a machine-to-machine transfer service where text would be typed into a machine and printed out on the recipient’s device.

However, users of this machine at the museum will not get any response from another human; it will be ChatGPT answering their questions.

Moreover, museum’s management is greatly thankful to the ingenuity of one of the volunteers, Mr. David Waters, as visitors can now type into the 50-year-old teleprinter and get responses from ChatGPT because of his experiment.

The questions will appear in classic black type, while the AI-generated answers will be in vivid red color.

The experience began by using a rotary dial to make the initial connections creating an unforgettable meeting of communication technologies separated by almost half a century.

Museum’s Marketing manager, Mr. Joe Meacher claims, “This project perfectly captures the spirit of the Amberly Museum-celebrating our technological past while engaging with the innovations of today.”

“It’s a conversation across decades,” Joe added.

Furthermore, visitors had a chance to experience this extraordinary setup at Communication Day on Sunday, August 17, 2025.

What is a Telex machine?

A Telex machine was used as an international telecommunication system that allowed text-based messages to be sent and received by teleprinter over telephone lines.

The term “telex” may refer to the network, services, the device, or a message sent using a telex machine. 

In a telex machine, messages are converted into signals which are transmitted either by radio signals or by electricity and printed out by a machine in another place.

The telex machine emerged in 1930’s and became a major tool for text messaging between businesses in the post World-War II era.

A two-way teletypewriter service channeled through a public telecommunication system for direct communication between subscribers at remote locations.

It was later replaced when the fax machine gained popularity in the 1980s.

How we’re tracking wildfires in Spainpublished at 14:07 British Summer Time

14:07 BST

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

Image source, NASA

Wildfires in Spain have destroyed more than 3,430 sq km (1,320 sq miles) of land this year, according to data released today by the European Forest Fire Information System.

That’s equivalent to nearly half a million football pitches.

BBC Verify has been tracking the spread and intensity of wildfires across southern Europe this summer. One tool we’ve been using is Nasa’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (Firms), which detects active hot spots on the planet’s surface.

In this screenshot, you can clearly see hot spots indicating wildfire locations in northern Portugal and the north-western Spanish provinces of Galicia and Castile and Leon.

Two firefighters were killed in those regions yesterday, one in each country, and Spanish officials say there are battling 23 active fires today.

Wildfires are a common occurrence across southern Europe in the summer, but their severity can be exacerbated by heatwave conditions.

Climate change is causing these conditions to become more frequent, according to research from Spain’s state meteorological agency.

Image source, EPA/Shutterstock