Tag: Region Europe

Canada signed a defence partnership with the EU on Monday as the two sides increase their security co-operation in response to Donald Trump’s threats against his Nato allies. The US president has questioned continued American support for allies that spend insufficiently on their own armed forces, and has threatened both Canada and Europe with punitive tariffs for allegedly taking advantage of the US. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a move away from buying US weapons, and…

Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said Tuesday they have imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich face asset freezes and travel bans from the five countries. The ministers are champions of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The decision by Western governments friendly to Israel was a sharp rebuke of Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank and of settler…

The thinly veiled threat reportedly refers to Hungary, which has blocked several of Brussels’ foreign policy decisions The incoming German government plans to play a larger role in EU decision-making, including by punishing nations that dissent against the bloc’s foreign policy, Politico has reported. According to the outlet, a draft coalition agreement targets Hungary, which has defied EU decisions on issues such as the Ukraine conflict and sanctions against Russia. Germany is set to have a new coalition government formed…

US Vice President JD Vance on Friday criticized Denmark for failing to adequately protect Greenland, during a visit to the strategically significant and resource-rich Arctic territory. His remarks, made at the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, have been viewed as a provocation by both Copenhagen and Nuuk. “Denmark has not done enough” Speaking at a press conference, Vance accused Denmark of under-investing in Greenland and neglecting both its people and its security infrastructure. “Our message to Denmark is very…

Israeli attack destroys a residential building in a Beirut suburb as France’s Macron decries ‘unacceptable’ strike. Israel has carried out an air strike on Lebanon’s capital for the first time since a fragile truce between the Israeli army and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in November halted a war between the two. Residents fled as a building was flattened in the Hadath neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday when Israel carried out four strikes – an attack reminiscent of…

U.S. immigration authorities detained and revoked the visa of a Russian scientist who opposes the war in Ukraine and had been conducting genetic research at Harvard Medical School, her friends and colleagues said this week. Ksenia Petrova was stopped at Boston Logan International Airport on Feb. 16 after returning from a personal trip in France. U.S. officials revoked her research visa for failing to properly declare frog embryos she had brought with her, according to The Harvard Crimson. U.S. Customs…

Ukraine’s leader has expressed readiness to enter a US-proposed energy truce with Russia Ukraine’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky, has offered his take on negotiations in Saudi Arabia shortly after the White House released two statements on the US contacts with Kiev’s and Moscow’s respective delegations. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Zelensky expressed readiness to observe US President Donald Trump’s proposed agreement to mutually halt strikes on energy facilities with Russia, as well as to stop fighting in the Black…

Russia is suing Shell for 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) over allegedly unpaid gas supplies to the state energy giant Gazprom in 2022, the British-Dutch company said in its annual report published Tuesday. Shell announced in early 2022 that it would sever ties with Gazprom, halt Russian crude oil purchases and withdraw from Russian energy markets in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the company’s annual report, Russian prosecutors filed a claim in a Moscow court on…

“Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear energy and is acting in line with international law,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Peskov said Moscow accepted Iran’s statements that it has no intention of obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran was one of the topics discussed in a long phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, after which the White House said the two leaders “shared the view that Iran should never be in a…

The destruction of the border energy facility is the latest provocation by Ukraine, the Defense Ministry has said. Ukrainian forces retreating from Russia’s Kursk Region have destroyed the Sudzha gas metering station, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported. The incident took place early on Friday, roughly 20 minutes after midnight, the ministry said in a statement. The facility had been previously used to deliver fuel to consumers in European nations.

Russian drone strikes targeted civilian infrastructure in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa, leaving at least three people injured and several districts of the city battling power cuts while Czech President Petr Pavel was visiting for talks with officials. The head of the Odesa region’s military administration Oleh Kiper reported on March 21 that minors were among the three known injured in the strikes that sparked fires in various parts of the city. The ASTRA Telegram channel, citing information…

A loss of power forced London Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest, to shut down on Friday morning, prompting chaos and disrupting travel for tens of thousands of air passengers. In a post on social media website X, the airport blamed a fire at an electrical substation in North Hyde in Hayes, west London, for the power outage and said it did not expect to reopen until early on Saturday. Aviation analyst Alex Macheras told Al Jazeera the knock-on…

A Delta Airlines aircraft en route to New York’s JFK Airport declared an emergency after finding a ‘mechanical issue with flight deck window heat,’ and reversed course over the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday afternoon. The flight DAL4 departed from London Heathrow Airport at 4.24pm local time on Tuesday, with an anticipated arrival at New York City at 9.23pm eastern time, as per FlightAware data. The Boeing 767-400, carrying 129 passengers, three pilots and nine cabin crew members, was redirected to…

Norway’s sanctions on March 14, 2025, targeted 19 individuals, including judges, prosecutors, and judiciary members involved in serious human rights violations. Notably, those implicated in the imprisonment and death of Alexei Navalny, as well as the politically motivated sentencing of human rights defender Oleg Orlov and artist Aleksandra Skochilenko, were sanctioned.