Author: staff

Tariffs weren’t on the agenda of this week’s Robotics Summit in Boston, United States, where thousands of tech industry workers mingled with humanoid and other robot varieties and talked about how to build and sell a new generation of increasingly autonomous machines.Not on the official agenda, at least.”Jump up to the microphones,” said keynote speaker Aaron Saunders, chief technology officer (CTO) of Boston Dynamics, inviting a standing-room-only crowd to ask him questions. “And I’m the CTO, so don’t ask me about tariffs”.The crowd laughed and complied. But as they streamed onto the show floor at Boston’s convention centre, greeted by…

Inflation in the eurozone stayed marginally above the European Central Bank’s target in April, a fresh increase in services prices keeping the annual rate stuck at 2.2 percent. Data published by Eurostat on Friday showed prices rose 0.6 percent on the month, with strong services inflation more than offsetting declines in energy prices, reflecting the slump in oil markets after U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed his trade tariff offensive. There were few other immediate signs of the U.S. trade strategy apparent in the figures, although officials expect it to have a disinflationary effect in the near term, due to heightened…

Fine Gael has confirmed its delegates at the European People’s Party’s Valencia congress refused on Wednesday to put their names to a motion condemning Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and calling for the release of remaining hostages, and defended the party’s position.The Fine Gael delegation could not support the motion because it didn’t mention “the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza”, and didn’t “propose any other actions to bring the conflict to a close, to move towards the building of long term peace built on a two state solution”, the party told Euronews in a statement. The resolution…

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has officially classified the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” marking the most serious step yet in Berlin’s efforts to contain the rising political force. The move, announced Friday by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), means that the AfD is no longer merely under suspicion. The agency says it now has definitive evidence that the party works against Germany’s democratic system. A 1,000-page internal report, according to German public broadcaster ARD, underpins the decision, citing violations of core constitutional principles such as human dignity and…

Updated: 02/05/2025 – 9:46 GMT+2Six months have passed since the collapse of a concrete awning at the Novi Sad railway station in Serbia, which left 16 people dead and one seriously injured. … More The incident on 1 November 2024 has led to national outrage, with legal proceedings ongoing in three prosecutors’ offices.Over the past six months, teachers in primary and secondary schools, high school graduates, lawyers, and workers have also joined the protests and work stoppages.Demonstrators are demanding full transparency over the reconstruction project, accountability for the collapse, and increased funding for education.The government insists it has addressed the…

Sky News’ Sam Coates and Politico’s Anne McElvoy have a Friday episode to take stock of the by-election, mayoral and local election results so far. Sam’s pulled an all-nighter to cover Reform’s victory in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election – they won by just six seats. The party won the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty too. So it’s a morning of questions to ponder – how do bigger parties respond to the Reform victories? Could a Starmer visit to Runcorn have secured the few votes needed for victory there? And is Labour focusing on Reform voters at expense of people at the…

Jill Sobule, hitmaker of ’90s anthems like ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and Clueless soundtrack contribution ‘Supermodel’, has died in a house fire. She was 66 years old. Her death was confirmed by her manager in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, who said she was staying with some friends in a Minneapolis suburb. The fire broke out early Thursday (1 May) morning. The cause of the fire has yet to be shared. Sobule’s manager John Porter said in a statement: “Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture. I was having so much fun…

“We are now the opposition party in the U.K. to Labour, and the Tories are a waste of space,” Farage told reporters in Runcorn. The results of the by-election vote — held after the previous Labour MP was convicted of assaulting a constituent — came as the counts from a slate of local elections in England began to trickle in. There were some limited scraps of relief for nervous Labour strategists panicked by the rise of Reform UK in the polls. Labour won key mayoral races in North Tyneside, the West of England and Doncaster — though Reform came second…

Séjourné’s plan was received positively by the sector and the EU countries who produce the most steel: Germany produces about a quarter, with Italy coming in second at around 10 percent. France, Romania and Poland each account for more than 7 percent of the European total, based on figures from lobby group Eurofer. The sector is spread widely across the bloc, with just five countries producing no steel. Post-Covid and in the middle of attempts to get rid of Europe’s decade-long dependency on Russian gas, a fresh dependency on basic Chinese industrial inputs is Brussels’ worst nightmare. Aside from security,…

The Seattle-based company also reported strong sales growth for its prominent cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services, it said after the market closed on Thursday.However, uncertainty about President Donald Trump’s tariffs and consumer spending clouded Amazon’s outlook.Trump’s trade policies — including 145% tariffs on China — have challenged businesses and threaten to raise prices. However, big companies like Amazon are expected to navigate the climate better than small retailers.Amazon, along with many large retailers and suppliers, have tried to beat the clock by bringing in foreign goods before Trump’s tariffs took effect. And Amazon’s president and CEO Andy Jassy told…