An enraged Elton John has attacked the British government for a “philistine” failure to acknowledge how Brexit has hit touring musicians and performers. Speaking to the Observer New Review this weekend, the veteran star has attacked Boris Johnson’s administration for having no grasp of the huge income normally generated by British artists working abroad. “I’m livid about what the government did when...
To their neighbours in the small village of Baudemont, in the Burgundy region north of Lyon, the Polette family seemed perfectly normal. They were discreet and did not socialise, but when they did villagers remarked that the four Polette children were well brought up and polite. Inside their home it was another story, a court...
Greece is set for the biggest shake-up of working life in decades after its pro-business government sought to brand parliament’s passage of controversial labour laws as a fresh start for a nation once at the centre of Europe’s financial crisis. The passage of legislation described as antediluvian by opponents and positively life-changing by supporters came within...
The former Catalan regional vice-president jailed for his role in the failed attempt to secede from Spain almost four years ago has signalled his support for a pardon from the Madrid government and suggested that unilateral efforts to secure independence are now “neither viable nor desirable”. Oriol Junqueras, who leads the Catalan Republican Left party (ERC), said...
The parents of Raman Pratasevich have pleaded for international help to free the Belarusian journalist as US president Joe Biden said sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime were “in play”, without revealing further details. From their new home in Poland, Natalia Pratasevich, the blogger’s mother, told Agence France-Presse: “I’m asking, I’m begging, I’m calling on the whole international community...
Relations between the US and Russia have taken a tentative step forward after the Kremlin welcomed a decision by the Biden administration not to impose significant sanctions on a controversial Russian pipeline delivering gas to Germany. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, on Thursday hailed what he called “positive steps” in ties with Washington, ahead of a face-to-face summit between Joe Biden...
Potentially thousands of lives could have been saved in Sweden had authorities imposed a nine-week lockdown during the early months of the pandemic, a study has suggested. Sweden, notably, chose not to close businesses and restrict movement early on in the pandemic despite pressure from health experts, while other European nations followed that path. Researchers in Germany studying the likely...
Amsterdam is preparing to build an out-of-town five-storey “erotic centre” with two bars, 100 small rooms and an “erotic entertainment” venue such as a strip club as it downsizes its red-light district. The plan for the 5,000-sq-metre building has been detailed in a document submitted to the council by mayor Femke Halsema as the city...
Leaving aside self-aware computer networks that send cyborgs back through time to terminate humanity’s saviour before birth, few technological developments are quite as terrifying – to Spanish palates, at least – as the prospect of a paella cooked not by a trusty Valencian hand but by a cold steel one. Since it was unveiled at...
“Henley & Partners is proud of the service that it has provided to Malta and its people. We assisted the Maltese government in the creation of a remarkably successful sovereign financing and economic innovation platform, raising hundreds of millions of euros in debt-free capital without which healthcare, social and cultural investments would not have been possible to...