Author: staff

LONDON — The U.K. is imposing fresh sanctions on up to 100 vessels accused of shipping Russian oil in the face of international sanctions, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Friday. The British government said the tankers had moved more than £18 billion of Russian oil since the start of 2024 in defiance of curbs imposed on Moscow after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia has tried getting around these economic conditions by building up a “shadow fleet” of tankers, often aging vessels with obscure ownership and unknown insurance. Speaking ahead of a Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) meeting in…

Since the first presidential debates last year, Donald Trump refused to answer the question about how he saw the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine. He famously promised to end it within 24 hours, but he was less decisive when asked whether its end would mean Ukraine’s victory. Ever since, Kyiv has been trying to convince Trump to decide who to back — more specifically, to side with Ukraine.From meeting Trump in New York in September 2024 before the presidential election to being accused of being a “dictator” and finally the unprecedentedly heated argument in the Oval Office in February, Volodymyr…

China’s exports to the United States tumbled in April while its trade with other economies surged, suggesting that President Donald Trump’s tariffs offensive is hastening a shakeup in global supply chains.Total exports from China rose 8.1% last month from a year earlier, much faster than the 2% pace most economists had been expecting. That was — however — much slower than the 12.4% year-on-year increase in March. Imports fell 0.2% in April from the year before.Shipments to the US sank 21% in dollar terms as Trump’s tariffs on most Chinese exports rose to as high as 145%. With Chinese tariffs…

U.S. presidents of both parties have long taken issue with taxes imposed by foreign governments on large technology companies, arguing they discriminate against American firms like Amazon, Facebook, Meta and Google. But the new agreement Trump hailed Thursday punts on that dispute, as well as several other particularly divisive issues like potential U.S. tariffs on pharmaceuticals. The U.K.’s 2 percent digital service tax — which hits companies that earn more than $662.37 million globally and over $33.12 million from U.K. users — has been a sticking point in the talks. The tax was imposed in 2020 and targets the revenues…

Almost two weeks since a massive blackout paralysed the Iberian Peninsula, unfounded claims and conspiracy theories continue to run rampant online.These are fuelled by the lack of official confirmation as to the cause of the outage, which the Spanish government says will take “three to six months” to determine. Both the governments in Madrid and Lisbon are conducting their own investigations, while an independent probe will also be led by an expert panel at European level.The Spanish grid operator, Red Eléctrica, has signalled the likely cause to be two consecutive “disconnection events,” barely 1.5 seconds apart, in energy generation plants in…

Updated: 09/05/2025 – 10:23 GMT+2Hundreds gathered in Prague’s Nusle district on Thursday to commemorate VE Day with a large-scale reenactment of the 1945 Prague Uprising, featuring period uniforms, authentic weapons, and WWII military vehicles. … More People in Prague commemorated VE Day on Thursday with a large-scale reenactment of the 1945 Prague Uprising against the Nazis.Around 400 people, dressed in period uniforms and armed with authentic weapons, recreated the scenes of urban warfare that marked the city’s liberation.Included were original WWII military vehicles.The event took place in the Nusle district, where some of the bloodiest clashes between Prague’s resistance fighters…

A victory for Berisha would bring an end to 12 years of rule by Rama’s Socialists, which international observers have described as a period marked by increased state capture by a single party. But it would also usher in a political force openly aligned with Trump’s agenda in a region long seen as being strategically vulnerable to Russian and Chinese influence. “In the last two years, Chris LaCivita has advised two major political figures, in two different countries … those two cases are Donald Trump and Sali Berisha,” Democratic Party spokesperson Alfred Lela told POLITICO. According to Lela, the two…

Next, the bloc needs to stand up for international law and to support international legal efforts to address the conflict. The EU and its members face third-party obligations with respect to the International Court of Justice’s consecutive orders from January, March and May 2024 on the situation in Gaza and to prevent genocide — a call Europe must heed by fully cooperating with war-crimes investigations. Given the appallingly high number of women and children killed in the conflict, European countries should also immediately stop their arms exports to Israel. Additionally, as members of the International Criminal Court, European countries are…

Radio Schuman spoke with Euronews’ Sasha Vakulina about what to expect from Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, the ceasefire disruptions, the European participants and what punishment they could risk for attending.Europe’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned European leaders to stay away from Putin’s 9 May party, but that hasn’t dissuaded everyone. Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić are set to show their faces.In this episode, we also head to Nancy in France, where French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk are set to sign a wide-ranging pact to deepen defence ties. And finally, we…

The official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, disputed that the legislation compromised the credibility of the Green Deal, arguing that it makes the system for implementing the CAP’s green standards more feasible, realistic and focused on incentives. Disaster relief In the short run, the Commission wants to make it easier for EU governments to hand out cash to support farmers hit by climate impacts, such as flooding and drought. The proposal foresees the creation of two new funds and would authorize direct payments to “enable the most affected farmers to be compensated rapidly.” National authorities should also set a “higher…