Uncertainty surrounded the details of a European plan for Ukraine discussed at a security summit in London on Sunday. After the meeting, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, proposed the idea of an initial one-month truce “in the air, at sea and on energy infrastructure”. But British officials said that no such plan had been agreed and that negotiations would continue.
Meanwhile Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, reiterated that his country would not accept an immediate truce with Russia without security guarantees. He added that he had not been in contact with Donald Trump since the disastrous meeting with America’s president at the White House on Friday. But he said that he was still prepared to sign a minerals deal with America, as intended before the fracas.
Police arrested the driver of a car that drove into a crowd of people in Mannheim, a city in south-west Germany. The incident killed at least one person and injured several others. Police did not confirm whether they thought the crash was deliberate. Germany has suffered several attacks involving vehicles recently; in February one collision killed a mother and child in Munich.
At least one person died and several were injured in a shooting between security forces on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Taliban officials. The incident occurred at the Torkham crossing, which Pakistan closed in February, stranding thousands of vehicles on either side. Pakistani and Afghan officials blamed each other for starting the latest clash on Monday.
The euro zone’s annual inflation rate was 2.4% in February, down from 2.5% in January, according to an initial estimate. The rate of services inflation, a recent cause for concern, also dropped slightly, from 3.9% to 3.7%. The European Central Bank is expected to lower interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Thursday.
Shares of Mixue Group, the owners of China’s biggest bubble-tea chain, jumped by up to 38% in Hong Kong after a heavily oversubscribed IPO worth HK$3.45bn ($444m). That boosted optimism over the prospects of Hong Kong’s IPO market, which is expected to double this year according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Shares of other Chinese bubble-tea companies listed in Hong Kong rose on Monday morning.
Britain’s privacy watchdog launched a “major investigation” into TikTok’s use of 13- to 17-year-olds’ data. The Information Commissioner’s Office will investigate whether the social-media app’s use of such information is exposing teenagers to increasing amounts of harmful material. It will also look into the age-verification processes of Reddit, an online forum, and Imgur, an image-sharing website.
Figure of the day: 53, the number of people who became billionaires in 2023 by inheriting money, according to UBS, a bank. Read the full story.
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