Chrystia Freeland takes on new role amid government shakeup in Kyiv as Ukrainian president replaces key figures
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has named Canada’s former finance minister Chrystia Freeland as an adviser on economic development, a move he says will help strengthen the “internal resilience” of the war-torn nation.
“Chrystia is highly skilled in these matters and has extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations,” he wrote on social media. “Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience – both for the sake of Ukraine’s recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defence if, because of delays by our partners, it takes longer to bring this war to an end.”
Le troisième ligne François Cros a repris l’entraînement collectif avec le Stade toulousain alors que l’ouvreur Romain Ntamack est incertain en vue du déplacement chez les Saracens.
La police suisse a annoncé avoir identifié toutes les victimes de l'incendie du bar Le Constellation survenue dans la station de Crans-Montana, en Suisse, dans la nuit du Nouvel An, et en avoir informé les familles. Sur les 40 morts, on compte 21 Suisses, neuf Français, 6 Italiens, un Belge, un Portugais, un Turc et un Roumain.
Bodies of first foreign victims repatriated after 40 people died in fire at New Year’s Eve party in Crans-Montana
All 116 people injured in the fire that tore through a bar in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana during a New Year’s Eve party, killing 40 mostly young partygoers, have been identified, police have said, as the bodies of the first foreign victims were repatriated.
Police in Valais canton said in a statement on Monday they had revised the number of wounded down from 119 because three people admitted to accident and emergency wards on Thursday morning had been wrongly recorded as injured in the blaze.
A surprise raid on the capital in the dead of night, ending with the capture of the country’s leader. By the following day, the invading power announces it will rule the nation for an indefinite period.
That was how Vladimir Putin envisaged his full-scale invasion of Ukraine playing out in February 2022. Instead, it was Donald Trump who pulled it off in Venezuela, in an operation condemned by many as illegal, whisking away the Kremlin’s historic ally Nicolás Maduro, who now faces trial in New York.
Le Royaume-Uni serait-il sur le point de réintégrer l’union douanière avec l'Union européenne (UE) ? Cinq ans après la sortie de l’UE, la question se pose régulièrement dans la classe politique britannique. Au sein du Parti travailliste actuellement au pouvoir, certains agitent l’idée. Mais le Premier ministre, Keir Starmer, la rejette. En partie seulement.
An attack by the United States on a Nato ally would mean the end of both the military alliance and “post-second world war security”, Denmark’s leader has warned, after Donald Trump threatened again to take over Greenland.
Fresh from his military operation in Venezuela, the US president said on Sunday the US needed Greenland “very badly” – renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of the Danish kingdom. Greenland’s foreign and security policy continues to be controlled by Copenhagen.
A Paris court has found 10 people guilty of online harassment of the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, by posting or reposting malicious comments on social media that claimed falsely that she was a man.
Eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60, including a school sports teacher, an art gallery owner and a publicist, were on Monday given sentences ranging from a compulsory course in understanding online harassment to an eight-month suspended prison sentence. One man, a property developer, who was absent from the trial hearings, was given a six-month prison sentence.
Eighty asylum seekers detained in preparation for being returned to France under the UK government’s controversial “one in, one out” scheme have called on UN bodies to investigate their treatment, claiming they have suffered “fear, humiliation and psychological distress” at the hands of the Home Office since arriving in the UK in small boats.
The detainees have compiled a document, “Report on conditions and treatment at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre”, which claims they have been treated unjustly by the Home Office since arriving in the UK on small boats. Harmondsworth is one of two detention centres close to Heathrow airport in London.
Subzero temperatures, heavy snowfall and powerful gusts mark a harsh start to 2026 for many
It has been a cold start to the year across much of Europe, particularly in central regions, where temperatures dropped to double-digit negatives. Heavy snowfall hit parts of eastern and central Europe on New Year’s Eve, notably in Poland and Ukraine, with similar conditions across the Alps on the first few days of the year.
The cold is likely to continue this week as an Arctic air mass sinks south across Europe, pulling temperatures well below the seasonal average outside south-east Europe. Temperatures are expected to fall widely by about 5C (41F) below average, with some areas – such as parts of central and north-eastern Europe – up to 10C lower than the norm. When wind chill is taken into account, it will feel even colder.
Mette Frederiksen says Denmark and Greenland have made it clear they reject US president’s statements
in Paris
Late last year, Brigitte Macron’s daughter has told a Paris court that false claims online that the French first lady was born a man had damaged her mother’s quality of life, leaving her worrying every day about the clothes she wears and how she stands.
Yulia Lemeshchenko was defiant and did not deny the accus ations, saying she had decided to fight against Russian military aggression
At the beginning of autumn 2023, Yulia Lemeshchenko stopped appearing at the Kharkiv gym where she trained most days. A driven athlete, whose talent for weightlifting led her to become champion of Ukraine in 2021, her disappearance prompted confusion among her training partners.
Months later, she resurfaced in a Moscow courtroom, accused of plotting sabotage and assassinations in Russia on behalf of the Ukrainian security services. Prosecutors claimed Lemeshchenko had blown up power lines outside St Petersburg and had later travelled to Voronezh, where she was staking out a Russian air force commander with a view to killing him.
The US president’s fears about ‘woke’ Europe are laughable. He would feel right at home in today’s EU
I expected the EU to push back strongly against Donald Trump’s new national security strategy. Not only does it show contempt for the EU and its “weak” leaders, but it also targets European citizens and migrants with racist dog whistles and barely disguised Islamophobia. Yet instead of a rousing defence of the bloc’s commitment to human rights and equality, there have just been bland platitudes.
António Costa, the president of the European Council, denounced Trump’s plans to boost support for Europe’s far-right parties. But there was no public challenge to the racist logic underpinning his argument. Costa, who has spoken proudly of his mixed ancestry, could have made a convincing counterargument to the US president’s false premise that Europe was heading for “civilisational erasure” because of migrants and, by extension, millions of Europeans of colour.
Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company
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Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had targeted Moscow with drones every day of 2026 so far. What we know on day 1,412
Russia’s defence ministry claimed that Ukraine has targeted Moscow with drones every day of 2026 so far, in what would mark an escalation from earlier, more sporadic attacks on the Russian capital. By midnight on Sunday alone, Russian air defence systems had destroyed 57 drones over the Moscow region out of 437 downed over Russia, the ministry said. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, but Kyiv has increasingly used long range drones to strike targets deep inside Russia. Ukraine says such attacks aim to disrupt military logistics and energy infrastructure, raise costs for Moscow’s war effort and respond to repeated Russian missile and drone attacks in the war that Russia launched nearly four years ago.
Three out of four of Moscow’s airports shut to air traffic on Sunday after Ukraine launched dozens of drones, authorities said. The attacks led to multiple flight delays, including at Moscow’s second-busiest airport of Vnukovo, Russian media reported. The disruption comes during Russia’s extended New Year and Orthodox Christmas break, when many Russians take vacations and travel domestically and abroad, making it one of the country’s busiest periods for transport and tourism.
Two people were killed in Ukrainian drone strikes in Russian border regions, local officials said on Sunday. Belgorod’s governor said one person died and two others, including a young child, were wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a car. Another person was killed in a drone strike on a village in the Kursk region, the region’s governor said.
Russia launched overnight strikes on Kyiv province killed two people, Ukrainian authorities said Monday, after a countrywide air alert was issued. One person was killed in the capital, according to Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the city’s military administration. And in the neighbouring city of Fastiv, a man in his 70s also died, Mykola Kalashnyk, the Kyiv regional governor, said.
In Ukraine, three people were wounded in the Kharkiv region in drone strikes from Saturday into Sunday, the country’s state emergency service said. Meanwhile, the death toll from a Russian missile attack on the city of Kharkiv on Friday increased to five when body parts were found under the rubble of a building, Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire in an industrial zone in the town of Yelets in Russia’s Lipetsk region, the regional governor said. There were no casualties reported. Yelets is home to the Energiya battery plant, a major producer of batteries and accumulators for Russia’s defence industry, which Ukraine said it has hit in the past.
C'est une mesure inédite en Europe qui a pour objectif de lutter contre l'obésité infantile : à compter de ce lundi 5 janvier, le Royaume-Uni bannit les publicités pour de la malbouffe à la télévision avant 21 heures. Alors qu'elles sont également complètement interdites en ligne, la mesure vise à renforcer la prévention en matière de santé.
La Première ministre danoise a exhorté, dimanche 4 janvier, les États-Unis à « cesser leurs menaces » d'annexion du Groenland après de nouveaux propos de Donald Trump en ce sens. Les déclarations du président américain, qui lorgne les importantes réserves en minerais du territoire arctique, avaient été précédées d'un tweet offensif de la femme du directeur de cabinet adjoint de la Maison Blanche.
Investigators have identified the last 16 people who died in the New Year’s Eve bar fire at the Swiss mountain resort of Crans-Montana, police said on Sunday.
Officers in Valais canton said they had managed to identify the last of the 40 bodies from the blaze, one of the worst disasters in recent Swiss history, with forensic work particularly slow-going due to the horrific burns sustained by most of the victims.
Protest over climate crisis and AI has cut power to tens of thousands of homes which may take days to fully restore
German leftwing militants protesting over the climate crisis and AI have claimed responsibility for an arson attack that cut power to tens of thousands of households in Berlin.
The fire that broke out on a bridge across the Teltow canal in the south-west of the capital early on Saturday could deprive up to 35,000 homes and 1,900 businesses of electricity – and in many cases heat – until 8 January, the grid company Stromnetz Berlin said.
European leaders emerged divided and torn as they tried to welcome the ejection of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, but still uphold the principles of international law that did not appear to allow Donald Trump to seize Nicolás Maduro, let alone declare that the US will run Venezuela and control its oil industry.
Europe tried to focus on the principle of a democratic transition, pointing out that the continent had not recognised Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela since what were widely regarded as fraudulent elections in June 2024.
Alors que l'enquête et l'identification des victimes du terrible incendie qui a fait 40 morts et 119 blessés dans un bar de Crans-Montana se poursuivent, une messe en mémoire des disparus a été célébrée dans la chapelle de la station, ce dimanche 4 janvier. Plusieurs centaines de personnes y ont participé.
A professor is challenging old assumptions about the iconic Bayeux Tapestry, proposing it was created for a refectory for monastic mealtime viewing rather than a cathedral.
Prime minister gives clearest sign yet that government is seeking to further deepen Britain’s links with Brussels
Closer ties with the EU single market are preferable to a customs union, Keir Starmer has said, in his clearest sign yet that the government is seeking to further deepen links with Brussels.
The prime minister said the UK should consider “even closer alignment” with the single market. “If it’s in our national interest … then we should consider that, we should go that far,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
Denmark’s prime minister has urged Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland after the president said the US “absolutely” needs the territory.
Mette Frederiksen said on Sunday: “It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the US needing to take over Greenland. The US has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom.”
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