EUROPEAN UNION: The EU’s executive decided to end its six-year dispute with member state Poland today.

The EU says the country’s new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has initiated the necessary changes to reverse what the bloc called the previous government’s backsliding on democratic principles.

GERMANY: Berlin said it had recalled its ambassador to Russia today for a week of consultations following an alleged cyberattack on its governing party.

Germany last week accused Russian military agents of hacking into the top echelons of Chancellor Olef Scholz’s Social Democrats, as well as other sensitive government and industrial targets. 

Berlin has joined Nato and fellow European countries in warning of consequences for cyber-espionage.

SOUTH AFRICA: A report into a fire that killed 76 people at a five-storey building in Johannesburg last year has concluded that city authorities should be held responsible.

Officials were aware of serious safety issues at the run-down apartment block at least four years before the blaze, it said.

At least 12 children were among the dead and another 86 people were injured in the inferno on August 31. 

AUSTRALIA: Qantas Airways has agreed to pay 120 million Australian dollars (£63 million) in compensation, as well as a fine, for selling more than 86,000 tickets on thousands of cancelled flights, the airline and Australia’s consumer watchdog said today.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued the Sydney-based airline in the Federal Court last year, alleging that Qantas engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights from May 2021 through to July 2022 that had already been cancelled.