I learned about slavery from Hollywood. Why is French cinema so slow to depict our own colonial crimes? | Rokhaya Diallo

France’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was historically among the most significant in Europe. After Britain, France had the second biggest colonial empire. We know that 1.38 million people were deported in at least 4,220 documented French slave trade expeditions. Yet the stories of the lives of those people are almost entirely absent from … Read more

The Guardian view on Budapest’s pride parade: a humiliation for Orbán and a triumph for European values | Editorial

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

M&S boss slams ‘bureaucratic madness’ of products requiring ‘not for EU’ labels | Marks & Spencer

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

Weather tracker: France hit by severe thunderstorms | France

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

Germany urgently needs to attract migrant workers – it just doesn’t want them to feel welcome | Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes

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