Sep 17 update

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, said she would travel on Sunday to Lampedusa, an Italian island that has been overwhelmed by a wave of migrants. Residents there held a protest against the visit on Saturday. Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has declared a state of emergency on the island. Some 114,589 migrants reached Italy by sea during the first eight months of this year.

Two ships reached Ukraine via a new “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea, where they will pick up grain. They were the first civilian vessels to navigate the route, which Ukraine introduced in response to Russia backing out of a deal that allowed it to export crops and fertiliser. The grain is reportedly destined for Egypt and Israel.

The United Auto Workers said that talks with Ford had been “reasonably productive”. The union, one of America’s largest, organised simultaneous strikes at the plants of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis—three carmakers—but has not said how negotiations are faring with the other two. The UAW is seeking a 36% pay rise over four years; the companies have offered between 20-21%.

The UN thinks that at least 11,300 people have now died after catastrophic flooding in Derna, a coastal city in Libya. It reckons that some 10,000 are still missing—leaving almost a quarter of the city’s population either dead or unaccounted for. Storm Daniel, which made landfall in Libya on September 10th, appears to be the deadliest cyclone worldwide since 2008.

The Republican-dominated Texas senate voted to acquit Ken Paxton, the state attorney-general, on charges of bribery, lying and dereliction of duty from office, following his impeachment in May by the state House of Representatives. The case against him centred on an alleged quid pro quo between Mr Paxton and a local property developer. Mr Paxton has made a name for himself by repeatedly suing the Biden administration.

Iran’s security services were out in force to prevent demonstrations on the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini. According to human-rights groups, her father was briefly detained as he left home to visit her grave, and there were sporadic disturbances. The fate of Amini, who died in police custody after she was detained for showing her hair, sparked months of protests.

Munich’s annual carnival of beer got under way with the opening of the 188th edition of Oktoberfest. “This is the most beautiful, biggest, most important festival in the world,” suggested Markus Soeder, the governor of Bavaria. Prices for a one-litre stein start at €12.60 ($13.45), an increase of around 6% on last year. Some 6m beer-lovers are expected to attend.

Word of the week: rezidentura, a Russian term for a base of operations, often an embassy, used for spying in another country. Read the full story.

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PHOTO: REX SHUTTERSTOCK

Le Pen and Salvini buddy up

Elections to the European Parliament do not take place until June 2024, but the campaign effectively gets under way on Sunday in Italy. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s hard-right National Rally, will join Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s populist League (previously called the Northern League), in Pontida, near Milan, for the Italian party’s annual jamboree. Ms Le Pen’s guest appearance, and speech, will transform the affair into a European campaign event.

The two leaders are hoping next year to boost their European parliamentary group, which also includes the hard-right Alternative for Germany party. The gathering is also a chance for Ms Le Pen to remind the French at home that she has lost none of her drive. Polls suggest that the RN could top French voting at the European election, beating Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition into second place. Ahead of the next French presidential election in 2027, when Mr Macron cannot stand again, that would send a tremor through Europe.

PHOTO: AP

Climate Week kicks off

“Our window of opportunity is about to close” is the stark message from Climate Group, the organisers of this year’s Climate Week, which begins on Sunday. The event will see business leaders, politicians and policy wonks—including Jim Skea, the new chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—gather in New York, where the high-level meetings of the UN General Assembly are also taking place from Monday. Film screenings and speaker sessions on environmental justice and sustainable living are scheduled around the city.

The gathering’s aim is to find ways to hold “those in positions of power” responsible for climate change. That feels urgent after months of record-breaking heatwaves and extreme weather events, and ahead of COP28, the UN climate summit taking place in the UAE from November 30th. The theme of this year’s Climate Week is “We can. We will”. The hope is that such determined words can encourage decisive action, too.

PHOTO: ALAMY

Another show of Saudi sporting strength

Over the past two weeks 719 athletes from 117 countries have gathered in Riyadh for the World Weightlifting Championships, which is being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time. The event serves as the qualification route for the Olympics in Paris in 2024. The choice of location for weightlifting’s flagship tournament also carries extra significance.

First, it is another display of Saudi sporting ambitions. The country’s lavish spending on football and golf has grabbed more attention, but it is expanding its influence in even niche sports. Second, the tournament shows a softening in the kingdom’s stance towards Israel. On Sunday, the last day of competition, Israel’s David Litvinov will try to win the super-heavyweight division, following three compatriots in other categories. It is the first time Israeli athletes have ever been allowed into Saudi Arabia. The shift follows a slight rapprochement between the two countries in recent months, after years of hostility. But establishing genuine diplomatic ties will require much more heavy lifting.

PHOTO: MUNCH, OSLO / HALVOR BJORNGARD

The sunnier side of Edvard Munch

In 1892 the Association of Berlin Artists invited Edvard Munch, then an obscure Norwegian painter, to stage a solo show. His unusual canvases caused such a scandal that it closed after one week. The modernist artist capitalised on the unexpected publicity by moving to Berlin, where he lived and worked for several periods on and off until 1908.

A new exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, on until January, traces Munch’s influence on the city’s art scene. “Magic of the North” displays around 80 pieces, with paintings, photographs, lithographs and woodcuts. The works include portraits of Munch and his contemporaries in Berlin, such as Dagny Juel Przybyszewska, his muse.

The controversy around Munch’s early exhibition in Berlin was driven, in part, by his paintings’ personal and psychological subject matter (best exemplified in “The Scream”, a later work). Visitors to the latest incarnation may be surprised by much brighter offerings, such as “Young People on the Beach”, painted in 1904.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Weekend profile: Shikma Bressler, the unlikely face of Israel’s protests

Since Israel’s government revealed its judicial-overhaul plans in January, it has been on a collision course with the Supreme Court—and a particle physicist. Shikma Bressler has become the unlikely face of protests against the country’s far-right coalition government. This week, as the Supreme Court began discussing whether to strike down the government’s first reform aimed at shrinking the judiciary’s powers, thousands of demonstrators again took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Ms Bressler claims she never had any political ambitions. She normally works as a senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. There she leads a research group that deals in other collisions: bashing particles into each other at the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Switzerland, to understand the universe’s fundamental building blocks. She has said that she longs to return to everyday life in the lab.

Since March 2020, however, she has been in the political spotlight. At the time, Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, was due to stand trial on corruption charges (which he denies). But his trial was postponed when the courts were shut as part of the first coronavirus lockdown. In response, Ms Bressler and two of her brothers founded the Black Flags, a pro-democracy protest movement that spread across the country. When Mr Netanyahu was relegated to the opposition after the 2021 election, the group disbanded—but within 18 months, “Bibi”, as he is known, was back in office.

His plans to limit the judiciary’s power spurred Ms Bressler to return to the megaphone. Shortly before the first legal step of that plan passed, which in July ended the Supreme Court’s ability to use “reasonableness” as grounds to overturn government decisions, she led 20,000 people on a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Among her concerns are the decision’s implications for women’s rights in Israel.

Her campaign has not been without missteps. Last week she likened parts of the coalition to “Nazis” for their views on Palestinians, which Mr Netanyahu was quick to condemn as “an insult to the Holocaust” and an “incitement to murder”. Ms Bressler, who is Jewish, later apologised on X (formerly Twitter). Many of her fellow protesters, though, seem unlikely to hold it against her; like Ms Bressler, they see these demonstrations as the battle of a generation.