Author: staff

The intervention at the event — titled Europe’s race for digital leadership — comes at a particularly sensitive time in transatlantic relations, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take over Greenland forced European politicians to consider retaliation. Virkkunen declined to single out the United States as one of the partners that the EU must de-risk from. She pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as incidents that point to Europe’s “vulnerabilities.” She said the U.S. is a key partner, but also noted that “it’s very important for our competitiveness and for our security, that we…

Momentum is building within the EU to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, after Italy shifted its stance on Monday and announced it would push for the move. According to diplomats, Rome had previously been reluctant to back the designation, but reversed course after new data highlighted the scale of Iran’s recent violent crackdown on protesters. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on X on Monday that he would propose the idea “in coordination with other partners” because “the sudden losses among the civilian population during the protests demand a clear response”. On Tuesday, the US-based…

Holocaust survivors, politicians and regular citizens commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, gathering at events held across Europe to reflect on the killing of millions of people by Nazi Germany. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across the world on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration. At the memorial site of Auschwitz, located in an area of southern Poland which was under German occupation during World War II, former prisoners laid flowers…

Published on 27/01/2026 – 15:45 GMT+1 A US aircraft carrier accompanied by three warships has entered the Middle East region as Iran faces ongoing protests that have resulted in thousands of deaths. The United States Central Command, which overseesAmerican military operations in the region, said on the social media platform X that the USS Abraham LincolnCarrier Strike Group is “currently deployed to the Middle East to promote regional security and stability.” US President Donald Trump said last week that ships were being sent to the region “just in case,” following an earlier warning that the US was “locked and loaded”…

Cypriot MEP Fidias Panayiotou has apologized for using offensive language to describe Paralympic athletes with mental disabilities. “The first thing I want to say is that I should not have used this word to characterize anyone — any disability, disorder or illness,” the lawmaker said in a video posted on social media on Tuesday. “I want to publicly acknowledge my mistake and make a sincere apology to Paralympic athletes.” In November, Panayiotou referred to Paralympic athletes with mental disabilities as πελλοί, or “loonies,” during a six-hour podcast with a Cypriot Paralympic swimmer. The remarks resurfaced months later, prompting a furious reaction…

Existing differences of opinion about digital rules in the European Union and the United States should not be a source of confrontation, but should be treated in a respectful way, the Executive Vice President of the EU Commission, Henna Virkkunen, said on Euronews’ flagship programme The Europe Conversation. “When we speak about democracies like the European Union and the USA, I think democratic countries and friends, we can handle those kinds of differences in our rules with respect,” urged Virkkunen, whose portfolio in the Commission includes Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. “Europeans are very committed to our rules because we…

Published on 27/01/2026 – 17:30 GMT+1 The “Doomsday Clock” which represents how near humanity is to catastrophe moved closer than ever to midnight on Tuesday as concerns grow over nuclear weapons, climate change and disinformation. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which set up the metaphorical clock at the start of the Cold War, moved its time to 85 seconds to midnight, four seconds closer than a year ago. The announcement comes a year into US President Donald Trump’s second term in which he has shattered global norms including by ordering unilateral attacks and withdrawing from a slew of international…

Published on 27/01/2026 – 16:22 GMT+1 TikTok says it is investigating why users of the platform have been allegedly prevented from using the word “Epstein” in direct messages. It comes after several public figures, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and musicians such as Billie Eilish, accused TikTok of censoring videos that criticised the Trump administration and its crackdown on immigration. The controversy follows a major restructuring of TikTok’s US operations. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, was forced to divest its majority stake in the platform’s US business. A separate US TikTok entity is now owned by a majority-American board of…

During a press conference, Aylo’s lawyers were keen to argue that the blame for its decision should be put at the government’s feet, rather than Ofcom’s, and argued only device-based age-assurance by the likes of Google, Apple, and Microsoft would solve the problem. “This law, not our regulator, this law by its very nature is pushing both adults and children alike to the cesspools of the internet, to the most dangerous material possible,” Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners and a lawyer representing Aylo said. “And while there [were] six months by Aylo of good faith effort to…

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is facing a backlash after saying that the European Union should “keep on dreaming” about becoming independent from the United States, its largest ally, in matters related to security and defence. His comments came on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s attempt to seize Greenland from Denmark through punitive measures, an unprecedented dispute that brought the nearly 80-year-old transatlantic alliance to the brink of collapse. The tensions were defused by a deal on Arctic security brokered by Rutte. “When President Trump is doing good stuff, I will praise him, and I don’t mind him…