A group of Afghan nationals have taken off from Islamabad, Pakistan and are due to arrive in Germany on Thursday, Germany's DPA news agency reported. Some 52 people were on board, sources told DPA. They are due to land in Berlin and Hanover. This would be the sixth group of such Afghans to arrive in the country since the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to power in May, DPA said.
Broadcaster refuses to apologise during Oireachtas hearing Broadcaster and media coach Ivan Yates has said he has "some regrets" about his comments that Fine Gael should "smear the bejaysus" out of Catherine Connolly during the presidential campaign. But he has refused to apologise for the remarks, which he made in a podcast by Newstalk Radio, saying they were "weaponised" and "deliberately manipulated" by Ms Connolly's campaign.
A devastating Russian aerial assault on Ternopil in western Ukraine has killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens more, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko has confirmed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that 22 people were still missing at the site of Wednesday's Russian attack on Ternopil. Russia unleashed 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, striking vital energy and transportation infrastructure and forcing emergency power cut-offs during freezing weather. In Ternopil, the attack obliterated the upper floors of a residential building. Smoke billowed from the structure as firefighters battled the blaze while distraught residents gathered below, anxiously awaiting word about missing loved ones.
The seizure on 30 September had prompted a furious response from China, which in early October banned exports of Nexperia chips from the country, where most of them are packaged and finished. That threw global carmakers' supply chains into turmoil, leading to production pauses in Mexico and warnings from EU manufacturers that they were days away from stoppages. China lifted the export ban on 9 November, and Volkswagen and Honda have indicated that Nexperia chips are flowing again to their factories in Germany and Mexico.
In a lengthy 2022 judgment, Mr Justice Hildyard concluded that Lynch and Autonomy's former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain had fraudulently inflated the software company's revenues and misrepresented its performance before selling it to HP for $11 billion. Although the judge said HP would still have proceeded with the deal had it known the true state of Autonomy's finances, he ruled that Lynch and Hussain had deliberately misled the buyer.
The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country's military and political sovereignty and is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv. The two men have formed an important but unofficial backchannel between Moscow and Washington, and it was unclear whether the Trump administration had formally backed the plan.
US research firm Gartner predicts that IT spending in Europe will increase by 11% to a total of $1.4 trillion in 2026. Growth is expected to be driven by AI, cloud computing and cybersecurity, despite limited IT budgets and few new hires. Spending on generative AI is expected to grow by 78%, while cloud investments will increase by 24% as companies increasingly move services to Europe for sovereignty reasons.
The initiative includes European Business Wallets, which the European Commission (EC) said will offer companies a single digital identity to simplify paperwork and make it much easier to do business across EU member states. Valdis Dombrovskis, commissioner for economy and productivity, said: "Today's proposal represents an important first step in our digital simplification agenda, aiming to create a more favourable business environment for European companies."
The trend goes like this: A group of people, typically kids, gives their phone to someone else and asks them to record them doing a dance. They record the dance on the front-facing camera so the dancers can see themselves and at the end of the dance, they move towards the camera and flip it to reveal the person recording them.
The general principle is that voting rights are based on citizenship and each country makes its own rules. When electoral rights are granted to non-nationals, these are usually limited to local elections and do not extend to national ones. So neither EU nationals or non-EU citizens are able to vote for example in French presidential elections or German parliamentary elections, unless of course they have taken citizenship in those countries.
He loved sport, not just watching it but entering competitions and pushed his limits in Iron Man and triathlons. His dedication and drive is part of what made him who he was. He also had enormous pride in diving. He lived his life with adventure and travelled far and dreamed big. His final illness took place in Turkey where he didn't expect his journey to end,
And that entrance is through a wide raised lawn, which is surprisingly well hidden unless you're familiar with it already. It's laid out as two lawns on either side of the main paved route to the church's actual entrance, and the paving is lined almost the entire way with benches, reflecting how busy the pocket park can get on a warm day.
IRFU chief executive Kevin Potts and chief financial officer Thelma O'Driscoll have defended the union's ticket pricing for senior men's internationals at the Aviva Stadium and rejected the idea that those games have become a corporate day out.
The clear intention was to cause human casualties, he said of the weekend bomb attack. The Polish security services said they were in the process of arresting several people linked to the incident. They are on the trail of the principals; they are on the trail of the perpetrators the first arrests are now taking place, the spokesperson Jacek Dobrzynski said on Wednesday morning.
The Trump administration is renewing efforts to end the war in Ukraine, with special envoy Steve Witkoff quietly pushing a revised peace plan that contains some provisions opposed by Kyiv and top U.S. military officials undertaking an unusual diplomatic assignment in the Ukrainian capital, according to people familiar with the developments. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who is leading the delegation, is the most senior Pentagon official known to have visited the war-ravaged country since President Donald Trump's return to the White House this year.
The trip, where he is scheduled to meet Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an attempt to revive talks with Moscow seeking an end to the war. "We are preparing to reinvigorate negotiations, and we have developed solutions that we will propose to our partners. Doing everything possible to bring the end of the war closer is Ukraine's top priority," Zelenskyy said of the visit.
Mingorrubio municipal cemetery, which sits where the suburbs of north-west Madrid fade out into the countryside, must have been something of a comedown for a man who was originally laid to rest with a 150-metre-high cross for a headstone and four enormous bronze archangels to watch over him. But six years after his remains were disinterred from the grotesque splendour of the Valley of the Fallen and flown by helicopter to Mingorrubio for reburial, Francisco Franco is at least in good company.
A Russian soldier, with his face blurred, poses in front of the bodies of three Ukrainian soldiers lying face down in a pool of blood, their hands clasped behind their heads. The image, shared by the Russian Rusich unit on its Telegram channel, is accompanied by an announcement for a contest: The first three people to submit a photo of prisoners who have clearly been erased from existence will receive a cryptocurrency reward.
Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his very large team of ministers, propagandists and members of the country's well-connected economic elite flew to Washington on November 7 to meet President Donald Trump, the first bilateral meeting of the two leaders since his return to power. The trip itself was unprecedented in its scale and unusual because of its historical context. A veritable spectacle. Trump has been pressuring Orban to align with his sanctions on Russian fossil fuels and purchase more American LNG.
New accounts filed by Laya Healthcare Ltd show that pre-tax profits increased by 108pc from €9.13m in 2023 to €19.02m last year. This followed revenues rising by 2.5pc from €100.85m to €103.39m. Last year Laya imposed two premium price hikes on its customer base. In October 2024, it increased its premiums on average by 6.5pc, stating at the time that the price rise was needed to address the increased demand for healthcare services and rising costs.
