The latest protests come after private meeting between Robert Fico and Vladimir Putin in December

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has rejected calls for his resignationafter tens of thousands demonstrated against his government’s policy shift closer to Russia.

About 60,000 people protested in the capital, Bratislava , on Friday and approximately 100,000 turned out for rallies in cities across the country, the largest demonstrations since Fico returned to power in 2023.

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Recently published in English for the first time, Esther García Llovet’s story pays tribute to the resort regarded by many as ‘the worst place in Spain’

Despite spending the summers of her youth in Fuengirola, watching the foreign tourists at play and devouring the English-language paperbacks she found in a little bookshop in the Andalucían town, nothing could prepare Esther García Llovet for the spectacular unreality of the place that inspired her noir novel Spanish Beauty .

“Benidorm is something of a myth in Spain – and a myth that no one goes to because there’s this stigma that Benidorm is the worst place in Spain,” says the writer.

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Experts suspect X owner’s interest in UK is to put pressure on authorities working to codify a new online safety law

For those wondering why Elon Musk, the tycoon newly infamous for his stiff-arm salutes , developed a sudden ferocious interest in the UK this month, the answer may lie in an arcane piece of online media legislation working its way gradually towards fruition.

In a ferocious flurry of tweets of his X platform this month, days before formally joining the Trump administration, the world’s richest man portrayed Britain as a dystopian “police state” run by a “tyrannical government” in which young working-class women are routinely kidnapped off the streets by gangs of immigrants.

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Transatlantic subsea cables serving Europe and the UK go to or near its shores – but some say recent suspected sabotage means Ireland must be able to defend itself

They are the bedrock of the internet, keeping everything from TikTok to emergency services, business, banking systems and political and military communications running smoothly.

But deep under the sea, the network of cables around British and Irish shores are being considered as increasingly attractive targets for military, terrorist or criminal actors after several incidents in the Baltics where internet cables were severed and internet communications were disrupted.

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The country’s most controversial politician, Michael Lowry, is the cornerstone of the coalition. That deal could haunt taoiseach Micheál Martin

The art of the stroke used to be a hallowed practice in Irish politics. To pull a stroke meant wiping the other fellow’s eye, by fair means or foul. The art might involve anything from “brown envelope” bribes and “nod-n-wink” sneaky deals to a type of sophisticated chicanery by outwardly unsophisticated politicians, known as “cute hoorism”. This was the culture of the Galway tent, so called because of an access-to-power fundraiser the Fianna Fáil party hosted for wealthy businessmen at the west of Ireland horseraces every summer.

Micheál Martin, who was – eventually – reinstalled as taoiseach on Thursday, after scenes of uproar in the Dáil the previous day, declared the age of the Galway tent dead more than 20 years ago, after state tribunals unearthed secret payments made by businessmen to Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern, his predecessors as Fianna Fáil leaders. Self-described as “a person of substance”, even Martin’s most ardent critics acknowledge his “decency”.

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Work that made its creator a superstar then mysteriously disappeared is mesmerising art lovers once more

It was commissioned by a Greek king, made its creator a superstar and in his native Denmark attracted crowds like no other painting before. Then it mysteriously disappeared.

Now, nearly nine decades after it was last seen gracing the stairwell of the royal palace that would become the Athens parliament, Carl Bloch’s masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound, has found fame again in Greece.

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Ukrainian president issues warning after Russia’s leader said he was ‘ready for negotiations’ with US counterpart on the war. What we know on day 1,067

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Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has warned that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is aiming to “manipulate” Donald Trump, after Putin praised the US leader and said he was ready for talks with him. “He wants to manipulate the desire of the president of the United States of America to achieve peace,” Zelenskyy said during his daily evening address on Friday. He said Putin was ready to continue the war and “manipulate the leaders of the world”.

Putin has said he is ‘ready for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine with Donald Trump and suggested it would be a good idea for them to meet. The Russian president struck a favourable tone towards his US counterpart, describing his relationship with Trump as “businesslike, pragmatic and trustworthy”. Putin echoed the US president’s claim that he would have prevented the war starting in Ukraine in 2022, and parroted Trump’s debunked assertion that the 2020 US elections were “stolen” from him.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has ordered a halt to virtually all US foreign aid , but made an exception for funding to Israel and Egypt, according to an internal memo to staff at the US state department. The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid – including potentially to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as it tries to repel a Russian invasion. The scope of the order was not immediately known and it was unclear what funding could be cut given that the US Congress sets the federal government budget.

North Korea is preparing to send more soldiers to fight in Ukraine, military officials in South Korea have said , despite reports of heavy casualties among troops from the communist state. South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement on Friday that four months after the North sent an estimated 11,000 troops to the Ukraine conflict – a significant number of whom have been killed or wounded – the regime “is suspected of accelerating follow-up measures and preparation for an additional dispatch of troops”.

Russian aerial attacks near Kyiv killed three people and wounded several others, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. “Three people were killed in an enemy attack in the Kyiv region,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media. Fragments of a drone had struck a 10-storey residential building after the head of the region said a private home had also been hit, it added.

An overnight Ukrainian attack involving more than 121 drones had targeted 13 Russian regions, Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday, but they were repelled. Ukraine’s military said the attack hit a Russian oil refinery and a microchip factory in the Bryansk region with a video posted online showing a giant plume of smoke and flames engulfing an oil refinery in the Ryazan region.

Tens of thousands of protesters flocked to a central square in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on Friday, waving banners opposing prime minister Robert Fico’s policy shift closer to Russia. Opposition parties last week said they were initiating a no-confidence vote against Fico’s government, but the prime minister has looked set to survive the vote. The latest round of protests come after Fico privately travelled to Moscow in December to meet Vladimir Putin, a rare encounter for an EU leader since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Sales of US military equipment to foreign governments in 2024 rose by 29% to a record $318.7bn as countries sought to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine and prepare for major conflicts, the US state department said on Friday. Sales approved in the year included $23bn worth of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, $18.8bn worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel and $2.5bn worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Romania.

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Around 60,000 people gather in Bratislava to oppose Robert Fico’s policy moves, with rallies also held in 20 other cities

Tens of thousands of protesters thronged a central square in the Slovak capital, waving banners opposing prime minister Robert Fico’s policy shift closer to Russia, amid rising tensions between the government and the opposition.

Organisers estimated 60,000 people attended Friday’s demonstration in Bratislava’s Freedom Square, about four times more than in the last demonstration two weeks ago.

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Researchers say study may help global efforts in controlling disease that still destroys crops today

It was a disaster that killed about 1 million people, devastating 19th century Ireland, but while the potato disease linked to the Irish famine is well known, a battle has raged over where it originated.

Scientists have long been divided over whether the fungus-like pathogen Phtytophthora infestans cropped up in the Andes or originated in Mexico .

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