ADVERTISEMENT A website showing doctored images of thousands of Italian women including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has closed down after a significant backlash. The scandal involving the online forum Phica, whose name is a play on the Italian word for vagina, was brought to public attention by MEP Alessandra Moretti,…

ADVERTISEMENT The Greek government has slammed allegations that Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis, wife of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, used taxpayers’ money to buy a multi-million-euro flat in an urban development south of Athens. A website called VoiceNews posted an article on 15 August claiming that Grabowski purchased the flat in a skyscraper…

ADVERTISEMENT The far-right Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, PVV, is leading in the latest opinion polls with two months to go to fresh parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. The snap elections were called for 29 October after the PVV left the coalition government in June over a disagreement about migration…

Published on 28/08/2025 – 13:58 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Hungary has imposed a travel ban on the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces after three consecutive attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline on Russian territory. The attacks halted oil imports to Hungary and to Slovakia for days. The sanction was announced by Hungarian…

ADVERTISEMENT US President Donald Trump has repeated his claim that Russian troops failed to seize Kyiv during the first weeks of their 2022 invasion because of a decision to cross muddy farmland in a bid to reach the Ukrainian capital. “They [the Russians] would have been in Kyiv in four…

ADVERTISEMENT Until now, a coloured badge was the only ticket you needed: white with a yellow ‘Press’ line for journalists, green for lobbyists, orange for diplomats and so on. With one of those dangling from your neck, you could roam both the Brussels and Strasbourg buildings of the European Parliament…

Published on 28/08/2025 – 9:37 GMT+2 •Updated 9:57 ADVERTISEMENT The shock wave unleashed by Russia’s latest strike against Kyiv has “severely” damaged the delegation of the European Union in the Ukrainian capital, the bloc’s ambassador Katarina Mathernova announced on Thursday morning. The overnight attack, part of Moscow’s campaign of sowing…

ADVERTISEMENT With the renewed promise of future EU membership, the French, German and Polish leaders visited Moldova on 27 August, the country’s national day. The message from the French President Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Friederich Merz and the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu, was…

Published on 27/08/2025 – 17:11 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Human rights abuses of asylum seekers in Mauritania have been exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, which are “continuing to outsource migration management” to the West African country, a report by Human Rights Watch published on Wednesday claimed. The 142-page report documented…

ADVERTISEMENT Unfounded claims, first made by Russian ‘hacktivist’ groups, that 1.7 million Ukrainian soldiers have died or gone missing since the start of Russia’s invasion have gone viral online. But the allegations are not backed by any credible, independent evidence, and experts warn the campaign bears the signs of coordinated…