Call it the five-for-five summit. When Nato leaders meet in The Hague next week, European allies will sign up to a phoney transatlantic bargain in which they pretend they will spend 5% of their economic output on defence and Donald Trump pretends in return that he is committed to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, … Read more
A British woman whose family cannot return to the UK because of Brexit visa rules has said she feels “forgotten and rejected” by the country of her birth. Sarah Douglas moved to Italy to teach English in 2007 before marrying Matteo Ricci, an Italian software developer, in 2010. The couple had always planned to settle … Read more
Discussing the dilemma facing western diplomats in confronting Iran’s nuclear programme, Henry Kissinger wrote in 2006: “Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks.” Rarely has the balance of incentives and risks been placed so starkly in front of … Read more
A Traveler Waits in the Stars for Those Willing to Learn How to Look
What would you do if the world was to end tomorrow? The premise itself may be both timeless and timely at this moment when authoritarianism is on the rise globally. But that’s not really what causes the nail-biting excitement at the doorstep of Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. On a chilly June evening, a predominantly female … Read more
Labour is cutting the farming budget in England by £100m a year, spending review figures show. Despite the decrease, the budget has been cautiously welcomed by nature and farming groups, as there were fears the Treasury had wanted to reduce the funding further. Farmers have felt squeezed by the Labour government’s policies over recent months, … Read more
Severe thunderstorms swept across France last Friday, killing one person and injuring another. Two systems were involved, prompting orange weather warnings: the first came from the west via Brittany and hit the north of the country, and the second arrived via Spain and affected south-west France. More than 30,000 lightning strikes were recorded between midnight … Read more
Donald Trump’s “America First” policies are undermining decades of transatlantic cooperation just as Putin’s Russia destabilises Europe with direct military aggression. But these twin shocks have unintentionally accomplished something the EU institutions never could. They have made European integration feel not just important, but existential – a matter of democratic survival – for ordinary citizens. … Read more
Temperature records for early June are being broken across large parts of Europe, with the mercury reaching 40.5C (104.9F) in Mértola, Portugal, on Sunday. On the same day, several weather stations in Spain recorded temperatures in excess of 42C, with dozens of sites at record levels for early summer. Across the Balkans, temperatures reached 37C. … Read more
The UK and Spain have struck a “historic” deal over Gibraltar’s future, ending the long-running dispute over the territory after Brexit and easing the movement of people and goods across the border with Spain. The Foreign Office said the agreement “resolves the last major unresolved issue from Brexit”, while the Spanish foreign minister said it … Read more