Poland threatens Putin with arrest if he flies through its airspace on way to Hungary
Poland warned Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday against travelling through its airspace for a summit in Hungary with US president Donald Trump, saying it could be forced to execute an international arrest warrant if he did, Reuters reports.
Bulgaria, however, would be willing to let Putin use its airspace if the summit is held in Hungary, foreign minister Georg Georgiev was quoted as saying.
Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told Radio Rodzina:
I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague.
And, therefore, if this summit is to take place, hopefully with the participation of the victim of the aggression, the aircraft will use a different route.
The ICC warrant obligates the court’s member states to arrest Putin if he sets foot on their territory.
Sikorski last week accused Russia of a “tactically stupid and counterproductive” escalation of the war in Ukraine, saying its drone incursion into Poland last month appeared to be deliberate.
Key events
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French police on Tuesday stepped up the hunt for thieves who stole priceless royal jewels from the Louvre museum, as scrutiny mounted over security at the country’s cultural institutions, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Sunday’s audacious daylight robbery – which lasted just seven minutes – was the latest in a string of thefts from French museums in recent months, and has left authorities scrambling to increase protection measures.
In a separate case, a prosecutor said on Tuesday that a Chinese woman had been charged over taking part in the theft of more than $1m worth of gold nuggets from another Paris museum last month.
Scores of investigators were still looking for Sunday’s culprits, working on the theory that it was an organised crime group that clambered up a ladder on a truck to break into the museum, then dropped a diamond-studded crown as they fled.
Detectives were scouring video camera footage from around the Louvre as well as of main highways out of Paris for signs of the four robbers, who escaped on scooters.
Italy is set to suffer a further drop in the number of births this year to a new historical low, aggravating the country’s demographic crisis, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Tuesday.
Last year recorded just 370,000 new births, the lowest figure since Italy’s unification in 1861, and the 16th year in a row in which the figure declined.
In the first seven months of 2025 the negative trend continued, with just under 198,000 newborns, down 6.3% from the same period of 2024, ISTAT said in a statement.
A Ukrainian citizen allegedly working for Russian intelligence services as part of a sabotage campaign was detained in Poland, while two others were arrested in Romania, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Prosecutors said the individuals acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence services were allegedly preparing acts of sabotage involving the sending of shipments containing explosives and incendiary materials to Ukraine, which were intended to spontaneously combust or explode during transport, AP reported.
The goal was to intimidate populations and destabilize EU countries supporting Ukraine, Polish prosecutors said, adding that two more Ukrainian citizens suspected of taking part in the same plot were detained in Romania.
Romanian authorities said Tuesday that two Ukrainians, aged 21 and 24, acting on behalf of Russian intelligence, deposited two parcels containing improvised explosive devices at an international courier company in Bucharest. Specialists from Romanian intelligence defused the devices, and the pair were placed under preventative arrest for 30 days.
The Ukrainian in Poland was one of eight individuals detained by authorities in recent days on suspicion of preparing acts of sabotage across the country, a spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office said.
AI chatbots are “unreliable and clearly biased” when offering voting advice, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has said, warning of a threat to democracy eight days before national elections.
The four chatbots tested by the AP “often end up with the same two parties, regardless of the user’s question or command”, the authority said in a report ahead of the 29 October election.
In more than half of the cases, the chatbot suggested either the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of Geert Wilders or the leftwing GroenLinks-PvdA led by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.
Some parties, such as the centre-right CDA, “are almost never mentioned, even when the user’s input exactly matches the positions of one of these parties”, the report said.
The deputy head of the AP, Monique Verdier, said that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, “as a voting aid, they consistently fail”. Voters were being pushed towards a party that did not necessarily align with their political views, she added.
“This directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of free and fair elections,” said Verdier. “We therefore warn against using AI chatbots for voting advice, as their operation is unclear and difficult to verify.”
You can read the full story here: Don’t use AI to tell you how to vote in election, says Dutch watchdog
Russia said on Tuesday its conditions for peace in Ukraine remained unchanged since the August summit between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters he was surprised by an “unscrupulous” CNN report which said that the anticipated meeting between him and US secretary of state Marco Rubio had been put on hold for the time being and that unidentified US officials felt that Russia still had a “maximalist stance”.
“I want to officially confirm: Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings that were reached during the Alaska summit,” Lavrov told reporters, adding that he had told Rubio precisely that.
Lavrov said that the place and the timing of the next Trump-Putin summit was less important than the substance of implementing the understandings reached in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Kremlin said there was no clear date, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying:
Listen, we have an understanding of the presidents, but we cannot postpone what has not been finalised.
Neither President Trump nor President Putin gave exact dates.
A court in Slovakia on Tuesday convicted the man in last year’s attempted assassination of the country’s populist prime minister Robert Fico of a terror attack and sentenced him to 21 years in prison, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
The shooting and the trial have shaken this small, EU and Nato-member country where Fico has long been a divisive figure, criticised for straying from Slovakia’s pro-western path and aligning it closer to Russia.
Juraj Cintula opened fire on Fico on 15 May 2024, as the prime minister greeted supporters after a government meeting in the town of Handlová, about 140km north-east of the capital of Bratislava.
Cintula, 72, was arrested immediately after the attack and ordered to remain behind bars. When questioned by investigators, he rejected the accusation of being a “terrorist.”
Fico was shot in the abdomen and was taken from Handlová to a hospital in nearby city of Banská Bystrica. He underwent a five-hour surgery, followed by another two-hour surgery two days later. He has since recovered.
Cintula has claimed his motive for the shooting was that he disagreed with government policies. He refused to testify before the Specialized Criminal Court in Banská Bystrica, but confirmed that what he had told investigators about his motive remains true.
Jon Henley
Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, based in Paris
Perhaps France’s most fabled jail, La Santé – where the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year jail term for criminal conspiracy to raise campaign funds from Libya – is the last remaining prison inside the Paris city limits.
Located in the southern Montparnasse district of the capital, it opened in 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 executions, the last in 1972. Partially closed for renovation in 2014, the prison reopened five years later and houses more than 1,100 inmates.
Famous former detainees include the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, the civil servant and Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, the businessman and politician Bernard Tapie, the 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
Prominent or at-risk prisoners are generally held in the jail’s QB4 ward for “vulnerable people” – the so-called “VIP quarters” – in single cells, not the usual three-person units, and kept alone during outdoor activities for security reasons.
Located on the first floor, the ward has 19 identical cells and a dedicated exercise yard so inmates are not obliged to mingle with other prisoners – although they remain subject to whistles, jeers and smartphone photos from nearby cells.
You can read the full piece from Jon Henley here: What can Sarkozy expect in La Santé prison and what has he taken with him?
Poland threatens Putin with arrest if he flies through its airspace on way to Hungary
Poland warned Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday against travelling through its airspace for a summit in Hungary with US president Donald Trump, saying it could be forced to execute an international arrest warrant if he did, Reuters reports.
Bulgaria, however, would be willing to let Putin use its airspace if the summit is held in Hungary, foreign minister Georg Georgiev was quoted as saying.
Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told Radio Rodzina:
I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague.
And, therefore, if this summit is to take place, hopefully with the participation of the victim of the aggression, the aircraft will use a different route.
The ICC warrant obligates the court’s member states to arrest Putin if he sets foot on their territory.
Sikorski last week accused Russia of a “tactically stupid and counterproductive” escalation of the war in Ukraine, saying its drone incursion into Poland last month appeared to be deliberate.
A tornado tore through districts north of Paris on Monday, toppling three construction cranes and killing one person and critically injuring four others, authorities said.
The town of Ermont, about 13 miles (20km) north-east of Paris, was worst hit by the sudden twister that caused damage across 10 districts overall.
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