German authorities are investigating whether a suspected Islamic State fighter seized by Iraqi forces in the war-torn city of Mosul is a 16-year-old German schoolgirl who disappeared from her parents’ home in Saxony a year ago after apparently being groomed by jihadist groups online.

The parents of Linda Wenzel have been searching in vain for their daughter since she vanished from her home in the village of Pulsnitz on 1 July last year after converting to Islam in secret. Video footage which appeared over the weekend seems to match images of Linda. Pictures show an exhausted, dust-covered girl who was arrested by Iraqi forces as part of a group of 20 female Isis supporters from Russia, Turkey, Canada, Libya and Syria who had barricaded themselves with guns and explosives in a tunnel underneath the ruins of Mosul’s Old City. An Iraqi commander in Mosul confirmed to the Guardian that all the arrested women had since been transferred to Baghdad.(theguardian)…[+]

Britain has warned the EU that it could return boatloads of radioactive waste back to the continent if the Brexit talks fail to deliver an agreement on nuclear regulation. In what is being taken in Brussels as a thinly veiled threat, a paper setting out the UK position for the negotiations stresses the right “to return radioactive waste … to its country of origin” should negotiations collapse. The UK paper, detailing the British government’s hopes for future cooperation once it leaves the Euratom treaty, at the same time as leaving the EU, further stresses the “strong mutual interest in ensuring close cooperation in the future”.

Britain currently has a 126-tonne stockpile of radioactive materials originating from EU countries such as Germany, Italy and Sweden. The state-owned Sellafield plant in Cumbria has been reprocessing spent nuclear field from across Europe since the 1970s, producing reusable uranium, plutonium and radioactive waste. Almost a fifth of the UK’s stockpile of civilian plutonium at Sellafield originates from overseas.(theguardian)…[+]

Donald Trump warned darkly of potential voter fraud at the first meeting of his election integrity commission on Wednesday, minutes after its chair, Mike Pence, insisted that the commission had “no preconceived notions”.Speaking to the commission, which comprises a mix of leading conservative advocates for more restrictive voting laws and state and local Democratic officials, Trump said of those state officials refusing to cooperate with the commission: “One has to wonder what are they worried about.” He added: “People would come up to me and expressed concern about voter inconsistencies and irregularities which they saw in some circumstances having to do with very large number of people.”No state has fully cooperated with the commission’s expansive request for data, which includes the social security numbers of voters, though many have partially done so. State election officials have cited privacy concerns and statutory prohibitions in refusing to share all requested data with the commission. These officials include several members of the commission, among them its vice-chair, Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who made the original request for voter data on behalf of the commission.(Theguardian)…[+]

Ecuador has become the first country to publicly admit it will not meet Opec’s production curbs, saying it needs to pump more oil to address its fiscal deficit.

The South American country’s promised cut of 26,000 barrels of oil a day is a tiny drop in the 1.8m b/d that the cartel recently agreed to curb until early 2018, but the decision is still the first crack in the deal’s unity.

“There’s a need for funds for the fiscal treasury, hence we’ve taken the decision to gradually increase output,” oil minister Carlos Perez told local television, adding he did not think the decision would have a big impact on Opec’s output. Italian company plans to drill four exploration wells in the Arctic, which some say will endanger polar bears, bowhead whales and other marine mammals. However, experts said the move could embolden other countries to rethink their commitment to the cuts. Opec producers and non-members including Russia extended but did not deepen production cuts at the end of May, and the oil price subsequently fell by 8% in June.(theguardian)…[+]

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán – who has been accused of stoking antisemitism – has greeted his Israeli counterpart with a public promise to “protect” Hungary’s Jewish community.

Referring to Hungary’s collaboration with the Nazis, the rightwing leader told Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in Budapest on a controversial visit: “We decided in world war two, instead of protecting the Jewish community, to cooperate with the Nazis. This will never happen again.” “I made it clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that the government will secure the Jewish minority and that we have zero tolerance to antisemitism,” he added.

Netanyahu said Orbán had reassured him in unequivocal terms that the Hungarian government stood by the Jewish people, which he called “important words” coming on the back of Orbán’s recent remarks that unnerved Jews in the country. Netanyahu’s visit – the first by an Israeli prime minister since the fall of communism three decades ago – has attracted sharp criticism in Israel, amid a campaign by Orbán’s Fidesz party targeting the Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, to which Netanyahu, who also detests Soros, has lent support.(theguardian)…[+]

Five-hundred-and-forty-seven pupils at one of Germany’s most famous Roman Catholic choir schools were physically or sexually abused between 1945 and 2015, an independent report has found, with some boys likening the institution to “prison, hell or a concentration camp”. The 440-page report chronicles teachers at the school in Regensburg doling out physical violence including slapping boys in the face so hard the marks could be seen the next day, whipping them with wooden sticks and violin bows and subjecting them to severe beatings. Boys who tried to escape the Regensburger Domspatzen choir were hauled back to the school and beaten and humiliated in front of other boys, it said. Allegations of abuse at the institution, which traces its history back 1,000 years and tours the world to perform choral music, surfaced in 2010.After criticism of the ensuing investigation, the diocese, which acknowledged on Tuesday it had “made mistakes”, commissioned the lawyer Ulrich Weber in 2015 to put together the independent report.

Georg Ratzinger, 93, brother of the former pope Benedict XVI, led the choir from 1964 to 1994. He acknowledged in 2010 that he had slapped pupils in the face but said he had not realised how brutal the discipline was.(theguardian)…[+]

Nearly every county in England has at least one industrial-scale livestock farm, with close to 800 US-style mega farms operating across the UK, new research reveals. The increase in mega farms – which critics describe as “cruel and unnecessary” – is part of a 26% rise in intensive factory farming in six years, a shift that is transforming the British countryside.

Only 12 counties in the UK now host no pig or poultry farms classified as intensive by the Environment Agency. To be classed as intensive, a farm must have warehouses with more than 40,000 birds, 2,000 pigs or 750 breeding sows. Herefordshire has more than 16 million factory-farmed animals, mainly poultry – which means the county has 88 times more factory-farmed animals than it does humans. Shropshire and Norfolk follow closely, with more than 15 million and 12 million animals respectively. Nearly every county in England and Northern Ireland has at least one mega farm, and they are also scattered across Scotland and Wales.(theguardian)…[+]

Qatar has accused its Gulf neighbours of breaking international law by hacking government websites and planting false information that helped cause a continuing diplomatic rift in the region. According to the Washington Post, US officials discovered last week that ministers from the United Arab Emirates held a meeting on 23 May to discuss plans to hack Qatari government news and social media sites and post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani.

The alleged hack, which involved disparaging remarks purportedly by the emir about Donald Trump, praise for Hamas and support for Iran as an “Islamic power”, took place the following day. It preceded the current split in the Gulf between Qatar and a coalition of four states – the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain – that are maintaining an economic and diplomatic boycott against it. The group imposed sanctions on Qatar on 5 June, cutting diplomatic and transport ties with the tiny Gulf monarchy after accusing it of financing militant groups and allying with their regional foe Iran. Doha denies the accusations and says Thani never made the remarks.(theguardian)…[+]

Dutch nationals who take British citizenship to avoid having to leave the UK after Brexit will be stripped of their Netherlands passports due to existing limits on dual nationality, the Dutch prime minister has said. About 100,000 Dutch nationals living in Britain face an uncertain future after March 2019. The UK and EU are yet to reconcile their differences on the citizens’ rights issue, with Brussels describing the British government’s initial offer as vague and inadequate.Mark Rutte told Dutch citizens in the UK who have considered becoming British to avoid residency problems once Britain leaves the EU that applying for dual nationality was not an option.

“Countering dual nationality remains one of this cabinet’s policies,” the prime minister said on Monday, in response to a petition with 22,000 signatures calling for a government rethink. “This is because having a nationality is always associated with an actual link to a certain country. If at some point there is a question of a connection to the Netherlands or if the link to another country has become stronger than that with the Netherlands, Dutch nationality will end.”(Theguardian)…[+]

An Indiana woman who didn’t want her canceled $30,000 wedding to go to waste threw a party for the homeless instead. On Saturday, at the swanky event center that Sarah Cummins had booked for the reception in Carmel, a suburb just north of Indianapolis, about a dozen veterans from a local organization were among guests who dined on bourbon-glazed meatballs, roasted garlic bruschetta and wedding cake.

Cummins told the Indianapolis Star that she and her fiance called off the wedding a week ago. She declined to give a reason, but said they were left with a nonrefundable contract for the Ritz Charles and a plated dinner for 170 guests. Cummins said she decided that rather than throw away the food she would bring some purpose to the event, so she contacted homeless shelters in the area. She cheerfully greeted and welcomed her guests when they arrived to attend the Saturday party.(theguardian)…[+]