Britain’s competition watchdog yesterday launched an investigation into Google’s dominant position in the search engine market and its impacts on consumers and businesses.

Belgium was hit by a national strike yesterday, with air and rail traffic severely affected as workers protested against pension reform plans.

The downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines airplane shows that flying over Russia poses a “high risk” to civilian flights amid the war in Ukraine, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency said yesterday.

The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar “beyond what modern humans have ever experienced”, Europe’s climate monitor said yesterday.

The icy weather first hit Wednesday. The statement said rescue services have been called out to deal with traffic accidents, people falling in the snow and ice, flooding and other emergencies

There is not a “snowball’s chance in hell” that Canada will merge with the United States, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, while his foreign minister added the country will “never back down” from threats by Donald Trump.

Russia said yesterday it had expelled more than 80,000 migrants in 2024, nearly twice as many as in 2023, as the country toughens migration policies after last year’s Crocus City Hall terror attack.

Ukraine launched an overnight strike deep inside Russia that set fire to an oil depot in the city of Engels that serves an air base for Russian nuclear bomber planes, the Ukrainian military said yesterday.

Russia said yesterday that Ukraine had launched a counter-attack in the Kursk region, an area of western Russia from which Russian troops have been trying to eject Ukrainian forces for the past five months.

Gunmen ambushed a Pakistan convoy travelling to bring aid to a region besieged by sectarian fighting yesterday, local government said, wounding several officials despite a ceasefire announced three days ago.

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine, killing two civilians and injuring four others in the Kyiv region, the military and regional officials said yesterday.

British researchers have unearthed some 200 dinosaur footprints dating back 166 million years in a find believed to be biggest in the UK.

Seven out of 10 UK family doctors are worn out and suffering from “compassion fatigue”, finding it hard to empathise with their patients, a poll published Thursday said.

Five people died across Germany and a police officer was seriously injured from accidents linked to the powerful fireworks Germans traditionally set off to celebrate the new year, police said in a preliminary count.

Twenty migrants were missing Tuesday off the coast of Italy’s Lampedusa in a shipwreck in which seven people, including an eight-year-old Syrian child, were rescued, news media reported.

President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a New Year address that the country would move forward with confidence in 2025.

Former England soccer boss Gareth Southgate, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Paris Olympics gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson were among the hundreds named in King Charles's New Year honours list published on Monday

Germany’s government said yesterday US billionaire tech baron Elon Musk is trying to sway February elections by praising the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a move strongly rejected by major parties.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said yesterday that a passenger plane that crashed last week, killing 38 people, had been damaged by shooting from the ground in Russia, and he said some in Russia had lied about the cause of the disaster.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday dissolved parliament and confirmed the expected date for the early general election prompted by the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s government last month.