Brussels, Belgium - EU member countries on Monday adopted a watered-down deal on curbing car emissions, after auto manufacturers complained stricter measures could undermine electric vehicle investments. Led by France and Italy, the 27 nations voted for a less ambitious plan than the one put forward by the European Commission in...

The EU trade commissioner is in China to press the bloc's case that it is not seeking an economic decoupling from China. His trip follows a report by the Chamber of Commerce of the European Union last week that showed business confidence was at one of its lowest levels in...

Istanbul, Turkey - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused the European Union of pulling away from Turkey, whose efforts to join the bloc have stalled amid criticism of Ankara's efforts to address democracy and rule of law concerns. Erdogan secured a pledge from Brussels to resurrect the membership talks first...

Paris, France - Irish regulators on Friday handed out a 345-million-euro ($369-million) fine to TikTok over data breaches, part of a battle between the European Union and big tech firms on issues from tax avoidance and hate speech to data privacy and monopolistic practices. Here is a summary of the tussles...

Copenhagen, Denmark - Danish shipping giant Maersk on Thursday launched the world's first container ship running on bio-methanol, a key step in its effort to lower its huge carbon footprint. Maersk, which sold its oil division to TotalEnergies in 2017, has set out a target to become carbon neutral by 2040....

"We condemn the decision of the Tunisian authorities to refuse entry for the delegation," the delegation, made up of five MEPs, said in a statement. "This conduct is unprecedented since (Tunisia's) democratic revolution in 2011", it said.

Tel Aviv, Israel - Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed the launch of the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) as the "largest cooperation project in our history" that will have a profound impact on the Middle East, Israel, and the world. Leaders from the United States, India, Saudi...

Washington, US - The REPO (Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs) task force, set up to search and freeze Russia-related assets, estimates the overall value of sovereign Russian assets, blocked by the West, at $280 billion. “The total value of assets <…> is estimated at around $280 billion, the majority of which is held in the European Union,” the US Department of the Treasury...

"I look forward to welcoming the AU as a permanent member of the G20", European Council president Charles Michel told reporters in New Delhi, where the two-day G20 summit begins on Saturday. In December, US President Joe Biden said he wanted the AU "to join the G20 as a permanent...

EU chief Charles Michel said last month that the bloc should get ready to admit new members from eastern Europe and the Balkans by 2030.

The European Commission, the EU's powerful antitrust body, named 22 "core platform" services belonging to five US tech behemoths identified as "gatekeepers" -- Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft -- and China's ByteDance. The services included Apple's App Store; Meta's Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; Google's YouTube video platform and...

The wildfire smoke recently suffocating cities from Athens to New York may be the most visible sign of air pollution brought on by heat waves. But extreme heat can also induce a whole host of other chemical processes that are hazardous for human health, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization...

Adults and children over five require a single shot "irrespective of their Covid-19 vaccination history" while younger children may get "one or three doses depending on whether they have completed a primary vaccination course or have had Covid-19" the Amsterdam-based EMA said.

Moscow, Russia -- Moscow considers threats by European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell to take medical supplies away from the Russian people as inadmissible and neo-Nazist, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing. "EU restrictions are above all an instrument of...

The landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) compels tech companies to better police content to protect European users against disinformation and hate speech. And it also demands the firms are more transparent about their services, algorithms and how ads are targeted. "These systemic platforms play a very, very important role in...

EU rules will apply from Friday to Google, alongside 18 other large social media platforms and websites including Meta-owned Instagram, Twitter (rebranded as X) and TikTok, forcing the companies to better police content, or face the risk of billions of euros in fines. Among the Google products listed were YouTube,...

The merger is expected to be completed by the end of Oct.

Cypriot authorities say there has been a rise in the number of migrants arriving by boat this year, with a 60 per cent increase recorded in the first five months. Most irregular migrants arriving by sea board boats in the Syrian port of Tartus, and these vessels are usually detected...

Tehran, Iran -- Trade between Iran and the European Union member states reached 2.3 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in the first half of 2023, according to Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat). Trade between Iran and Germany accounted for half the value, Tasnim News Agency reported, adding the Iran-EU...

As Middle Eastern countries rise economically and their populations grow, Malaysia sees a bigger role in fulfilling the region's growing demand for edible oils and fats.

The confrontation occurred in Pyla, an ethnically mixed village in the UN-patrolled area between the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet in the north. Video widely shared on social media showed bulldozers pushing away UN-marked SUVs, cement barriers and razor wire as...

The speedy filling of storage facilities means the bloc is "in a much more stable position than it was this time last year," when Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring, EU Energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, said.

Jerusalem--The European Union has disbursed $24 million for the payment of social allowances to 71,162 vulnerable Palestinian families through the National Cash Transfer Program. The European Union for the past 17 years has been a steadfast supporter of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), collaborating to ensure...

Ankara, Turkey -- Turkey intensified talks with Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union on the grain deal in preparation for a possible meeting between Turkish and Russian Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, TASS reported. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of...

Oslo, Norway - Norway's data protection agency said Tuesday it would start fining Facebook and Instagram owner Meta nearly $100,000 per day for defying a ban on using users' personal information to target ads. The Norwegian watchdog, Datatilsynet, said Meta would be fined one million kroner ($97,000) per day, starting August...

The drop in exports was bigger than expected and the heaviest since a 17.2 percent plunge in January-February 2020, when the economy came to a standstill in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from a brief rebound in March and April, exports have been in constant decline since...

The African Union demanded Niger's military "return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority" within 15 days as the EU intensified pressure on the coup leaders by suspending security cooperation with the country. General Abdourahamane Tiani, head of the Presidential Guard since 2011, appeared on state television to declare himself...

Twitter continues to dominate its space as a platform for online comment and news, and Musk "would have to completely destroy it" to drive away its audience for good. Threads was quickly billed as a potential death knell for Twitter, but weeks later, Threads has since seen a "material decline...

Italy and the European Commission have sought to step up engagement with Tunisia, promising funding if the country undertakes to stem emigration from its territory. According to the UN, more than 100,000 migrants arrived by sea to Europe -- most to Italy -- in the first six months of 2023,...

The US tech giant unveiled Bard in February but delayed its release in the European Union as the bloc plans to regulate artificial intelligence amid concerns about risks associated with the rapidly growing technology. The company said it would incorporate user feedback and take steps to protect people's privacy and data as...

The United States supports Turkey's bid to enter the European Union but does not believe Ankara should link that to accepting Sweden's entry into NATO, a senior American official said Monday. Earlier Turkiye's Erdogan had said that EU should restart his country's inclusion bid into the EU bloc.

The European Union and New Zealand signed a free trade agreement which Brussels says can lift exchanges between the two by 30 percent with a decade. The deal, agreed in June 2022 after four years of tough negotiations, is "ambitious", said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The new British sanctions regime will expand existing penalties imposed by creating new criteria under which individuals and entities can be hit. They include any Iranian activities "undermining peace, stability and security in the Middle East and internationally", and the "use and spread of weapons technologies from Iran".

Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the UN's World Meteorological Organization, warned on Monday that El Nino "will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -  Seven tech giants, including Amazon and Apple, have informed the European Union they meet the threshold to come under landmark new rules to curb their market dominance, Brussels said on Tuesday. The firms - Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Facebook umbrella Meta, Microsoft and Samsung...

Exhibitions are also scheduled to take place on Saturday in the north and center of the Gaza Strip, where people are normally forbidden to approach and photograph military sites.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that his visit to Kyiv on the first day of Spain's EU presidency showed the bloc's "unequivocal" commitment to Ukraine's bid to join the 27-nation bloc. "My being here on the first day of the six-month presidency... demonstrates a clear and unequivocal political commitment......

President Emmanuel Macron informed Berlin he was postponing a state visit to deal with the urban rioting that has rocked France for the last four nights, as the 17-year-old whose killing by police sparked the protests was laid to rest. Police arrested 1,311 people overnight, the highest figure since the...

In early June, European Union countries reached agreement on a long-stalled revision of the bloc's asylum rules. It aims to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers across EU countries, with those refusing to do so having to pay money to the ones that do. Poland and Hungary, which were...

The rules will apply from January 1, 2025, two years later than the 2023 deadline agreed under the reforms.

The 55-year-old Harvard graduate, who steered Greece from the coronavirus pandemic back to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already scored a thumping win in an election just a month ago. But having fallen short of five seats in parliament to be able to form a single-party government, Mitsotakis...

An Algerian court of appeal increased to seven years the prison term issued to a prominent media boss, but suspended two years, a watchdog and his lawyer said. Ihsane El Kadi, 63, whose release had been sought by the European Union and international media, is one of the last independent...

The balti -- a curry of spices, coriander, onions, tomatoes and green peppers with meat or fish -- was created by Pakistani migrants to feed hungry customers from nearby pubs.

Last year's donors' conference in Brussels for displaced Syrians raised pledges of $6.7 billion, and the one before that $6.4 billion. The EU overall contributed more than 70 percent of those totals.

The EU's plans date back to 2021, the draft rules took on greater urgency when ChatGPT exploded onto the scene last year, showing off AI's dizzying development and the possible risks. There is also growing clamour to regulate AI across the Atlantic, as pressure grows on Western governments to act fast...

Saudi Arabia announced that it would jointly lead a conference on the humanitarian response to the war in Sudan next week. The pledging conference will be held on June 19, the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing the foreign ministry, adding it would be jointly led with Qatar, Egypt, Germany,...

The EU offered a 900-billion-euro aid package -- contingent on Tunisia reaching an IMF deal. But Tunisian President Kais Saied has repeatedly refused "diktats" from the IMF and the US has led accusations that the birthplace of the Arab Spring is falling to authoritarianism after the dissolution of parliament and...

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, economic sanctions have seen a significant cut in its oil and gas exports to the EU and US. However Pakistan, in the midst of an economic downturn worsening a long-running energy shortage, in May confirmed it had struck a deal with Moscow...

The EU is ready to offer Tunisia a 900-million-euro package plus 150 million euros in immediate support, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said. Aside from trade and investment, it would help Tunisia with border management and to combat human trafficking, with support worth 100 million euros this year,...

Digging for salt is punishingly hard work, rewarded by an income that fluctuates according to whichever buyers happen to pass through town.