Author: staff

Updated: 30/04/2025 – 15:56 GMT+2Druze demonstrators blocked roads in northern Israel on Wednesday in response to violent clashes between Druze groups and armed factions in Jaramana, a city near Damascus in Syria. … More The violence erupted on Tuesday after an audio clip insulting the Prophet Muhammad circulated on social media. Although a Druze cleric was initially linked to the recording, he later denied involvement. Syria’s Interior Ministry confirmed it was investigating and said early findings suggest the cleric was not responsible.At least nine people were killed in the clashes, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.In response,…

“He used to say that he’d have a role to play [in the next presidential election],” the person said. “Now, he’s giving updates on where he is in his process, saying that he wants [to run] and is preparing himself.” Darmanin, who hails from French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party, will go “a little bit further” in defining his plans in an upcoming interview on a popular YouTube talk show soon, the individual said.  The justice minister would be joining an already crowded field of centrist and right-wing politicians. Macron is constitutionally barred from contesting after serving two consecutive…

Austria will not implement its controversial ban on family reunification for migrants until it has been cleared by the courts, Chancellor Christian Stocker told Euronews.Vienna wants to protect its system from overloading, but critics objected that the plan was not compatible with European law.“We have legal opinions that show that we can implement this in accordance with the law. I know that it is controversial. I assume that this will also be reviewed by the courts. We will wait for the courts’ decision and use it as a guide”, Stocker told Euronews’ Sandor Zsiros on the fringes of the EPP…

Updated: 30/04/2025 – 14:39 GMT+2Sirens echoed across Israel on Wednesday as the country paused to remember victims of militant attacks. … More At the site of the Nova music festival, where more than 360 people were killed during the 7 October Hamas attacks, families and friends stood in silence during the two-minute siren. The 2023 festival near Kibbutz Re’im, close to the Gaza border, turned into a massacre when armed militants stormed the site. Many were killed trying to escape through fields, while others were kidnapped.Israel’s operations in Gaza, launched after the October attacks, have killed over 52,000 Palestinians, with…

In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has cracked down on the practice as part of a broader campaign targeting the LGBTQ+ community. Surrogacy had become an increasingly popular option for the country’s same-sex couples, who are banned from adopting children, but in 2023 Meloni ordered city councils to only register biological parents on birth certificates. Last year her government made traveling abroad to have a baby through surrogacy a criminal act. Surrogacy has been prohibited in Spain since 2006. But for years, Spanish couples have successfully registered children born through surrogacy in other countries by providing foreign court rulings…

Krah, who was elected to the incoming German parliament this year, denied he had any knowledge about the secret service activities of his former aide. “I was obviously deceived,” he told POLITICO, adding he should be “more careful” about who he hires in future. The AfD currently has no information about what kind of intel the former aide collected on the party or its leadership, a spokesperson told POLITICO. According to a Spiegel report, investigators discovered documents in Chinese in Jian. G’s office containing detailed assessments of the role, status and position of top functionaries within the AfD, including its…

The eurozone economy expanded by 0.4% in the first quarter of 2025, according to preliminary figures released by Eurostat on Wednesday. The outcome, which marks the fifth consecutive quarter of growth, outpaced expectations of 0.2% and signals a modest pickup in economic momentum across the 20-member currency bloc.The quarterly expansion doubled the 0.2% growth recorded in the final three months of 2024, providing a measure of reassurance to policymakers navigating through a period of sticky inflation and high interest rates. On an annual basis, seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 1.2%, unchanged from the previous quarter.The broader European Union economy grew…

Microsoft is prepared to go to court to back up its contractual commitments to protect Europe’s digital resilience in times of geopolitical volatility, the company’s president has said.Brad Smith pledged during an event in Brussels on Wednesday to protect Microsoft’s European customer data and “agreed to challenge any government demand for EU public sector or enterprise customer data where we have a legal basis for doing so.” “We have included that commitment in our customer contracts and backed it up with a promise to compensate customers if we disclose their data in violation of EU law,” he added, saying that the…

A coalition deal between the SPD and Merz’s conservative bloc was finalized Wednesday after two weeks of voting by SPD party members, 84 percent of which agreed to join the new government. Klingbeil, 47, will serve as Merz’s deputy in a grand coalition between the CDU, its Bavarian counterpart Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD, set to be sworn in on May 6. He will also take charge of the finance ministry — a post that controls Germany’s federal budget but also shapes fiscal policy for domestic and international projects. A political scientist from Lower Saxony, Klingbeil has led…

Training AI models requires vast amounts of computer power and data storage capacity. Microsoft dispatched its president, Brad Smith, to Brussels to unveil the plans. He struck a conciliatory tone at a time when the U.S. administration and other U.S. tech executives have launched a full-frontal attack on some of the EU’s tech rulebooks. “We understand that European laws apply to our business practices in Europe, just as local laws apply to local practices in the United States,” Smith said in a blog post, referring to European competition law and the EU’s new digital competition rulebook, the Digital Markets Act.…