Author: staff

Another 2,649 people, 27 percent of the total, were staying in nonconventional housing, including nonapproved accommodation structures, temporary accommodations or squats. 1,539 people, 16 percent of the total, were staying with third parties. According to Bruss’Help, “the scale of the problem exceeds all individual initiatives,” and it hopes that the current report will help policymakers develop “more effective, structural and humane public policy measures.” The Bruss’Help study, which is carried out every two years with the help of volunteers, tracks various forms of homelessness across the region. A more detailed, qualitative analysis is expected in June.

The United Kingdom Supreme Court has ruled the definition of a woman under the country’s equalities law refers to someone born biologically female. This definition would reject the Scottish government’s argument that the definition should include transgender women. Five judges at the court ruled unanimously, according to Justice Patrick Hodge.This means that a transgender person with a certificate recognising them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes. The court did emphasise that the ruling “does not remove protection from trans people,” who are “protected from discrimination on the ground of gender reassignment.”The case stems from a…

The long-running legal challenge was brought by the For Women Scotland campaign group — who argue sex is biological, binary and can’t be changed — against the Scottish government. The case dates back to 2018 when the Scottish administration, led by then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, passed legislation to establish gender quotas to get more women serving on public boards. It was eventually amended to count trans women with gender recognition certificates, confirming their female gender, as women for the purposes of the legislation. Scottish courts ruled, and then upheld in the Scottish government’s favor, that sex is “not limited to…

Updated: 16/04/2025 – 11:37 GMT+2A Russian drone strike injured three in Odesa, damaging civilian infrastructure. Over the past day, Russia conducted 109 airstrikes on Ukrainian positions and settlements. … More Three people were injured overnight as a result of a Russian drone strike in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa.The attack took place late at night and caused damage and a fire at a civilian infrastructure, local authorities reported.Ukraine’s General Staff reported that during the past 24 hours, Russia carried out 109 airstrikes on Ukrainian military positions and settlements, dropping 177 guided air bombs and deploying more than 2,000…

Van Peteghem’s remarks come on the heels of a government agreement last week to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense and finally reach NATO’s decade-old current target. Belgium will seek to activate the national escape clause — a mechanism authorized by the European Commission to loosen fiscal rules — and benefit from some of the €150 billion in loans offered by the EU’s executive branch, he said. Amid Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine and increasing belligerence, NATO leaders are widely expected to raise the defense spending target to more than 3 percent of GDP during a June summit in…

But the American penalties against him were “inconsistent with U.S. foreign policy interests,” Rubio’s spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday, adding that the secretary of state had spoken with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to inform him the measures had been dropped. The two top diplomats also spoke about “ways to strengthen U.S.-Hungary alignment on critical issues and opportunities for economic cooperation,” according to a readout of their call. Orbán, from the hard-right Fidesz party, was the first European leader to endorse Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and is a vocal ally of the Republican. Trump, in turn, hosted the Hungarian…

Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude is integrating with Google Workspace, promising to help professionals free up time and get work done faster. The San-Francisco-based company announced on Tuesday that users will no longer have to dig through their emails on Gmail, calendar, or documents, as there will be advanced document search capabilities, Anthropic said. As well as this streamlined approach to searching through your Google Workspace without having to specify exactly which file you require, Claude will also be able to pull up meeting notes and past correspondence and search other relevant documents for additional context.Anthropic also announced a tool called…

While Dan is also well placed to collect support from Romanians abroad, he’s not yet well known outside Bucharest, which is in fact his Achilles’ heel. Across Romania, “10 percent of the population don’t know who Nicușor Dan is,” and that could cost him victory in a tight second-round runoff against Simion, according to Ștefureac. A poll published Monday by Curs, a polling company based in Bucharest, concluded the same, giving Simion (54 percent) an 8 percentage-point advantage over Dan (46 percent) in a hypothetical runoff. Ștefureac stressed that it’s early days with the election still weeks away, and that…

In part, Meloni’s actions reflect Italy’s terror at the prospect of losing its historically close ties to the U.S., which it sees as insurance against the Franco-German axis that dominates EU affairs. Unlike other European leaders, she believes that Trump can still be reasoned with and that his trade threats are little more than a brash negotiating tactic, according to two Italian officials familiar with the government’s foreign policy stance.  Meloni also wants to show that she can obtain concessions from Trump and that “if we are less hysterical, we can work with Washington,” said one of the officials, acknowledging…

No nuclear ‘has been’ At the same time, Bihet insists he has a partial solution for the EU’s continued Russian energy reliance: more atomic power. Long a die-hard nuclear proponent — Belgian lawmakers nicknamed him “Atomic Boy” — the Walloon Reformist Movement politician said he wants to overhaul his country’s approach to the low-emissions technology.  “Five years ago, it was a curse word,” Bihet said. “I was a has-been.” Now, he added, “the tide has turned on nuclear power.” Belgium, which has two active nuclear plants, has long treated atomic power ambivalently, banning new reactor construction in 2003. Bihet wants…