Author: staff

This tiny utopian community in Ethiopia’s Amhara region has spent decades championing equality, peace, and pacifism. Today, it lives under the shadow of civil war in the area. The Arwa Amba is a pacifist pocket of around 500-600 people nestled in the northern mountains of Amhara, over 550 kilometres from the capital, Addis Ababa. Founded in the 1970s, this pioneering community has been praised by organisations including the UN for its efforts to combat poverty, exploitation and gender inequality. As its prominence grew, the Arwa Amba would welcome thousands of visitors every year and guide them in its foundational ideas,…

A shadow banking crisis erupts And spare a worrying thought for the unregulated private credit market and the so-called shadow banks. The usually staid Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has already tolled the alarm bell.  In October, he warned of parallels with the 2008 financial crash, which was sparked by an American housing bubble fueled by easy credit and the issuance of risky subprime mortgages, with their subsequent bundling into opaque financial products that spread risk throughout the global financial system. Risk turned to contagion.  Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned of parallels with…

Published on 02/01/2026 – 6:28 GMT+1 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he is willing to negotiate an agreement to combat drug trafficking with the United States, in a pre-taped interview aired on Thursday on state-run television, but declined to comment on last week’s CIA strikes on a docking port. Maduro reiterated that Washington wants to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to his country’s vast oil reserves, through the months-long pressure campaign, which began with a major military deployment in the Caribbean Sea in August. “What are they seeking? It is clear that they seek to impose…

Zum Start ins neue politische Jahr spricht Gordon Repinski mit Ulf Poschardt, Herausgeber der „Premium-Gruppe“ des Axel Springer Verlags, zu der neben der WELT-Gruppe auch POLITICO Deutschland und Business Insider Deutschland gehören, über den Zustand der deutschen Politik und die Frage, ob vor dem Land ein Umbruch aus der Mitte oder von den Rändern steht. Im Zentrum des Gesprächs: die Zukunft der demokratischen Mitte, die Rolle des Journalismus und die wachsende Fragilität des politischen Systems.Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt: Die Wirtschaft und Reformpolitik. Poschardt fordert eine radikale wirtschaftspolitische Wende. Steuervereinfachung, Abbau von Bürokratie, Neuordnung des Sozialstaats und Orientierung an Modellen wie Dänemark…

Zohran Mamdani has pledged to “reinvent” New York during his first speech as mayor, where he has vowed to govern “expansively and audaciously” during his swearing-in ceremony. After working part of the night in his new office, the new mayor returned to City Hall in a taxi cab around midday local time for a grander public appearance, where US Senator Bernie Sanders – one of Mamdani’s self-declared political heroes – administered the oath for a second time. “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage…

“The Lives of the Twelve Caesars,” by Suetonius The historian of ancient Rome’s early imperial era, who chronicled 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian, would surely have been fascinated by our current crop of larger-than-life rulers — including Trump, Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Take away our technology and advances in medical science and we can read about our era in the most important work of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus — his full, gloriously Latin name. Here is caprice and malice, vanity and cruelty, whim and tyrannical ambition. The Victorians were so scandalized by the sex lives of the…

His discovery in 2018 proved a serious setback to an initiative begun four years earlier under David Cameron’s government, which set up a commission to plan a monument to ensure that “in 50 years’ time the memory and lessons of the Holocaust will be as strong and as vibrant as today.” Twelve years and several changes of prime minister later, construction on the site, on the north side of the River Thames, has not yet begun. Ministers were forced to legislate to repeal the building ban discovered by Gerhold — and that bill is still crawling its way through parliament.…

Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a fire broke out in the spire of the Vondelchurch in central Amsterdam. The neo-Gothic building, completed in 1880 and out of service since 1977, was soon engulfed in flames believed to have started from fireworks. The church, a familiar landmark near Vondelpark, collapsed as the fire spread through its wooden tower. Nearby residents were urged to leave their homes while firefighters tried to contain the blaze. Streets around the site were cordoned off through the night. By early morning, little remained of the historic structure beyond its scorched brick walls, leaving locals…

The US military struck five alleged drug-smuggling boats over two days, killing a total of eight people while others jumped overboard and may have survived, US Southern Command said in a social media post on Thursday. Southern Command, which oversees South America, did not reveal where the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday occurred. Previous similar attacks have taken place in the Caribbean Sea and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. A video of Tuesday’s attack posted by Southern Command on social media shows three boats traveling in a close formation, which is unusual, and the military said they were in a…

Updated: 01/01/2026 – 12:00 GMT+1 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this January 1st, 2026 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More