Ecstatic Gathering

British media and social media platforms have been given tough advice today by regulators and media outlets. Companies are being urged to strengthen their child protection mechanisms, with current age-rating safeguards deemed inadequate.

Britain is considering tougher restrictions on children’s access to social media, with the government considering banning under-16s from such platforms – mirroring a move by Australia.

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said they were increasingly concerned about algorithmic data feeds that expose children to harmful or addictive content.

“These online services are notorious for failing to put child safety at the heart of their products,” said Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom.

“This must now change quickly, or Ofcom will act,” she warned.

In the latest phase of the UK’s Internet Safety Act, Ofcom has called on Facebook and Instagram – both owned by Meta – as well as Roblox, Snapchat, ByteDance’s TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube to set out by April 30 how they will tighten age checks, limit contact between strangers and children, make data streams safer and stop testing new products on minors.

The ICO has separately issued an open letter to the same platforms, calling on them to adopt “modern, viable” age-verification tools to prevent under-13s from accessing services not designed for them.

“We now have modern technology at your fingertips, so there is no excuse,” said Paul Arnold, the ICO’s chief executive.

A Meta spokesperson said the company already uses AI-powered age detection and assessment tools and places teens in accounts with built-in protections. The spokesperson added that age verification should be done “centrally at the app store level” so that families don’t have to provide personal information multiple times. A

YouTube spokesperson said the platform offers age-appropriate experiences and was “surprised to see Ofcom move away from a risk-based approach,” urging the regulator to focus on “high-risk services” that don’t comply with the law.

Roblox, Snapchat and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ofcom can fine companies up to 10% of their global revenue, while the ICO can impose fines of up to 4% of a company's global annual turnover.

The privacy watchdog last month fined Reddit almost £14.5m for illegally processing children's data and failing to introduce meaningful age checks, according to the AP.

Iran is entering a new, dark phase of its water crisis, as the war turns already depleted water resources into a strategic target and a tool for the regime’s political survival.

Tehran’s accusation that the US bombed a desalination plant on the island of Qeshm, as well as the Iranian attack on a desalination plant in Bahrain, show that the battle for water in the Persian Gulf goes beyond borders and threatens millions of people in one of the most arid regions of the planet.

For decades, the Islamic Republic has dealt with the climate crisis with short-term solutions and a policy of denial, until reality caught up with it: the dams that feed Tehran are now operating at capacity, average rainfall has fallen by up to 45% below normal levels, and the state meteorological service is openly talking about a “day of zero water,” when the taps will simply stop running.

President Masoud Pezheskian has warned that the capital has become “uninhabitable” and has publicly opened the discussion of relocating it, in a country where water collapse is directly linked to internal security and political stability.
Water, War and Security in the Persian Gulf

The Iranian leadership has complained that the bombing of the desalination plant on the island of Qeshm cut off water supplies to about 30 villages, affecting an already vulnerable population living in coastal, climate-stressed zones.
Washington
denies any involvement, but the chain of attacks on water infrastructure – culminating in the Iranian attack on a desalination plant in Bahrain – has already opened a dangerous debate about whether water will henceforth be a legitimate target in future conflicts in the region.

Gulf countries rely critically on desalination to quench the thirst of their populations and industry, and any attack on such infrastructure directly translates into a threat to food security, internal unrest and new refugee flows.

At the same time, inside Iran, the water crisis, the economic suffocation from the war and the power outages are an explosive mix that experts warn could lead from an empty glass of water to a street full of protesters.
Water, corruption and “monuments of failure”

Tehran’s official narrative systematically blames climate change, but the numbers and studies show that nature made the rains, politics made the water shortage.

After the 1979 Revolution, the regime engaged in a frenzied construction race of dams and reservoirs, often in the wrong locations, based on power and contracts rather than ecology; today many of these dams are almost empty, “monuments of failure” that evaporate whatever water they have left under ever-increasing temperatures.

At the same time, over 80% of the country’s renewable water resources are consumed by an extremely wasteful agriculture, with yields that do not justify the sacrifices, while households are limited to about 10% of use, but are the permanent target of “saving” campaigns.

Behind the numbers lie thousands of hidden or illegal wells, a clientelistic licensing system, and the silencing of those scientists and activists who warned in time that the country was heading towards “water bankruptcy” – a bankruptcy that will not be measured only in cubic meters of water, but in social cohesion and lost generations.
Water lost forever

According to studies mapping 1,700 aquifers in 40 countries, 32 of the world’s 50 most over-exploited basins are in Iran, a finding that suggests the country has been pumping far more groundwater than it can naturally replenish for years.

The continued pumping has caused dramatic land subsidence—some areas of central Iran are sinking by more than 35 centimeters a year—and scientists warn that the permanent compression of aquifers amounts to a loss of storage space for water that will never return.

The annual groundwater deficit, estimated at about 1.7 billion cubic meters, is comparable to the combined capacity of the five dams that supply Tehran with water, making it clear that the country is essentially “consuming” its future safety reserves to meet its present needs.

In this context, proposals such as importing water from the Gulf of Oman look more like communication aspirins than a strategic recovery plan: they do not address overconsumption, do not correct corruption, do not restore the damaged basins.

Experts speak of a “virtually unrecoverable” situation and call for a complete model overhaul: from the logic of pharaonic projects and self-sufficiency at all costs, to a new policy of scarcity management, restoration of aquifers and strengthening the resilience of communities, according to the New York Times.

However, while the geopolitical agenda advocates strengthening military and nuclear capabilities and supporting armed allies abroad, water at home remains without political priority, slowly transforming the whole of Iran into a laboratory of how a country collapses when its most basic source of life dries up.

Natural rivers and free-flowing waterways in the Balkans have declined significantly in the past 13 years, according to a recent study as part of the “Save the Blue Heart of Europe” campaign. With the Balkans hosting some of the last free-flowing rivers in Europe, researchers have identified an escalating threat to the region’s natural heritage.

According to the report, around 2,450 kilometres of free-flowing waterways have been lost in the period, reducing the proportion of natural rivers by 7% in 13 years.

The study, which was completed in 2025, following a similar one in 2012, and was carried out by Riverwatch and EuroNatur, examines 83,824 kilometres of rivers in 11 countries, including Greece. At the same time, however, it raises another crucial issue, that of the connectivity of river networks, that is, whether rivers remain free to function as unified and living ecosystems.

"Throughout the rest of Europe, we have a very big problem with barriers, but also with the actual breaking of rivers into smaller parts, which do not allow free communication of organisms," explains Fanikos Sakellarakis, the coordinator of the Water Program at the Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Man (MedINA) - one of the campaign's partners - to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.

At the same time, he emphasizes that beyond the quality and chemical composition of the waters, that is, whether pollution is recorded that may undermine its ecological characteristics, a crucial factor is also their ecological connectivity, that is, whether a river network ultimately flows freely and is not obstructed by a dam.

What is happening with the rivers of the Balkans – What is the situation in Greece?

In the Balkans, as Mr. Sakellarakis emphasizes, the rivers of the region are still trying to maintain a good ecological condition and have several sections with ecological connectivity, that is, they are free-flowing and have maintained their natural characteristics. However, as demonstrated by the study from 2012 to 2025, a negative trend is observed as 2,500 kilometers of free river corridors have been lost in 13 years.

At the same time, the sections that were converted into artificial reservoirs increased by 18%. As Mr. Sakellarakis underlines, in the framework of the report, rivers are classified into different categories, namely those that are natural, those that have been slightly, moderately, extensively and to a large extent.

As for Greece, as Mr. Sakellarakis points out, 35% of its rivers maintain their natural state, 33% have been slightly modified (mild interventions) and 22-23% are assessed as extensively modified or significantly modified. At the same time, according to MedINA, over 3,500 km. of river networks have been significantly modified, while the heavily altered sections are mainly located on the major river axes of the country and are limited to 4%. Such examples, according to Mr. Sakellarakis, are the Aliakmonas and the Acheloos. However, as he notes, Greece is in a good situation compared to the rest of the Balkans, although there is no data from the previous report that had been prepared.

"Compared to other Balkan countries, such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, we are at a good level, while the queen of rivers at the moment in terms of ecological connectivity is Montenegro. Greece is close to what we could say as the Balkan average. Unfortunately, we see that some countries, and even our neighboring countries, such as Albania, have lost a significant number of rivers in the last 13 years, resulting in their ecological quality being somewhat undermined," Mr. Sakellarakis emphasizes to APE-MPE.

What are the threats they face?

As Mr. Sakellarakis points out, the rivers in Greece and the Balkans are currently “at the center of efforts for their protection, their promotion and their rational approach” to issues related to flood protection, however, he emphasizes that the practices proposed as solutions are more related to the protection of human capital and infrastructure.

In addition, according to him, the climate crisis further aggravates the situation, as it has “a dual character”.

“On the one hand, we observe the phenomena of the reduction of water in river networks, but at the same time we see that many times issues arise that have to do with flood phenomena,” he explains, noting that rivers are now “in an intense dialogue and a confrontation regarding the approach that we should ultimately follow.”

“It is worth noting that free rivers and the protection of their floodplains, the protection of the connectivity of rivers, are at the core of a rational approach for the protection of people, infrastructure, but also obviously for the protection of the ecological quality itself. The important thing that arises is the problem of what these constructions are that are coming and undermining the quality, the ecological state of the rivers. And there, unfortunately, what the study identifies and what we also mentioned about the kilometers of free rivers that have been lost, it turns out that it is the siting of new small hydroelectric or electrical projects in general. This is our big concern. At the moment when we are talking in the Balkans we have more than 1,800 hydroelectric projects that are in operational status. But we also have more than 3,000 projects that are in the licensing process”, he points out.

Regarding Greece, as he emphasizes, “it turns out that at the moment we have approximately 120 small hydroelectric projects that are accumulated in areas of high ecological value, such as the entire Pindos mountain range. And at the same time we have more than 500 projects that are in different stages of licensing, which if licensed tomorrow the number will change a lot for our own country”. “On the one hand we have 120 different small hydroelectric projects but these small hydroelectric projects ultimately contribute to only 1.6% of the needs of covering Greece’s electricity production”, he adds.

What emerges, as he explains, is the necessity of a rational approach to the framework for the eventual siting of small hydroelectric projects, without, however, questioning the need for renewable energy sources.

"No serious environmental scientist will say anything different in the situation we are experiencing today, that of absolute climate collapse. But what we must come and bring to the fore is the necessity of a rational approach to the framework for the eventual siting of small hydroelectric projects. In other words, we cannot, in areas of high ecological value on rivers, which we see that even today after so many years, so many decades, they have maintained their ecological connectivity, go and install small hydroelectric projects. We need a new spatial planning for renewable energy sources because unfortunately the current framework is outdated and the last one we had for Greece was in 2008”, notes Mr. Sakellarakis, while adding that the regulation on the restoration of nature, which was passed by the EU in August 2024, needs to be brought to the fore again.

“This is a basic environmental policy tool which, among many other goals it sets, explicitly stipulates that member states must release 25,000 kilometers of rivers by 2030. Fortunately, the Ministry of Environment and Energy itself has already entered a process of preparing the national plan for the restoration of nature, which must be submitted to the Commission in September this year, to which the project team itself and MedINA are trying to contribute with the expertise it has. "in order to identify which areas can be supported with actions to restore ecological connectivity, but obviously also by identifying areas that currently have high ecological value, connectivity and environmental characteristics that should be prioritized for their protection against anything that could undermine their connectivity," he concludes.

Ingredients

Cupcakes
2

large eggs

3/4 cup

vegetable oil

1/2 cup

(100 g.) granulated sugar

2 tsp.

pure vanilla extract

1 cup

(120 g.) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup

(46 g.) oat flour

1/3 cup

chocolate protein powder

1 1/2 tsp.

baking powder

1/2 cup

plain whole milk yogurt

Buttercream
1/2 cup

(1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup

creamy peanut butter

2 cups

(226 g.) confectioners’ sugar

1/2 tsp.

kosher salt

Caramel & Assembly
1 cup

maple syrup

3 Tbsp.

unsalted butter

2 Tbsp.

heavy cream

3 Tbsp.

vanilla protein powder

Crushed roasted unsalted peanuts, for topping

How to:

Cupcakes

Arrange a rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. In a medium bowl, whisk all-purpose flour, oat flour, protein powder, and baking powder.

Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and mix until only a few dry streaks remain. Add yogurt and mix until combined and batter is smooth. Divide batter among prepared cups, filling about three-quarters full.

Bake cupcakes until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Buttercream

In a medium bowl, using a handheld mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and peanut butter until creamy.

Gradually add confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating to blend after each addition. Add salt and continue to beat until light and fluffy.

Make Ahead: Buttercream can be made 1 week ahead. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before using.

Caramel & AssemblyStep 1In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring maple syrup and butter to a gentle boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly reduced, 2 to 3 minutes.

Reduce heat to low and stir in cream. Remove from heat, whisk in vanilla protein powder until smooth, and let cool slightly.

Using an apple corer or small measuring spoon, carve out a small section from the center of each cupcake. Spoon or pipe a small amount of caramel into each opening. Pipe or spread buttercream over, covering the filled center.

Top with peanuts and drizzle with more caramel.

Make Ahead: Caramel can be made 1 week ahead. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate.

What is happening in Greenland does not only concern its inhabitants. The future of the world's largest island has direct consequences for billions of people, as it is linked to one of the most critical issues on the planet: the rapid loss of ice.

Most of Greenland, an area of about two million square kilometers, is covered in ice. However, the polar regions are warming at a rate at least twice the global average, leading to accelerated melting with serious implications for climate stability.

The main cause is emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, which have increased the Earth's temperature, with the Arctic being disproportionately affected.
Greenland and melting ice: The global consequences

According to scientists from the Danish Meteorological Institute, in a single year (up to August 2025) Greenland lost about 105 billion tons of ice. This is not an isolated phenomenon, as the ice sheet has been steadily thinning for almost three decades.

The loss of ice is leading to rising sea levels, which have already risen about 10 centimeters since 1993. If all of Greenland’s ice were to melt – something that is not expected within a century – sea levels could rise by more than seven meters, exacerbating flooding and extreme weather events.

Melting ice reduces the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface, allowing the oceans to absorb more heat. This further accelerates warming and affects ocean currents.

Research shows that the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet is helping to slow down important ocean currents, with potential impacts on weather patterns even in the southern hemisphere.

Greenland: Mineral wealth and geopolitical interest

Beyond the climate, Greenland is at the center of international interest due to its rich deposits of graphite, zinc and rare earths – materials critical for clean energy technologies. The European Union considers many of these to be of strategic importance.

However, mining remains difficult due to environmental conditions, while the local government has banned uranium mining. At the same time, interest in oil has been limited, as no new exploration permits have been issued since 2021 for environmental and economic sustainability reasons.

The warming of the Arctic is opening up new shipping routes, significantly reducing the distances between Asia and Europe. China is promoting the so-called “Polar Silk Road”, which passes through the northern coast of Russia and is navigable only a few months a year.

Despite the economic opportunities, environmental groups warn of serious risks from increased shipping, such as black carbon pollution. At the same time, an international race to build icebreakers has begun, with Russia leading the way and NATO countries boosting their capabilities.

Greenland, then, is not just a remote island. It is a point of intersection of climate, economics and geopolitics, with developments that will determine the future far beyond the Arctic.

Nearly 80% of the world's poorest citizens, or 900 million people, are increasingly directly exposed to climate risks, exacerbated by global warming due to climate change, a "double burden" against which the UN is warning today.

Heat waves, droughts, floods... "No one is immune to the increasingly serious consequences of climate change", but "the poorest among us are hit hardest", commented Haoliang Xu, the interim head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP in French, UNDP in English).

At COP30 in Brazil next month, therefore, “the opportunity must be seized by world leaders to consider climate action as action against poverty,” he continued, in a written statement to Agence France-Presse.

The UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) research center publish the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) every year, which now includes data for 109 countries where 6.3 billion people live.

The index takes into account data on malnutrition, child mortality, lack of adequate housing, sanitation, electricity, access to the education system, etc.

According to this year’s findings, 1.1 billion people were living in a state of “acute” multidimensional poverty in 2024. Half of them are minors.

These figures, similar to those of last year, also show a trend towards a consolidation of the level of multidimensional poverty, as illustrated in the text by Ricardo's family.

A member of the indigenous Guarani community, he lives in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, with his wife, their three children, his parents, his divorced sister and her children. A total of 19 people in a small house, with one bathroom, a meager income, a kitchen that burns wood or coal. None of the children go to school.
4 in just one year

Two regions are particularly affected by poverty: sub-Saharan Africa (565 million poor people) and South Asia (390 million), which are also very vulnerable to climate change.

Against this backdrop, a few weeks before COP30, UNDP and OPHI want to highlight the “overlap” between poverty and exposure to four environmental hazards: extreme heat (at least 30 days with temperatures above 35° Celsius), drought, floods and air pollution (concentration of fine particles).

The result: 78.8% of the poor (887 million people) are directly exposed to at least one of these threats, with extreme heat putting the most at risk (608 million), followed by pollution (577), floods (465) and drought (207).

Some 650 million people are exposed to at least two of these threats, 309 million to three, and 11 million have already faced all four in just one year.

“The overlap between poverty and climate risks is clearly a global problem,” the report insists.

The fact that extreme climate events are multiplying threatens development progress. South Asia has made “success” in the fight against poverty, but with 99.1 percent of its poor exposed to at least one climate risk, the region “must chart a new course, balancing decisive poverty reduction with pioneering climate action.”

With global temperatures already around 1.4°C warmer than in the 19th century, the situation is set to get worse, with projections indicating, for example, that the poorest will be the ones to suffer the worst consequences of rising temperatures.

“In the face of these overlapping pressures, people and the planet must come first, and above all, we must move from description to rapid action,” the text says.

“Aligning poverty reduction, emissions reduction, adaptation to impacts and ecosystem restoration would allow (…) resilient communities, particularly those on the front lines of a warming world, to thrive,” it says.

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