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At least 27 migrants died after their dinghy capsized on Wednesday while trying to cross the Channel from France to Britain, a local mayor said. According to fishermen, more migrants left France’s northern shores than usual to take advantage of calm sea conditions, although the water was bitterly cold. One …

Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson quit as prime minister on Wednesday less than 12 hours after being appointed when her coalition collapsed, plunging the country into political uncertainty. Andersson said a decision by the Green Party, the junior party in the coalition, to quit had forced her to resign but …

The United States Department of Defense late on Tuesday said it will establish a new group to investigate reports on the presence of UFOs in restricted airspace. The formation of the group comes after the government released a report in June, encompassing 144 observations, which said there was a lack …

Lebanon’s president told central bank governor Riad Salameh on Wednesday to provide data for a forensic audit of the bank, saying the restructuring consultancy Alvarez & Marsal(A&M) had said it did not have the information it needed a month after starting. President Michel Aoun made the comments in a meeting …

The Taliban have signed a deal with Australian company Cpharm that wants to set up a cannabis processing center in Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesperson said on Twitter. A contract has been signed and the project will be up and running within days, Taliban Press Director Qari Saeed Khosty said. Afghanistan’s …

Russia staged military drills in the Black Sea, south of Ukraine, on Wednesday and said it needed to sharpen the combat-readiness of its conventional and nuclear forces because of heightened NATO activity near its borders. Ukraine, which with its ally the United States has said it believes Russia may be …

German Social Democrat Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday he had reached a coalition deal to form a new government that will try to modernise Europe’s largest economy and bring the curtain down on the Angela Merkel era. Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the ecologist Greens, and the libertarian Free Democrats …

Coronavirus infections broke records in parts of Europe on Wednesday, with the continent once again the epicentre of a pandemic that has prompted new curbs on movement and made health experts think again about booster vaccination shots. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary all reported new highs in daily infections …

New UNDP report projects that the number of those killed as a result of Saudi’s war on Yemen could reach 1.3 million by 2030. A new United Nations report has projected that the death toll from Saudi’s war on Yemen will reach 377,000 by the end of 2021, including those …

Slovakia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus among backyard poultry, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Tuesday. The outbreak followed several outbreaks among poultry farms in Europe and Asia in recent weeks in a sign the virus is spreading quickly …

Trapped in conflicts, the children of West and Central Africa are the most recruited by armed groups in the world and also have the highest number of victims of sexual violence, says a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Children’s Fund. For five years the region has seen increased …

Russia’s defence minister on Tuesday accused U.S. bombers of rehearsing a nuclear strike on Russia from two different directions earlier this month and complained that the planes had come within 20 km (12.4 miles) of the Russian border. The accusation comes at a time of high tension between Washington and …

Two refitted former U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats intended to bolster the Ukrainian navy have arrived at the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa, the Ukrainian navy said on Tuesday. “We appreciate the contribution of the United States to deter the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine,” naval …

Poland said on Tuesday that groups of migrants had made new attempts to cross over the border from Belarus and it would be premature to say that the worst of the crisis on the European Union’s eastern frontier was over. Border Guard spokesperson Anna Michalska said about 50 migrants tried …

Gunshots were fired overnight at police in the French Caribbean island of Martinique, local authorities said on Tuesday, in a sign that unrest triggered by COVID-19 curbs that have rocked the nearby island of Guadeloupe could be spreading there. No police have been injured and things have calmed down in …

A bus carrying North Macedonian tourists crashed in flames on a highway in western Bulgaria before daybreak on Tuesday, killing at least 45 people, including 12 children, officials said. The cause of the accident was unclear but the bus appeared to have hit a highway barrier either before or after …

Turkey’s lira nose-dived 15% on Tuesday in its second-worst day ever after President Tayyip Erdogan defended recent sharp rate cuts, and vowed to win his “economic war of independence” despite widespread criticism and pleas to reverse course. The lira tumbled to as low as 13.45 to the dollar, plumbing record …

Russian energy giant Gazprom will withdraw gas transit to Moldova in the next 48 hours after Chisinau failed to settle its outstanding debt for supplies already delivered, a spokesman for the company announced on Monday. At the end of last month, the Saint Petersburg-based company and Moldavgaz agreed a new …

Bored with kicking around Covid-19 like the political football it has become, the chattering class has taken on a new cause: why do so many people dislike the US president? It would take several encyclopedia-size volumes to fully answer that question, but let’s try to be brief. Anointed by Barack …

A boat carrying the bodies of 10 migrants found dead at sea arrived in Sicily on Friday, along with dozens of people it rescued this week as they tried to cross the Mediterranean. The crew of the Geo Barents vessel, run by charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), found the corpses …