Category Archives: Europe

Fortnite unavailable on iPhones globally after Apple rejects App Store release

Posted on by

Latest twist in a contest between iPhone maker and Epic Games over payments for hit game on Apple devices

Epic Games says Fortnite is now unavailable on iPhones and iPads globally because Apple blocked a bid to release the popular video game in the App Store in the US and Europe.

“Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union,” the X account for Fortnite posted early Friday – claiming that Apple’s move would now prevent the game’s iOS availability around the world.

Continue reading...

Week of geopolitical poker over Ukraine ends with no endgame in sight

Posted on by

Path to peace looks as unclear as it was before European leaders’ meeting with Zelenskyy in Kyiv

This week began with four European leaders, standing defiantly in Kyiv alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issuing an ultimatum to Vladimir Putin: sign a ceasefire now, or together with Donald Trump we will force you to do so, with sanctions and other tough measures.

Over the subsequent days, there followed a series of offers, counter-offers, ultimatums and deflections, in a dizzying week of high-stakes diplomacy that often seemed to resemble a geopolitical poker game.

Continue reading...

The Pope Leo XIV effect: Rome hopes for papal blessings of a US tourist boom

Posted on by

Traders anticipating increase in high-spending Americans are already working up Leo-themed beers and ice-creams

Even before the chimney on top of the Sistine Chapel emitted its last puff of white smoke, signalling to the world that the Roman Catholic church had a new pope, Atlante Star, a hotel with a privileged view over St Peter’s Basilica from its rooftop terrace, began to receive inquiries about room availability over the following few days.

Then, about an hour later, when the Chicago-born cardinal Robert Prevost was declared Pope Leo XIV, the inquiries turned into bookings as the tourists, mostly from the US, rushed to secure a place to stay in Rome in time for the pontiff’s inaugural Sunday mass on 18 May.

Continue reading...

Portuguese far-right leader taken to hospital after second collapse

Posted on by

André Ventura taken ill at campaign event less than 48 hours after first collapse and three days before election

The leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party has been taken to hospital after another collapse during a rally days before the country votes in its third snap election since 2022.

André Ventura, whose brash, blunt leadership style has helped make the populist, anti-immigration party Portugal’s third biggest political force, was taken ill at an event in the southern town of Odemira on Thursday, two days after a similar episode.

Continue reading...

Actor banned from Cannes red carpet after accusations of rape

Posted on by

Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday

The Cannes film festival said it had banned an actor in a prominent French film from the red carpet on Thursday because of sexual assault allegations against him.

Theo Navarro-Mussy has a secondary role as a police officer in the film Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll which is to premiere on Thursday in the festival’s main competition. According to French magazine Télérama, which broke the news, Navarro-Mussy was accused of rape by three former partners in 2018, 2019, and 2020, but the case was dropped last month for lack of evidence.

Continue reading...

Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion

Posted on by

Five years after near-total ban on abortion, campaigners say Sunday’s elections will be critical to see if promised change happens

Poland’s presidential elections are a “historic, groundbreaking” chance for Donald Tusk’s centrist party to show it was not trying to “deceive women” when it promised to change some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, campaigners have said.

Voters across Poland will head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the elections to replace Andrzej Duda, the current president who is aligned with the former rightwing government and has veto power over legislation.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa decries ‘nightmare’ of Putin-Trump alliance

Posted on by

In Cannes to promote his Stalinist drama Two Prosecutors, the film-maker said he feared the US and Russia would soon ‘become equal’

One of Ukraine’s leading film-makers has spoken of the “nightmare” of an emergent alliance between authoritarian leaders in Russia and the US, as his new film on contemporary echoes with the Stalinist era opens at the Cannes film festival.

“The events that unfolded in the past 100 days really surprised many people all over the world,” said director Sergei Loznitsa, whose new film Two Prosecutors received its world premiere on Wednesday. “One couldn’t even imagine in a nightmare such a union, such an understanding between two authoritarian leaders.”

Continue reading...

Mike Lynch’s superyacht sank in high winds, says report

Posted on by

Investigators said Bayesian, which sank in Italy killing 15 people, was destabilised by wind

The late tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht, Bayesian, sank after it was hit by winds of around 117km/h that drove the vessel past its point of stability and caused downflooding over the starboard rail, according to a preliminary safety report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB).

The investigators said Bayesian may have been vulnerable to high winds when running on its engine and that these “vulnerabilities” were “unknown to either the owner or the crew” as they were not included in the stability information book carried on board.

Continue reading...

Taxi driver in France charged with stealing from David Lammy and his wife

Posted on by

Driver allegedly stole luggage and cash from foreign secretary and Nicola Green after ride from Italy to French ski resort

A taxi driver has been charged by French police with stealing luggage and cash from the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, and his wife, Nicola Green.

The driver took the couple more than 600km (370 miles) from the town of Forli in Italy to the French ski resort of Flaine, Haute-Savoie, last month.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said Lammy and his spouse were victims in the case and that the driver has been charged with theft after driving off with their luggage.

It also denied that the Labour MP for Tottenham had refused to pay the driver.

Whitehall sources said no sensitive material was in the pair’s holiday luggage.

Prosecutors opened an investigation into a “commercial dispute” in Bonneville after the driver filed a complaint.

The Bonneville prosecutor, Boris Duffau, told the BBC the taxi driver was being charged with theft.

He said: “An investigation has been opened following a disagreement regarding the payment of a taxi ride between Italy and France.

“After an investigation by French police, the Bonneville prosecutor’s office has decided to prosecute the taxi driver who has been summoned to appear at the Bonneville court on 3 November 2025.

“He has been charged with theft (of luggage and cash) to the detriment of Nicola Green and David Lindon Lammy.”

The driver had told French media that Lammy became “aggressive” when asked to pay €700 (£590) of the €1,550 bill, the remainder of which was to be paid by the booking service.

The fee was paid upfront to the transfer service but the driver insisted he was owed money on arrival and that he needed to be paid in cash, a source said.

Green, who was speaking to the taxi driver while her husband went into the house, told police in a statement that she felt threatened and that the driver showed her a knife in his glove box, according to the PA news agency.

It is understood that after he left with their luggage, a member of the foreign secretary’s office contacted the driver to get it back, and it was deposited at a police station with a “considerable” sum of money missing from Green’s bag.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We totally refute these allegations. The fare was paid in full.

“The foreign secretary and his wife are named as victims in this matter and the driver has been charged with theft.

“As there is an ongoing legal process, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Continue reading...

Denmark rethinking 40-year nuclear power ban amid Europe-wide shift

Posted on by

Government to analyse potential benefits of new generation of reactors

Denmark is reconsidering its 40-year ban on nuclear power in a major policy shift for the renewables-heavy country.

The Danish government will analyse the potential benefits of a new generation of nuclear power technologies after banning traditional nuclear reactors in 1985, its energy minister said.

Continue reading...

‘We couldn’t tell if he was conscious’: Tom Cruise got stuck on top of biplane shooting Mission: Impossible sequel

Posted on by

The star, who at 62 performed his own stunts for the forthcoming Final Reckoning, tells Cannes press conference ‘I don’t mind encountering the unknown’

Tom Cruise got stuck on the wing of a biplane shortly before it ran out fuel during the filming of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the director of the eighth instalment of the action franchise has revealed.

Speaking to an audience at the Cannes film festival hours before the film’s premiere, director Christopher McQuarrie recounted the filming of a stunt sequence in which Cruise, in his long-running role as the field agent Ethan Hunt, walked between between the two wings of a biplane as the aircraft was mid-air over South Africa.

Continue reading...

Trump says there’s a ‘possibility’ he will attend Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Turkey – live

Posted on by

Kremlin refuses to say whether Russian president will be part of delegation

“I worry a lot about a kind of world war one-type scenario,” former White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill told Lucy Hough, “in which the prevailing system is broken down, and you get a whole outbreak of conflicts that meld together.”

People are always asking: ‘What should we be worried about in the future?’ We should be worried about the here and now.

He wanted a very close relationship with Putin, kept talking about him as his friend, talking about phone calls he had when he hadn’t had phone calls. He’s done this with China as well.

It’s almost as if he’s saying: ‘Please call me.’ He’s laid out every way in which he can be manipulated, and that’s what Putin has done. Putin is an expert in manipulation.

Continue reading...

Von der Leyen’s texts with Pfizer boss can be shared, says EU’s highest court

Posted on by

European court of justice says no ‘plausible explanation’ given for denying New York Times access to texts from pandemic

The EU’s highest court has cancelled a decision to withhold Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with a pharmaceutical executive during the pandemic, in a significant defeat for the commission president.

The European court of justice on Wednesday annulled a decision taken by the European Commission in November 2022 to deny the New York Times access to the messages, after a freedom of information request by the paper.

Continue reading...

Germany arrests three Ukrainians over alleged Russian parcel bomb plot

Posted on by

Prosecutors say men intended to attack German cargo transport by sending packages that would explode in transit

Three Ukrainian nationals have been arrested on suspicion of plotting parcel bomb attacks in Germany on behalf of the Russian state, prosecutors said.

The German federal prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that the men, identified only as Vladyslav T, Daniil B and Yevhen B, in line with German privacy rules, had been detained in recent days in Germany and Switzerland.

Continue reading...

Paris races to top of European rankings of cycling-friendly cities for children

Posted on by

French capital overtakes Amsterdam, where there are concerns about rising road speeds under rightwing government

Paris was once notorious for speeding traffic and a parking technique involving gently nudging cars to squeeze into a spot – but now it has topped a European ranking of cycling-friendly cities for children, leaving Amsterdam in second place and Copenhagen in the dust.

Analysing 36 European cities in terms of their cycling infrastructure’s suitability for children, the report found that the French capital had raced to the top thanks to investments for the 2024 Olympics and a €250m (£210m) initiative to build 112 miles (180km) of cycling lanes under Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Continue reading...

Wednesday briefing: Is Zelenskyy playing political poker – or Russian roulette?

Posted on by

In today’s newsletter: the Ukraine president’s call for Putin to meet him in person represents a huge gamble in the prospect of peace

Good morning.

Talks. Istanbul. Thursday. In the geopolitical equivalent of a playground challenge, the latest move in the back-and-forth brinkmanship between Russia and Ukraine has seen President Zelenskyy call Putin’s bluff.

US politics | Donald Trump says he will lift sanctions on Syria and meet with the country’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, during his tour of the gulf states. Sharaa’s pitch to woo the US offered access to Syrian oil, reconstruction contracts and to build a Trump Tower in Damascus.

UK news | Peter Sullivan, who has spent 38 years in jail, has had his murder conviction quashed in what is thought to be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history. Sullivan was wrongly convicted in 1987 for the frenzied murder of a florist and part-time pub worker, Diane Sindall, 21, in Merseyside.

Conservatives | An MP has been charged with sexual assault over alleged incidents at London’s Groucho Club in 2023, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Patrick Spencer, the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, was charged with two counts of sexual assault against two separate women, said the CPS.

Assisted dying | At least five MPs have decided to vote against the UK assisted dying bill, the Guardian understands. It comes as the Scottish parliament votes to consider a bill to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people for the first time.

UK news | A man has been arrested in connection with a series of suspected arson attacks on property linked to Keir Starmer, Scotland Yard has said. The 21-year-old was arrested in the early hours on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life and remained in custody, the Metropolitan police said.

Continue reading...

Gérard Depardieu found guilty of sexually assaulting two women

Posted on by

French actor, 76, convicted of assaulting set dresser and assistant director during film shoot in Paris in 2021

Gérard Depardieu has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, in a turning point for the #MeToo movement in France.

Depardieu, France’s biggest film star who has made more than 200 films and TV series, is the highest-profile figure in the French film industry to be convicted of sexual assault after years of the country being accused of being slow to take women’s claims of abuse seriously.

Continue reading...

Zelenskyy repeats vow to wait in Turkey for face-to-face talks with Putin

Posted on by

Ukrainian president says if Russian leader does not arrive it will indicate ‘that he does not want to end the war’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has doubled down on his promise to wait in Turkey on Thursday for face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin, calling it a test of Russia’s willingness to pursue peace.

Speaking to journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said he planned to wait for Putin in Ankara alongside the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, adding that he would travel to Istanbul if Putin opted to hold the meeting there.

Continue reading...

Germany bans major part of far-right movement seeking to undermine state

Posted on by

Security forces stage raids against cult-like extremist ‘Kingdom of Germany’ group, arresting alleged ringleader

The German government has outlawed a major part of an extremist movement seeking to undermine the state, in a move the new administration said signalled tough action against a subversive far-right scene.

Hundreds of security forces across seven states staged early morning raids on Tuesday against the cult-like group calling itself “Kingdom of Germany” (KRD), a large group within the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. Four suspects were arrested including alleged ringleader Peter Fitzek, the self-proclaimed Peter I.

Continue reading...

A year after deadly riots, New Caledonia’s president vows to address push for independence

Posted on by

Exclusive: In the wake of unrest that rattled the French overseas territory, Alcide Ponga discusses how to rebuild and his plan for the future

One year after the deadly riots that ravaged Nouméa and shattered New Caledonia’s economy and social fabric, newly elected president Alcide Ponga faces a series of challenges including deep division over the territory’s political future – and the prospect of independence from France.

Ponga, who was elected in January is an indigenous Kanak who is also anti-independence. The 49-year-old former nickel executive and mayor has vowed to get the economy back on track and support discussions on independence.

Continue reading...