Eurotopics.net

Following the announcement that Elon Musk has been officially tasked with making US authorities "more efficient" under Donald Trump, the British newspaper The Guardian and the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia have closed their accounts on X. Musk bought X, which was Twitter at the time, in 2022, and has since been accused of doing too little to combat fake news on the platform. Europe's press debates whether leaving X is the right approach.

On 17 November 1989, demonstrations at Prague University and Wenceslas Square marked the beginning of the virtually non-violent end of the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia: the Velvet Revolution. Thirty-five years on, how do things stand with the ideals that so many fought for back then?

Donald Trump's latest cabinet appointments are likely the most controversial: he has picked anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and Matt Gaetz, who supports the conspiracy theory that Trump's 2020 election was stolen, as attorney general. Tulsi Gabbard, who accuses the Biden administration of disregarding Russia's "legitimate security interests" in Ukraine, is to head the intelligence services. Commentators assess the risks.

The figurehead of the French right is facing five years in prison and a ban from politics. The public prosecutor's office has accused Marine Le Pen and other party leaders of the former Front National of using EU funds to employ staff who worked directly in France on party affairs between 2004 and 2016 - which constitutes embezzlement of EU funds. A litmus test for the polarised French public.