Le Monde: Searching for Ingmar Bergman’s soul on Sweden’s Fårö island
Le Monde writes about Fårö, the Baltic island where Ingmar Bergman shot six of his films and spent the last years of his life. On his 60th birthday he gathered all nine of his children there for the first time; most of them did not share a mother and had never met, and from that summer on the family returned to the island every year. After the director’s death his houses were bought by the Norwegian billionaire Hans Gude Gudesen, and today artists live and work in them.
Wired: It’s Becoming Clear Why Black Holes Never Run Out of Fuel
Wired writes that astronomers have worked out why black holes never run short of fuel. A black hole blows the surrounding gas far away in jets, but out in space the gas cools, condenses into thin filaments and flows along them back into the disk that circles the black hole and feeds it. The James Webb Space Telescope has now seen this whole cycle for the first time, in the galaxy NGC 4696.
404 Media: Tons of Peoples’ Claude Chats and Creations are Exposed on Google
404 Media reports that Google search results contain the conversations of many Claude users and the things they made with it. The users themselves most likely have no idea that what they wrote is publicly accessible and can be read by anyone.
The New York Times: A South African Identity Crisis
The New York Times writes about the persecution of immigrants in South Africa, where activist groups break into foreigners’ homes and shops, throw their belongings onto the street and demand that businesses close. When the activists declared that everyone in the country illegally had to leave by June 30, thousands fled, and Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda are now flying their citizens home on special flights.
Le Monde: Italy’s unhealed wound from Carlo Giuliani’s death and police violence at the 2001 Genoa G8 summit
Le Monde recalls how, twenty-five years ago during the Genoa G8 summit, Italian police spent three days taking revenge on protesters with impunity. Officers stormed a school where peaceful activists were sleeping, beat people badly and then planted Molotov cocktails there themselves to justify the raids, while detainees in the Bolzaneto barracks were beaten and humiliated. Many police unit commanders of that time have since been promoted, and next to the monument to Carlo Giuliani, who was shot dead by a police officer during the protests, a neo-Nazi group now openly runs its headquarters.
Al Jazeera: Why Mali’s northern conflict has entered a dangerous new phase
Al Jazeera explains how the war in northern Mali has changed since April, when a joint offensive was launched by the secular Azawad separatists together with JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate, even though the two have completely opposite goals. They are fighting side by side against the Malian army and Russia’s Africa Corps, which took over from the Wagner Group. Since the new allies are united only by a common enemy, nobody knows how long the alliance will hold.
LRT: Lithuania resumes Taiwan economic cooperation talks after government change
LRT reports that after the change of government Lithuania has resumed talks with the Taiwanese Representative Office on an economic cooperation plan, mainly covering the high-tech sectors. It was the office’s name that ruined Lithuania’s relations with China in 2021, because it uses the word “Taiwanese” instead of the customary “Taipei”. Some Lithuanian officials make no secret of their disappointment that the promised Taiwanese investment has been slow to come.
Sveriges Radio: How Christian are Sweden’s Christian Democrats?
In a Sveriges Radio programme, the political scientist Douglas Brommesson explains how Christian Sweden’s Christian Democrats really are. The party was born in the 1960s as a free-church protest against the removal of religion from schools, but since then both its platform and its voters have grown ever more secular.
RÚV: Hrísey puffin breeding confirmed after decoy ploy
RÚV reports that around two hundred puffin pairs are now nesting on the island of Hrísey in northern Iceland. Several years ago plastic puffin decoys were placed on the island, and they successfully lured the real birds in; this summer researchers also spotted the first puffling. Life on the island is safe for the birds, as there is plenty of food and neither foxes nor mink.
Meduza: A Moscow company has fired a senior manager for disclosing trade secrets through DeepSeek
Meduza writes that the Moscow company Energoprof fired its sales director, Yekaterina Remizova, who had been uploading internal reports to the Chinese platform DeepSeek. In court she did not dispute this, but considered her dismissal unlawful and demanded the severance payment of five million roubles, or about 56,000 euros, provided for in her contract. The court annulled one of the reprimands and awarded her ten thousand roubles, or about 113 euros, in moral damages, but rejected the rest of her claims.
Le Monde: On the front lines with firefighters and volunteers defending Bordeaux from a monster fire
A Le Monde correspondent spent a day with the firefighters and volunteers south of Bordeaux, where the huge fire has been burning for five days and has come within fifteen kilometres of the city. 220,000 people have already left their homes. There are not enough firefighters, so locals are helping to hold back the flames with pickup trucks and water tanks borrowed from neighbours, and Czech and Slovak helicopters have flown in to assist. One firefighter says this fire is worse than in 2022 and is approaching the devastation of 1949, when 82 people died.
The New York Times: India’s Young Protesters Take the Win but Want More Than ‘Damage Control’
The New York Times writes that India’s student protests have died down after the education minister resigned, but many participants see the victory as only partial. Modi has set up a commission to fix the exam system and stop test questions leaking before exams, yet in the states governed by his party hundreds of protesters have been arrested, even though the government had promised that no one would be punished.
NPR: The ‘cockroach’ in the machine: How Gen Z is rattling South Asia’s elites
In an NPR column, the political scientist Šumit Ganguly writes that India’s “cockroach” movement continues a pattern already seen in South Asia, as youth protests toppled the government of Bangladesh in 2024 and of Nepal last year. The movement’s name comes from a remark by the chief justice that many understood as comparing the unemployed to cockroaches. The causes are similar everywhere. In India almost 40 percent of graduates aged 15 to 25 are out of work, systemic corruption makes people doubt that ability and merit still matter, while the internet lets protests organise quickly and gives hope.
Le Monde: Corsica’s fight against ‘Airbnb-ization’ claims to have returned 233 homes to year-round residents
Le Monde writes that the city of Bastia in Corsica has, in two years, returned 233 homes to year-round residents by restricting short-term tourist rentals. Owners of several flats must offer, for every one rented to tourists, an equivalent home for long-term rental in the same neighbourhood; a main residence may be rented out for at most 120 nights a year, and a recently bought flat not at all. The opposition does not believe the mayor’s figures and claims that prices in the old town have not fallen by a tenth but risen by nearly a quarter.
Yle: See Alvar Aalto’s works that just gained Unesco World Heritage status
Yle looks at the thirteen Alvar Aalto buildings added to the Unesco World Heritage list on Sunday, among them the Paimio sanatorium, Villa Mairea and Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall.
RNZ: ‘The most loving, laziest dogs’: Greyhound-owner wants others to adopt as 1500 lose homes
RNZ writes that a ban on greyhound racing takes effect in New Zealand on Saturday and new homes will have to be found for about one and a half thousand dogs. An owner who took in two greyhounds within a month urges others to do the same, insisting that more loving and lazier dogs cannot be found, as they barely shed, never bark and are content with a twenty-minute walk a day.
Meduza relays an investigation by the Ukrainian YouTube channel Telebachennia Toronto, which established that the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has been living in Russia under documents in the name of Oleg Leonov. Leonova is his mother’s maiden name. The journalists located him on an estate of about three hectares in Sochi, while land, several houses and flats in Moscow are registered to his partner, and his son lives in Russia under the surname Sokolov. In Ukraine, Yanukovych has been sentenced in absentia to several prison terms, including for treason.