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The Israeli plan, approved early Friday by the government’s security cabinet, involves disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, establishing Israeli security control of Gaza, and setting up a new administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.  The military escalation comes amid increasingly urgent international condemnation over the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Even Germany, one of Israel’s staunchest European allies, has suspended some arms exports to Israel in response.  Huckabee referred to events of the Second World War in his response to Starmer, saying: “Did [the] UK surrender to Nazis and drop food to them? Ever…

Dmitriev did not name the countries, though he made the comments in response to a post on X by Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which Caldwell said he expects a “concerted effort” to undermine the meeting by “forces in Europe and Ukraine who have a vested interest in the war continuing.” European governments are likely to be strongly opposed to any deal that involves handing over Ukrainian territory to Russia, a prospect raised by Trump on Friday but rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. Dmitriev’s pre-emptive accusation regarding disinformation is…

Five foreign ministers have issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s plans to further escalate the ongoing war in Gaza and take control of Gaza City. Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand said in the statement that the plan, announced by the Israeli Security Cabinet on Friday, “will aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians.” “Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law,” the statement added. The foreign ministers called for an immediate end to the war, emphasising that a “worst-case scenario of…

Poland’s president has a national mandate and can propose and veto legislation (which Tusk’s coalition doesn’t have the votes to override), but the country’s domestic and foreign policies are largely under the control of the government run by the prime minister. Nawrocki used his inaugural speech to slam Tusk’s centrist government, saying: “It is impossible to continue governing in this manner, and Poland should not look like it does today.” The new president is expected to stall Tusk’s reform agenda until the next parliamentary election, which is set for 2027, meaning Poland is likely to see two years of political…

Some 18 per cent of the nearly three million motorhome owners in Europe will travel to Portugal this summer, according to Camping-Car Park, the European network of Motorhome Service Areas (ASA). The country, with 13,000 registered motorhomes, is attracting more and more European tourists who want to travel in this way. They spend an average of €52 per night. They are mainly Spaniards, French, Italians and Germans who spend at least three weeks touring the country from June to September. We spent 20 days travelling around Portugal in a motorhome, starting in Lisbon and then along the southwest coast, including…

Under the proposal being floated by the Trump administration, Russia would agree to a freeze of the war along the contact line in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Moscow controls less land than in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO. In return, Russia would be allowed to keep the Donbas, said the person, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, as others in this article. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff returned from a meeting with Putin earlier this week and told Trump that the Russian president had presented the terms under which the Kremlin would…

Published on 09/08/2025 – 9:08 GMT+2 In his workshop overlooking the Austrian town of Dornbirn, Elmar Kalb usually designs and creates objects that many other carpenters also make: benches, tables, chairs, wooden trays and bookshelves. But in 2018, the carpenter started working on a very different project: reinventing instrument cases for flutes. Kalb had been approached by Korean-born flutist Jasmine Choi after the musician had experienced an unfortunate incident with her flute. Running to catch a flight to a concert, Choi didn’t notice her flute case slipping out from her bag. The case fell to the ground, opened, and the…

Updated: 08/08/2025 – 18:00 GMT+2 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this August 8th, 2025 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More

LONDON — MPs enjoyed free hospitality at the U.K.’s top events this summer, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer accepting tickets to Ascot for his family. Google paid for several MPs to attend Glastonbury Festival including Labour’s Chris Curtis, Dan Aldridge, Leigh Ingham, Steve Race, Jake Richards and Fred Thomas. The hospitality cost of the individual packages was worth up to £4,000.  Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Conservative MP Caroline Dinenage, who has been critical of tech companies using copyrighted material to train their AI models, also took a Glastonbury ticket and a tent from Google. Deputy Speaker…

Published on 08/08/2025 – 18:03 GMT+2 A Belarusian journalist has been handed a 10-year prison sentence on charges of treason and disclosing state secrets, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which revealed the verdict on Friday. Danil Palianski, 53, who contributed to several independent news outlets, was convicted in a closed trial on 25 July, but details of the ruling only surfaced a day before the fifth anniversary of the controversial 2020 presidential election that entrenched Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s grip on power and triggered mass protests. According to media reports, in September 2024, while visiting family in Russia, Palianski…