Romanian top court overturns president's challenge to hate speech bill
Parliament updated legislation outlawing the celebration of fascist leaders or imagery in June, introducing prison sentences for the promotion of antisemitism and xenophobia via social media platforms.
The bill also increases jail terms for creating or belonging to racist organisations.
However, the president argued the bill did not properly define fascists, which would lead to judges interpreting the law arbitrarily. The court unanimously ruled against his objections.
An annual report released by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania on Wednesday said the country's election season was marked by a sharp increase of hate speech and aggression against Jewish, Roma, Hungarian and LGBT minorities - while also noting authorities were more actively enforcing legislation.
Romania cancelled a presidential election in December after allegations of Russian interference – denied by Moscow - in favour of far-right contender Calin Georgescu, who was later banned from running in the May re-run and has since been sent to trial for promoting Romania's wartime fascist leaders. He has denied all wrongdoing.
Romania had one of Europe's most violent antisemitic movements of the 1930s, the Iron Guard, known for political assassinations and pogroms. The country was also an ally of Nazi Germany until August 1944, when it changed sides.
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Reuters
11 minutes ago
- Reuters
Germany should consider Israel sanctions, senior lawmaker says after trip
BERLIN, Aug 4 (Reuters) - A senior lawmaker in German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition on Monday said Berlin should consider sanctions on Israel including a partial suspension of weapons exports or the suspension of a European Union-wide political agreement. The call by Siemtje Moeller, the deputy leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) parliamentary faction, reflects a sharpening of rhetoric from Berlin against Israel which has yet to yield any major policy changes however. Moeller, whose SPD joined a coalition with Merz's conservatives this year, wrote a letter to SPD lawmakers after returning from a trip to Israel with Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul last week. "My assessment is that the Israeli government will move little without pressure. If such concrete improvements fail to materialize in the near future, there must be consequences," she said in the letter, seen by Reuters. Recognition of a Palestinian state should not be "taboo", she said, adding that Israeli statements that there were no restrictions on aid to Gaza were not convincing. At the same time, Moeller demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages held by Hamas. She said Hamas must no longer play a role in a political future in Gaza. "It must be disarmed, its reign of terror must end." Western nations have intensified efforts to exert pressure on Israel, with Britain, Canada and France signalling their readiness to recognise a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory at the United Nations General Assembly this September. Israel has criticised France, Britain and Canada, saying their decision will reward Hamas. Critics argue that Germany's response remains overly cautious, shaped by an enduring sense of historical guilt for the Holocaust and reinforced by pro-Israel sentiment in influential media circles, weakening the West's collective ability to apply meaningful pressure on Israel. The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials. A growing number of civilians are dying from starvation and malnutrition, Gaza health authorities say, with images of starving children shocking the world and intensifying criticism of Israel over its curbs on aid into the enclave. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international outcry, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.
The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Dame Stella Rimington obituary
Stella Rimington, who has died aged 90, was the first head of the Security Service, commonly known as MI5, to be officially identified. She was also the first woman to head the agency, one that had been deeply infused with male culture. Asked what attracted her to MI5, she told me: 'Even though there were all of these tweedy guys with pipes, I still thought the essence of the cold war and spies and stuff was fun. You know, going around listening to people's telephones and opening their mail and stuff.' Rising to the top of MI5 after heading the agency's counter-subversion, counter-espionage, and counter-terrorism divisions was an achievement consolidating her reputation as a formidable Whitehall streetfighter, manifested not least by her success in wrenching from the police Special Branch its historical lead role countering Irish Republican terrorism in mainland Britain. Soon after she retired, she was embroiled in a furious row with her former Whitehall colleagues over her decision to write her memoirs. 'It was quite upsetting,' she said, 'because suddenly you go from being an insider to being an outsider and that's quite a shock.' But, she added: 'I've never been one to retreat at the first whiff of gunshot.' Her most controversial role as she rose up the ranks of MI5 was responsibility for countering 'subversion'. She was active during the miners' strike during the mid-1980s, and justified spying on the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on the grounds that Margaret Thatcher regarded it as 'the enemy within'. She said: 'If the strike is led by people who say they are trying to bring down the government, our role [is] to assess [them].' She chose her words carefully in an interview with the Guardian, denying that MI5 itself ran agents in the NUM, adding: 'That's not to say the police or police Special Branch … might have been doing some of those things …' The Special Branch reported to MI5 while GCHQ was providing MI5 and the police with technical help for bugging operations. Rimington also justified targeting and keeping files on civil liberty campaigners, protest groups and MPs, on the grounds that while not all their members were regarded as subversives, some of their contacts, colleagues, and friends were. Targets included the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – one of its organisers had been a member of the Communist party – the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) and two of its senior officials, Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, and Jack Straw, former president of the National Union of Students. All became Labour cabinet ministers. Rimington admitted MI5 checked files on prospective MPs to see if 'there is anything in there of importance ... so the prime minister can take it into account when he forms his government'. She insisted that individuals on whom MI5 had files should not be allowed to see them. She later acknowledged that during the cold war MI5 was 'overenthusiastic', opening files on people who were not 'actively threatening the state'. She also went as far as to accuse successive governments of wanting to 'live in a police state', introducing more and more anti-terrorism laws, including plans to hold terror suspects for 42 hours without charge. Such laws, she said, combined with 'war on terror' rhetoric, played into the hands of those they intended to deter. She described the response to the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001 as a 'huge overreaction'. Looking back, she said: 'I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was, as far as I was concerned, another one.' Asked what impact the 2003 invasion of Iraq had on the terrorist threat, she replied: 'Well, I think all one can do is look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take.' She was born Stella Whitehouse in south London; her father was a draughtsman, her mother a midwife and nurse. Her father had fought at Passchendaele in the first world war. 'He was never able to relax after that, a very uneasy soul, difficult to get close to,' she recalled. He worked in the steel industry in Barrow and then in the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire borders. 'Unfortunately, when we moved out of London, we always seemed to move to places that were priorities for German bombing,' she said, describing her childhood as 'disturbed and frightening … I was four when we left London as the second world war broke out … as the Barrow blitz commenced: hiding under the stairs, windows were blown out and ceilings fell down … Claustrophobia plagued me into adulthood. I struggled to sit in the middle of rows and always stood by the door on the underground. At all times I needed an exit route.' Educated at Nottingham high school, Stella studied English at Edinburgh University, then archive administration at Liverpool University. Her first job was as an assistant archivist in Worcestershire county council's record office. In 1963 she married John Rimington, her childhood boyfriend, who became a high-flying civil servant, and was posted to the British high commission in Delhi responsible for economic and trade relations with India. It was there that, in 1965, she 'fell into intelligence', as she later put it. She was approached by the resident MI5 officer who offered her a job as a typist. 'I was holding coffee mornings and the like … I was grateful for an end to the boredom,' she said. She joined the staff of MI5 in 1969 after the couple returned to Britain. In a colourful passage in her autobiography, to which she gave the provocative title Open Secret, she recounts how she came up against what she described as a 'strict sex-discrimination policy' in MI5. She wrote: 'It did not matter that I had a degree, that I had already worked for several years in the public service, at a higher grade than it was offering, or that I was 34 years old. The policy was that men were recruited as what were called 'officers' and women had their own career structure, a second-class career, as 'assistant officers'. 'They did all sorts of support work, but not the sharp-end intelligence gathering operations.' She vigorously challenged MI5's prevailing culture so successfully that John Major, the then prime minister, approved her appointment as director general – head of the agency – in 1992. After she retired in 1996, she became the target of bitter attacks by Whitehall mandarins and the SAS for daring to write her autobiography. In a ferocious diatribe, David Lyon, colonel commandant of the SAS, wrote in a letter to the Times: 'All members of the country's security forces should keep silent about their work, for life. When there is a requirement to publish, it is the government alone who should do so.' Rimington, he added, could expect 'a long period of being persona non grata, both to many she has worked with and many she has yet to meet among the general public'. She said she received a 'bollocking' from the cabinet secretary, Richard Wilson, and was told to remove any reference to the SAS despite widespread media coverage of their operations, including the well-documented killing of three unarmed members of the IRA in Gibraltar. In an attempt to sabotage her memoir, a copy of the manuscript was leaked to the Sun newspaper. The woman who had spent years deploying the secret state described the process of vetting her memoir as 'Kafkaesque', an experience that, she said, led her to understand 'how persecuted you can feel when things are going on that you don't actually have any control over'. Rimington said she decided to write her memoir to explain to her daughters, Sophie and Harriet, why she was never around as a mother. She separated from her husband when the children were young, but divorce 'seemed a faff' as she put it. They became friendly in old age and lived together during lockdown. 'It's a good recipe for marriage,' she said looking back. 'Split up, live separately, and return to it later.' After completing her memoir she turned to fiction, writing thrillers starring Liz Carlyle, a female agent sometimes referred to as her alter ego, and later Manon Tyler, a CIA agent. In 2011 she chaired the Booker prize panel, when she provoked a controversy by saying 'readability' and an ability to 'zip along' were important criteria for judging books. Literary critics suggested other things such as quality might be taken into account, adding that the shortlist was the worst in decades. Rimington responded by comparing the publishing world with the KGB and its use of 'black propaganda, destabilisation operations, plots and double agents'. Rimington was made Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1996. After she retired she held a number of corporate posts including a directorship of Marks & Spencer, and was chair of the Institute of Cancer Research. She was widely credited as the inspiration for Dame Judi Dench's M in the James Bond films. She is survived by her husband and two daughters. Stella Rimington, intelligence officer, born 13 May 1935; died 3 August 2025
Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Does Whitehall really have nothing better to do than spend our money on ‘trans listening circles'?
It's possible they'll be too busy attending events like the 'Invisible Women' presentation that took place there at 10.30am on a weekday, according to those Freedom of Information documents. (And I'm curious to know which particular brand of rubbish was being peddled here? Also, was it hosted by invisible women, attended by these ghostly apparitions – or both?). Then, with that unmissable 'Race equality allyship working group catch-up' at 4pm, you could see how it might be hard to get much work done in between. 'Allyship'. That's some premium-level balderdash we're subsidising. It's just as well there's no direct nuclear threat from Vladimir Putin or indeed a pressing issue with soaring energy bills in the UK, because over at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, employees may have been too immersed in a 'listening circle for trans colleagues and allies' at 11am on May 7 to be thinking about, you know, energy cost and security. They'll get around to reviewing the key defence infrastructure around our undersea gas pipelines once they've completed their more important work: promoting understanding, empathy and inclusivity in the workplace. While we're on inclusivity (and when are we not?), anyone wondering why the Department for Transport took so long to produce its recent evaluation of HS1 may have their answer. With their nine-to-fives as jam-packed with LGBT events as they appear to be, it's astonishing the department managed to publish the report at all. And should we really be expecting them to get stuck down in the weeds with the UK's only operational purpose-built high-speed line, when they could be having 'conversations on lesbian identity'? Is it not, similarly, asking a little too much of the Department for Education to prioritise issues such as persistent teacher shortages, funding gaps and rising pupil absenteeism over yet more 'sapphic sounds' events? Someone needs to explain the overwhelming need for musical sapphism in Whitehall's day-to-day life. I think I speak for all of us when I say: I'm confused. Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers' Alliance, is not amused: 'Taxpayers are sick of seeing staff time wasted on pointless meetings and irrelevant events, none of which benefits the Britons paying for them.' It's hard to remember a time when the government was faced with more crises than it is today, and in almost every policy area, Keck points out, 'with illegal immigration skyrocketing, energy bills through the roof and the economy in the doldrums. 'Yet pusillanimous pen pushers are devoting huge amounts of their time to ignoring these issues and focusing on their own pet projects. Ministers need to take on The Blob and demand an unconditional end to events and meetings during working hours.' The Blob is currently away from its desk celebrating 'Pansexual Visibility Day'. But it will get back to ministers in due course.
