The first stretch of an upgraded highway in central Estonia opens to traffic on Friday.

Despite being behind schedule, work is ongoing to electrify a stretch of rail line between Tartu and Tapa.

Political communication expert Annika Arras said that although parties should step up public discussion about the presidential election, the potential candidate should be someone who genuinely wants to run.

Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise has said she has not given her consent to be a presidential candidate ahead of this autumn's elections.

A European Environment Agency report ranks Estonia's bathing water quality among Europe's poorest. However, a marine biologist says that does not mean the country's beaches are unsafe for swimming.

Andre Farm, a cheesemaker based in Tartu County, has stopped selling its cheese through most major retail chains, saying the retail sales system has become too costly.

2022. aasta 24. veebruaril alustas Venemaa režiimi juht Vladimir Putin sissetungi Ukrainasse. Pärast seda, kui Ukraina lõi tagasi pealetungi Kiievile, on lahingute kese kandunud Ida- ja Lõuna-Ukrainasse. Postimees kajastab 1591. sõjapäeva sündmusi allolevas blogis.2026/ukraina-kalender 

Leedu presidendi Gitanas Nausėda sõnul on peaaegu kõik parlamendifraktsioonide juhid ühel meelel, et tuumarelvade paigutamist Leedu territooriumile keelav põhiseadusesäte on aegunud ja tuleks tühistada.

The latest barrage deployed the largest number of weapons on the capital and hit locations over a wide area.

Around 600,000 followers of the Society of Saint Pius X, a Catholic sect, are affected.

Wedding lists are being replaced by cash requests, but guests are divided over how much to give.

The government had initially said it would not relax licensing laws further for the World Cup.

LONDON — England is among the last 16 nations left in the World Cup after a tense win over the Democratic Republic of Congo, and hope is tentatively starting to spread that this tournament could finally end 60 years of hurt for the nation. This week’s Westminster Insider podcast explores the strange but powerful relationship between football and politics — and the unwritten rules politicians should follow if they want to use the unique emotional power of the beautiful game to their advantage. 1. Get your timing right It looks highly likely that Andy Burnham will become Britain’s new prime minister on July 20 — just one day after the World Cup final. If England were to lift the trophy, Burnham’s first day in office would coincide with a wave of national euphoria. History suggests this could be somewhat helpful to a new prime minister. Ten days before England’s 1966 World Cup triumph, then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson had introduced an emergency package of tax rises and spending cuts as Britain grappled with inflation and economic pressure. Morale was low. Then came Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick and England’s glorious win over West Germany.  England’s victory at Wembley gave the country a huge psychological lift — and boosted the standing of the government. Richard Crossman, then leader of the House of Commons, said in his diaries there was “a big change in Harold’s personal position.” But if Burnham is hoping for a well-timed World Cup-inspired polling boost on arrival, he should be aware that there are obvious risks if England doesn’t go all the way. In 1970, Wilson had hoped another deep England run would help create a feel-good factor before a general election. Instead, England surrendered a two-goal lead to West Germany in the quarter-finals just four days before polling day. After canvassing between the result and polling day, then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins reported that voters were despondent — less about the economy or immigration — but about who was to blame for England’s defeat.  Wilson lost to Ted Heath’s Conservatives. The electoral impact of the 1970 World Cup disappointment is still the subject of debate, though an intriguing fact has only added to the folklore: English voters swung more towards the Conservatives than Scotland and Wales.  2. Be authentic No discussion of the potential peril of mixing football and politics is complete without mentioning David Cameron. The former prime minister — supposedly an Aston Villa supporter — famously claimed to support West Ham during the 2015 election campaign. He later blamed a “brain fade” — but the damage was done. Scarlett McGwire, political commentator and former Labour adviser, says authenticity is everything. “One of the reasons it’s so important for politicians to be authentic is there’s this myth that politicians always lie,” she says. “If they’re not authentic, people think: if they’re lying about this, they could be lying about everything.” England captain, Bobby Moore with strikers Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst after winning the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley Stadium. | BIPPA/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Football fans can smell performative fandom instantly. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage recently faced criticism after posting what appeared to be recycled football content from Euro 2024 during this World Cup. Writer and journalist Adrian Goldberg says when politicians are genuine fans “football can just be a little bridge between the electorate and the prime minister.” Although this didn’t seem to help genuine Arsenal supporter Keir Starmer. 3. Remember the home nations Navigating football loyalties across the United Kingdom is hard. McGwire recalls former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s advisers deciding he was “too Scottish.” “[They] decided to get the Daily Mail in and he had to cheer on the English team. It was completely set up. Nobody believed it,” she recalls. Scottish Labour backbench MP Brian Leishman — a long-suffering supporter of the Tartan Army — is less concerned about courting England fans. “It would be intolerable if England won the World Cup,” he says. “I would hate it.” That result could boost support for Scottish independence, he adds — only half-jokingly. 4. There is no single football audience Football teams are cheered on by a wide range of people — from younger fans to older traditionalists, England obsessives to club loyalists, politically engaged supporters to those who simply want politics kept out of the game. That makes targeting your desired crowd crucial. Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was later seen by his advisers as too Scottish, holds the original football from England’s 1966 World Cup victory with German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck in 2006. | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Labour MP Kim Leadbeater sees football primarily as a force for connection. “It’s a powerful opportunity to show the kind of country we are,” she says. “The very best of people coming together.” But she warns against over-politicization. “Let’s use sport for good,” she says. For politicians, that balancing act is becoming harder as football increasingly overlaps with wider culture-war debates. Goldberg reckons the controversy over players “taking the knee” during the Black Lives Matter protests in the early 2020s left fans on the terraces divided.  “There were some fan bases where taking of the knee was booed, there were others where it was embraced and others where fans were kind of somewhere in the middle around that,” he says. “I’d say there was a substantial core of supporters who felt somehow uncomfortable about it,” he adds. Farage and his Reform UK party appear to be seeking the support of football fans with a campaign of turquoise football shirts, and visits to clubs like Ipswich Town. 5. It’s more than a game Football is never just football. Playwright James Graham, creator of the hit play and BBC TV series Dear England, argues politicians often underestimate football’s deeper social importance. He says that football matters not just every two or four years during major tournaments, but every single week, shaping people’s routines, their communities and even their identities. Amid the “hollowing out” of British civic life — declining high streets, weakened public spaces and fractured communities — the football stadium is one of the few places left where people still gather physically and collectively, he says. When people support their club, they are investing in something bigger than themselves: shared rituals, symbols, songs and belonging. “You have to turn up in person and in proximity with your physical community,” he says. Graham argues that politicians who understand this are more likely to connect to voters in what he sees as an age of growing disconnection, as people’s lives are increasingly shaped by AI, growth targets and digital life.  On whether Football’s Coming Home, Graham didn’t miss a beat: “Of course.”

ATHENS — Greece needs to cool its cozy relationship with MAGA, opposition leader and former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told POLITICO in an interview. Mapping out his agenda for a general election expected by next spring, the left-winger Tsipras criticized current conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for making excessive concessions to the U.S., contrasting him with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who blocked U.S. forces from using bases there. While much of Europe is turning its back on MAGA, Greece is doubling down on the relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump. Mitsotakis’ government has granted the U.S. open-ended access to pivotal military bases throughout the country — including its major naval base on Crete — instead of a regular renewal with renegotiation of terms. Tsipras said Mitsotakis had gone too far. “Greek-U.S. relations are strategic in nature and must be guided by mutual benefit,” he said. “The government is pursuing a policy of blank checks, and this does not serve our national interests.” Fifty-one-year-old Tsipras insisted the priority for the use of the bases had to be Greece’s domestic security, rather than just acceding to U.S. demands. “This is an issue that has arisen with great intensity during the recent war in Iran. We saw what the reaction of the Greek prime minister was, and what that of the Spanish prime minister was.” His pre-election stance that Greece should keep a greater distance from Washington is clearly intended to chime with widespread popular skepticism about Trump. In a survey by the Pew Research Center in late June, only 22 percent of Greeks surveyed expressed confidence in the U.S. president’s handling of international affairs. Tsipras, who lost power in 2019, gained international prominence as leader of the radical Syriza party that confronted Brussels and Berlin in high-stakes rounds of brinkmanship at the height of the eurozone debt crisis. He launched a new political party, Elas, in May, intending to unite the country’s fragmented opposition against Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party. He has already emerged as the No. 2 force in Greece, but still considerably behind the prime minister. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts New Democracy on 30 percent and Elas on 17 percent. An election is expected before Greece takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in July 2027. Should he be premier for that Council presidency, Tsipras said he would emphasize cohesion spending to reduce the economic disparities between EU regions, and raised the prospect of taxing big business more. “Social cohesion should be strengthened, and European own resources should be increased. This means there must be the political will to tax multinationals, as well as carbon emissions,” he said. Party supporters listen a speech by Greece’s former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images Given the security threats to Europe, Tsipras agreed that investment in the defense industry had to grow, but not at the expense of social spending. “If this happens, in a few years we will be left with an EU that is stronger in defense and governed by far-right governments.” Greece’s corruption tax Tsipras still faces the major challenge that Mitsotakis remains robustly in the top spot in polls. Despite a series of major scandals that have rocked the country — including the government’s botched response to Greece’s deadliest train crash and a massive fraud involving EU agricultural funds — the government has kept its lead, partly thanks to a highly divided opposition. Tsipras says that is exactly why he created his new movement. “The picture is not positive for the government,” he says, “but rather negative for the opposition, and that is why Elas was created.” Indeed, he stressed that public frustration with corruption would ultimately have to move the political needle. He cited polls showing that about 70 percent of Greeks want political change, that some 90 percent consider corruption is widespread and that around 55 percent said they were better off in 2019 than they are now. He observed that Greek households had to face a double hit over the past seven years: a high cost of living and widespread corruption. Annual inflation in Greece stood at 5.2 percent in May 2026, outpacing the broader euro area average of 3.2 percent. According to the 2026 UBS Global Wealth Report, wealth inequality has increased, with fewer and fewer people benefiting from the growth of total aggregate wealth. Even though net worth has been expanding steadily since 2020, the gap between the rich and the general population continues to grow. “We have the invisible corruption tax — and I call it a tax because I believe that the cost of the widespread and unprecedented levels of corruption in Greece is so great that it deprives social policy of resources,” he said. “Every euro lost through direct awards in public tenders and the misappropriation of European funds is a euro lost from public schools, teachers’ salaries, public hospitals, and nurses’ wages,” he added. When asked about the political implications of his reputation as a maverick radical from the eurozone crisis, Tsipras said many people only remembered his premiership for the wild first six months when Athens was on a precipice and liable to crash out of the eurozone. He portrayed himself instead as the leader of a party that finally steadied the ship. “There is an effort to focus on the first six months of the premiership from January to July [2015], but there is also the period before and after. The country didn’t enter the crisis because of our policies … We reached a difficult agreement, marked by conflicts and tensions, but ended the bailouts, restored the economy’s credibility and achieved positive growth rates.”

Powerful explosion as firefighters probe smoke at Tacoma apartment.

Cristiano Ronaldo pulls Portugal level before Goncalo Ramos wins it late on; Croatia have further goal ruled offside.

Yorgen Fenech said to have spent €400,000 on fees for men convicted of car bombing that killed investigative journalistA businessman accused of commissioning the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia spent more than €400,000 (£343,000) on legal fees for the hitmen convicted of her killing, prosecutors claim.Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to one of Malta’s largest fortunes, arrived in court for the second day of his trial on Thursday in an unmarked armoured police vehicle. He is on house arrest having pledged a record bail estimated at €50m. Continue reading...

NCA says offenders arrange to sexually assault and film victims via online networks with crimes often taking place in trusting relationshipsCriminal investigators in the UK say they have uncovered a “truly international network” of organised drug-facilitated sexual assault in which victims are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted.The National Crime Agency [NCA] has said online networks, “many as yet unidentified by law enforcement”, were allowing offenders to arrange to rape and abuse victims or arrange for sexual assaults to be filmed. Continue reading...

Prime minister in waiting says he will stick by Labour’s manifesto promises on tax

Attack with 74 missiles and nearly 500 drones follows Zelenskyy’s warning that Moscow was preparing ‘massive strike’