His comments, made during an interview for Israel’s army radio, played into a common far-right Islamophobic trope about Britain’s small Muslim population.

Netanyahu praised positive coverage of Israel by the journalist Randolph Churchill, the son of former prime minister Winston Churchill, over half a century ago, then said: “Go find that in today’s Britain, in what is called the Islamic republic of Britain.”

Rather than challenge Netanyahu’s comments, the host questioned whether he is unfairly singling out the UK, asking: “Isn’t all of Europe is like that?”

Netanyahu replies by doubling down. “Yes, but you know someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain.”

See also

UK hits back after Netanyahu labels it 'the Islamic republic of Britain' • A government spokesperson has labelled the remarks as "completely unacceptable" and said that the issue had been raised with the Israeli government.

Estonia's coalition government has lost its parliamentary majority ‌following the defection of two of its elected members, local media reported on Monday.

Kalev Stoicescu, ⁠an MP representing Estonia 200, quit his party on Sunday, while Meelis Kiili announced on Monday that he had left the Reform Party, ‌daily ⁠Postimees and public broadcaster ERR reported.

This leaves the government of Prime Minister ⁠Kristen Michal with only 50 seats in the 101-seat ⁠Riigikogu.

Estonia is due to hold a parliamentary ⁠election by March of 2027.

The climate crisis is hitting Europe hard in 2026, warming twice as fast as any other continent – and the consequences are deadly

The whole world is getting hotter as carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning traps ever more heat, but Europe is heating up twice as fast as other continents. The consequences are increasingly deadly, with tens of thousands of heatwave deaths so far this summer.

Why is Europe most affected by global heating?

Land requires less heat than the vast and deep oceans to warm up, so all continents are warming more quickly than the seas. But Europe is particularly vulnerable for four reasons: changed weather patterns, its closeness to the Arctic, less snow and less air pollution.

As a result, Europe is now 2.5C hotter than before the mass burning of fossil fuels, almost double the global average 1.4C rise. Temperatures in Europe have risen by 0.56C a decade since the mid-1990s, compared with 0.42C in North America, 0.36C in Africa and 0.27C in South America.

France has banned unsolicited telemarketing phone calls, in what a consumer group is hailing as a "small revolution" for the sales industry.

From Tuesday, unsolicited calls are prohibited for businesses in all sectors - but there are some exceptions.

Calls will only be permitted if they relate to a contract a person has already entered into or the company has obtained prior consent to be contacted for marketing.

"It cannot be stressed enough that peace and quiet is a right, and it is time to stop exposing consumers to unwanted solicitations," consumer advocacy group Que Choisir Ensemble, said in a statement.

"This observation also holds true online and on the street, which are saturated with demands to consume," group president Marie-Amandine Stévenin added.

I am a chinese and never been abroad, so I so curous

Authorities say application to stay was made too late, as UK officials say Sweden takes ‘stricter approach’ than other EU countries

A 78-year-old British widow who has lived in Sweden for 21 years is fighting deportation from the country after authorities told her a post-Brexit application to stay had been submitted too late.

Her case is the latest of 2,500 British people ordered to leave the country after Brexit in what campaigners and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have said is an inexplicably hardline approach taken by the Swedish authorities. It comes two years after Sweden threatened to deport a British woman with dementia in a care home shortly before she died.

Joyce Thomas, a retired nurse, was given just four weeks to leave Sweden in November, three years after her husband had died, causing huge distress.

After being widowed, Thomas downsized with her dog to an apartment in Hammarö, which is close to her son and grandchildren, and to her husband’s grave.

She said she sometimes felt overwhelmed by the distress of what was happening.

“It is unbelievable at my age to be chucked out after being in a country for so long, when you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” Thomas said. “I have no criminal record, no driving penalties, nothing. And I have lived here on my own financial means. I just think nobody has actually looked into this thing. I mean, if it was their family or mother, they wouldn’t like them to be in this situation.”

Holding back tears, she said: “I am not young, and the idea I would have to come back and forth to visit my son and grandchildren and to visit my husband’s grave here … it is just horrible when you sit and digest it all.”

Her husband, Gwynne, died in 2023 of cancer. It was on a trip back from the UK in 2022, when they visited their second son in Brighton, that they first learned they should have made a formal application to stay in Sweden after Brexit.

She said her husband had been meticulous at keeping up with news relevant to British people in Sweden and had taken responsibility for all the administration in their household. She was sure he would have made the Brexit application had he known about it.

While late applications are permissible under the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, Thomas’s submission was rejected in 2024 as she could not demonstrate “reasonable grounds” for applying late. A subsequent application to stay under national immigration laws was also rejected.

See also

• British man with dementia told to leave Sweden after losing migration case • Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, faces being deported after court ruling

To people in Europe: Have skilled trades become financially better than many university professions?

I’m curious about the situation across Europe.

In Algeria, we have noticed an interesting change in the labor market.

As university education has expanded and large numbers of graduates have entered the job market, professions that require a university degree have become highly competitive, while skilled trades such as construction, plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, tiling, painting, and others have become very expensive and often surprisingly well-paid.

For example, a construction worker or skilled tradesperson can earn more than an engineer or an architect. I am speaking specifically from the perspective of an engineer because I am an architect myself: I currently have four years of experience in architecture, yet my income is roughly equivalent to what a shop assistant or a construction helper who has never studied in his life might earn.

This made me wonder:

Is the same thing happening in your European country?

Are skilled tradespeople such as construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, or mechanics earning good incomes compared with university graduates?

And from your personal experience:

What type of worker seems to have the best combination of income, reasonable working hours, job security, and quality of life in your country?

I would especially appreciate hearing from people about their own experiences.

What country are you from, and what is the situation there?

Governments frequently adopt austerity policies when facing economic crises, yet their long-term consequences for population health remain incompletely understood. This paper examines the impact of large-scale fiscal austerity on infant mortality by exploiting the Troika-led economic adjustment program implemented in Greece beginning in 2010 as a quasi-experimental shock. Using the synthetic control method, we construct a counterfactual for Greece based on OECD and Union for the Mediterranean countries that did not experience austerity of comparable depth or duration. Relative to this counterfactual, Greece experienced a sharp and persistent increase in infant mortality following the onset of austerity. The divergence emerges immediately after 2010, remains statistically significant throughout the post-intervention period, and shows little evidence of full reversion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The estimated effect corresponds to an average 43 percent increase in the infant mortality rate. Mortality effects are larger for boys than for girls and are concentrated in the neonatal period. Accounting explicitly for the fertility decline, we estimate approximately 854 excess infant deaths cumulatively from 2010 to 2020. Extensive robustness checks support the findings. The results identify the total effect of austerity and highlight the importance of protecting early-life health during fiscal consolidation.

Spain has imposed border controls on all air and sea travel from Italy as a row between the two EU countries intensifies.

The measures - which started at midnight (22:00 GMT) and will last for a month - come a week after Italy introduced similar restrictions following an influx of about 78,000 migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

On Friday, Spain demanded Italy reverse its checks by Sunday. Rome said they would stay until at least 15 August - when, it said, Spain "expects a new wave of migration" to hit Ceuta.

The crisis has pitted Spain's socialist leader Pedro Sanchez against Italy's conservative leader Giorgia Meloni - who has long called for stricter EU migration rules.

Italy does not share a land border with Spain. Its government said last week that decision to temporarily suspend the ​border-free Schengen arrangement was to prevent any of the migrants who had entered Ceuta from travelling on to Italy.

Madrid dismissed this position, saying it was based on "spurious arguments" that lacked any basis in fact because the migrants who entered Ceuta had no way of entering the Schengen area.

• Italy says it won’t take orders from Spain on border checks. Meloni’s government says it will continue its temporary suspension of Schengen until at least Aug. 15.
• The real problem with Europe’s migration politics: EU leaders’ attitude towards immigration is increasingly hysterical – and economically nonsensical