Mayor of Norwegian capital, Anne Lindboe, says drugs worth up to £570m have entered through the port
The mayor of Oslo has warned that drug smugglers are increasingly targeting the Norwegian capital as a gateway to Europe as authorities tighten controls on major ports such as Antwerp.
Oslo’s mayor, Anne Lindboe, said drugs worth up to £570m have been smuggled through Norway’s largest port, which receives 50-70 ships and 243,000 containers every week.
Continue reading...Dutch artist’s 17th-century work said to have inspired tableau that has offended Christian and conservative critics
A controversial tableau in the Olympics opening ceremony denounced by Christian and conservative critics as an offensive parody of The Last Supper was in fact inspired by a 17th-century Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods, art historians have said.
“Does this painting remind you of something?” the Magnin Museum in the French city of Dijon asked (with a wink) on X, inviting people to “come and admire” The Feast of the Gods, painted by the artist Jan van Bijlert between 1635 and 1640.
Continue reading...Russian defence ministry says troops continue to make gains in Donetsk province, as Ukrainian president visits frontline in Kharkiv
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had arrived in the area of Vovchansk in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces have been trying to advance since May.
“Today, I had the honour to be there to congratulate our special forces warriors on their professional day and to present them with state awards,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
Continue reading...Gérald Darmanin says activists may have been encouraged to carry out arson attacks that caused disruption
France’s interior minister has suggested that far-left activists were behind the attacks on the high-speed rail system on the eve of the Olympics opening ceremony, as a fresh wave of vandalism targeted internet cables.
Four days after the attacks, Gérald Darmanin said the investigation into the arson attacks had “identified a certain number of profiles who could have committed it”.
Continue reading...Police voice alarm at high numbers as 14-year-old boy on e-scooter and two motorcyclists among latest killed
Ireland’s police force has said it is seriously concerned about the number of deaths on the country’s roads after five fatalities over the weekend.
Those who lost their lives included motorcyclists and a 14-year-old boy on an e-scooter.
Continue reading...Temperatures expected to soar to 35C, making some competitions more challenging for athletes
The Paris Olympics had a soggy start but conditions improved over the weekend. Meteorologists now expect temperatures to soar early this week, prompting several warnings.
The weather in the French capital has been forecast to climb to 35C (95F) on Tuesday, about 8C above average for the time of year, making some competitions more challenging for the athletes. Southern parts of France are likely to experience the hottest weather, reaching the high 30s celsius, nearly 10C above average.
Continue reading...Highway that consolidated Roman empire joins modernist Romanian sculptures as latest sites added to list
Italy’s Via Appia Antica, or Appian Way, the earliest and most important road built by the ancient Romans, has been named a Unesco world heritage site, making Italy the country with the world’s highest number of locations on the coveted list.
Known as the Regina Viarum, or Queen of Roads, it connected Rome with the port of Brindisi in the south and marked a revolution in the construction of roads.
Continue reading...Apology follows anger among Catholics and other groups at opening ceremony segment that resembled biblical scene
The organising committee of Paris 2024 has apologised to Catholics and other Christian groups who were outraged by a scene during the opening ceremony that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting with drag queens, a transgender model and a singer made up as the Greek god of wine.
The parody of the biblical scene, performed against the backdrop of the River Seine, was intended to interpret Dionysus and raise awareness “of the absurdity of violence between human beings”, organisers wrote on X.
Continue reading...French authorities say they received call for help from overcrowded dinghy in early hours of Sunday
A woman has died trying to cross the Channel in an overcrowded dinghy, as a number of small boats made the dangerous journey over the weekend.
Thirty-four others were rescued from what was described as a “migrant boat” off the northern French port of Calais, after a call for help was made in the early hours of Sunday morning, according to French authorities.
Continue reading...Russian leader says Washington risks triggering cold war-style missile crisis and promises to respond in kind
Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west.
The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to Nato and European defence, Washington and Germany said earlier this month.
Continue reading...The melody for the first live performance since 2020 by the singer, who has suffered with ill-health, was suitably tragic
It was a very public triumph, both for Paris and for Céline Dion. It received plaudits around the world as one of the highlights of the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Yet the soundtrack was a tragic one.
The Canadian diva had chosen to celebrate the great French chansonnier Édith Piaf in a live, high-stakes comeback performance delivered from the iron shoulders of the Eiffel Tower amid showers of rain and fireworks.
Continue reading...Far-right leader talks of new Asia-oriented world order and throws support behind Donald Trump
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Saturday that the EU was sliding toward oblivion, in a rambling anti-west speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order” while throwing his support behind Donald Trump’s US presidential bid.
“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Orbán said in Băile Tuşnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the US’s pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.
Continue reading...Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze has become the first woman to compete at 10 Olympic Games in a career that began with her representing the Soviet Union.
Salukvadze has competed at every Summer Olympics since 1988 – when she won gold as a 19-year-old Soviet citizen. She set her latest record when she stepped into the shooting range for qualification in the women’s 10m air pistol on Saturday.
Salukvadze finished 38th and didn’t advance to Sunday’s final, but she gets another chance at a medal on Friday in qualification for the 25m pistol event.
In a career spanning five decades, Salukvadze has competed on three different Olympic teams – first with the Soviet Union in 1988, then the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992 after the Soviet Union collapsed. For the last eight Summer Olympics, she has represented Georgia.
Salukvadze was in the spotlight again in 2008, when Russia fought a brief war with Georgia during the Beijing Olympics. Salukvadze won bronze and embraced Russian silver medalist Natalia Paderina on the podium in what was widely seen as a gesture for peace.
“Why did this gesture surprise everyone? We are athletes, there is no conflict between us,” she said at the time.
In 2016, Salukvadze and her son Tsotne Machavariani, who is also a pistol shooter, became the first mother-and-son duo in Olympic history to compete at the same Games. Salukvadze had considered retiring after the last Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, but was persuaded to continue by her father and coach Vakhtang, who died this year.
Salukvadze already had the record for most Olympic appearances by a female athlete and is now tied with Canadian showjumper Ian Millar for the most for any athlete.
Salukvadze is the only Olympian to compete at 10 Summer Games in a row, unlike Millar, whose appearances weren’t consecutive because Canada boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Most French newspapers praise the Olympics spectacle but far-right commentators reject ‘woke propaganda’
They had waited 100 years for it and the French, mostly, were determined to love their kitsch, crazy, subversive, waterborne and very rain-drenched Olympics opening ceremony. Less happy were far-right figures, who spied “wokeist” propaganda.
A thoroughly unscientific poll on the rue de Rochechouart in Paris – where the far right have never had so much as a look-in – found plenty of enthusiasm.
Continue reading...Firms accused of putting profits over safety as EU group weighs cutting minimum number of pilots from two to one
Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one.
The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned.
Continue reading...The rail operator has pulled four of 15 trains from its Saturday schedule, affecting more than 3,000 people
Eurostar passengers hoping to catch the start of the Paris Olympics have continued to face difficulties after an arson attack in France caused train cancellations.
People travelling by Eurostar from London to Paris on Friday were asked to postpone trips if possible after the rail operator cancelled one in four trains over the weekend as a result of arson attacks that lead to widespread disruption to France’s high-speed rail network hours before the start of the Olympics.
Continue reading...Public health adviser says higher temperatures caused by climate crisis pose danger for visitors not used to them
The climate emergency poses a “real risk” to Spain’s traditional mass tourist model as rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves hit the country’s most popular coastal destinations, a senior public health adviser has warned.
Héctor Tejero, the head of health and climate change at Spain’s health ministry, said the increasingly apparent physical impacts of the climate emergency had already led the ministry to begin talks with the British embassy on how best to educate “vulnerable” tourists about coping with the heat.
Continue reading...Arsonists used crude methods but disruption to opening of the Olympic Games in Paris was severe
It was about 1.15am when the SNCF maintenance workers, carrying out repairs by moonlight, spotted the group of people a little further down the railway line near a signal box outside the sleepy village of Vergigny, in the northern French department of Yonne.
They were concerned enough by the unlikely sight at such an hour to approach the intruders, and then to make a call to the local police as those they had interrupted ran off into the dark.
Continue reading...Vyacheslav Zinchenko, 18, remanded in custody for 60 days after Iryna Farion shot in Lviv on 19 July
A Ukrainian court has remanded an 18-year-old man in custody over the murder of a nationalist former lawmaker, state media reported.
Iryna Farion – a divisive hardline campaigner against the use of Russian language – was shot near her flat in the western city of Lviv on 19 July.
Continue reading...Police searched houses across country on eve of Olympic opening ceremony in neighbouring France
Three suspected members of Islamic State’s Afghan branch, Islamic State Khorasan, have been charged in Belgium with planning a terrorist attack.
Police released four other people who had also been detained during searches of houses across the country on Thursday, three of them after being questioned by an investigative judge, the state prosecutor’s office said.
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