Firefighters have battled a high-rise blaze in Milan that spread rapidly through a 20-storey residential building and poured black smoke into the air. Residents were evacuated and the city's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said there were no reports of injuries or deaths. He added that firefighters were kicking down doors, apartment by apartment, to make sure there were no residents left behind. The 60-metre (200ft) tall building, part of a recent development project, was designed to look like the keel of a ship and included an aluminium sail on its roof, which burned and fell to the street in pieces
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The curse of Mies van der Rohe: Berlin’s six-year, £120m fight to fix his dysfunctional, puddle-strewn gallery
The modernist maestro had carte blanche to build a great museum. The result? A breathtaking icon hopeless for displaying art. British architect David Chipperfield relives his gargantuan repair job
Never has so much praise been lavished on so dysfunctional a building. The last major project of modernist master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie is a perfectly square temple of steel and glass, raised above the street on its own granite acropolis. Built in 1968, not far from the recently erected Berlin Wall, it was intended to symbolise the freedoms of the west, its big black roof enclosing an epic column-free hall for the display of modern art. It has long been venerated as a 20th-century Parthenon, the ultimate example of Mies’s pursuit of “universal space”.
But as a museum, it has always been a disaster. Ever since it opened, the New National Gallery has been dogged by cracking windows, heavy condensation and awkward display spaces, presenting a curatorial nightmare for its staff. Beneath the impractical grand hall are subterranean galleries for the permanent collection that have the dreary feeling of a windowless office complex. It is one of the most extreme examples of the quest for purity of form trumping the demands of function.
Continue reading...Russian government moves to repress opposition in run-up to elections
Ruling United Russia party silences critics, cracks down on poll monitors and offers cash to voters as its support slumps
The Russian government has silenced opposition voices, approved cash payouts to potential voters, and made it nearly impossible to monitor the polls as it prepares for parliamentary elections next month that the opposition has warned will be marred by fraud.
United Russia, the ruling party that has supported Vladimir Putin through nearly his entire presidency, is expected to maintain a majority of the seats in the next Duma, despite state polling that shows that just 26% of Russians are ready to vote for the party – its lowest rating since 2008.
Continue reading...Porcelain seized by Nazis goes up for auction in New York
Prized collection smuggled across Europe by Jewish owners in 1930s expected to fetch more than $2m
A collection of prized Meissen porcelain smuggled across Europe after its Jewish owners were forced to flee the Nazis and later procured for Hitler before being uncovered in a salt mine by the “Monuments Men”, is to be auctioned in New York next month.
The extraordinary journey that the 18th-century artworks have undergone, reflecting the turmoil of the second world war years, has been reconstructed by art historians and restitution lawyers before their sale by Sotheby’s, the international auction house.
Continue reading...Majority of Northern Irish voters want vote on staying in UK
Two-thirds of people say a border poll should be held at some point in the wake of Brexit
Two-thirds of voters in Northern Ireland believe there should be a vote over its place in the UK, but only 37% want it to take place within the next five years, according to a new poll for the Observer.
Some 31% of voters said there should be a vote at some point about Northern Ireland’s place in the UK but after 2026, the LucidTalk poll found. A further 29% said there should never be such a vote. There is currently a seven-point lead for Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK should any vote take place.
Continue reading...Minister urges firms to invest in UK-based workers in HGV driver shortage
Business secretary reported as saying foreign labour only offers ‘temporary solution’ as companies face supply chain crisis
Employers have been told to invest in UK-based workers rather than relying on labour from abroad as supermarkets and suppliers struggle to contend with a chronic shortage of lorry drivers caused by the exodus of hauliers from EU countries because of Brexit and Covid.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, wrote to business leaders on Friday saying foreign labour only offered “a short-term, temporary solution” after industry groups, Logistics UK and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) called on the department to provide temporary UK visas to EU truck drivers. They said the lack of drivers was “increasingly putting unsustainable pressure on retailers and their supply chains”.
Continue reading...Afghans reach Europe and buying burqas in Kabul: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Afghanistan to Greece
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin urged to end crackdown on Russian journalists
More than a dozen independent media sign open letter calling for halt to ‘foreign agent’ designations
Russia’s leading independent media have appealed to Vladimir Putin and other top government officials to halt a crackdown on journalists under which some of the countries’ top outlets have been declared foreign agents or banned outright over the last year.
More than a dozen media, including Meduza, TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta have signed an open letter to the government calling on it to remove individual journalists and their outlets from its blacklists and repeal laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations” altogether.
Continue reading...Michel Barnier joins long list of leaders vying to unite French centre-right
Analysis: Les Républicains face complex battle to find 2022 presidential candidate to rival Macron and Marine Le Pen
This week’s declaration by Michel Barnier, the former EU chief negotiator on Brexit, that he aims to run for French president has added to the uncertainty of a crowded field of candidates competing to represent the traditional right in next spring’s election.
The rightwing Les Républicains, the party of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, is facing an increasingly complex battle to identify a 2022 presidential candidate to rival the centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen, who, polls currently show, could once again face one another in the final.
Continue reading...Denmark to lift all remaining Covid restrictions on 10 September
Health ministry says high level of vaccination means virus ‘no longer a critical threat to society’
Denmark is to lift all its remaining Covid-19 restrictions by 10 September after the health ministry declared the virus “no longer a critical threat to society” because of the country’s high level of vaccination.
“The epidemic is under control, we have record vaccination levels,” the health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said in a statement on Friday. “That is why we can drop the special rules we had to introduce in the fight against Covid-19.”
Continue reading...Brussels battles old prejudices as it frees unloved river from its vault
City aims to reopen parts of Senne but centuries-held view of it as toxic sewer remains surprisingly strong
While Paris’s winding Seine has been an inspiration for some of the greatest works of romantic art and literature, the unloved Senne running through Brussels has been buried away under concrete for the last 150 years, condemned by locals as little more than a sewer and cause of disease and unhappiness.
As a constant flood risk and source of cholera, it was vaulted in, built over and hidden from sight. Now, however, Belgium’s capital is preparing to stage an inauguration ceremony that officials hope will help force a rethink among Bruxellois about their centuries-held prejudices against the waterway.
Continue reading...‘We want to create magic’: Taking cinema to remote Spanish villages
La Barraca de Cine has spent the past year roving its way around dozens of communities across the country
Stretching six metres and painted turquoise, the trailer has trundled across Spain, making its way to mountaintop villages, cobblestone plazas and medieval historical centres. No matter the location, the process starts much in the same way: with the unfurling of a giant screen.
“Our motto is cinema for everyone and anywhere,” said Patricia de Luna, one of the co-founders of La Barraca de Cine, a roving cinema that has made its way to dozens of villages across Spain in the past year. “Those evenings of cinema with family, friends and that shared experience with those around you – that’s the magic we want to create.”
Continue reading...Scottish court drops extradition case of Catalan independence campaigner
Extradition request from Spain for Clara Ponsatí was halted after she move to Belgium
An extradition case against a Catalan academic and independence campaigner, Clara Ponsatí, has been dropped by a Scottish court after she moved to Belgium.
A sheriff in Edinburgh halted an extradition request from the Spanish government against Ponsatí, who had been elected to the European parliament in January 2020, after agreeing the court no longer had any jurisdiction in her case.
Continue reading...Spain bans fertilisers near saltwater lagoon after dead fish wash up
Officials close eight beaches as residents complain of cloudy, green water that emits a foul smell
Spanish officials have banned the use of fertilisers near one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons after five tons of dead fish washed up on its shores.
Alarm bells began to sound in the south-eastern region of Murcia last week as scores of small fish and shrimp began to wash up along the beaches of the Mar Menor lagoon.
Continue reading...Angela Merkel scores higher approval ratings than any other world leader
Exclusive: in six countries surveyed, outgoing chancellor is most appreciated for handling of German economy
Almost 16 years after she first became Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel’s approval ratings in five major European countries and the United States remain higher than those of any other current world leader, a new poll shows.
Asked by YouGov whether they had a favourable or unfavourable opinion of Merkel, who steps down next month after four terms in office, more respondents delivered a positive verdict than a negative one in all six countries surveyed.
Continue reading...Greece will not be ‘gateway’ to Europe for Afghans fleeing Taliban, say officials
Athens calls for a united response, as refugees already in Lesbos hope their asylum claims will now be reconsidered
Greek officials have said that Greece will not become a “gateway” to Europe for Afghan asylum seekers and have called for a united response to predictions of an increase in refugee arrivals to the country.
Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has spoken to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about the developing situation in Afghanistan this week. Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi last week said: “We cannot have millions of people leaving Afghanistan and coming to the European Union … and certainly not through Greece.” The country has just completed a 25-mile (40km) wall along its land border with Turkey and installed an automated surveillance system with cameras, radars and drones.
Continue reading...Tsitsi Dangarembga’s next work won’t be read by anyone until 2114
The Zimbabwean writer joins authors including Margaret Atwood and Ocean Vuong who have agreed to lock away new writing in the Future Library
Tsitsi Dangarembga made the Booker shortlist for her most recent novel, This Mournable Body, the story of a girl trying to make a life in post-colonial Zimbabwe which was praised as “magnificent” and “sublime”. Her next work, however, is likely to receive fewer accolades: it will not be revealed to the world until 2114.
The Zimbabwean writer is the eighth author selected for the Future Library project, an organic artwork dreamed up by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson. It began in 2014 with the planting of 1,000 Norwegian spruces in a patch of forest outside Oslo. Paterson is asking one writer a year to contribute a manuscript to the project – “the length of the piece is entirely for the author to decide” – with Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong and Karl Ove Knausgård already signed up. The works, unseen by anyone but the writers themselves, will be kept in a room lined with wood from the forest in the Deichman library in Oslo. One hundred years after Future Library was launched, in 2114, the trees will be felled, and the manuscripts printed for the first time.
Continue reading...German Greens under fire over 19th-century folk song in election ad
Greens go for wide appeal with reworked campfire song with no mention of devastating floods
Germany’s Green party has been accused of attempting to revive its hippyish origins rather than tackle the challenges of the present with the release of a campaign ad for next month’s federal election that revives a 19th-century folk song.
Five weeks before a general election, in which at one point the party was leading in the polls, the one-minute-long commercial is being seen by some critics as a deliberate and last-ditch attempt to appeal to as wide a constituency as possible as it battles for second place against the resurgent Social Democrats.
Continue reading...Revisited: Inside the ’Ndrangheta trial – podcast
Guardian journalists Lorenzo Tondo and Clare Longrigg discuss the largest mafia trial in three decades. At the centre is Emanuele Mancuso, son of boss Luni Mancuso, who has been revealing the clan’s secrets after accepting police protection
The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo tells Rachel Humphreys about the trial against the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia syndicate who are Italy’s most powerful organised crime group. The trial has 900 witnesses testifying against more than 350 people, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the syndicate.
All eyes will be on Emanuele Mancuso, who has been revealing the clan’s secrets after accepting police protection. His testimony will be used against his uncle Luigi Mancuso, said to be the region’s most powerful mafia figure.
Continue reading...Ukraine denies minister’s claims of hijacked Afghanistan evacuation flight
Deputy foreign minster Yevhen Yenin said plane was diverted to Iran by armed attackers, which Iran has also denied
A Ukrainian minister has claimed a passenger jet meant to evacuate people fleeing Afghanistan to Ukraine was hijacked at gunpoint and flown instead to Iran, in an unconfirmed incident that was later denied by his own government.
Ukraine’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Yevhen Yenin, said armed hijackers seized the plane at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai international airport, where a multinational evacuation is under way ahead of a 31 August deadline for foreign militaries to leave the country set by the Taliban.
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