Category Archives: Europe

Russian drone hits building storing spent nuclear fuel near Chornobyl

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Attack was ‘extremely vile’ and deliberate, says Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A Russian Shahed drone has substantially damaged a building used to store spent nuclear fuel close to the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant, in what Ukraine’s president described as a deliberate and “extremely vile” attack.

While the structure – the reception building of the spent fuel storage facility – was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit.

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‘Ugly in a beautiful way’: Denmark’s mullet championship celebrates divisive hairstyle

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Danish follicle rebels go head to head in competition for best short-in-the-front, long-in-the-back cut

Business in the front, party in the back. A packed Danish crowd has celebrated the much-maligned but enduring mullet hairstyle, defined by very short hair at the front and longer hair at the back.

Denmark’s raucous 2026 Mullet Championship, presented on an outdoor stage in central Copenhagen, attracted 12 well-coiffed competitors and more than 1,000 spectators.

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Thousands march for French schoolgirl murdered after police failed to question suspect

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Local man had been accused of rape in months before murder but series of delays meant police had failed to summon him for questioning

Thousands of mourners have turned out for a silent march for a 11-year-old schoolgirl whose murder prompted widespread outrage when it emerged police had failed to question the suspected killer about previous child sexual abuse allegations.

The parents of the girl, who has been named only as Lyhanna, led the cortege on Sunday in the south-western village of Fleurance behind a banner reading “Never again”. Most of those who marched, including children, wore white shirts or T-shirts, many bearing a smiling portrait of the young victim.

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Bernadette Chirac, formidable former first lady of France, dies aged 93

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Widow of French ex-president Jacques Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator known for her charity work

Bernadette Chirac, the formidable widow of the former French president Jacques Chirac and a driving force behind his political rise, has died at the age of 93.

As France’s first lady for 12 years, Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator in support of her husband, who served twice as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and two terms as president.

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Starmer to host Zelenskyy and EU leaders for Ukraine talks

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Ukrainian leader will attend UK meeting along with French president and German chancellor

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war.

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Pope Leo calls for leaders to reject polarisation as he begins Spanish tour

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Pontiff to make marginalised a focus of first papal visit since 2011 including meeting with migrants in the Canaries

Pope Leo has urged political leaders to seek unity, rather than divide their populations for political gain, and said they must fight for peace, in the opening speech of his tour in Spain.

The pope has made the marginalised a focus of his visit – his first tour of an EU country, apart from Italy – including meeting homeless people in Madrid and migrants in the Canary Islands. The pope, who has clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over his immigration policies and war with Iran, said his visit was aimed at setting an example of respecting “every human being”.

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Women accusing Andrew Tate criticise UK extradition delay as influencer appears in Russia

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Lawyer for British women attacks ‘extraordinary spectacle’ of Tate’s arrival in Moscow

British women who have accused Andrew Tate of rape, assault and coercive control have questioned why the self-professed misogynistic influencer has appeared in Russia as UK authorities continue to hold off on seeking his extradition.

Tate admires Vladimir Putin and amplifies Kremlin propaganda online. He arrived in the same week that Russian authorities welcomed US rightwing figures at an annual conference described as Russia’s answer to Davos.

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Armenia heads to polls amid Russian pressure and threat of ‘Ukrainian scenario’

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Relationship between Vladimir Putin and traditional ally has slowly unravelled under current PM Nikol Pashinyan

The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt.

Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck.

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US threatens to reconsider role in Bosnia and Herzegovina amid rift with Europe

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US embassy in Sarajevo made threat after European states refused to back its preferred High Representative candidate

A deepening US-European rift over the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina has broken open with a dispute over a top administrative post, leading to a US threat to “reconsider” its role in international peacekeeping.

The American embassy in Sarajevo issued the threat after European states refused to back the US preferred candidate to become the new High Representative for the international community. At a meeting this week in Sarajevo of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a multinational group tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement – Washington supported an Italian diplomat, Antonio Zanardi Landi, while the UK, France, Germany and most European states backed France’s envoy to the Western Balkans, René Troccaz.

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Putin rejects Zelenskyy’s offer to meet and reaffirms Ukraine war aims

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Russian president describes Ukrainian counterpart’s letter as rude and says he sees no point in face-to-face talks

Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold a face-to-face meeting, insisting instead that Russia will achieve its war goals in Ukraine, including seizing all of the eastern Donbas region.

Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president described the open letter from his Ukrainian counterpart containing the offer as rude. He refused to use Zelenskyy’s name, referring to him only as its author. Asked if they could meet to discuss an end to the conflict, Putin replied: “So far I see no point.”

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Scientists make sourdough bread using yeast found in 5,000-year-old mummy

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Team now plans to see if they can use yeast strains harvested from Ötzi the Iceman to brew beer too

Scientists have baked a sourdough loaf of bread using yeast strains harvested from a 5,000-year-old mummy and now plan to see if they can use them to brew beer too.

The yeast came from Ötzi the Iceman, a famous corpse remarkably preserved by being frozen in Alpine ice near the Italy-Austria border until he was discovered in 1991. Ötzi has been the subject of intense study since he was found and has shed much light on pre-historic European people and their way of life.

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EU must prove it is capable and willing to take in new members, leaders say

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Von der Leyen tells Balkans summit that bloc needs to make enlargement process ‘faster and more credible’

The EU must prove its willingness and ability to take in new members and speed up its enlargement process, leaders of the bloc have said, as they gathered with their counterparts from six western Balkan countries that hope to join soon.

“The European Union has to show that it is capable of enlarging and willing to enlarge, and we want to discuss that here,” Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told reporters on Friday at the summit in Tivat, a coastal town in Montenegro.

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More than a quarter of UK musicians lost all EU work since 2021, report finds

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Average tour earnings down 45%, with nearly three-fifths of musicians saying touring in Europe is no longer viable

More than a quarter of British musicians have lost all their work in the European Union since 2021, according to new research.

The report by European Movement UK, a cross-party campaign group advocating closer UK-EU relations, found that nearly half of British musicians had experienced a reduced amount of work in the EU since 2021, while more than a quarter had stopped working there altogether.

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Divine intervention: why Pope Leo visit could be a godsend for Pedro Sánchez

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Pontiff’s resolve to highlight plight of migrants has aligned him with Spanish PM, whose inner circle and party are mired in corruption allegations

While Pope Leo XIV isn’t due to touch down in Madrid until 10.30am on Saturday, his presence in the Spanish capital is already verging on the ubiquitous.

The smiling, avuncular face of the first US pontiff greets visitors from posters, from the sides of buses, from commemorative travel cards and even from the digital screens on the metro system, where it flickers up between adverts for sun cream and banking deals.

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EU summit with western Balkan leaders to reaffirm membership prospects

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Macron, Merz and von der Leyen among those due to gather in Montenegro for talks on integration of six countries

European leaders will seek to show six western Balkan countries that they have a real chance of joining the EU one day, despite splits over how to handle enlargement of the 27-member bloc.

Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Giorgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen are among more than 30 leaders expected to gather in the Montenegrin coastal resort of Tivat on Friday for summit talks. The focus will be on integrating the six Balkan countries – among them Montenegro and Albania – more deeply into the EU single market, paving the way for them to join the bloc.

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Zelenskyy calls for face-to-face Ukraine war negotiations in letter to Putin

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Ukrainian president proposes meeting in neutral third country as Trump says both sides have to ‘make compromises’

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for face-to-face negotiations in a public letter addressed directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The letter, the first Zelenskyy has publicly written directly to Putin since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, was a sweeping criticism of the Russian leader’s 26 years in power.

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‘You can stop your war’: Zelenskyy’s open letter to Putin – in full

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Russians are increasingly tired of the conflict and the time to end it is now, Ukraine’s president tells his Russian counterpart in an open letter

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an open letter to the Vladimir Putin, has called for a face-to-face meeting with the Russian president to end his war against Ukraine.

The letter sets out Zelenskyy’s view of the four-year-old conflict and says that while Ukrainians’ resilience remains intact, most Russians have grown weary of its effects and are ready for peace.

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In second break with Trump in a week, House passes bill to aid Ukraine

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Legislation would also sanction key segments of Russian economy, overriding objections from Republican leaders

The House passed legislation Thursday that would aid Ukraine and sanction key segments of the Russian economy, overriding objections from Republican leaders who warned the bill would undermine negotiations designed to achieve a comparable but stronger result.

The 226-195 vote is a sign of impatience with Donald Trump’s approach to the war and represents the House’s second major foreign policy break with Trump this week. The day before, the House, for the first time, approved a war powers resolution aimed at halting US military action against Iran.

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Uproar in France as it emerges suspect in case of missing girl had rape allegations dismissed

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Interior minister announces review into handling of the cases after body reportedly found in search for 11-year-old

Outrage has erupted in France after it emerged the main suspect in the case of an 11-year-old girl missing since last week had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing children with no action taken.

A body was discovered on Thursday and formal identification was under way, an informed source said.

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‘Embarrassing’: pressure on Merz after Germany’s failure to win UN security council seat

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Criticism comes from across political spectrum after blow to Friedrich Merz’s government

Germany’s unprecedented failure to win one of the rotating seats on the UN security council has prompted an intense round of soul searching in Berlin, and raised questions about its claims to international leadership under Friedrich Merz.

The council vote on Wednesday, which elected Austria and Portugal to a two-year term along with Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, was a blow to Merz’s struggling government, which has sought to position itself as a leading European voice on the world stage.

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