Author: staff

Updated: 09/12/2025 – 23:47 GMT+1 Pope Leo XIV said US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Europe were “trying to break apart what needs to be a very important alliance.” Pope Leo added that Europe’s role in seeking peace in Ukraine was important. … More

Published on 09/12/2025 – 17:52 GMT+1 France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party wants to reopen brothels run directly by sex workers. The party is preparing to submit a bill to parliament recommending that brothels, which were banned in France 1946, be reopened as cooperatives managed by sex workers, according to RN lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy. The politician told the Le Monde newspaper that party leader Marine Le Pen backed the bill. “Sex workers would be empresses in their kingdom,” Tanguy told the radio station RTL. Prostitution itself is legal in France, although brothels, pimping and the sale of sex by minors…

BRUXELLES — Plus de 80% des entreprises européennes seront libérées de leurs obligations en matière d’information environnementale après que les institutions de l’UE sont parvenues lundi à un accord sur une proposition visant à assouplir la réglementation verte. L’accord est une victoire législative majeure pour la présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen. Elle qui cherche à faire de l’allègement des démarches administratives pour les entreprises l’un des marqueurs de son second mandat. Toutefois, cette victoire a eu un coût politique : ce dossier a poussé au bord de l’effondrement la coalition qui avait permis sa réélection ;…

Published on 09/12/2025 – 18:36 GMT+1 More than two-thirds of women journalists, rights defenders and activists have reported violence online, with over 40% saying they have faced real-world attacks linked to digital abuse, a new study published by UN Women on Tuesday found. The report entitled “Tipping Point” focuses on an escalation in violence targeting such women alongside the rise of social media and artificial intelligence and draws on input from more than 6,900 human rights defenders, journalists and activists in 119 countries. The study by UN Women, the United Nations agency that promotes women’s rights, gender equality and empowerment…

Trump’s latest remarks appear to go further than his speech at the U.N. by suggesting that Khan chiefly represents people who have migrated to Britain, and further that they are at ideological odds with other Britons — a view echoed in the recent U.S. National Security Strategy document, which argued that immigration is weakening Europe.    To vote for the capital’s mayor, voters must be resident in London and either be British or Irish citizens or citizens of a defined list of countries including Commonwealth nations, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Spain who also have permission to enter or stay in the…

Italy is the setting for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest push to secure firmer European support. The Ukrainian president met Pope Leo XIV at Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday before heading to talks with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome. He again ruled out giving up territory, despite growing pressure from Washington to accept a compromise with Russia. The visit follows meetings on Monday with leaders in London, Paris and Berlin. All backed Kyiv’s stance as negotiations with the United States struggle over a proposal that Ukraine hand control of the Donbas to Moscow. The Vatican said the pope urged continued dialogue and…

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu scored a key political victory Tuesday after lawmakers approved next year’s social security budget by just 13 votes. The bill must still be approved by the French Senate, but its passage in the more powerful National Assembly is a positive sign for the future of Lecornu’s minority government and to financial markets worried about France’s ability to rein in its spiraling budget deficit. Lecornu will have little time to celebrate, however, as there still remains the matter of the state budget, a separate piece of legislation where compromise has proved arguably more contentious.  Just one lawmaker in the 577-strong National Assembly backed the budget during an earlier vote on part of the state budget. This developing story will be…

Published on 09/12/2025 – 19:44 GMT+1 The UK announced sanctions against Russian media and ideas outlets on Tuesday as the country’s foreign minister warned Western nations must raise their game to combat information warfare from “malign foreign states.” Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the UK was imposing sanctions on the microblogging Telegram channel Rybar, the Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, which has been described by Estonian intelligence as a front for Russia’s GRU spy agency, and the Centre for Geopolitical Expertise, a think-tank run by far-right Russian writer Aleksandr Dugin. Two China-based…

Trump’s National Security Strategy released last week, announced a realignment of the geopolitical order while claiming that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries. In the document, the U.S administration also appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties, saying “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.” Trump underscored that aim in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns that aired Tuesday in a special episode of The Conversation podcast, signaling he would endorse European politicians that share his vision. Merz — who commented on Trump’s new geopolitical strategy during a visit…

Published on 09/12/2025 – 19:19 GMT+1 Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced a leader of the Sudanese Janjaweed militia to 20 years in prison on Tuesday for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the catastrophic conflict in Darfur more than two decades ago. At a hearing in The Hague last month, prosecutors sought a life sentence for Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman who was convicted in October of 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity that included ordering mass executions and bludgeoning two prisoners to death with an axe between 2003-2004. “He committed these crimes…