For tourists, meeting a geisha in traditional costume is the quintessence of a trip to Japan. No wonder that visitors to the Gion district in Kyoto try at all costs to capture this phenomenal image in a photo. However, many of them do it in an intrusive way, which resulted in the introduction of a photography ban in 2019, which, however, is not respected.more

Marks & Spencer has won the right to demolish one of its flagship stores on Oxford Street after a High Court judge ruled the Government made a series of blunders while trying to block the plans.more

Apartment prices in Lodz increased last month to PLN 11,000. PLN per square meter - according to the BIG DATA RynekPierwotny.pl report. Apartments have also become more expensive in Krakow - up to PLN 16,000. PLN, and in Tricity - up to PLN 15,000 per square meter.more

Britain's third-largest supermarket group Asda said on Friday it would give more than 120,000 store workers an 8.4% pay rise from July 1, following a similar move by other large British retailers as the government's national minimum wage goes up.more

It was Raye's night as she made history at the Brit Awards, winning six of the seven prizes she was nominated for - beating Blur, Adele and Harry Styles' record four wins at a single ceremony. She is also the first woman to win songwriter of the year.more

A record jackpot of 64.59 million Swiss francs was won Saturday in Switzerland by a lucky single ticket-holder, Swiss Lotto said in a statement. The winning ticket was held by a person in the German- or Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, it said, without elaborating.more

Ugo Humbert stayed undefeated in ATP Tour finals by beating Alexander Bublik 6-4, 6-3 to win the Dubai Championships on Saturday.more

A council boss has said more than 70% of budgets are being used up by “very few people” as it emerged a number of authorities could become effectively bankrupt in the next five years.more

Irish GDP contracted by 3.2 per cent in 2023. - The country's statistics office CSO reported on Friday. This is the worst performance in Europe last year and a significant drop from the 9.4 per cent growth the year before.more

The leader, Liverpool, thanks to a goal by Darwin Nunez in the 99th minute, defeated Nottingham Forest away 1-0 in the 27th round of the English Premier League. Today's event will be a derby match between the runner-up and current champion, Manchester City, and United.more

A new species of sea slug has been discovered in UK waters. It was caught off the south-west of England from a research ship. The creature has been named Pleurobranchaea britannica. It belongs to a group found in warmer waters, which could be migrating north due to climate change.more

Szymon Holownia, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz and Donald Tusk enjoy the greatest public trust in February. Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mateusz Morawiecki are the most distrusted, according to the CBOS poll.more

The cost of first and second-class stamps is to go up again next month, after Royal Mail announced price rises of 10p a letter. The fourth increase in two years will take the price of a first-class stamp to £1.35 and the cost of the second-class service to 85p and will come into effect on 2 April.more

Police forces are failing to record the ethnicity of many people reported missing, BBC analysis suggests. In almost a fifth of all missing persons incidents in England and Wales in 2022-23, there was either no ethnic group recorded or the individual's ethnicity was marked "unknown".more

Russia is using private militias to control migration routes in Africa in order to increase the flow of illegal immigrants to western Europe at favourable times, such as before elections, the British 'Daily Telegraph' alerted yesterday, citing intelligence sources.more

Britain almost doubled the number of visas given to foreign health and care workers last year, government data showed, adding to pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over immigration ahead of an election expected later this year.more

Aleksander Zniszczol was eighth, Maciej Kot 33rd, Kamil Stoch 36th, Piotr Zyla 37th and Paweł Wasek 41st in Friday's ski jumping World Cup competition in Lahti, Finland. Slovenian Lovro Kos won. Overall leader Austrian Stefan Kraft did not advance to the second round.more

Billionaire and one of the co-founders of OpenAI Elon Musk has sued the company and its chief executive Sam Altman, accusing them of misappropriating their founding mission by putting profits before the good of humanity. According to Musk, the Microsoft-linked company has in effect already created general artificial intelligence (AGI) and is worth $80bn.more

The first ever Barbie doll will be among 180 going on display in a new exhibition at London’s Design Museum exploring the “design phenomenon” behind the hit film.more

"Right now we, including myself, have to score more goals and win more games," said Robert Lewandowski of Barcelona in an interview for his club's website. When asked about the Polish national team fighting for Euro 2024, he replied: "We are ready to play in the play-offs."more

Krakow Airport, which inaugurated its operations exactly 60 years ago, plans to exceed the threshold of 10 million passengers served in a year for the first time in its jubilee year, port authorities said on Thursday.more

House prices are rising in the north but falling in the south, according to Zoopla’s latest house price index. Properties in Northern Ireland saw the biggest increase, with prices up 4.3pc year-on-year, followed by Scotland (2.2pc) and the North West (0.7pc). Prices also rose in the North East, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber and Wales.more

The cost of the programme to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda could exceed half a billion pounds, the UK's National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report published today. This is a much higher figure than the government has reported so far.more

The organizers of this year's games in Paris officially received the keys to the Olympic Village. On Thursday, the 52-hectare complex will host over 14,000 people. athletes and team members were visited by French President Emmanuel Macron.more

The return to the House of Commons after nine years of George Galloway - a very left-wing, very anti-Israel and highly controversial politician - means that the toxic atmosphere in British politics against the backdrop of the Gaza war will get even worse, according to British media.more