Luxembourg’s labour code grants paid leave for major family events like birth, marriage, adoption and bereavement

Behind the scenes at Aqua Park Beaufort: chlorine barrels, sulphuric acid and 420,000 litres of water an hour

Luxembourg’s labour code grants paid leave for major family events like birth, marriage, adoption and bereavement

Behind the scenes at Aqua Park Beaufort: chlorine barrels, sulphuric acid and 420,000 litres of water an hour

Nobody could have predicted that today's main global headline would be Trump's desire to see a unified Ireland.

Officials say a rail fragment was found on the tracks after Friday's crash of a passenger train that left 44 people injured.

ÉPREVILLE–EN-LIEUVIN, France – As European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde shook hands and tasted oysters on the bucolic grounds of a Norman manor on Saturday, some might have seen a presidential candidate in waiting. But, Lagarde swears, there is nothing to see here. Speaking as a special guest at the Fête de la Pomme, an apple-themed political gathering organized by Normandy’s regional president Hervé Morin, Lagarde dodged questions over her involvement in the French presidential race and her early departure from the ECB — despite mounting speculation on both matters. On stage, she even encouraged reporters who made the trip to Normandy to cover her potential political comeback to pack up early, promising that they would be disappointed. But there are signs suggesting that the ECB chief, who entered into politics during the presidency of France’s apple-loving Jacques Chirac, is increasingly willing to weigh in on the campaign. While she promised to stay at least until the end of the year, Lagarde previously refused to rule out leaving before the end of her term, which ends in October 2027. Earlier this week, she announced that she would publish her first autobiography, Lady First, in January. She also waded into the French presidential debate by rejecting French far-left presidential contender Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s proposal to wipe out government debt.  Her presence at the apple festival in the 15th-century Manoir de la Fortière — an unconventional locale for a central banker’s speech — might be yet another signal. Opening the event, Morin said that he tried to invite her for years but never managed to make it work. Until this year.  Christine Lagarde at the Fête de la Pomme, France, on September 12, 202. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO “Everyone is happy to have you here and I realized to what extent you have an exceptional reputation,” said Morin, who worked with Lagarde when they both served as ministers under conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, including during the 2008 financial crisis.  While Lagarde declined to say whether she would become involved in the campaign, participants to Morin’s annual political rally didn’t rule that out. “Several people mention Lagarde as a presidential candidate, but she is the only one who can answer that question,” said centrist senator Catherine Morin-Desailly. “She is a Norman, French and European figure who must, of course, play an active role in helping to shape and develop future platforms for the presidential election. Good candidates will call on her expertise, and I hope they do.” With centrist candidates Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe competing against each other and Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the conservative Les Républicains, also taking part in the race, the center-right side of the presidential spectrum is already crowded. For Kristina Pluchet, a senator from Les Républicains who backs Retailleau, other candidates including Christine Lagarde could very well join the race, but they should compete in a primary election.  With French bond yields rising and the government led by Sébastien Lecornu struggling to cut the deficit, Lagarde’s financial résumé could prove to be an asset — although she complained to a local producer that the oysters she had during her time as the International Monetary Fund boss in Washington were washed with chlorine. The ECB President didn’t give any hint on her political future in her speech. Instead, she used repeated references to calvados, Normandy’s internationally famous apple brandy, to make the case for the benefits of EU membership. She said that calvados, which could be found on the stands of the fête, can be better exported across the world thanks to the EU’s trade policy and is protected by the bloc’s geographical indications. And, unlike calvados which can flow freely between member states without tariffs, capital and services still face internal barriers imposed by member countries, she added. “It is no surprise, then, that many of the people who want to build something new leave Europe altogether,” Lagarde said, calling for the emergence of a real capital markets union to rival the U.S.. As she walked back to a German-plated grey Mercedes S-Class, wearing a scarf with Normandy’s two-leopards flag, Lagarde stopped for selfies, but kept sidestepping questions about her future.

DUBLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump waded into another age-old conflict Saturday, declaring on a golf-focused visit to Ireland that he’d like to see the island unified — the nightmare scenario for Northern Ireland’s British unionists. Sitting beside Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin after an overnight flight from Washington, Trump said he couldn’t understand why Northern Ireland — the part of the island that remained in the U.K. when the rest of Ireland won independence over a century ago — hadn’t already joined the Republic of Ireland. “I’d love to see it unified. I think it’d be great. A great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually,” Trump said, gesturing to Martin, who has spent years trying behind the scenes to build better relations with unionists, to little avail. “You’ve got the right man over here to get it moving. But I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now the U.K. will have something to say about it obviously. But I think it’d be a great thing. How can it be bad?” Nearly 3,700 people were killed in three decades of bloodshed over the constitutional future of Northern Ireland, a conflict largely settled by the U.S.-brokered Good Friday accord of 1998. Crucially, that peace deal specified that Northern Ireland should stay a separate part of the U.K. as long as most voters support this — a position unchanged, according to virtually all opinion polls, in the years since. Trump’s out-of-the-blue endorsement of Irish unity spurred an immediate rejection from Northern Ireland’s main pro-British party, the Democratic Unionists, who have been the island’s main supporters of Trump’s MAGA movement. “President Trump knows better than most that elections matter,” said Democratic Unionist leader Gavin Robinson. “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people,” Robinson wrote on X. “As unionists we are not interested in the destruction of our country by joining with the Irish Republic.” The Protestant unionist side of the community that once commanded a firm majority in Northern Ireland has been in seemingly terminal decline. Irish nationalists on the Catholic side of the divide, by contrast, have increasingly demanded a referendum on Irish unity following Britain’s exit from the European Union — a move that made it easier for Northern Ireland to trade goods with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member country, than with the rest of the United Kingdom. The Irish republicans of Sinn Féin, which long backed Irish Republican Army violence aimed at destabilizing Northern Ireland and ending the island’s partition, seized on Trump’s words to shift political pressure back on Martin, Ireland’s prime minister. Sinn Féin today leads the cross-community government in Northern Ireland created by the IRA’s 1997 cease-fire and the 1998 peace deal. But south of the border, it remains the main opposition party — the primary parliamentary thorn in Martin’s side. “The conversation on Irish unity has shifted, and the onus is on the taoiseach to begin planning,” said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, appealing to Martin to push much harder on the issue. She lambasted Trump as a warmonger who “must stop arming Israel” and “must stop facilitating the genocide of Palestinian people.” Sinn Féin’s moderate competition for Irish nationalist votes in Northern Ireland, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, offered a far more light-hearted welcome for Trump’s apparent endorsement of their position. SDLP leader Claire Hanna drew gasps and whoops from the audience at her party’s annual conference in Belfast when she declared: “Donald Trump in the last hour has announced that he is in favor of a united Ireland.” “Turns out he’s not as orange as he looks,” she said, referencing Trump’s facial make-up as well as the main Protestant fraternal organization in Northern Ireland, the Orange Order.   Trump quickly acknowledged that his Irish unity remarks would raise eyebrows and make headlines. At a later appearance at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh, Trump led his remarks by noting he’d just told journalists that a united Ireland would “be a very cool thing.” “I gave a nice answer, I think. We’ll read about it tomorrow,” he said to laughter from the audience, which included many of Ireland’s political leaders and corporate kingpins. “There’s no good answer, right?” This article was updated.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday ​shut down the vital East-West pipeline after the conduit came under attack in the widening Middle East war, threatening to send energy prices soaring. The 1,200-km pipeline has served as the main route out for global ​supplies of Middle East oil for the ‌past six months while the Strait of Hormuz has been largely shut by war.

Beloved French Canadian singer Céline Dion on Saturday returned to the stage after years battling a rare neurological disorder with a sell-out concert in an arena west of Paris. The 58-year-old appeared visibly moved as she opened her first full concert in six years to a crowd of around 30,000 people.

The first naval battle between two Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) has taken place in the Black Sea.

Ebola has reached a seventh DR Congo province after an infected man travelled through Rwanda and Uganda.

Warring tech bosses unite behind warnings that humans could lose control of the technology

The disturbing global decline in test results rests on wrong-headed curriculum changes

The film, a drama directed by May el-Toukhy, follows a Danish servant in the uneasy years after World War II. Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” won the runner-up award.

A growing number of social media creators are pushing the boundaries of safety and good taste to feed algorithms and win followers.