Britain’s most hazardous building threatens to leak radioactive water until the 2050s unless the clean-up of a former nuclear power plant is quickened, UK lawmakers warned yesterday.

The European Union is on track to reach its 2030 climate targets, Brussels said yesterday, but uncertainty remains over the bloc’s ambitions to cut greenhouse gas emissions much further by 2040.

Scientists announced Tuesday they have discovered the earliest evidence of humans using whale bones, finding weapons made from the remains of the massive mammals dating back more than 20,000 years.

A German woman accused of a mass stabbing attack that wounded 18 people at a train station in Hamburg suffers from mental illness, police said yesterday.

Rising seas will severely test humanity’s resilience in the second half of the 21st century and beyond, even if nations defy the odds and cap global warming at the ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius target, researchers said yesterday.

Russia’s prosecutor general said yesterday it had banned human rights group Amnesty International Limited as an “undesirable organisation”, accusing it of backing Ukraine against Russia.

The first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in more than three years lasted well under two hours, with no apparent sign of progress so far in narrowing the gap between the sides, and a Ukrainian source called Moscow’s demands “non-starters”.

Paris has filed a case against Tehran at the top UN court over two French citizens who have been held in Iran for three years, the French foreign minister said yesterday.

A Swedish diplomat arrested over the weekend in Stockholm on charges of spying and released days later has been found dead, media reported yesterday, with the foreign ministry confirming an employee had died.

Russia has deliberately targeted hotels used by journalists covering its war on Ukraine, the NGOs Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Truth Hounds said yesterday, calling the strikes “war crimes”.

More than 295 million people faced acute hunger last year, a new high driven by conflict as well as other crises -- and the outlook is “bleak” for 2025 as humanitarian aid falters, a UN-backed report said yesterday.

The EU accused TikTok on Thursday of breaking digital rules after concluding that the Chinese-owned social media platform was not transparent enough about advertisements

A strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck south of the Greek island of Kasos on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage

The European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said yesterday she didn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin would turn up for talks in Turkey this week with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

European countries will begin preparing new sanctions on Russia unless the Kremlin starts abiding by a 30-day ceasefire in its war with Ukraine, which was set to expire by the end of yesterday.

France yesterday backed calls for a review of the cooperation agreement between the European Union and Israel over a blockade of aid to Gaza.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday said that Kyiv would meet with Moscow for talks in Istanbul on May 15, but said that Russia must first commit to a 30-day ceasefire starting today.

The leaders of France, Britain, Germany and Poland yesterday agreed to call on Russia to accept a 30-day unconditional ceasefire starting Monday, Kyiv said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday told his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian that Moscow wants a “fair” nuclear deal between the United States and Iran and was ready to help advance talks, the Kremlin said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service on Friday designated the far-right AfD party as an extremist group, setting off a diplomatic spat with the United States.