Forecast is slightly cooler than the record 1.55C reached in 2024, but 2026 set to be among four hottest years since 1850

Next year will bring heat more than 1.4C above preindustrial levels, meteorologists project, as fossil fuel pollution continues to bake the Earth and fuel extreme weather.

The UK Met Office’s central forecast is slightly cooler than the 1.55C reached in 2024, the warmest year on record, but 2026 is set to be among the four hottest years dating back to 1850.

The film-maker, whose 1971 feature about queer life has been described as Germany’s ‘Stonewall moment’, married his long-term partner on Friday

Rosa von Praunheim, a key figure of the New German Cinema movement who made taboo-breaking films about queer life and scandalised the country when he outed German celebrities on live TV, has died aged 83.

German media reported that Praunheim died in Berlin in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just days after marrying his long-term partner at a ceremony in the German capital on Friday.

The EU has unveiled its first-ever housing strategy, but is it enough to see off the far right and rescue a generation shut out of affordable living?

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Donald Trump may rage about Europe being a multicultural hell facing “civilisational” collapse. As a proud real estate guy, however, he must be impressed by one feature of European life: the house prices, and the extent to which even progressive governments have abandoned housing to the markets.

Since 2010, average sale prices in the EU have surged by close to 60%. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, house prices have doubled in a decade. Rents, meanwhile, have increased by almost 30% on average in the last 15 years. The rent average masks dramatic spikes experienced in some countries: 208% in Estonia, 177% in Lithuania, 108% in Ireland and 107% in Hungary. If property has been a lucrative bet for wealthy investors, the cost of a home is a financial ordeal for millions of people whose incomes have been outpaced.

Social and environmental reporting to be required of fewer companies after EPP aligns with far right to achieve goals

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Fewer companies operating in Europe will be made to carry out due diligence on the societal harms they cause, in what green groups have called a “betrayal” of communities affected by corporate abuse.

The gutting of the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence rules, which was greenlit by MEPs on Tuesday, slashes the number of companies covered by laws to protect human and ecological rights, and removes provisions to harmonise access to justice across member states.