world

Are the arts being drowned out by politics? A few days before Europe’s biggest cultural week, that impression is hard to shake. The Venice Biennale opens its doors to the public on Saturday, yet the run‑up conversation has centred far more on which national pavilions will be accessible

For years they acted as government mouthpieces, using their wide reach into Hungarian homes to bolster Viktor Orbán and vilify those he branded enemies – from philanthropist George Soros to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On Saturday, as Péter Magyar’s swearing‑in formally ends Orbán’s 16‑year rule, the once‑

Raw sewage from almost 40,000 residents and businesses is discharged straight into the sea because the British overseas territory of Gibraltar has never possessed a wastewater treatment plant. For decades, untreated effluent has flowed into the Mediterranean from the southern tip of the peninsula at Europa Point, where the

Europe’s first large‑scale elephant sanctuary, set to open to give a more natural setting for some of the 600 elephants still kept in captivity across the continent, is preparing to welcome its first residents. Julie, Portugal’s final circus elephant, will be transferred next month to Pangea’s

The United Arab Emirates’ ruling royal family is receiving tens of millions in EU subsidies to cultivate crops for the Gulf market, a cross‑border investigation by DeSmog shared with CuriosityNews has revealed. Subsidiaries controlled by the Al Nahyan family collected more than €71 million (£61 million) over six years

At a ceremony in the French National Assembly attended by Nobel laureates, former ministers, MPs, decorated scientists and academics, all eyes fell on a previously obscure literature professor. Florent Montaclair, then 46, a balding, bespectacled man in an ill‑fitting suit and a rose‑coloured shirt, was receiving the 2016