Author: staff

Four astronauts embarked on a historic voyage towards the moon on Wednesday, the first lunar mission in more than 50 years. Carrying three Americans and one Canadian, the 32-story rocket rose from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where tens of thousands gathered to witness the launch. Crowds also jammed the surrounding roads and beaches, reminiscent of the Apollo moonshots in the 1960s and ’70s. It is NASA’s biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence. Artemis II set sail from the same Florida launch site that sent Apollo’s explorers to the moon so long ago. The team, who donned bright…

Challenged on the view that European capitals have been less enthusiastic than Britain at the prospect of a post-Brexit rapprochement with the EU, Thomas-Symonds insisted the timetable and ambitions remained firm. “The bill will introduce the mechanism of alignment — and I would expect that to be completed by the end of 2026 and to have completed its parliamentary passage by then,” he said. ‘Hardball’ His bullish comments follow a bruising setback to talks after EU officials insisted European students studying at U.K. universities should pay “home” fees of about £9,500 a year in England and Wales as part of…

But Parry expressed concerns that the controversy regarding Boyarsakaya’s role in the OSCE could undermine the work done by the organization. “The public campaign surrounding this matter risks doing precisely the kind of damage to mission credibility that its authors claim to want to prevent,” he said. Parallel to the parliamentary assembly, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights also deploys hundreds of specialists to observe the vote at a technical level and delivers the final legal assessment of the election’s integrity, that risks being drawn into its sister mission’s controversy. In a move that could further undercut…

European prosecutors on Wednesday demanded that Greece lift the parliamentary immunity of 11 lawmakers suspected of involvement in a scam that syphoned off millions of euros in EU farm subsidies for years. The scandal has rocked Greece since the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) revealed the fraud in May, prompting widespread protests by farmers after it led to delays in the payment of agricultural aid. The case has piled major pressure on Greece’s conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, especially given his family’s decades-long political influence in Crete, where most of the allegedly fraudulent subsidies went. “The European Chief Prosecutor requested…

Updated: 01/04/2026 – 12:00 GMT+2 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this April 1st, 2026 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More

Leaving home, taking a year out, travelling the world: that’s a path many young people choose after finishing school. But Léocadie Reimers went a different route. Rather than taking a gap year, she opted for military service in the German armed forces. At 24, she saw the decision as an opportunity to try something new and see a different side of life. Before her military service, Reimers had been involved in volunteer work and saw her time as an extension of that, her “contribution to society” as she calls it. At the same time, she was drawn by the prospect…

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot met with his Bahraini counterpart as well as other senior Gulf region officials on March 25 to “share observations” which aim to “maximize the likelihood of the text’s adoption and subsequent implementation,” one of the diplomats said. French President Emmanuel Macron last month called for the U.N. to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz. France is one of the European countries leading Europe’s response to the Iran crisis via a combination of military pledges — Paris has vowed to send warships to the Strait once fighting has died down — and diplomatic efforts via the…

With US President Donald Trump’s approval number deep under water, Democrats are hoping for a massive electoral shift in their favour come the midterms in November. Yet in heavily liberal California, the party could suffer a political nightmare of their own making and hand the governorship to a Republican. How is that possible in a state, where Democrats routinely carry huge majorities in a year in which some Republicans are fearing a national drubbing? Here’s what is happening: In California, there is a top-two “jungle primary” system in which all candidates are listed on the same ballot. The top two…

In his view, NATO allies would then be open at least to discussing the request, like Estonia. “But that doesn’t mean that we are jumping into the unclarity or jumping into something we don’t know what it is,” he clarified. The defense minister strongly disputed Trump’s characterization of NATO allies as abandoning the United States in its hour of need, citing Estonia’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq since the turn of the century.  “Proportionally, the amount we lost in these conflicts is equal to [that suffered by the] U.S., so we’ve sacrificed as a nation, as an army, we sacrificed…

Published on 01/04/2026 – 17:44 GMT+2•Updated 20:58 Palestinian shops and public institutions were closed across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday in protest against a new Israeli law permitting the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks, but not Israelis found guilty of similar crimes. The law was passed by the Knesset earlier this week. In the territory’s main cities of Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus, most stores were closed after Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party called for a general strike. Entire shopping centres as well as the main market in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority north…