Germany's Sabotage Wave, Hungary's Billion-Euro Hunt

Germany's infrastructure is under sustained attack. Authorities have logged at least 160 suspected acts of sabotage against power grids and railways so far in 2026, and this week brought a fresh cluster: substations hit in Brandenburg, Cologne and Dormagen, plus an explosion near Augsburg. In Dormagen, police found a suspicious launching device at a substation alongside a written claim linking the attack to the Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia incidents; investigators believe the goal was a deliberate short circuit. Against that backdrop, a new ARD-Deutschlandtrend poll found 56% of Germans now view Russia as a threat to the country's security, though views split sharply along regional and party lines. Elsewhere in Europe, Hungary's new government, led by Peter Magyar's Tisza party, opened a dedicated agency to recover funds diverted to allies of former premier Viktor Orban, with estimates of the missing money running as high as 180 billion euros. Back in Germany, the refugee population slipped to 3.5 million in the first half of 2026, a drop of 20,000, as arrivals from Ukraine dwindled to just 3,919 applications in June. In Nepal, two workers trapped for nine days in a hydropower tunnel after a catastrophic Himalayan flood were pulled out alive, and Volkswagen's supervisory board signed off on cuts of 50,000 jobs and the closure of four German plants.