Lithuania will introduce universal male conscription despite public resistance to compulsory military service, the country’s government has announced.
The Baltic state reinstated selective conscription in 2015, seven years after abolishing it. Under the new plan, the draft would be extended to all eligible men, while women would continue to serve voluntarily.
Annual recruitment will increase from just over 5,000 to around 7,500 men, President Gitanas Nauseda announced on Thursday following a State Defense Council meeting.
Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius described universal conscription as “necessary and inevitable.”
The decision follows similar recruitment pushes elsewhere in Europe. Poland is considering restoring compulsory service, which was abolished in 2009, and introducing a system covering both men and women. A recent poll, however, found that 53% of Poles aged 18–24 opposed reinstatement of the draft.
Germany has already introduced mandatory military registration for 18-year-old men. Enlistment remains voluntary, but parliament can activate compulsory service if recruitment falls short or the security situation deteriorates.
Berlin’s recruitment drive has met resistance, with some 45,000 people joining student protests across roughly 100 German cities and towns in September, with some carrying banners reading “We won’t fight in your wars” and “Russia is not our enemy.”
Applications for conscientious objector status reached over 12,000 between January and August, compared with 3,879 throughout 2025, according to figures reported by German media.
European officials have nevertheless continued discussing preparations for a possible war with Russia by the end of the decade. Estonian Defense Minister Martin Herem “joked” last month that if Estonia mobilized and Russia did not attack, it would be “economically more correct to attack ourselves” rather than keep troops waiting.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that it has neither reason nor intention to attack NATO countries, describing such allegations as “horror stories” intended to prepare European populations for further militarization.
Russian officials have warned that Europe’s military buildup could itself lead to confrontation and that expanding NATO infrastructure near Russia’s borders would prompt additional security measures. Moscow has stressed that it is prepared to defend itself if attacked.
US President Donald Trump said that Vice President JD Vance’s outreach to Iran was about helping the country get medical supplies, after US media reported Vance had written to Tehran’s top security official to revive peace talks.
Iran has received a letter from Vance but it has not responded to it yet, the country’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday, while adding that Tehran wants the US to meet its conditions and “any position that contradicts this framework is unacceptable.”
Also on Thursday, the US military’s senior officer overseeing the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, met Trump at the White House to outline military options in Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials and other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
Reuters could not immediately independently verify this report.
Vance sent the letter to Iranian Security Council chief Mohsen Rezaei in a bid to revive peace negotiations, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing US officials and people familiar with the matter. Reuters could not immediately verify the reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Vance sent the letter at Trump’s direction. When asked by reporters later on Wednesday if he directed Vance to reach out to Iran to restart peace negotiations, Trump said: “No.”
“What that is is they need help with medical supplies and various things. He (Vance) asked me what I thought. I said, if you want to do that, that’s okay. Basically, it’s getting supplies in to help people that are not well,” Trump told reporters.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter and Trump’s remark. Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
TEHRAN’S CONDITIONS
Iran’s parliament speaker said on Thursday that Tehran’s conditions had been repeatedly and clearly communicated to mediators and that progress can only be achieved if Iran’s seven conditions are met.
The “carrot-and-stick approach has no effect on Iran,” Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf added.
Conditions Iran says must be met before it will reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz shipping route include, among other demands, lifting the US blockade on Iranian ports, lifting US sanctions on Iranian oil exports and ending hostilities on all regional fronts.
The United States and Israel launched a war against Iran at the end of February. The US has also since imposed a naval blockade on Iran to starve it of oil export revenue and escalated efforts to economically isolate Iran.
Iran has long blamed US sanctions for hindering civilian access to medical supplies.
In an August letter to the UN Security Council, Iran accused the US of intentionally depriving civilians “of access to food, medicines, medical equipment, energy and other necessities, with grave consequences for their rights to life, health, food and a decent standard of living.”
Qatari mediators presented Iran with a new draft deal on Sunday to end the war, but a senior Iranian official said Doha had only put forward unacceptable ideas that did not amount to an offer.
The war’s impact on global energy costs has also weighed on support for Republican candidates and hurt Trump’s approval ratings ahead of the US midterm elections that decide control of Congress. Trump’s Republican Party holds a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress.
Patrick Stewart, who rose from poverty in England to become an accomplished Shakespearean stage actor and then achieved global stardom as the erudite Captain Jean-Luc Picard in TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the telepathic Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” movies, has died at the age of 86.
Stewart, knighted in 2010 by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to drama, died at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement on his X account.
“We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday at his home in Los Angeles, in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia,” it said.
Stewart became an actor at age 18 and gained acclaim on the stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company beginning in the 1960s. But it was not until after he was hired at age 47 for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” – a TV series that ran from 1987 to 1994 as a sequel to the original 1960s “Star Trek” – that he gained mainstream fame, acting into his 80s.
“Make it so,” his character Picard often said, instructing a subordinate to carry out a command, or sometimes deploying the similar catch phrase, “Engage.”
It was a role he had debated even taking after his longtime friend and fellow Shakespearen Ian McKellen advised him to spurn “Star Trek” and remain in theater. Stewart did take the role and became both a fan favorite and an indispensable part of a lucrative sci-fi franchise, playing Picard not only in 176 episodes over seven seasons of that series but also in several “Star Trek” films and in the later streaming series “Star Trek: Picard” that began airing in 2020 when he was 79.
“As the seven seasons of TNG (“The Next Generation”) went by, the distinction between Jean-Luc Picard and Patrick Stewart became thinner and thinner, until it was impossible for me to know where he left off and I began. So much of what I believed and felt went into that show,” Stewart told the Guardian newspaper in 2022.
Stewart also initially balked at being cast as the wheelchair-using mutant Professor X in the “X-Men” movies, based on the popular Marvel comic book character.
“I said, ‘Look, I know this isn’t science fiction, but it’s fantasy, and I’ve done that.’ But they persuaded me that it wouldn’t be like ‘Star Trek,’ so I did it. And yet again I was proved wrong,” Stewart told the Guardian.
He became a critical part of another big-money franchise starting with the first entry “X-Men” in 2000 and followed by several more.
ACTING WAS SAFE SPACE
Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in the English town of Mirfield in Yorkshire. He was raised in poverty, with a father who he said returned from World War Two an alcoholic who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and physically abused Stewart’s mother. Stewart recalled putting his body between his father and mother to try to protect her.
As a child, Stewart said, acting became a “safe space” after a schoolteacher introduced him to Shakespeare – specifically “The Merchant of Venice” – during a class when he was 12. He started losing his hair at age 17 and was bald by 19. He was embarrassed at the time, but eventually embraced it.
“Star Trek,” created by Gene Roddenberry, presented a hopeful vision of the future, with humankind venturing into the cosmos in spaceships exceeding the speed of light and encountering alien races. The enduring popularity of the original series and the success of spinoff films prompted Roddenberry to create “The Next Generation” sequel series.
The Picard character was the opposite of the swashbuckling and sometimes unintentionally buffoonish Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, of the original series – envisioned as more cerebral and disciplined, though sometimes coming across as stuffy, humorless, or self-important.
Stewart recalled being a little bit too serious toward his cast mates early on.
“I tell the story of calling a meeting of my principal fellow cast members and telling them that I thought we were not disciplined enough, that we should not be fooling about on the set as much as we were but taking everything seriously,” Stewart told the New Yorker in 2023.
“And one of the cast members said, ‘Oh, come on, Patrick, we’ve got to have some fun.’ And I thumped the chair and said, ‘We are not here to have fun’ – which they have never let me forget. They taught me so much about loosening up and being freer,” Stewart added.
Stewart also felt the series improved as it went along, faulting his own portrayal of Picard in the first two seasons.
“I found it lacking intimacy. It was very authoritative, but there were few other qualities in him,” Stewart said, adding that his work got better in subsequent seasons.
In fact, the finest work for the entire cast may have been the two-part, time-bending series finale.
He became Sir Patrick Stewart when he was knighted by the queen at Buckingham Palace in 2010. He told reporters that his heroes were British actors Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, who also had been knighted, adding that being “in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”
Stewart was married three times and had two children. His third marriage, in 2013, was to American musician Sunny Ozell.
At least four people were reported killed when an Italian military helicopter with the EU peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina crashed on Thursday, ANSA news agency reported.
Another 12 people were injured when the helicopter came down in the village of Gorice in Brcko district, the mayor of Brcko was quoted as saying by the agency.
Images carried by local media showed a military transport helicopter overturned on the ground and shattered into pieces.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her condolences, writing on X: “My thoughts are with the victims, their families, and all those who, as part of the mission to promote peace and stability in the region.”
An official from the EUFOR mission confirmed the crash, but did not give details on the number of casualties.
The aircraft had been deployed as part of Operation Althea, run by EUFOR, which oversees the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
A meteorite found in 2022 in the Sahara in Mali formed in the Martian crust at least 4.1 billion years ago, according to scientists, making the reddish igneous rock perhaps the oldest of the 435 meteorites from Mars known on Earth.
The researchers said the composition of the meteorite, called Teghaza 001, is providing insight into the environment early in the history of Earth’s planetary neighbor, with fresh evidence of liquid water on the surface that bolsters the notion that primordial Mars may have been conducive to microbial life.
Planetary scientist Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which is managed by Caltech, called the meteorite “a witness to a time when Mars was likely warmer and wetter than it has been for most of its history.”
The chemistry of the meteorite, a type of coarse-grained rock called gabbro, shows that it experienced interactions with water when it was slowly cooling and crystallizing in the Martian subsurface. It was part of the Martian crust, the planet’s outermost layer, but formed from magma originating at greater depths in the planet’s mantle.
Mars is now cold, dry and desolate, but extensive evidence indicates it had water flowing on its surface in the form of rivers, lakes and an ocean in the northern hemisphere billions of years ago.
Teghaza 001 was discovered in eight pieces, with the largest chunk about the size of a fist, in the desert roughly 21 miles (34 km) from the Malian village of Bir Chali. Its main minerals are feldspar and pyroxene, and it contains zircon crystals bearing the element uranium. The researchers ascertained its age using a technique based on the decay of uranium into lead over time.
“Martian meteorites are our only samples from Mars, forming our basis for understanding the formation and differentiation of early Mars and allowing us to evaluate in laboratories whether ancient Mars could have supported habitable conditions,” said Liu, lead author of a study on the meteorite published in the journal Science.
“The detailed information we can extract from these meteorite samples complements and validates our exploration of Mars using satellites, landers and rovers,” Liu said.
This information provides clues about how the evolution of Mars diverged from Earth’s when they were in their infancy and life was beginning to take hold on our planet, Liu said. Earth, Mars and the solar system’s other planets formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago.
Only three Martian meteorites, including Teghaza 001, date to the planet’s early history. One of them, discovered in Antarctica in 1984, was initially assessed as being about 4.5 billion years old but more recently was determined to have a similar age to Teghaza 001. Teghaza 001 likely is the older of the two, according to the new study.
WATER WAS PERCOLATING
Isotopes, or forms, of the elements oxygen and hydrogen present in the meteorite show that water was percolating down into the planet’s deeper crust, as occurs on Earth, and mixing with molten rock from the mantle.
“Multiple lines of evidence in Teghaza 001 suggest Mars’ surface had water at more than 4.1 billion years ago. This is reflected by hydrogen isotopes in phosphate and oxygen isotopes in minerals and bulk samples,” Liu said.
Water is considered a key ingredient for life.
“The findings lend support to the idea that early Mars had the necessary ingredients and conditions to harbor life, but do not directly answer the question of whether there was life on Mars,” said planetary scientist and study co-author Lee Saper of NASA’s Ames Research Center and the BAER Institute in California.
“The rock is a snapshot in time that shows how a wetter early Mars with a thick atmosphere could have supported habitable conditions but that these conditions were waning rapidly over the first billion years or so of Mars’ existence, trending towards its currently dry and inhospitable environment,” Saper said.
Teghaza 001’s chemistry shows it is distinct from the other known Martian meteorites. It may have originated in the southern highlands, possibly from near Hellas Basin, one of the largest Martian impact craters, Liu said.
The meteorite has a dramatic backstory.
“It was blasted by an impact from the surface of Mars and was flying through space until its path crossed that of Earth. It then entered the atmosphere as a meteor and survived as a meteorite by landing in the Sahara,” Liu said. “We do not know when the sample landed on Earth.”
The European Commission urged member states on Thursday to apply for loans from a €21.3 billion ($23.74 billion) pot available through the European Union’s SAFE defence funding programme to boost their own forces and support Ukraine.
The Commission encouraged member states to launch joint procurement programmes with Ukraine, using funds from SAFE’s second round.
Member states should prioritise the urgent needs of Ukrainian and their own armed forces in air and missile defence systems, drones and counter-drone systems, ammunition and missiles, the Commission said.
The Security Action for Europe instrument is a joint borrowing scheme backed by the EU budget aimed at boosting the bloc’s defence capabilities and helping member states meet new, more ambitious NATO spending targets.
The supreme court on Thursday ruled against an application for a re-trial filed by convicted lifer Theodoros (Doros) Theofanous.
Theofanous, alias ‘the hairdresser’, filed a motion for a re-trial, arguing that material new evidence had come up following his conviction.
According to a statement by the attorney-general’s office, this was the first instance heard by the supreme court since the coming into force of a new law permitting the re-trying of cases when new evidence comes to light.
In October 2012 Theofanous was found guilty of the 2011 premeditated murder of his pregnant partner Yulia Oporok, and the manslaughter of Oporok’s three-year old daughter.
The supreme court had upheld the conviction in April 2015.
Theofanous later sought recourse with the supreme court, seeking a re-trial, claiming that new facts had emerged that questioned the initial conviction.
He cited the fact that one of the prosecution witnesses during the initial criminal trial had in June 2020 recanted a previous sworn statement. According to Theofanous, this person now stated that his testimony before the court had been false and that he was not at the scene of the crime.
Theofanous also cited statements by third parties claiming that another prosecution witness – Antonis Prokopiou Kitas, a convicted rapist and murderer – apparently ‘admitted’ that Theofanous was not the perpetrator of the crime.
All this, his lawyers argued, was sufficient to overturn the evidentiary basis of the conviction. Theofanous therefore asked for a re-trial of his case or, due to the length of time he has already served, an outright acquittal.
The supreme court rejected his motion.
In delivering its judgment, the court said Theofanous had presented no new material facts that would warrant a re-trial. Witnesses recanting or changing their testimony did not count as such.
What may have constituted new material evidence, said the court, would be facts that existed during the initial trial but did not emerge at the time, or material facts emerging after the trial.
Such examples would include evidence pointing to a different perpetrator, the emergence of a material eyewitness, or the discovery of genetic material pertaining to the case.
Theofanous presented no such material, the court said.
As such, he will serve out his sentence at the central prisons.
In September 2024, Theofanous escaped police custody while visiting his father’s home in Choletria, Paphos.
Following the fiasco, President Nikos Christodoulides fired the chief of police, the deputy chief of police and acting director of the central prisons.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that this Saturday was looking like “a very high risk” day for public order and that he would again deploy 70,000 security forces to try to safeguard the country.
Nunez told reporters on Thursday that several radical groups had called on social media for violent gatherings that day, which is also Halloween, and that the response of security forces would be “extremely firm.”
He highlighted the risk of disorder on Saturday evening in particular once more mainstream demonstrations had ended.
“We are seeing many calls for rallies coming from the labor movement, the radicalized far left, and certain radicalized ‘Yellow Vests’ websites, urging people to attend rallies on public streets starting at 8:00 p.m. (on October 31) in many cities across France, accompanied by various messages which are, let’s just, say quite radical,” he said.
“October 31 is a day that poses a very high risk to public order,” he added.
The Interior Ministry has said 410,000 people took part in marches last Saturday when authorities deployed 70,000 police, helping to avert a repeat of the looting and vandalism that swept many cities on October 17.
Labour leaders and students have urged further protests on October 31 and a nationwide strike on November 5, saying frustration over wages, living costs and public services was spreading far beyond the student movement that first mobilised last month.
It’s been said that truth is the first casualty of war. What about the Ukraine war? I’ve followed the news closely, and have found ample evidence in headlines and storylines that the old adage holds true today. Too often the Ukraine news stories we see are misleading instead of informative.
For instance, in March 2014 CNN reported that Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution was “standing up on behalf of democracy.” A month earlier, The Week cited many pundits and policymakers also characterizing events as a victory for democracy. It was a clear and compelling news theme.
But what’s misleading about that? It creates an impression that is contrary to reality. The truth is that the immediate result of the revolution was an abrupt end to constitutional democracy, not a victory for democracy.
The uprising totally dismantled the constitutional democracy that Ukraine had operated under since its independence from the USSR in 1991. The sequence of events makes it clear. Out went the democratic constitution; in came rule by force under the unelected revolutionaries. That’s what Ukrainians were stuck with for months. The stories about a boost for democracy were completely misleading.
This is a good example of truth being a casualty of war. The news celebrated an advance of democracy while in reality democracy itself had been lost.
Media distortion like that is not unique to the Ukraine war. Here’s an example dating back to the Cold War.
The issue was Soviet missiles showing up in Cuba in 1962. Upon discovery, President Kennedy railed against their presence.
On national TV he demanded that en route Soviet ships presumed to be carrying still more missiles be turned around. And Khrushchev complied.
Still there was the issue of removing the missiles from Cuba. How did that turn out?
“We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked,” reportedly said Secretary of State Dean Rusk. News reports characterized JFK as staring down the menacing Soviet leader and winning this round with the communists. The imagery seemed to play upon the title of Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage. It all was emblematic of the American Way. The story was almost poetic.
Indeed, this story seems so perfect that it is hard to believe it was actually a hoax. True, there were missiles. But here is a factual account of how that crisis really unfolded:
In late 1961 President Kennedy began placing nuclear missiles in Turkey, strategically close to the Soviet border. Full deployment was completed in 1962. It would take less than 15 minutes for the missiles to hit Moscow.
Then in July of that year Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sealed a secret agreement with Cuba to deploy Soviet nuclear missiles there, just 90 miles from Florida. It would take them less than 15 minutes to hit Washington DC.
What ended this standoff was something far less poetic than the Kennedyesque example I cited earlier. Khrushchev proposed a quid pro quo: He would remove his missiles from Cuba if Kennedy would remove his from Turkey. Kennedy privately agreed. But he insisted on a significant proviso: the quid pro quo must be kept secret. Khrushchev conceded and Kennedy’s fanciful story of standing tall in the face of a threatening adversary prevailed.
The Cuban missile story thus joins the Ukraine democracy story as another example of truth being a casualty of war.
Now consider this next example from back in Ukraine.
“Parliament votes 328-0 to impeach Yanukovych” reported the Kyiv Post on February 23, 2014. A day earlier the New York Times claimed, “Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Viktor F. Yanukovych from office hours after he abandoned his office.”
Both reports further demonstrate how truth becomes a casualty of war. Neither accurately portrays what really happened.
Radio Liberty was quick to set things straight. In a report titled “Was Yanukovych’s Ouster Constitutional?” staffer Daisy Sindelar presented an in-depth analysis showing that parliamentarians tried to remove Yanukovych from the presidency but failed to achieve a sufficient vote.
She also pointed out that Yanukovych’s alleged abandonment of the presidency was not even a possible basis for declaring the office vacant. Radio Liberty’s corrections are backed up by Constitutional Coup in Ukraine in 2014, a thorough academic study published under the auspices of the Polish Parliament.
Clearly all the examples cited above represent fabricated stories masquerading as the truth. But the news stories are also examples of something much more insidious: the collective impact that a persistent manufactured narrative can have on a given public.
They paint a picture, a vivid narrative, that shapes the cultural schema through which people understand and interpret future events.
This can be seen in how the media have portrayed the fates of Crimea and Donbas. At issue is the question: Did the revolutionary government automatically inherit all the territorial authority of the constitutional democracy they had overthrown?
Crimea, for example, has been a significant stumbling block in discussions of a peaceful settlement of the war. In March 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN, “Crimea is part of Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine.” But how is that true? What made Crimea part of revolutionary Ukraine?
Before the revolution, Crimea’s place within Ukraine was established by the democratic constitution. But the revolutionaries abandoned that constitution and claimed authority through force. Their rule by force never extended into Crimea. What, then, was the basis for their claim to Crimea? There was none that holds up to scrutiny. Even the eventual election of Poroshenko as president did not undo the constitutional destruction caused by the revolutionaries.
Why didn’t CNN challenge Kerry’s story? The assumption behind his statement illustrates how an ongoing series of fabricated stories can predispose us to interpret each new story in a particular way. If one can believe that a takeover by force is an advancement of democracy, why question an unsupported claim regarding Crimea? This shows that a lack of scrutiny can lead to creating or reinforcing a cultural schema that impedes our understanding of what is really happening.
The same principle applies to Donbas, but the words are different. Here Ukraine news stories portrayed the situation as “Russia invading Donbas.” But the facts show that notion to be a sensationalized misdirection from the truth.
The actual story can be understood by asking this question: What made Donbas, meaning the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, a part of revolutionary Ukraine?
The logic that clarified the status of Crimea applies here too. Donetsk and Luhansk were not part of revolutionary Ukraine for the same reason. Additionally, their populations actively rejected revolutionary rule. They fought against it when the revolutionaries attacked them. If there were, as reports claimed, Russian volunteers, mercenaries, or regulars helping the population defend their territories, it does not alter the basic scenario.
Calling the territories breakaway regions is a misnomer, as is calling the people separatists. It is not possible to break away or separate from something to which one was not attached in the first place. The Russia invades Donbas story is just sensationalistic fabrication.
What’s worse is that this obscures what really happened there. February 2022 is often cited as the start of the Ukraine war. The facts tell a different story. The hostilities in Donbas beginning in 2014 marked the actual start of the Ukraine war, years before the massive escalation in 2022. Reports say that this Donbas phase of the conflict claimed over 14,000 lives and displaced roughly 1.5 million people.
“Truth is the first casualty of war?” Once again we see that axiom is borne out. The mainstream story about Donbas leaves out the critical parts of the truth. But who will notice that? The facts are obscured from view by the now well-established, yet fundamentally misleading cultural schema.
The false claim of a democratic revolution. The lie about how Yanukovych was dismissed. The false and misleading narratives about the status of Crimea and Donbas. These and other stories have given the American public and our leaders a politically contorted view of the entire Ukraine war dilemma.
These narratives — and the false cultural schema they help create — can also lead people to draw unwarranted conclusions about the reasons behind political leaders’ decisions. As peace-treaty talks approach, there is a danger that proposals and decisions about ending the war might be built on a house of cards — that is, the series of misleading Ukraine news stories and the dysfunctional cultural schema that they helped to create. Together they distort perceptions of how the war began and what is at stake. If negotiators fail to break free of that schema, any resulting peace could prove unsustainable for Ukrainians and their country. What a waste that would be. Haven’t the Ukrainian people suffered enough?
A gulf separates employers’ organisations and trade unions on the issue of provident funds and how they should fit into pension reform as a whole, Labour Minister Marinos Mousiouttas said on Thursday.
He was speaking to media after the latest meeting of the labour advisory aboard, which discussed provident funds for the first time.
The minister confirmed that trade unions want provident funds to be prescribed by law so that all private companies offer one, whereas employers insist they should remain voluntary.
In Cyprus, provident funds are based on collective or private agreements between employers and workers. No legislation exists mandating that companies provide a provident fund.
Having heard the two sides’ views on the matter, Mousiouttas said, the government would try to find the ‘sweet spot’.
The next meeting of the labour advisory board is scheduled for Friday, November 9.
The government’s general position, said the minister, is that provident funds “are a necessary institution, which supplements workers’ pensions.
“What we’ll try to do is see how this institution can be expanded.”
Stakeholders also discussed some of the details, such as how provident funds would be cashed out on retirement – whether as a lump sum or in instalments. Another issue is whether it would be possible to borrow from a provident fund, under certain conditions, as is the case today.
However, the minister clarified that sorting out the provident funds question “is not something that will happen today or tomorrow or even next year”.
In order for a provident fund to ‘mature’ and to yield, it takes at least a decade, he added.
Nevertheless, the talks would continue, and once the government brokers an agreement between trade unions and employers, the relevant bill would begin being drafted.
“For sure we will follow European standards,” Mousiouttas said of the future bill.
A provident fund is essentially a private group pension plan that some employers provide for their employees in Cyprus.
Provident fund members invest monthly a fixed percentage of their salary into a common investment pool for their retirement in much the same way as they would with social insurance.
A provident fund is managed by a licensed pension provider. The pension providers are typically either insurance companies or asset management companies.
The operation of a provident fund involves contributions from both the employee and the employer, similar to social insurance contributions. The amounts contributed by each party can either be identical or differ.
The employer usually sets the contribution amount and provides these details in an employment contract.
Employees are generally restricted from accessing their pension funds, before reaching their retirement age or unless their employment is terminated. However, it is permissible for the employee to borrow a portion of their funds.
Meanwhile the main thrust of pension reform – which includes pillars zero and one – is still being worked on by the government.
The draft legislation needs to be vetted by the attorney-general’s office.
Once that is done, said Mousiouttas, he would present the bill to the cabinet. Once the cabinet gives the nod, the bill would be tabled to parliament.
Pillar zero, as it is called, concerns pensions for low-income earners.
Pillar one involves a reworking of the mechanics of the Social Insurance Fund, along with state pensions.
Provident funds and occupational pension schemes fall within pillar two.
The government aims to roll out pillars zero and one of pension reform at the beginning of 2027.
“It was worse than an earthquake,” says 21-year-old Greek man who survived the fatal collision of the two high speed trains in Spain. “The impact caught us while we were standing; we were traveling at 170 kilometers per hour, and we all fell onto one another,” Marios recalled speaking to Mega TV Live News magazine. […]
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday the EU and Canada continue to explore Canada becoming the union’s first “associate member,” a term so divisive among member countries that it does not appear in a joint declaration.
The European Union and Canada aim to deepen cooperation on AI, climate, energy and security, von der Leyen said in a speech at a Canada-EU summit in Montreal.
The associate member term, which Germany and several other EU countries oppose, has no legal meaning.
“Our idea is simple: it is an association without accession,” von der Leyen said. “We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we have done before.”
“We can work on everything, from AI and climate to energy or security,” she said.
Canadian and EU leaders, however, dropped the idea of associate EU membership from their joint declaration, seen by Reuters, agreeing instead to an “ever closer association.”
The declaration, which officials plan to make public on Friday, said work to define the Canada-EU relationship would continue until another summit next year.
CANADA SEEKING TO REDUCE US DEPENDENCE
Deeper ties to Europe are part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s strategy to reduce Canada’s economic and security reliance on the US since President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on a range of Canadian goods. Still, Canada’s efforts to draw closer to the EU risk angering Trump as trade talks between Canada and the US continue.
Von der Leyen first floated associate membership for Canada six weeks ago, prompting a rebuke from countries that argued they could not agree to a concept that had no legal status and had not been fleshed out, diplomats said.
Three EU diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised von der Leyen continued to use the “associate member” term, since the declaration deliberately excluded it.
Speaking later at the summit, European Council President Antonio Costa said the idea of associate membership for Canada was “audacious,” but that he shared von der Leyen’s ambition.
A previous draft statement had included at least two references to Canada as an associate member, including an acknowledgment that defining the term would take another year.
Carney said the term for Canada’s new relationship with the EU is insignificant.
“This new alliance is not a marketing exercise. The name doesn’t matter,” he told reporters.
“What matters is that the complementarities of our two jurisdictions strengthen our sovereignty, strengthens Europe’s sovereignty, various strategic autonomies, critical minerals, energy, other aspects, AI,” Carney said.
Canada and the EU were both trying to find an effective response to the geopolitical threats Trump has posed, said Mark Manger, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
“Canada and the EU both are now in this position where the most important ally they relied upon is suddenly not behaving like an ally anymore,” he said. Manger said Canada and the EU have an enormous opportunity to expand their relationship, but that it would take time to address regulatory inconsistencies, build new undersea cables linking Canada to Europe and secure common supply chains, some of the objectives mentioned in the joint declaration.
The declaration also proposes conducting a joint feasibility study on Canadian liquefied natural gas exports to Europe and enabling young Canadians and Europeans to work across the Atlantic.
Von der Leyen called for deeper cooperation between the EU and Canada on Arctic security.
“When we see Russia rebuilding its Arctic military footprint, pursuing hybrid strategies against its neighbors and reshaping the security of the Arctic, it impacts the European Union and Canada,” she said. “We have to act and change our strategic posture and, together with like-minded partners like Canada, stand up for these values.”
Later on Thursday, Carney will meet with European business leaders before hosting a dinner with EU leaders.
Nicosia municipality and restaurant operator PHC are expected to sign an agreement on Friday for the commercial development of the old GSP square, with a Caffe Nero billed as the largest in Cyprus among the planned outlets.
According to Politis, the deal, once final pending issues are settled, will give the redeveloped site a stable commercial base.
PHC won the concession for five premises after an open tender, the municipality announced in August.
Mayor Charalambos Prountzos told the Cyprus Mail then that the company would have “up to 12 months” to activate the agreement and that he hoped the project would make the former stadium “a destination in Nicosia”.
The concession will initially run for 10 years, with extensions possible up to a maximum of 25.
PHC is the largest restaurant and cafe operator in Cyprus, and its brands include Pizza Hut, KFC, Burger King, Wagamama, Caffè Nero and PAUL.
Politis reports that the Caffe Nero would go beyond a standard coffee shop, with plans including sofas, areas for business meetings, space for small events or seminars and a large outdoor garden.
PHC also plans a wine bar on an elevated part of the square overlooking the public space, while one of the smaller ground floor units is earmarked for a perfume shop.
PAUL, Wagamama and Verde Caferesto are under consideration, and the choice depends mainly on what the building can accommodate and on licensing requirements.
Politis also reports that the municipality aims to reopen a citizen service centre next year, after the closure of the one on Makariou Avenue.
The Cyprus Mail reported in August that the redevelopment would include such a centre, and that it was due to open by next year.
Residents of the walled city have also asked for a pharmacy, as none operates there at present.
The GSP stadium closed in 1999 and was demolished in 2017 to make way for what was originally intended to be a green space in the capital.
Lawmakers on Thursday got pushback from the government on a proposal to de-criminalise the publishing or reproduction of political content on the eve and on the day of elections.
As it stands, the law prohibits political messaging on the eve of, and the day of, elections – on penalty of a prison sentence of up to one year, or a fine up to €5,000, or both.
The aim is to prevent the circulation of content that might influence the outcome of elections.
The matter came to the fore after a number of people – including candidates for MP – were questioned by police over social media posts they made just prior to the parliamentary elections held in May this year.
Akel and Alma have drafted two separate bills aiming to relax the prohibitions and downgrade infractions from a criminal offence – as they are now – to an administrative fine.
Akel proposes that infractions be punishable by a fine of €2,000.
But the attorney-general’s office said this amount was too low, and also posed the issue of the ability to collect on such fines.
Under Akel’s proposal, only paid advertisements and sponsored content would be banned during the so-called ‘silence period’.
Regular people, making comments on social media, would be exempt.
However, the exemption would not apply to individuals designated as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).
In Cyprus, a PEP is an individual who holds or has held a prominent public function, along with their family members and close associates. This includes heads of state or government, senior politicians, high-ranking government, judicial, or military officials, senior executives of state-owned enterprises, and important political party officials.
Meanwhile the interior ministry raised other objections. Officials argued it would be extremely difficult to distinguish between spontaneous personal opinions posted online and organised political campaigning, especially when it comes to accounts operating under pseudonyms.
Moreover, criminalising content by PEPs but not by others might pose issues of discriminatory practices.
For this reason, the ministry counter-proposes that the infractions remain a criminal offence on the books, but in practice they would be converted into a fine of at least €5,000 – imposed by the Chief Returning Officer.
In case of repeat infractions, the monetary penalty would be increased.
The House interior affairs committee will continue discussing the issue at a later date.
International law could not be applied selectively and rules governing the seas could not be rewritten to serve the ambitions of individual states, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed, speaking at a high-level debate of the Greek Presidency of the UN Security Council titled “Maintenance of international peace and security: Emerging technologies and maritime security.” Referring […]
The Financial Times has refused to correct an anonymously sourced article about a recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Norway and Finland, despite objections from both Nordic governments, according to media reports.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Finnish President Alexander Stubb spoke with Putin earlier this week, drawing criticism from some of Europe’s more Russia-hawkish politicians.
The British newspaper claimed that Putin spent much of the conversation “lecturing” the Nordic leaders on “medieval Slavic history” and its relevance to the Ukraine conflict, rather than discussing ways to end the hostilities. Citing three anonymous sources described only as “familiar with the conversation,” the FT portrayed the Russian president as “fixated” on history.
Store’s government told Norwegian daily Verdens Gang (VG) that the characterization was inaccurate and that Finland had contacted the FT on behalf of both countries to challenge its account, the newspaper reported on Thursday. Finnish media also covered the joint objection, with the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat citing its own sources to dispute the British paper’s description of the call.
Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov said later in the day that the FT article is “some invented information, or rather disinformation” and that the Nordic leaders were correct to call out the publication.
The FT, however, rejected the request, telling VG that it stood by its reporting.
Its article, published on Tuesday, was written by three journalists.
One of them, American national Christopher Miller, previously worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US government-funded international broadcaster originally established with covert CIA funding to conduct anti-communist propaganda operations during the Cold War. Miller went to Ukraine in 2010 as a volunteer with the US Peace Corps.
His co-authors, Max Seddon and Henry Foy, head the FT’s bureaus in Moscow and Brussels, respectively.
Last week, the newspaper published a lengthy article by Seddon titled “The Putin whisperers,” recounting a dramatic but difficult-to-verify story of American and German nationals attempting to avert a “nuclear Armageddon” through backchannel diplomacy with Moscow.
Foy, meanwhile, broke a story in 2025 alleging that a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had experienced suspected Russian GPS jamming. The FT journalist was himself aboard the aircraft when it landed in Bulgaria, as he subsequently revealed on the newspaper’s podcast. His original report, citing anonymous officials, suggested Russia may have deliberately targeted the top EU executive with electronic interference.
Key elements of the story were challenged almost immediately by flight-tracking service Flightradar24. Bulgarian authorities subsequently debunked the core claims relayed by FT.
Despite the discrepancies, the FT insisted it stood by its reporting. Foy did not respond to requests for comment from fellow journalists who questioned the account.
The leaders of Norway and Finland are criticised for breaking with the European consensus on boycotting diplomacy by calling President Putin. Their decision to undermine this solidarity is seen as dividing and weakening Europe. I argue the opposite. It was a brave and necessary move, as the European consensus is based on a rhetorical trap that isolates Europe, makes it increasingly irrelevant, and risks taking it to war with Russia – the world’s largest nuclear power. I will make a further argument: we should develop a healthy scepticism towards the notion that speaking with one voice is always a strength.
How to Speak with One Voice: The Rhetorical Trap
Ask yourself: how can 27+ countries with different political, economic, and security interests agree on a common foreign policy and speak with one voice? A common voice can be achieved by defining collective interests or by setting a rhetorical trap. A rhetorical trap is set when politicians use shared values and earlier commitments to pressure others into supporting policies they would otherwise oppose. Disagreement is portrayed as a betrayal of these values, making it politically costly to dissent, even when the policy goes against national interests.
The easiest way to force a consensus is to frame every issue as a struggle between good and evil. Once political disagreements become moral questions, those who challenge the consensus can be shamed rather than answered. If every issue is reduced to a choice between freedom and imperialism, it becomes much easier to speak with one voice. The obsession with speaking with one voice makes Europeans vulnerable to Manichean thinking and warmongering policies.
Europeans unite around absurd slogans such as “Putin is Hitler” and “Russia wants to restore the Soviet Union”. These slogans do not help us understand Russia or develop sensible policies to mitigate the security competition. Their purpose is to establish moral clarity and enforce political conformity. Challenging these slogans with well-documented arguments is considered immoral and a threat to European unity. This rhetorical trap is extremely dangerous because, in a struggle between good and evil, we reach the conclusion that diplomacy is appeasement and weapons are the path to peace.
The End of Debate
Consider the debate about European security after the Cold War. We once recognised the principle of indivisible security, which means that one state should not strengthen its security at the expense of others. Discussions about security entailed balancing deterrence with reassurance. These principles have largely disappeared from European political discourse. It is now only about deterrence. It is heresy to contest the notion that NATO is a “force for good”, and all concerns about NATO expansionism are framed as opposition to democracy and freedom. How can we resolve a security competition if we are not even allowed to discuss its causes?
Instead, European leaders increasingly measure the success of their policies by their moral intentions rather than their consequences. Sanctions are presented as a demonstration of resolve, the willingness to fight a war as an expression of solidarity, and refusing diplomacy as standing firm against aggression. But what happens when these policies fail to produce the intended results? The answer is usually more sanctions, more war, and less diplomacy. The policies themselves cannot be questioned without appearing to undermine the moral foundations of European unity.
Weaponising Solidarity
The demand for solidarity is also weaponised to override reason. WikiLeaks exposed how Norwegian officials had initially expressed serious concerns that US strategic missile defence would disrupt the nuclear balance with Russia and destabilise the world. The US ambassador reported to Washington that the Norwegians could be persuaded to change their position, not through arguments, but by emphasising the need for NATO solidarity. If the Norwegians were presented with a choice between “repeating Russian narratives” and defending NATO solidarity, they would fall in line.
Later, the American ambassador sent another cable to Washington confirming that their work with NGOs, think tanks, journalists, and politicians had delivered the message, and that the Norwegians were abandoning their security concerns. This was not the result of arguments, but of pressure to show solidarity in a world where everything is framed in black-and-white terms. Since then, the nuclear arms control architecture has largely collapsed, and the world faces a dangerous future – but the political class takes comfort in the fact that it was all done in solidarity.
This is a dangerous way to organise European security. If solidarity means that countries must abandon their own security assessments to support a common position, then solidarity itself becomes a source of insecurity. The purpose of cooperation should be to reconcile different interests and develop better policies, not to pressure governments into repeating the same empty arguments.
Speaking with One Voice or Correcting Course?
A strong Europe should be able to tolerate disagreements among its members. Indeed, such disagreements are necessary if Europe is to correct mistaken policies. When dissent is treated as disloyalty, political mistakes become almost impossible to reverse. Leaders become prisoners of their own rhetoric.
Norway and Finland should therefore not be criticised for challenging the European consensus on diplomatic isolation. They should be encouraged. Europe needs countries willing to question policies that have become resistant to criticism, especially when those policies concern war and peace.
The current European consensus is sustained by a rhetorical trap that isolates Europe, makes the continent increasingly irrelevant, and risks dragging us into war. I therefore argue for a little less solidarity and a little more common sense.
President Volodymyr Zelensky recently signed Bill No.16119, a law expanding educational rights for national minorities and indigenous peoples. Ukraine is thereby selectively adjusting, rather than reversing, its post-2014 Ukrainization policies.
The measure was presented as progress on minority rights and a step that could help open further EU accession clusters. Romanian President Nicusor Dan welcomed the legislation, noting that mother-tongue education for ethnic Romanians is “no abstract matter” for families living in Ukraine.
The law expands the use of eligible minority languages in schools, recognizes special institutional status for minority-language schools, and strengthens continuity of education.
Crucially, the additional protections apply only to official languages of the European Union and to indigenous languages such as Crimean Tatar. Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian and Slovak qualify. Russian does not. The Ukrainian Ministry of Education clarified that the additional rights “do not apply to the Russian language.”
Russian remains widely spoken, with 28% or even more Ukrainians still using both Russian and Ukrainian at home despite years of Ukrainization and wartime restrictions.
The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe flagged the problem years ago: in its 2017 opinion, it found the less favorable treatment of non-EU languages, particularly Russian, difficult to justify and raised discrimination concerns. Its 2023 opinion report on national minorities legislation reiterated that promoting Ukrainian as the state language does not justify withholding equivalent protections from Russian speakers.
Ukraine’s Constitutional Court took a different view in 2021, holding that preferential treatment for EU languages was permissible – the European advisory body’s criticism and Kyiv’s domestic position have never fully aligned.
The expanded guarantees for ethnic Hungarians and Romanians may reflect Budapest’s and Bucharest’s ability to block or delay Ukraine’s EU accession process.
It is no accident Roma inclusion follows a separate track: a national strategy running to 2030 addresses education, housing and discrimination. These measures concern the social integration of marginalized Gypsies communities, rather than reversing Ukrainization.
Similarly, Russian speakers and ethnic Russians, who cannot exercise comparable leverage inside the EU process, remain outside the new framework.
By comparison, although the ongoing war complicates it, Russia formally recognizes ethnic Ukrainians, while its Constitution and laws guarantee the preservation and study of minority languages.
In any case, Kyiv explicitly differentiates between Russian and EU minority languages, while Moscow formally has an inclusive framework.
Ukraine’s Russian minority-rights controversy predates the 2022 invasion: differential treatment has been a structural feature of post-Maidan policy, rather than just a temporary wartime measure.
After 2014, language, media and minority legislation steadily elevated Ukrainian while narrowing the public space for Russian. US political scientist Nicolai N. Petro, writing in Foreign Policy in late 2023, described policies that further relegated Russian speakers to a permanent second-class status – and warned that such approaches risk alienating a significant share of the population even once fighting ends.
Ukrainian officials have at times declared there is simply “no Russian minority”, a claim that sits uneasily with census data and everyday bilingual reality, to say the least.
Meanwhile, nationalist historical narratives persist: a Lviv’s museum dedicated to Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych was being rebuilt just weeks before the education law was signed. Shukhevych incited anti-Polish pogroms in 1930.
The continued public commemoration of such figures is hard to reconcile with any claim of comprehensive ideological retreat from post-Maidan nation-building. Moreover, the reforms will be viewed by Ukrainian ultranationalists as a setback forced by European partners – and are likely to generate domestic pushback.
They may also, on the other hand, encourage further demands from minority communities, including over the glorification of controversial wartime figures – an issue that still strains relations with Poland. Not surprisingly, Ukrainian tensions with neighbors have been a recurring feature of the regional landscape – Hungary being a case in point.
As part of its EU accession plans, Kyiv is reviewing chauvinistic policies regarding some minorities – while leaving the largest linguistic community outside the latest concessions.
The “macro” dimension of the conflict involves great-power rivalry, proxy dynamics and the long trajectory of NATO expansion. The micro or rather “meso”-level dimension remains the unresolved issue of post-Soviet borders and the ethnopolitics of a post-Soviet republic still consolidating its nation-building project.
In the words of Kristin Henrard (Professor of International Law at the Brussels School of Governance): “Ukraine will need to acknowledge that the Russian minority, as one of the several minorities with kinstates in its territory, is special because of that strong numerical size, and traditional presence.” This would be “in line with Ukraine’s international obligations”, she writes.
So much for the idea that minority-rights problems were ever merely “Russian propaganda.” They were real enough for Hungarians and Romanians that Kyiv had to legislate; they remain real for Russian speakers. The civil-rights issue remains.
Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.
You read that right! The very first Halloween parade for four-legged guests is on its way! Organised by Glow and Beyond Events, Papaflessa Street in Agioi Omologites in Nicosia will fill with doggos and beyond as pet owners bring their beloved buddies to this unique experience.
The event will take place from 4pm to 6pm on Sunday, November 1, bringing together the animal lovers’ community to celebrate the Halloween spirit of the season.
Pets and their guardians are encouraged to arrive dressed up in their best Halloween costume and get ready for an afternoon of spooky surprises, treats and wholesome gatherings.
“All pets and their humans are welcome,” say the organisers. “Get ready to show off your pet’s Halloween look in Cyprus’ first pet Halloween parade.”
With free entrance and homemade dog treats, this one-of-a-kind event will certainly be a charming afternoon out in the city.
Those curious to explore it and connect with fellow pet lovers are advised to register their pet via the online form.
Halloween Pet Parade
First Halloween parade in Cyprus for pets and their owners. Costumes, treats and spooky surprises. November 1. Papaflessa Street, Agioi Omologites, Nicosia. 4pm-6pm. Free admission. Registrations needed. @gl0wco
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