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Revenge of The Blob

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play EN_Google_Podcasts_Badge Created with Sketch. Acast Amazon Music Britain’s civil service is under fire like never before — criticised as an obstructionist “blob” by ministers and castigated for a “terrifyingly sh*t” response to the COVID-19 pandemic by former Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings.So what do U.K. ...

Time to shed a tear for Portugal’s Costa and the world’s major corporations

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.I like it, I’m not gonna crackI miss you, I’m not gonna crackI love you, I’m not gonna crackI killed you, I’m not gonna crack“Lithium” by Nirvana.I resign“Lithium” by António Costa.Yes, it’s farewell to António Costa, the now-former prime minister of Portugal and the EU leader who most looked like he was about to burst into tears at any moment.Costa’s premiership came to an abrupt end after police raided his official residence and several ministries as part of an investigation into corruption surrounding lithium exploration schemes and a green hydrogen mega-project.  I know what you’re thinking, “not another leader brought down by a lithium scandal?” But lithium is big business these days thanks to a herculean effort by the comms gurus at Big Lithium to diversify away from treating depression and getting it used in batteries, which has its pluses and minu...

EU defers major entry exam over English-only testing

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

BRUSSELS — The EU’s personnel agency told thousands of wannabe Eurocrats their entry exams had been postponed due to technical issues with the testing platform. The real reason: Parts of the exam were only in English.The bloc’s hiring body scrapped the October 16 exam following advice from the Commission’s lawyers on October 4 that conducting tests only in English was a legal minefield.“They said that they could not support our selection model,” Luís Loureiro de Amorim, head of external relations for the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), told POLITICO.EPSO wrote in a public statement that the exam was deferred after hundreds of candidates reported technical glitches with the virtual testing platform.But Loureiro de Amorim explained that “even if we had had an excellent platform to test candidates, this alone [the ruling from the Commission’s legal services] would have made us postpone the publication of the competition.”The bloc’s lawyers insisted that the EU knowledge tes...

Inside Giorgia Meloni’s Hobbit fantasy world

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

ROME — Introducing soon-to-be Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at her final election campaign rally last year, the compère lifted a line from a battle speech in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings: “The day of defeat will come, but not today.”Meloni has made it no secret that the fantasy epic is her favorite literary work. As a young activist she dressed up as a hobbit; after she became a minister, she posed next to a statue of Gandalf for a magazine photoshoot. Tolkien’s story was, somewhat bizarrely, appropriated by the Italian right in the 1970s and has remained a sacred text for the Brothers of Italy party Meloni led to government. Now, as her government signals a shift in direction at Italy’s cultural institutions, one of their more unusual moves is a major exhibition celebrating Tolkien.The Ministry of Culture is funding an exhibition in Rome marking 50 years since the author’s death at a cost of €250,000, according to an official, who said the ministry hopes to ...

Enlistment à la carte: Ukrainians find flexible ways to fill the ranks

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

KYIV — Oleksandr Antonov, an officer with the 112th Brigade’s medical service, joined the Ukrainian army in June after six months searching for the right unit with the online recruitment platform LobbyX.The brigade of his choice gave him an assignment letter, but he still had to haggle once he went down to his local conscription center to join up. “I had some problems, as the center tried to mobilize me where there was a need, and not according to the letter I had. But communication with my military unit and an additional request letter from them helped to solve this problem,” Antonov said.Even though the local recruiters may have dragged their heels and tried to override the letter, Antonov was doing exactly what Kyiv wants. Ukraine’s government thinks the best way to have a motivated army to fight off Russian invaders is to allow volunteers to apply for the posts to which they feel best suited — perhaps to an unusual degree in a war of national survival against a genocidal a...

A chastened Israel fights for its life and its soul

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.TEL AVIV — In 2006, celebrated Israeli author David Grossman’s son Uri was killed in Lebanon when his tank was hit by a Hezbollah rocket. At his son’s funeral, Grossman spoke of the perennial dilemma Israelis face living in such an unforgiving neighborhood — having to defend themselves physically, while maintaining their integrity and not surrendering to cynicism.“We have to guard ourselves from might and simplistic thinking, from the corruption that is in cynicism, from the pollution of the heart and the ill-treatment of humans, which are the biggest curse of those living in a disastrous region like ours,” he said.The Levant is indeed a harsh environment, and Israel is defending itself once again, determined never to suffer a repeat of what is now being called the Black Shabbat. The country is still reeling from the shock and egregious savagery of the attacks by Hamas — the worst in their country’s 75-year history — and politicians...

António Costa’s downfall spells trouble for socialist hopes of EU top job

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

António Costa is out as prime minister of Portugal — and that’s a problem for Europe’s socialists in their quest for an EU top job.The center left had its hopes pinned on Costa getting a powerful role in Brussels as part of the great carving up of senior roles after the 2024 European election. Who should replace him will be a hot topic at a party congress in the Spanish city of Málaga on Friday and Saturday.Costa was the socialists’ pick to succeed Charles Michel as European Council president from November 2024, when the Belgian’s time in the role ends (and the rules say he cannot serve another term). The socialists — who are on course to once again be the second-largest group after the European election — have their sights set on the Council presidency after having one of their ranks fill the post of EU top diplomat, first with Italy’s Federica Mogherini and then Spain’s Josep Borrell. But that plan fell apart this week when Costa submitted his r...

The Israel/Gaza protest march dividing Britain

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

LONDON — Every Saturday for the past four weeks, tens of thousands of protesters have marched through the streets of London.They wave placards, and chant “freedom for Palestine.” And despite pockets of protesters crossing a line into seemingly pro-Hamas sentiment, the U.K. police have largely looked on. But the temperature in Britain is rising rapidly ahead of this weekend’s march — because Saturday November 11 is Armistice Day, when the U.K. commemorates the end of World War I. The following day, known as Remembrance Sunday, sees prime ministers past and present lay wreaths at the Cenotaph memorial on Whitehall in an annual act of commemoration.This jarring clash between solemn remembrance and angry protest has prompted some British politicians — along with parts of the British press — to call for this weekend’s pro-Palestine march to be stopped. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been the most vocal government critic, defying her own boss — Prime Minister Rishi Su...

UK softens stance on fossil fuels ahead of COP28 summit

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

LONDON —  Britain has signaled plans to water down its position on a core part of COP28 negotiations just weeks before the global climate talks begin.Energy and Climate Minister Graham Stuart, who will head the U.K. delegation to the COP summit, told MPs Wednesday that he was not fixated on whether countries agree to “phasing down” or “phasing out” fossil fuels so long as the COP agreement “translates into real action.”His comments mark a significant change in direction for the U.K. government, shifting London away from the tougher position on fossil fuels adopted by the EU. It follows Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement last month that key net zero targets — though not the U.K.’s aim to hit carbon neutrality by 2050 — would be rolled back.The distinction between “phasing down” and “phasing out” fossil fuels has become a key bone of contention between countries ahead of the COP28 talks, which start in Dubai in just three weeks’ time.The EU ha...

Substitute teacher shortage forces Brockton High School students to spend class time in cafeteria

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:51:20 GMT

Some students at Brockton High School have recently been spending class time in their school’s cafeteria as the public school district deals with a shortage of substitute teachers. On any given day, school officials said, there are between 17 and 29 teachers absent. Without enough substitutes, students have been left with no place to go, leaving parents frustrated. One such parent, Mary Lacivita, said her 16-year-old son is also frustrated after spending hours each school week without a teacher. So far this school year, Lacivita said, one of her son’s AP class teachers has been absent for nearly 30% of classes. District officials told 7NEWS students without a teacher or a substitute on a given day are asked to go to the cafeteria where Lacivita’s son said there is little to no supervision.“There’s a fight every day, at some point, whether it’s during lunch or whether it’s the group of students in the cafeteria because their teachers are absent,” Lacivita said.“Th...