US joins Bosnia in show of support on eve of planned celebration by Serb nationalists

Two US fighter jets flew over Bosnia as parts of the country prepared to mark the anniversary of the proclamation of Republika Srpska as a breakaway state

Two US fighter jets flew over Bosnia on Monday in a gesture of support for the country on the eve of a military-style nationalist parade planned by Serb separatists at a time of high tensions.

The American embassy in Sarajevo said that the flight by the F16 planes was a joint training exercise with Bosnian forces, as well as a “demonstration of US commitment” to ensuring Bosnia’s territorial integrity in the face of “secessionist activity”.

Continue reading...

French PM Élisabeth Borne quits as Macron seeks boost before EU elections

Second female prime minister of Fifth Republic resigns after days of speculation about reshuffle, with Le Pen party ahead in polls

France’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne has resigned after days of increasingly feverish speculation about an imminent government reshuffle.

Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking to give a new impetus to his second mandate before European parliament elections and the Paris Olympics this summer, said on Monday he thanked Borne “with all his heart” for her “exemplary work in the service of the nation”.

Continue reading...

Meloni urged to ban neofascist groups after crowds filmed saluting in Rome

Hundreds of men shown making fascist salutes during gathering outside Italian Social Movement headquarters

Italian opposition leaders have called on Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government to ban neofascist groups after a chilling video emerged of hundreds of men making fascist salutes during an event in Rome.

The crowd was gathered outside the former headquarters of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neofascist party founded after the second world war which eventually morphed into Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.

Continue reading...

German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest

Partial U-turn by Berlin fails to avert week-long nationwide action that government says could be co-opted by righwing extremists

German farmers blocked city centres, highways and motorway slip roads with tractors at the start of a week-long, nationwide protest over planned cuts to agricultural sector subsidies that the government said could be co-opted by rightwing extremists.

“We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector,” the president of the German farmers’ association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on Monday.

Continue reading...

Mystery of actor’s missing cat leads to claims of defamation in Italian town

Nino Frassica is under investigation after local people said they were accused of involvement in the disappearance of his pet Hiro

An Italian actor is being investigated by prosecutors for defamation, stalking and incitement to criminal activity after allegedly implicating his neighbours in the disappearance of his cat, amid a widespread search for the feline which has caused “turbulence” among the people of a small hilltop town.

The curious case of the missing cat began in September, when Nino Frassica, who lives in the Umbrian town of Spoleto when filming Don Matteo, a Rai TV series, announced the disappearance of Hiro in a post on Instagram.

Continue reading...

Gambian ex-minister on trial in Switzerland for crimes against humanity

Ousman Sonko is accused of supporting repressive policies and was arrested in Bern in 2017 after applying for asylum

A former Gambian minister has become the highest-ranking official to be tried in Europe under the principles of universal jurisdiction after his trial on charges of crimes against humanity opened in Switzerland.

Ousman Sonko, interior minister under the west African country’s ousted dictator Yahya Jammeh, was arrested in Bern in 2017 after applying for asylum in Switzerland.

Continue reading...

German vice-chancellor warns of extremism as far-right groups join farmers’ protest – as it happened

Farmers join railway staff and lorry drivers in threatening strike action in protests over issues including pay and cuts to agricultural subsidies. This live blog is closed

About 550 people protested near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin this morning, DPA reported.

Deutsche Bahn has asked a court to stop a planned strike this week, Die Welt reports.

Continue reading...

‘It’s about being able to say goodbye’: Spanish graphic novel explores early Franco-era reprisals

The Abyss of Forgetting chronicles a woman’s struggle to find remains of her father who was murdered after civil war

At the beginning of the new Spanish graphic novel El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Forgetting), a murdered man climbs out of his grave, lights a cigarette and takes stock of the past eight decades. “When western archaeologists opened the tombs of ancient Egypt, it was said that the souls of their occupants had been freed after millennia of silence,” he says. “In a way, the same thing is happening to us. All we did was wait in silence for more than 70 years.”

José Celda – Pepe to his friends – was shot dead against a wall in the small Valencian town of Paterna at five in the afternoon on 14 September 1940. The 45-year-old farmer, whose body was buried in a mass grave, was one of the thousands of represaliados, or victims of reprisals, who were murdered by the Franco regime well after the end of the civil war in April 1939.

Continue reading...

Cave flood in Slovenia traps five people after heavy rain

Teams of divers will make three-hour round trip to supply those trapped until they can be safely rescued

Five people have been trapped in a cave in central Slovenia since Saturday after heavy rains caused flooding, rescue workers have said.

A family of three adults with two guides had on Saturday morning begun a tourist visit to the Krizna Jama (Cross Cave), 50km south of the capital, Ljubljana.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: ‘Even Russia can be brought back within the framework of international law’, Zelenskiy says – as it happened

Ukrainian president says Moscow ‘aggression can be defeated’, in address to conference in Sweden

As of 1 January 2024, 3,428 educational institutions have been damaged and 365 destroyed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the education and science committee of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The data, which has not been independently verified by the Guardian, was cited from saveschools.in.ua documents.

Michel plans to take up his seat in the European parliament mid-July if he’s elected, meaning EU leaders will have to agree quickly on a successor for his vacated council post.

If they don’t, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose country will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in July, would lead the meetings – a broker-role normally undertaken by the European Council president.

Continue reading...

Michel sparks scramble to stop Orbán taking control of European Council

President under fire after announcing he will run for election as MEP in June and will stand down if he wins

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has said he is running as an MEP in June’s European elections and will stand down if elected, sparking a race to replace him or risk the role reverting to Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

“I have decided to run in the European elections in 2024,” Michel told Belgian media late on Saturday. The former Belgian prime minister has served as chief of the EU Council, the group of government leaders of the 27 EU member states, since 2019.

Continue reading...

‘The mood is heating up’: Germany fears strikes will play into hands of far right

Angry protests by farmers, hauliers and railway workers risk being exploited by populists such as Alternative für Deutschland

The symbolism that German farmers chose to express their discontent with the government in the first days of the new year was as unambiguous as it was ominous: by the side of rural roads across the country, there were sightings of makeshift gallows dangling traffic-light signs, a reference to the colours of the three governing parties.

The chilling sculptures are harbingers of unprecedented cross-sector protests and strikes hitting German roads and railways from Monday, and speak of a dramatic change of mood in a country long feted for its consensus-seeking approach to industrial relations, especially compared with its more traditionally strike-prone neighbour France.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: Russia on course to have lost 500,000 troops by end of 2024, says UK – as it happened

This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here

Russia has started using ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea to attack Ukraine, Washington and Kyiv have claimed, in an indication that Moscow plans to further expand its arms deals with regimes under sanctions in order to sustain its war effort.

Washington also alleged Russia was in talks with Iran to buy short-range ballistic missiles. The US intelligence assessment is that Iranian missiles have not yet arrived in Russia, but that the deal will eventually be done.

Continue reading...

‘Meloni’s response left me stunned’: the Italian priest taking on the mafia

Maurizio Patriciello has had police protection since a bombing near his church in Caivano, Naples, but he vows to keep fighting crime

Father Maurizio Patriciello is running late. “I’m waiting for my bodyguards,” he says by text message.

He is neither a celebrity nor a politician but a parish priest in Caivano, a desolate, crime-ridden town on the outskirts of Naples. He has been living under police protection ever since a bomb, accompanied by the message “get out of our way”, exploded by the gate of his church.

Continue reading...

‘It’s full of green areas’: mystery of Europe’s heat death hotspot

Hot weather has proved deadlier in the Croatian city of Osijek than in any other European city but little is being done to work out why

The green LEDs on the cross outside the pharmacy read 38C for the second day running, but the noontime crowds in the centre of Osijek seemed untroubled by the danger that signalled. “We work in the sun but for us it’s no problem,” said Davor, 47, a bike courier with the food delivery service Wolt.

Though many living there may be unaware, this small Croatian city is Europe’s heat death hotspot. In the past two decades, hot weather has proved deadlier in Osijek than in any other city in Europe, a study in the Lancet medical journal found. The researchers modelled temperature and mortality data from the 854 biggest cities in Europe and found Croatians were most likely to died from the heat.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 682

Kyiv says Russia has hit Ukraine with North Korean-supplied missiles for the first time; US official warns of diminishing time to resupply aid to Ukraine

Russia hit Ukraine with missiles supplied by North Korea for the first time during its invasion, a senior Kyiv official said, corroborating an earlier assertion by the White House. Grant Shapps, the British secretary of state for defence, said that “we’ll make sure North Korea pays a high price for supporting Russia”.

President Joe Biden’s top budget official warned of the rapidly diminishing time that lawmakers have to replenish US aid for Ukraine, as the fate of that money to Kyiv remains tied up in congressional negotiations over immigration where a deal has so far been out of reach. Shalanda Young said that while the Pentagon had some limited authority to help Kyiv, “that is not going to get big tranches of equipment into Ukraine”.

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s foreign minister, said the international community must “remain firm in its resolve to support” Ukraine.

Russian air defence units downed missiles and drones in a series of night-time attacks over the Crimea peninsula and the western part of the Black Sea, Russia’s defence ministry said early on Saturday. There was no report on the incident from the Ukrainian military, which does not consistently disclose its actions in Crimea.

The government of Nepal has banned its citizens from travelling to Russia or Ukraine for employment after 10 young men were killed and dozens more reported missing while fighting, predominately in the Russian military. More than 200 Nepali soldiers are believed to have enlisted in the Russian army since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nepal’s foreign ministry has said.

A British defence intelligence update on Ukraine noted that “over the last week, ground combat has continued to be characterised by either a static frontline or very gradual, local Russian advances in key sectors”.

Russian officials in the southern border city of Belgorod offered to evacuate residents, after waves of fatal Ukrainian attacks. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov’s offer came a day after overnight shelling wounded at least two people and knocked out glass from high-rise buildings.

Ukraine released images of what it said was a Russian Kinzhal ballistic missile, which it claimed earlier in the week to have downed using the US Patriot anti-aircraft system. The Guardian was not able to verify the claim.

Continue reading...

Money, money, money: Abba’s Benny and Björn share in £900,000 payout

Swedish music stars profit from blockbuster year for Mamma Mia! production company Littlestar Services

Abba stars Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus have shared in a dividend of nearly £1m after a surge in profits at the production company behind the Mamma Mia! stage musical and film adaptations.

The Swedish music legends received the payout after a blockbuster year for Littlestar Services, the licensing and production company behind the musical based on the pop group’s hits.

Continue reading...

Madrid investigates ‘racist’ Epiphany videos featuring blackface sent to children

City council hired firm to produce personalised messages as part of traditional 6 January festivities

Madrid city council is investigating after video messages featuring a white man wearing blackface and speaking halting and heavily accented Spanish were sent to children as part of the traditional 6 January festivities that celebrate the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus.

The feast of the Epiphany – or Día de Reyes, day of the kings – is the day when Spanish children receive their Christmas presents courtesy of the three kings, Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar. It is preceded by cavalcades, held across Spain on 5 January, in which the kings parade through the streets, showering the crowds with sweets.

Continue reading...

Eurozone inflation rises to 2.9% after increase in energy costs

December data comes amid speculation over when European Central Bank will cut interest rates

Inflation across the eurozone rose in December after an increase in energy costs, reversing six months of consecutive falls and easing the pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to cut interest rates.

Figures from the EU statistical agency Eurostat showed consumer prices across the 20-country bloc rose at an annual rate of 2.9% last month, up from 2.4% in November. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a slightly higher reading of 3% for December.

Continue reading...