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43 minutes ago
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‘Assault on justice’: how far-right attacks are threatening rule of law in Europe
Judicial independence is under threat as populist politicians target judges and authoritarian governments attempt constitutional reformsRevealed: Five EU governments found to ‘consistently’ dismantle rule of lawIn March last year, a Paris court found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement and barred her from running in next year’s presidential race in France. The far-right figurehead took to the airwaves to slam a “political decision” and “denial of democracy”.Le Pen, who has appealed, said she had been subjected to a “tyranny of judges” and a “political assassination”. The “system” had dropped “a nuclear bomb” on her. The presiding judge was then threatened by others on social media and her home address shared. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 hours ago
Thieves steal Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse paintings worth millions from Italian museum
Four masked men entered Magnani Rocca Foundation villa, near Parma in northern Italy, and made off with artworksThieves stole paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse from a museum in Italy a week ago, police have said.Four masked men entered the villa of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, near Parma in northern Italy, and made off with the artworks on the night of 22 March, a police spokesperson said, confirming a report on the Rai television network. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 hours ago
Five EU governments found to ‘consistently’ dismantle rule of law
Exclusive: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia actively pursue regressive policies, watchdog finds‘Assault on justice’: how far-right attacks are threatening rule of law in EuropeGovernments in five EU member states are “consistently and intentionally” eroding the rule of law, Europe’s leading civil liberties group has warned, while democratic standards are deteriorating in six more, including historically strong democracies.Drawing on evidence from more than 40 NGOs in 22 countries, the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) described the governments of Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia as “dismantlers” that were actively weakening the rule of law. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 hours ago
Ukraine war briefing: German defence giant sparks row after comparing Ukraine drone makers to ‘housewives’
Rheinmetall CEO’s dismissive comments draw pointed reaction from Ukrainian prime minister and adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. What we know on day 1,496German defence giant Rheinmetall has sought to ease a row caused by its CEO when he likened Ukrainian factories producing drones to “housewives” making weapons in their kitchens. In an interview with the Atlantic, CEO Armin Papperger was asked whether Ukraine’s drone technology could disrupt his industry, which focused more on areas such as artillery and tanks. “This is how to play with Legos,” Papperger said of the drones and went on to compare major drone Ukrainian manufacturers to “housewives”, adding “this is not the technology of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, or Rheinmetall”. “They have 3D printers in the kitchen, and they produce parts for drones,” he said, adding: “This is not innovation.” Alexander Kamyshin, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, swiftly point out the successes that Ukraine’s drones have had against Russian tanks. Kamyshin said that in his visits to arms factories he had seen “Ukrainian women working equally with men often enough”, adding: “They deserve respect.” The row also spawned the hashtag #MadeByHousewives on Ukrainian social media. On Sunday, Rheinmetall tagged Kamyshin in a post on its X account in which it said. “We have the utmost respect for the Ukrainian people’s immense efforts in defending themselves. Every single woman and man in Ukraine is making an immeasurable contribution.” Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, later on Sunday said “the people of Ukraine deserve not only utmost respect but to be heard – and learned from. Yes, Europe’s defence is powered by Ukrainian ‘housewives’,” she said, also adding the #MadeByHousewives hashtag.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he discussed a possible security partnership on Sunday with Jordan’s King Abdullah to defend against drone attacks arising from the Iran war. “We discussed a possible partnership in the security sphere and the overall situation in the Middle East and the Gulf region,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. Zelenskiy is seeking support from Gulf states as western military aid faces fresh uncertainty. “From our own experience, we know that without a unified system, it is simply impossible to set up full-fledged protection of people and critical infrastructure,” Zelenskyy wrote. Ukraine, he said, had just such a system as in four years of war “we have had to fight against constant Russian strikes, including the use of Iranian drones”. He said Ukraine was offering expertise in the expectation that “those to whom we are making this proposal can help us strengthen ourselves”.A Russian strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed three people and injured 13 on Sunday, police said, one of several attacks in frontline areas. Ukraine’s national police said a boy of 13 was among the dead. A statement said Russian forces used glide bombs in the strike on Kramatorsk, which has been a frequent target. Kramatorsk came under a new attack two hours after the initial strike. Other cities hit in Russian attacks included the nearby town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka and the city of Sloviansk, farther north. Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts.Russia’s Baltic Ust-Luga port, one of its largest petroleum export hubs, was damaged again on Sunday by a Ukrainian drone attack which sparked a blaze later brought under control, Russian and Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s SBU security agency said long-range drones struck an oil terminal at Ust-Luga. It added in a statement that the strike caused “serious damage” and a fire at the port. It follows several Ukrainian drone strikes last week on Russia’s western energy corridor when facilities at the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk came under fire, igniting storage tanks and suspending transportation. The recent attacks have caused severe oil supply disruption for Russia, the world’s second-largest oil exporter, and have come just as oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel due to the Iran war. “Additional firefighting resources from the Leningrad region and St Petersburg, including two fire trains, have been involved in extinguishing the fire at the port,” regional governor Alexander Drozdenko wrote on Telegram on Sunday.A Ukrainian drone attack has killed one person, injured eight, and damaged homes and businesses in the southern Russian city of Taganrog, local officials said. The regional governor said on Sunday that falling drone debris prompted the evacuation of an area hit by falling debris. “Emergency crews are working at the site of the incident, where the debris fell,” Yuri Slyusar, governor of Rostov region on Ukraine’s eastern border, said on Telegram. “Fires and damage have occurred. People have been evacuated.” Taganrog Mayor Svetlana Kambulova, in a subsequent post on Telegram, spoke of widespread damage in the city. Taganrog is a port city at the eastern end of the Sea of Azov east of the border with Ukraine. Continue reading...
The Guardian
8 hours ago
Struggling humpback whale stranded for third time on German coast
Weak and sick mammal has become stuck in shallow bays and experts say prognosis ‘doesn’t look good’The fate of a humpback whale stuck in shallow bays off Germany’s Baltic coast hangs in the balance after it became stranded for a third time.The roughly 10-metre-long (33ft) mammal appeared weakened and sick on Sunday and was struggling to find a route back to the Atlantic when it ran into fresh difficulty. Continue reading...
The Guardian
16 hours ago
EU offers UK ‘emergency brake’ on youth mobility scheme numbers
Britain wants limits on young people entering country but Europe opposes this as scheme aims to celebrate linksAn “emergency brake” could be put on the number of people coming to the UK from Europe as part of a new youth experience scheme, under terms being offered to Britain by EU negotiatorsBritain wants an outright cap, but the EU opposes this on the basis that the scheme is supposed to be a positive one aimed at celebrating and preserving links with the EU. Continue reading...
The Guardian
17 hours ago
‘Visible from space’: why Spain has the world’s biggest concentration of greenhouses
Andalusia houses ‘Europe’s vegetable garden’ – a laboratory of development and innovation producing vegetables for all of EuropeEurope’s vegetable garden is in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is so vast that it can even be seen from space: if you open Google Maps and look west of Almería, you will see a white patch that looks like a glacier, but as you zoom in, you realise it is the highest concentration of greenhouses in the world. More than 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) of land are covered in plastic, a geometric labyrinth five times the size of Manhattan, where 3.5m tons of vegetables are produced every year – from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers to courgettes, aubergines to melons – enough to feed half a billion people and generate a turnover of more than 3bn euros.Workers prepare peppers inside the Hortamar cooperative, a fruit and vegetable producers’ organisation in Roquetas de Mar, founded in 1977, that now has more than 240 members and sells throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Sugar high(st): more than twelve tons of KitKat’s ‘new chocolate range’ stolen in Italy
Thieves made a break for 413,793 units of the company’s new F1 line bars which could cause shortage before EasterA large shipment of KitKat bars was stolen while in transit to distributors, a major candy crime right before the Easter holiday that could cause shortages for customers.The truck carrying 413,793 units of a “new chocolate range”, about 12 tons of chocolate bars, was pilfered while driving through Europe on 26 March, Agence France-Presse reported. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Two Sudanese men face court in Greece after at least 22 people die off Crete coast
Survivors tell coastguard smugglers ordered victims to be thrown overboard after six days adrift in boat from LibyaTwo Sudanese men, believed by Greek authorities to have been behind a smuggling operation in which 22 people were “systematically” thrown overboard after succumbing to days without food or water at sea, have been ordered to appear before a local court on Crete.Accused of illegally trafficking scores of would-be migrants into the south-eastern European country from Libya, the duo were given 48 hours to prepare to testify before an investigating magistrate on Monday. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
In an Istanbul market, I found an old German phrase book – and a reminder of how not to speak to migrants | Carolin Würfel
Turkish immigrants to Germany in the 60s were seen as temporary labour, not people. Today’s government in Berlin is at risk of repeating the mistakeA few weekends ago, I went to the flea market in Bomonti, a neighbourhood on the European side of Istanbul. I go there regularly, and over the years I’ve accumulated a small collection of things: embroidered napkins, records, old issues of House & Garden, earrings, candle holders. It is usually on the days when you are not looking for anything in particular that you find the most interesting things – or, as the Turkish writer Sabahattin Ali once wrote, “some things we never know we need until we find them”.That particular Sunday, strolling through the stalls, I came across a book from 1965 titled Türkler için Almanca – Deutsch für Türken (German for Turks). It was among the first language textbooks of its kind, widely distributed to the so-called Gastarbeiter – “guest workers” – who came to West Germany in the 1960s and 70s. The economic boom of the 1950s had created an acute labour shortage, prompting the recruitment of workers from abroad. A bilateral agreement with Turkey, signed in 1961, facilitated the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Turkish men and women to come and work in German factories. Officially, their stay was meant to be temporary. Workers came alone; families stayed behind. A copy of the language book I found 60 years later at a flea market in Istanbul would have been in the suitcases of many of these workers.Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter and journalist who lives in Berlin and Istanbul. She is the author of Three Women Dreamed of SocialismDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Weather tracker: Cold weather sweeps Europe and cyclone hits Australia
Low pressure brings unsettled conditions to southern Europe, and rain and snow to western and central areasSouthern Europe has been under a variety of severe weather warnings this week owing to widely unsettled conditions driven by an area of low pressure in the region. This area of low pressure – previously part of the system that brought colder conditions to swathes of the UK earlier this week – moved southwards across Europe through the middle of the week.In doing so, it brought a cold front across western and central parts of Europe, with spells of rain and hill snow across the Alps on Wednesday, followed by snow showers on a brisk north-westerly wind. By Friday morning, accumulations of 20-40cm were expected above 600 metres, and 60-100cm above 1,000 metres in the Swiss Alps. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Governments controlling prices? It has long been unthinkable – but may now be inevitable | Andy Beckett
In Mexico and Spain, leaders who have capped public costs have been rewarded at the ballot box. As another cost of living surge arrives, it may be a policy our leaders are unable to resist Politicians are not supposed to meddle with prices. Even though much of politics is about whether voters can afford things – especially in an era of recurring inflationary shocks – ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union’s planned economy four decades ago, the orthodoxy across much of the world has been that only markets should decide what things cost.As the hugely influential Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek argued, in a complex modern society, information is too dispersed among potential sellers and buyers of goods or services for government to make informed and correct decisions about the prices of those goods. Hence, his disciples say, the inefficiency of state-run economies, from post-colonial Africa to the eastern bloc.Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Progressive Paris has many weapons to fight the far right, but the best? Spaces where you can simply hang out | Alexander Hurst
Drop into any of the French capital’s ‘third places’ and you’ll find food, culture, community – and an antidote to the disaffection extremists feed onParis’s success in removing cars from its streets has been more widely praised than its progress in opening up mixed-use spaces. But the city’s enthusiasm for bringing what urbanists call “third places” to life is exactly why I found myself, just hours after voting in the first round of Paris’s municipal elections, dancing in telecoms company Orange’s former offices in Ménilmontant, the “seventh-coolest neighbourhood in the world”..The building currently housing Print, a new pop-up, offers a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, poised against the sunset – and, for now at least, it is an ephemeral temple to Millennial culture. It’s a five-storey space hosting photography exhibits, a coffee shop, sourdough pizza, two bars, a red-lit and mirror-adorned dance area and a sunset terrace. As well as pizza and fancy coffee, you can buy hoodies and art and design books – but most importantly, Print contains plenty of space where you can just be, without needing to spend a single euro.Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
UK politics: Trump says UK’s aircraft carriers are just ‘toys’ – as it happened
The comments were part of a broader address in which he condemned Nato alliesYesterday the Conservative party said that it wanted to ban political parties from distributing campaign literature in a foreign language. Announcing a plan to propose an amendement to the representation of the people bill to make this law, the shadow communities minister Paul Holmes said:Campaigning in a foreign language as the Greens did in Gorton and Denton only fosters greater division. A coherent national culture relies on shared values, and an inclusive electoral process relies on a common tongue.I think it’s for political parties to choose how they campaign and communicate with British voters. If they’re using British money that is funding their campaigns and they’re speaking to people who have the right to vote, then why would you not show those voters the respect of communication?What fuels division is Nick Timothy standing up and singling out Muslim forms of worship for a ban when he’s not applying that to forms of worship that other religions are talking about.It just doesn’t compute, does it? I worked in Number 10. Briefly, I had a Number 10 phone. There was a paranoia about devices like that falling into other people’s hands.And so whether it was the Met Police, whether it was Morgan McSweeney, and what sounds like pretty evasive set of reporting, even when you look at that transcript, or whether it was the Number 10 security team following up something that at the time they could not have been sure had not been taken by a state actor, a phone with all sorts of government secrets potentially in it, that’s precisely why people in government have two separate phones.I don’t believe McSwindle had his iPhone stolenHonest believe, Matt. It’s smacks of the liar Johnson defence of ‘lost all my WhatsApp messages’. We mustn’t take the public for fools. And I am afraid this smacks of too convenient by far. I won’t do it. I will say what I actually think. And I don’t believe it. End of!I believe the report was made. McSwindle didn’t mention that he was the chief of staff to the PM. A significant omission of he’d wanted the police to prioritise the offence. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Skeleton found in Dutch church may be famous musketeer D'Artagnan – video
Remains of the famed French musketeer Charles de Batz-Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, may have been found in front of a church altar in the Dutch city of Maastricht, church officials and an archaeologist said. Workers discovered a grave containing human bones after parts of the floor of St Peter and Paul Church collapsed in February, triggering a race to identify the skeleton through DNA testing.Skeleton of Three Musketeers hero d’Artagnan may have been found Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
Russian drone hits Unesco world heritage site in Lviv – video
A Russian drone has struck a 16-century Bernardine monastery in Lviv’s Unesco-listed medieval centre, causing damage, local authorities said. The attack came as Russia launched a huge wave of nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine, killing at least seven people, as Moscow appears to be stepping up a spring offensive intended to break Ukrainian resistance along the frontRussia fires nearly 1,000 drones in one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine Continue reading...
The Guardian
5 days ago
European Commission president warns of ‘brutal, harsh and unforgiving’ world — video
In an address to Australia’s parliament, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, says Europe offers stability in an increasingly uncertain world, but that stability is changing. Europe has faced more than four years of conflict in Ukraine since Russian’s invasion, along with the new threat of war in the Middle East. ‘The comfort blanket of yesterday is ripped away. It is confronting,’ she says. On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union struck an agreement that will lead to both sides slashing tariffs and expanding trade across a range of areas Continue reading...
The Guardian
6 days ago
Owners from Great Britain travelling to EU warned over pet passport ‘dodge’
Bypassing animal health certificate system by using cheaper pet passport issued abroad could backfire, experts sayBritish pet owners who want to take their furry friends elsewhere in Europe have been warned not to try to dodge expensive health certificates by using a pet passport issued abroad.Before Brexit, taking a cat, dog or ferret to the EU was relatively simple: the Pet Travel Scheme meant an animal needed a microchip, vaccination against rabies, a pet passport and, for dogs, there were also requirements concerning tapeworm treatment. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 week ago
‘We need to think much bigger’: trade minister calls for greater ambition in UK-EU reset
Exclusive: Chris Bryant says policy agreements are being done in bits and pieces but a greater vision is needed by both sidesIt was all smiles and warm handshakes when the two men in charge of renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU met in Brussels this week.Maroš Šefčovič and the UK minister for EU relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, sharing a stage on the third floor of the vast European parliament building, were at pains to show the cross-Channel relationship was in a good place after years of rancour. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 week ago
Farage backs Tory attack on Muslim iftar event, saying public prayer ‘was a shock’ – as it happened
Nigel Farage echoed Nick Timothy’s comments after he said public prayer for Ramadan was an ‘act of domination’Starmer claims Tories have ‘problem with Muslims’ after Timothy tweetCleverly is trying to show a video, but it is not working. So he just invites Kemi Badenoch to start her speech.The Conservatives are launching their local elections campaign. There is a live feed here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 week ago
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