Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi also exchanged for Hamid Noury, who was serving life in Sweden for role in death of political prisoners
Johan Floderus, the Swedish EU diplomat held in captivity for two years in Iran, has been freed and is on his way home, the Swedish prime minister announced.
Ulf Kristersson said on Saturday that the Iranian lifer Hamid Noury was being exchanged for Johan Floderus and the Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi.
Continue reading...Marine Le Pen’s party is breaking record high scores across vast areas of the country, polls show, with an increase in its influence inevitable
It is 8pm on Sunday 7 July. Polling stations have just closed after the second round of snap French parliamentary elections – the country’s most momentous ballot in living memory – and the first estimations flash up on the nation’s TV screens.
President Emmanuel Macron has lost his gamble. The National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen has more than trebled its tally of deputies in the assemblée nationale to just over 290: an absolute majority. France’s next government will be far right.
Continue reading...Hi-tech imaging reveals the artist tinkered with Herri met de Bles’s painting to improve the composition of figures
One benefit of being among history’s greatest artists is that if you don’t much like a painting done by someone else, you can just improve it. The Flemish master Sir Peter Paul Rubens certainly knew how to paint people; Rubenesque is still used to describe a curvaceous, ample body. So when he noticed the inferior quality of the religious figures depicted on an otherwise accomplished landscape hanging on his wall, it turns out he simply picked up his paint palette.
A newly rediscovered Herri met de Bles painting, titled The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in an Extensive Landscape with Travellers, set a puzzle for art historians because the style of the landscape background did not match the group of people. Hi-tech imaging of the canvas carried out by a London auction house has since “completed the jigsaw”, revealing the way Rubens had tinkered with a painting now thought to have belonged to his own collection.
Continue reading...Labour leader rejects ‘desperate’ claim from Tory party that he has secret property tax plans
Keir Starmer has ruled out imposing capital gains tax on the sale of people’s homes and said it was “desperate” tactics from the Tories to suggest that he would.
The Labour leader said he could “absolutely” guarantee that would not happen.
Continue reading...‘Abject failure’ of family reunion scheme to provide legal route is leaving children at risk of trafficking or even death
Children are being trapped in war zones as a result of “impossible” bureaucratic requirements imposed on one of the few legal routes for asylum seekers, a charity has found.
The government has championed family reunion processes as a means for refugees to safely reunite with loved ones in Britain, but according to a new report by Ramfel, a charity that supports vulnerable migrants, the scheme is “not fit for purpose” and applicants have been abandoned, leaving them at risk of trafficking or even death.
Continue reading...Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd were calling for hand counts in 2022 as election denialism swept Cochise county, a records request shows
Republican elected officials in a small Arizona county talked with state lawmakers and activists about hand-counting ballots there in 2022 and urged their counterparts in other counties to push for hand counts as well, newly released public records show.
The records from Cochise county, a Republican stronghold along the US-Mexico border, only came to light after a lawsuit from a watchdog group, American Oversight, and took well over a year to be released. The original records request from American Oversight was filed in November 2022.
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