German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would shutter all of its 17 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that they currently produce about 28% of the country's electricity.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask: Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?
Fresh from a £40m refit the Royal Navy helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious has begun two months of intensive training off the south coast of Britain. Once the training is completed, the Portsmouth-based warship will be the UK’s on-call helicopter carrier, ready for global missions.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has urged Tory MPs not to vote for a referendum on the UK remaining in the EU, saying it would be a distraction.
Occupy Wall Street inspired protestors were on the move on Friday in two emblematic places of both New York and in London: in the financial heart of Manhattan and before St Paul’s Cathedral.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced his long-awaited anti-corruption plan Friday including a pledge to re-open the case into the collapse of former marketing partner ISL.
France's push to use more European Central Bank money to fight the Euro zone debt crisis has run into strong resistance from Germany and other EU partners, leaving Paris increasingly isolated before a crucial summit.
NATO plans to end its seven-month air and sea campaign in Libya at the end of October, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday, the day after the death of Muammar Gaddafi.
President Barack Obama vowed to pull all US troops from Iraq this year, symbolically ending the war but dashing US hopes of leaving a few thousand troops to buttress a still shaky Iraq and offset neighbouring Iran's influence.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy congratulated Spain on Friday for the Basque separatist group ETA's ceasefire, branding it a “victory for democracy over violence”.