Oxford University museum to return remains of 39 people to India's Naga community

Copyright Copyright Business Wire 2016

By Nathan Rennolds

Published on 07/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The Pitt Rivers Museum said it has been "working closely" with the Naga people on finding a date for a handover ceremony, after which a Naga delegation is set to accompany the remains home.

A museum in the UK has agreed to return a collection of human remains taken during Britain's colonial era to the Naga community in northeast India.

Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum, which holds the world's largest collection of Naga material, is set to repatriate the remains of 39 Naga people following years of negotiations.

Many of the Naga artefacts held at the museum were gathered by colonial administrators in the early 20th Century. The museum says it removed all human remains from display in 2020.

It comes after Oxford University received a claim for 40 sets of ancestral remains kept at the museum in February 2026. In July, the university agreed to return 39 of them, saying the remaining set did "not have a clear provenance as Naga."

In a statement to Euronews, the museum's director, Professor Laura Van Broekhoven, the director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, said it had been "humbling" to have been part of the process working towards returning the remains.

"I feel honoured that we walked alongside our partners to find the path to return for these 39 Naga ancestors, who have been away from their homeland for far too long," she added.

The museum said it has been "working closely" with the Naga people on finding a date for a handover ceremony, after which a Naga delegation is set to accompany the remains home.

The deal has been welcomed by the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) and other Naga groups.

"Repatriation, for the Nagas, is not simply about bones and ancestral remains finding their way back to the land but importantly about memory returning to where it belongs," the FNR and other Naga organisations said in a statement sent to the AFP news agency.

According to the Pitt Rivers Museum's website, the museum first received Naga ancestral remains more than 100 years ago from John Henry Hutton, an anthropologist and colonial administrator in the Indian Civil Service.

Hutton and a fellow administrator, James Philip Mills, are said to have brought the museum most of the Naga remains in its collection between roughly 1910 and 1940.

"Their 'collecting' was not the neutral, scholarly activity the word implies," the museum says, adding that "remains and objects were frequently confiscated during punitive military expeditions, rather than freely given."

The Pitt Rivers' Naga collection includes thousands of objects in total.

"Within it, 219 items are listed as Naga human remains: 39 ancestral human remains (primarily skulls) and 178 objects that contain, or may contain, human hair. The current return concerns the 39 ancestors," the museum says.

 

Inside the world’s first solar ambulance transforming remote healthcare even when the sun goes down

Copyright Bart van Overbeeke.

By Liam Gilliver

Published on 07/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Solar ambulance Stella Juva could transform access to healthcare in regions that lack reliable infrastructure, electricity and fuel.

The world’s first solar-powered ambulance has officially taken to the road, in what has been described as an “important first step towards the future of sustainable healthcare”.

Students from Solar Team Eindhoven at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed Stella Juva – a road-legal ambulance that operates as an electric vehicle (EV) powered by fully integrated solar panels.

Energy generated from the sun is stored in a 50 kWh battery, allowing the ambulance to safely keep driving and deliver healthcare in remote areas – which often lack reliable infrastructure, electricity and fuel options – even when the sun has gone down.

Unlike traditional ambulances that pick patients up and transport them to a hospital, Stella Juva brings healthcare directly to people in need.

“When a healthcare professional arrives at a dispensary, they are able to extend solar panels from the side of the ambulance,” Yarno Basten of Solar Team Eindhoven tells Euronews Earth.

“This helps generate extra energy and provide shade for delivering healthcare. While stationary, the ambulance generates more solar energy than the medical equipment uses. This means that healthcare workers can keep using medical equipment at all times.”

World’s first solar ambulance takes to the road

During its first practical test, in collaboration with the international health organisation Amref Health Africa, Sella Juva covered more than 800km driving around various field locations in the Narok region of Kenya.

At one point, the team spent six hours travelling on challenging roads to reach a remote field location in Mosiro.

Related

• Romania is falling behind the renewables race. Can the EU's biggest solar farm save it?
• Solar outpaces coal for the first time in China: How does Europe compare?

“During the end challenge in Kenya, the solar ambulance tackled rough off-road terrain,” Basten says. “During this off-roading, the toelink broke down, which connects the front wheels to the steering mechanism.

“Luckily, this part was designed as the first part to break. Within just half an hour, the team was able to exchange it with a new piece, so that Stella Juva was able to finish her journey.”

An ‘energy independent’ ambulance

Stella Juva is equipped with medical equipment that is urgently needed by health organisations in remote locations, such as an X-ray machine, ultrasound, Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and cooling equipment for vaccines.

During a two-day test, the solar ambulance proved that it could have provided medical care to approximately 200 people.

Stella Juva parked up with its solar panels extended. Bart van Overbeeke

While stationary, Stella Juva generated more solar energy than it consumed while using all of the medical equipment simultaneously. Researchers say that this shows the ambulance can operate in an “energy independent manner”, allowing healthcare workers to keep using medical equipment at all times.

“It is really great for the team to see the potential of Stella Juva in practice,” says team manager Mathijs van Gerven. “Not only to drive sustainably, but also to be able to provide fully independent care. Especially in remote areas where energy is often scarce, this can make all the difference.”

‘The potential impact could be enormous’

“In Narok, long distances and unreliable electricity still make quality healthcare difficult to access,” says Geoffrey Sadera, a project lead of maternal and child health at Amref Health Africa.

“Stella Juva can bring not only health workers to remote communities, but also the power and medical equipment needed to examine and diagnose people on the spot.”

For example, during a single outreach, Stella Juva could provide an ultrasound scan for up to 40 pregnant women. This could be a literal life-saver in Narok and nearby counties, which face high levels of maternal and child mortality.

“If we could deploy Stella Juva in these areas, the potential impact could be enormous: we could identify risks earlier, intervene sooner and ultimately save lives,” Sadera says.

Following the successful test, the research team hopes that its impressive results will inspire companies, social organisations and governments to tackle societal challenges. It says they are open to parties who want to explore scaling up the invention.

 

Second-hand smoke: 2.7 billion exposed, 767 million of them children, study finds

Copyright Cleared/Canva

By Marta Iraola Iribarren

Published on 08/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Second-hand smoke causes serious health harm, including heart disease, respiratory illness and cancer, and remains a leading cause of preventable death worldwide.

A third of the world’s population is exposed each year to second-hand smoke — also known as passive smoking — which continues to be a major source of illness and mortality among non-smokers.

An estimated 2.71 billion people around the world were exposed to second-hand smoke— a combination of two types of smoke inhaled by non-smokers — in 2023, contributing to 1.66 million deaths. This includes 767 million children under 15, who are especially vulnerable, along with 1.49 billion women.

These new findings come from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 study, published in The Lancet Public Health, which estimated second-hand smoke exposure and health impacts across 204 countries and territories between 1990 and 2023.

Need for stronger regulation

Despite the scale of exposure, the study found that approximately 70% of the world’s population is not protected by comprehensive smoke-free laws.

As of 2024, only 79 countries, approximately 70% of them in the Americas, have achieved the highest protection standards of the World Health Organization framework — with all public places completely smoke-free or at least 90% of the population covered by legislation.

The proportion of the global population covered by comprehensive smoke-free legislation has increased from 3% in 2007 to 33% in 2024, now covering 2.6 billion people.

However, the authors noted that while smoke-free policies directly reduce smoke exposure, there is a need for extra measures such as tobacco taxation, marketing bans, plain packaging and cessation programmes.

Related

• Hundreds of meetings, €8 million a year: How Big Tobacco lobbies the EU
• Cigarettes are on the decline in the EU, but how popular are smoking and vaping still?

Regional patterns

The researchers found that the number of people impacted by second-hand smoke exposure remained broadly the same globally, but rose sharply in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, which they attributed to population growth.

The exposure prevalence in the Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia region was 37.7% — higher than the global average of 33.9% — affecting 146 million people.

Most of the countries in Western Europe were included in the “high-income super region,” which showed some of the most significant progress in reducing passive smoking.

Denmark and Norway achieved some of the world's largest reductions since 1990, at -48,8% and -44,3%, respectively.

Broad health impacts

Beyond how many people are exposed, the report found that second-hand smoke accounted for the loss of 44.8 million years of healthy life and continues to be a major contributor to disability and premature death.

While a smoker inhales "mainstream smoke" through the cigarette's filter, non-smokers primarily breathe in sidestream smoke. This is unfiltered and contains higher per-unit concentrations of toxic and carcinogenic compounds than the smoke inhaled by the smoker.

The researchers estimated that second-hand smoke remains a substantial driver of global health loss, particularly through cardiovascular and paediatric respiratory diseases.

Exposure to tobacco smoke was associated with several health conditions, including stroke, lower respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, type 2 diabetes and cancers of the trachea, lung and breast.

 

Pupils' reading and maths skills slump across the world as digitalisation soars, PISA study shows

Copyright Jacob King/PA via AP

By Inês Trindade Pereira

Published on 08/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Student performance in reading, maths and science is declining across OECD countries, and the traditional divide between advantaged students and disadvantaged pupils no longer holds. How do EU countries measure up?

Pupils' maths and reading skills are declining across the globe, largely due to digitalisation and a drop in recreational reading.

The OECD's latest PISA report, which measures 15-year-olds' ability to use their reading, mathematics, and science skills, found that student performance across OECD countries reached a record low in maths and reading.

When looking at EU countries specifically, pupils in Spain, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, Greece, Romania, Cyprus, and Bulgaria score below the OECD average in reading, mathematics and science skills.

Only Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Poland and Czechia managed to secure a mean performance above the average.

Reading recorded the steepest decline, with scores falling by 28 points across OECD members between 2015 and 2025, with pupils from wealthy families being the ones who fell furthest behind.

Some of the reasons for the decline are related to increased digitalisation, longer screen time and falling rates of reading for enjoyment.

"Most troubling is the decline in the very skills that matter most in the AI age: evaluating information, making connections across multiple sources and thinking critically about what we read," the report stated.

"In turn, the share of 'hasty readers' – students who rush through texts and give quick but incorrect answers – almost doubled between 2018 and 2025. In a world increasingly flooded with information, our students are less likely to think deeply and separate signal from noise."

In 2025, seven EU countries had a mean performance significantly above the OECD average, while 13 member states had a mean performance considerably below.

Countries with the largest declines in reading also tended to record the largest drops in mathematics and science.

In fact, mathematics followed, with a drop of 22 points over the past decade. This is equivalent to just over one year of learning.

Last year, 11 EU countries had a noticeable mean performance above the OECD average, compared to nine member states with a mean performance significantly below.

Science, however, has been comparatively resilient over the past decade, registering the smallest fall.

Only eight EU countries had 15-year-old students scoring above the OECD average, while 10 EU countries had a mean performance below the average.

Is the inequality gap in education closing?

The report also states the world is no longer divided into rich countries with great schools and poor countries with weak ones.

"Between 2022 and 2025, the narrowing of socio-economic gaps largely reflected declines among advantaged students rather than improvements among disadvantaged students," the PISA report noted.

In science, disadvantaged students' performance in all OECD countries remained stable while advantaged students' performance declined by eight points.

Meanwhile, in reading, disadvantaged students' performance declined by four points, compared with a 20-point decline among advantaged students.

Finally, in maths, advantaged students' performance declined by 14 points, while the change among disadvantaged students was not statistically significant.

For instance, Luxembourg is by far the biggest spender on education, expending around €248,479, but it posted lower average science scores than Ireland, France and Italy, all of which invested less than half that amount per student.

"The most successful education systems focus on fewer areas in greater depth, invest in teachers, engage parents and provide targeted support for the students and schools that need it the most," said OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann.

"Technology and AI can strengthen learning and help prepare young people for the future, but only when used purposefully and not as a substitute for attention, effort and understanding."

 

Mistral AI raises record €3 billion in Samsung-led funding round

Copyright AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard

By Quirino Mealha

Published on 08/09/2026 - EURONEWS

French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI has raised €3 billion in a round led by Samsung Electronics, nearly doubling its valuation to more than €21 billion in what the company says is the largest equity fundraising ever completed by a European technology firm.

Europe's answer to OpenAI has just become considerably better funded.

The Paris-based company Mistral AI announced its Series D on Tuesday, three years after being seeded, with the memory chip giant Samsung leading alongside the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity.

The step up is steep.

Mistral was valued at €11.7 billion in 2025 after a €1.7 billion Series C led by Dutch chipmaker ASML, meaning the company has almost doubled its valuation in a year.

Much of the money is going into concrete rather than code. CEO Arthur Mensch announced the funding would build out data centres and computing capacity that Mistral can rent to others but that will also ensure autonomy.

"Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow around 100% in the next five years," Mensch said, adding that the company would train "bigger and faster models."

Mistral is already spending €4 billion on data centres across France and Europe, with one facility running outside Paris and another under construction in Sweden.

It raised further debt financing in March for the same purpose, and Microsoft has agreed to fund capacity from its European network, built around thousands of Nvidia chips.

Related

• Analysis: Will Big Tech's colossal AI spending crush Europe's data sovereignty?
• How the EU AI Act is reshaping company rules from Washington to Tokyo

Both Microsoft and Nvidia are also investors in Mistral, with the latter also adding exposure in this funding round.

The company says more than 125 enterprises across 20 countries use its technology, and Mistral projects it will pass a billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026.

Europe lags behind in the AI race

Despite the news, Europe continues to critically lag behind in the global AI race.

Mistral's valuation sits far below OpenAI and Anthropic, and Europe's wider AI sector remains a fraction of the American one, with enterprise adoption across the bloc running at around 13.5%.

Other European contenders exist but are smaller.

Germany's Aleph Alpha focuses on government and regulated industries rather than competing at the frontier, while Helsing has grown quickly in defence applications, and Switzerland's Apertus offers fully open models and training data.

Brussels is trying to close the gap.

The InvestAI initiative carries a €200 billion headline commitment, and in July the Commission opened tenders for up to seven AI gigafactories, aiming to unlock more than €30 billion in investment, though those sites are not expected to operate until next year or 2028.

Thirteen smaller AI factories are already being built across seven EU countries.

The AI Act became applicable in August, but its toughest obligations were pushed back by the digital omnibus agreed in May, with high-risk rules now landing in December 2027 and August 2028, a delay Brussels framed as making the policy more innovation-friendly.

 

AMD unveils ‘personal super computer’ for new era of computing

Copyright AP Photo

By Jonathan Benton

Published on 08/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The American chipmaker launched what they have described as a ‘personal supercomputer’ in Berlin on Friday, designed and made for a “completely new era of computing” driven by AI.

The supercomputer, called the Threadripper Halo Station, was unveiled at the German tech event Internationale Funkausstellung by AMD Senior Vice President Jack Huynh.

The Threadripper Halo is an ultra-high-performance workstation equipped with up to two terabytes of system memory, up to 576 gigabytes of high bandwidth memory (HBM3E), along with 96 cores of Threadripper Pro, two MI350P data centre accelerators, all supported by liquid cooling.

Huyn said the new supercomputer is the “most powerful workstation in the world”, capable of running AI models with more than a trillion parameters.

The AMD executive gave a brief demonstration of its potential at the event by generating an entire 3D world and flight simulator from a single prompt.

The company’s pitch is to bring data-centre level AI performance and capacity to a desktop format, as demand for AI rapidly grows around the world.

The supercomputer is slated for release early next year, however AMD are yet to reveal how much it will cost. It is expected that it could exceed €100,000, geared towards corporate and institutional budgets rather than as personal computers as originally pitched.

Related

• Before New York City, Norway had already banned AI in schools

Yet it will give its consumers a platform to deploy large-language models and agentic AI systems themselves rather than rely on increasingly expensive cloud computing.

The Threadripper Halo Station’s direct competitor is the NvidiaDGX Station, with both able to run large AI models in a desktop form, however they differ in how they approach this challenge.

AMD’s supercomputer dominates on memory capacity and bandwidth, offering more than three times as much memory than Nvidia’s, allowing it to run on trillion parameter AI models locally.

However, Nvidia’s offering more seamless integration when moving code from a local workstation to the cloud and, crucially, it is already available, retailing at around €100,000.

Relate

Industry analysts see AMD's announcement as a potential catalyst for reshaping the competitive landscape of the local AI computing market.

With cloud AI subscription costs adding up for many institutions and businesses, demand for computers such as the Threadripper Halo Station to run large models on their own infrastructure will continue.

Therefore, AMD's approach of delivering data-centre-class performance using standardised components to lower the barrier to entry could be a major turning point in the expansion of the AI and personal computing sectors.

France tests Tesla's self-driving tech as Europe moves closer to autonomous cars

France is preparing to test Tesla’s self-driving system on public roads, a move that could bolster the technology's chances of winning approval throughout the European Union.

Issued on: 04/09/2026 - RFI

A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street in Austin, Texas, in June 2025. France is testing the company's supervised driver-assistance system ahead of a European vote to approve wider use. © Joel Angel Juarez/Reuters

US electric carmaker Tesla has provided France with two vehicles fitted with its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to test on public roads, to allow regulators to check safety data provided by the company and from tests in the Netherlands.

France’s Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said the decision came after a “constructive exchange” with Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk.

“With the provision of two vehicles equipped with FSD by Tesla, we are now entering a new phase: that of on-road testing,” he said in a post on X late Tuesday.

France already allows certain forms of assisted driving, though each type of vehicle, use case and location require specific authorisation.


Safety reservations

FSD is not fully autonomous, but rather a supervised driver-assistance system. It can accelerate, brake and steer a vehicle, but the driver must remain attentive and ready to take control.

Tesla has been working with France for several months on technical changes that could allow France to approve FSD at an EU level.

The bloc is expected to vote on the technology before the end of the year, a source in the French Transport Ministry told Reuters this week.

In July, Tabarot said that France was not yet satisfied with the safety trade-offs, pointing in particular to speed limits and warnings designed to keep drivers attentive.

The tests are expected to produce results by mid- to late September.

The Netherlands became the first European country to provisionally approve FSD in April. Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania have since followed.

EU vote

Tesla, whose European sales have dropped in the face of competition from European and Chinese electric vehicle companies – as well as opposition to Musk's politics – has been lobbying European regulators to approve wider use of FSD.

On Tuesday, the company said it had recorded 4.1 times fewer collisions in Teslas fitted with FSD than in manually driven ones in the five European countries where the system is currently permitted.

Tesla said the figures were based on more than 100 million kilometres of driving data collected between April and August. FSD-equipped vehicles were involved in three collisions on highways and nine on other roads, compared to 137 and 490 collisions respectively for manually driven vehicles.

An EU vote could take place as early as October. Approval would require support from at least 15 of 27 member states, representing at least 65 percent of the bloc’s population.

Delivery robots

France is also moving to regulate other forms of autonomous transport. A decree published in early August allowed for the approval of delivery robots to be used on public roads.

The compact electric vehicles had previously lacked a specific regulatory framework. They can now be classified in the EU’s L category, which covers vehicles including mopeds and motorcycles.

They can operate on roads but must be remotely supervised, and local authorities will decide which areas and routes they can use.

The government said the rules were introduced ahead of a wider EU legal framework for autonomous delivery vehicles.

Meanwhile Waymo, the self-driving technology company owned by Google parent company Alphabet, is also preparing to expand in Europe, with plans to launch driverless taxis in Munich.

The company said last month it would begin testing its vehicles in the southern German city, initially using human drivers to map roads and assess local conditions before launching a its driverless service by the end of next year.

(with newswires)

 

Robot revolt? Polish company stages protest demanding stricter AI rules

Copyright Christoph Soeder/DPA via AP

By Una Hajdari

Published on 08/09/2026 - EURONEWS

In Warsaw, marching robots waved flags and chanted slogans outside the digital affairs ministry, calling on Poland's government to regulate AI before it costs people their jobs.

Waving flags, "chanting" slogans and marching in circles, around 30 robots took to the streets of Warsaw on Monday to campaign for AI regulation in front of Poland's digital affairs ministry.

The protest was organised by Democratism, an initiative that, according to its website, aims to launch debate on how AI and robotisation affect the labour market.

In a scene that blurred the line between protest and product demonstration, one of the machines fielded questions directly from journalists.

"The robots present here are meant to show that this technology is already a reality," Agibot A3, one of the AI-powered humanoid robots, said — a statement that proved its own point rather neatly.

Chants of "Defend workplaces," "Time for rules" and "Don't wait, regulate" played on loudspeakers as the robots — which ranged from bipedal humanoids to dog-like quadrupeds — demonstrated.

"We particularly want to address the issue of the potential replacement of people both by humanoid robots and by artificial intelligence in cognitive work," said (human) organiser Grzegorz Kuliś.

"If we don't react now, we may soon have a problem," he added, emphasising the need for "rules and regulations that would serve as a shield protecting workers".

Aside from attracting the attention of several passers-by, Kuliś said the use of robots was meant to demonstrate their existing capabilities and, by extension, the urgency of the issue.

"These robots can already move around freely, they're already 'protesting,'" he said — leaving unaddressed the question of whether a machine reading out a pre-loaded chant counts as protesting at all.

Minister comes out to meet organisers

The marching robots were met with a visit from Poland's Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who spoke to Kuliś on site.

"Uncontrolled (AI) models, implemented into humanoids that will also keep evolving as robotisation moves forward, are a major problem," he said.

Kuliś, who is now the chief information officer of a robotics company and chief executive of an employment agency, served two terms on the Labour Market Council at the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy.

"We feel responsible for starting to inform society about the rapid and dynamic technological changes which personally frighten us," he said.

Related

• AI-powered robots showcased at European Parliament in Brussels
• Would you let a humanoid robot clean your home for €26 an hour?

Who's behind the machines

Local Polish outlet Opolska360 reported that the robots used in Monday's protest were built by Delta Robots, a company that has been producing both humanoid and quadruped machines for more than a decade.

Kuliś is also president of Weegree, a recruitment firm that has operated for more than 20 years — both companies are based in Opole, in southern Poland.

That detail sharpens the irony at the heart of Monday's demonstration, as the robots warning of job losses were built by the very industry sounding the alarm about them.

Opolska360 also quoted Kuliś describing Democratism as a movement he hopes will go international, saying the goal is "not to fight change, robotics or technological development," but to launch a debate on its consequences and how to counter the negative effects.

According to the outlet, Gawkowski told the gathered protesters that Poland is the first EU country to introduce oversight of the AI market and announced plans to set up a Commission for the Development and Security of Artificial Intelligence, along with regulatory sandboxes that would let companies test AI solutions before wider rollout.

In July, Poland's conservative-nationalist President Karol Nawrocki signed into law a bill put forward by the ministry to implement the EU's AI Act.

It created a national authority capable of enforcing existing EU regulations, which had already formally come into force.