Although young people's loneliness is often discussed in public, demographer Mark Gortfelder rejected that notion. According to him, while people are still forming partnerships at the same rate, the main problem lies in the instability of relationships.

Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur (Reform) expects the EDF to present possible options by the end of the week for how Estonia could contribute to the mission protecting the Strait of Hormuz.

Minister of Energy and the Environment Andres Sutt (Reform) has completed a new version of the Climate Resilient Economy Act and plans to seek principled approval for it at the government's cabinet meeting on Thursday. The coalition plans to pass the law before next year's elections.

A bill that would define sexual intercourse without consent as rape has been sent to its second reading by the Riigikogu Legal Affairs Committee after additional amendments were added to define consent.

Although young people's loneliness is often discussed in public, demographer Mark Gortfelder rejected that notion. According to him, while people are still forming partnerships at the same rate, the main problem lies in the instability of relationships.

The Riigikogu on Wednesday passed a law with 76 votes in favor requiring all conscripts entering compulsory military service to have at least B1-level proficiency in Estonian starting at the beginning of 2027.

Saksamaa kergejõustikuliit teatas esimesed sportlased, kes osalevad augustis Birminghamis algavatel Euroopa meistrivõistlustel.

Neljapäeval kavatseb valitsus kabinetiistungil anda kliimakindla majanduse seadusele põhimõttelise heakskiidu ning saata see parlamenti, et seadus saaks vastu võetud veel enne valimisi. Postimehe meelest ei ole kiirustamine hea mõte ja seaduse üle võiks otsustada järgmine valitsus.

Six people have been killed after Zelensky warned of "more waves" of Russian strikes through Wednesday.

The ship, which set sail from Belfast on Friday, is at port in Bordeaux after 49 people fell ill from gastrointestinal illness.

The travel operator says customers are delaying booking holidays over Iran war concerns.

A cyber security expert says deleting chat history could lead to a lack of accountability if things go wrong.

PARIS — Team Brigitte is slapping back against allegations her relationship isn’t perfect. A person close to the First Lady, granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, told POLITICO that Brigitte Macron “has categorically denied” allegations that her dust-up with her husband last year caught on camera was due to revelations of his purported relationship with an actress. The claim was made in a new book about the pair, “An (almost) perfect couple,” by Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif. Tardif writes in his book, which went on sale Wednesday, that Brigitte “lost her temper” while the two were on the plane in Vietnam after discovering by mistake a message on his phone from Iranian-French star Golshifteh Farahani. Speaking on RTL radio on Wednesday, Tardif alleged that President Macron maintained a “platonic relationship” with Farahani for several months. However, some exchanges — which Tardif said he was forwarded by people close to Macron — “went quite far,” the journalist said. Tardif said one message sent to Farahani said: “I find you very attractive.” Golshifteh Farahani attends the Grand Dîner du Louvre at Musee du Louvre on March 3, 2026 in Paris. | Aurore Marechal/Getty Images The Elysée, which initially called the reports of the slap fake news and later dismissed the incident as “horseplay,” has not given an official response. An individual close to the French president, also granted anonymity to discuss the matter, said Brigitte Macron’s team denies the allegations. President Macron himself said last year the ordeal had been blown out of proportion and he was “joking with [his] wife.” Still, however, the incident attracted much media attention worldwide. Even U.S. President Donald Trump joked about it last month. Farahani has previously shot down rumors of a relationship with Macron but has not publicly commented on the allegations in Tardif’s book.

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve by a 54-45 vote, giving the former Wall Street banker a shot at overhauling an institution that he has long criticized. Warsh got the support of only a single Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, presaging a rockier relationship with Congress than his predecessor, outgoing Chair Jerome Powell, enjoyed. He enters the job at a fraught moment for the central bank, with President Donald Trump aggressively pushing for the Fed to sharply lower interest rates — a move that Powell resisted for more than a year. Warsh might also find that task difficult to pull off anytime soon, given surging energy, food and wholesale prices triggered by the war in Iran and internal divisions on the Fed. But the incoming chair, who previously served on the Fed board from 2006 to 2011, also has a host of other ambitions for the world’s most important central bank. Warsh has said he wants to reform some of the Fed’s decades-old tools, including how it tracks what’s happening in the economy and how it communicates with the public and financial markets. He argues that Fed officials talk too frequently about how they expect the economy to evolve, in ways that are more of a distraction rather than providing useful information, given the inherent uncertainty of such predictions. “Fed leaders would be well-served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings,” he said last year at an International Monetary Fund event. “The swivel chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counter-productive.” Warsh has also said the Fed’s practice of buying trillions of dollars in U.S. government debt and bundled mortgages, which it has done after global crises to boost the economy, leads to distortions in the prices of stocks and bonds. He has expressed a desire to shrink those asset holdings, a process that some warn could be disruptive to markets. His disagreements about those policies with then-Chair Ben Bernanke — with whom he had worked closely during the financial crisis —led him to depart from the Fed’s board in 2011. Warsh, 56, has spent his years since leaving the Fed as a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and as a partner in the private firm of the legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller. Prior to his central banking experience, he worked at Morgan Stanley and then as a staffer in President George W. Bush’s White House. Warsh is married to Jane Lauder, the granddaughter of cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder. He is worth at least $131 million, according to his financial disclosures, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized him for not disclosing details on many of his investments. Warsh said at his confirmation hearing that he had agreed to divest “virtually all” of those assets and move into all “plain vanilla” holdings.

Russia has launched a massive daytime drone barrage across Ukraine, killing at least six people.

A Qatar-based professor has pioneered a non-invasive eye scan to detect neurodegenerative diseases in minutes.

Brand owner Mondelēz was accused of reducing weight of Alpine Milk bar from 100g to 90g without significantly altering the packagingMany chocolate lovers consider shrinkflation a serious crime – and they have been vindicated after a German court ruled that the makers of Milka cheated consumers by cutting the bar’s size, while keeping the wrapper the same.The three-week case in a regional court was brought by Hamburg’s consumer protection office. It accused the chocolate brand’s US owner Mondelēz of deceiving shoppers by cutting the weight of Milka’s classic Alpine Milk bar from 100g to 90g without significantly altering the distinctive purple packaging. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here:Streeting to resign and challenge Starmer, allies sayLibby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.An odd dispute of interpretation has emerged overnight between the Scottish and UK governments. Yesterday evening a Scottish government spokesperson announced that, during a call between first minister John Swinney and prime minister Kier Starmer, both parties agreed to meet face to face next month to discuss a referendum on independence.It is particularly welcome that the prime minister agreed to meet next month to discuss a referendum on independence.The PM committed to meeting to discussed shared issues including the cost of living.As the PM told the first minister, the manifesto this government was elected on was unambiguous that ‘Labour does not support independence or another referendum’. Our position remains unchanged.We, in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, had a devastating set of election results and we were simply unable to articulate our offering, or indeed critique, of the SNP government because of the noise created at the centre.Therefore, we became, and the prime minister became, the inadvertent midwife of a fifth-term SNP government. And that scenario you saw then, people waiting for a speech to try and articulate his new direction, a strategy, and it simply was not forthcoming.This is not one faction of the Labour party. This is about the Labour party articulating, I think, now a commonly held view that this is unsustainable and unstable. Continue reading...

Study suggests Neanderthals had cognitive ability, dexterity and social support comparable with modern humans

Moscow and Kyiv lose faith in Donald Trump’s diplomacy even in the event of Iran war ending