Author: staff
Support for Ukraine against Russia is NATO’s main focus, not the row over Greenland, the leaders of the military alliance, Poland and Finland sought to reassure on Wednesday.”The main issue is not Greenland,” NATO’s Mark Rutte told a panel in Davos. “The main issue is Ukraine.”He said he is “a bit worried we might drop the ball (on Ukraine) focusing so much on other issues”, or that some might think the urgency of the conflict is over with the peace process advancing. The US and Ukraine have said they are close to finalising their joint 20-point peace plan, while the…
It’s Trump Day at Davos! The President of the United States is once again en route to the World Economic Forum after his plane was ordered home due to a “minor electrical issue”, according to the White House. By switching aircraft, Trump managed, albeit unintentionally, to further heighten the tension in the Swiss mountain resort, where participants were eagerly awaiting the speech of the week, now scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. What used to be a meeting for the big movers and shakers of the world has this year become the Trump show, with a global audience holding its breath. The…
Published on 21/01/2026 – 13:54 GMT+1 The European Commission presented its long-awaited Digital Networks Act (DNA) on Wednesday, unveiling reforms meant to modernise the European Union’s telecom sector by reorganising the bloc’s fragmented rules. The Commission wants to accelerate the rollout of high-speed fibre and 5G, and reduce dependency on foreign tech. Yet the final proposal appears diluted, and has left both the telecom industry and big tech dissatisfied – highlighting the difficulty of reconciling Europe’s ambitions for an unified single telecommunications market with the bloc’s political realities. At the heart of the tension is the issue of whether tech…
According to Rutte, the big economies in Europe — including Spain, Italy and France — would have never agreed to allocate 2 percent of their GDP to defense if Trump had not become the U.S. president again. “No way, without Donald Trump this would never have happened. They’re all on 2 percent now,” Rutte said. “I’m absolutely convinced without Donald Trump you would not have taken those decisions and they are crucial, particularly for the European and the Canadian side of NATO to really grow up in the post-Cold War world.” Rutte’s own country, the Netherlands, which he led as…
Europe is in a housing crisis: since 2010, average house sale prices in the EU have risen by 55.4% and rents by 26.7%, outpacing income growth for many groups. At the end of 2025, the European Commission estimated that the average overvaluation of housing prices in Portugal is around 25% above fair value, “surpassing other property markets” in the bloc. This is hitting young people particularly hard, especially those between the ages of 18 and 29, as they are more likely to fall behind on paying for housing and utilities, according to a recent report by Eurofound, a foundation which…
Published on 21/01/2026 – 12:38 GMT+1 The European Film Awards, Europe’s counterpart to the Oscars, took place last weekend and Euronews Culture was on the ground to meet and greet the stars on the red carpet. When interviewing European Film Academy President Juliette Binoche last year, we talked about her goal of humanising – or rehumanising – society through cinema. A lofty ambition but a crucial one in troubled times, when political strife, global conflict and anxieties regarding current events and the rise of AI all seem hellbent on dehumanising us further. It’s something that stuck with us – how…
The issue of divestment had been raised in a weekend note to clients by Deutsche Bank’s chief foreign exchange strategist George Saravelos. But Bessent said he had received a call from Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Christian Sewing to say that Saravelos’ arguments didn’t represent the bank’s views. “Of course, the fake news media, led by the Financial Times, amplified it,” Bessent said. U.S. bond and stock markets had sold off sharply on Tuesday in response to growing concerns that the U.S.-Europe rift over Greenland could reignite the trade war that was feared in 2025, but which failed to materialize. Bessent…
The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to refer the EU-Mercosur trade agreement to the EU Court of Justice, a move that significantly delays the deal and could potentially derail its final approval. As expected, the vote was tight, with 334 MEPs in favour of the referral, 324 against, and 11 abstaining. The agreement signed on 17 January, which will create a free trade area of over 700 million people, is controversial across Europe, and several countries like France and Poland have opposed it. The agreement’s advocates consider it a major opportunity for European industries and a way to bolster the…
An inn located in the central Japanese city of Takayama has created an ice forest, taking advantage of the freezing cold weather. Located in Gifu Prefecture at an altitude of about 1,000 metres, the inn builds what it calls a Subzero Forest each year by spraying water onto trees and nearby slopes. The forest looks fantastical with some icicles hanging from the trees like curtains and others resembling jellyfish. As temperatures stay below zero, the water freezes into thick layers of ice. Icicles form on branches like curtains, while others hang in rounded shapes that visitors compare to jellyfish. The…
Published on 21/01/2026 – 11:31 GMT+1 Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform Grok is still being used to generate sexually explicit images despite recent restrictions by the company, according to a new analysis. Last summer, xAI, Grok’s operating company, introduced an image-generator feature that included a “spicy mode” that could generate adult content. In recent weeks, the feature was used to undress images of women. After mounting criticism, parent company X said on January 14 that it had “implemented technological measures” to prevent Grok from editing images of real people in revealing clothing. But European non-profit AI Forensics found that…