Belgium is preparing for widespread disruption this week as unions launch a three-day national strike that will culminate in a full general stoppage on Wednesday.The action is aimed at government plans to cut public spending by overhauling labour rules and reshaping unemployment and pension systems.The industrial action begins with transport on Monday, when national rail operator SNCB expected to...

Diplomacy in Geneva wrapped up with US and Ukrainian officials saying talks had moved forward, but the biggest obstacle remains unresolved: Moscow's insistence on formal recognition of territory it now controls. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the steps taken in the meetings but warned that accepting Russian claims to occupied areas would violate Ukraine's territorial integrity...

The Royal Navy says it intercepted two Russian naval vessels as they passed west through the Dover Strait into the English Channel. HMS Severn shadowed the RFN Stoikiy, a corvette, and the tanker Yelnya during the encounter in the past fortnight, the UK Ministry of Defence reported. After initially tracking the pair, Severn handed monitoring duties to a NATO partner off the coast of Brittany but...

When 23-year-old Aishat Baimuradova left Chechnya earlier this year she hoped to build a life away from strict family controls and public scrutiny. Friends say she adopted a more modern appearance — shortening her hair, abandoning the headscarf and even altering an eyebrow — and began sharing candid photos online, telling people she finally felt able to breathe. In October, Armenian police...

The United States has publicly claimed authorship of a controversial 28-point blueprint intended to end the war in Ukraine, after reports that the document was being characterised by some as favouring Russia. Senator Marco Rubio, who has been involved in discussions over the plan, insisted the proposal was produced by the US and incorporated feedback from both Russian and Ukrainian sources. His...

Albania's prime minister has accused the UK Home Secretary of ethnic stereotyping after she highlighted Albanian families while unveiling major changes to Britain's asylum system. Shabana Mahmood told MPs that roughly 700 Albanian families were living in taxpayer-funded accommodation despite having had their asylum claims refused, and argued the government must remove people who have no right...

Leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan have urged further work on a US-drafted 28-point plan intended to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, expressing serious reservations about several of its provisions. At the G20 summit in Johannesburg, officials from Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Germany and Norway — together with two senior EU...

By ChatGPT, your friendly digital fortune tellerWhat does the future hold? No one can say for sure, but patterns, science, and human ambition give us some strong clues. As an AI trained on a mountain of human knowledge and trends, I’ve developed a few ideas about where things might be going — some exciting, some alarming, and all worth thinking about.So here are 10 bold guesses about the...

Got yourself a misbehaving E or F series Samsung Smart TV? Has the normal Factory Reset not worked for you? Follow these instructions to complete a much more complete Factory Reset that normally only technicians would use.The instructions below will work on an E and F series Samsung Smart TV (I have not tested this on earlier models, but it could also work with those as well). You will...

I made me a little .bat file to solve the problem with restart/shutdown. To make a bat file to work with you go to START --> Run --> cmd and press Then you get a command window. Type EDIT and press . Then a blue window opens. Press ALT+F to make the menu appear, and choose "Save As..." You just save the file on your desktop (or another place of your choosing). After...