Ursula von der Leyen hasn’t revived the EU in the way she hoped. People around her say its her own fault

#German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is seeking to reverse his beleaguered government’s fortunes by getting an ambitious reform agenda back on track amid plummeting public support

#Trump and Xi dialed down the trade war, but challenges lurk at their #China summit. #WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump claims that America has increasingly profited from trade with China, largely playing down the tensions over rare earth minerals, tariffs and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence that could rupture relations between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump departs Tuesday for a summit in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in what could potentially be the first of four meetings this year.

“We’re doing a lot of business with China and making a lot of money,” Trump said last week. ”We’re making a lot of money — it’s different than it used to be.”

The summit is primarily about keeping the economic relationship stable, with only modest policy announcements expected. A trade truce reached last October likely will be extended, while China may announce plans to buy American soybeans, beef and Boeing airplanes. U.S. officials also have teased the creation of a Board of Trade to keep the sides talking on economic issues.

Some in the Trump administration believe “the outcome that matters more than any set of deliverables is stability and space for continued engagement, both to build domestic resilience and to facilitate future deal-making,” said Brett Fetterly, a managing principal at the consultancy The Asia Group who focuses on China.

Engagement would only be the first step toward addressing the competition between the U.S. and China, as tit-for-tat tariffs, the AI and electric vehicle buildout, and the Iran war could upend relations.

More than 30 #African leaders kicked off a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron in #Kenya on Monday, as Paris sought new deals and partnerships amid signs of fading influence in some of its former colonies on the continent.

Modi is seeing success at uniting #India's Hindu vote, according to an analysis of voting trends

Thailand’s ex-PM Thaksin to be released from prison, Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is set to be released early from prison on Monday, raising the prospect of a return to the spotlight for the political heavyweight.

The 76-year-old telecoms billionaire has been serving a one-year prison sentence for corruption since September.

He is due to be paroled Monday morning, with the requirement to wear an electronic monitor until his probation ends in four months.

Thaksin’s political machine has for two decades been a key rival of Thailand’s pro-military, pro-royalty elite who view his populist brand as a threat to the traditional social order.

His Pheu Thai party, and its earlier iterations, was the country’s most successful party of the 21st century, with the Shinawatra family producing four prime ministers and drawing widespread support from the rural population.

But Pheu Thai had its worst election result ever in February, slipping to third place and raising questions about the future of Thaksin’s dynasty.

Yet Pheu Thai’s inclusion in the ruling coalition of conservative Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has left open the possibility of a political comeback.

For his die-hard supporters, Thaksin’s release “will strengthen Pheu Thai in the short term because people will feel that the Pheu Thai owner is back”, said political science lecturer Wanwichit Boonprong.

But Thaksin’s “old enemies, the conservatives” will rally around Anutin, who “has what Thaksin does not have -- the trust of the elites”, Wanwichit added.

The anti-Thaksin conservatives “will unite and focus on Thaksin’s next move -- and whether he will stay away from politics”.
Ex-PM on parole

The corrections department announced Thaksin’s parole last month, citing his age and the fact that he had less than a year left to serve as reasons for early release.

Thaksin was jailed after the Supreme Court ruled last year that he improperly served a 2023 sentence in a hospital suite rather than a prison cell.

He was elected prime minister in 2001 and again in 2005, and took himself into exile after his second term was cut short by a military coup.

After returning to Thailand in August 2023, he was sentenced to eight years for corruption and abuse of power.

But rather than prison, he was whisked to a private room in hospital on health grounds, his sentence was reduced to one year by royal pardon, and he was freed as part of an early release scheme for elderly prisoners.

The timing of his return and his medical transfer, which coincided with Pheu Thai forming a new government, fuelled public suspicion of a backroom deal and allegations of special treatment.

The Supreme Court ruled in September that Thaksin had not been suffering from a critical health condition and his time spent in hospital could not count as time served, landing him in prison to serve his one-year term.

Thaksin was one of more than 850 prisoners who were also approved for early release.

His daughter, former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, told reporters on Thursday after meeting with Thaksin in prison that they had “not discussed anything about politics” and only spoken about family.

Thaksin’s nephew Yodchanan Wongsawat, who became Pheu Thai’s standard-bearer ahead of the February election, was made minister of higher education in Anutin’s cabinet.

Canadians on virus-stricken ship set to disembark. Canadians on board the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship will soon begin disembarking after the vessel docked this morning at the port city of Tenerife.

The MV Hondius arrived just after 6 a.m., local time, in the Canary Islands, Spain.

The ship’s owner, Oceanwide Expeditions, has said that several international groups, including the World Health Organization, will screen the four Canadians and roughly 130 other asymptomatic passengers.

Global Affairs Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada have not yet commented on the disembarkment or next steps for the Canadian travellers.

Several Canadians have been linked to the hantavirus outbreak, which hit the ship during its voyage from Argentina to Antarctica sometime after April 1, following several stops at isolated islands in the South Atlantic.

Three non-Canadian passengers have died, and five others, who have already left the ship, are infected with hantavirus.

#Iran has still given no indication whether it will accept President Donald Trump’s plan, sent on Wednesday, which proposes that the Islamic Republic reopen the waterway and the US end a blockade on Iranian ports over the next month

A South #African vessel headed to a sub-Antarctic island to resupply #scientists has been held up by fuel supply disruptions caused by the Iran war

Dozens of artists bring new life to a gigantic former ironworks on UNESCO's world heritage list.

At the Völklinger Hütte, or Völklingen Ironworks, the Urban Art Biennale 2026 is getting underway, continuing what has grown into a biennial tradition over the past decade and a half.

“This location is at the core of street art and graffiti art,” said Ralf Beil, the general director of the site, which is open to the public as a museum. “It all began in industrial places like this.”

Artists “love this place and they do works for the Völklinger Hütte, in the Völklinger Hütte, with the Völklinger Hütte,” he said.

This year’s show features 50 artists. They include France-based Tomas Lacque, whose installation features a small van, a pile of tires, toys and debris covered in a coat of paint. Standing in a hall where furnaces once worked, it appears to evoke fossil-fueled mobility being covered in ash like Pompeii.

Spanish artist Ampparito has painted the words “no hay nada de valor” (roughly, “There is nothing of value here”) in huge white letters on the roof of one of the site’s massive sheds — a work best seen from a viewing platform 45 meters (148 feet) above ground level.

Dutch artist Boris Tellegen, better known as Delta, contributed a massive green-and-black wooden sculpture that lights up the interior of the ironworks. French-based collective Vortex-X, who recycle salvaged material, stretched rays of white industrial fabric across one of the building’s halls in a work titled “Memory in transit.”

The ironworks spreads over a 6-hectare (nearly 15-acre) site, a maze of chimneys and furnaces in which visitors still encounter ominous industrial-era signs warning of risks such as a “danger of crushing.” They dominate the town of Völklingen, near Germany’s border with France.

They have been on #UNESCO’s world heritage list since 1994, recognized as “the only intact example, in the whole of western Europe and North America, of an integrated ironworks that was built and equipped in the 19th and 20th centuries.”

The furnaces have been cold since 1986, when production ended, and the site has been preserved as it was then. But its appearance is much older, as no new installations were added after the mid-1930s.

“It’s so dusty and it’s so old, but it’s beautiful, you know, there’s beauty in decay,” said British artist Remi Rough. “I think what I’ve done makes you kind of just perceive it in a bit of a different way.”

Rough contributed small paintings that he said were meant to be “very clean and clinical,” in contrast to the site.