French police reinforcements have started arriving in New Caledonia as part of a massive operation to regain control of the capital Noumea, the top French official in the Pacific island territory said on Friday (17 May).

Tornado Cash co-founder Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to a little over five months in jail this week by a Dutch court, for helping to create a tool that obfuscates the trail of cryptocurrencies. The tool, built and run on Ethereum blockchain, was used by hackers to launder their illicitly obtained funds.

The Pfizergate scandal broke in 2021, revealing that during the pandemic, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had negotiated a contract for 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla via mobile phone texts that remain undisclosed to this day.

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about Bulgaria demanding €400 million from Russia's Gazprom for suspended gas supplies, Swedish Social Democrats wanting ID verification on social media on EU level to fight trolls, and so much more.

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico remains in a serious but stable condition and is able to speak a little, the country's president-elect said on Thursday (16 May), a day after an assassination attempt that sent shock waves across Europe.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven major democracies meeting in Italy next week will back a EU plan to use the income from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine's war effort, an Italian Treasury official said on Thursday (16 May).

Over the past five years, Ursula von der Leyen’s College of Commissioners has presented a long list of legislative texts covering issues ranging from Green Deal legislation to defence industrial programmes. 

Kosovo’s last-minute bid to placate Germany and get its application for membership of the Strasbourg-based human rights body, the Council of Europe approved has been attacked by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic and criticised by Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani.

Bulgarian state-owned gas company Bulgargas is seeking more than €400 million in damages from Russian gas monopoly Gazprom Export-Import for the sudden suspension of natural gas supplies at the end of April 2022.

The end-2023 MEPs failure to approve a comprehensive reform of the rules on pesticides epitomizes the difficulties of the Green Deal in agrifood policy. Two big agrifood policy files are pending for the next Parliament.

NATO's top commander said on Thursday (16 May) he did not believe Russia's military has deployed enough troops to make a strategic breakthrough in the region around Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.

Georgia's controversial 'foreign agent' law profoundly changes the country's relationship with its Western partners and the EU should take the outcome of the upcoming elections as a basis to reassess its ties with Tbilisi, the country's President Salome Zourabishvili told Euractiv.

Parliament in ex-Soviet Moldova voted on Thursday (16 May) to hold a referendum in October on European Union membership, the cornerstone of President Maia Sandu's policies, alongside a presidential election.

The left-wing to far-left platform Sumar and its former ally, the far-left Podemos party, have pressured the government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to prevent Madrid from sending weapons to Israel on a ship that was due to dock in the south-east Spanish port of Cartagena, Murcia, on Wednesday.

The planned televised showdown between Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein and Fratelli d’Italia leader Giorgia Meloni, initially set for 23 May, has been cancelled, as other parties, both in opposition and in coalition, raised objections about fairness and are now seeking to have a debate involving all party leaders.

Swedish Social Democrats are calling on the European Union to introduce an identity verification requirement across social media to prevent the creation of fake accounts, former prime minister Magdalena Andersson and socialist MEP Heléne Fritzon said on Thursday, following the recent revelations of alleged far-right troll farms.

As the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico continues to fight for his life after Wednesday’s assassination attempt, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk made public one of the death threats he received on social media.

Experts are questioning the legality and effectiveness of France's ban of TikTok in New Caledonia, imposed on Wednesday (15 May) to contain widespread protests that rocked the French overseas territory in the South Pacific.

Political murders often happen in authoritarian countries, and even more often in dictatorships, but when an elected politician gets shot in a democratic country, it opens wounds in the nation’s society that are very hard to heal.

The revealing of June’s EU elections lists in the last weeks has showcased a sad truth: politics can be very unfair and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are constantly walking on thin ice. Here’s a step-by-step guide to avoid being dumped from a party’s electoral lists.