The Riigikogu Anti-Corruption Select Committee has initiated a bill that would impose a ban of up to one year on senior public officials taking jobs with companies linked to the sectors they previously oversaw.

Ukraine's drone units have helped its armed forces fend off attacks by numerically superior Russian troops on the front line, Gert Kaju, head of the defense readiness department at the Ministry of Defense, said.

Isamaa and the Center Party remained Estonia's two most popular parties in June, with ratings separated by less than the latest poll's margin of error, Emor said Friday.

The most popular choice for Estonia's next prime minister is Urmas Reinsalu, the latest poll by NGO Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut and the research firm Norstat has found.

The Riigikogu Anti-Corruption Select Committee has initiated a bill that would impose a ban of up to one year on senior public officials taking jobs with companies linked to the sectors they previously oversaw.

Estonia plans to spend up to €7 million overhauling a digital platform that gives healthcare workers a more complete and accessible view of patients' medical info.

Vesi pannakse pliidil huugama. Kontserdini on tund aega. Suvi on Jaan Tättel töine aeg. Paar-kolm kuud teenib raha, ülejäänud üheksa kuud ei tee mitte midagi.

Tähenduse teejuhte on ilmunud juba kuuskümmend neli numbrit. Käesolev, nooruseteemaline on kuuekümne viies ning ühtlasi kuuenda hooaja lõpunumber. Oleme esimesest numbrist alates andnud iga lehe noortenurgas võimaluse oma mõtteid avaldada alla kolmekümneaastastel autoritel. Tänase numbri eripära seisneb aga selles, et kõik kaasautorid ning ka usutletud pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv jäävad sellest vanusepiirist allapoole.

The highly public exchange is an indication that their earlier close ties have frayed since Trump's decision to go to war with Iran.

Ukraine has denounced the move, calling it a "strategic mistake" and "disrespectful".

Sales agreements will be legally binding sooner and making sellers provide more home information up front are part of the planned changes.

The Ryanair boss extends his contract to 2032, in a deal featuring a bonus scheme that could earn him more than €150m (£130m).

LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer is sounding out his future with his Cabinet after Andy Burnham’s win in the Makerfield by-election put the two Labour politicians on a collision course. The assessments he’s received back have been grim.  Chief Whip Jonathan Reynolds discussed the prime minister’s bleak prospects with him during a face-to-face Downing Street meeting on Friday afternoon, four people with knowledge of their conversation told POLITICO. All were granted anonymity to discuss the private conversation.  One of the four people said: “If he continues to insist on digging in he will look like Comical Ali” — a reference to the former Iraqi information minister who overstated his country’s performance in the 2003 war. Three of the four people suggested Reynolds had urged the PM to accept the widespread demands to set out a timetable for his departure. However, the fourth person said this characterization of the meeting was incorrect. Both No. 10 and Reynolds’ team declined to comment.  A fifth person, an MP, said they had been told ahead of the Downing Street meeting that Reynolds was preparing to have a “candid conversation” with Starmer. Also on Friday, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the PM during his ring-round of the Cabinet that he needs to set out a timetable, as first reported by the Financial Times. POLITICO confirmed the account with a person familiar with the conversation between the hitherto loyal ally who is nonetheless close with Burnham. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, have both previously urged the prime minister to set out a timetable for his departure. Calls between Starmer and other top ministers are planned for the weekend. The PM has insisted he will fight on after Burnham won a resounding victory that will bring him back to Westminster — a move the Greater Manchester mayor undertook specifically with the aim of returning to challenge Starmer, who has been weakened by repeated political missteps and devastating losses in recent local elections, for national leadership. Burnham’s allies have said he will seek talks with Starmer next week in the hope of agreeing an orderly transition of power. The PM held a virtual call Friday lunchtime with Labour staffers where he warned a leadership contest would plunge “our party and our country into chaos.” He added: “Let’s pull together as a party and a movement.” Allies of Starmer have insisted that Burnham should play a key role in the forthcoming by-election campaign for his old job of mayor of Greater Manchester, which will only conclude on July 30. That, in the view of Starmer’s allies, would delay any internal leadership contest. Burnham held off a challenge from Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK party to win by more than 9,000 votes. Makerfield was once considered a Labour heartland, but the party was wiped out in Wigan council seats there contested in May’s local elections. While the PM gauged his prospects, Burnham supporters spent Friday speaking to Labour MPs to assess their next move. Burnham will take his seat in parliament on Monday, two members of his team said.

Britain may — very likely — soon have a new government under Andy Burnham. Amid the swirl of senior Labour figures vying for a place at the top table, one name keeps coming up: Ed Miliband. The energy secretary, who led the Labour party himself between 2010 and 2015 — when he was rejected by voters at the ballot box — is regarded by many MPs, as well as by bookmakers, as the frontrunner to be Burnham’s chancellor. The two men are longstanding political allies and have been in regular contact in recent weeks, including one-to-one phone calls about policy during the Makerfield by-election campaign, according to three Burnham allies. In response to reports that he could quit if besieged Prime Minister Keir Starmer does not signal his willingness to stand aside for Burnham, a spokesperson for Miliband told POLITICO he has “no plans to resign.” But the energy secretary is influential among Labour backbenchers and members. Once regarded as a close ally of Starmer, who has placed significant faith in his net zero agenda, Miliband’s moves over the coming days could seal his leader’s fate. Political allies Burnham and Miliband have been close since both men served in Gordon Brown’s Labour Cabinet before the 2010 election. During Miliband’s five-year spell as leader, Burnham led on health and the NHS, garnering significant public support for Labour’s stance — but not enough to fend off a bruising defeat for Miliband in 2015. Now, contemplating a new partnership, the pair share a diagnosis of the ills afflicting British society. Miliband believes ordinary voters are “so angry” because “the country is rigged against them” (as he told a union event in London in February). Burnham used his victory speech on Friday morning, after sweeping to victory as the new MP for Makerfield, to promise “a change in our politics to make it work again for people.” Miliband is a believer in an interventionist state, prepared to invest to spur growth; Burnham wants greater public control of energy, water, and other “basics of life.” But a potential source of tension is looming over a matter close to Miliband’s heart — the future of North Sea oil and gas. Miliband has spearheaded the Labour government’s ban on new exploration licenses for fossil fuels, as well as championing a windfall tax on North Sea profits that was first imposed by the Conservative government and then increased by Labour. Burnham — who supports net zero as an opportunity for “reindustrialization” — told The New Statesman during the campaign that he kept “something of an open mind” on North Sea oil and gas. `He holds, he said, no “fixed position.” But he will come under pressure, if he becomes leader, from Labour’s union backers, some of whom are longstanding critics of Miliband’s North Sea policies, which they claim are accelerating job losses for oil and gas workers. The other by-election The potential for a North Sea clash came into focus Friday thanks to another by-election, held on the same day that the Makerfield race gobbled up most of the country’s political attention. Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party — now fiercely anti-net zero and pro-oil and gas — won the vote in Aberdeen South, unseating the Scottish National Party. Oil and gas firms are major employers in the constituency, where many jobs linked to drilling have been lost in recent years as reserves depleted and investment dried up. Badenoch argues Miliband’s policies are making things worse, and put the issue at the heart of the party’s local campaign. Labour finished fourth with just 5.4 percent of the vote, having come second with nearly 25 percent as recently as the 2024 general election. The victorious Tory candidate, Douglas Lumsden, told voters on his leaflets that a Tory win would “send a very clear message to Ed Miliband down in London.” The union question Miliband and Burnham will brush off the criticisms from opposition parties. But warnings from Labour’s own union allies will be harder to ignore. Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, the country’s second-biggest union, and an outspoken critic of Miliband’s North Sea approach called Aberdeen South “a direct result of failed Labour policies on oil and gas.” Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland’s general secretary, said it was “entirely predictable that a Tory would win this election by promising to protect the North Sea.” Gilmour warned of a “industrial catastrophe unfolding in plain sight.” Those words won’t go unnoticed in the Burnham camp, who have pledged to put the concerns of ordinary workers front and center. (Team Burnham declined to comment on the Aberdeen South result or their North Sea stance on Friday.) A Conservative victory in Aberdeen, tightly focused on the future of fossil fuels in a city where oil and gas dominates politics, does not translate into a winning strategy nationally. Steve Akehurst, director of polling company Persuasion UK, said there was “next to no evidence that this is a vote-moving issue for people nationally. … Aberdeen is very uniquely dependent on fossil fuel industry and it makes the importance of the issue there highly unusual, too.” But with the unions campaigning hard on the issue, the North Sea already looks like an early test of the Burnham-Miliband relationship. Graham, the Unite boss, welcomed the former Manchester mayor’s victory in Makerfield — but warned that across the country “workers feel abandoned by Labour.” She called for a plan to “back British industry” — including oil and gas.   “Labour is supposed to be the party of workers, [but] that is yet to be seen in any real way,” she said. “Until that happens, workers will continue to abandon Labour in their droves.”

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PM faces cabinet mutiny after outgoing Greater Manchester mayor sees off Reform UK in Makerfield

Draft report by European Commission aims to boost performance of lenders in bloc compared with US rivals