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HONG KONG (AP) — Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison in the longest punishment given so far under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city’s dissent.

His co-defendants, six former employees of his Apple Daily newspaper and two activists, received prison terms of between 6 years and 3 months, and 10 years on collusion-related charges.

The Paris public prosecutor had requested a criminal trial, noting that some riot police officers “armed with batons and shields” had “repeatedly struck non-hostile demonstrators” who were on the ground or “trying to come out with their hands raised”.

The officers are charged with aggravated intentional violence by a person holding public authority. If found guilty they face up to seven years in prison and a €100,000 (£87,000) fine.,,(..)

Laurent-Franck Liénard, defending the officers, said context was important and that day “my clients were faced with hundreds and hundreds of demonstrators with an extraordinary level of violence”.

WORO, Nigeria (AP) — Weeks after residents of two Nigerian villages ignored a letter from militants announcing they would come to spread their extreme form of Islam, gunmen arrived on motorbikes and embarked on a 10-hour frenzy of killing.(..)

The attackers went from door to door, shooting and setting homes and shops ablaze in the mostly Muslim villages of Woro and Nuku. Later, residents told The Associated Press, they went into a mosque, announced the call to prayer and shot everyone who turned up.(..)

Nigeria now plays host to multiple armed groups, both homegrown and cross-border. The West African nation has been fighting an insurgency for more than a decade, with Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State of West Africa Province, in addition to several amorphous groups commonly referred to as bandits.(..)

In Woro and Nuku, for instance, the Muslim victims appear to have been killed for resisting the preachings of the extremists.

TALLINN - The Eurozone economy continues to grow at a moderate pace and the labor market remains strong, with recent statistics supporting the assessment that inflation will stabilize near two percent in the foreseeable future, said Madis Müller, President of the Bank of Estonia and member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council.

The Norwegian police have announced the opening of an investigation into Thorbjørn Jagland, who led the Labour government from 1996 to 1997, on suspicion of 'aggravated corruption' in connection with his past ties to the American sex offender.

Jagland was prime minister of Norway from 1996 to 1997 and secretary general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019. Between January 2009 and March 2015, he also chaired the committee that selects the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The police "have opened an investigation into... Thorbjorn Jagland, on suspicion of aggravated corruption," said the Norwegian police's economic crime unit, Okokrim, in a statement.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski delivers a powerful address at the Oslo Security Forum, highlighting the growing Norway-Poland alliance in Northern Europe and the urgent need to strengthen transatlantic defense against Russian aggression. Sikorski emphasizes strategic ooperation, military readiness, and regional security, stressing the critical role of Poland and Norway in safeguarding Europe.

Real intelligence is not about having all the answers, but about staying humble enough to keep questioning, brave enough to stand alone and strong enough to resist the confort of stupidity

Bonhoeffer was accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler and was tried along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office). He was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau in 1906. The son of a famous German psychiatrist, he studied in Berlin and New York City. He left the safety of America to return to Germany and continue his public repudiation of the Nazis, which led to his arrest in 1943. Linked to the group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed, he was hanged in April 1945.

Unlike many of Hitler’s victims, Bonhoeffer was not a Jew, but a Lutheran minister, scholar, and theologian who boldly spoke against Hitler’s policies. Bonhoeffer landed a position in the German government during WWII and subsequently used that position as cover for assassination attempts against Hitler.

While awaiting execution, Bonhoeffer recorded a number of his thoughts in a work we now know as Letters and Papers from Prison. One of these essays, entitled On Stupidity, records some of the problems which Bonhoeffer likely saw at work in Hitler’s rise to power:

“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi is reducing its exposure to US dollar assets and turning to European and emerging markets, its chief executive has said.

Valerie Baudson, whose firm has €2.4 trillion of assets under management, said Amundi would advise clients to shift away from the greenback over the coming year, warning that if US economic policy remains unchanged, “we will go on seeing a [weakening] of the dollar”.

Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi is reducing its exposure to US dollar assets and turning to European and emerging markets, its chief executive has said.

Valerie Baudson, whose firm has €2.4 trillion of assets under management, said Amundi would advise clients to shift away from the greenback over the coming year, warning that if US economic policy remains unchanged, “we will go on seeing a [weakening] of the dollar”.

The year 2025 may come to be seen as a "tipping point" when democratic institutions were severely damaged and human rights suffered as a result, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The global human rights system is in peril," wrote HRW executive director Philippe Bolopion. "Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed."

Here the whole world report available in several languages.

Hungary’s forthcoming election [ April 12] potentially offers a first test of the US government’s new commitment to assist like-minded politicians in Europe. Yet when it comes to gauging just how much help Orban might expect from Washington, the picture is confused(...)

Seeing how fruitless Orban’s visit to Washington in November was, I doubt that any meaningful material support would arrive from the US in the period before the election,” believes Zoltan Ranschburg a freelance political analyst based in Budapest. That said, he adds, “Trump is of course famously unpredictable.”(..)

Dr Garvan Walshe [research associate at the Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels] however, thinks that, depending on the outcome of April’s vote, the true significance of American support for Orban may only be felt after polling day rather than before it. In his view, “if there’s a disputed outcome, they [the Americans] are likely to either stand by Orban, or demand a huge and random price from others in exchange for making him stand down.”

France has finally passed a budget for this year after the minority government survived a series of no-confidence votes in a long-running political saga that has unsettled debt markets and alarmed the country’s European partners.

The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, told parliament on Monday, after months of wrangling, that French people “refuse this disorder and want our institutions to function”.