Author: staff

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:32 GMT+2 Slovakia will hold a referendum in summer to decide whether to cancel lifelong payments for Prime Minister Robert Fico and other leaders after their terms in office expire, the country’s president said on Monday. According to President Peter Pellegrini, the vote is scheduled to take place on 4 July. At the same time, Slovaks will also vote on whether to reopen the office of the special prosecutor that used to deal with major crime and corruption. The referendum follows a petition organised by the Democrats, a non-parliamentary pro-Western opposition party, and signed by more…

Tens of thousands of people attended a giant open-air mass by Pope Leo XIV outside the Angolan capital Sunday, where he delivered a message of hope to the resource-rich country marked by poverty and inequality. Leo flew to Portuguese-speaking Angola on Saturday, the third leg of a whirlwind four-nation African tour on which he has condemned corruption and the plunder of the continent’s resources and had a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump. Around 100,000 people attended the pontiff’s first mass in Angola at Kilamba, around 30 kilometres from Luanda, the Vatican said, citing local authorities.

Starmer announced Monday that he had commissioned a review into any security concerns raised during Mandelson’s tenure. That in itself means the scandal could deepen.  MPs are also asking about just how high a level of top secret documents Mandelson was allowed to see under Britain’s “STRAP” protocol. Access to these highest-level documents is complicated and varies case by case, with each one having an assigned “compartment” of people who see it on a need-to-know basis. Therefore we may never find out what Mandelson saw. 7) What else is waiting to come out? One row that dominated Monday shows anything…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:34 GMT+2 In late 2023, the Polish prime minister wrote the modern playbook on unwinding years of entrenched illiberal rule. Now, Magyar is looking to apply it, especially as the two leaders expressed a similar to-do list across three key areas. To bypass an opposition president, Andrzej Duda, Tusk’s government used a parliamentary resolution to instantly dismiss state broadcast management, literally taking the network offline overnight. Magyar is threatening the exact same shock therapy. Following a heated interview last week on public television, which he likened to North Korean propaganda, he explicitly vowed to suspend the…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:06 GMT+2 US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States would not lift its blockade of Iranian ports until Tehran had agreed a peace deal to end the war. “THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a ‘DEAL,’ is absolutely destroying Iran,” Trump said in a post on social media. “They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run.” Traffic has again seized up in the Strait of Hormuz as both Tehran and Washington impose separate blockades. Trump’s announcement comes after Iran…

Cooperation in so-called forward deterrence includes Poland as well as Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. Poland, which doesn’t take part in the U.S. nuclear-sharing program, is interested in firming up European deterrence against Russia. “We’ve decided to join a group of countries invited by France to cooperate,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “An exclusive group made up of countries who understand the need for European sovereignty. We live in a world in which we need nuclear dissuasion capacities.” France is adamant that final control on the use of its nuclear weapons must rest with Paris, but…

EU countries are set to push back on Spain’s request to end the EU-Israel association agreement during the Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Tuesday in Brussels, diplomats told Euronews. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called on Sunday to break the agreement, accusing Israel of violating international law and therefore the terms of the deal. But his call is far from reaching the unified position needed to proceed. Ireland and Slovenia have previously joined Spain in requesting to discuss the agreement, considering that Israel “is in breach of its human rights obligations” for continuous violations of the ceasefire agreement, escalating violence in…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 19:41 GMT+2•Updated 19:42 Hungary’s newly elected prime minister Péter Magyar suggested a controversial pipeline carrying Russian oil through Ukraine should be resumed as Brussels sets the stage for Budapest to lift its veto over a crucial financial loan for Kyiv. Reacting to reports suggesting oil supplies could be reinstated imminently by Ukraine in exchange for a €90 billion loan, currently blocked by outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, or faster progress in accession talks, Magyar played both down. “What I can say to the Ukrainian president — although we have not spoken — is that this is…

If the loan is approved this week, Kyiv would be set to receive the money in May, offering relief to Ukraine’s war-battered economy as it continues to fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year. Once Hungary lifts its veto the European Commission would be able to disburse the funds after completing technical checks expected to take a few weeks. After initially agreeing to the loan in December, Budapest blocked it in February as a dispute flared over the Druzhba pipeline. Orbán accused Zelenskyy of slow-walking repairs to the infrastructure in retaliation for Hungary’s friendly relations with Russia.…

Efforts to rescue a humpback whale stranded for weeks on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast were complicated on Monday when the animal unexpectedly swam away but then appeared to have got stuck again. The 13.5-metre whale and its struggle for survival have captured the hearts of the German public, with some of the press calling him “Timmy.” Rescuers had cleared sand away from the spot where the whale had been stuck for around three weeks off the island of Poel, near Wismar, and sent a tugboat to be used in the rescue effort. The plan was to lift the whale from…