Author: staff
By Una Hajdari with AP Published on 20/05/2026 – 12:45 GMT+2•Updated 13:27 The United Nations has lowered its forecast for global economic growth and raised inflation projections for this year, responding to the Middle East crisis and rising oil prices. UN economists said global GDP growth is now forecast at 2.5% for 2026, down from 2.7% in January, and could fall to just 2.1% “in a more adverse scenario”. That would be one of the weakest growth rates this century, outside of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global financial crisis of 2008, said Shantanu Mukherjee, director of economic analysis in the UN Department…
Google used its annual developer conference on Tuesday to outline an aggressive new vision for artificial intelligence, unveiling a wave of products and upgrades designed to make Gemini the centre of its ecosystem. At the company’s I/O 2026 event in California, CEO Sundar Pichai described the company’s next era as “agentic,” as the company shifts towards an AI system capable of completing autonomous tasks. To Pichai, the agentic era also includes AI agents, which will be integrated into many of the company’s products, including Google Search and Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. “Ten years since we pivoted the company…
A new outbreak of the deadly disease began in May in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a small number of cases spreading to neighboring Uganda. On Sunday, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency. More than 130 people had died from the latest outbreak by Tuesday, according to the WHO’s director general. The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been working to evacuate American doctors exposed to the disease while treating patients in the DRC and Uganda. The Czech health ministry said in Wednesday’s statement that “other American healthcare workers…
Swiss Defence Minister Martin Pfister said on Monday in Berlin that “Switzerland wants and is ready to take responsibility for its own security, but also to meet the expectations of other European countries that Switzerland, too, should contribute to the security of our continent. We want to live up to this aspiration as a reliable partner.” He was speaking at a meeting of the DACH countries, a region of shared economic and cultural heritage that comprises of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Countries that in the past spent relatively little on their defence have changed course in recent years following the…
Published on 20/05/2026 – 11:42 GMT+2•Updated 11:49 Reindustrialisation is no longer just a statement of intent. Three out of four large European and US companies already have a strategy under way. According to the latest data collected in the report “The return of industry: reindustrialisation strategies in Europe and the United States (source in Spanish)”, produced by the Capgemini Research Institute, 73% of European and US companies already have at least one such plan in operation, compared with 59% in 2024. The figure is even higher in Spain, where 76% of companies have a reindustrialisation strategy up and running. However,…
Published on 20/05/2026 – 11:32 GMT+2•Updated 11:46 Long before he became one of the world’s best-known Latin American artists, Fernando Botero sold his first work for two packs of cigarettes. More than seven decades later, and almost three years after his death, that youthful watercolour is returning to the art market at an auction in Bogotá. The piece, entitled ‘La Plegaria’ and executed in 1949, is regarded as the first work Botero sold in his career and features in an auction organised by Bogotá Auctions on 21 May, which will also offer more than 120 works of modern and contemporary…
Following the detection of the drone in Lithuania, Vilnius International Airport was closed and officials in the Ignalina District Municipality instructed children in schools to take shelter. Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė was set to meet her National Security Commission on Wednesday to discuss drone incursions; a government spokesperson told LRT that she had been taken to a shelter in response to the air alert. In a letter obtained by POLITICO, a group of 15 Baltic MEPs from across the political spectrum on Wednesday asked Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas to take action.…
Published on 20/05/2026 – 12:09 GMT+2 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers that the bloc must tear down remaining barriers in its internal market to compete in the current geopolitical climate. “We must finish what we started. We must remove the barriers that still persist in our internal market,” von der Leyen told MEPs gathered in plenary session on Wednesday. “We must make it much easier to scale up across Europe. This is the basic promise of the single market and it must be fulfilled.” Von der Leyen singled out the practice of so-called “gold plating”…
More than a decade of late-night history ends this week, with Stephen Colbert’s tenure as the host of the US show The Late Show coming to an end this Thursday. As a reminder, The Late Show has been CBS’s flagship late-night talk show for many years. It first aired in 1993 with David Letterman hosting. Colbert joined the show in 2015 and stood out for his wit, charm, and his hugely popular political monologues skewering the Trump administration. Colbert’s 11-year run ends on Thursday 21 May, and he’ll leave the late-night landscape significantly poorer. Here’s everything you need to know…
The big shots and the thinkers Burnham is no stranger to the Cabinet either. Two of his biggest supporters around Starmer’s top table are Miliband, the energy secretary, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is “pally” with Burnham, too, as the friend quoted above put it. And Deputy Labour Leader Lucy Powell is another prominent champion in parliament. They all might hope to prosper if the mayor does make it to Downing Street. More immediately, Powell is taking on the key by-election job of trying to rally members and volunteers on the campaign. She played a similar…