Author: staff

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday he had been wrong to appoint Labour politician Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington, seeking to quell anger over a scandal surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time associate. Starmer, whose popularity with the British public and many MPs in his own centre-left Labour Party has slumped, has also struggled to manage a controversy that threatens to bring down his leadership. Addressing parliament about the deepening political row, Starmer said: “At the heart of this, there is also a judgment I made that was wrong. I should not have appointed Peter…

Turkey said on Monday it had arrested 90 people with suspected links to the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, two weeks after a deadly shootout outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul. A total of 198 people were detained a day after the 7 April attack in a nationwide sweep against “the terrorist organisation Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for the group. The 90 other suspects arrested in 24 of Turkey’s provinces include “members of the terrorist organisation,” and people “involved in its financing…and suspects disseminating propaganda,” the interior ministry said. Authorities have not officially connected these arrests to the shootout…

“PSD can no longer be held captive while our social base is being destroyed,” Grindeanu told top party members in Bucharest Monday, using an acronym for the Social Democrats. According to local media, hundreds of people gathered in the capital for an evening rally in support of Bolojan, who said in a press statement that he won’t resign. The prime minister accused the Social Democrats of “cowardly running” from responsibility for decisions they too had made. “What we see today is the jeopardizing of our country’s finances, blowing up governing, all done with total lack of respect toward our country’s…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:32 GMT+2 Slovakia will hold a referendum in summer to decide whether to cancel lifelong payments for Prime Minister Robert Fico and other leaders after their terms in office expire, the country’s president said on Monday. According to President Peter Pellegrini, the vote is scheduled to take place on 4 July. At the same time, Slovaks will also vote on whether to reopen the office of the special prosecutor that used to deal with major crime and corruption. The referendum follows a petition organised by the Democrats, a non-parliamentary pro-Western opposition party, and signed by more…

Tens of thousands of people attended a giant open-air mass by Pope Leo XIV outside the Angolan capital Sunday, where he delivered a message of hope to the resource-rich country marked by poverty and inequality. Leo flew to Portuguese-speaking Angola on Saturday, the third leg of a whirlwind four-nation African tour on which he has condemned corruption and the plunder of the continent’s resources and had a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump. Around 100,000 people attended the pontiff’s first mass in Angola at Kilamba, around 30 kilometres from Luanda, the Vatican said, citing local authorities.

Starmer announced Monday that he had commissioned a review into any security concerns raised during Mandelson’s tenure. That in itself means the scandal could deepen.  MPs are also asking about just how high a level of top secret documents Mandelson was allowed to see under Britain’s “STRAP” protocol. Access to these highest-level documents is complicated and varies case by case, with each one having an assigned “compartment” of people who see it on a need-to-know basis. Therefore we may never find out what Mandelson saw. 7) What else is waiting to come out? One row that dominated Monday shows anything…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:34 GMT+2 In late 2023, the Polish prime minister wrote the modern playbook on unwinding years of entrenched illiberal rule. Now, Magyar is looking to apply it, especially as the two leaders expressed a similar to-do list across three key areas. To bypass an opposition president, Andrzej Duda, Tusk’s government used a parliamentary resolution to instantly dismiss state broadcast management, literally taking the network offline overnight. Magyar is threatening the exact same shock therapy. Following a heated interview last week on public television, which he likened to North Korean propaganda, he explicitly vowed to suspend the…

Published on 20/04/2026 – 21:06 GMT+2 US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States would not lift its blockade of Iranian ports until Tehran had agreed a peace deal to end the war. “THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a ‘DEAL,’ is absolutely destroying Iran,” Trump said in a post on social media. “They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run.” Traffic has again seized up in the Strait of Hormuz as both Tehran and Washington impose separate blockades. Trump’s announcement comes after Iran…

Cooperation in so-called forward deterrence includes Poland as well as Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. Poland, which doesn’t take part in the U.S. nuclear-sharing program, is interested in firming up European deterrence against Russia. “We’ve decided to join a group of countries invited by France to cooperate,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “An exclusive group made up of countries who understand the need for European sovereignty. We live in a world in which we need nuclear dissuasion capacities.” France is adamant that final control on the use of its nuclear weapons must rest with Paris, but…

EU countries are set to push back on Spain’s request to end the EU-Israel association agreement during the Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Tuesday in Brussels, diplomats told Euronews. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called on Sunday to break the agreement, accusing Israel of violating international law and therefore the terms of the deal. But his call is far from reaching the unified position needed to proceed. Ireland and Slovenia have previously joined Spain in requesting to discuss the agreement, considering that Israel “is in breach of its human rights obligations” for continuous violations of the ceasefire agreement, escalating violence in…