Europe

Applicants for German citizenship will be required to explicitly affirm Israel's right to exist under a new citizenship law which came into effect on Tuesday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday that the three main centrist groups inthe European parliament had agreed on the top European Union posts. German conservative Ursula von der Leyen has been granted a second term as head of the EU's powerful executive body and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa will helm the European Council.

Here is the official statement (pdf)

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Finland’s multifaceted approach to preventing teenage abortions has proven highly effective, with a 66 percent reduction reported between 2000 and 2023. This large drop, owing to free contraception and obligatory sex education, serves as a model for public health programs.

Trine Krebs is sometimes called “the leek woman,” or even Miss Dry-Legume, of Denmark. The 48-year-old has for decades traveled around the country as, in her words, a “food inspirer,” proselytizing about all things vegetables.

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*- The Italian government has fined a car company $6.4m (£5m) for allegedly branding vehicles that were made in China as being produced in Italy.*

Swedish authorities say Russia is behind “harmful interference” deliberately targeting the Nordic country’s satellite networks that it first noted days after joining NATO earlier this year.

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: Valbuena, 37, is from Cali, which he describes as “the capital of salsa”; he now finds himself in the more sedate surroundings of Campdevànol, a village of 3,200 people in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees, as a pioneer in the programme Comunitats Rurals Queer. With funding from the equality ministry of the Catalan regional government, Valbuena now shares a house in the village with two other Colombian refugees: Edwin Cardenas, 54, a trans man, and his partner Nazareth Moreno, 51, who is a lesbian. One beneficiary of the Oportunitat500 scheme is Sabiha Kammoush, 50, a refugee from Aleppo, Syria, who for the past two years has been living in Bellaguarda, a tiny village – population 289 – surrounded by olive and almond groves in the Catalan interior, along with three of her six children. Eunice Romero Rivera, responsible for migration, refugees and antiracism in the Catalan government, agrees: “If you dump 300 people in a village with a small population, and furthermore in a country which is quite racist, it’s hardly surprising that there’s a populist reaction,” she says. Inspired by Riace, the social cooperative JungiMundu (“unite the world” in the local dialect) set about repopulating Camini, another Calabrian village, which now hosts 118 migrants in a total population of 810. And in last month’s regional election, Campdevànol voted for Catalonia’s own xenophobic party, Aliança Catalana, whose leader Sílvia Orriols, says, among other things, that “it is impossible for a Muslim to be a Catalan”. The original article contains 2,214 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: The European Union is at risk of missing its ambitious climate goals for 2030, and Germany and Italy are largely to blame. There's just one problem: Germany and Italy could eat up the majority of credits available across the EU, setting up a costly bidding war by other countries that also miss their climate goals. "Germany and Italy are eating up all available carbon credits from their neighbours, leaving them stranded and at risk of legal proceedings," Sofie Defour, climate director at T&E, said in a statement. An EU climate law, known as the Effort Sharing Regulation, sets binding emissions reduction targets for each of the bloc's 27 countries. Attempts by countries including Germany, Italy, and France to slash emissions from agriculture and transportation have sparked protests by farmers and citizens worried they will push up the costs and make EU products more expensive than imports. Defour said countries face a choice: pay billions to their neighbors for their carbon debt or implement stronger climate policies, such as insulating houses to make them more energy efficient. The original article contains 355 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

"Professors at the European University Institute are warning of the rapid popularisation of generative-AI that makes threats of foreign interference and disinformation operations more subtle and harmful for our democracies than ever before. The number of violations reported just in Europe and only in 2024, also denounced by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, depicts well-established tactics of media warfare from which the population needs to be protected."

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: The Commission said it was satisfied that "the opening of a deficit-based excessive deficit procedure is warranted" in the case of seven countries. The EU suspended debt and deficit regulations to help countries cope with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The rules are now back in place and now any EU country going over debt and deficit limits run the risk of legal action. According to the reformed rules, an EU member state's debt may not exceed 60% of gross domestic product (GDP). According to the commission's economic forecast, France is at -5.5%, Italy is at -4.4% and Belgium is at -4.4% and will breach this deficit limit in 2024. Austria, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia also have deficits that are too high according to the rules. The original article contains 237 words, the summary contains 133 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: Environmental protesters sprayed paint on Stonehenge on Wednesday, with footage showing an orange powder covering some of the stones. Two protesters dressed in white were seen running towards two of the megaliths and spraying paint, as another person attempted to stop them, in footage released by Just Stop Oil, an environmental activist group focused on the issue of human-caused climate change. The prehistoric structure dates back to somewhere between 3100 BC and 1600 BC, according to archaeologists. Just Stop Oil has drawn criticism for targeting public treasures in the past, including the vandalism of Van Gogh's Sunflowers with tomato soup in a publicity stunt at London's National Gallery in 2022. Less than a year later, two protesters from the group disrupted play during the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, running onto the court throwing confetti from a picture-puzzle box featuring an image of Wimbledon's famed Center Court. On the eve of that tournament, celebrities including Richard Curtis and Emma Thompson had called on Wimbledon to end its partnership with Barclays Bank over the institution's multibillion-dollar support for fossil fuel projects. The original article contains 161 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 0%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

China's commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had urged Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms after the country sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia.

The planned chat control makes the world less secure and more authoritarian, as it is directed against private and encrypted communication. Proponents are using disinformation, lies, and sleight of hand to push through the project. But chat control can still be stopped. A commentary.

Russia has turned increasingly to blackmail and financial incentives to hire Germans to spy for it after the blow dealt to its intelligence services by Europe's expulsion of some 600 Russian diplomats, Germany's domestic security service said.

*- In response to the EU's tariffs on EV, China announced an anti-dumping probe on pork imports from the European Union. But at less than $2 billion last year, pork accounts for a tiny sliver of the trade between the EU and China, which topped $280 billion in 2023.*

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: There's no ice cream, no sandcastles and no sense of fun in this tale - but there are criminal gangs, dune buggies and desperate people. As we arrive, the boat is making its way toward Britain, while the people smugglers are heading back toward their hiding places in the dunes. As we're watching, a crowd of people - men, women and children - start hurrying down the beach. Smugglers have worked out that it's much more efficient to launch the boat elsewhere and bring it round to the beach, allowing your passengers to run into the water and clamber aboard. More from Sky News on the migration crisis:On 'Train of Death': Electric shocks and beatingsPoll reveals what people think about immigration Watch special programme on migration crisis with Yalda Hakim on Sky News from 9pm tonight The original article contains 995 words, the summary contains 136 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: The third trial against the "Reichsbürger" group around Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss begins on Tuesday at the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG). The eight defendants in Munich are accused of membership in, and in some cases founding, a terrorist organization and of preparing a so-called high treason enterprise. Several of the Munich defendants allegedly belonged to the organization's so-called "council" or to the command staff of its "military arm." The Munich Higher Regional Court has initially set 55 dates for the main trial, currently up until the end of January 2025. The Reichsbürger, literally "citizens of the Reich," is the name given to a disparate movement of conspiracy theorists who deny the legitimacy of Germany's post-World War II Federal Republic. Although there is some overlap with the far-right scene, "Reichsbürger" are distinguished by their adherence to four often debunked claims: That the pre-war German Empire (Reich) still legally exists, that the post-war Federal Republic of Germany does not have a valid constitution, that the Federal Republic is not a state at all but in fact a private corporation, and that Germany is still under Allied occupation. The original article contains 402 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is not a joke...

Tony Sinclair had worked all his life – but still found himself sleeping rough. Then even his tent was taken away from him.

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The patchwork plains of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain, were once known for their windmills.

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Here's Mr. Stoltenberg's statement in a video (1 min)

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: Wearing a dark green suit, Austrian Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler arrived in Luxembourg on Monday ready for a fight. She had decided at the 11th hour that it was her duty to approve the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, a central pillar of the bloc’s efforts to reverse the major degradation of its landscapes. Her decision, which defied a stern letter from Nehammer claiming Gewessler couldn’t legally speak for Austria, gave the measure just enough support to pass. Last month, Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan, a Green Party member, spearheaded a letter with 10 other countries calling on EU governments to back the Nature Restoration Law, which requires Europe to revive 20 percent of its land and seas by 2030. Ryan had an ally in Alain Maron, environment minister for the Brussels-Capital Region and a member of Ecolo, the Belgian Francophone green party. But at the last minute the region of Vienna changed its mind, breaking the consensus and opening the door for Gewessler to modify Austria's position at the EU level and back the legislation. The original article contains 1,199 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: But a last-minute change of heart by Austria’s Green climate minister, whose vote is credited with saving the proposal, led to fury in Vienna, with the party of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, announcing it would seek criminal charges against her for alleged abuse of power. In an extraordinary display of division at the heart of Austria’s coalition government, Nehammer wrote to the Belgian presidency of the EU Council before the vote urging it to disregard his minister’s support and arguing that she did not have the right to take the position she had. “Today marks a significant day for Europe as we transition from merely protecting and conserving nature to actively restoring it,” said César Luena, a centre-left MEP from Spain who led the European parliament’s negotiations on the law. Copa and Cogeca, the EU’s biggest farming lobby group, criticised the slim majority of ministers voting in favour of the law, calling it a “flawed proposal” that would cause legal battles in regional, national and European courts. “Political rhetoric aside, the question of the lack of clear and consistent funding for ecosystem restoration across the EU remains unanswered – partly explaining the great embarrassment and headlong rush that surrounds this law,” a spokesperson said. Špela Bandelj Ruiz, a Greenpeace biodiversity campaigner, said: “Despite the weakening of the law, this deal offers a ray of hope for Europe’s nature, future generations and the livelihoods of rural communities.” The original article contains 1,014 words, the summary contains 236 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: Meanwhile, on the left, a co-operation agreement has been struck and parties seem intent on putting their differences behind them — but tensions still crackle between two star figures, in terms of both personality and issues including Ukraine and Gaza. Opinion polls and analysis of last Sunday’s results suggest a united left and a strengthened far-right National Rally could wipe the pro-Macron coalition off the map — meaning that the president’s only chance of avoiding a crushing defeat is to bet on divisions among his opponents. Doubling down, Ciotti posted a video of himself in his office set to an epic soundtrack, claiming he was going “back to work for France.” Several French commentators on social media compared his defiance to Al Pacino’s bloody last stand in the movie Scarface. Two years ago, the four main left-leaning parties — the Communists, Socialists, Greens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) movement — agreed to run a united left-wing front, allowing them to more than double their total in the National Assembly and block Macron from securing a majority. The coalition imploded after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel, when LFI’s three former partners said they could no longer work with the leftist movement due to its reluctance to label Hamas as a terrorist group. Unlike the pro-Macron camp, led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, and the National Rally, which is backing Bardella to head the government, the left is avoiding the question of leadership for now. The original article contains 1,106 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: A Chinese state-owned company sought to use a partnership with a leading British university in order to access AI technology for potential use in “smart military bases”, the Guardian has learned. Emails show that China’s Jiangsu Automation Research Institute (Jari) discussed deploying software developed by scientists at Imperial College London for military use. Ministers have spent the past year stepping up warnings about the potential security risk posed by academic collaborations with China, with MI5 telling vice-chancellors in April that hostile states are targeting sensitive research that can “deliver their authoritarian, military and commercial priorities”. They together raise questions about whether British science faculties understand that China has become increasingly authoritarian and militarised under Xi Jinping, and that proper due diligence is required in dealings with this state.” A Channel 4 documentary last year revealed that Guo had written eight papers with Chinese collaborators at Shanghai University on missile design and using AI to control fleets of marine combat drones. Of his previous collaborations, he said that the papers were classified as “basic research” and were written to help advance scientific knowledge in a broad range of fields rather than solving specific, real-world problems. The original article contains 872 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Original article behind paywall

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The Belgian Council presidency seems set to greenlight Chat Control on Wednesday 19 June. This confirms fears: the proponents of Chat Control want to exploit the situation after the European Elections, in which there is less public attention and the European Parliament is not yet constituted. If Chat Control makes it through the Council now, there is a risk that the Parliament in its new composition will not fight as fiercely as before and surrender our previous wins.

European Union ambassadors agreed on Friday formally to start accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, the Belgian EU presidency said, adding this would take place at intergovernmental conferences on June 25.

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Russian inflation accelerated in May to the highest in more than a year, adding to pressure on the central bank to hike the key rate to curb price growth.

International Criminal Court (ICC) investigating alleged Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as possible war crimes, sources say

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: Click here to see the summaryThis is the best summary I could come up with: Contamination levels in the first eight days of June, after persistent heavy rain in Paris, showed bacteria such as E. coli and enterococci beyond limits judged safe for athletes. The report was published by monitoring group Eau de Paris one day after a senior International Olympic Committee executive said there were “no reasons to doubt” races will go ahead as scheduled in a historic downtown stretch of the Seine near the Eiffel Tower. Marathon swimming races over 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) for women and men are scheduled on Aug. 8 and 9, respectively, in waters that were historically polluted before a $1.5 billion investment ahead of the Olympics The safety of the Seine water for the Olympics has been in doubt since some test events scheduled last August were cancelled, also after unseasonal heavy rains. Rainwater infiltrates the sewer system, and to prevent street flooding, the excess water, carrying fecal bacteria, is diverted into the Seine. Water quality of rivers in major cities can be impacted by many things, from runoff to dumping of chemicals, sometimes illegally, and boat traffic. The original article contains 471 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Norway’s prime minister signaled a hardening stance on China, pledging tighter cooperation with businesses on security risks linked to the Asian nation.

The United States, Britain and Canada accused Russia on Thursday of carrying out a plot to sway the outcome of the Moldovan presidential election in October and incite protests if a pro-Moscow candidate should lose.

*- Kremlin hawk talks of need for harsh campaign against West* *- Ex-president Medvedev: Response needed against sanctions* *- Calls for Western society, infrastructure to be targeted* *- Western officials have accused Russia of sabotage* *- Moscow has publicly rejected those allegations*

The EU’s top court on Thursday fined Hungary 200 million euros ($216 million) and imposed a daily one-million-euro penalty for failing to follow the bloc’s asylum laws and illegally deporting migrants, a decision Budapest slammed as “unacceptable”.