Eurotopics.net

Two people died and 58 people were injured in several explosions at a liquid petroleum gas (LPG) filling station in the town of Crevedia, near Bucharest, on Saturday. Fire inspectors had already informed the authorities about serious problems at the site in 2020. The station's operating licence had been withdrawn, but it was never shut down. Another case of lethal Romanian corruption, says the national press.

The Dutch company Pluralis, owned by US investor George Soros's Soros Economic Development Fund, has acquired a majority stake in Gremi Media, which publishes the second largest Polish daily, Rzeczpospolita. There had been growing speculation about a sale in recent years, with a Polish state-owned company among the interested parties. The news elicits a divided reaction in the press.

Drugs like hashish and LSD have been openly traded for decades on Pusher Street in Freetown Christiania, the hippy enclave in Copenhagen founded by squatters and anarchists in 1971 and tolerated by the city as an autonomous community. Weapons and hard drugs are forbidden, but for some time now residents have had problems with criminal gangs, and matters came to a head last weekend after a man was shot dead and four other people injured.

Headscarves are already banned in France's schools. Now the country's new education minister Gabriel Attal wants to ban abayas as well. Wearing these ankle-length garments is a "religious gesture", argues Attal, citing France's strict secularism. The press is at odds over the planned ban.

Time and again, Kyiv has stressed its determination to retake Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, by military means. But now President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he believes a political solution is feasible. Once the Ukrainians are on the administrative border with Crimea it would be possible "to push through the demilitarisation of Russia on the territory of Ukrainian Crimea," he said on Sunday. Commentators discuss the initiative.