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Florida budget puts millions in reserves as economic uncertainty brews. Here's a look by the numbers

On the 105th day of what was supposed to be a 60-day session, Florida lawmakers gave final approval to a leaner state budget totaling $115.1 billion, marking the end of a lawmaking season that was largely defined by inter-party clashes in the Republican-dominated capitol

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Horse racing and erotica: How I survived the fickle world of freelance writing

Gabrielle Drolet had always dreamed of being a writer. But when disability closed down most of her opportunities, a strange career began

When people ask what I do for a living, I’m faced with two choices: either I can lie or I can bore them with the truth, which is too complicated to explain succinctly. While those around me have normal, definable jobs – accountant, journalist, engineer – my work requires headings and subheadings to get it across properly: a map of overlapping gigs and contracts.

“What do you do?” It’s a simple question, and one that often gets asked on first dates. No matter how much I pare down my reply, it’s always long-winded.

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© Photograph: Ruby McKinnon

© Photograph: Ruby McKinnon

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The Netherlands’ world-leading postnatal care facing crisis, unions warn

Kraamzorg system, where care assistants visit new mothers at home, is threatened by labour shortage and competition

A key pillar of Dutch maternity services that has led to the Netherlands being hailed as a world leader in postnatal care is under threat, healthcare unions in the country have warned.

The Netherlands has long prided itself on its unique system of kraamzorg (maternity care), whereby a maternity care assistant comes to a new family’s home for eight days after a baby’s birth, caring for mother and infant.

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© Photograph: Imago/Alamy

© Photograph: Imago/Alamy

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‘It was love at first sight, again’: Prague exhibition celebrates work of pair at heart of Europe’s avant garde

Anne-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung battled with the Nazis and created some of the most riveting abstract art of the last century

They created some of the most riveting abstract art of the 20th century, fought Nazis with the gun and the pen, married, divorced and married again. Now the continent-spanning and nigh-forgotten love story of the Burton-Tayloresque couple at the heart of the European avant garde is finally being given its due at a major art institution.

And We’ll Never Be Parted, exhibiting at Prague’s Kunsthalle gallery, is the first show to reunite the Norwegian painter Anna-Eva Bergman and German-born Hans Hartung.

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© Photograph: Courtesy Kunsthalle Praha

© Photograph: Courtesy Kunsthalle Praha

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A Berlin audience has fake faeces thrown at them – and is moved to tears. So am I | Fatma Aydemir

We’re surrounded by news images of death and violence. Why do Florentina Holzinger’s visceral stage productions still have such impact?

What would you do if the world was to end tomorrow? The premise itself may be both timeless and timely at this moment when authoritarianism is on the rise globally. But that’s not really what causes the nail-biting excitement at the doorstep of Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. On a chilly June evening, a predominantly female and queer crowd of all ages gathers here to see, or rather experience, A Year Without Summer, the newest play by the infamous Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. It’s the anticipation of Holzinger’s trademark body horror that unsettles and attracts us, the crowd. And the question: how much can we take?

“Europe’s hottest director”, as the Guardian described 39-year-old Holzinger last year, is not only known for her work at the Volksbühne but mesmerises and shocks audiences all over the world. Her all female-assigned cast of different ages, origins and abilities dances, bleeds, defecates and swallows swords on stage, naked.

Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist

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© Photograph: Mayra Wallraff

© Photograph: Mayra Wallraff

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