‘If we burn, you burn’: hundreds arrested at protests across France – in pictures

17 October 2026 at 15:59

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country to demonstrate against rising fuel prices and the cost of living

Police clash with protesters as tens of thousands take to streets across France

Pope Leo discharged from hospital after cancer operation

The Guardian - Europe

By: Angela Giuffrida in Rome

17 October 2026 at 14:41

Doctors say pontiff is ‘fit for discharge’ after operation to remove cancerous tumour from his lung

Pope Leo lung cancer surgery: what kind of operation did he have and what happens next?

Pope Leo has been discharged from hospital in Rome after undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung.

Leo, 71, was deemed “fit for discharge”, his doctors, Luigi Carbone and Stefano Margaritora, said in a statement published by the Vatican.

Isabel Allende wins €1m Spanish literary prize under pseudonym

The Guardian - Europe

By: Emma Loffhagen and Ella Creamer

17 October 2026 at 14:01

Chilean-American author awarded Premio Planeta for sequel to her 1982 debut novel, The House of the Spirits

The Chilean-American author Isabel Allende has won Spain’s €1m (£843,000) Premio Planeta, one of the world’s most lucrative literary prizes, under a pseudonym, with a sequel to her celebrated debut novel, The House of the Spirits.

Allende, 84, won the 75th edition of the award on Thursday with La hora antes del alba, which returns to the characters of her 1982 novel, a multigenerational family saga set against political upheaval in a country inspired by Chile.

Buildings set ablaze and more than 1,800 arrested as police clash with protesters across France

The Guardian - Europe

By: Kim Willsher in Paris and William Christou

18 October 2026 at 01:01

Police fire teargas in Paris and Limoges town hall ‘largely lost’ to fire – with officials blaming violence on ‘ultra-left’

More than 1,800 people were arrested in France on Saturday after protesters supporting high school students clashed with police, with some demonstrations later spiralling out of control as buildings were set ablaze and shops looted.

Police fired teargas in confrontations with protesters, as demonstrations across France were boosted by other groups angry about high prices and the fraying of a social welfare system. While hundreds of thousands protested peacefully in street marches in scores of cities, violent fringe groups targeted public buildings, luxury boutiques and supermarkets and attacked police vehicles and officers.

‘Drones all night. By morning, you smell the smoke’: life in the last hotel on Ukraine’s frontline

The Guardian - Europe

By: Korbinian Leo Kramer in Kherson

17 October 2026 at 12:00

Amid blackouts, artillery fire and the onslaught of Russian drone attacks, the Richelievsky in Kherson provides a refuge for those with nowhere else to go

There is one important rule in the Richelievsky, Kherson’s last functioning hotel: close the curtains before dusk. Less than a kilometre away lies the Dnipro, the river that has formed the frontline since Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson in November 2022; Moscow’s troops are on the opposite bank.

In a city where Russian drone operators hunt civilians in what is now widely known as the “human safari”, even a sliver of light escaping through a window may be enough to reveal someone’s location after dark.

Hotel manager Yevhen Emtsov, 46, in the building’s former conference room

‘Austerity is inevitably painful’: How Michael Gove justifies his politics | Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty – podcast

The Guardian - Europe

By: Presented by Aditya Chakrabortty with Michael Gove, produced by Frankie Tobi and Luke John Smith · the executive producers are Maz Ebtehaj, Kirsty Major and James Tindale

17 October 2026 at 07:45

For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible, the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam

Watch the full episode with Michael Gove here.

Aditya’s suggested reading:

To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Today gang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair

For slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books

To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a column by me for the Guardian

Just why the most successful political party is now failing is analysed in-depth by Phil Burton-Cartledge in his book The Party’s Over: The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak

Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch

Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:

or, Whatever Happened to The Tory Party

For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.

And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England

Finally, on the Spectator read Nesrine Malik’s recent column in The Guardian

Why has Britain’s oldest political magazine become such a rabid cheerleader for Islamophobia?

Not cool: who hacked France’s supermarket fridges?

The Guardian - Europe

By: Kim Willsher in Paris

17 October 2026 at 05:00

Whether it was youngsters proving their skills or state sabotage, Europe’s most hacked country was left with a mountain of waste after food began cooking in freezers

Shortly before midnight last Sunday, the digital thermostats controlling hundreds of supermarket cold aisles across France began to flicker and rise.

In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the temperature settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets pushing them from as low as -27C (-16.6F) to well over 50C (122F).

Azerbaijan: Ilham Aliyev, the School Hijab Ban and the Battle for Secular Education

The European Times

By: Isaac Hammouch

16 October 2026 at 23:07

Political and Geopolitical Analysis | October 16, 2026 Azerbaijan’s School Hijab Controversy: A Debate That Goes Far Beyond Religious Clothing Azerbaijan has found itself at the center of an increasingly sensitive debate over secular education, religious freedom, national sovereignty, and the authority of the state. New regulations governing clothing in public schools have triggered demonstrations, […]

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