Berlin has reported a marked increase in attacks on asylum seekers and refugee shelters, amid a sharp rise in far-right crime and a hardening of German migration policy.

Official figures provided at the request of two local Green party lawmakers showed there were 77 assaults on asylum seekers and refugees in 2024 and eight instances of deliberate damage to residences housing them.

This compares with 32 targeted attacks on people and none on residences in 2023, one of the deputies, Ario Ebrahimpour Mirzaie, told the news agency dpa.

As a result of the assaults, 34 people needed treatment in hospital, according to the official data. These included 16 women, 14 men, two girls and two males whose age was not reported.

Frustration with established parties across Europe has created openings the right has been quick to fill. Can a divided left rally in response?

In a recent escalation, Berlin authorities ordered the deportation of four pro-Palestine activists – three EU citizens and one American, none of whom were convicted of a crime. Rather, citing Staatsräson, their threatened deportation was for holding anti-Israel views. Although one of these deportations was later deemed invalid by the Berlin Administrative court, the move followed 18 months of cancellations, bans and dismissals of artists, academics and speakers – Palestinians, Jews, Israelis and others – for speaking out against Israel.

In a cruel historical twist, Germany, the perpetrator of the Holocaust, has enabled what numerous observers, including Amnesty International, have identified as a genocide of Palestinians. Rather than learning a universal historical lesson that applies to all people, Germany chose a particularist interpretation of its history, centered on the state's relation to Israel.

The recent deportation order suggest a dramatic escalation in the influence of St

She had been welcomed to the White House with open arms as few other foreign visitors had been since Donald Trump’s return, and Giorgia Meloni wanted to assure her host that – at least when it came to their political worldview – they spoke a common language.

Italy’s prime minister, whose Brothers of Italy party has roots in neo-fascism, was keen to stress that she shared many things with the man who had just hailed her as a “friend” who “everybody loves … and respects”. Tariffs were a bit of problem. But between friends? Hey, we can work it out.

Even if Italy boasted one of Europe’s biggest trade surpluses with the US, such disagreements could be bridged with recourse to the previously uncoined creed of “western nationalism”, argued Meloni, speaking in confident, lightly accented English, although she admitted she did not know if it was “the right word”.

The Algerian foreign ministry said the actions of the French prosecutor were designed to “humiliate Algeria, with no consideration for the consular status of this agent, disregarding all diplomatic customs and practices, and in flagrant violation of the relevant conventions and treaties”. In July, Macron announced that France would back Morocco's decades-long plan to give the Western Sahara limited autonomy under its sovereignty. That shift would align France with allies like the United States.

Algeria, however, backs the pro-independence Polisario Front, which acts as the Western Sahara's government in exile within Algeria's borders, the Associated Press said.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on Friday appeared to reject a call from Spain to hold an open debate on Israel’s participation in this Eurovision song contest amid the ongoing Gaza war.

Earlier in the day, the president of Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE sent a letter to the director general of the EBU urging the step. Several hours later, the EBU issued a brief statement in response.

In an apparent effort to assuage RTVE over the decision not to rule in its favor, EBU added that it remains in “constant contact” with the Spanish broadcaster and all other members regarding all aspects of the May singing competition.

The UK supreme court has ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex, in a victory for gender-critical campaigners.

Five judges from the UK supreme court ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs).

In a significant defeat for the Scottish government, the court decision will mean that transgender women can no longer sit on public boards in places set aside for women.

Sitting alone at the end of a dinner party, under chandeliers, next to a table with white roses and leftover wine, Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump are locked in conversation.

Whatever was discussed, however, Meloni appears to be holding sway. Trump later described her as “a real live wire” and someone he could work with “to straighten out the world a little bit”. He may well have received positive reports on her from Elon Musk, with whom the Italian prime minister has met on several occasions and whom she has called “a brilliant man”.

As the relationship progressed, Meloni paid a flying visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida a month later, and was the only European leader to attend his inauguration as US president.

Now her influence over Trump is to be put to the test when the pair reunite in Washington on Thursday for their first bilateral summit. Meloni is the first European leader to meet Trump since he paused some of his planned tariff hikes last week.

Irregular crossings at Europe’s borders have fallen by 30% in the first quarter of the year compared with the same period last year, in a decrease that rights groups partly attributed to EU policies that have emphasised deterrence while seemingly turning a blind eye to the risk of rights abuses.

The falling number of arrivals comes as the bloc has increasingly struck agreements with countries outside Europe, such as Libya and Tunisia, where practices such as beatings, sexual violence and imprisonment have been documented.

“The bottom line is that, insofar as the drop in arrivals is due to the EU’s deterrence measures, those measures are accompanied very clearly by human rights abuse that the EU is therefore complicit in,” said Sunderland.

PARIS/BERLIN, April 14 (Reuters) - More than three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Europe's energy security is fragile. U.S. liquefied natural gas helped to plug the Russian supply gap in Europe during the 2022-2023 energy crisis.

But now that President Donald Trump has rocked relationships with Europe established after World War Two, and turned to energy as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, businesses are wary that reliance on the United States has become another vulnerability.

Against this backdrop, executives at major EU firms have begun to say what would have been unthinkable a year ago: that importing some Russian gas, including from Russian state giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) could be a good idea.

That would require another major policy shift given that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 made the European Union pledge to end Russian energy imports by 2027.

So bad is the situation that local lawmakers declared a “major incident” this month in the city, where some residents say their quality of life is worse than in developing countries and hold it up as an example of “Broken Britain” — which is how some describe the perceived widespread social decay of the U.K. and the breakdown of public services in the country.

“You’re not getting little rats anymore,” Charlie Wilson, 31, said as she sat on her front porch. “They’re getting cat-size.” She added that the smell — which has only gotten worse as spring temperatures have risen — was making her sick.