Author: staff
US Border Patrol chief Gregory “Greg” Bovino, who has been at the centre of fierce criticism following a second fatal shooting amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday along with other agents, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a sign of a softer tone from President Donald Trump on the crackdown, the US leader has scaled back federal presence in Minneapolis and replaced Bovino with his border czar, Tom Homan. The shift in tone comes after 37-year-old ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, was fatally shot by federal immigration officers,…
Both Allisio and Vassal are calling for unspecified spending cuts while preserving basic services provided at the local level like schools, public transportation and parks and recreation. Vassal, who is polling third, said she would make public transportation free for residents younger 26 to travel across the spread-out city. She accuses the current administration of having delivered an insufficient number of building permits, slowing the development of new housing and office buildings and thus the revitalization of Marseille’s most embattled areas — a trend she pledged to reverse. Both Vassal and Allisio are advocating for less local taxes on property…
Published on 26/01/2026 – 12:46 GMT+1 Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland or AfD party in Bavaria is proposing a specialised police unit modelled on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track asylum seekers and coordinate deportations, according to internal documents. At the press conference following the winter conference of the Bavarian state organisation, AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner initially avoided questions about this model. While Ebner-Steiner explained that the unit’s organisational structure was still open, the fact that the concept paper envisages an orientation “similar to the ICE” only became known later, when the documents were made available to…
It is, by any reasonable measure, a strategic own goal. The consequences of this go well beyond trade. Mercosur governments spent years negotiating this free trade agreement (FTA) in good faith, navigating Europe’s hesitation, shifting demands and inconsistent political signals. Understandably, they are now interpreting the referral to the court as a political move. For partners already hedging their bets in an increasingly contested global landscape, it reinforces doubts over whether Europe can be relied on. Meanwhile, for Europe, the true damage is to a deeper truth it all too often obscures: That its real power comes from the ability…
Published on 26/01/2026 – 14:33 GMT+1 Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul denounced Russia’s “stubborn insistence on the crucial territorial issue” on Monday following talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US envoys in Abu Dhabi on ending Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine. “What I am hearing and reading today, including from the negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, is only Russia’s stubborn insistence on the crucial territorial issue,” Wadephul said during a visit to Latvia. “And if there is no flexibility here, I fear that the negotiations may still take a long time or may not be successful at this stage.” Wadephul…
Published on 26/01/2026 – 15:08 GMT+1 Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani urged the EU on Monday to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “terrorist organisation” following Tehran’s deadly crackdown on country-wide mass protests over the past weeks. Tajani said he would propose the idea “in coordination with other partners” at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday. “The losses suffered by the civilian population during the protests demand a clear response,” he wrote in a post on X, calling for the EU to levy individual sanctions against those responsible. US-based rights group Human Rights…
Leaders rubber-stamped the law on Monday, but Hungary and Slovakia — which are highly dependent on Russian fossil fuels — voted against the measure, arguing that it would send energy prices skyrocketing. Hungary said it would begin proceedings against the EU as soon as the law is formally adopted, which is likely to be in early February. Szijjártó has repeatedly threatened to sue the EU but this is the first time he has laid out a specific timeframe. He criticized the EU’s use of a “legal trick” to pass the law by presenting it as a trade measure rather than a…
By Euronews Published on 26/01/2026 – 15:18 GMT+1 Norwegian prosecutors have charged two citizens and a Norwegian-based oil company with paying around $25 million (€21.1m) in bribes to the Republic of the Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso and his family in exchange for offshore drilling rights. The alleged corruption centred on a 2016 oil licence application in which the defendants offered Sassou Nguesso and his relatives a quarter-share of the concession’s revenues, prosecutor Marianne Djupesland said Monday. “The main bribe is related to the fact that the Norwegians accepted that the president and his family would have one quarter of the…
The verdict also lands as countries such as France are actively discussing restrictions on social media platforms for children. The decision focuses particularly on WhatsApp Channels in which admins can broadcast announcements to groups of people in a feed, making it different from the messaging feature. WhatsApp’s private messaging service is explicitly excluded. WhatsApp was aware that the decision was coming as far back as August, when it reported that Channels had approximately 51.7 million users in the EU. That crossed the EU’s threshold for Very Large Online Platforms with over 45 million users in the EU. Meta now has…
Published on 26/01/2026 – 15:32 GMT+1 A global crackdown on human traffickers and migrant smugglers coordinated by Interpol led to the arrest of more than 3,700 suspects and aided over 4,400 potential trafficking victims around the world, the international law enforcement organisation said Monday. Interpol said 14,000 officers carried out Operation Liberterra III across 119 countries between 10-21 November which led to 3,744 arrests, the protection of 4,414 potential victims and the detection of 12,992 people caught in illegal migration schemes. Authorities opened at least 720 new investigations, according to the agency headquartered in France that helps police in 196…