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Iranian authorities hinted the death could be linked with other motorbike slayings previously attributed to Israel.

Biden’s comments were among the most forceful US presidential statements in support of self-governing in recent decades. He added that the burden to protect Taiwan is "even stronger' following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has helped to push global refugee numbers above 100 million for the first time on record, a sober milestone and one that could have long term implications.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

Belarusian fighters have answered President Zelenskyy's call for foreign fighters to join Ukraine's resistance - united against the alliance between Presidents Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin.

North-east Bangladesh's worst floods in nearly 20 years began receding on Sunday, but rescue workers were struggling to help millions marooned by extreme weather across the region that has killed around 60 people.

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Moldova is Europe's 11th largest wine-producing country, with 3.8% of its territory consisting of vineyards.

Three rescued loggerhead turtles are released into the Mediterranean off the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax, one, named Marwa, with a tracking beacon glued to its shell to help researchers better protect the threatened species.

The government in Warsaw is a strong supporter of Ukraine's bid to join the EU, which Zelenskyy says will determine Ukraine's future.

As Spain endures unusually high temperatures for the season, scientists warn heatwaves and intense temperatures may be here to stay.

In the midst of the noise of Russian shelling in the neighbouring city of Severodonetsk, on the east Ukrainian front, believers of Orthodox Church in Lysychansk attend a mass at the basement of a damaged church.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

The Ukrainian government has extended both until 23 August, with the parliament voting to support the presidential decree with an absolute majority.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

The Labour Party is also on track to win a majority in the Australian Parliament after the Liberal-National coalition failed to secure enough seats.

The Public Defender's Office of the state of Minas Gerais fulfills the dream of 50 couples in its fifth edition of community wedding in Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The initiative is aimed at low-income couples, who cannot afford the cost of a private wedding.

The documentary was completed by co-director Hanna Bilobrava after her fiancee and director Mantas Kvedaravičius was arrested and reportedly killed by Russian forces.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

North Korean authorities say that almost 220.000 more people with fever symptoms have been found. This comes as Kim Jong Un claims progress is being made to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Strong winds hit several mostly western federal states, causing significant damage and creating three tornados.

It's second time lucky for Boeing as they successfully launch their space capsule and dock it at the International Space Station.

The cutoff is not expected to have any major immediate effect and there would be no disruption to customers, Finnish authorities said.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

Russian authorities claim that 2,439 Ukrainian fighters surrendered in Azovstal by Friday, ending the siege of the southern seaport's steel mill.

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Meanwhile, Moscow claimed victory in Mariupol after months of siege and the destruction of over 90% of the southern port city.

Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.

Health Minister Johannes Rauch said the country was "putting an end to discrimination from another age".

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told Euronews the UK is wrong if it thinks overriding the Northern Ireland Protocol would not provoke a trade war with the EU.

Nikola Gruevski has been living in exile in Hungary since 2018 and was convicted of abuse of power in absentia.

Yuliia Paievska, or 'Taira', helped wounded soldiers and civilians from both sides and is one of hundreds of prominent Ukrainians kidnapped or captured by Russia.

Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said 1,908 Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal had "rendered themselves prisoner" since Monday.

Hundreds of residents tried to salvage parts of their destroyed homes on Friday, a day after a massive fire engulfed a residential compound in Manila.

Officials say the boat carrying more than 50 Tunisian migrants had been trying to reach Europe illegally.

This book is one of the most important ever written on Britain’s tortuous relationship with Europe in the last 50 years. It has been dismissed as a book written by a haut fonctionnaire, what in English would be called a Whitehall Mandarin. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason Barnier comprehensively out-negotiated his [...]

The post Barnier’s Secret Brexit Diary – A British perspective appeared first on The Federal Trust.

What is it about England’s right-wing journalism and France? The obsessive hate against France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, in papers like the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Spectator is without precedent. As news arrived of the death of 27 refugees drowned in the Straits of Dover, the Daily Mail summed up the style and language of the Francophobe press. It blasted the “Tantrum [...]

The post The Macron Obsession – a Very English Virus appeared first on The Federal Trust.

The extraordinarily tight outcome of the German elections has created the danger for the European Union of prolonged negotiations before the next federal government can be formed, lasting even as long as until Christmas. However, it also contains a most significant opportunity. This is not merely due to the defection of voters from the anti-European [...]

The post The German elections and the future of the euro appeared first on The Federal Trust.

This essay was commissioned by Léo Keller on behalf of the Blogazoi blog, as part of a collection to be published following the German election.   It is over 21 years since Angela Merkel took over from Wolfgang Schäuble as leader of the CDU, Germany’s most consistently successful political party. Schäuble, the heir apparent to the long-serving [...]

The post Angela Merkel, Britain and Europe: a view from offshore appeared first on The Federal Trust.

From Unidentified Political Object to European Democracy Thirty years after the foundation of the European Union by virtue of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty the nature of the Union has been established at last. At the time of its creation as successor of the European Communities the EU used to be described by the then President [...]

The post The Identity of the EU appeared first on The Federal Trust.

6 years ago I published a book “Brexit. How Britain Will Leave Europe.” It came out before the May 2015 election. It set out all the reasons, based on 20 years of door knocking in what we now call a red wall seat, why I thought that if a populist plebiscite on Europe were to [...]

The post A Brexit Cassandra appeared first on The Federal Trust.

Within ten days after the finalisation of the UK withdrawal from the EU, the European Union is to start an ambitious Conference on the Future of Europe. The aim of the Conference is to discuss the place of the citizens in the construction of the Union and to underpin European democracy with a solid political [...]

The post Building Bridges in times of Divergence appeared first on The Federal Trust.

In May 2021 Northern Ireland will mark the hundredth year of its existence. These years have been marked by long periods of turmoil rather than any sense of contentment or stability. There has been and remains an atmosphere of unease. Governments in Northern Ireland have been marked  by periods of social and religious discrimination, been [...]

The post A United Ireland – An Empty Slogan? appeared first on The Federal Trust.

The author wishes to dedicate the present essay to the memory of the ever inspiring Michael Burgess, in live Founder and Director of the Centre for Federal Studies at the University of Kent.   For decades, it has been common practice in academic circles to refer to the EU as a rare bird, an ‘ava [...]

The post The European Union: From organisation ‘sui generis’ to democratic regional organisation appeared first on The Federal Trust.

The future of the financial services industry - centred in the City of London - matters enormously to the health of the United Kingdom’s economy. The Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) has few provisions on financial services and the UK now appears set to drive a wedge between EU and British rules so it can [...]

The post Brexit: Ending the City’s Dominance of European Finance? appeared first on The Federal Trust.

Some 630,000 weapons are listed as "wanted items" in EU police databases, amid growing worries over right-wing extremism.

Last-minute Israeli blacklistings and red lines have prompted MEPs to call off an official trip, posing the question if Israel can belittle the EU Parliament with impunity.

On World Bee Day, it is essential to pay homage to a variety of pollinating insects crucial for our food security. A number of EU projects contribute to their sustained survival.

Britain is likely to send just a few "hundreds" of asylum seekers to Rwanda for claims processing each year its justice secretary Dominic Rabb told the BBC Friday. "I'd be careful about managing expectations. It is not going to deal with the whole problem," but will send an "important message" to irregular migrants, he said. The first flights may take off in June, amid delays caused by civil-rights group appeals.

Friday's knife attacks in a village in Norway were carried out by a Syrian man but linked to a domestic dispute rather than religion or politics, Norwegian police say. "This is a family from Syria where the perpetrator is married to one of the victims," a police statement said, Reuters said. "There is no longer a danger to other people," a police spokesperson added.

On the 30th anniversary of the Falcone murder by the Sicilian mafia, Italy remembers how one of the EU's founding members almost became a Mediterranean narco-state.

Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde has complained of "vastly-spread disinformation" that Sweden harboured militants from the separatist PKK party in Turkey, saying Sweden "was first after Turkey to list PKK as a terrorist organisation, already in 1984". Ankara has threatened to block Sweden and Finland's Nato bid saying they hosted "terrorists". Russia said Friday it would create 12 new military units on its western flank over the Nordic Nato move.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and a German businessman, Matthias Warnig, who used to work in the Communist-era Stasi secret police, have quit their jobs in Russian oil firm Rosneft, amid a political outcry over Russia's war on Ukraine. They both still work for the Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 gas consortium. German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday rejected an EU parliament appeal to blacklist Schröder for his close Russian ties.

The Group of Seven leading industrial nations has agreed to provide €18bn in aid for Ukraine at a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Bonn, the Financial Times reported. According to estimates, Ukraine will need €4.7bn a month to pay wages and keep government services running. US treasury secretary Janet Yellen this week called on EU allies to increase financial aid to help Ukraine "get through" the Russian invasion.

Italian transport unions on Friday striked in protest against military aid for Ukraine and called for an immediate ceasefire. While most Italians blame Russia's president Vladimir Putin for the conflict, union leaders want the government to increase workers' wages instead, and some fear that sending weapons will prolong the conflict. Within Italy's coalition government, Giuseppe Conte's 5 Star movement and Matteo Salvini's League oppose Italy's supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Eurozone finance ministers will discuss the economic worries with the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, agriculture ministers are set to talk food prices, and EU affairs ministers will put Hungary on the spot in the Article 7 procedure.

Russia state-owned gas giant Gazprom told Finalnd's gas operator that it will cut gas supplies to Finland on Saturday, Finland's Gasum said on Friday. "We have been carefully preparing for this situation," Gasum's CEO Mika Wiljanen said, with the company continuing to supply gas from different sources. Gazprom's move comes as Finalnd last week announced that it wants to join Nato in light of Rusia's invasion of Ukraine.

About half of all Gazprom's gas buyers opened accounts at Gazprombank, after Russian president Vladimir Putin demanded "unfriendly countries" pay for gas in roubles, Russia's deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday according to the Financial Times. 54 companies have an agreement with Gazprom Export, with "about half" having opened rouble accounts. Most buyers of Gazprom's gas are on the list of unfriendly countries, including much of Europe.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Austria's ex-foreign minister Karin Kneissl should be blacklisted if they don't step down from top Russian state-owned companies, while EU countries should sanctions Europeans who take key jobs at Russian state firms.

French president Emmanuel Macron said in Paris Thursday while meeting Moldovan president Maria Sandu the EU should give a "quick opinion" on her country's eligibility to become an official EU enlargement candidate. But German chancellor Olaf Scholz warned Ukraine in Berlin the same day "there are no shortcuts on the way to the EU", prompting a rebuke by Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba that Kyiv was getting "second class" treatment.

In a debate between energy commissioner Kadri Simson and MEPs, some lawmakers called for a stronger response to Russian energy aggression.

The leader of the Catalan government, Pere Aragonès, denounced the use of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware against Catalan politicians and MEPs during a visit to Brussels.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag Thursday that he will tour the Western Balkan capitals before the next EU summit to assure them of their European future. "Honouring our commitments to them is not just a question of our credibility. Today more than ever, their integration is also in our strategic interests," Scholz said, Reuters reports. He warned that "external powers", including Russia, were seeking influence in the region.

The UN's human rights office has confirmed 8,089 civilian casualties in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February, with 3,811 killed and 4,278 injured. "Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons ," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a statement on Thursday. "The actual figures are considerably higher, as many reports are still pending corroboration," it added.

A Joint Investigation Team combines prosecutors, police and judges from different countries who come together under the coordination of Eurojust to synchronise cross-border investigations — with a track record of achieving results: from the Bataclan attacks to the MH17 investigation.

The French EU presidency is pressing to make some last-minute headway on the EU's migration and asylum reform but is still meeting resistance from a handful of member states.

Prices of cereals, fertilisers, and oilseed have shot up drastically in several European markets due to Russia's war on Ukraine, prompting some member states to seek EU aid.

The European Parliament and member states agreed on minimum gas storage obligations on Thursday. The new rules were prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The bloc aims to get rid of Russian energy addiction while maintaining energy security. This year EU countries will need to reach a minimum 80 percent gas storage level by 1 November and from 2023 the target will be 90-percent full gas storage by November.

The European Parliament adopted an EU Commission proposal to reinforce the mandate of the EU agency for criminal justice cooperation, Eurojust, on war crimes evidence. It will now have to be agreed by EU governments, and expected to come into force in June. Eurojust will now be allowed to preserve, analyse and store evidence centrally, and exchange evidence with national authorities, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other countries.

Vladimir Putin's Ukraine war has threatened to be a public relations disaster for hard-right gatherings like the Conservative Political Action Conference — now meeting in Budapest and featuring Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who remains highly-cordial with the Kremlin.

Last year, 139,000 non-EU citizens were refused entry into the bloc, with Ukrainians accounting for the largest number of refusals (50,200), the EU's statistical office, Eurostat, reported on Thursday. In 2021, Hungary, Poland, Croatia and Romania reported the largest number of refusals of entry. Meanwhile, 681,200 non-EU citizens in total were found to be illegally present across EU member states — which represents a 22-percent increase compared to 2020.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag on Thursday that his government is ready to discuss the possibility of treaty change or a convention "if required". "That's no taboo. But it is important that we achieve the greatest possible consensus in the process," he also said. Earlier this month, MEPs called for a convention to implement the conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe and trigger deep reforms.

The Nordic Bridges cultural initiative is now in full swing in Canada — an initiatives of the Nordic ministers for culture, to showcase interaction between their cultures and the rest of the world.

EU countries need to refill stockpiles after several member states supplied weapons to Ukraine in its fight with Russia, and to phase out existing Soviet-era weapons systems, and reinforce air defence.

Russian gas imports are set to stop by the weekend amid the country's plans to join Nato and a payment dispute between the two nations, Gasum, the Finnish state-owned gas company, said on Wednesday. Finnish households barely use gas but it is used extensively by industry, which has been told by local authorities to find alternative supplies following the country's application to join Nato on Wednesday, alongside neighbouring Sweden.

Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands on Wednesday pledged to increase offshore wind generation capacity from 15 gigawatts (GW) now to at least 150GW by 2050 — as part of efforts to phase-out fossil fuels and reduce energy imports from Russia. This target represents half of the capacity intended for the entire 27-nations bloc, under the EU offshore renewable energy strategy, unveiled back in November 2020.

The EU and US are carrying out legal assessments on whether it can use frozen Russian money to rebuild Ukraine after the war.

The EU unveiled its plans to increase solar generation capacity and accelerate the rollout of major renewable projects in the EU — as part of efforts to reduce energy imports from Russia.

EU leaders unveiled a €210bn strategy aiming to cut Russian gas out of the European energy equation before 2027 and by two-thirds before the end of the year — but questions remain on how it is to be financed.

Turkey has blocked starting Nato accession talks with Finland and Sweden after the Nordic states' ambassadors handed over formal application letters Wednesday, saying they must first extradite 33 Kurdish separatists it calls terrorists. "So you won't give us back terrorists but you ask us for Nato membership?", Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said. "Nato expansion is only meaningful for us in proportion to the respect shown to our sensitivities".