World News

Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, has condemned the installation of new plaques in Poland at the site of the Jedwabne pogrom, during which hundreds of Jews were burned alive in World War Two.

Polish prosecutors have launched an investigation into far-right leader Grzegorz Braun after he declared the gas chambers at Auschwitz to be “fake” and said it is a “fact” that Jews have committed ritual slaughter of Christians. Denial of Nazi crimes is an offence in Poland that carries a jail sentence of up to three years.

Slovenia’s liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob said on Friday that he intends to call a consultative referendum on the country’s NATO membership, following a surprise defeat in parliament over a related measure on defence spending.

Inside the guarded bubble of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, there are signs of a problem. Next to the security carousels, a large sign, replicated all over the hallways, says: “In response to the ongoing UN budget crisis, we have had to reduce operating hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.” During the past two years, corridors and meeting rooms of the Palais des Nations have been occasionally kept in the dark, central heating and elevators cut to save on the very inflated Swiss electricity bills. Back in December 2023, the UN’s liquidity crisis got so dire that the Palais was shut down for three whole weeks. Ahead of a security meeting, a source told me a Russian delegate once joked in front of a dead elevator that they should turn the power off for Americans but not for him: His country had already paid its yearly contribution to the UN.

Poland’s main opposition party, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), has proposed an entry ban for people from certain countries in the Middle East and Africa. It says this would help stop Germany’s practice of sending migrants who have illegally crossed the border back to Poland.

Evidence gathered by Amnesty International demonstrates how over a month since the introduction of its militarized aid distribution system, Israel has continued to use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and to deliberately impose conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide.

The chamber of Poland’s Supreme Court tasked with overseeing elections – but whose legitimacy is rejected by the Polish government and European courts – has passed a resolution validating the result of last month’s presidential vote in Poland, which was won by conservative opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki.

Protest against student arrest, barricades in Belgrade

Aujourd’hui, ce monde qu’on voulait changer, on dit, et on n’a pas tort, qu’il est surtout en marche, vers une forme de fascisme, ou plus précisément de techno-fascisme.

Berlin-based advocates are one step closer to creating a car-free zone in their city that's bigger than the entirety of Manhattan.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”.

NEW YORK (AP) — Europeans still aren’t buying Teslas with figures out Wednesday showing sales plunged for a fifth month in a row in May, a blow to investors who had hoped anger toward Elon Musk would have faded by now.

Soldiers in the Israeli military have told the Israeli news outlet Haaretz that aid distribution centers in Gaza have become “a killing field,” with military leadership ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians.

Along with the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Denmark constitute the Danish Realm, a political arrangement united under the Danish monarch, King Frederik. Greenlanders hold Danish citizenship, many are of mixed Inuit and Danish heritage, and approximately 17,000 live in Denmark. What the Danish government doesn’t like to admit is that Denmark enjoys geopolitical advantages from the arrangement. Retaining Greenland as a territory makes Denmark one of eight members of the Arctic Council and the third largest territory within NATO. And though Greenland retains full control of its natural resources, Denmark is responsible for its foreign policy; the economic potential of any mineral deposits, as well as the emerging trade routes in the Arctic, will likely elevate Denmark’s geopolitical influence in the region and its standing on the world stage.

There is no English equivalent for the word the women of Yakel use to describe the shame they feel when they are unable to carry out their customary duties. It is not exactly embarrassment. It is not simply sorrow. It is something deeper — a rupture between the self and the sacred. For generations, the women of Yakel, a kastom (custom) village on the island of Tanna in the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, have borne the responsibility for the ritual of Nahunu. Nahunu entails the preparation of food and drink for the Imalul, or the spiritual center of the village, where the people go to commune with their ancestors. This responsibility, though heavy, is not a burden. It is a birthright. A form of spiritual service. To perform it is to be in right relationship — with the land, with one another, and with the ancestral realm. To fail is to feel adrift, untethered from a deeper order, like a reed cut from a reed bed.

Representative Al Green, a Texas Democrat, officially introduced new Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

On Sazan, a small island off the coast of Albania, the landscape is Jurassic. Ferns, giant lavender, plumbago, rosemary, broom and laurels grow on the mountain at its centre. The view from the top, with its dramatic sunsets, is dizzyingly beautiful.

On an afternoon in March in the middle of the world’s oldest desert, Johannes Michels looks out at an array of solar panels, the size of 40 football fields, that stretches toward a ridge of jagged peaks between the ochre-colored sand and a cloudless blue sky. Inside a building to Michels’s left sits a 12-megawatt electrolyzer—a machine resembling two giant AA batteries that is designed to split water into its two component parts, H₂ and O. Behind him is the desert factory’s key piece of proprietary tech: a rotating kiln in which the hydrogen gas from that water is mixed with iron ore to create a pure form of iron, the main ingredient in steel.

Everything is ok!

Might want to top off your gas tank today, if you have one.

The European Union’s chief diplomat has called for all sides in the Middle East conflict to “step back” and return to negotiations after the U.S. struck key Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.

Well, fuck. Now I guess we get to find out. Bee sure to tune in at 2200 Eastern for whatever rambling mess Trump is going to spout off.

People in affluent countries around the world are willing to tax themselves to address climate change and ease poverty.

Tonga, a Pacific Island nation with deep connections to the ocean and its non-human inhabitants, could become the first country in the world to recognize that whales have inherent rights.

Scientists in Poland have called on the public to step up efforts to combat drought, revealing that around 45% of the country’s forests and agricultural land are under threat.

Poland has been observing GPS disruptions over the Baltic Sea, Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said, adding they were “related to the actions of the Russian Federation, including sabotage actions.”

The two parties that make up the Third Way (Trzecia Droga), which is part of Poland’s ruling coalition, have confirmed that they are splitting and will stand separately at the next elections.

The European Union has unveiled plans to legally bypass Hungary and Slovakia to ban Russian gas imports by 2027, using trade and energy laws that avoid national vetoes.

Perhaps the oldest, most pernicious form of human bias is that of men toward women. It often started at the moment of birth. In ancient Athens, at a public ceremony called the amphidromia, fathers would inspect a newborn and decide whether it would be part of the family, or be cast away. One often socially acceptable reason for abandoning the baby: It was a girl.

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The Israeli military says Iran launched dozens of ballistic missiles at Israel as sirens and loud blasts were heard in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israel launched a major attack on Iran, drawing their long-running shadow war into the open conflict in a way that could spiral into a wider, more dangerous regional war.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

Shots fired—that is how observers described the landmark legal decision in late May in a case brought by a Peruvian farmer against a German coal giant, that ruled fossil fuel producers could be held accountable under German law for the climate harms they have caused around the world. It was a groundbreaking moment, a decade in the making, that began in 2015 when Saul Lucian Lliuya realized he had a problem: the constant threat of catastrophic flooding he and the other 120,000 residents of his hometown, Huaraz, faced. Above Huaraz sits Lake Palcacocha, one of several glacier lakes that supplies the city’s drinking water. Over decades, water levels have occasionally risen, but as global average temperatures have increased, the surrounding glaciers have shrunk, pushing the lake to capacity and the point where a catastrophic flood is now inevitable.

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that European Union energy and climate regulations are incompatible with the Polish constitution and breach national sovereignty in determining energy policy.

The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday launched a certification scheme aimed at contributing to global efforts to conserve 30 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial and aquatic areas by 2030.

Joachim Streit has never stepped foot in Canada. But that hasn’t stopped the German politician from launching a tenacious, one-man campaign that he readily describes as “aspirational”: to have the North American country join the EU.

archive.is link

A new low for the IDF. The US and Israel decided to start their humanitarian aid org so that Hamas would get less positive PR. They placed their distribution center behind IDF lines. Everyone including the UN said this was a terrible idea. Predictably, IDF has opened fire on people trying to travel to the humanitarian aid center. At least 27 people died.

"Wealthy tourists travel here from across the world to receive illegal, but life-saving kidney transplants. The donors receive less than £2000 for donating their organs."

In the early hours of April 7, 2024, Israeli forces stormed the homes of 25-year-old Layan Kayed in Ramallah and 23-year-old Layan Nasir in Birzeit, both located in the occupied West Bank. The two women were arrested at gunpoint and placed in “administrative detention” without charges.

Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as further information becomes available.

Poland holds a knife-edge second round of the presidential election on Sunday as the country chooses between a centrist liberal and a right-wing nationalist.

Last month, Brazil announced it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow its citizens to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world.

Three doctors have been charged over the death of a pregnant woman, named only as Dorota, while she was in hospital under their care. Prosecutors found that “there was a failure to undertake appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, which led to the patient’s death”.

Poland’s government has announced 230 million zloty (€54 million) in state support for the construction of what it says will be the world’s largest factory producing towers for offshore wind turbines.

Demand for electricity is surging globally — and it’s projected to grow even more as society shifts away from gas-powered cars and heating to electric systems, and as intensifying heat waves drive the need for more air conditioning.

archive.is link

On May 13, José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano, who served as president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, died of cancer at his farmhouse in Rincón del Cerro outside the capital city of Montevideo.

A Norwegian man has spoken of the “unreal” moment he woke up to discover that a 135-metre container ship had crashed into his front garden.