Vatican: Pope Francis suffering from pneumonia
20 Feb 2025
After being admitted to hospital on 14 February, Pope Francis has developed pneumonia in both lungs, and his condition remains ‘complex’. The 88-year-old pontiff has been battling a respiratory infection for over a week. A follow-up…
US secretary of state Pete Hegseth has defended Donald Trump’s push for peace talks on Russia’s war in Ukraine, insisting it was not a betrayal of Kyiv. Speaking before a NATO meeting in Brussels, Hegseth emphasised…
Lina Ishaq, a 52-year-old Swedish woman, has been sentenced to twelve years in prison for genocide and war crimes against Yazidis in Syria. She enslaved three Yazidi women and six children in Raqqa between 2014 and…
Austria: coalition government talks collapse
13 Feb 2025
Talks to form Austria’s first far-right-led coalition collapsed after negotiations between the Freedom Party (FPO) and the conservative People’s Party (OVP) failed. The FPO, which won the most votes in September’s election, has struggled to reach…
Sweden: ten dead after school shooting
06 Feb 2025
A mass shooting at an adult education centre in Örebro has left ten people dead, including the suspected gunman, in what prime minister Ulf Kristersson called ‘the worst mass shooting in Swedish history’. Police have stated…
Olaf Scholz has criticised Donald Trump’s proposal to make US military aid for Ukraine conditional on access to the country’s rare earth resources, calling it ‘selfish and self-centred’. A Ukrainian source has said that resource-sharing had…