More than 1m march in France amid strikes over plan to raise retirement age

Arrests at biggest march in Paris while train services halted and many primary schools close for the day

More than 1 million people have taken part in demonstrations across France as transport, schools and refineries were hit by strikes in protest at Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plans to raise the retirement age by two years to 64.

The interior ministry said 1.12 million people protested nationwide on Thursday, with 80,000 taking part in the biggest rally in Paris. Trade unions said the figure was even higher.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv opens investigation into helicopter crash; as British, Polish and baltic defence ministers to meet over tanks

Ben Wallace makes statement at meeting of defence ministers in Estonia

Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne is reporting that eleven people are still considered missing after Saturday’s attack on a high-rise building in Dnipro.

Yesterday it reported that, according to deputy mayor of Dnipro, Mykhailo Lysenko, “municipal workers are still finding remains of bodies while sorting through the debris”, and the remains are being handed over to forensic experts for DNA testing.

How can you escalate against a guy who is doing all out war against a civilian population?

Continue reading...

Gina Lollobrigida fans gather at funeral to say goodbye to ‘Queen of Rome’

Coffin is accompanied into church by estranged son, grandson and ex-husband who are embroiled in inheritance feud

Fans of the Italian screen legend Gina Lollobrigida shouted “goodbye, Queen of Rome” as they gathered for her funeral in the city while defending her against relatives embroiled in a bitter inheritance feud.

Lollobrigida, one of the most glamorous actors of Hollywood’s golden age, died on Monday at the age of 95.

Continue reading...

Former Swedish intelligence officer jailed for life for spying for Russia

Judge says Peyman Kia abused trust placed in him, and also sentences younger brother to 10 years

A court in Stockholm has sentenced a former Swedish intelligence officer to life imprisonment and his younger brother to 10 years after finding both guilty of spying for Russia’s military intelligence service for more than a decade.

Peyman Kia, 42, served in the Swedish security and counter-intelligence service, Sapo, and in armed forces intelligence agencies, including the foreign intelligence agency (Must) and KSI, a top-secret unit dealing with Swedish spies abroad.

Continue reading...

UK energy bills to fall to about £2,200 from July as wholesale gas costs drop

Mild weather in Europe reduces gas demand but bills will remain higher than 2021 energy price cap

Annual energy bills are expected to fall to about £2,200 from July in a fillip for the government and households struggling with ballooning costs.

The energy consultancy Cornwall Insight has predicted that, excluding government subsidies, typical annual household energy bills will have fallen from £4,279 now to £3,208 from April, and then will ease to roughly £2,200 for the remainder of the year.

Continue reading...

MEPs call for blacklisting of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

Ministers under pressure to pass ban but some fear it could lead to collapse of nuclear talks

The European parliament has called for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to be blacklisted in Europe, a move some western politicians fear could provoke Iran to walk out of talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

The parliament has only an advisory role, but EU foreign ministers are due to meet on Monday to discuss further sanctions, and the Iranian diaspora is making the proscription of the IRGC its key demand.

Continue reading...

Brexit exodus helps drive record number in EU banks paid €1m-plus

Data shows UK banks losing well-paid staff, as Italy, France and Spain make up 70% of rise in EU top earners

A record 1,957 bankers across Europe earned more than €1m (£878,000) last year, according to data that shows the scale at which some of the best-paid jobs in Britain have moved from London to the EU since Brexit.

The European Banking Authority disclosed on Thursday that the number of bankers earning €1m or more a year had increased by more than 40%, from 1,383 in 2020 to 1,957 in 2021. Excluding UK figures, it is the highest number of €1m-plus European bankers since the EBA began collecting the data in 2010.

Continue reading...

Olaf Scholz steers clear of commitment to supply of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine

Zelenskiy warns against delaying military support after German chancellor’s reticence at Davos summit

Germany’s chancellor avoided committing to the supply of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine at the Davos summit on Wednesday, although he held the door open to a positive decision at a special summit of western defence ministers on Friday.

Olaf Scholz did not mention the Leopard tanks at all when a Ukrainian delegate asked him “why the hesitancy” in signing off their re-export – prompting an apparently frustrated Ukrainian president to warn the same forum against delay.

Continue reading...

Italian police find suspected ‘secret bunker’ of captured mafia boss

‘Last godfather’ of Sicilian mafia Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested after 30 years on run

Italian military police have found a possible secret bunker suspected of being used by Matteo Messina Denaro, the “last godfather” of the Sicilian mafia who was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run.

The entrance to the bunker was concealed in a closet full of clothes in a house in Campobello di Mazara, a small town in Sicily where the apartment Denaro, 60, had been living in was discovered on Tuesday.

Continue reading...

Cash for influence inquiry homes in on Brussels meeting days before World Cup

Ex-MEP allegedly called on friends to ask questions at meeting to lead Qatari minister ‘on a known path’

Belgian police seized nearly €1.5m in cash from homes and hotels in Brussels last month, allegedly paid by Qatar to sway decisions in the European parliament. Now a series of reports have suggested what that money may have been attempting to buy.

Investigators have homed in on a meeting of the European parliament’s subcommittee on human rights on 14 November 2022, where Qatar’s minister for labour, Ali bin Samikh al-Marri, defended his country’s record on workers’ rights.

Continue reading...

TonyBet fined for asking winners for ID leaving other gamblers unchecked

Regulator fines online betting firm £442,750 for imposing unfair terms and failures in anti-money laundering measures

An online betting firm has been fined £442,750 for demanding ID from winning punters before it would give them the cash, while failing to carry out similar checks on potentially vulnerable people depositing money.

The Gambling Commission punished TonyBet, which is based in Estonia but has a licence to operate in Great Britain, for imposing unfair terms and failures in anti-money laundering and social responsibility measures.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: Polish president ‘afraid Moscow is preparing new offensive’ – as it happened

This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Russia-Ukraine war coverage here

Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, governor of Sumy region, and Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv region, have both posted their regular morning status updates on Telegram, and both say that their regions passed the night without any shelling or air raid warnings taking effect.

Politico’s chief Brussels correspondent Suzanne Lynch reports from Brussels that the Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, has said he expects Germany will sign off on sending tanks to Ukraine at a key meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group at the Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday.

Continue reading...

Ukraine’s interior minister killed in helicopter crash

Denys Monastyrskiy and other key officials among dead after crash near kindergarten in Kyiv suburb

At least 14 people including Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, and other senior officials have been killed after a helicopter crashed by a kindergarten in a suburb of Kyiv.

A number of children at the school in Brovary were among the casualties after debris hit the building. The most recent update, on Wednesday afternoon, suggested one child had been killed, after previous reports that the number was at least three.

Continue reading...

Underwater bike garage solves Amsterdam station’s storage headache

Central station is replacing its messy, overflowing cycle parking facilities with a low-cost area that’s tucked away out of sight

Beneath the clear waters and pleasure boats by Amsterdam central station is a remarkable feat of engineering: an underwater garage for 7,000 bicycles.

The garage, which opens on 26 January, is the result of a four-year, €60m (£53m) project to clear heaps of rusty bikes left by hasty commuters and install rows of clean, safe parking spaces underground, where bikes can be left free for 24 hours and then at a cost of €1.35 per 24 hours.

Continue reading...

World’s oldest known person, French nun Lucile Randon, dies at 118

Sister Andrée was born in 1904 and survived an outbreak of Covid-19 in 2021 in her nursing home that killed 10 other residents

The world’s oldest known person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118, a spokesperson has said.

Randon, known as Sister Andrée, was born in southern France on 11 February 1904, when the first world war was still a decade away.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war latest: six children among dead and 19 missing following Dnipro strike

Death toll from Saturday’s Russian missile attack on a residential building in the Dnipro rises to 45

Rescue workers have this morning found the body of a child in the rubble of the high-rise residential building struck by Russia at the weekend, according to Ukrainian officials.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of president of Ukraine, posted an update to Telegram to say:

At 09.46am, the body of one dead child was found from under the rubble of a destroyed residential building on the 4th floor. A total of 41 people died (including four children), 79 people were injured (including 16 children), and 39 people were rescued (including six children).

Continue reading...

Captured mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was living in modest apartment

Italian investigators discover designer clothes and expensive shoes inside ‘normal’ two-storey building

The mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals who had spent 30 years on the run, lived in a modest apartment in western Sicily in his final months as a free man, Italian investigators said.

Denaro, 60, who was apprehended as he came out of a well-known private clinic in Palermo, lived in a small apartment inside a two-storey yellow building in the centre of the town of Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, in the heart of his territory.

Continue reading...

Ryanair enjoys record January with 2m sales in a weekend for the first time

Airline to continue aggressive post-Covid expansion, offering 10% more seats in the UK this summer compared with 2022

Ryanair took record numbers of bookings in January, the budget airline has announced, passing 2m sales in a weekend for the first time.

Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said there was no sign of a slowdown in demand despite the economic uncertainty.

Continue reading...