De NAVO‑secretaris‑generaal hoort een kleurloze figuur te zijn: een voorzitter die vergaderingen leidt, spanningen dempt en lidstaten bij elkaar houdt. In plaats daarvan gedraagt Mark Rutte zich als de spreekbuis en verdediger van Donald Trump – en niet als bewaker van het bondgenootschap.

In het Europees Parlement noemde hij Trump “very important to NATO” en “totally committed to NATO”, terwijl diezelfde Trump openlijk twijfelt aan artikel 5 en Europese bondgenoten als profiteurs wegzet. In interviews herhaalt Rutte dat Europa “blij” moet zijn dat Trump hen tot hogere defensie‑uitgaven heeft gedwongen, alsof Europese regeringen alleen nog uit angst voor Amerikaanse strafmaatregelen in beweging komen. Zo praat de NAVO‑chef zijn belangrijkste lidstaat naar de mond, maar hij maakt Europa tegelijk kleiner dan het is.

Rutte over Trump in drie citaten

1. “Donald Trump is very important to NATO. He is totally committed to NATO.”– Rutte in het Europees Parlement, terwijl veel Europarlementariërs juist waarschuwen voor Trumps chantagepolitiek richting bondgenoten.
2. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”– Uit Rutte’s privébericht aan Trump, dat Trump zelf publiceert vlak voor een NAVO‑top over hogere defensie‑uitgaven.​
3. “No. It’s not positive. We have to work something out.”– Rutte die Trump in het Witte Huis publiekelijk tegenspreekt wanneer die beweert dat géén handelsdeal met de EU óók positief zou zijn.

De kritiek zwelt intussen zichtbaar aan. In een veelbesproken analyse schrijft politicoloog Leonard Schütte dat Rutte “de grens naar onwaardige onderdanigheid” overschrijdt en “alles ondergeschikt maakt aan het pleasen van de Amerikaanse president”, wat op termijn de NAVO juist kan verzwakken. Rutte wuift dat weg met de opmerking dat hij “not deaf” is, maar hij blijft volhouden dat Trump alle lof “verdient”.

Daarmee raakt hij de kern van zijn probleem. Een NAVO‑secretaris‑generaal mag best bemiddelen, maar niet één leider tot maat aller dingen maken. Wie in het openbaar vooral Trump vleit, verliest geloofwaardigheid bij de rest. De functie is apolitiek; Rutte maakt er een politiek ambt van – en dan nog in dienst van precies die president die het bondgenootschap het hardst onder druk zet.

Opening in May, Camden museum has 100,000-item archive telling story of British youth subcultures, from mods and rockers, to ravers and emo

In the basement of a new-build housing block in Camden, the ventilation system is working flat out. The fans whir like a chainsaw orchestra bouncing around the concrete room as they attempt to deal with a slight damp problem. “This is what it’d sound like if there was a fire!” shouts Jon Swinstead, the driving force behind the Museum of Youth Culture, as he tries to make himself heard above the din.

It’s hard to imagine but in a few weeks this empty, slightly soggy space will be transformed into an institution dedicated to all things teenage – a project Swinstead has been working on in one way or another for almost 30 years.

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Shipments to Russian smelters from Aughinish Alumina have increased sharply since the invasion of Ukraine

A leading Irish metals refinery is part of an international aluminium supply chain that appears to conclude with shipments to arms producers feeding the Kremlin’s war machine in Ukraine, leaked records and public data suggests.

Trading records show that shipments to Russian smelters from Aughinish Alumina, which is located on the Shannon estuary in the west of Ireland and has been owned by the Russian aluminium group Rusal since 2006, have increased sharply since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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The great Italian entertainer’s plays, such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist, have not lost their power to make audiences roar with laughter while confronting injustice

In Britain we tend to separate political and popular theatre. The genius of Dario Fo, who was born 100 years ago on Tuesday, is that he brought them together in his multiple roles as dramatist, actor, director and designer. Along with his wife, Franca Rame, he took satire to the people and in plays such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! he achieved a global reach that justly earned him the Nobel prize for literature in 1997.

You could say that protest and performance were in his genes. His father was a stationmaster and part-time actor whom he joined in wartime resistance to the Nazis in northern Italy, helping to smuggle Allied soldiers across the border to Switzerland. He became famous, however, in 1962 when he and his wife fronted a weekly TV variety show that attracted huge audiences: an engagement that was abruptly ended when they refused to accept censors’ cuts.

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They’re not armed and they keep a relatively low profile. But the Home Office’s immigration compliance and enforcement officers have searched thousands of business in pursuit of illegal workers. Are they abusing their powers?

Diners were tucking into their upmarket Indian lunch when the Ice agents slid through the restaurant’s back fence. Armed with stun guns and clad in stab vests, the 11-strong unit blocked off every entrance before moving in on their target: Mandira’s Kitchen. This wasn’t a scene from California or Texas. It happened near Guildford, England, among the rolling Surrey Hills.

Before the Home Office’s immigration compliance and enforcement (Ice) officers stormed the restaurant in September, they came up with a codeword in the event they were attacked with any weapons that might be at hand in a kitchen. What they found were customers eating biryani and samosas in a converted barn decorated with plants and a rickshaw bicycle hanging from the ceiling. When they reached the kitchen, they found five junior members of staff cooking. The officers demanded to see their passports. “They didn’t explain. They didn’t ask for permission,” says the restaurant’s owner, Mandira Moitra Sarkar. That 11 officers could burst into her business with no warrant and question staff is “astounding”, she says. Moitra Sarkar was on holiday in Tanzania when Ice arrived; she was notified by a frantic call from a member of staff.

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Polling for anti-immigration DPP is relatively low, but many feel its ideas have been co-opted by Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats

Mayasa Mandia, a recent graduate living in the small Danish town of Kokkedal, will be voting for the left in Tuesday’s general election – but it won’t be for Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats.

The 23-year-old, a practising Muslim, says that under Frederiksen’s government far-right commentary has become normalised in the Danish mainstream. She has seen this, she says, at her own university, where there were discussions about banning prayers.

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The PM is figurehead of the international rightwing movement but that has alienated his most loyal voter base

“Viktor Orbán is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. The US president followed up with a video message to far-right leaders meeting in Budapest, describing Orbán as a “fantastic guy”.

Orbán, a long-term friend and ally of Trump, may need all the support he can gather ahead of the Hungarian parliamentary elections on 12 April. The prime minister and his Fidesz party are trailing in most opinion polls. His main challenger, Péter Magyar, and his Tisza party are leading by nearly 10 percentage points. The public debate in Hungary has shifted dramatically: the question is no longer whether the opposition can win, but whether Orbán will accept defeat.

Gellert Tamas is a Swedish-Hungarian author and journalist. His next book, 56 Days, will be published in 2027

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It’s one thing to remove a PM from office, as happened to the former cricketer in 2022. But it’s another thing to try to eradicate the most famous person in Pakistan’s history

• This article originally appeared in Equator, a new magazine of politics, culture and art

Just so we’re clear, the following is a fact. Not opinion, not a point of view, not a hot take. Fact. There is no Pakistani – male, female, dead, alive, real, imagined – as famous as Imran Khan. Every turn in a multifarious public life has abounded in fame, first as a cricket legend, then as a beloved philanthropist who built a cancer hospital for the poor, latterly as a maverick politician who swept to power promising reform, and now, as the sole occupant of a cell in Pakistan’s most notorious jail. So famous he’s been the subject of two death hoaxes – most recently in November, when he went unseen for so long that many concluded he had died.

There have been others with greater accomplishments. There may come others in the future. But in almost 79 years of Pakistan, in the pure currency of fame, of being known and recognised, of being talked about, of being the one Pakistani everyone can name, there is nobody beyond Imran. (He is almost universally known by his first name alone.) It holds even now, two years into the state’s attempts to erase him from public life. In that time, they’ve barred TV channels from saying his name on air and stopped newspapers from publishing his picture; they’ve even scrubbed him from the footage of his greatest sporting triumph.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy. TotalEnergies has agreed to what's essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.

The Trump administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges overturned those orders. Environmental groups denounced the TotalEnergies deal as an alternate way to block wind projects. President Donald Trump has gone all in on fossil fuels, which he says is the way to lower costs for families, increase reliability and help the U.S. maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.

TotalEnergies pledged to not develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement that the company renounced offshore wind development in the United States in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, "considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country's interest." Pouyanne said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and gas activities, calling it a "more efficient use of capital" in the U.S. After it makes those investments, TotalEnergies will be reimbursed, up to the amount paid in lease purchases for offshore wind, according to the DOI.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vandaag domineert de bewolking het weerbeeld in het Rijnmondgebied. Af en toe kan even een waterig zonnetje zichtbaar zijn, maar daarbij blijft het. De zuidwestenwind neemt toe tot matig en aan zee tot krachtig (windkracht 4 tot 6). De maximumtemperatuur komt uit op 14 graden en daarmee is het voorlopig de laatste zachte dag.