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Britain ​is set to enter talks to join the European Union's 78 billion ‌pound loan ($106 billion) to Ukraine, the government said on Sunday, in a further sign of deepening European defence ties under rising U.S. pressure. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected on Monday to tell ​a summit in Armenia's capital Yerevan of the European Political Community - a discussion ​forum set up after Russia's invasion in 2022 - that Britain wants ⁠to work with the EU to support Ukraine in getting vital military equipment, his ​office said.

Spain’s Foreign Ministry has called for the immediate release of a Spanish citizen detained by Israel following the interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla, after an Israeli court extended his detention by two days. Saif Abu Keshek, a resident of Barcelona, and Brazilian national Thiago Ávila appeared before a court in Ashkelon on Sunday, several days after Israeli forces intercepted multiple vessels attempting to breach Israel’s maritime blockade on Gaza. The flotilla consisted of dozens of boats carrying activists from numerous countries. Israeli authorities stated that over 170 individuals were removed from the vessels, with Abu Keshek and Ávila transferred to...

Nato is “disintegrating”, Poland’s prime minister has said after the United States announced it was withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany. Donald Tusk made the dire assessment of the Western alliance on Saturday amid an escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Germany over Berlin’s criticism of the war on Iran. In a post on X on Saturday, Mr Tusk wrote: “The greatest threat to the transatlantic community are not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of our alliance. We must all do what it takes to reverse this disastrous trend.” On Friday evening, the US department of defence...

The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Service committees on Saturday expressed they are “very concerned” about the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany amid President Trump’s feud with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Trump on Wednesday had announced that he was reviewing a possible reduction of U.S. troops in Germany. “We are very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany,” the chairs, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), said in a joint statement. “Germany has stepped up in response to President Trump’s call for greater burden sharing, significantly increasing defense spending...

A report by the Hope and Courage Collective, which works to build resilience in communities against rising far-right hate and disinformation, has found a widening gap between public attitudes and political discourse. The report, “Ireland in Focus 2025, Mind the Gap”, shows that a relatively small number of far-right actors disproportionately influence public debate through online amplification, visible protests, and repeated narratives. It says public attitudes are becoming steadily more inclusive, but that political rhetoric risks legitimizing scapegoating and that the far-right had not secured broad public support, but “is shaping the conversation”. The report found that multiple communities in...

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his ‌administration was reviewing the ‌possible reduction of U.S. troops in Germany, ​adding that a decision would be made shortly. "The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction ‌of Troops in ⁠Germany, with a determination to be made over the ⁠next short period of time," Trump said on Truth Social. Trump's statement ​follows his ​criticism of ​German Chancellor Friedrich ‌Merz on Tuesday over the war in Iran, a day after Merz said the Iranians were humiliating the United States in talks ‌to end it. Trump's administration ​has also repeatedly ​engaged in...

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, the European State of the Climate Report for 2025 has found. From the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle, its climate is shifting in ways that are no longer subtle, no longer gradual, and no longer distant. The consequences are cascading across Europe’s environment, economy, and ecosystems. With hotter air, warmer seas, shrinking ice, drying soils, and stressed ecosystems, the warning signals are screaming from every part of the climate system. Europe has been warming at a rate of 0.56°C per decade throughout the past 30 years. This is more than twice as fast...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested on Monday that Ukraine may have to accept that parts of its territory could remain outside Kyiv's control in ​a future peace deal with Russia, linking such concessions to ‌the country's prospects for joining the European Union. "At some point, Ukraine will sign a ceasefire agreement; at some point, hopefully, a peace treaty with Russia. Then it may ​be that part of Ukraine's territory is no longer Ukrainian," Merz ​told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, a town in ⁠North Rhine-Westphalia, on Monday. "If President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy wants to communicate this to his ​own population...

MOST Scots would vote for independence if a referendum were held tomorrow, a fresh poll carried out in the middle of the Holyrood election campaign has found. A poll of just over 1000 Scots commissioned by James Kelly of the pro-independence Scot Goes Pop blog found 53% would vote Yes, excluding don't knows. When don't knows are left in, 50% would vote Yes while 44% would vote to remain in the Union. The survey was carried out between April 15 and 20 for Scot Goes Pop. According to Kelly, there have been nine polls this year that suggest Scots would...

French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that Europe needs to strengthen its defence posture, claiming that China, Russia, and the United States are all opposed to the interests of the old continent. On a visit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens on Friday, President Macron continued his push for Europe to re-arm itself in light of the supposed unreliability of the United States under President Trump, who has himself long called for Europe to pay more for its own defence. Nevertheless, Macron yet again attempted to cast such a rearmament as being contrary to the interests of the...

I asked my friend in Ireland what was going on as the media is downplaying stuff as usual. Here's her response: People are raging and worse it is getting. It’s been a slowly building … Our cost of living has gone unbearable for many. Gas is around 13 or 14 dollars a gallon if you were to put it in dollars 65 % of that is government tax then there is home heating oil - that has doubled. Then there is a housing crisis for Irish but immigrants get immediately given government housing while our homeless and violent crime skyrocket...

Germany announced a new military strategy with the goal of building “Europe’s strongest conventional army” by 2039. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius revealed the proposal speaking to the German parliament on Wednesday, and detailed a public outlining for the “future direction” of the Bundeswehr, the German Armed Forces. One of the goals of the plan, the German Defense Ministry said in a statement, is for Germany to take “more responsibility” within NATO. “We are developing the Bundeswehr into the strongest conventional army in Europe. In the short term, we are increasing our defense and resilience, in the medium term we are...

The UK government has agreed to pay France another £660m to curb the number of asylum seekers travelling across the Channel, including plans to fund a riot squad to “contain and disperse” people trying to board small boats. Under a three-year deal to be signed on Thursday by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, 1,100 enforcement, intelligence and military officers – an increase of 40% – will be employed to track down smuggling gangs and people seeking refuge. A 50-strong riot squad will be trained in “crowd-control tactics” and will “stop illegal migrants in their tracks”, according to the Home Office....

Druzhba means ‘friendship’, which is nowhere to be found these days. Today, Ukraine restarted the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline that it kept shut to further boost the election of Péter Magyar. In exchange for that, the EU was finally able to approve the long-awaited 90 billion Euro loan to Kiev – although it must be noted that both Budapest and Bratislava ‘opted-out’, meaning no Hungarian or Slovak money is part of it. But there isn’t time to celebrate because, also today, Russia announced that it will close a major oil pipeline into...

The European Commission said the anti-LGBTQ law would be one of the issues it would be taking up with the new government once it was in place. "It's up to the... Hungarian government to abide by the ruling and once that is done the issue is solved," said spokeswoman Paula Pinho. The man whose Tisza party defeated Orbán on 12 April, Péter Magyar, has not said much about the laws related to Hungary's LGBTQ community. However, in his victory speech, he spelt out his vision for Hungary as a country "where no-one is stigmatised for thinking differently than the majority,...

Over one in every four people in Germany, or nearly 22 million, now have an “immigration history”, according to the country’s national statistician. A report from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has found that the proportion of people living in Germany with an immigration history rose by 0.5 per cent last year to a record 26.3 per cent. The category is defined as someone who has either immigrated to Germany since 1950 or who has two parents that came to the country as migrants. This is significantly stricter than the previously used category of “migration background”, which is defined in...

Incoming Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar will reverse Viktor Orbán’s decision to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) and enforce an ICC arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ...... “I… made it clear to the Israeli prime minister that we will not back down, because my colleagues have examined it and we can still stop [Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC]… If someone is a member of the International Criminal Court and a person who is wanted enters the territory of our country, he or she must be detained.” – Péter Magyar

A survey in Spain found some 80.5 percent of individuals aged 17–25 reject the socialist government’s mass amnesty plans for half a million illegal migrants, the digital newspaper El Español reported on Sunday. The survey was conducted by the polling and research firm SocioMétrica for El Español between April 15 and 18 — the same week that the socialist government led by Prime Minster Pedro Sánchez began its mass amnesty process to benefit 500,000 illegal migrants in Spain with legal residence and work permits. The Spanish government launched the highly criticized amnesty process despite a fierce rejection from the nation’s...

Nearly half of criminal suspects in violent crimes are foreign nationals in Germany, police statistics have found. According to the annual statistical release from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), violent crime in Germany fell slightly in 2025, by 2.3 percent compared with the previous year. However, the agency noted that “(n)on-German suspects continue to be significantly overrepresented in violent crime” at 42.9 percent. Data collected from various federal states across the country from the Welt am Sonntag newspaper found similar results, with around one in every two suspects of violent crimes in Bavaria, Berlin, and Baden-Württemberg being foreign nationals,...

New police data shows foreign nationals feature disproportionately in violent offences, with sharp regional disparities and rising political pressure. Germany’s latest police crime statistics (PKS) have reignited the migration debate, with new data showing a stark overrepresentation of foreign nationals in violent offences. According to the figures, non-German suspects—particularly from Syria and Afghanistan—feature disproportionately in serious crimes. While foreign nationals account for around 15% of the population, their share of violent crime suspects is significantly higher. The imbalance is especially visible at regional level. In several federal states, including Bavaria, Berlin, and Baden-Württemberg, roughly half of all suspects in violent...