Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Electric scooters could be on roads by June, leaving UK last major European country not to have approved use
Germany’s upper house of parliament is due to vote on Friday on whether to allow electric scooters on to the country’s roads, following a feverish debate spanning everything from road safety to air quality.
The transport minister is behind the plan, but he has faced a barrage of protests from lobby groups, representing both car drivers and bike riders, who have warned of chaos and accidents if the so-called e-scooters – known locally as e-rollers – are allowed.
Three in 10 think conflict among EU countries is a realistic possibility, survey finds
More than half of Europeans believe the EU is likely to collapse within a generation, despite support for the bloc hitting heights not recorded in more than a quarter of a century.
In France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic and Poland, a majority of people surveyed thought EU disintegration was a “realistic possibility” in the next 10 to 20 years.
Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron met companies and G7 nations in Paris for Christchurch Call summit
World leaders and heads of global technology companies have pledged at a Paris summit to tackle terrorist and extremist violence online in what they described as an “unprecedented agreement”.
Wednesday’s event, organised two months to the day since the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, drew up a “plan of action” to be adopted by countries and companies to prevent extreme material going viral on the internet.
Investigation is linked to Panama Papers and part of money laundering allegations
Eleven banks and eight private homes and offices across Germany have been raided by police and tax investigators as part of a wide-ranging investigation into tax evasion.
France’s far-right National Rally leader asks ally to remove controversial selfie from Facebook
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has asked an Estonian ally to remove a selfie from Facebook in which the pair made a controversial “OK” hand gesture, which has been linked to white-power messaging.
Le Pen was in Tallinn to meet MPs from Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently became part of the country’s coalition government, as part of cross-continent negotiations on setting up a new bloc of nationalist and far-right forces after European elections next week.
Three-quarters of areas tested show contamination, European Environment Agency says
Heavy metals and a cocktail of dangerous chemicals continue to poison Europe’s seas, with more than three-quarters of areas assessed showing contamination, according to a report.
The sea worst affected was the Baltic, where 96% of the assessed areas showed problematic levels of some harmful substances, according to the European Environment Agency. Similar problems were found in 91% of the Black Sea and 87% of the Mediterranean. In the north-east Atlantic, unsafe levels of chemicals or metals were found in 75% of assessed areas.
German chancellor also shares views on Brexit and climate crisis in interview
Europe must reposition itself to stand up to the challenges posed by its three big global rivals, China, Russia and the US, Angela Merkel has said before her final European election as German chancellor.
Facing challenges that range from Russian interference in elections to China’s economic clout and the US’s monopoly over digital services, Europe needs to get better at putting up a united front, Merkel said in a wide-ranging interview shared with the Guardian.
British film-maker claims she was denied access to Marché du Film, then told to pay fee for baby and wait two days for it to be processed
The Cannes film festival has been criticised for its treatment of mothers and babies after a female director claimed she and her child were prevented from entering the festival site.
British director Greta Bellamacina, whose film Hurt By Paradise is screening in the market section of the festival, said the festival had displayed an “outrageous” attitude after she attempted to enter the festival with her four-month son.
Designs from architects around world also suggest glass, crystal and metal spires
An architecture firm has proposed replacing the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral with a swimming pool, as France prepares to launch an international competition to restore the fire-damaged gothic edifice to its former glory.
After the roof and spire of Notre Dame were damaged in a fire watched worldwide in April, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to a “contemporary gesture” in rebuilding it “more beautiful than before”, and the prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, called for a new spire “adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era”.
Boyko Borisov has praise even for Theresa May, but is less keen on questions about corruption
At a time when some politicians in central and eastern Europe are profiting from hostility towards Brussels, Bulgaria’s Boyko Borisov is taking a different path, aiming to winning favour from Europe through charm and flattery.
“I’ve been all over the world and I can say that there’s no better place to live than the EU,” he said during a recent interview with the Guardian in Sofia.
Secretary of state’s visit will be first high-level meeting since redacted Mueller report release
Mike Pompeo is to meet Vladimir Putin in Russia at a time of heightened fears of a clash between the US and Iran, a Moscow ally.
A Kremlin spokesman, before the meeting on Tuesday, accused the US of applying a “maximum pressure policy” against Iran, a reference to a harsh US sanctions regime and military deployments to the Middle East.
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt chronicled final months before he was beheaded on 13 May 1619
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is arguably the greatest Dutch statesman, as one of the founding fathers who helped liberate the Netherlands from Spanish rule, but for 200 years the whereabouts of a diary chronicling his final months before he was beheaded has been a mystery.
The prose – written over an eight-month period between 1618 and 1619 – was last seen in 1825 when a pastor, the Rev Adrian Stolker, studied the manuscript and made a copy by hand to be published for wider dissemination.
Rightwing populists to launch attack on climate science in vote drive before EU elections
Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as “mentally challenged” and a fraud.
The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.
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.”
PM told that any deal involving customs union would be ‘bad politics and bad policy’
Theresa May is under intense pressure to abandon cross-party Brexit talks, after a group of senior Conservative figures, including leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, issued a strongly worded warning against any deal that involved a customs union.
May’s cabinet, and Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, are both due to take stock of the talks on Tuesday, with neither side optimistic about the prospects for an agreement that could secure a majority in parliament.
Jeremy Hunt warns of conflict erupting in the Gulf by accident after Saudi ships sabotaged
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has been urged by European leaders to show maximum restraint towards Iran after Saudi Arabia confirmed that two of its vessels had been mysteriously sabotaged on Sunday in the waters off Oman by an unidentified assailant.
Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, warned Pompeo in a hastily arranged meeting in Brussels: “We are living in crucial delicate moments where the most responsible attitude to take and should be is maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on the military side.”
Pair discovered dead in flat owned by one of three victims of hotel shooting
Two more bodies have been found during investigations into the deaths of three people discovered in a Bavarian hotel room who had been killed by crossbow bolts.
Two women were found dead at a flat in Wittingen, northern Germany, belonging to one of three people who died at a hotel 400 miles away in Passau, near the Austrian border, on Saturday.
In December 1984, a group of teenagers on a school trip from West Germany crossed the border into East Germany. When they returned, an East German defector was hiding under a seat on their bus. Sophie Hardach speaks to those involved 35 years on and revisits their incredible story. Plus: Jo Holdaway on the GM anti-virus drug that saved her daughter’s life
It began as a typical 1980s school trip: a group of teenagers piled on to a bus, Duran Duran were on the stereo and spirits were high. What happened next caused a sensation: it was part The Famous Five and part John le Carré thriller.
The teenagers were from Marburg in West Germany, crossing the border into East Germany. While they were there, they managed to evade their minders and hatched a plot to smuggle a young defector out of the country with them. It was a plan fraught with danger: leaving East Germany was a criminal offence and hundreds of people had been killed making the attempt.
Pope Francis aide crawls into manhole to return power for hundreds of homeless in unused state-owned building
An aide to pope Francis has shimmied down a Rome manhole in order to restore electricity for hundreds of homeless people living in an unused state-owned building.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski broke a police seal to turn the electricity back on on Saturday evening in the building where 450 people, including about 100 children, had been living without lights or hot water since 6 May, according to Italian news reports
Cruel laws risk lives and harm women around the world. Attempts to extend them must be resisted
No law can end abortions, however severe its restrictions and however harsh its penalties. Each day almost 70,000 unsafe abortions are carried out around the world, and they are vastly more likely to happen in countries with strict laws. What such legislation does do is force some women to continue pregnancies against their wishes, while risking the lives and wellbeing of others. Women in the US have seen their ability to terminate pregnancies dismantled piece by piece. Now states are racing to outlaw or dramatically curb abortions with extreme and unconstitutional bills. The aim is to directly challenge Roe v Wade, the US supreme court ruling that established that abortion is legal before the foetus is viable outside the womb, at around 24 weeks. Last Tuesday, the governor of Georgia signed a bill essentially banning abortions after six weeks from 2020. Some described it as a sign that men who wish to control women’s bodies have no idea of how they actually work. More likely, those who pushed hardest for the change understand all too well that many women will not know they are pregnant until it is too late.
Five other states have signed similar bills; several more are considering them. (Others have introduced more incremental curbs.) The Alabama senate will this week consider a near-total ban on abortion – with prison sentences of up to 99 years for doctors – which Republicans initially tried to sneak through without even a vote. The state’s lieutenant governor said he believes Roe v Wade will be overturned thanks to Donald Trump’s appointment of conservative jurists.