Author: staff
U.S. ambassador Tilman Fertitta was scheduled to meet Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi later Tuesday to clarify Olympics plans, Tajani said. The controversy erupted Monday, when Attilio Fontana, president of Lombardy, one of the northern regions hosting the Games, wrongly suggested that ICE agents would merely assist with the security of U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who are scheduled to attend the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium on Feb. 6. ICE later sought to clarify its role, saying in a statement: “At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is supporting the US Department of…
Published on 27/01/2026 – 21:21 GMT+1 Rwanda is taking legal action against the British government for its refusal to disburse payments under a controversial agreement to receive deported migrants, an arrangement Westminster abandoned two years ago, a Rwandan official said on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped the deal, brokered by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022, when he took office in July 2024, declaring it “dead and buried.” London had already paid Kigali £240 million (€276 million) before the agreement was abandoned, with a further £50 million (€57 million) due in April. “Rwanda regrets that it has…
Heritage praised Duda for strengthening Poland’s military posture and boosting its defense spending during his two terms in office between 2015 and 2025, portraying him as a model of sovereignty-focused leadership at a time of “heightened geopolitical risk.” “President Duda governed with a clear-eyed understanding of what nations owe their people: secure borders, public safety, and the courage to stand up to self-appointed global elites. We are pleased to welcome him to Heritage at a moment when the future of the West depends on nations that still remember who they serve,” Heritage’s Kevin Roberts said in a statement. Heritage is…
Published on 27/01/2026 – 21:30 GMT+1 Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar visited Baku on Sunday to expand relations with Azerbaijan amid Iran’s violent suppression of protests that has killed thousands. Sa’ar condemned Iran’s crackdown during meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. “There is a massacre of unimaginable proportions taking place in Iran,” Sa’ar said at Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry. “A massacre of people by the regime that rules them. If this is how they act toward their own people — how should they be expected to act toward other countries?” Israel supports the protesters seeking to…
“All age-restricted products” will be behind that layer of age checking, Zhu said. The Commission is the primary supervisor of Shein under the Digital Services Act, the EU law designed to limit the risks of online platforms to users. Shein is classified as a Very Large Online Platform with over 45 million users and can face fines up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue for breaches of the rules. The Commission did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment. Shein is also testing the Commission’s age verification app, or “mini wallet” as it’s sometimes called, Zhu said.…
Former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi will attend an informal meeting of European Union leaders at the invitation of European Council President António Costa, who is looking to accelerate the implementation of his competitiveness report. The retreat will take place on 12 February and will focus on boosting the European economy. Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta will also participate in the gathering. Draghi and Letta penned two influential reports on the EU single market and competitiveness in 2024. In an interview with Euronews from New Delhi, where the EU signed a major trade deal with India, Costa said…
Published on 27/01/2026 – 20:05 GMT+1 Eight men who were handed life sentences by Russian judges over an attack on a bridge linking Crimea to Russia issued a joint appeal to be freed on Tuesday, saying they did not know about the Kyiv-planned operation. The 2022 blast killed five people and badly damaged the Kerch Bridge, which was built after Russia annexed the region from Ukraine in 2014 and became a potent symbol of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s ambitions. The bridge has suffered two further major attacks in 2023 and 2025, both carried out by Ukrainian forces as they push…
The notice will be published “in the next few days,” a spokesperson from Dinum said. That follows an announcement on Sunday by the Minister for State Reform David Amiel that France would target the adoption of a home-grown videoconferencing platform by 2027. France last summer mandated that officials get off WhatsApp and Telegram and instead use Tchap, an instant messaging service designed exclusively for civil servants. Visio is already used by 40,000 staff — including most ministries and some of their subsidiaries, such as the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Dinum is aiming for 250,000 users. The department will…
Published on 27/01/2026 – 19:13 GMT+1 European lawmakers issued a declaration on Tuesday urging the European Union to unlock the potential of nuclear fusion energy, stressing its role in boosting the bloc’s competitiveness as a future electricity source. MEPs made the case during a public hearing in the European Parliament calling for a “clear, predictable regulatory framework” that would attract investment, given the astronomical costs that fusion energy will likely demand. “Fusion has reached a turning point. European industrial capability and private investments are converging toward deployment. What is now required is clear political backing and effective mechanisms to attract…
A Dutch court convicted an Eritrean man of people smuggling and extortion on Tuesday and sentenced him to the maximum 20 years imprisonment, saying that he and his accomplices subjected migrants to “cruel, violent, and degrading treatment.” Tewelde Goitom, also known as Amanuel Walid, was found guilty by the Overijssel District Court of leading a criminal organisation that mistreated migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe and extorted money from their families in the Netherlands to pay for the risky voyages. The courtrejected his defence that he was not the person identified by witnesses as a leader of…