Success for party of the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, despite increased support for rightwing Progress party
The Norwegian Labour party has secured four more years in government after seeing off a surge of support for the populist right in a polarised election.
Soon after the polls closed, the centre left was projected to win with 89 seats with the centre right taking 80 seats. A minimum of 85 seats are needed for a majority.
Continue reading...Europe and US consider further actions to weaken Russia after largest-ever air attack on Ukraine over the weekend
The EU’s most senior sanctions envoy is holding talks in Washington with US officials after Donald Trump said he was ready to take further action against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
David O’Sullivan, the EU sanctions envoy, is meeting US counterparts on Monday, as Europe and the US look for tougher measures to weaken Vladimir Putin’s war machine after Russia launched its largest-ever air attack on Ukraine over the weekend.
Continue reading...The French president will have to choose a new prime minister after resistance to austerity budget unites left and far-right in opposition
As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, faces a crucial moment on the international stage this month, with the recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN assembly and diplomacy over Gaza and Ukraine, he has once again been shaken by a damaging political crisis at home.
The centrist prime minister, François Bayrou, was toppled on Monday night in a parliamentary confidence vote, leaving Macron scrambling to appoint his third prime minister in a year, and the fifth since his second term as president began in 2022.
Continue reading...People suspected teenagers playing ding dong ditch and called police, who found animal crawling on the door panel
Inhabitants of an apartment block in Bavaria, southern Germany, who called police to investigate the relentless buzzing of their doorbells late at night were surprised to find the culprit was not a teenage prankster as they had suspected, but a slug.
The slug had been sliding up and down the bell plate, creating havoc in the building and tearing angry residents out of their beds long after midnight when they could not sleep for the noise.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Experts decry lack of nationally determined contributions in negotiating document with weeks to go before UN-set deadline
EU member states are still wrangling over crucial commitments on the climate crisis with no sign of agreement, according to a leaked draft text seen by the Guardian.
With just weeks to go before a UN-set deadline, the European Commission and key member states remain at loggerheads over targets on greenhouse gas emissions, with the prospect of a strong outcome looking increasingly imperilled.
Continue reading...Government to use tax breaks and other financial incentives to encourage people to have more children
Greece has announced drastic measures, including tax breaks and other financial incentives, to address a population decline that is on course to make it the oldest nation in Europe.
The prime minister said the €1.6bn (£1.4bn) relief package had been dictated by one of the biggest challenges facing the Mediterranean nation : a demographic crisis of unprecedented scale.
Continue reading...British newlyweds feared worst when transportation of rescue cats from Greece to Paris went awry
A newlywed couple who married in Greece have said they feared the worst when three kittens they rescued from Crete went missing after being left in the hold of an aeroplane.
They first travelled to the island in September 2023 and found the mother cat, who “had a very distinctive bulging eye that needed to be removed”, Bethany Mulcahy-Stephenson, a veterinary nurse, said.
Continue reading...Sources say Prince, whose firm’s contractors committed 2007 Iraq massacre, eager to get into valuable drone sector
Amid reports that Donald Trump’s administration is considering using US private military contractors in a postwar Ukraine, multiple sources tell the Guardian one high-profile and controversial American from the “war on terror” era is already circling for business.
In the streets of Kyiv, military hawks and defense privateers have described how Erik Prince, Maga disciple and founder of the now-defunct mercenary company Blackwater, has been aggressively pitching his services and looking to buy.
Continue reading...Officials say three people including mother and baby killed in strikes that also hit key government building for first time
Russia has launched its largest ever air attack on Ukraine, hitting a key government building in Kyiv for the first time and killing at least three people, including a mother and her baby, and drawing widespread condemnation, including a fresh threat of further US sanctions.
The bombardment of the capital with a large number of drones and missiles injured at least 18 people and set scores of buildings on fire. Explosions were also reported in the cities of Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih. Authorities triggered a countrywide air-raid warning at 6.06am local time and later accused Russia of deliberately striking civilian targets.
Continue reading...The Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing account of a Palestinian child’s death in Gaza, won the runner-up Silver Lion
US indie director Jim Jarmusch unexpectedly won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on Saturday with Father Mother Sister Brother, a three-part meditation on the uneasy tie between parents and their adult children.
Although his gentle comedy received largely positive reviews, it had not been a favourite for the top prize, with many critics instead tipping the Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing true-life account of the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the Gaza war. In the end, the film directed by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania took the runner-up Silver Lion.
Continue reading...Investigators say it had not been possible to visually inspect section of cable that separated before incident
A cable linking two carriages snapped shortly before Wednesday’s funicular crash in Lisbon that killed 16 people, accident inspectors have said in a report.
An operator tried to apply emergency brakes but failed to prevent the derailment, investigators added.
Continue reading...Relatives pay tribute to Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, who died when the Elevador da Glória derailed
The families of a British couple killed in Lisbon after a funicular streetcar derailed have paid tribute to them and have said they are “heartbroken”.
Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, died alongside 14 other people after the Elevador da Glória hurtled down a hill and careered into a building on Wednesday night.
Continue reading...Relatives pay tribute to Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, who died when the Elevador da Glória derailed
The families of a British couple killed in Lisbon after a funicular streetcar derailed have paid tribute to them and have said they are “heartbroken”.
Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, died alongside 14 other people after the Elevador da Glória hurtled down a hill and careered into a building on Wednesday night.
Continue reading...Michele Bourda’s husband says police and coastguard were ‘criminally slow’ in responding to her disappearance in August
A body found on a barren Greek island has been identified as that of Michele Bourda, the British tourist who vanished from a beach more than a month ago.
Greece’s coastguard confirmed that the body of the 59-year-old, whose disappearance sparked a big rescue operation, had been discovered by a passing yacht on the islet of Fidonisi.
Continue reading...Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 and built websites to spread Catholic message, to become first millennial saint
In a see-through safe carved into a wall behind the altar of a chapel in northern Rome lies a collection of relics of Carlo Acutis. These include a splinter from his wooden bed, a fragment of a jumper and a piece of the sheet used to cover him after his death. Locks of his hair are on display in other churches in the Italian capital and beyond.
Acutis, the London-born Italian who on Sunday will become the Catholic church’s first millennial saint, built websites to spread Catholic teaching, earning him the nickname “God’s Influencer” after his death, aged 15, from leukaemia.
Continue reading...Regulators ordered the tech giant to end ‘self-preferencing practices’ in advertising services but declined to force sale
European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a €2.95bn ($3.5bn) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the US company to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.
Continue reading...Funeral chamber to be set up at Teatro Armani where people can view casket before a private service on Monday
Twice a year, the usually calm Via Bergognone in Milan shuts down due to excited fashion week crowds descending on Teatro Armani. Home to the Giorgio Armani headquarters since 2000, the sprawling space includes a purpose-built theatre where each show season a catwalk is constructed.
On Friday, crowds again began to gather outside, but this time the mood was much more sombre. They had come to pay their final respects to the visionary Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, who died on Thursday at the age of 91.
Continue reading...Russian president’s threat follows French proposal for postwar support for Kyiv that would include presence of Nato countries’ forces
Vladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes as Kyiv’s allies scramble to come up with a convincing offer of postwar support to Ukraine.
Speaking a day after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced still-vague plans for a package of support for Ukraine backed by 26 nations, Putin on Friday said any guarantees that involved boots on the ground would violate Moscow’s longstanding objections to Nato troops in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Deputy defence minister Anna Tsivilyova said those coming back from the battlefield had become a ‘driver’ in pushing Russia’s innovation in prosthetics
A Kremlin official has said that the number of soldiers wounded fighting in Ukraine had helped to make Russia a world leader in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs.
Deputy defence minister Anna Tsivilyova, reportedly a relative of President Vladimir Putin, told a conference in Vladivostok that those coming back from the battlefield had become a “driver” in pushing Russia’s innovation in prosthetics.
Continue reading...French president says allies would either deploy ‘reassurance force’ troops to Ukraine, or be present in the area on land, sea or in the air
Twenty-six nations have pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air, Emmanuel Macron said after a summit at which European leaders sought to pin down Donald Trump on the level of support he is willing to give Kyiv.
“The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” the French president told a press conference at the Élysée Palace in Paris, standing alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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