The Ministry of Finance continues to see a need for the state to retain its holdings in Levira, Eesti Loto, Eesti Energia and RKAS. The state justifies retaining its stake in the former on security grounds.

The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Vabamu has named researcher Dr Maarja Merivoo-Parro as its next executive director, who will take over the position in August 2026.

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.

There were no significant changes in party popularity ratings over the past week. Isamaa leads, with a 3.4 percentage point advantage over the second-place Center Party.

The Ministry of Finance continues to see a need for the state to retain its holdings in Levira, Eesti Loto, Eesti Energia and RKAS. The state justifies retaining its stake in the former on security grounds.

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.

Euroopa Liidu Venemaa veeldatud maagaasi (LNG) import tõusis aasta esimeses kvartalis kõrgeimale tasemele alates Moskva 2022. aasta sissetungist Ukrainasse, selgub täna avaldatud uuringust.

Kulumisest tingitud põlvevalu vaevab paljusid, kuid peotäie rohtude neelamisele või keerulistele aparaatidele leidub ohutum alternatiiv. Ligi 10 000 patsienti hõlmanud mahukas uuring lükkab ümber senised arusaamad ja näitab, millised lihtsad lahendused toovad tegelikult suurima leevenduse.

Andriy Yermak was named by Ukraine's two anti-corruption agencies as a suspect in a money-laundering scheme.

She told an EU summit that an expert panel was due to come up with steps on how to protect minors online by July.

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

The biggest tech firms are set to sell millions of smart glasses despite growing privacy concerns.

The walls that once kept Chinese electric vehicles out of the western economies are quickly developing some major cracks. That’s made the U.S. auto industry and lawmakers nervous that President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing for a Thursday summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping could accelerate the entry of cheap EVs, wiping out the nascent U.S. EV sector at a time when fuel costs are soaring because of the U.S. war against Iran and rising car prices are souring public sentiment. “The only thing that terrifies me is BYD,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), whose family built a car dealership company before he entered Congress, said last week at an event in Washington. “The fact that it’s so inexpensive would destroy every other car company’s investment in electric vehicles.” For now, the U.S. market is off limits to Chinese EVs due to a combination of national security regulations and a 100 percent tariff. A flurry of new legislation backed by the top auto lobbying organization and manufacturers along with bipartisan warnings from Congress to Trump to avoid deals are evidence that U.S. automakers are in a panic over the potential entry of Chinese EVs or manufacturing investment. “They’re absolutely more than worried — they’re scared stiff,” said Michael Dunne, chief executive officer of Dunne Insights, an automotive consultancy. “Imagine if the Chinese come in with a $25,000 EV. That could catch like wildfire.” While Cabinet officials insist protecting the auto sector is non-negotiable in the talks at this week’s summit, Trump himself has opened the door to Chinese investment. “If they want to come in and build the plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors, that’s great,” Trump told the Detroit Economic Club in January. “I love that. Let China come in, let Japan come in. They are and they’ll be building plants, but they’re using our labor.” Lawmakers have focused on national security concerns to dissuade Americans from fantasizing about Chinese vehicles they can’t buy. They also have championed protecting the nation’s industrial core and the jobs they represent, pointing to European struggles to save auto jobs from Chinese competitors. Michigan Reps. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, and John Moolenaar, a Republican, co-sponsored legislation Monday to codify bans on Chinese models because of software and hardware that collect personal information like location data. Democratic Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno — who also made his fortune from car dealerships — introduced a version in the Senate, S. 2040, last month. “I think we all understand the desire for a cheap car, just like I understand my nieces and nephews wanting to use TikTok and not caring that their data goes back to Beijing,” Slotkin said at a recent Washington event. “We have to care as leaders, even when people are laser-focused just on cost.” Unpredictable Trump Trump’s proclivity for splashy trade announcements and his previous stance on the Chinese car companies could set the stage for the U.S. to lower the barriers that have so far closed the country off to their EVs. For China, there is no bigger prize than accessing the U.S. market — a goal that could come into play in Trump’s long pursuit of an elusive trade deal with the world’s second-largest economy. That backdrop has raised anxiety in the U.S. automotive sector that customers could be drawn to the cheaper Chinese vehicles, particularly as U.S. drivers contend with gasoline prices at four-year highs and Republicans’ repeal of buyers’ incentives last year. Chinese EV-maker BYD markets its Seagull model at $7,800 in China, far less than the $29,000 Chevy Bolt, the cheapest EV available in the United States. Praise from mainstream news outlets like the Wall Street Journal has also helped dispel the perception that Chinese models are cheap knock-offs, and videos on TikTok are fanning the flames by appealing directly to American consumers. The White House, in a statement, rejected the notion that it would allow any technology that would threaten U.S. national security. “While the Administration is always seeking more investment into America’s industrial resurgence, any notion that we would ever compromise our national security is baseless and false,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. Automakers speaking to POLITICO expressed fears that Chinese EV brands could pose an existential threat to their business and impose security risks on American consumers. Some experts also said the entry of Chinese firms could undercut U.S. efforts to grow its EV sector — as they did in Europe, where they quickly gobbled up market share. But consumer interest remains significant despite those warnings. Thirty-eight percent of Americans would consider buying a Chinese vehicle if they were available, compared with 39 percent who would not, according to a February survey by Cox Automotive, Inc. Making inroads in Europe and Canada The U.S. firewall on Chinese EVs remains in place, however, as other countries are lowering theirs. Canada reversed protectionist trade measures earlier this year to embrace new Chinese EV imports — those first shipments landed this week. Under the terms Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to, Canada will import enough Chinese cars to comprise 20 percent of its EV market. Canada’s Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told POLITICO last week the joint ventures with Chinese EV companies could help boost Canadian manufacturing productivity. In Europe, Chinese models grabbed their highest share ever late last year, putting German automakers on edge. Manufacturing investment has followed suit: On Friday, Dutch-based Stellantis announced a deal to produce electric vehicles with Chinese firm Leapmotor at two sites in Spain. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government has resisted tariffs, which enabled cheaper Chinese models to get a sizable foothold in the market. Chinese cars represented 4.9 percent of new car registrations in the U.K. in 2024, 9.7 percent in 2025 and 14.6 percent in the first four months of 2026, according to figures shared by the U.K. automobile industry group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The U.K. experience may be instructive for Trump. In a sign of the political ramifications of an open-door policy, the increasingly common sight of a BYD or Jaecoo (the U.K.’s best-selling car in March) on British streets has sparked a backlash among Trump-aligned, right-wing opposition to Starmer’s Labour Party. Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party, currently topping opinion polls, has threatened to erect trade barriers to protect domestic manufacturing. “British car makers currently don’t stand a chance against unfair Chinese competition,” Reform’s economy spokesperson Robert Jenrick said last month, raising the prospect of tariffs and quotas should his party win power. A U.K. government spokesperson said the country was “open to global investment into the sector, including from China” and that ministers would “continue to engage closely with industry to ensure our approach reflects the sector’s and the U.K.’s national interests.” The spokesperson responded anonymously as per typical U.K. government procedure when asked for comment. Automakers look for lessons abroad U.S. automakers and their allies have warned of European automakers’ struggles to beat cut-rate Chinese pricing. They have claimed Chinese promises to invest in manufacturing are vaporware, arguing they would cut out U.S. suppliers to source from supply chains that rely on lower-cost foreign labor. A U.S. auto executive who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations said three senior administration officials insisted the auto sector would not be on the negotiating table for Trump’s visit. That the U.S. industry and its boosters have rallied their Washington allies for this week’s summit is an indication that they are anxious about any unscripted dialogue between Trump and Xi. “I hope it isn’t on the agenda. But we are also doing everything we possibly can to keep it off the agenda,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition of U.S.-based companies. “There’s a great deal of concern about this one.” Paul’s organization’s 54,000 members have spent weeks urging their congressional representatives to amplify that message, aiming to snuff out even the whiff of a deal that would give Chinese automakers access to the U.S. market. Chinese investment was a “Trojan horse” for the auto sector, which he said accounts for one in nine U.S. manufacturing jobs. Chinese automakers’ entry would kill the “green shoots” of the burgeoning U.S. EV fleet, such as Ford’s forthcoming midsize Ranchero EV pickup targeted for $30,000 and the reintroduction of the Chevy Bolt. Few automakers and analysts see Trump reversing course to allow imports to the U.S., which they say would undermine his America First trade policy to bring manufacturing back to the country. And for now, some experts say the Chinese sector may be wary of stirring up opposition that undercuts its long-term growth. “I don’t think Chinese automakers are going to take the risk, even if they have the opportunity,” said Jacob Gunter at MERICS, a German research organization focused on China, adding that European automakers reeling at home from Chinese competition can continue to have confidence the U.S. market will be ringfenced for the near future. But one foreign auto executive said Trump’s penchant for dealmaking and splashy announcements was worrisome. Imports are not the biggest concern, the person said, rather, it’s the promise of investment in U.S. states that could bring jobs and, in Trump’s mind, votes. Such a deal would likely see financial markets ding Western companies because it would raise the prospects of future investment, even if it doesn’t materialize before Trump leaves office. “It would be a worry. Where the Chinese go, legacy brands die,” said an executive at a second global automaker. That approach underlies BYD’s broader strategy. Stella Li, the company’s executive vice president, told the audience at London’s International Energy Week the company wants to “localize our manufacturing capacity” in hopes that Europeans think of it as one of their own within three years. U.S. manufacturers are also taking note. Ford has reportedly pitched European joint ventures with Geely, China’s second-leading EV producer — though it is unclear whether any such partnership would involve a U.S.-focused strategy. Chinese automakers have set their sights on the U.S. BYD has invested in its own logistics with a fleet of eight container ships that can each carry up to 9,000 vehicles, making it easy to redirect exports to the U.S. as soon as the barriers crumble. The Chinese industry’s overcapacity is largely due to ramping up of production to address the U.S. market, said Matthias Schmidt, a long-time car analyst in Europe. Meanwhile, a costly price war in China has undercut profits, following the EU move to slap duties on made-in-China electric vehicles in an effort to stop them from flooding the market. Those dynamics are manifesting at a sensitive time in the U.S., where Trump faces worsening poll numbers in large part due to rising costs. The surge in production and availability of cheap, tech-savvy cars come at a time when Americans have less ability to afford new vehicles, making the Chinese an alluring option. “The Chinese are very good at infiltrating, influencing and persuasion,” said Rachel McCleery, executive director of the Coalition for Reimagined Mobility at Securing America’s Future Energy, a nonprofit. “They’re doing what they do best when it comes to getting people on board with the product they have to offer that they don’t currently have market access to offer.” For the allies of the U.S. carmakers, though, the message to Trump is simple: “Find something else to give on,” Slotkin said. “Don’t give away the farm just to make a deal.” Zack Colman and Sara Schonhardt reported from Washington. Jordyn Dahl reported from Brussels. Charlie Cooper reported from London.

President Donald Trump is arriving in Beijing in a role that he isn’t used to — a supplicant asking for favors. The White House has said the meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday and Friday will focus on trade, fentanyl and the war in Iran — all areas where the Trump administration has had little luck getting deals or concessions from China. That means Trump will be hard-pressed to deliver the big outcomes he has promised for weeks. Trump pitched the meeting as “a Monumental Event” in March and announced on Truth Social last month that he expects nothing less than a “big fat hug” from Xi. Beijing hasn’t provided any summit agenda details. Trump and Xi will discuss “major issues concerning China-U.S. relations and world peace and development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Monday. Trump himself has given a variety of answers as to what will be on the agenda. On Monday, he said that Iran and energy were both on the list, while on Tuesday, he walked back those comments before leaving the White House: “We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control.” Instead, he said trade would be the main topic. “It’s the shrinking summit,” said Zack Cooper, a former assistant to the deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, who regularly meets with administration and Chinese officials. “It’s pretty clear the Trump team is in a very difficult position and it’s very possible Trump goes to Beijing preoccupied and weakened.” The Iran conflict and the Supreme Court’s decision in February blocking Trump’s main avenue for imposing tariffs have upended the power dynamic between the two leaders. Trump has less leverage to get Xi to agree to tangible returns from their meeting that the president can peddle as wins when he returns to the United States. And China knows it. “The confidence that you see from Beijing in recent months that they are negotiating with the United States as equals, if not as the stronger player in the negotiation, is striking,” said Henrietta Levin, former deputy China director at the State Department during the Biden administration. Xi goes into his meeting with Trump empowered by “a perception of U.S. distraction in Iran, and the prospect of the U.S. getting bogged down again in the Middle East,” added Levin, who is in contact with Chinese officials. That will likely relegate hot button issues that vex the U.S.-China relationship — Beijing’s state subsidies to its industrial sector, its increasingly aggressive military footprint in the Indo-Pacific and the dramatic expansion in its strategic nuclear arsenal — to recitation of existing positions. Instead, the two leaders are expected to focus on extending the trade truce they struck in South Korea in October that suspended retaliatory tariff increases, export restrictions on materials such as critical minerals and a resumption of Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products like soybeans. “We had a certain level of tariff on China. We’re looking for continuity with respect to that,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview. “We want stability.” Trump is likely to face similar hurdles on Iran. He wants Xi to use his influence with Tehran — China has supplied Tehran with military gear and been a major buyer of Iran’s oil — to push the regime into ending its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. “I would expect the president to apply pressure” on Xi regarding Iran during their meeting, a senior administration official told reporters Sunday in a briefing provided on condition that they’d be granted anonymity. A senior White House official said separately that, already, “China has pressed Iran on coming to a deal.” The official was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But Beijing’s geostrategic gains from the conflict — diverting U.S. attention from the Indo-Pacific and the shifting of Pentagon assets from Asia to the Middle East — give Xi little incentive to hasten its end. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi bracketed his vague call last week for a “comprehensive ceasefire” with a reminder that Beijing remains Tehran’s “trustworthy strategic partner.” “China is just going to keep calling for calm and broader descalation,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “I don’t think Beijing is going to stick its neck out to solve a war it didn’t start and it doesn’t control.” In recent months, senior officials have been focused on avoiding another rupture in ties that spiraled into last year’s tit-for-tat slugfest of sky-high tariffs and export restrictions. In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the goal is to avoid another trade conflict with Beijing, while Greer spoke of the need for “pragmatic” ties that avoid economic decoupling in April. “A year ago, there was all the talk about the prospect for some kind of grand bargain between the U.S. and China,” said Jonathan Czin, a former senior China analyst at the CIA who frequently meets with Chinese and U.S. officials. “What I’ve heard over and over again is that maybe little bargains are possible.” For administration allies, a stable, not-so-splashy summit is a sign that the trip was a success, not a failure. “It’ll be less about big, flashy announcements and more about establishing a continuity in a relationship that these last 10 years — it’s been these big gyrations, ups and downs,” said Alex Gray, who served in a senior role at the National Security Council in Trump’s first term. “I think the goal is to put it on a more sustainable footing again, while we do some of the hard domestic work to become more resilient over the long term.” The two leaders will iron out details for two new mechanisms to manage trade in “non-sensitive goods” and to discuss “investment-related issues,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told reporters Sunday. “The two sides will also discuss additional agreements on industry spanning aerospace, agriculture and energy,” Kelly added. An administration official told reporters at the briefing that Xi and Trump will also discuss aircraft purchases. That suggests the meeting could result in a deal for Chinese purchases of Boeing planes that U.S. ambassador to China David Perdue said was near final in September, per Reuters. (Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg is one of more than a dozen CEOs traveling to China with the U.S. delegation, according to a White House official.) The two leaders are also expected to discuss extending an agreement they brokered at their most recent meeting in South Korea that lifted Chinese export controls on rare earths essential to U.S. civilian and defense manufacturing. The administration has said it sees this as a way to underscore that what both sides want is stability. Trump and Xi will also discuss a new U.S.-China dialogue on artificial intelligence, the official said. Washington and Beijing share concerns about security risks posed by the deployment of AI tools in autonomous weapon systems, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. Discussions that lead to agreements on whether and how AI systems are deployed in combat would align with the agreement that then-President Joe Biden reached with Xi in 2024, which barred the use of AI in the operation of nuclear weapons. The Chinese embassy declined to comment on whether AI will be on the summit agenda. Such announcements will be difficult to turn into meaningful initiatives that will continue post-summit, argued Liza Tobin, who served as National Security Council director for China during the first Trump administration and the start of the Biden administration. “I’m expecting more optics than substance out of the summit,” said Tobin, who’s now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “I think some of it will be real and most of it will be fake.” Hanging over any AI discussions will be the race between the U.S. and China to create ever-more sophisticated AI systems, only more acute now that U.S. company Anthropic has developed its highly advanced Mythos model. Both countries have continued to flex their leverage in multiple areas ahead of the summit. Beijing has imposed new measures targeting supply chains and sanctions compliance, while the administration has taken aim at Chinese refineries that process sanctioned Chinese oil and companies implicated in providing satellite data to the Iranian military. Yet Washington has largely avoided public escalation ahead of the meeting between Trump and Xi and has left tariffs at a comparatively lower level after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s emergency powers. “The U.S. has tried very hard to make sure that no announcements are made that could be interpreted by China as adversarial,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator. A summit that ends with smiles, handshakes and a smattering of trade and economic incentives will likely count as progress by both Beijing and Washington compared to the economic hostility that beset the U.S.-China relationship last year. “Both leaders have come to the conclusion that they each are better off with a cold peace in the relationship or an unsteady calm than they are by just sort of moving from crisis to crisis,” said Ryan Hass, former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council during the Obama administration. Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.

Two children among those killed after three strikes hit cars on the highway in Jiyeh, south of Beirut.

The MV Hondius hantavirus scare revived debates about luxury travel, public health and unequal vulnerability to disease.

Sergei Lavrov comments before leaders of the ‘Bucharest Nine’ meet later today with Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte in BucharestToday’s Bucharest Nine talks in Romania take place against the backdrop of another domestic political crisis in the country, following the recent collapse of its pro-EU government.“In recent years, a series of major corruption trials involving politicians and businessmen have collapsed after reaching the statute of limitations due to repeated delays in judicial proceedings and despite extensive evidence, including wiretaps of suspects appearing to admit wrongdoing.” Continue reading...

British pop-metallers’ frontman Oli Sykes suffers concussion after phone strikes him on the head, in latest in spate of similar incidents faced by musiciansEric Clapton and Bring Me the Horizon’s frontman Oli Sykes have both been struck by objects thrown at them while performing, the latter incident leaving Sykes with concussion.As Bring Me the Horizon performed in St Louis on Monday, a member of the audience threw a phone at Sykes, striking him on the head. Sykes continued to perform but cut one of the songs from the band’s set as well as a fan interaction section. Continue reading...

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