Author: staff

A major fire broke out late on 17 November in the Vjesnik skyscraper on Slavonska Avenue in Zagreb, spreading vertically across several floors and the roof. Firefighters deployed dozens of vehicles and around 80 personnel to contain the blaze. Officials said archives and furniture inside the building fueled the fire, but no casualties were reported. While the cause remains unknown, investigators suspect an issue with the building’s installations. Authorities say there is no danger of the skyscraper collapsing, though the structure may require reconstruction or demolition.

A move overseas doesn’t come as a total surprise for Donohoe, 51, one of the Irish government’s most highly regarded and longest-serving ministers. But the timing comes at a moment of weakness for Donohoe’s party Fine Gael, which has just suffered a lopsided loss in the presidential election to an opposition socialist figure, Catherine Connolly. That outcome also undermined the credibility of Prime Minister Micheál Martin, whose own Fianna Fáil party candidate stumbled on the campaign trail and quit the race midway. Donohoe had previously been rumored to be interested in taking a senior post at the International Monetary Fund,…

Published on 18/11/2025 – 12:03 GMT+1 •Updated 12:12 French authorities are investigating the second-hand clothing platform Vinted for allegedly failing to prevent children from being exposed to pornographic content. France’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Sarah El-Haïry has asked TV and internet regulator Arcom to probe allegations that some Vinted accounts were directing users, including underage ones, to adult material. Local media reported that some sellers are posting lingerie or swimwear ads to attract users to their profiles on adult content platforms like OnlyFans. “Where there are children or teenagers, there are predators, and what they did this time is to use…

Though the labyrinthine legislative process is far from finished, opposition lawmakers have managed to pass several amendments opposed by the government, including massive corporate tax hikes. Not all amendments are certain to make it to the final draft, but Lecornu will have less control over the final product than his predecessors, as he vowed not to use a constitutional backdoor to pass his budget. To ensure his minority government’s survival, the prime minister is allowing lawmakers to debate and vote on whatever emerges from the parliamentary proceedings. “Today, because the French have decided so, the political situation has changed and…

Published on 18/11/2025 – 10:46 GMT+1 Belgium has struck a deal to buy Latvian-made drone interceptors, the defence ministry said, after a series of incursions near Belgian airports, military bases, and a nuclear plant. The Belgian defence ministry said the defensive kamikaze drones will be acquired from Latvian company Origin Robotics as part of a €50 million anti-drone package. It’s unclear how much of that money will go to the firm, and how many units have been ordered. The purchase comes after drone sightings forced the temporary closure of Belgium’s main international airport at Brussels and Liege, one of Europe’s…

The prime minister is out of the country again for the first of two overseas trips this week – he’s off to Berlin ahead of the G20 in South Africa. Back home, he leaves grumpiness and angst about next week’s budget – Sam tells Anne he’s hearing about the challenges of squeezing every last penny out of Whitehall departments. Is this the first budget that’s unravelled before it’s delivered? And with auditions becoming a theme of the Labour front bench, did the home secretary pass on her big day? Plus, is there a quiet man elsewhere in cabinet who is…

Published on 18/11/2025 – 9:31 GMT+1 German military forces began five days of urban warfare training in Berlin, practising emergency deployment scenarios across the capital as Europe’s security landscape shifts following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Bundeswehr’s guard battalion launched the “Bollwerk Bärlin III” exercise on Sunday at multiple locations including Jungfernheide underground station, the Ruhleben police training ground and a former chemical plant site in Rüdersdorf. The German army cited Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine as requiring enhanced defence preparedness. The urban warfare exercise was needed as Berlin’s narrow streets, high-rise buildings and metro tunnels require specialised training for…

If you’re still sore about Taylor Swift not responding to your well wishes regarding her engagement to her beau Travis Kelce, then Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Yearwill speak to you: “Parasocial”. The word is used to describe a relationship (or Parasocial Relationship – “PSR”) in which a person feels like they know a celebrity on a personal level even though they have never met them. It’s only the second time that an adjective has been crowned Word of the Year, following “paranoid” in 2016, and Cambridge Dictionary defines this year’s word as: “involving or relating to a connection that…

While also a social democrat, Kukies is clearly associated with the right wing of the party and has not recently opposed Merz in public. Kukies may well be an acceptable candidate for the chancellor, a person close to Merz told POLITICO. His impeccable English, PhD in finance from the University of Chicago and a spell leading Goldman Sachs’s German operations would also help his candidacy. But intriguingly, at a recent public event in Berlin, Bank of France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau appeared to suggest that Röller has also been touting a German woman — rather than Nagel — for the presidency. That woman…

For years, Washington has been warning others not to trust loans from Chinese state banks fuelling its rise as a superpower. But a new report reveals an ironic twist: The United States is the biggest recipient of all — by far. And the security and technology implications have yet to be fully understood. China’s state lenders have funnelled $200 billion (€172.48bn) into US businesses for a quarter of a century, but many of the loans have been kept secret because the money was first routed through shell companies in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Delaware, and elsewhere that helped obscure their…