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Cake day: July 27th, 2025

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  • The tail end of an evening train between Malaga and Madrid with some 300 passengers came off the rails near Córdoba at 7:45 p.m. local time and jumped onto the track in the opposite direction and slammed into a train with some 200 passengers coming from Madrid to Huelva, killing at least people 21 and injuring dozens more

    oh wow that’s a serious crash. At first it sounded like a case of a train going too fast at a corner but apparently not:

    Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said the causes of the crash were unknown. He called it “a truly strange” incident because it happened on a flat stretch of track that had been renovated in May. He also said the train that jumped the track was less than four years old.

    Article doesn’t mention how fast the trains were going but they can go at up to 300 km/h, depending on the track, and this being a straight section of a route to Madrid, 200 km/h would seem a conservative estimate. It also doesn’t say if both trains were high speed - but in any case a head-on collision between 2 trains at these kinds of speeds is going to be catastrophic.


  • As none of the candidates secured an absolute majority, António José Seguro, a former head of Portugal’s Socialist Party, and André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party will face each other in a Feb. 8 runoff election.

    But while Ventura performed strongly on Sunday, few believe he has a real shot at winning the runoff vote. Political watchers expect the public to mobilize to prevent him from capturing the presidential palace and to rally round Seguro. That may not matter to Ventura, who said he has no real interest in being “the president of all Portuguese people” and has hinted he was only running to gauge support for his eventual candidacy for prime minister.


  • my information might be out of date yeah! I’ve just skimmed their wikipedia which hasn’t helped clear things up! Seems they did have difficulties around 2011 - “After two decades in decline, Philips went through a major restructuring, shifting its focus from electronics to healthcare.”

    Then, “On 29 January 2013, it was announced that Philips had agreed to sell its audio and video operations to the Japan-based Funai Electric for €150 million […] Funai was to pay a regular licensing fee to Philips for the use of the Philips brand.[59] The purchase agreement was terminated by Philips in October because of breach of contract[61] and the consumer electronics operations remained under Philips”

    It’s a long wiki article with a hell of a lot of transfers and acquisitions, and it’s not clear how up to date some sections are. So I’m not sure what the current situation is.