Giles Whittell

They don't take kindly to tax evasion in France, but now they'll have to make nice with a convicted tax evader and jailbird whom Donald Trump has proposed as US ambassador to Paris.

After 45 years of strict protection in Europe, grey wolves could soon be fair game for hunters. Conservation officials have adopted EU proposals that will allow member countries to set a quota of wolves to kill each year.

The question for Asia yesterday was whether South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol would survive the day in office after a desperate overnight experiment with martial law. He did, but he may not last the week. MPs could vote as early tomorrow to impeach him. Opposition parties need only eight votes from Yoon's party for the two-thirds majority needed to hand the case to the country's constitutional court. Japan is meanwhile contemplating a severely destabilised Pacific alliance with South Korea in turmoil and the US waiting for the return of Trump. Between them they hope to contain Chinese empire-building in the South China Sea and North Korean militarism in concert with Russia. The autocrats have had a good 48 hours just watching. The verdict on Yoon from a political scientist who knows him is that he's become

A British-led police operation arrested 84 suspects yesterday accused of using stolen crypto to turn cash from drug gangs into laundered funds for Russian oligarchs. The head of operations at the UK's National Crime Agency – not known for its ambition or results – said the scheme mixed McMafia and Narcos with elements of Le Carré. It centred on a 38-year-old Russian businesswoman, Ekaterina Zhdanova, whose “concierge” service for the very rich appears in reality to have been focused on helping Russians evade sanctions to move money to the Gulf. She has a loose connection to Trump via his nominee for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, whose Wall Street brokerage owns a 5 per cent stake in Tether, her preferred cryptocurrency. She's in custody in France. £20 million in cash and crypto has been seized, but that's not much next to the £100 billion laundered through the UK each year.

They grab people's attention in a world of beige This week Jaguar launched a hot pink prototype in Miami and the price of bitcoin passed $100,000 for the first time.

Rachel Reeves will ask Eurogroup finance ministers today for a reset in EU-UK economic relations, without spelling out what it might comprise.

From next month Vinted will have to share personal data with HMRC on any UK users who make £1,700 or more selling second-hand clothes on its platform in 2024.

Ten weeks ago Michel Barnier told French MPs a sword of Damocles was hanging over them that could push France “to the brink of the abyss”. So what? The sword fell and so did Barnier’s government, leaving President Macron racing yesterday to form another one. His difficulties are the tip of an iceberg that could …

Casablanca and Dubai would be flooded. Mumbai would be under water. But humanity could find alternatives to glaciers as water stores (more dams) and rivers as transport routes (more railways).

The European Parliament has been hearing arguments this week for and against a trade deal agreed in principle between the EU and four members of Mercosur – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.