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In a cultural landscape often dominated by the ephemeral, the "Ion Luca Caragiale" Cultural House of the Municipality of Ploiești invites a new generation of creators to the 24th edition of the National Poetry Contest "Iulia Hasdeu". https://www.litera13.ro/2026/10/concursul-national-de-poezie-iulia.html (translated)

The author of the entry claimed that Donald Tusk's actions have made the upcoming winter the most expensive for Poles in the 21st century. He wrote that in response they proposed the "Cheap Heating" program, which was supposed to reduce the price of coal by 300 PLN, pellets by 350 PLN, and electricity bills by even 70 PLN per month. #Polska #Tusk #Ogrzewanie #PL (translated)

The author believed that the debate surrounding the Ballon d'Or was unnecessary and accused skeptics of not recognizing Dembélé's exceptional season. He highlighted his 26 goals and 14 assists, totaling 40 decisive contributions in 2,909 minutes, one every 73 minutes. He also pointed out eight decisive contributions, including seven goals, during the knockout matches of the Champions League, with at least one contribution in each round. According to him, Dembélé scored in the Champions League final, provided an assist in the UEFA Super Cup final, and scored in the intercontinental cup final. The author also mentioned two goals he deemed worthy of the Puskás award and the goal of the season in Ligue 1. He reminded that Dembélé had been voted player of the season in Ligue 1 by players and coaches, and that he was included in the Champions League and Ligue 1 teams of the season, chosen by UEFA's technical expert panel and by players, respectively. For the World Cup, the author attributed him eight decisive contributions, which is the third-best total of the 21st century in a campaign, behind Messi and Mbappé. He pointed out that Dembélé was decisive against five different opponents up to the semifinals, that he was the third most decisive French player in the tournament's history with 10 contributions, and the second-best creator with 18 chances, behind Lionel Messi. He also mentioned his fifth-place ranking among the competition's offensive players according to FIFA. The author cited the titles of Ligue 1, Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, intercontinental cup, and Trophée des champions. He finally highlighted Dembélé's collective behavior: during the match against Bayern in 2026, having been substituted in the 65th minute, he reportedly did not contest his replacement and encouraged his teammates from the bench. According to the author, he also accepted to defend for the team and dedicated his Ballon d'Or to the collective, thanking his partners. He described his season as marked by pressing, defensive efforts, and encouragement directed at his teammates. #BallonDor #Dembélé #Football (translated)

Foot Mercato praised Jude Bellingham's performance in midfield during the Clásico won by Real Madrid. The media noted that the Englishman touched the ball 56 times, succeeded in 3 out of 3 dribbles, won 13 of his 15 ground duels, made 3 tackles out of 5, and completed 8 defensive interventions. It described his performance as a demonstration of power and control, and then asked if Bellingham was better than Pedri. #JudeBellingham #Clasico #RealMadrid (translated)

THE "BATTLE OF CERIGNOLA (1503)" ON "POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY USA" (by LUCIANO MAGALDI SARDELLA) SOURCE 1: https://popular-archaeology.com/author/sardella/ SOURCE 2: https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-2026-battlefield-archaeology-of-the-battle-of-cerignola-1503/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- CERIGNOLA (FG) — On April 28, 1503, at sunset, a shallow trench cut between the vineyards outside Cerignola rendered heavy cavalry obsolete. For five centuries, its exact location has only been conjectured, its archaeology ignored, its most important sources never translated into English. We are on the Tavoliere of Puglia, a corridor of battles for two thousand years: from Cannae in 216 BC to the falcon hunt of Frederick II from Torre Alemanna. Cerignola, at that time, was not a city but a rural village of 350 families at 120 meters above sea level, custodian of the Mena della Dogana delle Pecore, the great pastoral system of transhumance that financed the Kingdom of Naples. Its possession was fiercely contested. Facing each other were two worlds. Louis d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, Viceroy of Naples for Louis XII, in his thirties, splendidly armored, confident of victory. On the other side was Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Gran Capitán, who on April 27-28 marched from Barletta with about 9,000 exhausted men and decided to settle on a low ridge. He deepened what was already there: not an invention, but an agricultural ditch. The French gendarmes, the last heirs of the medieval knight, lowered their lances and never reached the line. From behind a parapet reinforced with vine stakes, over 1,000 Spanish arquebusiers opened fire. Nemours fell, almost certainly the first European army commander to die from a portable firearm. With him, the charge of cavalry as a dominant tactic died. And here is the scandal denounced by the article: no cartographer of the 17th-18th centuries ever mapped the battlefield. No monument commemorates it. It is not protected as a cultural landscape under the Code of Cultural Heritage. Every deep plowing of the Tavoliere, standard practice since the Bourbon reforms, destroys an archaeology never recorded. Yet the perimeter can be reconstructed. By cross-referencing the 16th-century descriptions of "vine-covered slopes fifteen miles north of the Ofanto" with the Via Traiana, the engagement area is a rectangle of 3-4 square kilometers northeast of the current settlement. With the 1m LiDAR DTM from ISPRA, it could reveal anomalous linear depressions, and the lower filling of a ditch 2-3 meters deep, under the plowed layer, is still readable with magnetometry and ground radar. Why did we arrive late? Not for lack of sources, but for lack of translation. The Municipality of Cerignola and the Torre Alemanna Research and Study Center of Prof. Matteo Stuppiello, who in 1978 obtained the first monumental protection for Torre Alemanna, have digitized a corpus that has never entered Anglophone historiography. Here are the 3 pillars: 1. The letter that still smells of gunpowder. The “Letter from Consalvo de Córdoba to the Spanish royals dated April 29, 1503,” edited by Stuppiello in 2003 and updated to 2025 on comune.cerignola.fg.it/biblioteche-digitali. A handwritten page written in Cerignola the day after the battle, “rich in flashes, twilight lights, and gunfire.” Not a polished chronicle like that of Giovio, but a field dispatch: the fatigue of the night march, the decision to entrench upon arrival, the recovery and honorable burial of Nemours, the intact capture of the French artillery. 2. The graffiti, a monument inside the monument. In the 14th-century church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, known as the Incoronatella, on the Via Trinitapoli Vecchia, where tradition holds that the body of Nemours was brought. On the triumphal arch, a 1503 graffiti gives, in almost notarized form, the date, sixth indiction, Friday at the hour XXIII-XXIIII. It was indeed Friday, as confirmed by the perpetual calendar of Cappelli. Decoded in 1995 by Prof. Francesco Magistrale, Latin paleographer at the University of Bari, in *The Battle of Cerignola (1993)* and in the municipal monograph *S.M. delle Grazie (1999)*. Today it is fading due to humidity and neglect. 3. The land registry that explains the ditch. The Survey of 1672 preserved at the State Archive of Naples, Pignatelli Aragona Cortes fund, Scanzia 63, fasc.1: “At the time of the battle, thick vineyards covered the hill reaching to the plain, and were distinctly separated from the rest of the countryside by a not very deep ditch.” Córdoba did not improvise; he adapted. This is confirmed by the catasti of the Giustiniani: 277 households in 1532, 699 in 1595. The landscape of 1503 was intensely horticultural, not the deeply plowed monoculture of today. In addition to these, there is the first monograph by Vincenzo Buonassisi, *The Battle of Cerignola* (1908, died in Via Fanfulla 10 on June 27, 1928), and the first modern military analysis by Piero Pieri, “Consalvo de Córdoba and the Battle of Cerignola,” Archivio Storico Pugliese 1952, which 30 years before the Anglophone rediscovery of the “pike-and-shot” defined Cerignola as an engineered killing ground. While Cerignola forgot, others remembered. The “Regimiento de Infantería Cerinola n.42”, later “Fuerteventura n.56”, carried the name of Cerignola until the 20th century. The coat of arms, described in *Heraldica e Historiales del Ejercito, Tomo V” (Madrid, 1981): silver field, dying white swan entangled in a hedge, golden wall crown, with the scroll “Cerignola.” Dossier officially transmitted on April 30, 1986, prot. 4565/509, from the Servicio Histórico Militar of Madrid to the Torre Alemanna Center thanks to Col. Alessio Antonutti and Gen. José Cifuentes. And in Amsterdam, at the Rijksmuseum, the anonymous bronze commemorative medal: Hercules with lion skin and club and Janus with the keys next to an eagle-armed coat of arms, legend “Consalvus Agidarius… Janum clausit,” on the reverse a battle scene “Consalvi Agidari Victoria de Gallis ad Cannas,” an artist's mistake that confuses Cerignola with Cannae. It belonged to Mrs. J.M. van Gelder-Nijhoff, donated in 1885. The author's conclusion is clear: Gonzalo's ditch is the most consequential earthwork in European military history. It inaugurates the infantry armed with firearm and conditions the Mediterranean for 160 years. It may still be there, filled, plowed, invisible to the naked eye but accessible to a magnetometer. It is not a matter of medieval archaeology but of the will to protect. (translated)

The author of the contribution criticized the article about a man who allegedly forced a woman obeying the speed limit to brake on the D6 and attacked her in front of her daughter. He stated that the article did not include the license plate or the full name. He labeled the worst part of the video as the fact that cars stopped at the incident, but according to him, no one intervened when the man was hitting the woman. https://t.co/XxEkMPfAHf #bezpečnost #násilí #ochrana #CZ (translated)

The author of the post argued that Europe was asking the wrong question about the hybrid war campaign conducted by Russia. He added that, with the escalation of attacks, the debate had shifted to the choice of terminology. https://t.co/CA6D9zuGbI #GuerraIbrida #Russia #Europa #EU #RU (translated)

The author wrote that Italian schools and universities continued to educate graduates capable of critical thinking and opposed to war. He argued that Meloni, Crosetto, and Valditara aimed to dismantle this spirit to create disposable soldiers of the 21st century. https://t.co/8mpe6DlDFg #istruzione #pace #guerra #IT #XX (translated)

NIUS reported that police special forces arrested three young men on October 1 in Hagen and Unna, who were suspected of preparing a terrorist attack. About 15 hours later, two of the suspects were released after the Hagen district court rejected a police request for extended detention. According to NIUS, the domestic intelligence agency had been monitoring the two Syrians for months; security authorities had feared a possible attack. https://t.co/xXvznAZzi7 #Terrorismus #Sicherheit #Polizei (translated)

SX highlighted that Boca had played in eight finals of the Copa Libertadores, four of the Recopa, three of the Sudamericana, three of the Intercontinental, and one of the Club World Cup. It also pointed out that their longest period without reaching an international final in the 21st century had been five years and described the record as impressive. #BocaJuniors #Libertadores #Fútbol (translated)

The author said formal proceedings had been opened to assess whether the linked platform may have breached the Digital Services Act by failing to properly assess or effectively mitigate risks related to fraudulent listings and accommodation offers that did not comply with the rules.

The Spanish newspaper EL ESPAÑOL reported that Javier Milei described Pedro Sánchez as "unpresentable" and "dictator" during his visit to Spain. He also stated that the country had welcomed hundreds of thousands of Argentines who, he said, escaped from the misery and lack of future caused by 21st-century socialism. Milei described Kirchnerism as the Argentine version of that movement and claimed that the Spaniards regularly suffered from it. #Milei #PedroSánchez #Socialismo (translated)