Migration into the European Union pushed its population to a record 450.4 million people last year, offsetting a natural population decline for the fourth straight year, EU data released yesterday showed.

Police rescued 1,194 potential human trafficking victims and arrested 158 suspects in coordinated raids across 43 countries last month, the European Union’s law enforcement agency said yesterday.

The European Parliament yesterday gave final approval to a phased rollout of a new border check system for non-EU nationals which will do away with passport stamps.

The snow and ice accumulated in the Swiss Alps over the winter has already melted away, a monitoring service said yesterday, marking the second earliest arrival of a tipping point known as “glacier loss day”.

A stash of “unusually large” 2,000-year-old shoes dug up at a Roman site in northern England has left archaeologists searching for an explanation, they told AFP on Thursday.

A large aerial drone flies over the charred remains of Canadian forests devastated by wildfires, bombarding the ground with seed capsules to accelerate reforestation.

Southern Europeans braced Saturday for their first heatwave of the northern hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes thermometers on the world’s fastest-warming continent increasingly into the red.

France will ban smoking on beaches and in parks, public gardens and bus shelters from Sunday, the government said

A Russian strike yesterday killed five people and wounded more than a dozen in Ukraine’s industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, where Moscow has stepped up fatal bombardments.

Southern European countries yesterday braced for a punishing weekend heatwave, with temperatures predicted to hit up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and beyond, prompting health warnings for residents and tourists plus fears of wildfires.

For US President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin is a man looking for an off-ramp to his bloody three-year assault on Ukraine.

Scientists have found a way to use the bacteria E.Coli to convert plastic waste into a popular painkiller, a study said Monday, though outside experts doubted the technique would make a dent in the fight against plastic pollution.

Waves of Russian drones and missiles in and around Kyiv overnight killed 10 people including one child, lit up the night sky with fires in residential areas and damaged the entrance to a metro station bomb shelter, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.

In a bid to defuse the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, foreign ministers from Europe’s top three powers hurried to meet their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva.

Pro-Palestinian activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in central England yesterday, damaging and spraying red paint over two planes used for refuelling and transportation.

Pope Leo XIV yesterday warned of the potential consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) on the intellectual development of young people, saying it could damage their grip on reality.

A species of Australian moth travels up to a thousand kilometres every summer using the stars to navigate, scientists said Wednesday, the first time this talent has been discovered in an invertebrate covering vast distances.

The UK yesterday tightened its sanctions on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, imposing bans on 20 more ships and blacklisting 10 other people or bodies involved in energy and shipping.

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday criticised US President Donald Trump for his threats to take over Greenland, saying that was “not what allies do”, as he arrived in the Danish autonomous territory for a visit.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour -- the country’s highest distinction -- following a conviction for graft, according to a decree published yesterday.