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Macron's envoy meets with Russian officials for peace talks in Moscow
French President Emmanuel Macron’s most senior diplomat was in Moscow on Tuesday to hold talks with Russian officials, according to a source familiar with the meeting and two diplomatic sources. The first source said Emmanuel Bonne, who has been at the helm of Macron’s diplomatic cell since 2019, met officials at the Kremlin. He did not give further details beyond saying the aim was to hold dialogue on key issues, most importantly Ukraine. The French presidency neither confirmed nor denied the talks, but said: “As the President said during his doorstep yesterday, discussions exist at a technical level, in full transparency and in consultation with President Volodymyr Zelensky and with the main European colleagues.” The two diplomatic sources said allies had been made aware of the initiative and that Bonne had held talks with Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Macron said in December that Europeans would have to re-engage in direct talks with Putin if the latest US-led efforts to broker a Ukraine peace deal were to founder. France 24, February 5

Sanctions having ‘significant impact’ on Russian economy, says EU special envoy
Western sanctions are having a “significant impact” on the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions envoy has said, ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. David O’Sullivan, a veteran Irish official, said sanctions were “not a silver bullet” and would always face circumvention, but insisted that after four years he was confident they were having an effect. “I am fairly bullish. I think that the sanctions have really had a significant impact on the Russian economy,” he told the Guardian in a rare interview. “We may be, in the course of 2026, coming to a point where the whole thing becomes unsustainable, because so much of the Russian economy has been distorted so much by the building up of the war economy at the expense of the civil economy. I think defying the laws of economic gravity can only go on for so long.” The Guardian, February 5

Canadian pension funds to exit UK’s biggest port operator in £10bn deal
Two Canadian pension giants plan to sell their stakes in Associated British Ports in a deal that they hope will value the UK’s biggest ports operator at more than £10bn. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System - which own 34 per cent and 33 per cent of ABP respectively - have appointed bankers at investment bank Morgan Stanley to explore a sale of their stakes, according to people familiar with the situation. A deal could be reached as soon as the second half of this year, one of the people said, although they cautioned that talks remain at an early stage. Asset manager Hermes, which owns about 6 per cent of the group, could also sell its stake, according to some of the people close to discussions. ABP owns 21 ports in the UK including Southampton and the Humber, and handles around a quarter of the country’s seaborne trade. Financial Times, February 5

Washington Post announces sweeping layoffs as it scales back news coverage
The Washington Post has announced it is laying off one-third of its work force, sharply scaling back the paper's coverage of sports and foreign news. The cuts, announced on Wednesday, will impact employees across departments, with roles in the newsroom's sports, local and foreign sections hit particularly hard. It marks the latest upheaval for the leading US newspaper, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Executive editor Matt Murray said the cuts would bring "stability". But the announcement was met with condemnation from the paper's employees and some former leaders, one of whom described it as among the "darkest days in the history of" the storied newspaper. "Today's news is painful. These are difficult actions," Murray wrote in a note to staff on Wednesday. "If we are to thrive, not just endure, we must reinvent our journalism and our business model with renewed ambition." In his explanation of the cuts, Murray said that the paper's online traffic had plummeted in the last three years amid the artificial intelligence boom, and that it was "too rooted in a different era". Ahead of the announcement, foreign correspondents and local reporters had pleaded with Bezos to preserve their jobs. BBC news, February 4

BT profits slip as thousands more cut their broadband connection
Broadband line losses have continued to mount at BT but the decline this year will be less severe than expected, the former state telecoms monopoly has said. Openreach, BT’s wholesale broadband network, lost another 210,000 customers during the third quarter of its financial year, below the 242,000 shed in the previous three months. The FTSE 100 constituent now expects a decline of about 850,000 broadband lines for the year, down from previous guidance of about 900,000. The slowdown in losses could provide some relief for Allison Kirkby, BT’s chief executive. The telecoms group has seen a rise in bets against its stock over the past six months. Short sellers have run up a position of about £670 million, or 3.6 per cent of the group’s outstanding share capital, since September. BT is Britain’s biggest broadband provider and has spent billions on rolling out full-fibre across the country. It has connected its faster network to more than 21 million homes, against a goal of 25 million by the end of next year and potentially 30 million by the end of the decade. The Times, February 5

Russian spy spacecraft have intercepted Europe’s key satellites, officials believe
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them. Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the west following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the west have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 - two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious manoeuvres in orbit. Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe’s most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. Financial Times, February 4

UK PM: Russian attacks on Ukraine energy sites 'particularly depraved'
Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy sector on Monday night - as temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F) - were "barbaric" and "particularly depraved", UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said. He made the comments after speaking to US President Donald Trump hours after Russia hit power plants and critical infrastructure in the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere. The attacks came at the end of a week-long pause that Trump had asked Russia's President Vladimir Putin to observe as a fierce cold swept Ukraine. Trump said on Tuesday that Putin had "kept his word" and that he would like him to end the war. Top US envoys are meeting negotiators from Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday. Asked by reporters whether he was disappointed with Russia's renewed attacks, Trump said, "it [the agreement] was on Sunday, and he [Putin] went from Sunday to Sunday. It's a lot, you know, one week, we'll take anything, because it's really, really cold over there." The damage from the strikes was extensive, with more than 1,000 tower blocks in Kyiv without heating and a power plant in the eastern city of Kharkiv beyond repair. BBC news, February 4

Iran demands Oman venue for US talks amid rising regional tensions
Iran is demanding that talks with the US this week be held in Oman, not Turkey, and that the scope be narrowed to two-way negotiations on nuclear issues only, a regional source said on Tuesday, adding new complications to an already delicate diplomatic effort. Iran's move to change the venue and agenda for the talks, scheduled for Friday in Istanbul, comes amid heightened tensions as the US builds up forces in the Middle East. Regional players have pushed for a resolution of a standoff that has led to mutual threats of air strikes and stirred fears of escalation into a wider war. The US military on Tuesday shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, the US military said, in an incident first reported by Reuters. France 24, February 4

Zero net migration would shrink UK economy by 3.6%, says thinktank
The UK economy would be 3.6 per cent smaller by 2040 if net migration fell to zero, forcing the government to raise taxes to combat a much bigger budget deficit, a thinktank has predicted. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said falling birthrates in the UK and a sharp decrease in net migration last year had led it to consider what would happen if this trend continued to the end of the decade. In this scenario the UK population would stop growing at about 70 million in 2030. The latest official figures showed the UK population was 69.3 million in 2024. Dr Benjamin Caswell, a senior economist at NIESR, said: “Net zero migration leaves the economy 3.6 per cent smaller by 2040 and this reflects slower employment growth and a smaller workforce.” The Guardian, February 4

UK diners ditch restaurants for chicken shops and fast-food chains
Britons are swapping sit-down restaurant meals for cheaper fast-food options as the squeeze on household finances reshapes how the country eats out. Data suggests that dinner or lunch at a restaurant or pub is losing ground to chicken shops, bakery chains and coffee houses. According to an analysis of more than 60,000 outlets across the country, visits to restaurants and pubs fell by 7 per cent last year while fast-food edged up by 1 per cent, indicating that some consumers are actively “trading down” from full-service dining to low-cost alternatives. Fast-food prices, however, rose 7.7 per cent in the year to December against wider food inflation of 4.5 per cent. The Times, February 4