Category: Politico News

Only a state actor could have carried out attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines and the most likely culprit is Russia, said the former head of Germany’s federal intelligence agency. “An unnoticed, conspiratorial damage to pipelines at a depth of 80 meters in the Baltic Sea requires sophisticated technical and organizational capabilities that clearly point […]

DUBLIN — Bank of Ireland was hit with an Irish-record €100.5 million fine Thursday for overcharging nearly 16,000 mortgage customers and failing to redress the wrongs for more than a decade. Bank of Ireland admitted 81 regulatory breaches as part of regulators’ investigation into its refusal to keep providing low-cost “tracker” mortgages to customers, even […]

Finland is to close its border to Russian tourists, the government announced Thursday. Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said the border will be closed to Russians traveling to Finland for tourism or for transit purposes “until further notice.” The border will close at midnight on Thursday. Entry to Russians for family visits, as well as […]

BERLIN — The German government will take on €200 billion in fresh debt to implement a gas price cap aimed at shielding consumers and companies from high energy costs, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Thursday. “The German government will do everything in its power to bring [energy] prices down,” Scholz said at a press conference in Berlin, […]

The role of the European Union’s ex-digital chief in lobbying for Uber will be investigated by OLAF, the EU agency that hunts fraud and misconduct in the EU institutions. Uber’s lobbying practices from 2013 to 2017 were made public in July by a group of journalists in what they called the Uber Files, based on […]

BUCHAREST — A top U.S. official won a massive majority to lead the United Nations agency that sets global standards for telecoms and tech infrastructure. 139 countries voted for U.S.’s Doreen Bogdan-Martin against 25 casting their ballots for Russia’s Rashid Ismailov, choosing the American to lead the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the next four […]

PARIS — Ukraine’s Agrarian Policy Minister Mykola Solsky said today he cannot predict whether the deal brokered with the U.N. and Turkey to export grain via the Black Sea will be extended because Russian President Vladimir Putin is too “mentally” unstable. Speaking at POLITICO’s Future of Food and Farming Summit in Paris, Solsky said “it’s […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a signing ceremony on Friday formally annexing four areas of Ukraine after illegal sham referendums, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. The Russian president will make a speech at the Kremlin during a signing ceremony that will take place on Friday at 3 p.m. Moscow time (2 p.m. CET). […]

LONDON — Liz Truss insisted she needed to take “decisive action,” in her first public appearance since her government’s budget threw markets into turmoil. In a round of interviews with local BBC radio stations on Thursday morning, the U.K. prime minister refused to change course and said she had the “right plan.” Asked whether she […]

The Swedish coast guard confirmed Thursday that there are four leaks in the damaged Nord Stream pipelines, with two in the Swedish and two in the Danish exclusive economic zones. Jenny Larsson, an officer with the Swedish coast guard, said: “We have known about these two, which are in the Swedish economic zone, since we […]