Three others wounded as jet-powered drones increasingly target Ukraine’s capital, with medical centre also hit
A Russian drone hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv on Monday, killing at least one person, in the latest daytime attack on Ukraine’s capital.
Flames tore through the historic building as people clambered out of first- and second-floor windows to escape, in dramatic scenes increasingly familiar in the heavily bombarded city.
Continue reading...EU to push member states to cut tax rate below duty on gas, with 11% surge in sales also put down to fallout from Iran war
Sales of residential heat pumps increased 11% across Europe in the first six months of the year as the Iran war sent oil and gas prices rocketing and some countries lowered electricity taxes.
Homeowners bought 1.16m heat pumps across 12 European countries, up from 1.05m in the first half of 2025, according to the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA).
Continue reading...Official says deaths – and dozens of injuries – were probably caused by crushing on boat carrying 105 people
A 10-year-old child and two women died attempting to cross the Channel on Monday, French authorities have said.
Their deaths and the injuries of dozens of others in a large dinghy were probably caused by crushing, according to a French official.
Continue reading...National Rally and allies gain record 14 seats and can form senate group for first time after indirect vote by local officials
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has said her 2027 presidential campaign will be boosted after her anti-immigration party, the National Rally (RN), and its allies improved to a record 14 seats in partial senate elections this weekend.
Le Pen called the results a “historic victory” and a “major milestone” after her party cleared the 10-seat threshold to be able to form a senate group for the first time, after an indirect vote by local officials including mayors and councillors.
Continue reading...Vučić not allowed to seek third presidential term and election will test his grip on rule after widespread protests
Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vučić, has resigned to pursue an attempt to become prime minister in an early parliamentary election that will test his firm rule in the Balkan country after nearly two years of protests.
Vučić’s second presidential term would otherwise end in May next year. He is banned by the constitution from seeking a third term and said he was resigning to lead his rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) in the 25 October ballot.
Continue reading...Pontiff also uses visit to Catholic shrine at Lourdes to criticise assisted dying as ‘false compassion’
The pope has called on the Catholic church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, before a meeting with survivors of child sexual abuse as he continues his four-day visit to France.
Addressing a crowd in a large field near the Catholic shrine of Lourdes on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called on the church to reckon with its past, without directly referencing sexual abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades.
Continue reading...70% vote against tightening centuries-old neutrality, which far right said was being eroded by sanctions against Russia
Swiss voters have decisively rejected a proposal for a strict definition of neutrality that would have required Switzerland to curb cooperation with Nato and abandon sanctions against Russia.
All cantons and about 70% of voters rejected the proposal for a strictly defined version of neutrality to be written into the Swiss constitution, final results from the Federal Statistical Office showed. The motion had been promoted by the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP).
Continue reading...Emergency teams discovered victims after two-storey building in historic Plaka district collapsed ‘in seconds’
Greek authorities say they are trying to discover what caused a two-storey apartment block in the heart of ancient Athens to collapse “in a matter of seconds”, killing six people.
Emergency teams found the victims, including four American tourists, on Saturday, more than 24 hours after the early morning explosion in the historic Plaka district.
Continue reading...Crowds line Place de la Concorde on second day of pontiff’s first official papal visit to France in 18 years
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris on Saturday to attend an open-air mass with Pope Leo, on the second day of his visit to France.
The Vatican estimated 700,000 people turned out for the outdoor mass with the 71-year-old American pope – about 100,000 more than the number of people who had registered to attend.
Continue reading...New research suggests the technology could be used to increase out-of-hospital access to life-saving devices
Drones could help cut the time it takes to get a defibrillator to people experiencing cardiac arrests when not in hospital, researchers have suggested.
In the UK alone, there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year where emergency medical services attempt to resuscitate the individual, according to the British Heart Foundation. However, fewer than one in 10 people survive such an event, and some who do are left with neurological problems.
Continue reading...Mountaineer’s body recovered about 20 metres below the summit of Torrecerredo, the highest peak of the Picos de Europa range
A British man has died after falling about 61 metres (200ft) while descending from the summit of a mountain in northern Spain, according to local law enforcement.
The 28-year-old mountaineer fell down a vertical gully on the east side of the Torrecerredo – the highest peak of the Cantabrian mountains – on Thursday afternoon, the Spanish Civil Guard for the Asturias region said.
Continue reading...Thélyson Orélien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social media
The organisers of France’s most prestigious literary prize said they had removed a critically acclaimed novel by a Canadian-Haitian writer from the longlist after an anonymous online account claimed the book was “almost entirely” written by AI.
The Académie Goncourt, a Paris-based literary organisation, said on Friday its decision to withdraw Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die) was “driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt prize and the academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men”.
Continue reading...Pontiff says artificial intelligence must remain at service of people in first official papal visit to country in 18 years
Pope Leo has warned against losing humanity in a “paradise of machines” as he addressed global concerns over the dangers of artificial intelligence at the start of a three-day visit to France.
“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for people to be educated in ethical discernment, capable of seeing what is morally right,” he said in a speech at the Élysée.
Continue reading...Critics say decree also banning burqa in schools shows Italian PM worried about losing far-right voters in next year’s elections
The Italian government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric to try to court far-right voters ahead of next year’s general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools.
The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”.
Continue reading...Tour Montparnasse modernisation project at a standstill after clashes over pricing and other issues
It has been called a carbuncle on the Paris skyline, a sombre skyscraper where visitors to its viewing platform often joke that the city looks better when you can’t see the building itself.
The much-maligned Tour Montparnasse, a lone, dark monolith with tinted windows rising above a historic neighbourhood in the south of the city, is once again at the centre of controversy after its long-awaited renovation was halted this week because of disagreements between its many private co-owners.
Continue reading...Catherine Corless’s exposure of almost 800 infant deaths at a home led by nuns prompted Neeson to bring the story to screen
Liam Neeson still remembers his shock and shame when he read a New York Times article about the mother and baby institution in Tuam, County Galway.
It was 2017 and the article chronicled the campaign by Catherine Corless, an amateur local historian, to expose abuse and neglect by Irish nuns that led to hundreds of children being buried in a mass, unmarked grave.
Continue reading...Industry leaders call on government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security
The gap between Britain’s food and drink exports and imports has neared its highest this century, as a combination of Brexit, war in the Middle East and US tariffs dented deliveries overseas while imports soared.
The UK’s food and drink trade deficit has risen to more than £21bn – the largest since 2000 – in what industry leaders said was a “wake-up call” for the government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security.
Continue reading...Monthly ‘thank you’ payments for people hosting refugees to be cut from £350 to £100 from next year
Ukrainian refugees in the UK fear they could be left homeless after the government quietly axed 70% of funding for hosts of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, reducing monthly “thank you” payments to them from £350 to £100.
The scheme was launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has provided support for 181,000 of the 234,000 Ukrainians who have since sought sanctuary in the UK.
Continue reading...‘If you’re not in the internal market, you don’t get the same protection,’ says French minister of policy designed to curb Chinese competition
France is leading a push to exclude the UK from the EU’s “Made in Europe” policy that could result in British companies losing out in the race to supply European countries with low-carbon technologies and electric cars.
The plans were raised by Andy Burnham when he met the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly earlier this week.
Continue reading...Warning comes hours after Poland says fire at Starlink satellite station was ‘act of sabotage’
Russia could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, Danish intelligence said, in one of the starkest warnings yet by western security services.
In a report published on Thursday, the Danish defence intelligence service warned of a “low but growing risk” that Russia could launch long-range strikes on Nato infrastructure supporting Ukraine, or carry out a limited incursion into a neighbouring country with a small number of troops, potentially operating without insignia.
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