Plans for retired dancer to return from Monaco for run at post revealed during mansion dispute in court
After finding fame and fortune in Riverdance and other stage shows, Michael Flatley is to seek a new role: president of Ireland.
The Irish American dancer and impresario planned to move back from Monaco to Ireland and would seek nomination in the upcoming election, a Dublin court heard on Friday.
Continue reading...Judges rule document invalid as former Syrian leader had immunity as head of state
France’s highest court has cancelled an arrest warrant for the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country’s civil war.
The Cour de cassation declared the warrant invalid under international law, which gives heads of state personal immunity from prosecution in foreign courts while they are in office.
Continue reading...Officials and ministers either deny that Palestinians are being affected by hunger or say it is not Israel’s fault
Israel is pursuing an extensive PR effort to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is responsible.
As dozens of governments, UN organisations and other international figures have detailed Israel’s culpability, officials and ministers in Israel have attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, that if hunger exists it is not Israel’s fault, or to blame Hamas or the UN and aid organisations for problems with distribution of aid.
Continue reading...Supplies of ready-to-use-therapeutic food will be depleted by mid-August if nothing changes, says Unicef
Gaza is on the brink of running out of the specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children, United Nations and humanitarian agencies say.
“We are now facing a dire situation, that we are running out of therapeutic supplies,” Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for Unicef in Amman, Jordan, told Reuters on Thursday, saying supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a crucial treatment, would be depleted by mid-August if nothing changed.
Continue reading...Moscow’s drone production is improving, leading to rise in salvoes and civilian casualties
Night by night, the blitz develops. Russian drones, decoys, cruise and ballistic missiles – increasingly aimed at a single city or location – are being launched in record numbers into Ukraine, straining the country’s ability to defend itself and raising questions about how well it can endure another winter of war.
One day earlier this month, 728 drones and 13 missiles were launched, mostly at the western city of Lutsk, home to many Ukrainian airfields. Large salvoes now come more frequently: every three to five days, rather than every 10 to 12, and civilian casualties are rising: 232 people were killed in June, the highest monthly level for three years.
Continue reading...Database of 8m handwritten census entries paints portrait of city that was hub for intellectuals, artists and young, single people
In 1926, James Joyce was working on his novel Finnegans Wake while living in a spacious apartment in the 7th arrondissement of Paris with his partner, Nora Barnacle, and their two adult children, Giorgio and Lucia.
Joyce’s neighbours in the elegant stone building at 2 Square de Robiac included a Syrian family whose three children had an English nanny called Jessie, Russian émigrés, an Egyptian industrialist, and the US writers William and Elizabeth Placida Mahl.
Continue reading...The prime minister did not, however, follow French president Emmanuel Macron’s lead with a commitment to recognise a Palestinian state
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Anthony Albanese has condemned Israel for “the killing of civilians, including children” seeking aid, but stopped short of saying Australia would recognise a Palestinian state, as France has committed to doing.
In the Australian government’s strongest condemnation of Israel yet, the prime minister said the killings and denial of aid “cannot be defended or ignored”.
Continue reading...Wall Street Journal reports ex-president’s letter, while New York Times reports Trump called Epstein ‘the greatest’
Donald Trump apparently isn’t the only president that sent a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. “The biggest name in the album” was Bill Clinton, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The ex-president’s letter appeared alongside nearly 50 others, including other prominent celebrities and executives.
Last week, the Journal reported that Trump had authored a “bawdy” letter to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 after he was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. The letter was included in an album Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell compiled on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters and the newspaper’s publisher Dow Jones for libel and slander over the reporting.
Continue reading...Philippe Lazzarini says Unrwa findings show one in five children is malnourished in Gaza City and says agency has food and medical supplies
Palestinian health officials said Thursday that two Palestinian teenage boys were killed by Israeli fire on Wednesday night in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel’s military said its forces had fired at Palestinians throwing molotov cocktails toward a highway, killing two near the West Bank town of Al-Khader.
Continue reading...Central bank shuns calls to reduce borrowing costs as higher US tariffs loom
The European Central Bank has kept interest rates on hold as figures showed the eurozone economy maintaining a slow pace of economic growth.
In what was widely expected to be a pause before further cuts later in the year, the Frankfurt-based central bank shunned calls to reduce the cost of borrowing and held its main interest rate at 2% and the deposit rate at 2.15%.
Continue reading...Tbilisi judge rejects lawyer’s offer of plea agreement for release of pregnant Teesside teenager, now 19, at hearing
The British teenager Bella Culley is to be held in a Georgian prison for at least five more weeks as she awaits trial on drug-smuggling charges, a court in Tbilisi has ordered.
Culley, the great-granddaughter of a former Labour MP, was arrested on arrival at the city’s airport in May. Georgian prosecutors said she was carrying a large amount of illegal drugs in luggage she brought with her from Thailand.
Continue reading...Some slammed the agreement with the Trump administration to reinstate $400m in federal funds while others praised it as an ‘excellent outcome’
Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.
Continue reading...Electric carmaker struggles to emerge from sales rut on continent despite updating its bestselling Model Y
Tesla sales in Europe have collapsed by one-third this year, data shows, after Elon Musk warned the electric carmaker faced “a few rough quarters” ahead.
According to the figures published on Thursday by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), sales of Tesla vehicles in Europe slumped by 33% to 110,000 in the first half of 2025, compared with 165,000 in the first half of 2024.
Continue reading...The 21-year-old was discovered by housekeeping staff on holiday island Phuket
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An Australian tourist has been found dead in a Thai hotel room, one day before his flight home.
The 21-year-old was discovered by housekeeping staff at a hotel on holiday island Phuket on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Former political prisoners face lengthy travel restrictions to stop them speaking out, says human rights organisation
Saudi Arabia is banning large numbers of its own citizens from leaving the country in a “cruel” attempt to silence criticism, say human rights activists.
High-profile women’s rights campaigners, including Loujain al-Hathloul, who pushed for the right for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Maryam al-Otaibi, one of three sisters targeted by the authorities for their activism, appear to have been given long travel bans. These restrictions frequently extend to family members.
Continue reading...Officials say they do not expect to find survivors after wreckage of Angara Airlines flight found on mountainside
A passenger plane has crashed in Russia’s far east after disappearing from radar, with 49 people on board feared dead, local officials have said.
The flight, operated by Siberia-based Angara Airlines, vanished from radar on Thursday and lost contact with air traffic controllers while approaching its destination of Tynda, a remote town in the Amur region bordering China.
Continue reading...Clip turned out to be a stunt, but strength of reaction speaks to genuine affront at Ireland’s portrayal on big screen
A man in a bar with a flat cap, bloodied knuckles and a dreamy look lays down his whiskey and writes a letter. “Dear Erin,” he begins, and a soundtrack of fiddles swells as he yearns for his lost love in the distant land of America.
The trailer for the upcoming film – tagline: “she was the Irish goodbye he never forgot” – ran in recent weeks in cinemas and online and was accompanied by a poster showing green mountains, shamrocks and a rainbow.
Continue reading...Ukraine’s president says outcry is ‘not falling on deaf ears’ as European leaders voice concern at recent legislation weakening anti-graft watchdogs
Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised a new bill to strengthen the rule of law in Ukraine on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to assuage popular anger at his decision to weaken the powers of two independent anti-corruption agencies.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Kyiv for a second day, while European leaders expressed concern at the Ukrainian president’s contentious decision. The demonstrators gathered outside the presidential office, shouting anti-government slogans.
Continue reading...Crackdown on what the White House claims is bias echoes longstanding conservative grievances against tech
Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a trio of executive orders that he vowed would turn the United States into an “AI export powerhouse”, including a directive targeting what the White House described as “woke” artificial intelligence models.
The anti-woke order is part of the administration’s broader anti-diversity campaign that has also targeted federal agencies, academic institutions and the military. “The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries,” Trump said during remarks at an AI summit in Washington on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer’s government struggling to convince MPs and public it is doing enough for civilians starving in Gaza
When David Lammy stood at the dispatch box to deliver a statement condemning Israel’s killing of starving civilians in Gaza on Monday, he was met with anger from MPs.
“We want action, and this is not action,” thundered one Labour MP. Another questioned: “Is this it?” A third asked: “At what point does our basic humanity require us to take stronger action? Many of us think the red line was passed a long time ago.”
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