Germans enjoy some of the most generous employee illness policies in Europe, a fact which the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, says is undermining efforts to kickstart the EU's biggest economy whose growth has largely stalled since 2022. At a regional campaign event last weekend, Merz said staff took an average 14.5 sick days per year too high, he said. That's nearly three weeks in which people in Germany don't work due to illness, he said.
Atos announced on Wednesday that it expects revenue of €8 billion in 2025, in line with previous forecasts. The organic revenue decline will be 13.8 percent. The French IT company continues to struggle with contract losses, but CEO Philippe Salle sees customer confidence gradually returning. The company, once considered a crown jewel of the European tech sector, emerged from a major debt restructuring at the end of 2024. That restructuring reduced its debt burden by €2.1 billion.
The Iryo train that crashed on Sunday in Adamuz in the Spanish province of Cordoba displays marks on the wheels of the first five carriages that passed over the track before its derailment, as evidenced by the work carried out by Spain's Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF). These marks, up to the size of a coin, could coincide with the break in the track at kilometer 318 of the Madrid-Seville line, which is where the tragic accident occurred, leaving 42 people dead.
Alexei clears his throat without showing the slightest expression on his face. Squatting and wearing gloves, he shakes the military uniform that once belonged to a man. The jacket and trousers still hold their shape, but inside there is nothing. Just air. Alexei pulls out a worn, stained piece of paper from one of the pockets. Andrei. Moscow, he reads aloud. There's a phone number written here. Good. It helps us trace his origin. Whoever he was, he was a Russian soldier.
The crunch moment in Google's antitrust battles with the Justice Department over its ad tech stack looms ever closer, with Justice Leonie Brinkema expected to issue her remedies ruling by the close of Q1. While these deliberations take place in the chambers of a courtroom in the Eastern District of Virginia, developments elsewhere underscore the political undercurrents at play, namely the push to limit Big Tech's power.
In January 2018, when Donald Trump was in the second year of his first term as US president, Angela Merkel, in her 13th year as German chancellor, gave a gloomy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She opened her remarks with a warning from Europe's past. Politicians had sleep-walked into the first world war. As the number of surviving eyewitnesses to the second world war dwindled, she added, subsequent generations would have to prove they understood the fragility of peace.
A major hotel operator with properties in Austria has filed for bankruptcy proceedings covering around 140 of its companies, with more than 100 establishments affected. The Revo Hospitality Group said all hotels would continue operating, but it has not yet specified which Austrian sites are included, according to Kleine Zeitung. The filing was made at the Charlottenburg district court in Germany and covers roughly 140 group companies, including 125 hotels employing around 5,500 people in Germany and Austria.
Europe faces increasingly sophisticated hybrid attacks on every area of its infrastructure, the EC claims. The revised Cybersecurity Act looks to address this with union-level risk assessments, combined with targeted mitigation measures that will include bans on IT components from "high-risk suppliers." The suggested timeframe for this could leave member states with as little as three years to remove non-compliant kit.
Rory McIlroy has challenged Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm to demonstrate their commitment to the Ryder Cup cause by settling fines for their LIV Golf participation. McIlroy pointed towards motivation used by Europe during victory at Bethpage last September after it emerged the United States players were paid to play the Ryder Cup. The switches of Rahm and Hatton to LIV has drawn fines totalling several million pounds due to tournament conflict with the DP World Tour, where both remain members.
"Calm down the hysteria," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday. "Take a deep breath." He was urging European counterparts and journalists not to read too much into the current kerfuffle over President Donald Trump's desire to annex Greenland, which was followed by the threat of new U.S. tariffs on a group of European countries standing in solidarity with Denmark.
Ireland remains cautious about deploying the so-called "big bazooka" economic mechanism against the US, despite Europe moving closer to using the trade weapon in response to threats to take Greenland. Amid reports that Germany is moving towards supporting France in its call for EU member states to ask the European Commission to unleash the Anti-Coercion Instrument, Ireland has remained coy on its position and is instead calling for dialogue to avert an all-out trade war.
Ireland remains cautious about deploying the so-called "big bazooka" economic mechanism against the US, despite Europe moving closer to using the trade weapon in response to threats to take Greenland. Amid reports that Germany is moving towards supporting France in its call for EU member states to ask the European Commission to unleash the Anti-Coercion Instrument, Ireland has remained coy on its position and is instead calling for dialogue to avert an all-out trade war.
Mykhailo Fedorov said on Tuesday that Kyiv had rolled out a program inviting defense companies to test their small interceptor drones in Ukraine, paying them $20,000 for each Shahed drone their product destroyed. "At the time, no one believed in it," Fedorov said at a press briefing. "But now, by this month, 40,000 interceptors are expected to be delivered to the military."
Growing up in the midsize city of Vancouver, Canada, I always dreamed of living in a big metropolis - a cultural hub where something was always going on, with endless places to explore. For a while, I did. When I started dating a Brit, I moved to his hometown of Birmingham, England, the second-largest city in the UK population-wise, with over a million residents.
In the coming weeks, we will begin to roll out enhanced technology in Europe to further support how our moderation teams detect and remove accounts that belong to someone under the age of 13. This follows an initial pilot in Europe over the last year, which led to the removal of thousands of additional underage accounts.
More than three-quarters of Germans reject the idea of buying an electric car from the US manufacturer Tesla, according to a recent survey by the German Economic Institute (IW). Some 60% of respondents said buying a Tesla was "completely out of the question," while another 16% said they would "probably not" purchase a car from US tech billionaire Elon Musk's company, which saw sales fall by 13% worldwide in the first quarter of 2025, by 45% in Europe, and by 62% in Germany.
Revenue wrote to 34,000 family carers notifying them carer's allowance or carer's benefit have always been taxable and warning those who have not been declaring them as income they may face back-taxes. Payments to carers have always been subject to taxation but were previously self-declared. Under the new system, tax on income from the payments will be collected in real time, similar to other payments from the Department of Social Protection.
The remarks led to a rebuke of Vistisen, who was cut off in the middle of his speech. I'm sorry, colleague, said fellow MP Nicolae Stefanuta of Romania. This is against our rules as much as you might feel, or the room might feel in this, we have clear rules about cuss words, language that is inappropriate in this room. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it is unacceptable, even if you might have strong political feelings about this.
The HSE Mid West has said it accepts "full institutional responsibility" for the "catastrophic and irreparable harm caused" when teenager Jessica Sheedy died at University Hospital Limerick.
