Category: Azer News

Large-scale forest and vegetation fires are raging across several German states amid high temperatures and persistent drought, AzerNEWS reports, citing foreign media.

In Hrtgenwald, North Rhine-Westphalia, firefighters have extinguished the open flames at the site of a historic wildfire. Around 1,800 residents who had been evacuated from the affected area have since returned home.

Near the Belgian border, the wildfire close to the city of Monschau has spread across an area of up to 3,000 hectares. Although the risk of the fire spreading into Germany has decreased, authorities have issued a warning to around 5,000 residents because of heavy smoke.

In Waldaschaff, Bavaria, around 80 people were evacuated because of a wildfire. They were allowed to return after the blaze was brought under control.

Meanwhile, 22 rescue workers were injured while fighting a fire in the Langscheid area of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Similar wildfire outbreaks have also been reported in Saarland, Saxony, Thuringia and Baden-Wrttemberg. Emergency response measures have prevented the flames from spreading further in most affected areas.

Ukraine’s Defense Forces carried out an overnight airstrike on August 16 against the Kamensky military plant in the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in Russia’s Rostov region, AzerNEWS reports, citing the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

According to the statement published on Telegram, a fire broke out at the facility following the strike. The extent of the damage is currently being assessed.

The Kamensky plant is part of Russia’s defense industry and manufactures solid propellants for Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S multiple launch rocket systems, as well as other missile systems and air-launched missiles.

The facility’s products are used to meet the operational needs of the Russian Armed Forces.

Germany’s struggling automotive industry is facing further pressure as employment in the sector continues to decline, AzerNEWS reports.

According to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of people employed at automotive manufacturing companies fell by 42,300, or 5.8%, in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2025.

Following the decline, employment in Germany’s automotive industry dropped to 691,500. This is the lowest level recorded since 2005.

Despite the decline, the automotive industry remains Germany’s second-largest industrial sector after mechanical engineering, which employs around 905,900 people.

The sharpest employment decline within the automotive sector was recorded in the production of vehicle parts and accessories. Employment in this segment fell by 7.6% to 219,500.

Employment in the production of vehicles and engines declined by 6.1% over the same period.

Across Germany’s manufacturing sector as a whole, employment fell by 2.7% year-on-year to 5.29 million during the reporting period, highlighting the broader challenges facing the country’s industrial economy.

France’s General Directorate of Public Finances confirmed that its information system had been illegally accessed, affecting approximately 678,000 individuals and legal entities, AzerNEWS reports.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has called an interministerial crisis meeting, in response to the large-scale cyberattack targeting the country’s tax administration.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Lecornu will chair the meeting via secure videoconference after completing a visit to the Gironde department.

The meeting will bring together relevant ministers, with one of the main priorities being preparations to notify the 678,000 individuals and companies whose data was accessed without authorization.

A complaint has been filed with law enforcement authorities, while a judicial investigation into the incident is underway. France’s data protection authority has also been notified.

Starting August 17, affected users will be contacted individually and informed about the data that may have been compromised, as well as recommended measures to strengthen their security.

The crisis meeting will also address France’s new digital governance model, an additional pound 200 million allocation aimed at strengthening interministerial cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and ministerial security, as well as a proposed reinforced defense doctrine.

The war Israel launched in Gaza on October 7, 2023, has become the longest and most costly conflict in the country’s history, AzerNEWS reports, citing Haaretz.

The newspaper estimates that Israel’s war expenditure has reached approximately 420 billion shekels ($142 billion), while government debt has risen to around 400 billion shekels ($135 billion).

It was noted that Israel’s ammunition reserves had originally been prepared for shorter conflicts. When Israeli forces began their ground operation in Gaza in late October 2023, the military had expected the fighting to last approximately three months.

However, the prolonged conflict has placed significant pressure on Israel’s weapons stocks. An Israeli reserve officer told Haaretz that supplies of some types of ammunition would not have been sufficient even for a short war, while actual consumption in certain categories was twice as high as initially projected.

The Azerbaijan Junior Open 2026, the first badminton tournament in Azerbaijan held under the Junior International Series category, has concluded, AzerNEWS reports.

According to the Azerbaijan Badminton Federation, the competition brought together 64 junior and young athletes representing Azerbaijan, Trkiye, India, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Tajikistan. Winners were determined across five categories.

Azerbaijani badminton players delivered strong performances throughout the tournament.

In the men’s doubles, Azerbaijan’s Ulvi Huseynov and Amirhan Imanov defeated the U.S. representatives 2-0 (21-16, 23-21) in the final to claim the gold medal.

In the women’s doubles, Leyla Jamalzade and Yagmur Guliyeva finished as runners-up, while Ulvi Huseynov also secured silver in the men’s singles competition.

In the mixed doubles, Amirhan Imanov and Yagmur Guliyeva won the bronze medal.

The tournament had a total prize fund of $5,000 (8,500 Azerbaijani manats).

Included in the official calendar of the Badminton World Federation (BWF), the Azerbaijan Junior Open 2026 was aimed at giving young Azerbaijani badminton players greater international competition experience, supporting their professional development and strengthening competition within the national team.

The closing ceremony of the 42nd Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships was held in Frankfurt today, with Azerbaijan officially receiving the flag as the host of the next edition, AzerNEWS reports.

During the ceremony, the championship flag was handed over by the German delegation to World Gymnastics, which then presented it to representatives of Azerbaijan.

The symbolic handover marked the official announcement that the 43rd Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships will take place in Azerbaijan from September 15-19, 2027.

Both this year’s championship and the 2027 event in Baku will serve as Olympic qualification competitions. The Baku championship is expected to provide more gymnasts with opportunities to secure qualification spots in both individual and group events, making it a particularly important stage on the road to the Olympic Games.

By hosting the world championship and an important Olympic qualification event, Azerbaijan is set to become a major focus of international rhythmic gymnastics in 2027.

Non-resident companies and individuals providing goods and services to customers in Azerbaijan through electronic commerce will be required to register for tax purposes once their annual turnover exceeds the equivalent of $10,000 in Azerbaijani manats, AzerNEWS reports.

The relevant amendments, adopted on February 13, will enter into force on August 23.

Under the new rules, non-residents conducting e-commerce through online platforms and earning income from providing services or performing work for customers in Azerbaijan must complete electronic tax registration within 30 days after their turnover exceeds the $10,000 threshold during a calendar year. Non-residents whose turnover remains below the threshold may register electronically on a voluntary basis.

However, certain services will not be classified as e-commerce services under the new provision. These include consulting, legal, financial, accounting, design and engineering services provided via email or other interactive communication tools, as well as real-time online educational and training services and online ticket booking for scientific, educational, cultural, sporting and entertainment events.

The relevant authorities will establish procedures for the electronic registration, re-registration and deregistration of non-residents, as well as their registration as VAT payers, submission of VAT returns and payment of VAT.

China’s National Supercomputing Internet announced that it had made the official version of DeepSeek V4 Pro (DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813) and the DeepSeek Harness agent framework available on its platform, a move that a Chinese expert said could lower technical barriers for domestic developers and accelerate the adoption of AI agents in scientific research and industrial applications, AzerNEWS reports, citing Global Times.

DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 places a particular emphasis on enhanced agent capabilities. DeepSeek Harness, launched alongside the model and open-sourced under the MIT License, adopts an “everything is a plugin” architecture, allowing components such as models, tools, skills and sessions to be freely replaced and recombined. It offers four operating modes: Standard, PTC, Minimalist and Creative.

Backed by an independently developed and controllable national computing infrastructure powered by domestic technologies, the platform enables users to download DeepSeek models and source code, conduct private deployments and distributed inference, and carry out secondary development of AI agents through a one-stop service, helping bridge the critical gap between cutting-edge large-model research and industrial application.

According to the platform, the National Supercomputing Internet operates China’s first 100,000-accelerator resource pool integrating supercomputing and AI computing, supporting the entire large-model life cycle from training to deployment.

DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 features enhanced agent capabilities, with particularly significant performance improvements in production environments. Its overall performance is comparable to that of foreign closed-source models such as Claude Fable 5 and Opus 4.8.

On August 13, the developer preview of DeepSeek Harness (v0.1) was released for testing by agent-harness developers worldwide, with its source code made available under the MIT License. The National Supercomputing Internet’s AI community has also made the complete source code available, allowing developers to download the full project files from its code repository for compilation, debugging, further development and deployment.

The National Supercomputing Internet’s AI community currently hosts more than 1,700 popular open-source models from China and abroad, including leading Chinese model families such as DeepSeek, Qwen, MiniMax and Kimi.

Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the rollout goes beyond adding two new services. It connects an advanced model and agent framework with national computing infrastructure, making computing resources easier to use while strengthening compatibility with domestic systems.

The enhanced agent capabilities of DeepSeek V4 Pro reflect a broader shift from models that provide answers to agents that execute tasks. Users can set a goal, while the agent plans the workflow, calls tools and completes the task, expanding AI applications from content generation to software engineering, industrial simulation and scientific computing, Wang said.

For research institutions and smaller technology firms, the integrated platform could reduce computing costs and technical complexity. Its 100,000-accelerator resource pool supports the entire model life cycle, while Harness’s plug-in architecture simplifies model adaptation, development and deployment.

Wang added that the MIT-licensed framework allows flexible customization, enabling smaller teams and individual developers to build AI agents and supporting the growth of China’s domestic agent ecosystem.

A 17th-century wooden Catholic church has been destroyed by fire at the Open-Air Museum of Folk Architecture in the Polish city of Sanok, AzerNEWS reports.

According to Poland’s State Fire Service in the Podkarpackie region, the fire broke out overnight on August 16.

Around 120 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Although they managed to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby buildings, the church could not be saved.

Museum officials said the collection housed inside the church was also destroyed in the blaze. The historic church had undergone restoration shortly before the fire.

The cause of the fire remains unknown.

The church was considered one of the oldest churches in Poland.