Thousands of Germans have been threatened with fines or prison sentences for social media posts, reports The Telegraph, calling the country's political speech laws "unusually stringent for an EU member state."
One German had his home raided for calling a minister a "Schwachkopf [dummy]" while another was fined €2,000 (£1,700) for calling Friedrich Merz a "lying Fritz" under a law that, critics claim, makes it effectively illegal to make fun of politicians. The number of investigations under Section 86a, the Nazi symbols ban... has more than doubled over the past decade according to official police statistics. Investigations into the "political insult" law also reached record levels in 2025. The surge in cases is so vast that the UN has launched an investigation into free speech violations in Germany, a step typically reserved for dictatorships and banana republics...
In one recent case, a pensioner was investigated under Section 188 for posting "Pinocchio is coming" on Facebook, after he learnt Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, was visiting his hometown... The case was dropped after the story caused an outcry in Germany, and police have since clarified that calling the chancellor Pinocchio is not a crime... In November 2024, police in Bavaria raided the home of another pensioner because he called Robert Habeck, the then vice-chancellor of Germany, a "schwachkopf", or dummy. The raid was reportedly launched after Mr Habeck personally filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner. Prosecutors eventually dropped the investigation after deciding that the insult "dummy" was not of "sufficient weight" to merit criminal charges.


While such cases might seem like bizarre outliers, there are plenty of others. In 2021, police raided a man's apartment in Hamburg after he told a senator "you're such a d---," and this year a resident was fined €2,000 for calling Mr Merz a "lying Fritz". Official figures show a record 4,792 Section 188 cases were filed in Germany in 2025, with the numbers rising by nearly 85 per cent between 2023 and 2025.
The article notes both left- and right-leaning free speech activists in Germany are calling for some of the stricter laws to be scrapped. And it adds that the uproar "bears some similarities to the free speech debate in Britain, where citizens have had a knock on the door from police over opinions posted online."

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Four decades after he and George Michael became the first western pop act to tour the country, Ridgeley recalls silent gigs, awkward embassy receptions – and the ‘bloody ludicrous’ hiring of Lindsay Anderson as director

There has always been something surreal about Wham!’s 1985 trip to China. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley looked like alien visitors on the streets of Beijing, their bouffant hair and flamboyant outfits setting them apart from the Mao jackets and drab uniforms of the Chinese people they encountered.

Now the full strangeness of the duo’s brief trip, which made them the first western pop act to play in the country, is explored in a fascinating documentary film, Wham! 10 Days in China. Using previously unseen archive footage and featuring new interviews with many of the people involved in the tour, it shows the extraordinary impact Wham!’s two concerts had on their Chinese audience, as well as providing a snapshot of a country on the brink of great change.

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New tariffs, gas price rises, the deaths of thousands, insecurity … We’re living at the whim of one capricious, vain, easily bored man and his gang of stooges

You would be forgiven, as the US and Iran traded strikes over the past few days, for thinking that it was only last month that the two signed the Islamabad Memorandum, which formalised the process of ending the war and established a 60-day period to negotiate the final terms of a deal. That’s because it was only last month. But there has been so much talk and bluster and strike and turn tail that the conflict feels like it has started and ended several times already. The whole war is only five months old but is already settling into a sort of permanent feature of life, one that is all repetitive theatre now, each act indistinguishable from the one before it to all but the most plugged-in observers. The war is over. The war is at its peak. The Iranians are brave people. The Iranians are scum, not least their leaders. The Iranians don’t want a ceasefire. The Iranians are begging for one. The strait of Hormuz is open, it is shut, it is partly open.

To recap, where we are now in the war that was only supposed to last a few weeks but is now entering its sixth month is that the US has expanded airstrikes on Iran in a “major military punishment”. Iran has once again struck US base targets located across the region. The Houthis have claimed their own blockade over a second shipping chokepoint – the war now extends from the Gulf to the Red Sea. Trump can’t get out. Iran now understands the powerful leverage of the strait and its geographical, and therefore military, advantage in controlling it. Trump cannot end the war with that bargaining chip in its hands and the Iranians will not end the war without it. He can’t withdraw on terms that merely restore the prewar status quo. And Trump can’t go all in. Boots on the ground would be an extended bloody campaign that would claim many lives. In the US, the deaths of 18 troops so far and how the Pentagon appears to be trying to undercount that number has triggered outrage.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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This crime drama about a female serial killer is enormously entertaining TV that demands you pay attention

Furious is well named. It is powered throughout its eight-episode run by an unfaltering current of female rage. It is the creation of Elizabeth Meriwether, who gave us last year’s astonishing Dying for Sex (starring Michelle Williams as a woman with terminal cancer discovering the range and depth of her sexuality for the first time) and 2022’s brisk, brilliant The Dropout (the tale of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing company, Theranos). They were both based on true stories. Furious was apparently inspired by the 1987 film Black Widow, starring Theresa Russell and Debra Winger, but it has jettisoned the marry-and-murder-for-money plot and contemporised the rest so thoroughly that the result hardly seems to merit the dutiful hat-tip the publicity has given it.

Meriwether is the writer of the first three episodes, the rest are divided among four women and one man. The drama itself is dominated by three complicated and fascinating female characters, played by Emmy Rossum, Lola Petticrew (who gave an extraordinary performance in 2024’s Say Nothing) and Quincy Tyler Bernstine. A fantastic supporting cast and a dense, lean, evocative script make this television for grownups, television to pay attention to and to entertain you enormously.

Furious is on Disney+

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There were 470 women killed in such circumstances across the country last year, with rights groups saying the true toll will be even higher, reflecting a system that still protects the accused

Mohammad Ramzan was on the night shift at the cement factory outside Karachi when he answered a phone call from home. His 20-year-old daughter, Khalida Chandio, had been shot dead in their village in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.

Now back home, with Khalida’s mother, Nabul, at his side, the devastated couple are trying to comprehend what happened. Nabul struggles to hold back tears. She says her daughter had been taken out from their home under the cover of darkness and killed just a few hundred metres away.

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His mother was an Oscar-winning actor who had been exploited from a young age; Astin appeared in The Goonies at just 13. Now, he has followed in his mother’s footsteps again as a union leader. He talks Stranger Things, AI and why playing Samwise Gamgee cost him his house

Sean Astin is showing me around his new office. There’s framed movie prints on the walls, piles of paperwork and a stack of boxes of Stranger Things Funko Pops. “If you were here, you could look out this window and see a 10-storey building with our iconic Sag-Aftra logo on it,” he says proudly on video call, gesturing out of the window to the Los Angeles skyline. “But you just have to trust me that it’s there.” He shows me a framed photo of his mother, Patty Duke, aged 16, with the best supporting actress Oscar she won in 1963 (for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker), and even more proudly, a framed copy of Duke’s business card from when she was president of the Screen Actors Guild in the mid-80s – the role he now occupies (Sag merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012). The 10 months of his presidency “has been a whirlwind”, he says.

It’s still slightly jarring to see Astin in a suit and tie, lanyard around his neck. We’re more accustomed to seeing him in the handwoven cloak and hairy feet of Samwise Gamgee, loyally accompanying mister Frodo into Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. Or as Winona Ryder’s short-lived partner in Stranger Things (before a Demodog got to him). Or as never-say-die college football underdog “Rudy” Ruettiger in the 1993 biopic. Or, for viewers of his own vintage, as plucky leader Mikey in The Goonies. Astin has been a member of the union he now represents for 45 of his 55 years, but he seems to have survived the perils of child stardom and a Hollywood upbringing remarkably unscathed. In fact, you could see it all as preparation for the role.

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Airports in England and Wales are likely to lose millions of passengers if third runway goes ahead, DfT economic paper shows

Expanding Heathrow airport will take thousands of jobs from other regions of the UK, including almost 10,000 from the West Midlands alone, according to an analysis of the government’s own forecasts.

An economic paper published by the Department for Transport last month shows that airports in England and Wales are likely to lose millions of passengers if Heathrow builds a third runway, in a significant blow to regional jobs.

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At least four people taken to hospital after gunfire at Seattle Center near Space Needle, with one reported to be in a critical condition

Two people were killed and five others wounded in a shooting on Sunday evening during a food festival at an events complex near the Space Needle in Seattle, a city fire department spokesperson said.

The Seattle Center was hosting the Bite of Seattle food festival over the weekend. After the shooting, police urged people to avoid the area.

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Two others on Mount Elbrus survive after group of foreign climbers ‘strayed from route’ amid deteriorating weather, say authorities

Russia says it has found the bodies of five foreign climbers – believed to be Bosnian – on Mount Elbrus, authorities and state media say.

Authorities said earlier that out of a group of seven climbing Russia’s highest mountain, they had recovered two bodies and were searching for three more.

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Vanochtend is er veel bewolking met soms wat zon en kan er vooral landinwaarts nog een bui voorkomen. Op de meeste plekken blijft het gewoon droog. In de loop van de middag komt de zon er steeds vaker bij en uiteindelijk krijgen we mooie zonnige perioden. De middagtemperatuur komt uit op een graad of 22. Dat is wat aan de magere kant voor eind juli. Er staat een matige westenwind, met windkracht 3 of 4.