Author: staff
Is Kemi Badenoch wise to call the Tories ‘a distressed asset’? – POLITICO Skip to main content
Published on 02/10/2025 – 10:21 GMT+2 Athletes with intellectual disabilities competed in boccia and table tennis at the European Commission during European Sports Week, pressing EU officials to increase funding and policies for inclusion in sport, education, employment and healthcare. The event, organised at the European Commission by Special Olympics, aims to promote the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in the EU. “We are here to show the European Union that funds and policies are needed for greater inclusion, not only in sport, but also in education, employment and health services,” Bulgarian athlete Viktor Petrov Hristov told Euronews. Hristov…
“If nothing changes, the outcome is already known … This government will fall,” the Socialists’ leader Olivier Faure said. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, who handles the far-right National Rally’s economic policy, accused the prime minister of trying to “buy time” by delaying budget announcements in an interview. Union leaders, who have repeatedly accused Lecornu of ignoring their demands, will spend Thursday on the picket lines in the second general strike of Lecornu’s short tenure. His first full day as premier coincided with a nebulous movement to “block everything” that failed to materialize. Lecornu has acknowledged his relatively tenuous position as a head…
Published on 02/10/2025 – 9:41 GMT+2 A widespread claim on social media alleges that the German city of Hamburg has banned music lessons in public schools because music is considered “haram”, or forbidden, in Islam. One post on X says that the ban has been brought in because it would be considered “Islamophobic” to impose music lessons on Muslims. It’s been seen more than half a million times and contains a clip of a German-language news report, which supposedly explains the details of the ban. However, none of the claims is true. While there have been some reports in German…
By JAMEY KEATEN with AP Published on 02/10/2025 – 9:42 GMT+2 Switzerland’s glaciers have faced “enormous” melting this year with a 3 per cent drop in total volume, the fourth-largest annual drop on record, due to the effects of global warming, top Swiss glaciologists reported Wednesday. The shrinkage this year means that ice mass in Switzerland — home to the most glaciers in Europe — has declined by one-quarter over the last decade, the Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences said in their report. “Glacial melting in Switzerland was once again enormous in 2025,” the scientists said. “A…
“If someone governs while constantly being pressured with this demand, they might eventually give in. After all, we’ve already seen that happen in the U.K.,” Lipavský said. Dohnal, Ostrava’s mayor, said he could see Babiš calling a referendum on NATO — but not the EU, due to the bloc’s cash helping Agrofert. “Andrej Babiš is primarily a pragmatic politician, so he tends to make decisions based on the current mood in society,” Dohnal explained. “If one of his internal polls showed that he should, for example, call a referendum on the Czech Republic’s membership in NATO, he would be capable…
By AP with Euronews Published on 02/10/2025 – 8:38 GMT+2 The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Lisa Cook to remain a Federal Reserve governor for now, declining to act on the Trump administration’s effort to immediately remove her from the central bank. In a brief unsigned order, the high court said it would hear arguments in January over Republican President Donald Trump’s effort to force Cook off the Fed board. The court will consider whether to block a lower-court ruling in Cook’s favour while her challenge to her firing by Trump continues. The high-court order was a rare instance of Trump…
Tough choices in Brussels: Representing the European Commission, Sandra Gallina promised the executive will “do everything to honor the social contract” but said governments had to make difficult choices, defending the decision to cut the EU4Health program by a fifth to fund the war in Ukraine. Are things really so bad? Pamela Rendi-Wagner, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said people were talking about the social contract as if it was a sick patient. “I don’t think [it] is really at that stage … we should be more proud of what we have achieved,” she said,…
Israeli forces intercepted 13 out of 43 ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, organisers of the flotilla said on Thursday, adding that the 30 remaining boats are still on their way to the war-ravaged enclave. Israeli authorities said activists on board of the intercepted ships, including climate activist Thunberg, were safe and transferred to Israel. Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Italian public broadcaster Rai that the activists would be deported in the coming days and that Israeli forces were told “not to use violence.” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s interception of the boats, denouncing it as an “act of…
By Theo Farrant & AP Published on 02/10/2025 – 7:00 GMT+2 In the depths of an active mine under the Dolomites in Italy, work to create a digital data centre is underway. It will be the first and only centre in Europe to be installed in an active mine. Known as Trentino DataMine, the project is a joint venture between the University of Trento and a small group of privately owned companies. Giuliano Claudio Peritore, an expert in digital data and president of the Association of Italian Internet Providers, said he is “absolutely fascinated” by the project because a mine is generally considered…