A British royal historian who said slavery was not genocide has quit his honorary position at Cambridge University and been dropped by his publisher HarperCollins. The comments from Professor David Starkey came during a period of soul searching in Britain over its colonial past.

The U.K. government is to exempt some leading U.S. actors, such as Tom Cruise, and crew from its 14-day travel quarantine to allow Hollywood blockbusters to resume production. The move follows a conversation between culture secretary Oliver Dowden and Cruise earlier this week about restarting filming on the latest “Mission: Impossible” movie. The exemption will allow “Mission: Impossible 7” – starring and produced by Cruise – to restart filming at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, near London.

As Germany emerged from its coronavirus lockdown in May, police commandos pulled up outside a rural property owned by a sergeant major in the special forces, the country’s most highly trained and secretive military unit. They brought a digger. The sergeant major’s nickname was Little Sheep. He was suspected of being a neo-Nazi. Buried in the garden, the police found two kilograms of PETN plastic explosives, a detonator, a fuse, an AK-47, a silencer, two knives, a crossbow and thousands of rounds of ammunition, much of it believed to have been stolen from the German military.

VanMoof, the Dutch electric bicycle brand, is officially too hot for (French) television. The company’s first TV advertisement was banned in France for its negative portrayal of car traffic and pollution. The commercial was rejected by France’s advertising regulatory authority, ARPP, because it “discredit[s] the automobile sector [...] while creating a climate of anxiety.”

Dead dolphins are washing up on France’s Atlantic coast in such high numbers that local populations of the mammals are at risk, according to marine biologists. The overwhelming majority of dolphins are found drowned in the nets of fishing trawlers, and post mortems often show fractures, broken tails and flippers, and deep incisions cut into their skin by the nets.

Italy on Saturday reported eight more novel coronavirus-related fatalities – the lowest daily rise since the beginning of the outbreak in early March – bringing the country's death toll to 34,716. The record low in daily deaths, however, contrasts with news of new clusters that recently emerged across the country, from north to south. Authorities and experts worry that the start of the summer season, with huge crowds of Italians traveling to holiday sites, could spark a second wave of contagion.

France's armed forces ministry has provided local authorities with a guide to 100 Africans who fought for France in World War Two, so that streets and squares may be named after them. France's reappraisal of its colonial past is fuelled by the global anti-racism protests and Black Lives Matter. There are many Senegalese and North African soldiers on the list, but none from what was French Indo-China.

European Union officials confirmed on Friday that the EU would bar American travelers when it reopens its external borders on July 1, The New York Times reported. The US is among dozens of countries deemed too risky because their coronavirus outbreaks are poorly contained, according to The Times.

Europe's "blanket job-retention schemes" mean that around 9 million workers risk becoming unemployed in 2021, according to asset management firm Allianz.

Scientists in Italy have found traces of the new coronavirus in wastewater collected from Milan and Turin in December 2019 - suggesting COVID-19 was already circulating in northern Italy before China reported the first cases.

The UK government is considering steps to end its ongoing financial support for fossil fuels overseas after using £3.5bn of public funds to support polluting projects since signing the Paris climate agreement. Senior civil servants are understood to be planning a new climate strategy that would phase out financial support for oil and gas infrastructure in developing countries ahead of the UN’s Cop26 international climate talks next year.

White-tailed eagles — one of the largest birds of prey with a 2.5-metre wingspan — have been spotted for the first time in 240 years soaring above the North York Moors. The incredible creatures, also known as Sea Eagles, went extinct in England in the early 20th century due to illegal killing. But thanks to a pioneering project by Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, there is new hope for the majestic birds.

We’ve been here before: a pandemic, income inequality, economic stagnation and climate change brought down Medieval Europe

As the coronavirus crisis continues to take a terrible toll on lives and livelihoods worldwide, the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) has warned the EU's forthcoming Biodiversity Strategy will be an early test of whether Europe is taking nature, including biodiversity, seriously in its economic thinking.

The European Union will contract 7.4% in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic brings the worst economic shock since the Great Depression in the 1930s, the European Commission said Wednesday. The executive arm of the EU has released its latest economic forecasts — the first estimates since European countries introduced lockdown measures to stop the spread of the virus. In February, the European Commission estimated a 1.4% rise in GDP for the EU this year.

In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Europe has become an unexpected battleground for a different kind of threat: a propaganda war. As Beijing tries to shape the narrative of the outbreak, it has ramped up its efforts to influence how Europeans think and talk about China and the pandemic in ways that are alarming policymakers across the bloc.

Some 1,500 years ago, the Plague of Justinian spread via ships from North Africa to Europe and Asia, killing up to 50 million people.

One in five Europeans are exposed to harmful levels of noise pollution, and this number is set to rise in the next decade, with road traffic the biggest culprit, a new study has shown. Excessive noise can cause physical and mental illness, and is associated with higher levels of heart disease, stress and sleeplessness.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to reduce the role of Huawei in the U.K.'s 5G network in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, according to reports in the Guardian and the Telegraph. Johnson has instructed officials to draft plans that would reduce Huawei's involvement in building the U.K.'s 5G phone network to zero by 2023, the Telegraph reported.

Despite the US leaving the negotiations, European Union officials say it will implement its own plans to tax digital services from Apple, Google, and more, unless a global deal is achieved this year. Having previously supported the European Union's aim of a global tax on digital services, the US has now withdrawn from negotiations. The EU says that it hopes a global agreement can still be achieved, but if not, it will implement the taxation plans of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) anyway.