About 800,000 people to demonstrate against budget plans, putting pressure on new prime minister
France is braced for one of its biggest strike days in recent years, as trade unions make a rare show of unity to put pressure on the new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to rethink budget cuts and act on wages, pensions and public services.
About 800,000 people are expected to take to the streets in marches across the country on Thursday, according to police, while schools, rail and air transport will all be affected. A total of 80,000 police will be deployed.
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© Photograph: Jean-François Badias/AP
© Photograph: Jean-François Badias/AP
© Photograph: Jean-François Badias/AP
In the 1970s, the radical leftwing German terrorist organisation may have spread fear through public acts of violence – but its inner workings were characterised by vanity and incompetence
In the summer of 1970, a group of aspirant revolutionaries arrived in Jordan from West Germany. They sought military training though they had barely handled weapons before. They sought a guerrilla war in the streets of Europe, but had never done anything more than light a fire in a deserted department store. They sought the spurious glamour that spending time with a Palestinian armed group could confer. Above all, they sought a safe place where they could hide and plan.
Some of the group had flown to Beirut on a direct flight from communist-run East Berlin. The better known members – Ulrike Meinhof, a prominent leftwing journalist, and two convicted arsonists called Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader – had faced a more complicated journey. First, they’d had to cross into East Germany, then they took a train to Prague, where they boarded a plane to Lebanon. From Beirut, a taxi took them east across the mountains into Syria. Finally, they drove south from Damascus into Jordan.
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© Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy
© Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy
© Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy
For 25 years, Justin and Nichola were an essential part of each other’s lives. Then, one random Wednesday, came a terrible, wrenching phone call
Many lifelong alliances begin with a period of mild intimidation, and so it was with my friendship with Nichola. We were 18, in the first year at university, and shared a few French classes. I didn’t know her name, had never heard her speak in English but, with her voluminous curls and friendly, curious stare, she stood out. I assumed she would be too cool to hang around with someone like me.
One weekend, at a student social in the grotty union bar, booze acted as an icebreaker and the guardrails dropped. Nods of recognition in the corridor became cheery hellos, then toasties in the cafe, followed by nights out and nursing hangovers in front of the TV in our dilapidated student houses.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Justin Myers
© Photograph: Courtesy of Justin Myers
© Photograph: Courtesy of Justin Myers
The two actors play brothers dragged into danger by gangsters, but are too stupid or poorly sketched for you to sympathise with them. It’s a relentlessly cheerless watch
Hard on the heels of the airless misery of Mark Ruffalo’s new venture, Task, comes Jude Law and Jason Bateman’s Black Rabbit, which has a bit more action but the same relentless, cheerless tone and even less forgiving lighting. One more entry and it’s officially a trend! We’ll all have to schedule recovery viewings of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, like winter vitamin D shots, to make it through unbowed.
Law and Bateman are working-class brothers Jake (Law) and Vince (Bateman) Friedkin from Coney Island. They grew up in what we assume from relatively early on was a violent home, dominated by an alcoholic father. They became a Nirvana-lite rock group – Jake the handsome lead, Vince the drummer and creative force – until the latter’s taste for drugs and mayhem put paid to their success. Jake pivoted into management, primarily of multihyphenate talent Wes (Sope Dirisu), and when Vince regained his sobriety and vision and found a building that seized his imagination they all went into business together as restaurateurs, creating the Black Rabbit – a three-storey clubhouse that soon became the toast of bohemian New York.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
© Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
Weakened domestically, Emmanuel Macron wants an international legacy. Yet still, he does nothing to sanction Israel
When Emmanuel Macron announced that France intended to recognise Palestinian statehood, he drew a furious rebuke from Israel – and caused a diplomatic storm with the US. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote a letter accusing the French government of failing to “confront the alarming rise of antisemitism” in France, adding the harsh and unequivocal assessment: “Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on this antisemitic fire.”
In the same letter, he praised Donald Trump’s action to “protect the civil rights of American Jews”.
Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Let’s not be too cynical about the US-UK agreement to build new power plants – but costs must fall if nuclear is to make headway
Presidential visits, like investment summits, involve a blizzard of claims about companies set to spend squillions in the UK. Some “commitments” are merely extrapolations of current trends. Some can be filed under “believe it when you see it”. Some involve throwing everything into the mix and producing an implausibly precise number for the “economic value” to the UK. A few pledges are genuinely new, but scepticism should be the default setting.
How to view this week’s “landmark commitments” by UK and US firms to build new nuclear power plants in the UK? Actually, this may be one of those rare occasions when one shouldn’t be too cynical.
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© Photograph: Rolls-Royce/Reuters
© Photograph: Rolls-Royce/Reuters
© Photograph: Rolls-Royce/Reuters
Mariam, Nasser and Ahmed were evacuated from the warzone but are now stranded in an Egyptian hospital that cannot treat their life-threatening injuries after Trump’s sudden ban on Palestinians entering the US
Mariam Sabbah had been fast asleep, huddled under a blanket with her siblings, when an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of 1 March.
The missile narrowly missed the sleeping children but as the terrified nine-year-old ran to her parents, a second one hit. “I saw her coming towards me but suddenly there was another explosion and she vanished into the smoke,” says her mother, Fatma Salman.
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© Photograph: Hamada Elrasam/The Guardian
© Photograph: Hamada Elrasam/The Guardian
© Photograph: Hamada Elrasam/The Guardian
Former 2GB and Sky News Australia broadcaster was not in court on Thursday when it heard 17 of previous 44 charges had been dropped
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Alan Jones faces 25 charges of indecent assault and two of sexual touching relating to nine complainants after prosecutors revealed two alleged victims would no longer be part of the case against the veteran broadcaster.
Jones was on Thursday expected to make his first appearance in court this year to be committed to stand trial on 44 charges of indecent assault against 11 victims aged 17 and older.
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© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
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