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Bayeux tapestry to be insured for £800m for British Museum exhibition

The Bayeux tapestry will be insured for an estimated £800m when it returns to the UK in 2026 for the first time in more than 900 years. The Treasury will insure the 70-metre embroidered cloth, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, for damage or loss during its transfer from France and while it is on display at the British Museum from September. It will back the cover under the Government Indemnity Scheme, an alternative to commercial insurance that allows art and cultural objects to be shown in the UK. The Financial Times reported the Treasury had provisionally approved an estimated valuation for the tapestry with the final valuation expected to be about £800m. An HM Treasury spokesperson said: “The Government Indemnity Scheme is a longstanding scheme that allows museums and galleries to borrow high value works for major exhibitions, increasing visitor numbers and providing public benefits. “Without this cover, public museums and galleries would face a substantial commercial insurance premium, which would be significantly less cost effective.” The scheme is estimated to have saved UK museums and galleries £81m compared with commercial insurance. The Bayeux tapestry depicts the Battle of Hastings and events leading up to it. At the battle William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson and became the first Norman king of England. The cloth consists of 58 scenes and is widely accepted to have been made in England during the 11th century and was probably commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux. It will be on loan while the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy closes for renovation until its scheduled reopening in October 2027. Visitors will have the chance to view it in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery of the British Museum in London between autumn next year and July 2027. It is part of a major loan agreement between the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced in July. The British Museum will loan the Sutton Hoo collection, the Lewis Chessmen and other items to France in return for the tapestry. In France, voices from the art and conservation fields have called on Macron to abandon the project because of concerns transportation would cause irreparable damage to the tapestry.

Poland preparing €2bn anti-drone fortifications along its eastern border amid Russian threat

Poland plans to complete a new set of anti-drone fortifications along its eastern borders within two years, a top defence official has said, after a massive incursion of unmanned Russian aerial combat vehicles into Polish airspace earlier this year. “We expect to have the first capabilities of the system in roughly six months, perhaps even sooner. And the full system will take 24 months to complete,” the deputy defence minister, Cezary Tomczyk, told the Guardian in an interview in Warsaw. Tomczyk said the new air defence systems would be integrated into an older line of protection constructed a decade ago. He said it would involve different layers of defence, including machine guns, cannon, missiles and drone-jamming systems. “Some of this is for use only in extreme or war conditions. For example, these multi-barrel machine guns are difficult to use in peacetime, because everything that goes up must go down,” he said. More than a dozen suspected Russian drones entered Polish airspace in September, in an incident that led to airport closures, fighter jets being scrambled, and damage to buildings on the ground as drones were shot down. The foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, told the Guardian at the time that the attacks, which involved drones not carrying any ammunition, were an attempt by Russia “to test us without starting a war”. Since then, Poland has updated plans already in the works to reinforce its eastern borders. While no anti-drone system can be fully effective against the kind of systematic and massive targeting that Ukraine has been subjected to, European nations along the eastern flank are scrambling to upgrade their systems to match the new threat. Tomczyk said the project would cost more than €2bn (£1.75bn), and would be mostly financed with European funds under the SAFE (Security Action for Europe) defence loan programme, as well as some contributions for the state budget. During almost four years of full-scale war in Ukraine, Poland has increasingly put itself on a war footing, as cases of sabotage and arson which Polish services link to Russian intelligence agencies are on the rise. The country has plans to train hundreds of thousands of citizens in survival skills while others are taking voluntary military training. In addition to the anti-drone wall, Poland is also conducting fortifications along its land borders with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, known as the Eastern Shield and aimed at preventing a future Russian invasion. Tomczyk said special logistics hubs would be built in every border municipality, where equipment to help block the border would be stored, ready to be deployed in a matter of hours. “The truth is that as long as Ukraine is defending itself and fighting Russia, Europe is not at risk of war in the conventional, strict sense of the word. What we will face instead are provocations and acts of sabotage,” said Tomczyk. But, he said, if the west allowed Russia to win in Ukraine, it could be not long before the Kremlin set its sights on Europe. Poland has boosted its defence spending to 4.7% of GDP, one of the highest rates in the European Union, amid continuing fears over Russian hybrid operations and potential military threats to the country. “Today, Ukraine is spending around 40% of its GDP on the war, and anyone wondering what percentage we should devote to the military ought to ask themselves whether it’s better to raise spending from, say, 2% to 3 or 3.5%, or to let it rise from 2% all the way to 40% later,” Tomczyk said. Questioned over whether Russia really had military designs on Poland in the same way it did on Ukraine, which the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has long said was central to Russian identity, Tomczyk pointed to the long history of Russian aggression and expansionism in eastern Europe. He said that “like in Orwell’s 1984”, messaging about the enemy of the day could quickly be changed. “These conquests function mainly as a political tool for maintaining power: a recurring motif in Russian history. The government needs to show that it is strong, that it commands a powerful army, that no one should dare to challenge it. In that sense, an external war becomes a domestic instrument in Russia,” he said.

Child abuse victim of Jackanory presenter tells how climbing saved him

A man who was sexually assaulted by a children’s television presenter has spoken of how climbing and mountaineering saved his life and “sanity” during the 50 years in which he kept the abuse secret. Iain Peters, 77, who has waived his right to anonymity, was between nine and 13 years old when he was abused weekly by John Earle, when he was a geography teacher and deputy head at a now-closed boarding school in Okehampton, Devon. The school closed shortly after and Earle went on to present children’s television programmes including Treasure House and Tom Tom, and was a storyteller for the flagship BBC series Jackanory. Peters broke his silence in 2015 and after reporting the abuse to police, Earle at the aged of 87 admitted six counts of indecently assaulting a boy and was jailed in 2017 for four years. The former tree surgeon turned commercial writer, who lives on the North Devon coast, wrote a memoir, The Corridor, about how his lifetime of climbing and adventure helped him manage the trauma he had endured since childhood. In November, the book won the prestigious Boardman Tasker award for mountain literature. “In effect, for 50-odd years I was suffering from PTSD,” he said. “Climbing on the one hand, it can be a very dangerous activity. And in my case, I pushed the envelope of survival in climbing to its limits in many ways. In my younger days I was doing loads of crazy stuff. “It was almost in response to what had happened to me in terms of abuse and all these other things. In some ways, climbing, it saved my life. It saved my sanity.” Peters said his favourite outdoor pursuit, introduced to him at the age of three by his grandfather, has taken him all over the world, from the Alps to the Cordillera Darwin on Tierra del Fuego on the border of Chile and Argentina. “It has enabled me to reach the grand old age that I’ve reached – living the life that I do, and I’m still a climber, even in my late 70s,” he said. “From a therapeutic point of view, it’s helped. It’s helped me considerably, in terms of both of living with abuse, living with the aftermath of abuse … It became my survival technique.” Peters said he believed climbing allowed him to “disassociate”. “When you’re concentrating on staying alive halfway up a vertical rock face you can’t then think ‘Oh God, poor me, I was assaulted when I was nine years old,’” he said. The father and grandfather said the trauma still had a great impact on his life choices, including on relationships as well as his career. He turned down a scholarship at Cambridge and at one stage found himself working in a strip club for the notorious Kray twins. “The problem with sexual abuse is it’s all about power and the power of the rapist is huge psychologically and physically,” he said. “I was always frightened. I can see this now but I always rejected success because success led to power, and power led to being like a rapist.” Eventually, he did marry with his first marriage lasting 28 years before he lost his wife to cancer. Six years ago, he married again to Ellen. He had never shared his experience with anyone before he reported it in 2015 by handing “a grubby piece of paper” recounting his abuse over the counter at a police station in Exeter. He had previously denied anything had happened to him when reports of abuse at the school – Upcott House preparatory school – emerged in the media. Asked what he thought would have happened to him without climbing in his life, he shared the experience of his best friend, who was also abused by Earle, often in front of each other. “He never recovered,” he said. “He didn’t have climbing. He didn’t climb. He lost his mind. He tried to kill me at one stage. He tried to stab me. I said ‘Why?’ He said ‘Because you survived.’” “I have had things like climbing, I have had, eventually the ability to have children, to have a successful relationship, all these things have come. And now finally, you know, I’m an award-winning writer, yes, and so many victims don’t have that opportunity.” Looking ahead, Peters hopes he and his book can be a beacon for survivors of sexual abuse to know they can come forward with confidence. “We have to create a social culture that will make people feel that they shouldn’t have shame, they shouldn’t have guilt, that they can go for help and more people, particularly young people, should have that opportunity.”

‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture

The two men chop peppers, slice aubergines and giggle into the camera as they delve into the art of vegan cooking. Both are wearing ski masks and T-shirts bearing Nazi symbols. The German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for violating its guidelines. But it offered a glimpse of how far-right groups have seized on cultural production – from clothing brands to top 40 music – to normalise their ideas, in a process that researchers say has hit new heights in the age of social media. “It’s frightening, honestly,” said Katherine Kondor, a researcher with the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies. “You can be radicalised sitting on your couch.” In affiliation with the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), Kondor is leading a six-country project looking at how the extreme right uses aesthetics, from fitness influencers to memes and stickers, to spread their views across Europe. From Sweden to Spain, researchers found that extremist messaging was woven through cultural aspects of everyday life, both online and offline. “In Hungary we have some examples of extreme right bands becoming mainstream because they’re on the top 40 chart. I mean, what’s more normal than being on the top 40?” Kondor said. “I have a stepson who sometimes sends videos and then I go down the rabbit hole to see who created them and it turns out it’s a far-right influencer.” So-called “tradwives”, referring to female content creators who promote traditional gender roles on social media, are another example. As the numbers of women embracing the concept online surges, the content’s far-right roots have been increasingly obscured. Even so, the views they often promote – from anti-feminism to a nostalgia for an imagined past – continue to boost far-right aims. These cultural elements serve as gateways, at times helping to reel people into extremism, Kondor said. “I think there’s a mistaken idea that people join the far right because they believe in that ideology and want to meet like-minded people,” she said. “But that’s not how it works.” While there are some who are driven by prejudices against certain groups or specific beliefs, or others who tag along with friends who are already involved, many are lured by the subcultures that encase these movements, she said. “They start listening to a band that they really like and start going to concerts of that band. Then they start meeting people there and it can escalate in that way,” Kondor explained. “When people find things that work for their aesthetic or their vibe, or they find music that they really like, that can really influence a person.” The link between extreme ideas and the cultural tools they opt to use is not always straightforward, she added, citing the example of a group of far-right extremists in the Netherlands with a penchant for hosting wine-tasting events. “They’ve also started their own food delivery,” she said. “It’s just wild that you can be ordering food from the far right and not know.” Extremists have long used culture to foster a sense of belonging among its members and gain attention among the wider public, said Greta Jasser, a research associate at Germany’s Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, which is also part of the six-country project. Previously, however, their strength in doing so relied on the talent pool of their members, as musicians, artists and camera operators were needed to create content. With the advent of generative AI, this is no longer the case. “Now there’s technology that we can use to generate an image or video in an instant or music within just a couple of minutes,” said Jasser. “So the playbook is old, but the speed is much faster.” The economics of social media have also transformed the process, leading to questions regarding who is creating far-right content and their motivations. “It could be posted by a bot. It could be anyone and anything wanting to generate income from producing as many AI videos and images as possible,” said Jasser. “Which then interestingly calls into question how ideologically driven many of these accounts are, or if it’s a way to generate revenue.” As the research continues, Kondor and her team have been weighing how best to educate the public about their findings, mulling strategies such as online content or tools that could help people better recognise the far right and the myriad of cultural elements they’re producing. “I think it’s often shocking to people,” said Kondor. “Right now it’s dangerous because we’re seeing a steady rise of the far right in every aspect of society. It’s more important than ever to figure out how to mitigate this.”

Opposition anger as Guinea’s junta leader is frontrunner to be elected president

In September 2021, a tall, young colonel in the Guinean army announced that he and his comrades had forcibly seized power and toppled the longtime leader Alpha Condé. “The will of the strongest has always supplanted the law,” Mamady Doumbouya said in a speech, stressing that the soldiers were acting to restore the will of the people. Not long after, Doumbouya announced a 36-month timeline for transition to civilian rule in the resource-rich west African nation on the Atlantic coast, shrugging off pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), which wanted a swifter return to democracy. His actions triggered widespread protests and criticism from opposition groups and civil society, most of whom doubted his vow not to personally run for office. On Sunday, 6.7 million eligible voters in Guinea will head to the ballot box for the first presidential election since the 2021 coup. Among the nine candidates are the former minister Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé of the Democratic Front of Guinea and the former junta supporter turned critic Faya Millimono of the Liberal Bloc party. But thanks to a controversial referendum in September that led to the adoption of a new constitution allowing him to run and extending presidential terms from five to seven years, the clear frontrunner is Doumbouya. The opposition coalition Forces vives de Guinée has called his candidacy a betrayal. “The man who presented himself as the restorer of democracy chose to become its gravedigger,” it said in a statement last month after Doumbouya officially deposited his intent to run with the supreme court. Political upheavals have been a recurring feature in west Africa, a region that has earned the moniker of “coup belt” after seven successful coups and several unsuccessful attempts since 2020. While Guinea has remained under the Ecowas umbrella, fellow juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, angered by its post-coup sanctions, have split from the regional bloc to form the pro-Russian Alliance of Sahel States (AES). If it holds, the Guinean election will be the first in any of the junta-run states since 2020. Within Guinea, many believe the general’s victory is a foregone conclusion, given his consolidation of power since ascending to the presidency and promoting himself to a general. Even now, the presidential race is notable not for those who are on the ballot, but for those who are not. The biggest opposition parties remain suspended, and their most prominent leaders have been detained, barred from running or – like the former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea, are in exile. Many say a climate of fear pervades the country due to the junta’s crackdown against its critics, with several dissidents in jail. Conversely, Doumbouya pardoned the former dictator Moussa Dadis Camara who was given a 20-year sentence for his role in one of Guinea’s most serious human rights atrocities: the 2009 massacre and mass rape of protesters at a stadium in Conakry. The pardon, granted before the final hearing, prompted several human rights groups to write a joint open letter to the junta leader alongside families of victims, urging him to reconsider. That process is now in limbo. Ahead of the vote, Doumbouya has been accumulating goodwill.This month, the shiny new Simandou mine, which has the world’s largest untapped reserve of iron ore, was launched after nearly three decades of delays caused by political instability and corruption. Doumbouya’s government is touting the project as a bridge to prosperity for Guinea and a sign of incoming development, despite mass job losses and environmental complaints. The election stakes are high: in the coming years, the multi-layered Simandou mine project – which also includes the construction of ports and a railway – is expected to transform the economy of Guinea, where half of the population lives on below $2 a day. Given existential concerns around transparency, many are waiting to see what the winning government does after the election. “Our salvation lies in a return to the [proper] constitutional order,” said Abdoulaye Koroma, a presidential candidate for the Rally for Renaissance and Development party.

No gels, no foams: Catalonia turns to grannies to teach traditional cooking

Catalonia’s avant garde chefs have made a name for themselves with their revolutionary techniques and molecular gastronomy, yet they are fond of saying they are merely paying homage to the simple dishes served at their grandmother’s table. Maybe so, but now the grannies have been given a chance to show off the real thing under a Catalan government initiative called Gastrosàvies. A double play on the Catalan words for wise and grandmother, Gastrosàvies provides a platform for more than 100 women of a certain age to share videos cooking traditional dishes “with a view to preserving and communicating traditional Catalan cuisine for future generations”. No spherification and liquid nitrogen for these chefs – just some basic ingredients, a sharp knife and a couple of pots and pans. The project has collected more than 300 recipes from all over Catalonia, and videos of home cooks preparing 12 of them have been posted on the Gastrosàvies website, with more to follow. These simple creations such as rice with cabbage and peas, thyme soup, chicken with apple, duck with turnips or pork chops with chestnuts hark back to an era where people cooked with what was at hand and in season, using basic equipment and techniques handed down over generations. While these rustic dishes can still be found in bars and restaurants in rural Catalonia, they are increasingly hard to come by in Barcelona where they have been usurped by pizza, kebabs, ramen, sushi and the ubiquitous Argentinian empanadas. Working in her farm house kitchen in the village of Santa Margarida i els Monjos in Penedès, a region 45 minutes south of Barcelona, Maria Antònia Udina, 76, prepares a Penedès cockerel with dried fruit and nuts and a dash of cognac, a dish characteristic of Catalan cuisine. “Catalonia is small but we have mountains and sea and we like mixing the two,” she says. “That’s why we cook meat with fruit or meat with fish in dishes such as meatballs with cuttlefish, chicken with prawns or xató, a salad made with frisee, salt cod, tuna and romesco sauce.” Udina’s mother cooked for her and her five siblings, “simple dishes with local products, a lot of potatoes, a lot of rice. We did the dishes and laid the table but my mother did the cooking. I didn’t really know how to cook. I wasn’t a good eater as a child but I loved mashed potatoes with a bit of oil poured over them.” She is also a champion of local produce such as the Penedès cockerel that she and her husband farmed until a few years ago. She says the Penedès variety has more flavour and a better texture than supermarket chicken because it’s reared for twice as long and is fed on grape seeds from local vineyards. She lists what in her view are Catalan cuisine’s three essential characteristics: the sofregit made with olive oil, onions, tomatoes and sometimes peppers or carrots, which is the ground zero of dozens of dishes; the use of herbs such as rosemary, bay and thyme, and finally the picada, a paste made from olive oil, ground almonds or hazelnuts, garlic, parsley and fried bread, served as an accompaniment to many dishes and a key ingredient in suquet de peix, the Catalan version of bouillabaisse. Although Udina has a reputation as an excellent cook, she has never worked as a professional chef. However, she has dined in some of the region’s most famous restaurants, among them Can Fabes, the first in Catalonia to be awarded three Michelin stars, and El Celler de Can Roca, twice voted the best restaurant in the world. She admires these avant garde chefs and accepts that their cuisine is rooted in tradition. However, she is sceptical about the claim that it’s simply a homage to their mother’s and grandmother’s tables. For example, Udina says, wild mushrooms are a staple of Catalan cooking but at Can Fabes, “we had six or seven dishes that were all made with wild mushrooms, including an ice-cream”. “That’s nothing like what their mothers would have cooked,” she says, adding that she believes there’s a move back towards simpler, less innovative cuisine and hopes that Gastrosàvies will encourage “our children and grandchildren to cook traditional food instead of pizza, hamburgers and Pot Noodles”.

Thailand and Cambodia agree ‘immediate’ ceasefire after weeks of deadly border clashes

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to an “immediate” ceasefire, pledging to end weeks of deadly border clashes that have killed more than 100 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides. In a joint statement, the two south-east Asian neighbours said the ceasefire would take effect on Saturday at noon local time and involve “all types of weapons, including attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas”. “Both sides agree to maintain current troop deployments without further movement,” their defence ministers said in a joint statement. According to the statement released by Cambodia’s defence ministry, “any reinforcement would heighten tensions and negatively affect long-term efforts to resolve the situation”. The two countries also agreed to cooperate on demining efforts and combatting cybercrime. The agreement, signed by the Thai defence minister, Natthaphon Narkphanit, and his Cambodian counterpart, Tea Seiha, ended 20 days of fighting that have included fighter jet sorties, exchanges of rocket fire and artillery barrages. Even as the two countries held talks on Saturday to put an end to the skirmish, Cambodia reported that Thailand hit a site in the country’s north-west with an airstrike. Cambodia’s defence ministry said Thailand deployed F-16 fighter jets to drop four bombs on Saturday morning on a target in Serei Saophoan in the north-western province of Banteay Meanchey. On Friday, Cambodia said a similar airstrike dropped 40 bombs on a target in Chok Chey village in the same province. Thailand’s military confirmed the Friday attack. Longstanding competing claims of territory along the border are the root of tensions that broke into open combat in late July. Despite a shaky ceasefire mediated by the Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, and backed up by pressure from the US president, Donald Trump, renewed combat erupted in early December. Thailand has lost 26 soldiers and one civilian as a direct result of the combat since 7 December, according to officials. Thailand has also reported 44 civilian deaths from collateral effects of the situation. Cambodia hasn’t issued an official figure on military casualties, but says that 30 civilians have been killed and 90 injured. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from affected areas on both sides of the border.