Author: staff
Separately, the Commission can also hand out up to €395 billion in cheap loans to countries facing an unexpected and unspecified crisis. In a concession to critics of joint debt, however, the approval of national capitals and the European Parliament is required to trigger this mechanism. The only justification for grants ― effectively free money ― is to finance Ukraine, an aim that is uncontroversial in most EU capitals. A €100 billion cashpot for the war-battered country will include a mix of loans and grants that hasn’t yet been agreed. Market reaction Currently, markets treat EU joint debt more like…
“If we had more time, then almost certainly we would have had a majority in favor of halting the bill,” said Alistair Thompson, a spokesperson for Care Not Killing, a campaign group which opposes assisted dying. “We will get a much fuller and franker debate in the Lords without people who have genuine concerns being excluded,” Thompson argued. “This particular bill is a very bad one,” concurred Tory peer and opponent Mark Harper. The former cabinet minister claimed some MPs “both on and off the record … recognized that the bill is not in great shape and expect the House…
Moscow claims it’s transferring Ukrainians to safety from the conflict, yet refuses to return the children to their relatives, putting them into the adoption system as orphans instead and immersing them in Russian propaganda. Recently, the Trump administration made it even harder to track and retrieve Ukrainian children in Russia after it disbanded Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab task force, which helped to locate kidnapped children and expose complicit Russian and Belarusian officials. U.S. cuts to foreign assistance and Trump administration sanctions against the International Criminal Court are also hurting the ability of groups to track thousands of abducted…
“Humanitarian space must be protected, and aid should never be politicised,” it continued. “However, due to restrictive new registration requirements, essential international NGOs may be forced to leave the OPTs imminently which would worsen the humanitarian situation still further.” The statement further implores Israel to authorize all international NGOs and “unblock” humanitarian actors, as well as facilitating the immediate entry of widespread aid into Gaza via the U.N. and international NGOs. It also says that lethal force must not be used at aid sites. Many Palestinians have reportedly been shot by snipers and tanks while trying to access aid. EU…
In Britain, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK is also topping polls amid broad public dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government. While POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows that Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats maintain a slight lead over the AfD in an aggregation of voter surveys, the far-right party has climbed since snagging almost 21 percent of the vote in February’s federal election, its best-ever result. The AfD is now the largest opposition party in Germany’s Bundestag. The AfD was initially founded as a single-issue party more than a decade ago by a group of economics professors who, in the…
So far, about 110 million złoty (€25.8 million) have been paid out, leaving most of the program’s budget frozen. The HoReCa scheme, part of Poland’s long-delayed EU Covid recovery plan, was intended to help small tourism and hospitality businesses diversify after the pandemic. Brussels had withheld the wider recovery fund, worth €59.8 billion for Poland, for years over rule-of-law disputes with the previous government, making its eventual release a signature win for Prime Minister Donald Tusk after his 2023 election victory. But an interactive online map of recipients, published last week, instead lit up social media with eyebrow-raising purchases ranging…
The Philippine military has blamed China for the collision of two Chinese navy and coast guard ships while trying to drive the Philippine coast guard and fishermen from a disputed shoal in the South China Sea. In a statement on Tuesday, it said it would assess how to respond to Beijing’s use of military force against civilians. “Their actions not only posed a grave danger to Philippine personnel and vessels, but also resulted in the unfortunate collision between the two Chinese vessels,” the Philippine foreign ministry said in a statement. Philippine authorities said Monday’s accidental collision resulted in visibly heavy damage to…
“If today we leave Donbas, from our fortifications, from our reliefs, from the heights that we control, we will clearly open a bridgehead for preparing an offensive by the Russians. In a few years, Putin will have an open path to both the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions. And not only that. Also to Kharkiv.” Trump said on Monday that a peace settlement would require “land swapping” done by both Ukraine and Russia, but did not specify which territories are on the table. “If it’s a fair deal, I will reveal it to the European Union leaders and the NATO leaders…
By Una Hajdari with AP Published on 12/08/2025 – 19:03 GMT+2 Evergrande, once China’s second-largest property developer and now the world’s most indebted company, said on Tuesday it will be delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange on 25 August. The company, founded in 1996, grew on a wave of debt-fuelled expansion by aggressively borrowing to buy land and build projects. It later diversified into wealth management, electric vehicles, theme parks, bottled water and even a soccer club. Delisting in Hong Kong Evergrande was the world’s most heavily indebted real estate developer, with over $300 billion (€257.1bn) owed to banks and bondholders, when…
“I get nothing, no extra resources. They have listened to me, but apart from the 30 extra people at the FGP [Federal Criminal Police], I see nothing,” he said, highlighting a recent shooting in the district of Molenbeek on August 5. “It was 2 p.m., in the middle of the day. A bullet went through the windshield of a car where a mother and her 9-year-old child were sitting. She was nearly killed,” he fumed. “Are we going to wait until innocent civilians are killed before we get the necessary resources?”Moinil said current policy to tackle drug users was insufficient,…