Eurotopics.net

Mobile phones will be prohibited in French schools when classes begin this autumn. Internet-enabled devices will be banned in most schools, while lycées (upper secondary schools) will be allowed to decide for themselves whether to impose the ban. The move is a bid to improve pupils' concentration in class. Scientists and journalists also take a critical view of how smartphones are influencing our lives.

The conflict between Ankara and Washington is escalating on the trade front. Turkey has raised import tariffs on certain US products by up to 140 percent and announced a boycott on US electronic components, after the US doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium last week. What course will the relations between the two countries take?

Masked youths have set dozens of cars on fire and attacked police officers in several Swedish cities. In Gothenburg alone, at least 88 vehicles were destroyed or damaged. The authorities are not ruling out the possibility that this was a coordinated action. What will the unrest mean for the parliamentary elections at the start of September?

Poland has registered Ludmila Koslovska, president of the NGO Open Dialog Foundation, in the Schengen Information System for "security reasons". Because she is now on the list of persona non grata in this database she was refused entry to Brussels on Thursday and forced to return to her home country, Ukraine. Journalists disagree about the authorities' motives.

Student and civil rights movements came to a head in many countries 50 years ago in 1968. In Western Europe the so-called "68ers" championed democracy, social freedom, emancipation, the environment. During the Prague Spring in the Czech Republic, civil rights activists seeking to make the communist system more democratic were forced to capitulate in the face of Soviet tanks.