US president says on visit to republic that unification will happen eventually so ‘may as well happen now’
Donald Trump has said he would “love” to see a united Ireland and that it “may as well happen now”.
The US president appeared to endorse the push for constitutional change on the island at the start of a two-day visit to Ireland on Saturday. The unexpected intervention prompted a swift rebuttal from the UK government and Northern Ireland’s unionist leaders.
Continue reading...Latest poll shows 0.3-point gap between left and right blocs, with country’s reputation as global champion of human rights said to be at stake
Sweden goes to the polls on Sunday in an extremely close election that could see the far right enter government for the first time if the country’s rightwing parties can form a majority.
Opinion polls show the centre-left opposition alliance ahead, with Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats the favourite to become prime minister again after four years in opposition, but her bloc’s lead has narrowed considerably in the final days of the campaign.
Continue reading...Many fear chancellor is wrong man for the job at a time when Germany’s defences against far right are crumbling
A cataclysm. A 9.0 earthquake. A five-alarm fire. A bitter rejection of Germany’s joyous reunification three decades ago, and a threat to the democratic postwar order.
Sizing up the repercussions of last weekend’s win for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in the former communist state of Saxony-Anhalt, German commentators expressed a sense of doom, panic and helplessness in the political establishment.
Continue reading...Many are rooting for vocal critic Catherine Connolly to let rip in Dublin meeting, but others hope she holds back
Catherine Connolly, Ireland’s president, once said she abhorred Donald Trump’s policies. In his sole previous comment on Connolly, the US president seemed to think she was a man. Now that they are about to meet, Ireland is holding its breath.
Trump is to fly into Dublin on Saturday morning for a two-day visit centred on golf. But before making it to his beloved greens, protocol obliges him to meet a woman who has given every impression of loathing him.
Continue reading...Rights groups say those missing after being deported under one in, one out deal include dozens of age-disputed children
Hundreds of asylum seekers including at least 41 age-disputed children who were removed to France under the “one in, one out” deal have disappeared, human rights organisations have said.
The pilot scheme was hailed as “groundbreaking” by the former prime minister Keir Starmer when he and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced it in July 2025. Under a treaty drawn up for this agreement, it forcibly returns small-boat asylum seekers to France in exchange for others brought legally to the UK from France.
Continue reading...Fans from around the world gather for star’s long-awaited performances after break because of neurological condition
More than 30,000 Céline Dion fans have gathered in Paris for the Canadian singer’s long-awaited return to performing on Saturday night, four years after she revealed her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological condition.
Thousands more people without tickets have flocked to a series of giant karaoke events across France to belt out Dion’s famous power ballads, in celebration of the star’s health stabilising enough for her to return to the stage.
Continue reading...Part of Dmitry Donskoy’s right hand sent to ‘spiritually strengthen’ soldiers
The Russian Orthodox church has sent a fragment of a medieval warrior prince’s remains to troops fighting in Ukraine, saying the relic would “spiritually strengthen” soldiers and help them achieve victory.
A reliquary containing part of the right hand of Dmitry Donskoy, the 14th-century prince revered in Russia for his victory over the Mongolian Golden Horde in 1380, has been taken to Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and is now being transported along the frontline.
Continue reading...While England makes its first foray into unfamiliar territory, it’s proved a boon for Italy’s cash-strapped municipalities
A nightly tourist tax may be unfamiliar territory in the UK, but countries in continental Europe have been cashing in on these kinds of levies for decades.
Tourists usually need to pay the tax on the day they check out of a hotel or holiday let, and are often surprised by an extra fee on top of their accommodation costs.
Continue reading...The new ‘true-scale’ map shrinks Europe and North America while enlarging Africa – and depicts the disputed Kuril islands as ruled by Moscow
Japan has asked for the revision of a new world map adopted by the UN because it said it made the disputed Kuril islands appear to belong to Russia.
The UN general assembly voted on Friday to adopt the new map, which makes the African continent larger while also shrinking North America and Europe, drawing condemnation from the US.
Continue reading...Labour peer tells Council of Europe inquiry failure to implement legal protections still putting journalists at risk
Malta is vulnerable to “repeated instances of high-level corruption” unless it strengthens the rule of law and protections for journalists, the Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti said at the opening of an inquiry into judicial failures following the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Chakrabarti, a member of the House of Lords and former director of the human rights group Liberty, has been named special rapporteur for a Council of Europe investigation into the fallout from the assassination of the anti-corruption journalist, who died in a car bombing in October 2017.
Continue reading...Europe’s royals and global political figures attend ceremony that brings 13 days of national mourning to a close
Norway has observed a minute’s silence as it takes leave of King Harald V in a series of ceremonies, bringing to a close 13 days of national mourning that followed the popular monarch’s death last month at the age of 89.
Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Oslo and foreign heads of state and government converged on the Norwegian capital for the funeral of the late king, a light-touch and unassuming reformer who ruled for more than three decades.
Continue reading...German chancellor attacks Alternative für Deutschland after far-right party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt election
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has accused the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) of seeking “ethnic cleansing” with its “remigration” drive, after the nativist party’s seismic weekend victory in a state election.
In his first public confrontation with the AfD since Sunday’s shock outcome in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz said at a raucous parliamentary debate that the far-right party would take an axe to one of the pillars of the German economy with a racist campaign of mass deportations.
Continue reading...A continent-wide crisis of confidence is creating fertile ground for far-right narratives of decline, report suggests
Europeans overwhelmingly want a strong, united and independent Europe but question whether it can get there, according to a study that suggests a continent-wide crisis of confidence is creating fertile ground for far-right narratives of decline.
The report, based on 5,800 interviews in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK and analysis of the way Europe is discussed in the politics and media of 15 countries, paints a picture of an ambitious but disillusioned public.
Continue reading...More than 1,000 flights cancelled with problems continuing on Wednesday and airlines calling for overhaul after third incident in just over three years
Flight delays and cancellations were expected to continue into Wednesday at UK airports after another air traffic control failure kept planes grounded for hours, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
At least 177 flights scheduled for Wednesday to and from UK airports had been cancelled, plane tracking site Flightradar24 said, “nearly all at London Heathrow”. More than 1,000 were cancelled by about 8pm on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Thieves took four artworks but it is thought they dropped two in museum garden as they fled
French police are hunting two thieves who escaped with two Renoir paintings from a museum on the French Riviera after breaking in through a hole cut in its garden fence.
Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, about 10 miles west of Nice, said the pair appeared to have been “well equipped and well informed” about the museum, which houses works by the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in his former home.
Continue reading...Friedrich Merz said his conservative CDU was shaken ‘to its very foundations’ after far-right victory in Saxony-Anhalt
A “shocked” and chastened Friedrich Merz has vowed to stay in office despite the far right’s triumph in a state election that has brought anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin politicians within striking distance of power.
The German chancellor, appearing ashen-faced in front of reporters in Berlin, said on Monday that the landslide victory by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt had shaken his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) “to its very foundations”.
Continue reading...Saxony-Anhalt win part of wider trend driven by mainstream policy failures and gradual normalisation of far right ideas
The numbers speak for themselves: Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a party that dabbles in Nazi imagery, distinguishes between “biological” and “passport” Germans, and is too extreme even for France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, nearly doubled its score in Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt to 43.8% of the vote.
Meanwhile, the centre-right CDU of the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, collapsed to 17.2%, less than half its total in the same race five years ago, and the centre-left SPD – Germany’s other main party of government for the past 60-odd years – scraped 9.3%. The least that can be said is that the centre did not hold.
Continue reading...Estimates suggest drop in production with vineyards also concerned ‘smoke taint’ from wildfires may affect quality
French vineyards hit by severe drought and heatwaves are expected to report a 30-year low in wine production after the country’s hottest ever recorded summer, according to the agriculture ministry.
Initial estimates suggest winemakers will produce just under 34m hectolitres from this year’s harvest: a drop of 6% on last year, and 17% less than the 2021-2025 average.
Continue reading...Aftershocks of party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt will ripple across Germany, with two more state elections this month
Germany is reeling from the biggest far-right victory in a state election since the Nazi period after voters in Saxony-Anhalt in the former communist east gave the anti-immigration, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party a thumping first-place finish of 44%, just short of an absolute majority.
Continue reading...Fanfare at Belgrade funeral of man convicted of genocide raises questions from EU over Serbia’s membership plan
Thousands of mourners have gathered in Belgrade for the funeral of Ratko Mladić, a Serbian general convicted of orchestrating the worst massacre in Europe since the second world war, and whose hero’s return home has raised international alarm.
Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role during the Balkans genocide in the 1990s, Mladić died in prison in late August aged 84 while serving a life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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