Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters
Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni has cancelled all her engagements for the day to focus on actions to take in response to U.S. tariffs, a government statement said on Thursday. Meloni was supposed to attend in the afternoon the inauguration of a police station in a small town in southern Italy, her official agenda said.
Greek finance minister said on Thursday that the fresh tariffs imposed by the U.S. government on world trade were a historic shift towards protectionism and a deviation from how the European Union sees economic and social progress. “As a country, we are in favour of free trade,” Kyriakos Pierrakakis said in a statement. “We hope that this chapter will last as little as possible.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to fall off a stage on Thursday during a campaign event for May’s national election, but quickly recovered and insisted he was “sweet” afterwards. The leader of the centre-left Labor party, 62, was posing for photos following his speech at the Mining and Energy Union Conference held in New South Wales, when he stepped back and lost his footing, drawing gasps from the audience. Albanese promptly got back on his feet and gestured to the crowd with two hands that he was fine. Video footage from the event showed Albanese had tumbled off the…
NATO allies have pledged more than 20 billion euros ($21.65 billion) in military support for Ukraine in the first three months of the year, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday. Foreign ministers from the alliance meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss further support for Ukraine against Russia’s three-year-old invasion.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and discussed topics including military progress against Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis and possible solutions in Gaza. Trump said the call went very well.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin was open to normalising relations with Finland, which his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said were in a “sad state,” if Helsinki wanted to rebuild ties. Finnish President Alexander Stubb told his British counterpart Keir Starmer on Monday that Helsinki needs to “mentally prepare” for the restoration of ties with Russia. Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (800-mile) border with Russia, joined the NATO military alliance in 2023, which Moscow cast at the time as a dangerous historic mistake.
Ukraine will work with the United States towards a mutually acceptable text of a minerals deal that the two countries can sign, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Tuesday. Sybiha told a press conference that one round of consultations had already taken place on a new draft of the minerals deal and that an agreement providing for a strong American business presence in Ukraine would contribute to his country’s security infrastructure.
Ukraine will hold in-depth talks on Friday with a small group of foreign countries about contributing forces to a contingent that would act as a security guarantee for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. The Ukrainian leader told a news conference with Germany’s foreign minister that he was awaiting “more concrete” answers from Kyiv’s allies on their readiness to participate in such a force, an initiative Russia strongly opposes. “As far as the matter of a contingent goes, we will have a meeting on Friday. It will be a meeting of our military teams, several countries, a narrow circle…
Hard-right opposition leader George Simion led an opinion poll published on Monday, five weeks before the first round of a repeat presidential election that could determine whether Romania remains on its pro-Western course. The European Union and NATO member which borders Ukraine will repeat the two-round election on May 4 and 18 after the Constitutional Court voided the initial ballot in December following accusations of Russian meddling, which Moscow denied. With the cancelled election’s far-right frontrunner banned from running again, ultranationalists have regrouped around Simion, leader of the opposition Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), Romania’s second-largest party. An opinion poll…
Lithuania said on Monday rescuers have recovered the armoured vehicle of four missing U.S. soldiers that last week sunk in a peat bog in a military training area in the Baltic country, not mentioning the soldiers. The defence ministry said Lithuanian military police and U.S. investigators are still at work at the site. The soldiers and their vehicle went missing at the Pabrade training ground near the border with Belarus. “We will remain patient and focused as they gather more information about the situation,” it said on social media platform X. A large search and rescue operation was launched on…