Hungary suggests foot-and-mouth outbreak could be 'biological attack'
A Hungarian official has suggested the country's first cases of foot-and-mouth disease in more than 50 years could have come from a "biological attack".
The World Organisation for Animal Health, citing Hungarian authorities, said the country reported an outbreak of the disease on a cattle farm in the northwest last month.
Thousands of cattle have been slaughtered to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth, while neighbouring Austria and Slovakia have closed multiple border crossings.
Gergely Gulyas, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, told reporters on Thursday that officials have not ruled out what caused the outbreak - including an attack.
"At this stage, we can say that it cannot be ruled out that the virus was not of natural origin, we may be dealing with an artificially engineered virus," he added.
The official then said suspicion of a biological attack was based on verbal information received from a foreign laboratory -- which has not yet been fully proven - and that no further outbreak has been detected.
Foot-and-mouth disease poses no danger to humans but causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, swine, sheep and goats, and outbreaks often lead to trade restrictions.
Reports of foot-and-mouth first emerged in mid-March, with more than 3,500 cattle slaughtered in Hungary's northern county of Gyor-Moson-Sopron.
After the outbreak in Hungary, cases were then reported across five farms in southern Slovakia, prompting the country to declare an emergency.
On 2 April, Hungary deployed soldiers and launched new disinfection measures in the northwest close to border regions to contain the outbreak.
Austria then closed 21 crossings into Hungary and two into Slovakia a day later.
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Reuters
4 days ago
- Reuters
Foot-and-mouth disease contained in Hungary, farm minister says
BUDAPEST, June 6 (Reuters) - Hungary has successfully contained an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, leading to the lifting of European Union restrictions, the country's farm minister Istvan Nagy told local news site in an interview published on Friday. Hungary reported its first case of foot-and-mouth disease for over 50 years in March, leading to infections in five farms near its border with Slovakia and Austria and triggering border closures and the mass slaughter of cattle. "There hasn't been a single new outbreak on the farms for over a month and a half. Disinfection work is ongoing, cleaning is happening at full speed, we're preparing for repopulation at all the sites ... the virus is gone," Nagy said. The farm minister also said that the European Union was lifting restrictions introduced after the outbreak. The disease, which poses no danger to humans, mostly affects cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals like swine, sheep and goats, causing fever and mouth blisters. Outbreaks often lead to trade restrictions and livestock culls. Authorities were still investigating the origins of the outbreak and testing several theories, Nagy said. He reiterated that terrorism had not been ruled out. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff in May suggested a "biological attack" as a possible source of the outbreak, without giving further details. Restrictions have also been eased in Slovakia since May as the country has not seen any fresh outbreaks in recent months. In the Czech Republic, where no cases were reported, remaining measures to prevent the spread across its borders were due to end on Friday.
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- The Guardian
Monday briefing: What Farage's new obsession with nativism could mean
Good morning. In 2023, Nigel Farage went on a podcast to decry what he described as a culture of 'welfarism' in the UK, insisting it was making millions of people in the country lazy. ''I'm too fat, I'm too stupid, I'm too lazy, I don't get out of bed in the morning. I smoke drugs, give me money',' he said. ''I don't need to work, the state will provide for me' … We cannot afford it.' Less than two years later, the self-styled free-market crusader seems to be singing a different tune. Last week, he publicly backed the removal of the two-child benefit cap – a move that would lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight and ease hardship for 700,000 more. So, what changed? At a press conference, he explained that removing the cap would help lower-paid workers have children. But then came the caveat: 'I want to emphasise that this is aimed at British families. It's not aimed at those that come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children.' He didn't stop there. Farage also floated more generous tax breaks for married couples, if elected, and tougher restrictions on abortion. He called the current 24-week limit 'ludicrous'. This isn't a new strategy in Europe. Farage appears to be mirroring Hungary's Viktor Orbán, a pioneer in blending anti-immigration rhetoric with anti-abortion measures, while promoting nativist policies to boost birthrates. For today's newsletter, I spoke to Sian Norris, author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, about how these tactics are gaining ground in the UK, and what they could mean for the future of reproductive rights. That's after the headlines. Ukraine | Ukraine has launched a 'large-scale' drone attack against Russian military bombers in Siberia, striking more than 40 warplanes thousands of miles from its own territory. On the eve of peace talks, the drone attack on four separate airfields was part of a sharp ramping up of the three-year war. Israel-Gaza war | More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to an aid distribution point in Gaza, according to witnesses. Israeli forces were said to have opened fire as Palestinians headed for the aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Poland | The populist-right opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki has won the presidential race in an extremely close contest. A pro-Trump nationalist, Nawrocki beat the pro-European Warsaw mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, in a major blow for Donald Tusk's coalition government. Defence | Britain needs to be ready to fight a war in Europe or the Atlantic, a strategic defence review will conclude. But the plan, to be launched on Monday, it is not expected to contain any additional spending commitments. Health | Exercise can reduce the risk of cancer patients dying by a third, stop tumours coming back and is even more effective than drugs, according to the results of a landmark trial that could transform health guidelines worldwide. When Sian Norris first began investigating the UK's anti-abortion movement, she came across an organisation called UK Life League. Its founder, Jim Dowson, is perhaps better known for starting the far-right party Britain First. At first glance, the group seemed focused solely on opposing abortion. But once she started digging into their language and literature, it was clear that anti-abortion and anti-immigration rhetoric were being fused together. Alongside the usual scaremongering about migrants 'replacing' white Britons ran a parallel narrative: that feminists were suppressing the white birthrate through abortion and contraception. Together, these ideas were feeding the same conspiracy theory – the so-called 'great replacement'. The group's magazine, Rescue, didn't exactly hide it. 'It would say things like: the children in our classrooms are being replaced by aliens, meaning migrant children, and that white babies were being aborted. It was very full of praise for people like Viktor Orbán and his family protection policy and his anti-migrant policies.' The moment it all clicked for Norris was when she saw a cartoon shared by Mark Collette, the founder of far-right group Patriotic Alternative. 'It was a picture of hijabi-wearing women in a maternity clinic and white women in an abortion clinic with the caption 'this is white genocide'. It's this idea that white women are not doing their 'duty' making white babies.' Norris also points to the man who carried out the terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. In his manifesto, he fixated on declining birthrates and blamed what he called 'selfish individualism' among women for not having enough children. These links between anti-abortion politics and the far right, Norris said, shouldn't come as a surprise. Often misogyny is the gateway drug to the far right for young men. 'If you've got male supremacy in your head, then white supremacy is the next obvious step.' The Orbán playbook A couple of months ago, Norris went undercover to a Reform rally in Birmingham. In one event, the host was 'throwing out Labour policies' to gauge the audience's reactions, she said. Some topics got big reactions, like winter fuel allowance cuts or the lack of housing for veterans. But when it came to proposed cuts to disability benefits, she told me, 'it was crickets.' The silence was revealing. 'Benefits themselves aren't really a motivating issue for Reform voters,' she said. Farage was quite explicit about this when he backed calls to scrap the two-child benefit cap, not because he supports 'a benefits culture'. He is first and foremost concerned with demographic concerns. Norris described that as a 'classic tactic' from the far right when it comes to natalist policies. 'Orbán is the European politician that really normalised great replacement conspiracy theory. He was the one that would go to conferences and talk about replacement, talk about demographics. He would say that if you wanted a Christian Hungary and a Christian Europe, the way to do this was to incentivise ethnic Hungarian married women to have more children,' she said. 'And, we know that Farage is really influenced by the kind of Orban, US conservatism movement.' She added that, for Farage, the driving force of this policy is not a concern about child poverty. 'He's talking about it because he wants more British women to have more British babies, and the fact that it would be coupled with this tax break for married couples is again a learned tactic from the far right in terms of what kind of families we value.' A new front in the culture war Farage has been active in British politics for more than three decades, but until recently, he had said very little about abortion. That changed last November, when he called for parliament to debate reducing the legal abortion limit from 24 weeks, citing advances in medical technology. The remarks marked a notable shift, which worries Norris. 'It feels like this is going to be the new front in the culture war. We know that the far right is very good at working out which issues are going to work in different territories. So in Poland, it's very much about abortion. In Romania, it's very much LGBT rights,' she said. Norris described the 24-week abortion limit as 'the wedge' when it comes to anti-abortion campaigning. 'Abortion has mass popular support in this country. The British Attitudes Survey puts it at about 90% support for abortion in some circumstances,' she said. 'But people do get really emotional about the 24-week limit because of foetus viability and the fact that you can technically have a baby below 24 weeks.' It's a tactic designed to trigger outrage and force a polarising debate, she explained. Supporters of abortion rights are pushed to defend procedures that are already rare and deeply complex. Only about 1% of UK abortions take place after 20 weeks, and these are almost always carried out in exceptional circumstances, such as severe foetal abnormalities or serious risks to the mother's health. 'I think it's going to be a whipping up of cultural values. It will be framed as: are you the mad, woke, pro-abortion side or the traditional, family-centric, anti-abortion side? That really concerns me,' Norris said. Her reporting has uncovered links between rightwing MPs and US-backed Christian charities funding anti-abortion campaigns in the UK. These groups, she says, are already laying the groundwork ahead of a potential parliamentary debate over legislation that would remove the threat of imprisonment for women who terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks. They would be using trialled and tested messaging and tactics, Norris explained, most notably in the US. 'As soon as you start chipping away at abortion rights, it's much easier to chip away at the next one,' she warned. 'We'll go from 24 weeks to 22 weeks, and then, 'well, what about 20 weeks?' And then, 'what about if we add in this extra barrier and say you have an ultrasound, or have to have counselling'?' The right direction It's still unclear how successful Farage will be with this new strategy. Over the past decade, the UK has seen a string of major victories for abortion rights: decriminalisation in Northern Ireland, the permanent adoption of telemedicine after the pandemic and the introduction of buffer zones around clinics. Now, the focus is on the upcoming parliamentary vote to decriminalise abortion. The vote, originally scheduled for last year, was expected to pass, even under a Conservative majority. 'Now I think with a Labour majority there's an even bigger chance of that happening. So I do think politically we are moving in the right direction and the momentum is for the pro-abortion movement,' Norris said. While she remains concerned about abortion becoming the next front in the UK's culture wars, Norris is confident that public support remains strong. 'The anti-abortion movement is very noisy, but it is pretty small.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion This is true, she added, even on a global scale. Although Roe v Wade was overturned in America, there were also significant global wins. In 2020, Argentina legalised abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. In Mexico, in 2023, the supreme court decriminalised abortion across the country. Norris points to a report by the Centre for Reproductive Rights, which found that over the past 30 years, more than 60 countries and territories have liberalised their abortion laws. Only four have rolled back access. Jacinda Ardern took power in New Zealand in the same year Donald Trump first became president in the United States; to her fans, she is a shining emblem of what politics might have been, or might still be. In Katharine Viner's fascinating interview for Saturday magazine, she reflects on the politician's lot: 'People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had.' Archie As Aamna explains above, Reform UK's promise to remove the two-child benefit limit is an abrupt political pivot – but it is hardly representative of 'Farageonomics' as a whole. Richard Partington's column is a useful primer on who would really benefit from the party's tax and spending plans. Archie Deadlifts can help us move through life with a strong, flexible body. Guardian writer Phil Daoust pulls on his gym shorts and gives them a try. Aamna The Swiss village of Blatten had existed for more than 800 years; on Wednesday, it was obliterated by an avalanche. Tess McClure's report from Lötschental is a clear-eyed examination of the wider pattern of glacial collapse the disaster represents. Archie Fans of abrasive and challenging music should be delighted that the surviving members of Cabaret Voltaire are reforming to play shows celebrating their 50th anniversary. The Sheffield pioneers tell Daniel Dylan Wray about starting riots and recording David Attenborough. Alex Needham, acting head of newsletters Tennis | Defending champion Iga Świątek staged a stunning comeback against Elena Rybakina to reach the French Open quarter-finals 1-6, 6-3, 7-5. In the men's draw, Carlos Alcaraz reached the last eight with victory over Ben Shelton. Cricket | Joe Root produced a display of ethereal stroke-making on his way to an unbeaten 166 to give England victory over West Indies in the second one-day international. Root's innings made him the first Englishman to score more than 7,000 runs in the format. Cycling | Britain's Simon Yates sealed victory in the Giro d'Italia in Rome for his second Grand Tour title. Yates leapfrogged 21-year-old Giro debutant and race leader, Isaac del Toro and podium rival, Richard Carapaz in Saturday's mountain stage, one of the most stunning turnarounds in Grand Tour history. The Guardian splashes on a study showing 'Exercise 'better than drugs' to stop cancer returning'. The Times leads with 'Ukraine drone swarm hits Russian airbases' and the i paper has 'Britain sends warning to Putin with 12 new attack submarines'. The Telegraph splashes on 'Starmer's defence strategy in disarray' and the Mail goes with 'Labour's defence spending retreat'. The Express leads with 'Boats arriving 'like taxis' as migrant numbers surge' and the Metro has 'We've lost control', also on migrant crossings. For the FT, it's 'Bessent vows US will never default as market data lays bare investor anxiety' and the Mirror goes with 'One heart two heroes' on the impacts of an organ donation law. Making America pregnant again: the pro-natalist movement Why is pro-natalism – the idea that society should focus on producing children – a growing movement in the US? Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan speaks with Helen Pidd about the different groups of people who want the US population to have more babies. Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett's cartoons, the best Saturday magazine journalism and an exclusive look behind the scenes A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad If you are looking for a break in a beautiful location to get your brain in creative mode, our readers have some recommendations. Wider Horizons in Berkshire is a vibrant outdoor gathering for young adults, featuring workshops, music, and poetry to spark creativity. Or what about Trigonos Retreat in Eryri (Snowdonia) which offers storytelling, yoga, and nature-based activities in a mythologically rich setting. If you want to go further afield, Creative Escapes provides immersive photography holidays in stunning locations like Sicily and Japan. Each retreat fosters artistic growth in its own unique way. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday And finally, the Guardian's puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- The Guardian
Is Trump's ‘baby bond' really pro-child? No – children need a fair society to thrive
Turning children into capitalists – that's the purpose behind the new 'Trump account', which will give every new baby born in the US during the president's second term $1,000 to be invested in the stock market. Now, little shareholders can identify with the US companies they invest in. 'Hey … I own 50 bucks of McDonald's' was an example given by senator Ted Cruz. This is a surprise element in Donald Trump's 'big beautiful bill', which gives $1.1tn in tax cuts to the very rich funded by cutting Medicaid, food assistance and the education department. This joins a range of policies from rightwing parties around the world which look, on the face of it, to be pro-child or pro-family. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán announced an income tax exemption for mothers of two or three children – previously, only mothers of four or more children were exempt. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage in the UK has proclaimed that Reform would end the two-child benefit cap. Yet in reality, the policies are anything but. Trump's baby bond is not a pro-family poverty alleviation scheme, but his way of creating the 'shareholding democracy' Margaret Thatcher dreamed of when she promised in her 1985 conference speech to make 'owning shares as common as having a car'. Her government sold off nationalised companies cheap to encourage the capitalist impulse in British citizens: that's when we lost gas ('If you see Sid, tell him'), water and electricity alongside British Airways and others. It didn't work, as most sold these underpriced shares for a quick profit: by 2022, only 14% of British people directly held any shares. Britain had a child trust fund (CTF) for every baby until it was brutally axed by the coalition government. (Abolition was in the Liberal Democrats' 2010 manifesto: they weren't always nice.) Labour had introduced it in 2005: £250 for all, or £500 in low-income families, with a top-up of £250 at seven, and double that for poorer seven-year-olds. Parents who were able to could contribute extra. But Labour's intention was radically different from Trump's. The idea was to make a small dent in the colossal injustice of the inheritocracy so that every child at 18 would have something to see them on their way. The average £2,000 pot is only a wren-sized nest egg, but for those with no bank of mum and dad at least it can contribute towards driving lessons, renting a flat or education costs. When 8.4 million people have no savings at all, those from families with nothing risk being forced into bad jobs with no escape, for lack of the choices a little money can buy. Right now, restoring it is nowhere on the agenda; in these far harder times, the government must strive first towards its manifesto promise to cut child poverty. Gavin Kelly, the begetter of the CTF inside Gordon Brown's Treasury, laments that there is no research on its effects: this real-life experiment should be comparing those receiving the CTF with previous or later generations without it. The impulse for research dried up once the policy itself was killed off, but in one study done before the CTF came in, Abigail McKnight of the London School of Economics's Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion found that 'early asset holding does have positive effects on later wages, employment prospects, excellent general health and in reducing malaise'. She says it allows young people to take risks, 'and risk-taking is very important for higher returns in later life'. Kelly has plentiful anecdotes. He just met a family in rural Suffolk with no savings whose son used his CTF to buy an old car he could never have afforded without it so he can travel to an apprenticeship 45 minutes away. Roughly 55,000 18-year-olds every month come into their fund, but it ends in 2029, when today's 14-year-olds will be the last recipients (18- to 22-year-olds, there are lost child trust funds waiting to be claimed). Back in 2005, Labour already had child poverty falling steeply, and this was a small attempt to ease the gap between the richest and the poorest. But it was far more than that. Here was another symbol of Labour's pro-child spirit – welcoming every baby and enhancing their lives with Sure Start centres. Labour was never consciously pronatalist, but its 'every child matters' policy strove to set children on their feet, with child tax credits among its pro-child impulses. Labour inherited a falling birthrate in 1997, but it rose until 2010, and then fell from two births a woman to 1.5 in the Tory years. Correlation is not causation, but unwelcoming years of cutting child and youth services can't have helped, with rising housing and childcare costs acting as barriers to child-bearing, and young people worse off than their parents were at baby-producing age. Children's pleasures were stripped bare, as school arts and sports were lost, and further education colleges, leisure centres, parks and every support to childhood were depleted, alongside savage benefit cuts. Even the infant mortality rate rose for first time in generations. So did the child death rate, up 8% in England in 2023, a third of it avoidable, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. This was all under the rightwing governments that savoured the two-child benefit cap, a (failed) eugenic attempt to prevent the wrong kind of children increasing the population. The sadness is that most women in the UK and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries wish they had more children than they do. In 2016, they wished on average for 2.3 – well above the population replacement rate of 2.1, let alone the current rate of 1.57. Rightwing leaders such as Trump and Viktor Orbán wish to own the pronatalist argument – don't let them. As the Social Market Foundation (SMF) reports in Baby bust and baby boom: Examining the liberal case for pronatalism, a country that celebrates childhood is often a better place for everyone. Just as abortion is a right, so is the right to bear children. That's why abolishing the two-child benefit limit – as ministers have hinted they are considering – is about even more than alleviating child poverty. Scrapping it would signify the renewal of a hopeful attitude to children that was always in Labour's DNA. Any vision of the future has to embrace a younger population: old people are not a nation's dynamism or innovation. Falling fertility means long-term stagnation. Punishing the children we have only leads to long-term social and economic damage. For the children who receive one, the 'Trump account' may do some good. But whatever his motive, the president's version of pronatalism is doomed. Experience from around the world suggests bribery has a minimal effect: France and Sweden both have higher birthrates than Hungary, regardless of the tax breaks. So Trump's offer of $5,000 to mothers for every birth may be doomed without a social environment that nurtures all children. Nor is his bill really likely to turn babies into mini-capitalists. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
