Author: staff
The pair are expected to discuss Ukraine alongside other topics at their latest meeting, according to three British officials and one U.S. official familiar with their plans, not authorized to speak on the record. Lammy, Britain’s former foreign secretary, has developed a friendship with the American vice-president. It saw Vance and his family stay with Lammy during a holiday to the U.K. last summer. The two men have bonded over their difficult upbringings as well as their faith, with Lammy attending Mass in Washington at the vice-president’s invitation in March 2025. Lammy was moved from the post of U.K. foreign…
Boats carried participants to the centre of the river before they jumped into the water and swam back to shore. The water temperature was around 2°C, with air temperatures falling to minus 5°C. Swimmers stayed in the river for about ten minutes as rescue teams watched from nearby boats. Wearing crowns, three of the swimmers symbolised the biblical magi, while others followed in a long line toward the riverbank. Polar swimming has a long history in the Czech Republic and is seen as both a test of endurance and a social ritual. Similar winter swims take place every year in…
The coalition collapse came as two lawmakers and the finance minister left the BSW parliamentary group over policy disagreements. That caused the coalition, which had only a two-vote surplus, to lose its majority in the state parliament. “This breakdown means that the basis for cooperation in a coalition no longer exists,” Woidke told reporters on Tuesday. The workings within government had become “overshadowed by constant disputes within the BSW,” he added. The BSW was founded in 2024 by Sahra Wagenknecht, a longtime icon of hard-left politics in Germany. The party merges elements of hard-left and hard-right politics — an…
Greece marked Epiphany on Tuesday with the traditional blessing of the waters, a ritual observed across the country each year on January 6. In the port city of Piraeus, dozens of young men plunged into the cold sea after an Orthodox priest threw a wooden cross into the harbour. The diver who retrieves it is believed to receive good fortune for the year ahead. The ceremony followed a Divine Liturgy and a short procession to the waterfront. Families and onlookers gathered despite water temperatures of around 10 to 15°C. Similar rites took place in coastal towns, rivers and lakes throughout…
Published on 06/01/2026 – 14:44 GMT+1 •Updated 14:44 One of US President Donald Trump’s senior aides has ramped up Washington’s threat to take over Greenland, stating on Monday that no one would militarily challenge the United States over the future of the autonomous Danish territory. In an interview with CNN, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said it was Washington’s “formal position … that Greenland should be part of the US”. His comments followed the US president’s renewed call for the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island to come under Washington’s control in the aftermath of the weekend military…
The statement was signed by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof tweeted afterward that the Netherlands “fully supports” the statement. The show of support for Denmark comes after Trump doubled down on his claims to the Danish-held territory following a U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. On Monday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller questioned Copenhagen’s claim over the territory, but declined to…
By Euronews Published on 06/01/2026 – 13:07 GMT+1 Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday closed out the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year by denouncing today’s consumerist and anti-foreigner sentiment, capping a Jubilee that saw some 33 million pilgrims flock to Rome and a historic transition from one American pontiff to another. With cardinals and diplomats looking on, Pope Leo XIV kneeled down in prayer on the stone floor at the threshold of the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica. He then stood up and pulled the two doors shut, symbolically concluding the rarest of Jubilees: one that late Pope Francis opened in December…
Mark your diaries — POLITICO has all the dates in a year of make-or-break elections, a closer U.K.-EU relationship and laws on migration control that Keir Starmer hopes will save his premiership. It’ll be a wild ride. Dec 19 15 mins read
The swearing in of Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s interim president following Washington’s ouster of Nicolás Maduro marks the latest twist in the country’s socialist “Chavismo” movement. But who exactly is Rodríguez, and what can be gleaned from her family background and political ties? The 56-year-old lawyer has risen rapidly through the ranks of power in Miraflores Palace over the past decade. Yet her political ascent is inseparable from her family history —above all from the legacy of her father, José Antonio Rodríguez. José Antonio Rodríguez, the patriarch of a family that would later come to shape the trajectory of Venezuela’s…
By Patrick Whittle with AP Published on 06/01/2026 – 11:04 GMT+1 One of the world’s rarest whale species is having more babies this year than in some recent seasons, but experts say many more young are needed to help stave off the possibility of extinction. The North Atlantic right whale’s population numbers an estimated 384 animals and is slowly rising after several years of decline. The whales have gained more than 7 per cent of their 2020 population, according to scientists who study them. The whales give birth off the southeastern United States every winter before migrating north to feed. Researchers have identified…