The UK government has returned to an issue musicians have been discussing since Brexit: how to make working in Europe easier again.

Its new music strategy, Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music, refers to the first high-level meeting on culture between the UK and the European Commission, held back in March, and promises continued work to reduce the barriers faced by British artists touring the EU.

The timing is significant. The UK is preparing to rejoin Erasmus+ in 2027, while London and Brussels are pursuing a broader reset of post-Brexit relations.

Music offers an interesting test of that reset. The UK has left the European Union, but its musicians have not become any less European.

British performers still tour the continent, while European musicians continue to work in British orchestras. The musical ecosystem survived Brexit. Navigating it became considerably more difficult.

A UK government study estimates that additional barriers to EU touring between 2022 and 2024 cost Britain £208m in lost economic output and the equivalent of 2,490 full-time jobs.

A Musicians’ Union survey found that, among musicians who had previously worked in the EU, 75 percent reported fewer bookings and 72 percent lower EU income.

More than half said EU touring was no longer financially viable.

But music reveals something more interesting than another item on the list of Brexit consequences. Brexit drew a political border through a professional community that had operated internationally for centuries.

Musicians were ‘European’ before EU

European musical mobility did not begin with freedom of movement. In the early 19th century, theatre companies crossed linguistic and political borders. Imperial Russia accommodated French and German theatrical companies alongside Russian performers, while Italian opera was embedded in its musical life.

Individual musicians were equally mobile. John Field, the Irish pianist and composer at the centre of my own research, trained in London before spending most of his adult career in the Russian Empire. The German pianist Adolf Henselt settled there and became deeply involved in Russian musical education.

These were not exceptions: musical life itself was international. The EU did not invent that circulation. European integration merely made it administratively easier. 

Brexit did not make British musicians unwelcome in Europe, or European musicians unwelcome in Britain. It changed the cost of maintaining those relationships.

For an international star with professional support, another permit can be an inconvenience. For a young ensemble deciding whether four European concerts are financially viable, it can determine whether the tour happens at all.

The border appears before the first tour

The consequences begin before professional life. A conservatoire is not simply somewhere a musician obtains a qualification. It is where professional relationships form. A student may meet a future ensemble partner, while an exchange can produce an opportunity years later.

The post-Brexit figures are striking. The number of new EU students entering UK higher education fell from 66,685 in 2020–21 to 28,375 in 2023–24 — a decline of around 57 percent, according to figures based on HESA data.

Britain’s Turing Scheme supported outward mobility, but did not reproduce Erasmus+’s reciprocal structure.

The UK’s return to Erasmus+ in 2027 therefore matters beyond universities. In music, today’s exchange student can become tomorrow’s professional collaborator.

Meanwhile, Brussels is actively spending money to encourage cultural mobility. Creative Europe has a €2.44bn budget for 2021–27. Its Pan-European Cultural Entities programme specifically supports orchestras working across borders to develop young musicians: around €11m was allocated to five projects in 2024, expected to involve more than 1,000 young musicians from at least 20 participating countries. The policy assumption is revealing: movement itself creates value.

Put musicians into the reset

At the 2025 UK-EU summit, London and Brussels explicitly recognised “the value of travel and cultural and artistic exchanges, including the activities of touring artists.”

The new high-level cultural dialogue provides a forum to turn that promise into policy. Cultural mobility should become a permanent part of the UK-EU reset.

London and Brussels should use the dialogue to identify touring requirements that can realistically be simplified and work with member states towards greater consistency for short-term cultural engagements.

Emerging artists should also be explicitly considered in the proposed Youth Experience Scheme. The commission’s original proposal envisaged a time-limited route for people aged 18 to 30 to live on the other side of the English Channel. Paid cultural work should be clearly accommodated in whatever agreement emerges.

A 24-year-old violinist should not discover that a programme intended to restore opportunities for young Europeans works perfectly until somebody pays her to perform.

None of this means recreating freedom of movement through the orchestra pit. Britain chose to leave the EU and cannot expect every privilege of membership.

The argument is more practical. British and European cultural industries remain intertwined, and unnecessary friction is most expensive for those least able to absorb it. Major institutions employ administrators. International stars have managers. A young quartet may have four instruments and a group chat.

Two centuries ago, Field travelled from Ireland through London and built a career in Russia. Henselt left Germany and became part of Russian musical education. They did so long before Eurostar, Erasmus+ or Creative Europe.

Two hundred years later, crossing the continent is faster. Building a European career need not become harder. The UK has left the EU. Its musicians have not left European musical life.

As London and Brussels shape their new relationship, cultural mobility should be treated as part of its infrastructure. Musicians will continue to cross the Channel. The question is how costly we choose to make it.

A 500-year-old religious triptych by Andrea Previtali has been brought together for the first time in almost two centuries. The reunion forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition examining the painter’s place in the Venetian Renaissance.

Three panels of a Renaissance altarpiece, separated for almost 200 years, have been reunited in Italy for an exhibition opening on Saturday, 17th October, offering visitors a rare opportunity to see a work by Andrea Previtali in its original arrangement.

The painting, created around 1515 for the Church of the Annunciation in Serina, near Bergamo, has been reconstructed through cooperation between the Diocese of Bergamo and the Museo Villa Bassi Rathgeb in Abano Terme, close to Padua. One panel, depicting a bishop saint, belongs to the museum’s permanent collection, while the remaining two have been brought together for the exhibition.

The reunion was confirmed on 16 October by Italy’s Ministry of Culture heritage authority. It forms the central attraction of Andrea Previtali: Disciple of Giovanni Bellini, which runs until 7th February 2027 and examines the career of a painter who worked between two important artistic centres of Renaissance Italy.

Reconstructing a Renaissance Altarpiece

The three panels originally formed a triptych, a type of religious painting consisting of a central image flanked by two wings. Such works were commissioned for churches and private chapels, where they served as devotional objects and demonstrations of the artistic ambitions of their patrons.

Over succeeding centuries, many Renaissance altarpieces were dismantled, removed from their original settings or dispersed among private collections and museums. Their individual panels could subsequently be displayed as independent works, losing much of the relationship between the images originally intended by the artist.

The Previtali triptych provides an example of how those connections can be recovered.

The Museo Villa Bassi Rathgeb holds the panel depicting a bishop saint as part of the collection assembled by Roberto Bassi Rathgeb, an art historian and collector who contributed to renewed scholarly interest in Previtali.

His collection, donated to the municipality of Abano Terme between 1972 and 1980, contains important examples of painting from the Bergamo and Brescia schools.

The collaboration with the Diocese of Bergamo has now made it possible to display the bishop saint alongside the two surviving companion panels from the original altarpiece. Their reunion allows the work to be studied as a complete composition rather than as three separate paintings.

It also offers an opportunity to reassess Previtali’s decisions concerning the relationship between figures, religious symbolism and the architectural arrangement of devotional paintings.

A Pupil of Giovanni Bellini

Andrea Previtali was born around 1480 in Valle Imagna, in the territory of Bergamo, before moving to Venice, where he entered the workshop of Giovanni Bellini.

Bellini was among the most influential painters of the Venetian Renaissance, known for his treatment of colour, light and religious subjects. His workshop trained artists who would help establish the distinctive visual language of sixteenth-century Venetian painting.

Previtali’s connection to his master is documented in an inscription on his 1502 painting Madonna and Child with Donor, now held by the Musei Civici di Padova.

The artist described himself as a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, a declaration that has become an important piece of evidence for reconstructing his early career.

The new exhibition explores that relationship by displaying works by Previtali alongside paintings associated with the artistic environment in which he trained.

Among the loans is Bellini’s Saint Justina, from the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan. Although painted before Previtali’s mature career, it demonstrates the treatment of sacred figures, colour and composition that influenced succeeding generations.

The exhibition also includes works connected with Francesco Bissolo, Girolamo da Santacroce, Palma il Vecchio and Giovanni Busi, known as Cariani.

Together, they illustrate the movement of artistic ideas between Venice, Bergamo and Brescia during a period in which painters increasingly travelled between workshops, cities and patrons.

Venice, Bergamo and the Changing Renaissance

Previtali’s career developed at a time when the artistic traditions of northern Italy were undergoing considerable change.

The Venetian school placed particular emphasis on colour and atmosphere, while painters working in Lombardy drew on different approaches to portraiture, religious narrative and landscape.

Previtali’s paintings reflect both traditions. His subjects included Madonnas, religious gatherings, portraits and landscapes, often combining carefully observed human figures with detailed natural backgrounds.

After returning to Bergamo, he encountered the work of Lorenzo Lotto, whose approach to portraiture and religious painting introduced further stylistic developments.

The exhibition therefore examines Previtali not simply as a follower of Bellini, but as an artist whose work developed through exchanges between different regional schools.

It also includes Renaissance portraits, among them a painting on loan from the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo.

A separate section examines the practical techniques employed in Renaissance workshops, using physical and digital displays to explain how artists prepared, constructed and completed their paintings.

Such research has become increasingly important in the study and preservation of Europe’s Old Master paintings, allowing historians to reconstruct relationships between works that have survived in different institutions.

The restoration and presentation of historic collections also forms part of the wider debate about protecting Europe’s cultural heritage.

The Previtali exhibition has been organised by the municipality of Abano Terme in cooperation with the University of Padua and the Italian heritage authorities. It is curated by Raffaele Campion and Barbara Maria Savy.

Visitors will be able to see the reunited triptych at the Museo Villa Bassi Rathgeb from 17th October until 7th February 2027. The exhibition provides a rare chance to examine the three panels together and to understand how a religious commission created more than five centuries ago fitted into the artistic culture of Renaissance northern Italy.

A new exhibition in Belgium brings together a 1956 painting by Paul Delvaux and its original preparatory drawing, revealing how the artist transformed his composition and concealed elements beneath the finished work.

Scientific examination of a painting by Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux has revealed significant changes to its original composition, including figures and other details concealed beneath layers of paint. The findings are being presented in a new exhibition opening on 16 October at Musée L in Louvain-la-Neuve.

The exhibition, La Ville lunaire II: The Hidden Side of Paul Delvaux’s Painting, examines a work completed in 1956 and held in the museum’s permanent collection. Through X-ray imaging, infrared reflectography and ultraviolet examination, researchers have been able to investigate the artist’s working methods and compare the finished painting with an original preparatory drawing.

The exhibition, which runs until 7 February 2027, follows the acquisition of the drawing by the King Baudouin Foundation in 2024. Its subsequent deposit at Musée L has made it possible to examine the two works together and reconstruct the development of a composition that underwent substantial alterations.

A Painting Concealing Its Own History

Completed in June 1956, La Ville lunaire II depicts a mysterious nocturnal landscape, with a long avenue, buildings, streetlamps and figures arranged within an unsettling architectural setting.

The painting measures approximately 89 by 139 centimetres and was executed in oil on a fibreboard panel. It entered the museum’s collection in 1990 through a bequest from Dr Charles Delsemme.

Its carefully constructed perspective and unusual treatment of space reflect Delvaux’s interest in creating scenes that appear familiar while remaining detached from ordinary reality.

The museum’s collection records describe the work as a strange nocturnal landscape, with wooden barriers and a sequence of streetlamps establishing its distinctive spatial arrangement.

Yet the painting visible today differs considerably from the composition Delvaux originally envisaged.

Earlier technical examinations had already established that important details were covered during the painting process. The new exhibition brings those findings into direct comparison with the preparatory drawing, enabling visitors to see how the artist’s intentions changed.

An auction catalogue published in 2024 identified several elements present in the drawing and concealed in the painting, including a moon in the right-hand sky, a seated figure on the right and two figures wearing robes near the centre.

These changes are significant because they suggest that Delvaux did more than adjust minor details. He altered the population and lighting of the scene, potentially changing how the composition would be experienced by the viewer.

The reasons for those decisions remain uncertain.

How Scientific Technology Reveals Hidden Paintings

Modern conservation techniques allow researchers to examine works of art without removing the paint that covers earlier stages of their creation.

Infrared reflectography can reveal underdrawings and certain changes concealed beneath surface paint, depending on the materials used by the artist. X-ray imaging can detect differences in the composition of pigments and structures below the visible surface.

Ultraviolet examination provides further information about surface materials and alterations, including some later interventions.

When combined with documentary evidence, these methods help researchers distinguish between an artist’s initial design, revisions made during painting and changes introduced after completion.

The Musée L exhibition uses these techniques to investigate what art historians call pentimenti — visible or detectable alterations that record an artist changing their mind during the creative process.

The preparatory drawing, measuring approximately 28 by 45 centimetres, provides an additional reference point. Executed in ink and pencil, it contains elements that were subsequently revised or painted over in the final composition.

Displayed alongside the finished work, it allows visitors to follow the artist’s decisions from the preliminary design to the version that eventually entered the museum’s collection.

The technical findings also demonstrate the importance of preserving preparatory studies, which can contain information absent from completed paintings.

Paul Delvaux and the Belgian Surrealist Tradition

Born in Antheit in 1897, Paul Delvaux became one of Belgium’s best-known twentieth-century painters, developing a distinctive artistic language associated with surrealism.

His paintings frequently depict classical buildings, railway stations, deserted streets and solitary figures, often arranged in environments where architectural precision contrasts with an atmosphere of uncertainty.

He was influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, whose deserted urban spaces and dramatic perspectives helped establish the visual language of metaphysical painting.

Delvaux’s relationship with de Chirico has been examined extensively by art historians, including Joël Roucloux, whose study of La Ville lunaire II analysed its architectural perspective, shadows and the psychological effect of its composition.

The painting’s apparently moonlit setting is particularly interesting in light of the concealed moon identified by technical examination.

The absence of that celestial body from the final visible composition changes the relationship between the painting’s title and its visual content, leaving the viewer to interpret the source of its unusual illumination.

This approach distinguishes Delvaux from other Belgian surrealists, including René Magritte, whose work frequently relied on recognisable objects placed in logically contradictory situations.

For Delvaux, architecture, perspective and the arrangement of human figures were equally important in constructing a world that appears coherent but resists conventional interpretation.

A New Examination of a Familiar Work

The exhibition forms part of Musée L’s programme devoted to research into its permanent collections, rather than a conventional retrospective of the artist’s career.

Its central purpose is to explain how a single painting developed, from its first drawn composition through successive revisions to its completed form.

The research has been supported by the Jacqueline Delcourt-Nonkels Fund, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation.

For visitors, the opportunity is to examine not only a painting by one of Belgium’s leading surrealists, but also the evidence of the artistic decisions that shaped it.

The exhibition is open at Musée L in Louvain-la-Neuve from 16 October 2026 to 7 February 2027. By presenting the original drawing, technical images and finished painting together, the museum offers a detailed examination of Delvaux’s methods and the changes he made to one of his most carefully constructed nocturnal scenes.

Excavations at the ancient Roman city of Altinum have revealed the probable remains of an early Christian cathedral and bishop’s palace, offering new evidence about the origins of Venice and the transformation of its lagoon settlements.

Archaeologists working near Venice have identified what they believe to be the remains of a 1,600-year-old cathedral and an adjoining episcopal palace, resolving a longstanding question about the location of one of the region’s earliest Christian centres.

The discovery was announced on 15 October by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, following excavations at Altinum, an important Roman settlement on the mainland near the Venetian lagoon. The foundations of a substantial religious complex have emerged from an area where ancient written accounts had long indicated the existence of a cathedral, although its precise location had remained unknown.

The findings suggest that the church was constructed between the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD, making it the earliest Christian church so far identified archaeologically in the Venetian territory. The researchers believe the complex provides physical evidence of the period when Christianity was becoming an important political and administrative force in the declining Roman Empire.

A Cathedral Hidden Beneath a Roman City

The newly identified church was a rectangular structure approximately 30 metres long and 20 metres wide, without an apse and orientated towards the east. Its layout differs from the surrounding Roman street grid, reflecting the religious requirements of the early Christian community.

The architectural arrangement resembles early churches in the northern Adriatic region, particularly those associated with Aquileia, which was an important centre of Christianity during late antiquity.

An adjoining building, distinguished by its substantial foundations and a complex arrangement of internal rooms, has been provisionally identified as the bishop’s palace. Archaeologists believe it may have stood two storeys high, with residential accommodation for senior clergy above rooms potentially associated with privileged burials.

Among the most revealing discoveries is the extensive reuse of stone paving blocks taken from the Roman streets. These materials were incorporated into the foundations of the ecclesiastical buildings, providing evidence of how the city was being physically reorganised during the transition from Roman to Christian administration.

The university’s researchers suggest that the removal of public paving materials may also indicate the authority exercised by the bishop over urban infrastructure. This interpretation would place the emerging Church at the centre of the city’s political transformation.

Ancient Written Accounts Supported by Archaeology

The existence of an early Christian cathedral at Altinum had been documented in letters written by Saint Jerome, one of the most influential Christian scholars of the late Roman period.

Writing in AD 396, Jerome referred to the religious activities of Nepotian, a priest associated with Heliodorus, the first bishop of Altinum. His descriptions included the maintenance of church furnishings, walls, floors and sacred vessels, suggesting an established and relatively prosperous Christian institution.

Until now, however, archaeologists had struggled to connect those accounts to a particular building.

The latest excavations, combining evidence collected during the 2025 and 2026 campaigns, have provided what researchers consider a convincing identification of the ecclesiastical complex.

The excavation is directed by Diego Calaon of Ca’ Foscari University and co-directed by Elisa Possenti of the University of Trento. Their work has brought together earlier archaeological records and newly examined foundations, including sections exposed during investigations in previous decades.

Researchers have also identified a burial area dating from the sixth and seventh centuries. Many graves were disturbed when construction materials were removed from the abandoned complex, but surviving human remains offer opportunities for further scientific investigation.

Radiocarbon dating, anthropological examinations and additional geophysical surveys are planned to establish a more detailed chronology and search for other elements of the religious complex, including its baptistery.

What the Discovery Reveals About Venice’s Origins

The historical importance of Altinum extends beyond the cathedral itself.

The ancient settlement was an important Roman commercial centre with connections to the waterways of the northern Adriatic. As political, environmental and demographic conditions changed during late antiquity, its population and institutions gradually shifted towards settlements within the lagoon.

One of the most important destinations was Torcello, which later became an early centre of Venetian civilisation.

Traditional accounts have often portrayed the creation of lagoon settlements as a response to barbarian invasions, with mainland inhabitants fleeing to isolated islands for protection.

The latest archaeological findings support a more complicated process.

Research at Altinum and Torcello indicates that the movement of people, religious institutions and construction materials was gradual and organised rather than the consequence of a single catastrophic event.

The cathedral appears to have been systematically dismantled during the first half of the seventh century, with substantial quantities of its stone and brick transferred to developing lagoon communities.

A surviving inscription records the establishment of Torcello’s cathedral in AD 639, providing an important chronological reference for the movement of ecclesiastical authority.

The findings add to the wider study of Europe’s surviving archaeological and architectural heritage, particularly the transformation of Roman settlements into medieval urban centres.

They also demonstrate how archaeological evidence can challenge historical narratives constructed centuries after the events they describe.

Much of the late-antique landscape at Altinum disappeared because of centuries of agricultural activity and the systematic removal of reusable building materials. In many cases, the excavators are studying trenches left by the extraction of foundations rather than surviving walls.

Further investigations may determine the complete extent of the episcopal complex and clarify the chronology of its abandonment.

For the first time, however, researchers can locate the religious buildings associated with Altinum’s earliest Christian bishops and trace their connection to the communities from which medieval Venice eventually emerged.

Excavations in Germany’s Ruhr region have uncovered evidence of a substantial underground mining operation that predates the area’s industrial expansion. The discovery is providing new clues to the origins of European coal mining.

Archaeologists have identified a previously unknown coal-mining tunnel stretching at least 130 metres beneath woodland near Sprockhövel in western Germany. The remains provide evidence of coordinated underground construction at a time when the Ruhr’s mining industry was still developing, long before the region became synonymous with heavy industry.

The discovery was announced on 15 October by the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL), whose archaeologists are working alongside the German Mining Museum in Bochum and GeoPark Ruhrgebiet. The team says its findings shed light on tunnelling techniques used before the eighteenth century, although the newly identified passage has not yet been given a precise scientific date.

At Haßlinghausen, a forest floor conceals old shafts, spoil heaps and depressions left by abandoned mining operations. Researchers did not enter an intact underground gallery. Instead, they identified the location of a collapsed passage by excavating at two former shaft sites and drilling into the surrounding spoil. Subsidence created by the collapse left a recognisable trace above ground.

How Early Miners Organised Underground Work

The evidence suggests a more complex operation than miners simply following exposed seams into the earth. Construction shafts were sunk at intervals along the proposed tunnel. Workers descended through them and excavated separate stretches underground, later joining those sections into a continuous passage.

This method allowed several groups to work simultaneously rather than advancing from a single entrance. It also demanded planning and considerable labour. The filled-in shafts and disturbed soil are still visible in the excavated sections, enabling specialists to reconstruct the miners’ methods even though much of the original tunnel has collapsed.

Till Kasielke of GeoPark Ruhrgebiet explained that the construction shafts were located beside the underground route and then filled after the gallery was completed. Jennifer Garner, an archaeologist at the German Mining Museum, said the excavations would provide material for scientific dating and a better understanding of the effort required to build the structures.

The latest work follows a 2025 investigation of a separate, approximately 70-metre tunnel nearby. That earlier feature reached a coal seam some ten metres below ground. Researchers suspected it might predate the seventeenth century because it appeared to have been overlooked during later mining activity. The newly identified 130-metre passage is a distinct discovery.

The chronology matters because horizontal tunnels changed the possibilities of coal extraction. Early miners could reach seams by digging pits or inclined shafts, but groundwater increasingly obstructed work at depth. Drainage galleries allowed water to escape, making deeper workings more practical and potentially extending the life of individual mining sites.

An Industrial Region’s Earlier History

The Ruhr is usually associated with the vast collieries, factories and transport infrastructure that drove Germany’s expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet coal was extracted locally during the Middle Ages. The transition from small workings to organised subterranean networks remains poorly documented, partly because written records from the earliest periods are scarce.

The archaeological research programme, which began with related investigations in 2024, is intended to address that gap. The team has excavated soil layers associated with old shafts, and the recovered material may help establish when specific construction techniques were introduced. For now, it would be premature to assign the new passage a medieval date.

At Essen, the UNESCO-listed Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex preserves the architecture and machinery of the Ruhr’s later industrial era. The remains at Sprockhövel represent a different historical record: temporary shafts, collapsed passages and waste deposits left by miners whose operations preceded industrial-scale coal production.

Across Europe, such landscapes have become an important part of cultural heritage. EU Today has previously reported on the preservation of Belgium’s Bois du Cazier colliery, where 262 people died in the 1956 mining disaster. In Sprockhövel, the focus is on a much earlier workforce, whose organisation and technical knowledge must be reconstructed from the ground itself.

Further dating and analysis will determine whether the newly identified tunnel pushes back the known chronology of organised drainage and gallery construction in the Ruhr. The excavations have already established that a substantial underground project once operated beneath a forest whose surface retains remarkably little indication of the work carried out there.

Image credit: LWL-Archäologie für Westfalen / Manuel Zeiler

The HBO series served as a stand-in for everything wrong with white millennial women during its original run. Then Gen Z started watching.

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She started taking action against Hitler as a teenager and never stopped until her death in a concentration camp. Berlin's Blücherplatz is now being renamed after her.

The artist’s macabre short works have been adapted into eerily freaky 30-minute bites for television. We got a sneak preview of the next episode airing on HBO Max.

While the world debates the dangers of artificial intelligence, filmmaker Doris Dörrie explores how humanoid robots could change the way we deal with aging, caregiving and how people choose to die.

Dorothy places a trans woman’s desire, identity, and capacity for love at the centre of a romance, challenging decades of stereotypical representation of transgender persons in Tamil cinema.

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A recent ISEAS Fulcrum commentary by Hoang Thi Ha and Pham Thi Phuong Thao offers a useful mapping of how Chinese culture and economic opportunity are drawing in young Vietnamese. The authors are right that this bottom-up attraction is unfolding alongside renewed official promotion of people-to-people ties, and that long-standing sensitivities about China have not […]

The post Why Chinese culture lands so fluently and freely in Vietnam appeared first on Asia Times.

Some medieval books can’t be read by anyone, and one of them has become almost a trademark of the genre: the Voynich manuscript, kept at Yale University and dated to the 15th century. It has inspired novels and theories of every kind. Specialists often place another volume right behind it on the list of enigmas, […]

Graham Linehan, the Father Ted creator, may have been unfairly arrested by the Metropolitan Police because of his gender-critical views, the police watchdog has said.

The post Metropolitan Police May Have Unfairly Arrested Linehan Over Gender Critical Views, Says Watchdog appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

A backlash is building against an EU ‘omnibus’ bill that seeks to make it easier to authorise and use pesticides across the bloc. 

MEPs are still yet to set a date to vote on the European Commission’s proposal to extend how long pesticide active substances can stay approved in the EU, amid a series of protest letters from scientists, UN health experts, and divisions among member states. 

EI parliament’s environment and agriculture committees were originally expected to hold a joint vote on a compromise text on 5 October, but shelved that date without proposing another as this article went to publication. 

Sustained criticism has come from the scientific community. 

Last month, a group of more than 500 scientists signed an open letter to the commission on 16 September demanding a pause on the file pending “an independent assessment, whether carried out by parliament’s own research service or by an equivalent independent body.” 

And last week, a group of five UN health experts penned their own letter to the EU executive.

They warned that the commission’s plan to extend grace periods for products withdrawn on safety grounds, widen derogations for hazardous substances, and restrict the use of the latest independent scientific evidence “seem difficult to reconcile with the precautionary principle and with obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights, including the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas”. 

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This over 1,000-page masterpiece offers a panoramic view of society in the 19th century and exposes the collapse of a merchant family: unrecognized sons, disillusioned daughters and the loss of middle-class ideals.

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