While the Eternal City is one of the country’s headline act, it does come with one major downside: the crowds. So here are some quieter destinations where you’ll find culture on par
Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy confirms he has no time for rules or process. America’s allies must find new ways to guarantee their own interests
Occasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. And sometimes, as the former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in the New Statesman, history unfolds “in a series of flashes and bangs”. In Caracas last weekend, Donald Trump’s forces did this in spectacular style. In the process, the US brushed aside more of what remains of the so-called rules-based order with which it tried to shape the west after 1945.
The capture of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro has precedents in US policy. But discerning a wider new pattern from the kidnapping is not easy, especially at this early stage. As our columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has argued this week, the abduction can be seen as a assertion of American power, but also as little more than a chaotic asset grab.
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Ewes and lambs coaxed out of store in Burgsinn after about 20 minutes, leaving trail of destruction in drinks section
About 50 wayward sheep broke off from their flock and stormed a discount supermarket in a German town, startling and delighting customers as the animals rushed to explore the aisles before being escorted from the premises.
The woolly incursion occurred on Monday during a routine seasonal migration of the sheep in the Bavarian municipality of Burgsinn. A few dozen of the sheep had other ideas about the route and made their way into a store of the Penny retail chain.
The Son of Saul director recalls how getting his first job as assistant to the austere master was a hard but inspiring lesson in the most ambitious kind of movie-making
The last time I saw Béla Tarr was a few years ago at the Nexus conference in Amsterdam. We were invited to speak about the state of the world and of the arts. We both thought light and darkness existed in the world, even if our perception about them differed. Béla was already weakened in his body, but the spirit was still ferocious, rebellious, furious. We sat down to talk. It seemed fairly obvious this would be our ultimate, and most heartfelt, conversation. As the former apprentice, I was able to see the master one last time, with all his rage, sorrow, love and hate.
I first met Béla in 2004 when he was preparing The Man from London. I wanted to learn film-making and applied to become an assistant on the film. He gave me my first real job: as an assistant, I had to find a boy for one of the main parts. I spent months in the casting process, for a part that eventually was cut from the shooting script. But for Béla, every effort put into a given movie was never lost – it was integrated into the energy field of the enterprise. The final outcome had to be the product of difficult processes. The harder the task, the better quality one could expect. He wanted to film life, and its constant dance. The choreography was a revelation for me: 10-minute, uninterrupted takes, unifying space, characters and time. All in black and white.
Launchers Isar Aerospace is expected to attempt its second two-stage Spectrum vehicle test flight, a key step after its first, partially successful liftoff in 2025. In parallel, Spain’s PLD Space and its Miura-5 remain the second contender — after Isar — for the European Launcher Challenge, a competition that increasingly looks like Europe’s closest analogue […]
Citizen scientists help in University of Bonn study showing river carries up to 4,700 tonnes of ‘macrolitter’ annually
Thousands of tonnes of litter are pouring into the North Sea via the Rhine every year, poisoning the waters with heavy metals, microplastics and other chemicals, research has found.
This litter can be detrimental to the environment and human health: tyres, for example, contain zinc and other heavy metals that can be toxic to ecosystems in high concentrations.
Emmanuel Macron’s comments come as Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warns against turning world into ‘robber’s den’
The presidents of France and Germany have sharply condemned US foreign policy under Donald Trump, saying respectively that Washington was “breaking free from international rules” and the world risked turning into a “robber’s den”.
In unusually strong and apparently uncoordinated remarks, Emmanuel Macron and Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned the postwar rules-based international order could soon disintegrate.
Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, is facing calls to resign after it emerged he opted to play tennis hours after a crippling blackout triggered by an arson attack hit a large swathe of the city, and then misled the public about it.
Districts in the south-west of the German capital were gradually returning to normal after the longest power cut since the second world war as Wegner acknowledged he had not been entirely forthcoming about his actions when the outage began.
Le demi de mêlée toulousain, qui retrouvera le brassard de capitaine dimanche, a évoqué le rendez-vous crucial contre les Saracens de Londres en Champions Cup
Tractor protest in city centre comes as Emmanuel Macron confirms he will vote against accord on Friday
French farmers in tractors have blocked roads around the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in protest at an imminent EU trade deal with South American countries that they say will create unfair competition.
The farmers blockaded motorways outside Paris on Thursday and dozens of tractors overran police checkpoints to reach the city centre in a pre-dawn protest organised by the Coordination Rurale union.
Des archéologues ont déterré une série d’objets de l’âge du fer dans l’est de l’Angleterre, au cours de fouilles de routine, pendant la construction d’un immeuble. Parmi le trésor historique, une trompette de guerre, la plus complète jamais trouvée dans le monde, et une tête de sanglier sculptée.
La Russie a remis en liberté le chercheur français Laurent Vinatier en échange de la libération du basketteur russe Daniil Kasatkin, a rapporté jeudi 8 janvier l'agence de presse russe Tass, citant le service russe de la sécurité intérieure (FSB). Le ministère français des Affaires étrangères confirme que le chercheur est rentré en France dans la journée.
Scotland's oldest known coin has been uncovered by a detectorist near Edinburgh, a 900-year-old artifact bearing the image of King David I from the 12th century.
Vast swathes of the country’s trees have been killed off by droughts and infestations, in a trend sweeping across Europe. A shift towards more biodiverse cultivation could offer answers
Even the intense green of late spring cannot mask the dead trees in the Harz mountains. Standing upright across the gentle peaks in northern Germany, thousands of skeletal trunks mark the remnants of a once great spruce forest.
Since 2018, the region has been ravaged by a tree-killing bark beetle outbreak, made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves. It has transformed a landscape known for its verdant beauty into one dominated by a sickly grey.
À mi-parcours de la phase de poules de la Coupe d’Europe, rares sont les clubs français en position idéale pour se qualifier. Mais rien n’est définitif. Revue des troupes avant la 3e journée.
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