Author: staff
Recruitment began in January for the role of chair, which will pay £200,000 to £300,000 a year for 10 days of work a month. The process is ongoing, and the final decision, which will be taken by ministers, has not been made. The publicly-owned company will oversee rail infrastructure and services, which had previously been separated, as part of Labour’s reversal of the Conservative rail privatization from the 1990s. Great British Railways is due to be up and running in 2027, with passenger services transferred to public ownership by the end of that year as private rail operators’ contracts expire.…
Published on 30/06/2026 – 9:00 GMT+2•Updated 10:40 Serbia is experiencing a monumental political shake-up but it looks more like a calculated strategy from a politician who has dominated Serbian politics since 2012. For over eighteen months, student-led demonstrations have shaken Belgrade. This powerful protest movement erupted after a tragic railway station canopy collapse in Novi Sad killed sixteen people, exposing, according to students and opposition parties, systemic state corruption. And Vučić is launching a tactical pivot. Barred constitutionally from seeking another presidential term in 2027, experts expect him to return to power by running for prime minister instead. He gambles…
Published on 30/06/2026 – 23:22 GMT+2 The death toll from two devastating earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela last week has risen to 1,943, authorities said on Tuesday. A further 10,571 people have been injured and 28,380 are receiving care in hospitals or temporary camps following the quakes, according to Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the country’s National Assembly. Back-to-back 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude tremors hit Venezuela on the evening of 24 June, causing widespread destruction and leaving tens of thousands of people missing. A strong aftershock also rattled the region on Friday, sending people fleeing into the streets as the ground…
On July 1, a flat €3 customs duty on low-value e-commerce imports will come into effect. Until now, goods imported into the EU worth under €150 were exempt from customs duties. This temporary measure means small parcels entering the bloc, largely through online shopping platforms, will face a fixed customs charge. It addresses what the European Council describes as “unfair competition” for European retailers, as well as concerns over unsafe products, fraud and the environmental impact of vast volumes of cheap imports. The Council also clarifies that this customs duty is separate from the proposed “handling fee” (expected to be…
Erdoğan has repeatedly said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and last week Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described Israel’s Armenian genocide recognition vote as “an attempt to cover up their own crimes.” Israel’s government has strongly denied committing genocide. Under discussion is the Ottoman Empire campaign that is estimated to have killed more than 1 million Armenians and is widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Numerous EU members recognize the events as a genocide, and in 2015 the European Parliament passed an anti-genocide resolution marking the events’ centenary. Many scholars also consider…
Published on 30/06/2026 – 21:47 GMT+2 The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said on Tuesday they were conducting raids in four countries to probe alleged misappropriation of EU funds by the former far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament. The EPPO said the searches were “part of an ongoing investigation into the use of EU funds by a former political group of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2024.” The ID group was formally disbanded after elections in 2024 and was succeeded by a new grouping Patriots for Europe. It contained MEPs from a range of Eurosceptic…
Here are the five key things to know about the DIP. 1. Britain is not on track to meet its NATO commitment The plan says that the U.K. defense spending will reach 2.7 percent of GDP — up from the earlier 2.6 percent settlement that lead to former Defence Secretary John Healey quitting earlier this month. In raw numbers, the U.K. will spend £297.7 billion on defense over the next four years, with the investment plan adding £15 billion to the military budget agreed last year — up from £13.5 billion when Healey quit. The government said it will spend…
Pope Leo XIV will visit the Italian island of Lampedusa on 4 July in a highly symbolic visit as he continues to advocate for migrants’ rights. The Vatican announced the three-and-a-half hour visit in April which is scheduled to take place on the same day as the pope’s native United States marks Independence Day. Pope Leo XIV has been outspoken on the issue of migration and has already visited one of Europe’s migration hotspots, Spain’s Canary Islands, where he stressed the need for a shared response to one of the archipelago’s biggest challenges. The pontiff arrived in Gran Canaria earlier…
By Euronews Published on 30/06/2026 – 20:09 GMT+2 WhatsApp is set to allow users to go by usernames instead of phone numbers as part of a privacy push. The messaging service, which is owned by US tech giant Meta, announced on Monday that people could begin to reserve usernames this week to use when the feature rolls out later in the year. “Usernames are our latest step to make WhatsApp even more private,” WhatsApp said in a blog post. “There’s no directory to browse and no suggestions – people will need to know your exact username to contact you for the…
Russia is the world’s second-largest crude oil exporter and third-largest exporter of refined petroleum products, making the prospect of gasoline imports politically and economically surprising. Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend publicly acknowledged that Russia faces a fuel shortage, saying national gasoline reserves have fallen to 1.7 million metric tons — around 4 percent lower than a year ago. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has described imports as one of the government’s key tools for stabilizing the market, while Russian lawmakers last week approved tax changes creating subsidies to help finance gasoline purchases from abroad. The supply squeeze has…