Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war, with liberal democracies again under siege, Britain should be leading the fight against extremism
Eighty years ago, the start of the second world war saw Nazi Germany invading Poland. Six years later, up to 85 million people were dead. I’m in Poland this weekend to commemorate the start of the bloodiest war in human history.
An entire generation of brave men and women around the globe sacrificed everything to defeat the singular evil of Nazism and fascism.
On 19 August 1989, Hungarians and Austrians gathered in friendship at the border, paving the way to unification
When the end finally came for the Iron Curtain, it was not bulldozers or hammers that struck one of the first decisive blows, but a picnic.
Thirty years ago this Monday, on 19 August 1989, thousands of Hungarians and Austrians gathered at the border fence between the two countries, which also marked the dividing line between the Communist bloc and the west. They had come for a “pan-European picnic” of solidarity and friendship across the Iron Curtain, as momentum for political change increased and the Eastern bloc regimes struggled to keep up with rising popular discontent.
PM Viktor Orbán and his spokesman launch series of attacks on Finnish presidency
Finland has pledged to pursue a hearing into alleged breaches of the rule of law by Hungary’s far-right government after a campaign of vilification led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Campaign linked to Sziget festival criticised by senior member of ruling Fidesz party
Advertisements by Coca-Cola relating to a popular music festival in Hungary that promote gay acceptance have prompted a boycott call from a senior member of the conservative ruling party.
The posters are timed for the week-long Sziget festival – that takes the theme of “Love Revolution” and starts on Wednesday in Budapest – and show gay people and couples smiling with slogans such as “zero sugar, zero prejudice”.
Michael Minden says we must grapple with the different realities of those who think and feel not as we do
I agree with Natalie Nougayrède’s point that “universalism is not a dirty word” (Hong Kong’s struggles are ours too, Journal, 19 June), but I don’t think it is “beautiful” either.
As I understand it, it entails a challenge to all of us to assume responsibility for our condition. This cannot be achieved by affirming values as universal because they belong to our particular vocabulary (“basic human aspirations”, “fundamental rights and freedom”, “essential, individual rights”, etc). It can only be achieved by grappling with the different realities of those who think and feel not as we do.
Sunday’s ceremony comes as PM stands accused of trying to rewrite Hungarian history
Only a few hundred people were present to commemorate the anniversary of the execution of Imre Nagy on Sunday morning in Budapest, a far cry from 30 years ago when his reburial drew more than 100,000 people to the city’s Heroes Square.
Nagy, a communist reformer, had wanted to implement a less hardline version of communism, but Moscow sent in tanks in 1956 to crush the revolt. He was arrested and hanged on 16 June 1958.
Academy will be managed by nationalist government in unprecedented move
The Hungarian government is moving to bring the country’s umbrella scientific research organisation under its control, in what scientists in the country and globally say would be an unprecedented assault on academic freedoms.
The far-right, anti-migration government of Viktor Orbán has sought to increase its control over numerous sectors of society since it came into office in 2010, including putting financial pressure on independent media outlets, harassing and taxing NGOs that work on issues such as migration, and moving to centralise historical research.
On a rare trip to Europe, Myanmar leader and Hungary PM discuss issue of ‘growing Muslim populations’
From her failure to speak out against ethnic cleansing to imprisoning journalists, the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi in the west has taken a battering in recent months.
But the leader of Myanmar has found a new ally in far-right, staunchly anti-immigrant Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.
Mussolini’s great-grandson and Silvio Berlusconi among surprise EU election winners
Following the European elections the next parliament will prepare for a host of newcomers with colourful biographies and forthright opinions, as well as an all too familiar face …
Council of Europe’s damning report says human rights violations must be urgently addressed
Europe’s top human rights watchdog has accused Hungary’s government of violating people’s rights and using anti-migrant rhetoric that fuels “xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred”.
A damning report from the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, concluded: “Human rights violations in Hungary have a negative effect on the whole protection system and the rule of law” and should “be addressed as a matter of urgency”.
Facing challenges from Russia, China and the US, the continent can no longer neglect its core values of peace and human rights
Sometimes, when it comes to Europe, things are clearer from afar. Take Viktor Orbán’s encounter with Donald Trump last week: a love-fest perfectly timed to signal that this US president is out to disembowel the European Union, if not break it entirely. Ahead of the European elections, here was Hungary’s self-proclaimed “illiberal” prime minister – a man teaming up with Italy’s far-right strongman Matteo Salvini – receiving his long-awaited anointment from a white-nationalist US president who has called the EU a “foe”.
The US president, Donald Trump, met with Hungary's far-right prime minister at the White House on Monday. Welcoming Viktor Orbán, Trump said he is 'probably like me, a little bit controversial, but that's OK'.
After giving a commencement address and quoting Robert Mueller - you know, the man whose investigation he oversaw - Rosenstein went on to speak at the annual meeting of the Greater Baltimore Committee, where he continued to make waves.
Ex-Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein in a speech in Baltimore tonight is defending his handling of the Mueller probe and taking aim at ex-FBI director James Comey.
Rosenstein also says: “Based on what I knew in May 2017, the investigation of Russian election interference was justified.”
In his prepared remarks, Rosenstein said Trump, “did not tell me what reasons to put in my memo,” but noted what the special counsel report had said. He said he did not include what Trump wanted because it was not relevant, and he did not have personal knowledge of what Comey had told Trump.
Rosenstein said he “did not dislike” Comey but that Comey took steps that were “not within the range of reasonable decisions” during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Rosenstein suggested that if he — rather than Trump — had been in charge, “the removal would have been handled very differently, with far more respect and far less drama.”
Nationalist groups across the continent are stoking anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment to win seats in next month’s EU elections
The battle for Europe is coming to a head – but, surprise, surprise, the main focus is not Brexit. Across the continent, far-right populist and nationalist parties are mobilising ahead of next month’s EU parliamentary elections. Polls show their support growing. For Europe’s newly energised hard right, Brexit is both a spur and a sideshow.
Whipping up anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and anti-semitic sentiment, and exploiting public anger over austerity and the perceived arrogance of the Brussels political class, the populists aim to reassert the pre-eminence of national identity, narrowly defined, and halt the European project in its integrationist tracks.
European commission combats ‘untruths’ over issue after row with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
The European commission has declared the migration crisis over, as it sharpened its attack on “fake news” and “misinformation” about the issue.
Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, said: “Europe is no longer experiencing the migration crisis we lived in 2015, but structural problems remain.”
Hungarian PM’s anti-EU attitude is alienating centre-right European People’s party
Viktor Orbán could face renewed calls for his expulsion from the European People’s party (EPP) at a gathering of the powerful centre-right bloc next month.
The Hungarian prime minister and his Fidesz party will be on the agenda of the EPP political assembly on 20 March, an event intended to approve the group’s manifesto before European parliament elections in May.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments cause anger in Poland ahead of summit
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to build friendly relations with central European nations are being tested, on the eve of a Jerusalem summit aimed at showcasing the alliance, by disputes over Holocaust history.
Netanyahu has long been criticised by domestic opponents for seeking political alliances in central Europe while turning a blind eye to historical revisionism and antisemitism in the region. However, the Israeli leader was caught up in the dispute last week, when he said during a visit to Warsaw that Poles had collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Growing families better than letting Muslim immigrants in, says prime minister
Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has promised that women who have four or more children will never pay income tax again, in a move aimed at boosting the country’s population.
Orbán, who has emerged as Europe’s loudest rightwing, anti-immigration voice in recent years, said getting Hungarian families to have more children was preferable to allowing immigrants from Muslim countries to enter.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, is at the forefront of a nationalist surge in Europe, and his anti-migrant rhetoric has brought condemnation from the EU. The Guardian’s John Domokos went to find out the attraction Orbán holds to Hungarian voters, including his own father. Plus: how one woman is campaigning to prevent her frozen eggs being destroyed
What makes a person vote for Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán? It was a question intensely personal to the Guardian’s John Domokos, whose Hungarian father is a believer in economic nationalism, and supports Orbán.
John took a road trip through the country for a Guardian documentary, in the hope of understanding his father’s politics and to try to overcome their differences. He tells Anushka Asthana what he learned, while Kim Lane Scheppele, an expert on Hungary at Princeton University, discusses how far Orbán has strayed from Europe’s democratic norms.
A Guardian film-maker and his father, who left communist Hungary for Britain in the 70s and now supports the nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, take a road trip through the country in the hope of understanding each other and overcoming their differences