Author: staff

Wind power in Finland has more than doubled since 2020 to supply a quarter of the country’s energy. The closure of a coal power plant in Finland today brings the country to the brink of a full coal phase-out – four years ahead of schedule. Power utility company Helen officially decommissioned its Salmisaari plant in Helsinki on 1 April, dropping coal to a less than 1 per cent share of the country’s energy mix. Alongside reducing emissions and increasing energy independence, it says the switch is also helping it to cut customers’ electricity bills. “We have been able to improve…

– Ostdeutschland im Kabinett:Wie wird Ostdeutschland im künftigen Bundeskabinett vertreten sein? Union und SPD stehen vor einem Repräsentationsproblem: Es fehlen prominente ostdeutsche Politikerinnen und Politiker – vor allem in der CDU. Wie wollen beide Koalitionspartner den Osten künftig besser einbinden? Gordon Repinski und Rasmus Buchsteiner analysieren die Frage rund um die ostdeutsche Repräsentation in der Bundesregierung. – Dazu im 200-Sekunden-Interview: Philipp Amthor, CDU-Bundestagsabgeordneter, Generalsekretär in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Mitgliederbeauftragter seiner Partei.– Marion Sollety von POLITICO in Frankreich berichtet aus Paris über das Urteil gegen Marine Le Pen – und welche Konsequenzen es für Le Pen und ihren rechtspopulistischen Rassemblement National haben…

“It is unrealistic to ban a party that has over 20 percent of the popular vote,” said Hannes Gnauck, leader of the AfD’s youth branch. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images A ban on Young Alternative would have been far easier to implement legally, which explains why members moved to dissolve it. The group’s former leader said as much in the lead-up to Germany’s nation election on Feb. 23. “It is unrealistic to ban a party that has over 20 percent of the popular vote,” said Hannes Gnauck, leader of the AfD’s youth branch. “But attacking where we are weakest, namely the…

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said it had tracked 19 Chinese navy vessels in the waters surrounding the island in a 24-hour period from 6am Monday until 6am Tuesday. The Chinese military said it had launched large-scale drills in the waters around Taiwan on Tuesday, as it warned the self-ruled island against seeking independence.The joint exercises involve navy, air ground and rocket forces and are meant to be a “severe warning and forceful containment against Taiwan independence,” according to Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command.It comes after Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-Te called Beijing a…

A simple solution that addresses all of these concerns is available. To avoid the risk of Russia’s central bank assets unfreezing and returning to the hands of the Kremlin in July, Europe needs to use the countermeasures argument and put the assets beyond Moscow’s reach. This can be done by transferring them to a new vehicle set up in Belgium, with EU governance oversight, and placing the assets’ legal title in a trust for Ukraine’s benefit. Importantly, the assets wouldn’t be transferred to Ukraine but would be used to generate a steady stream of annuity income to support its defense…

“We have got to do more as the West than just talk about democratic values. We must live them,” she said, paraphrasing Vance’s remarks. Vance has repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. In his Munich speech, Vance criticized Europe’s “old, entrenched interests” for “hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’” to suppress alternative viewpoints and quash the possibility of an outsider winning an election. “We support the right of everyone to offer their views in the public square, agree or disagree,” Bruce said, parroting Vance. Le Pen’s conviction has elicited a wellspring…

The Russian hearing is scheduled for April 17 and will be held behind closed doors, the Supreme Court press service said in a statement, state-owned media outlet TASS reported. “The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has received and accepted for consideration an administrative claim by the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation to suspend the ban on the activities of the Taliban movement, included in the unified federal list of organizations, including foreign and international organizations recognized in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation as terrorist,” the Supreme Court added. Russia’s relationship with the Taliban regime has…

Le Pen and 23 others on Monday were convicted of misappropriating funds from the European Parliament and were handed a mixture of fines, suspended prison sentences and bans. The three judge-panel took the extraordinary — though not unprecedented — step of enacting Le Pen’s ban immediately, regardless of whether she appealed. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, Le Pen insisted that standing in the 2027 presidential election — for which she is a frontrunner — remained possible. She urged the justice system to hear her appeal quickly but retrials usually occur several months after the initial verdict, at a minimum, narrowing…

“This will backfire, like the legal attacks against President Trump,” Musk said in another post. Vice President JD Vance delivering a withering speech in Munich in February in which he attacked European governments for their approach to a series of hot-button cultural issues. Both Vance and Musk — plus a hard-line online MAGA contingent — have already identified Romanian ultranationalist Călin Georgescu as one cause célèbre victim of so-called lawfare after a top national court blocked him from running in the presidential election following allegations that his 2024 campaign was boosted by a Russian influence operation. France now risks becoming…

Despite law-enforcement cooperation with France and work with authorities in other countries along the migrant route, more than 6,600 people crossed the Channel in the first three months of this year, the highest number on record. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said a lack of coordination between the police and intelligence agencies is partly responsible for a surge in the number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats across the English Channel.At an international meeting on boosting border security and tackling people-smuggling, Starmer expressed frustration at the difficulty of stopping thousands of people a year risking the dangerous sea crossing…