Trans activists in Estonia have accused the state gender reassignment committee of obstruction and bias, and are demanding that the committee's chair be removed.

State Real Estate Ltd. (RKAS) has announced a public online auction for properties in Tallinn's Nõmme district that housed Tallinn Music High School from 1961 to 2022. The starting price is €6.09 million.

According to public‑opinion monitoring commissioned by the Government Office, Estonia's most trusted institutions remain the police and the president.

Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise says that when granting security agencies the powers needed in a difficult security situation, strong and substantive oversight must be ensured so that security is not guaranteed at the expense of fundamental rights.

Trans activists in Estonia have accused the state gender reassignment committee of obstruction and bias, and are demanding that the committee's chair be removed.

Estonian municipalities want to get kids reading more. One option may be for school and public libraries to team up more, making it easier for children to access books.

Suurbritannia peaminister Andy Burnham nimetas jalgpallimatšide ajal fännidele kehtestatud tribüünidel alkoholi joomise keelu diskrimineerimiseks.

Inimesed, kelle sünnikaardis domineerib üks nendest sodiaagimärkidest, peavad nägema veidi rohkem vaeva, et leida elus oma keskpunkt ning tunda ära, mis valikud on hetkel õiged. Kas kuulud ka nende hulka?

The satellite station is used in part to provide internet coverage to neighbouring Ukraine, the government says.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the measures as "common-sense tools that do not divide but really help to integrate".

Recorded incidents of violence and harassment against passengers and rail workers showed a sharp increase in the year to March.

Consumers are feeling the pinch from the rising cost of protein.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he told U.S. President Donald Trump that a 90-day diesel export ban being considered by the White House was a bad idea. “I think all the experts around him and all the American refiners can only tell him the same thing,” Macron said during a prime-time interview. “This decision would be a bad one — not just for the rest of the world, but for the U.S. economy as well.” The United States is currently the world’s largest exporter of diesel, according to ClearView Energy, and removing that supply from global markets would have far-reaching effects given how the conflict in the Middle East has already upended the global energy trade. “There is a war in the Middle East, and we are paying the price,” Macron said. The European Union has in recent months purchased more diesel from the U.S. to make up for lost supply that can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz, and shipments from across the Atlantic now make up more than half of all diesel imports to the bloc. Macron last week announced plans to chair a G7 meeting to look at releasing strategic oil stocks and held talks with the leaders of hydrocarbon exporters to secure supplies from alternative sources. During Thursday’s interview, Macron said France would deploy the military to help secure the Saudi port city of Yanbu, from which more than 5 million barrels of oil are shipped daily, after it came under attack by the Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The French leader has also tried to lobby Brussels to ease EU rules on the make-up of fuel and on methane emissions to help keep soaring energy prices under control, and his government this week announced it would spend €450 million to extend fuel subsidies enacted in March through the end of the year. But those moves have so far failed to move the needle, with diesel prices in France and the rest of Europe surging to record highs this week, according to analyses from Agence France-Presse. France has little fiscal space to further cushion the blow given its anemic growth, stubbornly high budget deficit and massive pile of debt. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said last week the government would propose a €54 billion budget squeeze to contain the deficit. Ben Munster and Geoffrey Smith contributed to this report.

Tech billionaire and artificial intelligence investor Peter Thiel criticized Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, accusing the pontiff of serving as a “useful idiot for the [Chinese Communist Party]” by calling on world leaders to regulate AI. During an interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer, the PayPal co-founder said the pope’s May encyclical would do nothing to rein in China’s AI ambitions — but could cause the U.S. and its allies to place onerous rules on the technology. “The Communist Party of China is not going to listen to the pope,” Thiel told Döpfner, “There’s a chance people in the U.S. will. And so in effect, the Pope’s encyclical was working for the Communist party.” “I’m not saying he was an agent of the communists, but he was at least acting as a useful idiot for the CCP,” Thiel added. Spokespeople for the Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The tech billionaire was speaking just ahead of Chinese leader Xi Jinping sitting down with President Donald Trump in Washington. As fears grow about the catastrophic risks of AI, lawmakers and tech executives have called on the two leaders to strike a deal that could slow the tech’s development or otherwise ameliorate those risks. Thiel has a history of harshly criticizing public figures who call for new regulations on technology. Last year, he compared climate activist Greta Thunberg and AI safety advocate Eliezer Yudkowsky to “the Antichrist,” which he warned would appear as “a Luddite who wants to stop all science.” Speaking in July in Colorado, Thiel accused the pope of inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” for advocating AI regulation. Thiel spoke with Döpfner in Berlin at a ceremony where he received the Axel Springer Award, which honors those “whose achievements have had a lasting impact on business, society, or technological progress He is a partner at Founders Fund, a venture capital group that is invested in OpenAI, Palantir, Scale AI and several other powerful AI firms.

US citizen injured after wrongly arrested by ICE in Illinois

The lawsuit comes two months after the state filed a similar lawsuit against competitor Kalshi.

Monthly ‘thank you’ payments for people hosting refugees to be cut from £350 to £100 from next yearUkrainian refugees in the UK fear they could be left homeless after the government quietly axed 70% of funding for hosts of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, reducing monthly “thank you” payments to them from £350 to £100.The scheme was launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has provided support for 181,000 of the 234,000 Ukrainians who have since sought sanctuary in the UK. Continue reading...

‘If you’re not in the internal market, you don’t get the same protection,’ says French minister of policy designed to curb Chinese competitionFrance is leading a push to exclude the UK from the EU’s “Made in Europe” policy that could result in British companies losing out in the race to supply European countries with low-carbon technologies and electric cars.The plans were raised by Andy Burnham when he met the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly earlier this week. Continue reading...

Western punitive measures have forced Moscow into costly workaround efforts

Conservationists worry that views of the Tower of London will suffer if more blocks are built in the financial district