Author: staff

The videos, found in Gaza and shared by families, show the group walking through the passage, sitting on blankets and lighting the holiday candles. They appear under pressure yet still speak to each other with calm moments, even wishing one another a happy new year. Israel says the six were killed last August by Hamas just before soldiers reached the site. Autopsies indicate they were shot at close range. Among them was Hersh Goldberg Polin, who had lost part of his arm during the 7 October attack. Families say they released the footage to show the hostages should have returned…

Published on 12/12/2025 – 18:04 GMT+1 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Ukrainian troops in Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region on Friday, which Moscow claimed it had occupied. Nearly one month ago on 20 November, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said Moscow troops had captured the northeastern Ukrainian town with a pre-war population of some 26,600 residents. Kyiv denied the claims and Ukraine’s National Guard said it carried out a successful counterattack north of Kupyansk over the past several days, encircling Russian troops there. In a video clip posted on his social media platforms on Friday, Zelenskyy is seen…

The detention of former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini earlier this month in a fraud investigation in Belgium has raised fresh questions about why suspects in the European Parliament’s corruption scandal still have not faced trial, three years after arrests that shocked Brussels. Mogherini, who led the EU’s diplomatic service from 2014 to 2019 and then served as rector of the prestigious College of Europe, was questioned alongside two others on suspicion of alleged procurement fraud, corruption and conflict of interest related to an EU-funded diplomatic training programme. The Italian top diplomat, who was eventually released pending charges, has…

“Every country takes very seriously the way that it protects its borders and makes sure that it has a grip on people who come into the country that are aligned with its own values and principles,” Kyle said when asked if he was worried about the plans. “I’m not in a business of criticizing other countries in the way that they do it, because we are certainly taking it very seriously for our own country.” Kyle spoke to POLITICO in California as part of a visit to advance trade talks and drum up investment alongside U.K. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall.…

The Brexit debate has been revived in Britain, after more than 100 MPs backed a bill tabled by the centrist Liberal Democrats party — which holds the third most seats in the UK Parliament — calling for a bespoke UK-EU customs union. Such a deal, according to the Liberal Democrats, would cut down on red tape and trade barriers between the EU and UK by aligning customs procedures. But to be enshrined into law, the bill would need government backing, which, despite receiving support from a dozen MPs from the ruling centre-left Labour Party, remains unlikely. Starmer has ruled out…

Russia’s central bank on Friday filed a lawsuit in Moscow against Brussels-based Euroclear, which houses most of the frozen Russian assets that the EU wants to use to finance aid to Ukraine. The court filing comes just days before a high-stakes European Council summit, where EU leaders are expected to press Belgium to unlock billions of euros in Russian assets to underpin a major loan package for Kyiv.  “Due to the unlawful actions of the Euroclear depository that are causing losses to the Bank of Russia, and in light of mechanisms officially under consideration by the European Commission for the…

Published on 12/12/2025 – 15:00 GMT+1 Olla Home Solution is a Tuscan construction company and one of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses in 2025. Its turnover increased by more than 400% between 2020 and 2023. Founded in the midst of the pandemic, the company specialises in green building and energy efficiency. “We wanted to provide an additional service to a growing market that was also full of gaps – explains its founder and President Samuel Olla – “because there weren’t any players offering a truly all-round, 360-degree service.” The company also offering to handle the administrative procedures, was a winning move. It…

The Gedi group, which publishes iconic Italian newspapers such as La Repubblica and La Stampa as well as national radio and digital assets, is currently at the centre of one of the most controversial operations in the Italian media landscape. After weeks of rumours, Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli-Elkann family that controls the group, has confirmed that it is in exclusive negotiations with the Greek group Antenna, led by Theodore Kyriakou, for the sale of most of Gedi’s assets. The official confirmation of the negotiations triggered an immediate reaction in the newsrooms. Journalists at La Stampa called a…

Published on 12/12/2025 – 14:03 GMT+1 Facing stiff competition from Anthropic and Google, leading artificial intelligence (AI) developer OpenAI announced a new update to its flagship Generative-AI model, GPT-5.2 – calling it the “best model yet for real-world, professional use”. The company said the update, released less than a month after GPT-5.1 debuted, hallucinates less than its predecessor and is more accurate when it comes to research, writing, analysis, and decision support. In a blog post, OpenAI claimed GPT-5.2 is better at “creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long contexts, using tools, and handling complex, multi-step projects”.…

Published on 12/12/2025 – 13:52 GMT+1 Four Afghan men have been ordered to report to the country’s Taliban “morality police” and warned for dressing in suits inspired by the celebrated TV show Peaky Blinders. The men in their twenties posted videos of themselves in their outfits (flat caps, three-piece suits) inspired by the show starring Cillian Murphy, which is loosely based on a real criminal organisation whose influence in Birmingham, UK, grew in the aftermath of the First World War. A Taliban spokesman, Saiful Islam Khyber, wrote on social media: “They were promoting foreign culture and imitating film actors in…