BUSINESS

In late 1980s Hungary, courageous environmental protests against an unpopular dam project played a part in the eventual collapse of the country’s communist regime. Originally focused on protecting the quality of drinking water for about 3 million Hungarians, some of the largest demonstrations seen since the 1956 revolution came also to symbolise a wider rejection … Read more

When I moved to Amsterdam, I felt incredibly lucky to find an illegal six-month sublet 15 minutes by bike from the centre, secured through a friend of a friend. The cost was €1,000 a month – a bargain by market standards but still well over double what my downstairs neighbour, Henrika, paid under the lifelong … Read more

The boss of Marks & Spencer has called on the government to rapidly reset relations with the EU and criticised new rules which demand extra checks and labelling on products headed from the UK mainland to Northern Ireland as “bureaucratic madness”. Stuart Machin, the chief executive of M&S, which has 25 stores in Northern Ireland, … Read more

After several days of intense heat, large parts of France were hit by severe thunderstorms on Wednesday night as powerful supercells swept north-east across the country. A low-pressure system that originated near Portugal tracked over an unusually warm Bay of Biscay towards northern France late on Wednesday, bringing a strong upper-level disturbance over land that … Read more

A UK plan to send refused asylum seekers to “return hubs” in third countries shows post-Brexit Britain is “in a very dark place”, Albania’s prime minister has said. In his first interview with the international media since leading his socialist party to a historic fourth term in office, Edi Rama said the idea of the … Read more

Chris Reiter Will Wilkes Friedrich Merz’s government has sent a clear message to anyone thinking about coming to live in Germany: don’t. Yet its message to those who want to come to Germany to work is: we need you. This might sound like a contradiction, but it is a revival of the thinking that drove … Read more

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jun/26/ben-jennings-jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-amazon-cartoon

John Major has condemned cuts to overseas aid as “callous” and shortsighted, in a blistering speech that took aim at leaders obsessed by national self-interest and explicitly linked Donald Trump with Xi Jinping as the world’s main destabilising forces. Arguing that his age and lack of connection to everyday politics gave him the ability to … Read more