From May 11 to 20, 42 percent of soils in Europe and the Mediterranean basin lacked moisture and were at a warning level, while five percent were at an alert level, indicating vegetation was not growing normally.
Countries in northern, central and eastern Europe were at high alert levels.
Roughly 19 percent of territory in Ukraine was on alert, with other countries in concerning circumstances, including nine percent of Hungary and Slovakia, 10 percent of Poland and 17 percent of lands in Belarus.
The alert level for some territories and countries was as high as 20 percent, including the Palestinian territories, Cyprus and Syria.
Several countries were experiencing drought conditions in mid-May without being at an alert level, including 98 percent of the United Kingdom. According to the UK’s Met Office, the country had its driest spring in over 50 years, as well as its warmest spring ever recorded.
Members of an international diplomatic delegation scramble for cover after coming under Israeli fire during a May 21, 2025 visit to the besieged Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine. (Photo: Mohammad Ateeq/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images)
Among those shot at were representatives of three nations that threatened “concrete actions” if Israel doesn’t end its assault and siege on Gaza and others that support a genocide case against the country.
Israeli occupation forces fired what they called “warning shots” at a large delegation of international diplomats visiting the besieged Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on Wednesday, an incident many critics said was an attempt to intimidate countries that just two days earlier issued an ultimatum to stop annihilating Gaza and others that have joined a genocide case against Israel.
Palestinian officials were briefing a group of more than 20 diplomats about the crisis in the illegally occupied West Bank—where Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians including hundreds of children since October 2023 while pushing ahead with massive land theft and colonization—when they came under fire.
According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the delegation “deviated” from the route approved by Israeli occupation authorities “and entered an area where they were not authorized to be,” prompting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers to fire “warning shots to distance them away.”
“The IDF regrets the inconvenience caused,” the ministry added.
Israeli soldiers intentionally fired at a delegation of about 30 Arab & EU diplomats, ambassadors and consuls, visiting Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank. Israel claims “it was an accident” and that they fired “warning shots” because they “felt in danger”. Israel was trying to intimidate them.
Israeli media reported IDF troops fired shots in the air. However, video footage of the incident appears to show soldiers aiming their guns and firing straight ahead in the direction of the diplomats as they scrambled for cover. Israeli officials have often been caught lying about the actions of IDF troops in Palestine.
The delegation included diplomats from the European Union and countries including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
Another video documenting the moment the diplomats and representatives from over 24 countries and the EU were intimidated by Israeli soldiers as they gathered in front of the besieged Jenin Camp. pic.twitter.com/5uJTOE9pRi
On Monday, three of those countries—France, the United Kingdom, and Canada—issued a rare joint statement condemning Operation Gideon’s Chariots, the ongoing Israeli campaign to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population.
On Tuesday, the U.K. announced it is suspending negotiations with Israel on a free trade agreement, explaining that “it is not possible to advance discussions on a new, upgraded FTA” with a government “that is pursuing egregious policies in the West Bank and Gaza.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza including extermination and forced starvation.
The U.K. additionally sanctioned three far-right Israeli extremists, including settler leader Daniella Weiss, as well as three illegal settlement outposts and two groups “that have supported, incited, and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.”
Also on Tuesday, European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas—who is the E.U.’s foreign policy chief—said the 27-nation bloc would review its political and economic agreement with Israel in light of the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza.
Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey have either joined or expressed support for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—which last year found that Israel’s 58-year occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible.
France's Foreign Minister confirms that Israeli soldiers shot at EU ambassadors and diplomats in Jenin.
Had any other country done this, it would have been considered an act of war. Imagine if Russia had done this?
Israel’s 592-day assault and siege on Gaza has left more than 189,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and over 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned what it called Wednesday’s “heinous crime” against the diplomats.
“The delegation was undertaking an official mission to observe and assess the humanitarian situation and document the ongoing violations perpetrated by the occupying forces against the Palestinian people,” the ministry said. “This deliberate and unlawful act constitutes a blatant and grave breach of international law and of the fundamental principles of diplomatic relations as enshrined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”
Kallas said Wednesday that “any threats on diplomats’ lives are unacceptable.”
“Israel is also a signatory to the Vienna Convention, I mean the obligation to guarantee the security of all foreign diplomats,” Kallas noted. “We definitely call on Israel to investigate this incident and also hold accountable [those] who are responsible for this.”
The governments of other countries whose diplomats were targeted on Wednesday condemned the incident, with some, including France and Italy, summoning their Israeli ambassadors.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
A parody ‘Tesla – The Swasticar’ advert posted at a London bus stop. Photograph: People vs Elon
The tycoon’s links with Donald Trump and Germany’s far-right AfD have slammed the brakes on sales and put the car’s owners in a spin
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In Poland – where the Nazi German occupation led to the deaths of 6 million Poles, including 3 million Jews – the country’s tourism minister called on citizens to boycott Tesla after Musk’s surprise appearance at the AfD rally. “All I can say is that probably no normal Pole should buy a Tesla any more,” Sławomir Nitras recently told Polish broadcaster Tok FM. “A serious and strong response is necessary, including a consumer boycott.”
In August, the German drugstore chain Rossmann said it would no longer buy Tesla cars for its corporate fleet, citing Musk’s support for Trump, while the German energy company LichtBlick said on social media that it would be “pulling the plug” on the Tesla vehicles in its fleet, citing Musk’s backing of “a rightwing populist and extremist party”.
“The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is promoting the far right in Europe,” the campaign group wrote on social media after their collaboration with Germany’s Centre for Political Beauty. “Don’t buy a Tesla.”
In London, activists put up a parody “Tesla – The Swasticar” bus stop advert with the tagline “goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds”, referencing the start of the second world war, and stickers with similar wording have been slapped on Tesla cars. In Tottenham, north London, a member of the activist group People vs Elon took a cardboard cutout of Musk’s salute into a Tesla dealership.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Original article by Andrew Wasley republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
British consumers were exposed to drug-resistant salmonella because border checks took years to come into force
UK health chiefs privately admitted that a lack of border inspections in the wake of Brexit left British consumers exposed to diseased meat, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.
Delays in implementing checks on imported food meant hundreds of people, including children, were poisoned by imported meat during a series of major salmonella outbreaks.
Previous TBIJ investigations uncovered a host of failings in the government’s handling of outbreaks of drug-resistant salmonella spread by supermarket chicken from Poland. Illnesses connected to the outbreaks – which also affected eggs – peaked at different points between 2020 and 2024, and Poland has since continued to export contaminated meat to the UK.
Documents now reveal that in a series of high-level meetings in late 2023, food safety and health bosses admitted that the UK’s borders could have been allowing infected meat to enter the country unchecked.
Minutes from the meetings attended by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and its devolved partners acknowledge there were “no current border controls in place”, and that paperwork and physical checks on imported goods were not due to start until the following year.
“This could change,” officials noted. “However, [the] FSA have decided that they can’t wait for border controls to come in as a control measure.”
Following the UK’s departure from the EU, Boris Johnson’s government announced that hygiene inspections on meat imports from Europe would begin in 2021. However the checks were repeatedly delayed and weren’t implemented until 2024.
“We didn’t do any checks on EU imports at our border control posts for three years,” said Helen Buckingham, a trade policy expert. She pointed to a recent report published by the National Audit Office that was highly critical of the UK’s post-Brexit border controls. She added: “Delays on introducing a new regime of incoming checks for EU goods [were seen as being] risky for the UK in public and animal health terms, because our borders were weak.”
Although checks on some UK meat and poultry imports – typically between 1% and 30% – are now being carried out, concerns have been raised that funding cuts to inspection staff at some ports could see large volumes of substandard meat coming into the UK, as reported in the Grocer.
Tim Lang, professor emeritus of food policy at City St George’s, University of London, said: “Food flows depend on trust. And that depends on believing that systems are in place to protect us from known harm. Five years from Brexit, we see not fewer, but persistence of problems. We’ve put up borders but haven’t invested in the inspection.”
Following the publication of details of the government’s planned border controls in 2023, the FSA chair Susan Jebb said that border controls were “critical to maintaining the UK’s high food and feed safety standards” and that they “must be a priority”. The FSA had previously raised concerns that food products imported from the EU were not being subjected to inspections.
According to Buckingham, the post-Brexit inspections phased in last year do represent a more stringent system than was previously in place. “Pre-Brexit, we didn’t check EU products of animal origin because […] the principle of ‘free circulation of goods’ applied between member states.”
TBIJ’s revelations come as Parliament’s environment, food and rural affairs select committee prepares to launch an inquiry into animal and plant health next Tuesday. Imported animal products will be a central focus of an initial evidence gathering session that will assess the effectiveness of import controls on biosecurity, food hygiene and public health.
The internal UKHSA records obtained by TBIJ also reveal that while a ban on Polish poultry products was among the measures being considered by the FSA, concerns remained about its potential effects on the meat industry. They included the possibility that the UK could import chicken from other countries with food safety “hazards”. No ban was subsequently implemented.
Although earlier FSA interventions brought about a reduction in reported cases, rates were still “outside of the tolerance that the FSA Board can accept of salmonella entering the UK from the EU”.
Officials were also worried that the salmonella contamination had become more widespread, involving multiple producers from Poland and a greater number of food products, the documents show. While attention had initially focussed on breaded chicken and other highly processed products, testing had revealed that fresh chicken and raw pet food was also implicated.
Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, said: “We expect our trading partners to meet their responsibilities with regard to safe food. If they cannot, and their own authorities cannot enforce the appropriate controls, then we want our own regulators to have the powers and resources to stop unsafe meat entering the country.”
The BPC previously called for every consignment of Polish poultry to be checked at UK borders.
Tests revealed that in 2024, at least 138 consignments of exported poultry from Poland contained salmonella, including variants that can be highly harmful to human health, according to EU data. The UK was among the affected countries. The figures were only slightly down from 2023, when there had been 149 recorded cases of contaminated products.
In June 2023, TBIJ reported that some of the salmonella linked to Polish poultry that poisoned UK consumers was resistant to multiple antibiotics, limiting treatment options for those falling seriously ill. The UK government was found to have allowed food companies linked to the outbreak to continue supplying supermarkets even after contaminated meat had been linked to the deaths of four people, and the poisoning of hundreds more.
Investigations also found that even though some of the salmonella was known to be antibiotic resistant, food safety and health officials did not disclose this to frontline health workers, including those treating victims. Nor did they inform the Polish authorities, impeding possible investigations into practices on the farms involved.
Bacteria such as salmonella can easily spread on poultry farms, particularly where there are unhygienic or overcrowded conditions, and go on to infect the wider supply chain.
The use of antibiotics on farms can enable potentially lethal bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs will no longer work to treat infections. Antibiotic use in Polish livestock production has been a cause for concern in recent years, with increases in usage of some types of drugs important for humans.
Anjali Juneja, director of UK and international affairs at the FSA, said it has been working with the Polish authorities on measures to enhance the safety and compliance of imported poultry meat and eggs. These include increased testing and other interventions at the farm and manufacturer level.
“We continue to actively monitor the situation, including through in-country audits of Polish food safety controls and of poultry producers exporting to the UK. If we see any information of concern, we will take the necessary action,” Juneja said.
She added that the FSA welcomed the enhanced border checks implemented last year, which have become “a crucial part of our food safety system” that she said helps uphold the UK’s high standards.
A Defra spokesperson said: “This government will never waver in its duty to support the UK’s biosecurity and preserve our food supply.”
The Polish Veterinary Inspectorate told TBIJ that food safety alerts relating to poultry from Poland decreased from 2020-2024, demonstrating that it had been taking appropriate and effective action.
It said that a thorough investigation is undertaken whenever a salmonella case is detected and, in the event, will withdraw the food in question, as well as taking measures to minimise recurrence. And it said antibiotics are only used on farm animals when prescribed by a vet.
Kath Dalmeny, chief executive of the Sustain food and farming alliance said the latest findings expose “just how vital it is for the government to uphold high food standards in international trade deals, especially for high-risk foods such as Polish chicken”.
“They must also ensure there are enough vets and food hygiene inspectors to check that British and imported meat is fit to eat – health protection roles that have been in worrying decline for several years,” she added.
Ron Spellman, a veteran meat inspector, said the issue ultimately needed to be tackled at source. “The European Commission, as well as the Polish authorities and poultry industry, carry responsibility to protect all consumers who buy Polish poultry products, they must resolve this problem.”
Red Army soldiers with prisoners of Nazi concentration camp, 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons
As European leaders gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate 80 years since its liberation, they upheld a revisionist narrative that downplays the role of the Red Army in defeating Nazism
On January 27, 1945, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where over one million people—overwhelmingly Jews—were murdered. Eighty years later, European leaders gathered in Poland, now home to the Auschwitz memorial, to hear survivor testimonies and reaffirm the commitment to ensuring such atrocities never happen again.
Yet this year’s commemoration came with a blazing omission. Despite the USSR’s vital role in defeating Nazi Germany and its allies—at the cost of over 20 million Soviets’ lives—there were no representatives of the Russian Federation at Auschwitz. In its pursuit of punishing Russia for the war in Ukraine, the European Union (EU) has virtually erased the Red Army’s contributions from the narrative. Leaders like Ursula von der Leyen and Giorgia Meloni issued statements of remembrance while avoiding any mention of the USSR. Only left politicians dared to talk about the full picture in their messages on the day of remembrance.
These events have to be read as part of a broad revisionist trend spreading through Europe, in which far-right parties, such as Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and France’s National Rally, are using anti-communist tropes to rewrite history. This trend has taken root among mainstream parties as well. Just days before Holocaust remembrance day, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning Russia for “exploiting the narrative of the ‘liberation of Europe from Nazism.’” The text of the resolution also criticized the restoration of Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine and called for a “pan-European” memorial for “victims of the 20th century totalitarian regimes,” a vocabulary that aims to equate fascism and communism.
In what can only be described as a severe case of historical amnesia, the parliamentaries proposed a ban on “both Nazi and Soviet communist symbols” across the EU. As some have pointed out, implementing such a ban would complicate commemorations like the one on Monday, given the prominence of Soviet uniforms in archival photographs of liberation.
While the EU is entertaining itself with erasing communism’s role in defeating Nazism in World War II, it seems to have learned extremely little from the Holocaust itself. The first phase of a ceasefire in Gaza had not even begun when Polish authorities announced they would allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the Auschwitz commemoration—despite an International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges. Though Netanyahu ended up not attending himself, the mere possibility highlights Europe’s willingness to overlook crimes against humanity if committed by its current allies.
“Laying claim to the memory of one genocide in order to justify another genocide is morally and politically unacceptable,” historian Enzo Traverso said in a recent interview with Jacobin, commenting on Europe’s reactions to the genocide in Gaza. “The memory of Auschwitz should be mobilized to impede new genocides, not to justify them.”
By refusing to acknowledge the full history of Nazism’s defeat in 1945—especially the contributions of the Red Army and communist movements—Europe only fuels the rise of the far-right. Parties like Alternative for Germany (AfD), National Rally and Brothers of Italy may avoid explicit antisemitism in their platforms, but their policies thrive on the same hatred and violence that drove the Holocaust. As these parties gain electoral ground, the slogan “Never again is now” is becoming increasingly difficult to believe.
