LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Britain's Heathrow Airport was shut on Friday after a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out its power, disrupting flight schedules around the world.

Around 70 firefighters were tackling the blaze in the west of London, which led to a mass power outage at Heathrow, Europe's busiest and the world's fifth-busiest airport, and also knocked out its back-up power system.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59025097

The Spanish parliament has voted through a measure that will in effect lift the hunting ban on wolves that was imposed in 2021.

A coalition led by the conservative People’s party, with the support of the far-right Vox party and Basque and Catalan nationalists, added an amendment to a law aimed at reducing Spain’s estimated 1.2bn kilos of food waste.

The amendment says that wolves create food waste in the form of 14m kilos of meat in the remains of the 14,000 sheep and cattle they allegedly kill each year. In Castilla y León, the region with the largest wolf population, farmers’ organisations claim that in 2024 wolves killed about 6,000 head of livestock.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58971495

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58970789

France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.

“I learned with concern that a French researcher” on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) “who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled”, Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, said in a statement on Monday to Agence France-Presse published by Le Monde. “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” the minister added.

A diplomatic source told the French news agency that the incident occurred on 9 March. Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”. He was reportedly also informed of an FBI investigation, but told that “charges were dropped” before being expelled.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58889753

To friends of democracy around the world: we need your help.

You know that the Trump regime is brutally attacking US democracy. Most of us did not vote for Donald Trump (half of us didn’t even vote in the 2024 election). But he feels he has a mandate to take a wrecking ball to the constitution.

Like most bullies, the regime can be constrained only if everyone stands up to the bullying – including you.

First, if you are considering a trip to the United States, please reconsider. Why reward Trump’s America with your tourist dollars?

Spending by non-Americans in the United States is a significant source of tax revenue and a major “export” of this nation. There’s no reason for you to indirectly support Trump’s economy.

Many international travelers concerned about Trump’s authoritarianism have already canceled trips to the United States. You might do so, too.

Last week, the US president threatened a 200% tariff on European wine and alcohol after calling the European Union “one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World”.

Why reward this bellicose rhetoric? Many Europeans are already skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/58664309

https://archive.is/dDxHw

-Volkswagen intends to shorten the time between development and launch to 36 months from 54 months, Thomas Schafer, CEO of the company's passenger car brand, told reporters last week. The German group hopes to achieve the faster turnaround by working closer with Chinese EV maker Xpeng Motors.

-Renault, whose profit sank 66%, revealed in January that it opened a research and development center for EVs in Shanghai.

-Stellantis is partnering with Leapmotor Technology to sell compact EVs from the Chinese startup in Europe.

-Mercedes-Benz will reduce annual production capacity of its German factories from 1 million vehicles to 900,000. Volkswagen will cease production at two German factories and cut 35,000 jobs by 2030.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26937940

The group that drafted a key blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term convened a meeting in Washington D.C. this week to consider proposals for bulldozing the European Union (EU).

The Polish investigative outlet VSquare revealed that the Heritage Foundation gathered hardline conservative groups on 11 March to hear how they would overhaul the current structures of the EU.

The “closed-door workshop” featured a debate on a new paper produced by the lobby groups MCC and Ordo Iuris entitled: “The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the 21st Century”.

Tensions are rising between Paris and Algiers. The current diplomatic crisis, described by analysts as the most serious since Algeria's independence in 1962, raises the risk of a rupture in bilateral relations between France and its former North African colony.

The current quarrel was triggered in July 2024 by French President Emmanuel Macron's support for Morocco's claims of sovereignty over Western Sahara.

The resource-rich territory, considered by the UN as "non-autonomous", is controlled for the most part by Morocco but claimed by the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement supported by Algeria.

The move infuriated Algiers, which announced the "withdrawal with immediate effect" of its ambassador to France.

Relations have deteriorated ever since, first with the incarceration of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal in Algiers in mid-November, who was accused of having undermined the integrity of Algerian territory in statements made to a far-right media outlet in France.

Greenland’s probable new prime minister has rejected Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, whose centre-right Democrats won a surprise victory in this week’s legislative elections and now must form a coalition government, pushed back on Thursday against Trump’s repeated claims that the US will annex the island.

“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” Nielsen, 33, told Sky News. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”

Donald Trump has threatened a 200% tariff on wine and champagne from European Union countries, in the latest threat of escalation in the global trade war started by the US president against the country’s biggest trading partners.

Trump said in a post on Thursday on his Truth Social platform that the tariffs on all alcoholic products from the bloc would be retaliation for a “nasty” 50% levy on bourbon whiskey announced by the EU.

The EU’s action against bourbon whiskey – due to come into force on 1 April – was itself part of a €26bn response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, which came into effect on Wednesday.

In what a leading legal advocacy group has called a “glaring miscarriage of justice”, the head of the Pessac Mosque in the French commune of Meaux, has been “wrongfully convicted” of terror apology in violation of free expression and due process.

CAGE has reported that Abdourahmane Ridouane was accused of glorifying terrorism based on his support for the Palestinian struggle against genocide, colonisation and apartheid. “The ruling comes after years of legal battles during which the State relentlessly tried to silence Ridouane and force his expulsion from France,” explained the advocacy group. “He received a suspended sentence and was banned from national territory for two years. As a result, the State is looking into his immediate deportation.”

Ridouane, who recently won a case to renew his residency in France, is known for his outspoken support for Palestine and his criticism of France’s neo-colonial policies in Niger, his country of origin.

On 25 February he said on air: “Every year in France, we commemorate what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane – the massacre of an entire village. But we have committed hundreds of these, in Algeria. Are we aware of this?”

He was referring to the village where an SS unit returning to the front in Normandy massacred 642 residents on 10 June 1944. Leaving a chilling memorial for future generations, the village was never rebuilt.

Challenged by the anchor over whether “we [the French] behaved like the Nazis”, Aphatie said: “The Nazis behaved like us.”

On X, he acknowledged his comments had created a “debate” but said it was of great importance to understand the full story over France’s 1830-1962 presence in Algeria, saying he was “horrified” by what he had read in history books.

After being suspended for a week by the channel it means that “if I come back to RTL I validate this and admit to making a mistake”.

Well put Mr. Tusk.

Europe’s rightwing populist parties are split over how far to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine, with some fearing unflinching solidarity with the US president’s brand of nationalism will damage their efforts to widen their domestic support.

Broadly, unease over Trump’s treatment of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the ominous encroach of authoritarianism by the new US administration, is strongest among the populist parties in western Europe and some Nordic countries.

By contrast in eastern Europe, where parts of the electorate view Russia sympathetically, support for Trump remains undimmed.

Eurostar and French rail services halted at Gare du Nord after WW2 bomb found

Unexploded bomb found on tracks during overnight maintenance work near France’s busiest train terminal Angelique Chrisafis in Paris and agencies Fri 7 Mar 2025 09.50 CET

Traffic at the Paris Gare du Nord train station has been halted after a second world war bomb was found on tracks leading to France’s busiest terminal, officials said.

The unexploded bomb was found in the middle of the tracks overnight during maintenance work carried out in the suburb of Saint Denis, the national SNCF rail company said.

The bomb dated from the second world war, the RER B suburban train line wrote in a post on X.

A German court has jailed five members of an extremist group linked to the Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens) movement for plotting a coup and to kidnap the health minister.

The defendants, four men, aged 46 to 58, and a 77-year-old woman, who belonged to the self-styled “United Patriots” group, were sentenced to between five years and nine months and eight years’ jail by the Koblenz higher regional court on Thursday.

A fifth defendant received a sentence of two years and 10 months, the German news agency dpa reported.

It was one of several trials targeting the wider far-right movement, whose members adhere to conspiracy theories and reject the legitimacy of the modern German state.