Author: staff

Published on 24/04/2026 – 13:44 GMT+2 A letter is circulating in the European Parliament warning of the concentration that might result from the system of quotas allocation contained in the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement and the potential for major South American agricultural firms to abuse it. The document, sent to EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen and Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, comes as the agreement is set to enter provisional force in a week (1 May), despite warnings from European farmers over unfair competition from Latin American imports. “In markets that are already highly concentrated, particularly in Brazil, there is a high…

Published on 24/04/2026 – 15:32 GMT+2•Updated 15:37 US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth warned Iran to “make a good, wise deal” ahead of a second round of peace talks between Washington and Iran which could resume in Pakistan on Friday night. Echoing US President Donald Trump’s comments on Thursday, Hegseth said Washington was not “anxious” to reach a peace deal, adding, “We have all the time in the world.” Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the US blockade of Iranian shipping will continue “as long as it takes” to accomplish Washington’s “bold and dangerous” mission to end Tehran’s…

As the European Central Bank (ECB) enters its pre-meeting quiet period before the interest rate decision next Thursday, policymakers are grappling with a deteriorating economic landscape defined by stagflation and geopolitical instability. With major European economies, including Germany and Italy, slashing their growth forecasts and energy costs climbing, Frankfurt must support a slowing economy while keeping inflation under control. ECB President Christine Lagarde gave no clear direction as she talked about the difficulty of assessing the current situation and weighing a rate decision, in a speech at the Association of German Banks’ 75th Anniversary in Berlin on Monday. “The stop-start…

With oil and gas tankers stranded in the Strait of Hormuz and energy prices skyrocketing, European leaders have so far failed to find an agreement on how to help secure the strategic waterway. While Germany has indicated it could be ready to accept U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for a maritime operation to reopen the strait, France insists that would only be acceptable in the context of a peace deal. “There are efforts to have the negotiations between the Iranian side, the Americans and so on — there are various efforts of mediation taking place in various conflicts. We want…

Published on 24/04/2026 – 14:44 GMT+2•Updated 15:10 A senior Swedish diplomat serving as special envoy to Syria was charged on Friday with unauthorised possession of classified documents which could have jeopardised Sweden’s national security in the hands of a foreign power, prosecutors said. “This concerns highly-classified information that the defendant has unlawfully handled by taking home and then keeping the documents containing classified information in his residence and holiday home,” prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in a statement. The diplomat gained access to the classified information “through his previous duties, but which he then took with him without authorisation and subsequently…

The group visited key locations including the abandoned city of Pripyat, once home to about 50,000 people, and the New Safe Confinement structure covering the damaged fourth reactor. The commemoration highlights the lasting impact of the world’s worst nuclear accident by scale and consequences. Known as “liquidators”, around 600,000 people were mobilised across the Soviet Union after the explosion on 26 April 1986. Many were exposed to high levels of radiation while building containment structures and clearing debris, leading to long-term health problems. Several of those returning in 2026 came from the Poltava region and worked on decontamination between 1987…

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on the United Kingdom unless it scraps its digital services tax on American tech companies. “We’ve been looking at it and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful,” Trump said, speaking from the Oval Office. “If they don’t drop the tax, we’ll probably put a big tariff on the UK,” he continued. Here’s what you need to know about the levy seems to have Washington rattled. What is the Digital Services Tax? The UK introduced its Digital Services…

Flights to and from Kuwait are set to resume on Sunday, two months after the outbreak of war following the US-Israel attack on Iran. While the airspace reopened last night (Thursday 24 April), commercial flights will not begin until 26 April as part of a “phased plan to gradually resume air traffic in preparation for the airport’s full operation in the coming period”, the country’s civil aviation authority said in a statement on the Kuwait News Agency website. Kuwait International Airport has been hit several times in recent weeks, with drone attacks on Terminal 1, the under-construction Terminal 2 and…

Russia and Israel have been barred from winning the Venice Biennale’s top prizes after the exhibition’s jury moved to exclude countries whose leaders have been indicted by the International Criminal Court. In a statement released Thursday, the jury said it decided to rule out awarding the Biennale’s Golden and Silver Lions, handed out at the exhibition’s closing in September, to national pavilions belonging to countries whose heads of state are facing ICC charges. The unprecedented decision directly affects Russia and Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been under an ICC arrest warrant since 2023 over war crimes following Moscow’s full-scale…

The instrumentalisation of vetoes undermines the democratic principles of the European Union as it hijacks the interests of 26 in the name of one single holdout, High Representative Kaja Kallas told Euronews in an exclusive interview. Kallas was reflecting on the end of Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in uninterrupted power, during which the Hungarian prime minister frequently frustrated his fellow leaders with his near-constant, overlapping vetoes. “We have to be clear that, actually, the EU treaties do not foresee the veto. The treaties are based on unanimity — that everybody agrees,” Kallas told Euronews in an interview recorded on the…