Lietuvoje ketvirtadienį viešės Juodkalnijos prezidentas Jakovas Milatovičius, vizito metu jis susitiks su prezidentu Gitanu Nausėda.

Vilniaus apygardos teismas ketvirtadienį skelbs nuosprendį advokatą nužudžiusio ir kelis policininkus sužeidusio Igorio Moskaliovo byloje.

Moscow says it is "ready in principle" to resume peace talks and US President Donald Trump says the world is "the closest we've been" to ending the war.

President Vladimir Putin does not feel under pressure right now to end the war, the BBC's Russia Editor writes.

For the first time, the Treasury calculates how much the UK could have raised by investing North Sea proceeds.

The vulnerabilities with PHP, a programming language widely used across the internet, have been described as the most significant ever found by AI.

Trade unions, unanimously disappointed after their meeting with the government, are calling for a large mobilisation on 5 November. The CGT's general secretary is urging workers to "generalise the strike".

The pontiff needs no further treatment, his doctors said, eight days after an hour-and-a-half operation on his right lung.

Czech President Petr Pavel says a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine was “quite close” – until President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel.  In an interview conducted on Tuesday with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO, Pavel said coordinated U.S.-European sanctions on Russian oil, oligarchs, and other industries were putting Russia “under strain.” But the deal Trump announced earlier this month, in which Russia would supply hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel to the U.S., gave Russia “time to breathe.” “It will be much harder now,” said Pavel. “Russia uses this momentum to get out of pressure, and it’s kind of a moral boost for them.” The White House on Wednesday said Trump “successfully negotiated” the deal in order to supply the global market with “massive amounts of diesel and bring prices down.”The deal quickly drew backlash and, at one point, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators urged Trump to rescind the deal. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that the deal “plays into Russia’s hands” and allows Russia “to kill more, wage war for longer, have even less respect for America, and inflict even greater losses and damage on the world.” He accused Trump of using peace talks in Florida as a “smokescreen” as the administration pursued its deal with Russia. Zelenskyy’s criticism was the latest indicator of rising tensions between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustrations with Zelenskyy, accusing him of elongating the war. By contrast, of late he has spoken warmly of Putin and said this week that “Russia frankly has been fine on Ukraine.”  But Pavel offered the Ukrainian president words of support on Wednesday.  “I believe that President Zelensky and the whole of Ukraine is a victim of a conflict,” said Pavel. “So, I would be probably the last to blame Ukraine for being guilty of the conflict. It was not Ukraine who attacked Russia. It was not Ukraine who was threatening Russia.” He added that Trump shows a more open approach to Russia than any European leader.  “To some extent, he may be attracted by Vladimir Putin as a leader with authority, but I don’t think that … President Trump sees it from a position of a struggle between democracy and autocracies because he’s looking at it simply from the point of view of economic prosperity for the United States,” Pavel added.   Though Pavel indicated concerns about the diesel deal, he declined to say the U.S. had betrayed Ukraine or other European partners.  “I don’t know yet if we can call it betrayal, but I would call it a mistake,” he said. “Because … it’s now giving Russia a new hope: New hope that they can disregard Europe, they can disregard Ukraine, they can focus on making a deal with the United States, potentially with China, and arranging all things up to their priorities and strategies. I believe that it’s clearly against our interest in Europe.” Pavel also didn’t rule out a future in which European countries would buy Russian oil, but added that it “will take time” before that happens.  “If one day Russia is a country respecting other countries’ sovereignty and borders, why not have regular business with such a country? But Russia is not there yet,” he said. 

ROME — Former paratrooper General Roberto Vannacci portrays himself on social media as a Roman legionary and charioteer. He has declared he prefers women “without skirts” and posted an AI-generated image of a female junior minister with exaggerated cleavage. None of these projections of masculinity and anti-woke culture are clumsy gaffes. The insurgent far-right star of Italian politics is making a deliberate play to the so-called manosphere to transform himself from an internet provocateur into a heavyweight political force. For Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Vannacci now poses a serious problem as she needs to decide whether he is an asset or a liability. With elections expected next spring, his National Future party is polling at about 8%, making him a potentially crucial factor in building a right-wing coalition. “It is disgusting to think you can manipulate the image of a woman for such deplorable propaganda,” the center-right junior minister in Meloni’s coalition whose image was manipulated, Matilde Siracusano, told POLITICO.  “I don’t think we have ever sunk this low, especially from someone aspiring to be a national political leader.” Vannacci’s provocations may look like familiar trolling from a politician who has built his reputation on saying the unsayable. But behind them lies a broader political project, tapping into the grievances of young men who feel alienated by feminism and progressive culture. Emanuele Pozzolo, a National Future parliamentarian who defected from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, believes young men have become increasingly constrained in their relationships with women. “I think young Western men are very often almost castrated in their instinct for dealing with women,” he said, arguing that even legitimate romantic approaches risk being treated as aggression.  “The cultural problem is that sometimes everything seems to be harassment, everything abuse, everything violence,” he added, while stressing that genuine abuse must be punished. Mediterranean patriarchy Vannacci combines inflammatory online messaging and an alpha-male persona with a political program that promises to restore traditional roles for men and women. National Future even has a name for its preferred social order: “Mediterranean patriarchy.” Its political program calls for the formation of “strong men” capable of controlling their emotions and passions, protecting women and sacrificing themselves for society. It opposes the recently introduced crime of femicide, condemns feminism, and declares the defense of life “from conception to natural death” and the “natural family” among its non-negotiable values. The architect of this vision and principal author of the program is Lorenzo Gasperini, a conservative Catholic philosophy teacher from Tuscany, who has opposed vaccines and abortion rights on social media and blamed feminism for violence against women. The result is a political offering that combines different traditions: conservative Catholic ideas about family and sexuality, older Italian ideas of virility and the much newer online politics of male grievance. Giorgia Meloni speaks at a press conference in Prague on Sept. 29, 2026. | Milan Kammermayer/AFP via Getty Images The manifesto seeks to put traditional family values into practice with proposals to pay parents who leave work to raise children, and reward parents of large families with tax exemption and public sector jobs.   Some proposals echo Benito Mussolini’s fascist-era “Battle for Births,” which offered similar incentives while promoting motherhood as a patriotic duty. Luca Sforzini, a former Vannacci ideologue who has since broken with him, said the Mediterranean label was a clever piece of marketing. “It’s like talking about the Mediterranean diet,” he told POLITICO. “You think of Italian food, mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil.” The result, he said, was to conceal a patriarchal model with men above women behind “bucolic, positive images. It’s monstrous,” he said. Pozzolo rejected the suggestion that the program advocates for male supremacy. “It is exactly the opposite,” he said. “When we talk about Mediterranean patriarchy, the main idea is to recover, preserve and pass on the responsibilities of being a man within the family and society.” Men, he argued, had a duty to show women respect, love and protection, while rejecting violence or coercive control. He defended the “without skirts” remark as “extremely funny” — picking up on a reference to Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani advocating long skirts — and not remotely offensive, comparing Vannacci’s ability to connect with ordinary Italians to Silvio Berlusconi’s.  At a recent rally in the Umbrian city of Orvieto, Vannacci defended the Mediterranean patriarchy concept as not “oppression and possession” but “duty, fidelity, sacrifice,” and said it was the family model that had allowed “us to prevail over the last 2,000 years.” Elisa Ercoli, president of the women’s rights organization Differenza Donna, condemned the program as “a return to the supremacy of the white, cisgender alpha male, and the woman as his handmaiden.” Appealing to alphas Vannacci, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, became a media sensation in 2023 with the self-published book “The World Upside Down,” a broadside against immigration, feminism and homosexuality. In it, he told gay people: “You are not normal, get over it.” Lionized by fans as a defender of common sense against progressive politics, he received more than half a million votes as a candidate for the anti-immigration League in the 2024 European elections, before founding National Future in February. Polling analysis suggests that about 62% of National Future’s prospective voters are male, including strong support among manual workers and the unemployed. Vannacci speaks during the National Future’s constituent assembly in Rome on June 14, 2026. | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images Pozzolo denied National Future was deliberately targeting male voters, insisting the party’s ambition was to reach Italians of all backgrounds who felt unrepresented. Federica Formato, a lecturer at Brighton University in the U.K., who studies gender and the far right, said Vannacci was “testing the waters” to see whether he can reach a younger male audience, tapping into what she described as the “aggrieved entitlement” of young men. A career soldier, he has repeatedly portrayed himself through images of physical strength, competition and military prowess. On social media, AI-generated versions proliferate of Vannacci as an ancient Roman in scenes recalling the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator. For Formato, the Roman imagery projects “virility and hyper-masculinity,” while Vannacci’s army background itself helps construct the image of an “alpha male.” Humor, memes and deliberate provocation are particularly effective with a younger online audience, Formato said, allowing relatively complex ideological messages to be reduced to instantly comprehensible images. “He is not naive,” she said. “He says things to provoke and get more attention.” That presents Meloni with a headache. Vannacci’s party is drawing voters from her Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League, while offering a more uncompromising platform on immigration, social issues and foreign policy. Yet Vannacci has opened the door to an alliance with Meloni if she needs his votes. He has described National Future as a natural partner for the center-right, while insisting that any deal must respect his party’s principles. With Italy’s new electoral law offering a parliamentary majority bonus to coalitions winning at least 42 percent of the vote, those votes could matter. That presents Meloni with an uncomfortable choice: Keep Vannacci outside the coalition, or bring into her government a movement whose appeal rests partly on the grievances of men who believe feminism has gone too far. For Formato, Vannacci is exploiting a space in Italian politics that has so far lacked a figure capable of turning those grievances into an organized political constituency. Vannacci, with his promises to restore traditional masculinity, appears determined to occupy it. “There is an empty chair,” she said.

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Russia frees American Stephen Hubbard after 4 years behind bars

Russia frees Stephen Hubbard after US request while Steve Witkoff praises Putin, wanted by ICC as war criminal, as a ‘humanitarian’Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American man from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine. Continue reading...

Author withdrawn from France’s Prix Goncourt last month has repeatedly denied using artificial intelligence to write novelThe publisher of top-selling Haitian Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien, who was removed from France’s most prestigious literary prize list last month, has confirmed the author used artificial intelligence to help write his novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die).Orélien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel and, last week, Canadian publisher Les Éditions du Boréal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. Continue reading...

Transaction would enhance London Stock Exchange Group’s services for customers

Steve Witkoff discusses resumption of peace dialogue with Russian president followed by US-China-Russia meeting next month

French police banned protests in parts of Paris on Thursday as authorities braced for further demonstrations following some of the worst street unrest in years. The restrictions came after President Emmanuel Macron appeared to accuse US President Donald Trump of exploiting the violence for political gain ahead of US midterm elections. Follow our liveblog for the latest updates. 

Russian missiles struck Kyiv overnight, wounding six people and forcing residents into shelters, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday, hours after Moscow signalled readiness to resume US-mediated peace talks. President Donald Trump said negotiations were closer than ever to ending the war, though the Kremlin expressed doubts over Ukrainian and European proposals.

Tanks and gunfire mark renewed clashes on the outskirts of Taiz. Inside the Yemeni city, mounting rubbish and blocked roads are raising concerns about public health.

Thousands of protesters marched through Athens on Wednesday 21 October, demanding greater investment in education. Crowds filled the streets of the capital, waving banners, chanting slogans and beating drums as they made their way past the Greek parliament.