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Iran tells US not to let Netanyahu thwart nuclear talks before Trump meeting

Tehran has told the US not to allow Israel to destroy the chance of reaching an agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme amid speculation that Benjamin Netanyahu intends to use a hastily arranged White House meeting with Donald Trump on Wednesday to divert negotiations. Iran’s intervention came as the Israeli prime minister flew to Washington to plead with Trump not to negotiate a deal with Tehran if it excludes limiting the country’s ballistic missile programme, dropping its support for proxy forces in the region and curtailing human rights abuses at home. Netanyahu is deeply concerned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, are prepared to strike a deal confined to limiting the scope of Iran’s nuclear programme, which in Israel’s view would do nothing to rein in the long-term threat Tehran poses to the region. Speaking before leaving for Washington, Netanyahu said he would “present to the president our approach around our principles on the negotiations”. He is expected to provide Trump with fresh intelligence about Iran’s military capabilities, including new long-range ballistic missiles. Netanyahu faces a delicate task in setting out his stall because he risks being seen as challenging two of Trump’s most respected aides by mapping out a set of demands that could force the US into prolonged conflict with Iran. He also risks angering Trump by opening up divisions in the Republican party, especially if he reminds the US president that he made repeated unfulfilled promises to come to the help of Iranian protesters. Netanyahu’s turbulent relationship with Trump was already entering another rough patch as he continues to stall on his Gaza peace plan by barring a Palestinian technocratic body from entering the strip, and seeking in effect to annex the West Bank. In a sign that he knows he is treading on thin ice, Netanyahu agreed to take the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, with him. Before heading to Washington, Huckabee said there was “an extraordinary alignment between US and Israel on Iran”, and that as far as he knew the two sides shared the same red lines. Iran expressed its anger at Israel’s intervention. Ali Larijani, the the head of the Supreme National Security Council, the body overseeing Tehran’s negotiating strategy, said: “The Americans should think wisely and not allow him, with his posturing, to create the impression before his flight that he is going to the United States to set the framework of nuclear negotiations. They must remain vigilant regarding Israel’s destructive role.” Larijani met the mediators between Washington and Tehran in Muscat to discuss the agenda for further talks. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said in his weekly press briefing: “Our negotiating party is America. It is up to America to decide to act independently of the pressures and destructive influences that are detrimental to the region.” Israel’s alarm about a potential deal that undercuts its ambitions for regime change in Tehran has grown ever since the US agreed to reopen indirect talks with Iran, which started in Oman on Friday. The Iranian government also still faces political challenges at home, with more reformist groups and academics issuing statements protesting against the suppression of dissent and, in particular, the arrest of leaders of the Reformist Front. The front issued a further statement expressing its shock, and warning that the regime’s exclusionary approach and baseless accusations would worsen the political deadlock and “strengthen the violent and war-mongering factions supporting Israel”. It called on Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to intervene urgently to secure the release of its leadership. Even if the planned second round of talks are confined to Iran’s nuclear programme, as Tehran wants, there is no guarantee of success because it insists on maintaining its right to enrich uranium as fuel for nuclear power plants, something the US permitted under the 2015 deal but Trump has appeared to rule out. Trump has sent the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and three accompanying warships to the region, which are capable of hitting a huge range of Iranian military and economic sties. The US has also buttressed the air defences of US bases across the region. The head of Iran’s atomic energy authority has said Tehran may be prepared to dilute its stock of highly enriched uranium to 60% purity, a limited concession given the 2015 deal limited it to enriching to 3.75% purity.

Ireland’s basic income for the arts scheme becomes permanent

Ireland is creating a scheme that will give artists a weekly income in the hope of reducing their need for alternative work and boosting their creativity. The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) initiative will provide €325 (£283) a week to 2,000 eligible artists based in the Republic of Ireland in three-year cycles. The culture minister, Patrick O’Donovan, said at the launch in Dublin on Tuesday that it was the first scheme of its kind in the world. “This is a gigantic step forward that other countries are not doing,” he said. The scheme was “a start” and hopefully would be expanded, O’Donovan said. “For the first time in the history of the state we now have, on a permanent basis, a basic income structure that will really revolutionise and, in many ways, set Ireland apart from other countries with regard to how we value culture and creativity.” The permanent scheme follows a trial that ran from 2022 to 2025 to help artists during Covid pandemic shutdowns. New York and San Francisco had similar pilot schemes but Ireland is believed to be the first country to make one permanent. The pilot, for which 2,000 artists were randomly selected from 8,000 applicants, lowered the likelihood of artists experiencing enforced deprivation and reduced their levels of anxiety and reliance on supplementary income, a study found. The scheme recouped more than its net cost of €72m through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis. Peter Power, a member of the National Campaign for the Arts steering committee, said it was a real-world test of what happened when people were given stability instead of precarity. “Artists on the scheme spent more time creating and less time trapped in unrelated jobs just to survive, and many became better able to sustain themselves through their work alone,” he said. A more vibrant arts sector brought myriad benefits such as greater economic activity, improved mental wellbeing, critical thinking and innovation, Power added. Under eligibility rules, artists can receive support for three out of every six years. An artist selected for the 2026-29 cycle must skip the next cycle but can reapply for the following one. Guidelines about the scheme, which has an initial budget of €18.27m (£16m), will be published in April. Applications for the cycle that begins in 2026 will open in May, with payments starting September and continuing until September 2029. Applicants are to be randomly selected. Jenny Dagg, a Maynooth University sociologist who studied the scheme, said it was a win for all but noted that eligible artists could not live solely on the weekly payments, which were considered supplementary income. Artists have welcomed the scheme but said they still faced a cost of living and housing crisis. Rents in Dublin have doubled since 2013, forcing many young people to continue living with their parents.

Norway defence chief says Russia could invade to protect nuclear assets

Norway’s army chief has said Oslo cannot exclude the possibility of a future Russian invasion of the country, suggesting Moscow could move on Norway to protect its nuclear assets stationed in the far north. “We don’t exclude a land grab from Russia as part of their plan to protect their own nuclear capabilities, which is the only thing they have left that actually threatens the United States,” said Gen Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s chief of defence. He conceded that Russia did not have conquest goals in Norway in the same way as it had in Ukraine or other former Soviet territories, but said much of Russia’s nuclear arsenal was located on the Kola peninsula, a short distance from the Norwegian border, including nuclear submarines, land-based missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft. These would be crucial if Russia came into conflict with Nato elsewhere. “We don’t take that off the table, because it’s still an option for Russia to do that in order to make sure that their nuclear capabilities, their second strike capabilities, are protected. That’s sort of the scenario in the high north that we plan for,” he said. In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, Kristoffersen was sharply critical of recent comments by Donald Trump on Greenland, as well as of the US president’s “unacceptable” claims that allied countries had not served in frontline positions in Afghanistan while US troops had done the bulk of the fighting. “It didn’t make sense, what he said, and I know that all my American friends from Afghanistan know that,” said Kristoffersen, 56, a career army officer who served several tours in Afghanistan. “We were definitely in the frontline. We did all the full spectrum of missions, from arresting Taliban leaders to training Afghans to doing surveillance. We lost 10 Norwegians. I lost friends there. So we all felt it doesn’t make sense,” he said. “At the same time, I felt that this is President Trump. I never saw him in Afghanistan. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says these things. A president should not say these things, but it didn’t really affect me. But my concern was for the Norwegian veterans, the relatives of the people we lost, soldiers we lost.” Kristoffersen has been Norway’s chief of defence since 2020, responsible for the country’s armed forces as well as its intelligence service. It has been a period of intense change as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced a rethink of European security, with neighbouring Sweden and Finland joining Norway in the Nato alliance, and the country reinforcing its border areas with Russia in the far north. Kristoffersen said that while Norway was keeping the threat of a traditional Russian invasion in mind, the current Russian tactics were more diffuse. “If you prepare for the worst, there is nothing that prevents you from also being able to counter sabotage and more hybrid threats,” he said. He added, however, that Norway and Russia still maintained some direct contact over search and rescue missions in the Barents Sea, and that there were regular meetings at the border between representatives of the two militaries. He has recommended setting up a military hotline between the two capitals to have a channel of communication to avoid escalation based on misunderstanding. He said Russian actions in the far north had generally been less aggressive than those in the Baltic Sea. “So far, what we have seen of airspace violation in our area has been misunderstandings. Russia is conducting a lot of [GPS] jamming, and we think that the jamming also affects their aircraft,” he said. “They haven’t said that, but we see that when something like violating the airspace happens it’s usually because of a lack of experience from the pilots. When we talk with the Russians, they actually respond in a very professional and predictable way.” On Norway’s northern territory of Svalbard, which contains a Russian settlement and is not allowed to be militarised under the provisions of a 1920 treaty, Kristoffersen said Russia was “respecting the treaty” and that Norway had no plans to militarise the area. Moscow has accused Oslo of performing stealth militarisation of Svalbard but Kristoffersen said this was just a propaganda claim that Moscow did not really believe. When it came to Trump’s assertion that China and Russia had military designs on Greenland, Krisoffersen said it was “very strange” to hear the claims. “We have a very good overview of what is happening in the Arctic from our intelligence service and we don’t see anything like that in Greenland … we see Russian activity with their submarines and also their underwater programme in the traditional part of the Arctic … but it’s not about Greenland, it’s about reaching the Atlantic,” he said. His remarks came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, used an interview with a group of European newspapers to say Europe was in a “Greenland moment” and to call on countries to stand up to Trump. Macron said that when there was “blatant aggression … we must not bow down or try to reach a settlement. We tried this strategy for months and it’s not working. But above all, it strategically leads Europe to increase its dependence.” He said the scare over Greenland was far from over. “There are threats and intimidation and then suddenly Washington backs down. And we think it’s over. But don’t believe it for a second,” he said. Kristoffersen, asked whether Denmark and its allies would have any chance of repelling a US military takeover of Greenland if Trump went through with it, said: “They won’t do it, so it’s a hypothetical question.” But he added a word of warning for Trump and the US military. “If Russia is learning something from the war in Ukraine, I think it’s that it’s never a good idea to occupy a country. If the people don’t want it, it’s going to cost you a lot of money and a lot of effort and in the end you will actually lose. “To occupy in the first place is often very easy, but to keep the occupation going is very, very hard. And I think all expansionist powers have experienced that.”

‘Wake-up call’ for Greece as air force officer accused of spying for China

A Greek air force officer arrested on suspicion of spying for China has been detained pending trial after appearing before a military judge in a case that is seen as exposing Beijing’s determination to infiltrate Europe’s security and intelligence services. Surrounded by armed escorts, a squadron leader identified as Col Christos Flessas emerged from the court late on Tuesday after giving testimony for more than eight hours. The 54-year-old could face a life sentence if found guilty of charges that include “transmitting top secret information of a military nature” to China. He was described as having access to sensitive military information, including armed forces technologies under development, and is believed to have been recruited by Beijing last year. Greek media reports said he had admitted to photographing and transmitting classified Nato documents using specialised encryption software provided by Chinese intelligence. He allegedly received tradecraft training in China during an undeclared trip to the country that military sources claimed had ultimately exposed him. In a statement made by his lawyer after the court appearance, Flessas said: “Unknowingly and without intent, I became involved in something that developed in a way that became nightmarish, dangerous and illegal. In my testimony I did not try to justify myself or, in reality, even defend myself … I ask to be punished with a fair punishment.” Greek authorities were reportedly tipped off by the CIA about the extent of the leak, and in a highly unusual statement after Flessas’s arrest on 5 February the Greek general staff said there was “clear evidence of criminal offences under the military penal code”. Chinese operatives are thought to have initially approached their target online before recruiting him at a Nato conference in an unidentified European country. Flessas has been cited as saying he was lured with promises of financial rewards made in foreign currencies and digital payments of between €5,000 and €15,000 for every transmission made. He told the military magistrate on Tuesday that contact with agents that would lead to his handler was first made via LinkedIn. Nicholas Eftimiades, a retired US senior intelligence officer with considerable expertise in Chinese espionage operations, told the Guardian the case was a wake-up call for the Greek government and military. “[It’s] significant because it shows China’s desire and ability to penetrate the military communications infrastructure of Greece and other Nato members,” he said. “Nations spy against other militaries to give them an advantage in war. Despite all the proclamations of friendship and economic engagement, China continues to evolve as a threat to democracies worldwide.” Flessas had previously served as a Nato evaluator in information systems and at the time of his arrest was commanding a battalion in the Athenian suburb of Kavouri training in telecommunications. Eftimiades, whose book Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics was released last year, said because citizens in China were required by law to support their country’s espionage efforts, the west was increasingly vulnerable to Beijing’s spymasters. Last week, four people including two Chinese nationals were arrested in France on suspicion of intercepting and collecting military intelligence. In Germany last September, a former aide to a member of parliament for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party was sentenced to almost five years in prison for spying on behalf of China. “China uses a ‘whole of society’ approach to conduct worldwide espionage,” said Eftimiades, who now teaches homeland security at Penn State University. “[It] is unlike the efforts of any western government. The sheer volume of activity makes it impossible to counter … western societies are open democracies. This makes them extremely vulnerable to China’s covert influence efforts.” Media reports on Tuesday suggested the Hellenic air force officer was cooperating fully with authorities. Well-placed insiders said there were fears of other military officials being implicated. One said the armed forces were airing the case so publicly as a warning. “What we are seeing is unprecedented,” said Plamen Tonchev, an expert in Sino-Greek affairs. “Greece is seen as a relatively China-friendly country. This is the very first time that China is so openly implicated in an espionage case of this kind.” Tonchev said the episode was bound “to tarnish the image” of Beijing in a country where it had acquired control of much of the port of Piraeus a decade ago. An estimated 24% of imports to Europe from China are shipped through Piraeus’s container terminals, and Tonchev said this was a source of “great pride” for Beijing.

Venezuela welcomes Trump-loving US TV channel in ‘marriage of convenience’

In the days after Nicolás Maduro was abducted by US special forces, hundreds of journalists from as far away as Japan flocked to Colombia’s border with Venezuela hoping to witness the fallout from one of the most dramatic moments in South America’s recent history. None were granted visas to enter. Those who tried to do so anyway were detained and thrown out. But last weekend a team of reporters was finally allowed to visit Caracas. Not the award-winning correspondents from outlets like CNN, Sky News and the BBC, who were among those left waiting at the border in January, but reporters from Newsmax, a conservative network owned by Donald Trump’s billionaire friend Chris Ruddy. “We are here in the shadow of the great monument to Simón Bolívar, the great liberator … of Latin America. And … now we have a new great liberator, Donald Trump,” Ruddy told his channel’s correspondent as he stood in Caracas’s historic Plaza Bolívar celebrating the US president’s “almost miraculous” overthrowing of Maduro. “Just one military strike: boom! It was done,” the Mar-a-Lago-frequenting media mogul enthused, claiming Venezuelans all across the country were “really excited about what Trump is doing”. On Saturday, the anchor for the Florida-based broadcaster, Rob Schmitt, was even granted an “exclusive” audience with one of Venezuela’s most powerful men, the president of the national assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, who is also the brother of the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez. “In the last 36 days, we have had a very good understanding and relationship working with the government of the United States,” Jorge Rodríguez said in what is thought to be the first such interview since Maduro’s capture. Rodríguez called for a “win-win relationship” and touted some of the world’s biggest reserves of oil, gold and natural gas. “As President Donald Trump has mentioned recently, there’s a lot to be done,” he added, switching to English when asked how Venezuela’s people felt about the arrival of capitalist oil giants. “They are OK,” he said. Venezuela’s decision to open the doors to the conservative network, an upstart rival to Fox News, highlighted the once-unthinkable alignment of interests between the remnants of Maduro’s supposedly “anti-imperialist” regime and their ideological opposites in the White House. For years those sides have been at loggerheads, as Trump worked to topple the socialist “thug” Maduro and Maduro berated Trump as an insane imperialist “gangster”. Now, for different reasons, both countries appear keen to project an image of post-Maduro stability and good cheer. “It is kind of tragicomic. But it is revealing,” the political scientist Michael Paarlberg said of the peculiar political marriage of convenience that lay behind the Newsmax trip to Caracas. From the perspective of Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, both close Maduro allies, the network’s visit was an opportunity to signal to Trump that they are reliable partners who should be allowed to remain in power without the need for a messy transition towards democracy. “[Trump] wants to keep the oil flowing and that’s something the Rodríguez siblings can guarantee – or at least that’s what they promise. And that’s their bid to stay in power,” said Paarlberg, the former Latin America adviser to Bernie Sanders. From Trump’s point of view, Paarlberg said the Newsmax interview was a chance to send his Maga movement a simple message: “We’re kicking ass!” “It was a propaganda piece for consumption by Trump’s base,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, who believed the tete-a-tete was designed to convince Trump voters that the Rodríguez siblings would toe the US line. “[The message about Jorge Rodríguez was]: ‘This is our man. Look how reasonable he is … He’s going to support US capitalism and US jobs and markets. Hey, it’s a win-win,’” Sabatini said. Sabatini said Rodríguez’s “softball” sit-down with “the most pro-Trump news station in the US” was as inconceivable as imagining the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, giving an exclusive interview to the leftwing magazine Mother Jones – and getting an easy ride. But the decision to grant the interview made sense, from the perspective of Venezuela’s new leadership, as they sought to convince Trump of their desire to collaborate in order to retain power and avoid a Maduro-esque fate. Asked by his interviewer what message he had for Trump, “who watches this show quite often”, Rodríguez replied: “Right now, we have a golden opportunity … We have a very bright future ahead of us.” Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, seemed to approve and shared a link on X. On the streets of Caracas, the channel’s reporting followed a script likely to have pleased both governments – but which left opposition activists incensed. “Venezuelans to Newsmax: Country Calm, Optimistic Since Maduro Capture,” read one headline, so on-message it might have been plucked from the pages of North Korea’s state-run news agency, KCNA, or Xinhua in China. An unnamed woman told the network’s correspondent: “I’ve noticed there’s a calm within the people. I feel it could be a better future for us and for Venezuela.” Another local ventured: “I consider there is optimism. The country is very calm right now … You can see it here – harmony. Nobody fighting.” Sabatini believed the US network had been handpicked because Venezuelan officials were aware of “Newsmax’s fealty to Donald Trump” and anticipated such “Trumpist propaganda” that would not dwell too long on thorny issues like human rights and democracy. “Why not invite the BBC?” he asked. “Because the BBC would have asked tough questions.”

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi obituary

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who has died aged 53, shot dead by four masked assailants at his home, was for many years considered the heir apparent to his father Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-time dictator, and was still a potential force in his country’s fractured and violent politics. He was issued with an arrest warrant by the international criminal court in 2011 – and convicted in absentia by a Libyan court in 2015 – over war crimes committed during the 2011 revolution. Saif had promised that the regime would keep fighting the rebels “until the last man standing, even the last woman standing”. Since being captured while attempting to flee Libya after his father’s death later that year, he had largely remained, initially as a prisoner, in the western Libyan city of Zintan, where the assassins killed him. In 2021 he had announced, with the backing of the Gaddafist or “green” Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya, his candidacy in presidential elections, which his rivals feared he might win, but which did not in the end take place. In a rare 2021 New York Times interview as he contemplated his run, designed to appeal to Libyans disillusioned by economic hardship, instability and the effective partition of the country, he said: “They [Libya’s postwar leaders] raped the country – it’s on its knees. There’s no money, no security. There’s no life here … It’s more than a failure. It’s a fiasco.” Saif’s career can be roughly divided into three phases: first, that of a wealthy, well-educated – including controversially, as it would turn out, at the London School of Economics – and jet-setting English (and German) speaker – who for a time kept two tigers as pets. With many western businessmen and politicians, including Peter Mandelson, then a cabinet minister, he was an interlocutor who had shown – both at home, where he pursued a number of humanitarian initiatives, and abroad – an eagerness to democratise the Libyan state. The second phase was from February 2011, when he shed his reformist stance in favour of backing his father’s violent efforts to quell the revolt, until the end of the civil war. And the third was when, after being captured by a local anti-Gaddafi militia as he was trying to escape the country, and subsequently facing a death sentence which was commuted only in 2017, he began to plan an ultimately unfulfilled comeback as a political player. Explaining that he had been “away from the Libyan people for 10 years,” he told the New York Times: “You have to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease.” He was born in Tripoli, the eldest of the seven children of Muammar Gaddafi’s second marriage, to Safia Farkash. Saif went to a school for children of the Tripoli elite where “national discipline” and Muammar’s Green Book, the eccentric treatise expounding his theories of dictatorial socialism, were, as elsewhere, curriculum staples. He secured a degree in engineering and architecture at Al-Fateh University in Tripoli (now the University of Tripoli), an MBA at the Imadec business school in Vienna (where he was friendly with the Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider) and by 2002 he was at the LSE to take a PhD. When it was awarded, a charity founded by Saif agreed a donation to the school of £1.5m. In 2011, after Saif’s role in the civil war became clear, the then LSE head, Howard Davies, resigned. But despite criticisms that Saif’s dissertation on “The role of civil society in the democratisation of global governance institutions” had had outside help, the LSE did not revoke his doctorate. Only the first £300,000 of the donation was ever paid. Saif had also been actively responding to western efforts – including by the Blair government – to improve relations with his once shunned but oil-rich country. He was involved in the negotiations both on compensation to the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie and in those that led to his father’s abandonment of Libya’s weapons of mass destruction programme in December 2003. One casualty of western outreach to Libya would be the French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted in 2025 of corruption after accusations – persistently promoted by Saif himself – that he had received €50m from Libya to fund his 2007 election campaign. Saif startled even some of his closest aides with the ferocity with which he lined up behind his father once the revolt had begun, with a televised speech in February 2011 warning the rebels they would unleash “rivers of blood”. Watching Saif addressing a noisy and excitable youth rally in Tripoli during the Nato bombing the following month, it was hard to believe that his chilling promises of revenge were those of a liberaliser and sometime critic of his father’s regime. Referring to strongholds of the rebel “gangs”, he shouted: “We’re coming to you. Today Ajdabiya, tomorrow Benghazi.” Yet within 10 months of that speech, and after what the UN estimated were 15,000 deaths in the conflict, his father had been killed by a rebel militia in his home town of Sirte, along with his brother Mutassim; and Saif himself, having earlier survived a Nato strike on a convoy he was travelling in, was captured as he tried to reach Niger. He was released in 2017 by Abu Bakr al-Siddiq battalion, the militia controlling Zintan, after an amnesty announced by Khalifa Haftar, the warlord controlling eastern Libya. In 2021 Saif denied reports that he had been married and had one son. But in 2012 an Israeli model and actor, Orly Weinerman, said she had had a six-year affair with Saif and appealed to Tony Blair to save him from his then impeding Libyan war crimes trial. While the perpetrators of his assassination remain unknown, both the Haftar family and the UN-recognised, Tripoli-based, western Libya government of national unity (GNU) led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dabaiba, may have had something to fear from a Gaddafi comeback because of his probable appeal to those Libyans who believe, despite his father’s egregiously brutal dictatorship up to 2011, that conditions in the country are no better – and in some respects even worse – than when it fell. Gaddafi is survived by his mother and his siblings Saadi, Hannibal and Aisha, and by a half-brother, Muhammad, from his father’s first marriage. Three other brothers, Saif al-Arab, Mutassim and Khamis, predeceased him. • Saif al-Islam Gaddafi political leader, born 25 June 1972; died 3 February 2026

Bulgaria gripped by mysterious deaths of six people in mountains

It has been dubbed Bulgaria’s “Twin Peaks”: a grim saga involving the mysterious deaths of six people in the middle of the mountains that has gripped the eastern European country. Zahari Vaskov, the director of the national police general directorate, told a press conference on Monday that the deaths were “a case without comparison in our country”. Fittingly, perhaps, for an investigation that has been shrouded in sensationalised conspiracy, conflicting accounts and fevered speculation, Borislav Sarafov, the general prosecutor, gave his own verdict. “Life has given us more shocking details here than in the Twin Peaks series,” he told local media, alluding to the 1990s US television drama. The case began at the start of February, when three men aged 45, 49, and 51 were found dead in a the burned-out remains of a lodge near the Petrohan pass, a mountain pass that connects Sofia province with the northwestern Montana province. All three had gunshot wounds to the head, which forensic experts said were apparently self-inflicted, either point-blank or at close range. DNA traces detected on the firearms belonged only to the deceased men, they said. Then, on Sunday, the police discovered the bodies of three more people, two men aged 51 and 22 and a 15-year-old boy, in a campervan in the Okolchitsa Peak area, about 62 miles (100km) north of the capital, Sofia. The trio was tracked down by law enforcement as investigators suspected they were linked to the Petrohan pass deaths. Agence France-Presse reported that the prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday: “Based on the autopsy data for the [latter] three bodies, it appears that there were probably two murders committed successively and one suicide.” According to the police, five of the deceased were members of the National Protected Areas Control Agency, a non-governmental organisation devoted to nature protection which used the Petrohan pass lodge as a headquarters and also hosted rural holiday camps for young people. Some accounts have described its members as “forest rangers” who for years patrolled the area near the Serbian border and assisted border police. Meanwhile, law enforcement have said the men were involved in Tibetan Buddhism and quoted a relative of one member who spoke of “exceptional psychological instability” within the group. Those close to the deceased have said they must have been killed because they witnessed criminal activity around the Bulgarian-Serbian border, where people smuggling and illegal logging activities are not uncommon. Ralitsa Asenova, the mother of one of the victims found in the campervan, dismissed reports of tensions within the group. “They obviously witnessed something. For me, this is a professionally committed murder,” she said in an interview with Nova, a Bulgarian TV station. As details remain sparse, a lack of official information has led to often groundless speculation spreading online and has further undermined Bulgarians’ low trust in their institutions and authorities. The country is without a government and is headed towards its eighth parliamentary election in five years. The former president Rumen Radev called the case “a political shock and a sign of the country’s condition”, according to his press office. Radev, who resigned as head of state last month after nine years in office, offered his condolences to the deceaseds’ families and urged the authorities to solve the case. “I will not comment on this tragedy, which must be investigated by the competent authorities. The causes of these murders must be clarified as quickly as possible, because the public expects answers,” he said. In 2024 a survey found that 70% of Bulgarians believed in conspiracy theories while 37% had fallen foul of misinformation – so much so that the authors of the study, by the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media, said Bulgaria was living in a “post-truth” situation.

EU moves closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers

The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies. MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to. Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state. The vote effectively underwrites Italy’s deal with Albania and the Dutch government’s agreement with Uganda on the deportation of people whose asylum claims in the Netherlands have been turned down. In a separate vote, MEPs also voted to create an EU list of “safe third countries”, meaning that people from those places will face fast-tracked procedures and may find it harder to claim asylum. The list includes all EU candidate countries, including Georgia and Turkey, where the EU has expressed concerns about government crackdowns on the opposition in 2025. The safe list also includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia. Rights groups have raised the alarm about the inclusion of Tunisia, where President Kaïs Saïed has cracked down on civil society and opposition figures have been jailed for up to 66 years by politically controlled courts. Tunisian forces have also forced back migrants to remote desert regions, where some have died of thirst. A coalition of 39 NGOs said in a statement before Tuesday’s vote that designating Tunisia as a safe country of origin deprived “Tunisian nationals of their right to an individual, fair, and effective assessment of their asylum claims, while giving the Tunisian authorities a renewed carte blanche to continue their systematic violations against migrants, civil society and the wider civic space”. Alessandro Ciriani, an Italian MEP, who led the European parliament’s work on the safe countries of origin list, hailed the result: “This is the beginning of a new phase: migration is no longer endured but governed.” He said: “For too long, political decisions in migration policy have been systematically called into question by divergent judicial interpretations, paralysing state action and fuelling administrative chaos.” Ciriani is member of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has clashed with Italian and European judges, who have ruled against the government’s arrangements with Albania. In 2024 an Italian court ruled that seven men at the Albanian facility would be transferred to Italy, disagreeing with the safe country of origin argument presented by Italy. Italy had argued that the men could be transferred to their “safe” home countries of Bangladesh and Egypt, but the judges said there was a lack of transparency in how safety was assessed. The EU has been tightening refugee rules since more than 1.3 million people claimed asylum during the 2015 migration crisis, but the trend has accelerated with electoral gains by nationalist and far-right parties. In the search for “innovative solutions”, EU leaders in 2024 endorsed the concept of offshore return hubs – processing centres for people denied asylum in the EU. The rightwing Dutch government announced last September it had reached a deal with Uganda to enable the deportation of Africans denied asylum in the Netherlands. Denmark’s Social Democrat government had previously explored processing asylum claimants in Rwanda, but never went ahead. Last year 155,100 people risked their lives travelling in unseaworthy boats across the Mediterranean, while 1,953 died or went missing, according to the UN refugee agency. The deadly toll has continued in the first weeks of 2026. As many as 380 people were feared drowned after a boat from Tunisia sailed into a cyclone last month. Supporters of the new measures argue they undermine the business model of people smugglers. “People who genuinely need protection must receive it, but not necessarily in the European Union. Effective protection can also be provided in a safe third country, while individual assessment remains fully guaranteed,” said Assita Kanko, a Flemish nationalist politician. The International Rescue Committee described the votes as deeply disappointing. “The new ‘safe third country’ rules are likely to force people to countries they may never have set foot in – places where they have no community, do not speak the language and face a very real risk of abuse and exploitation,” said the IRC’s senior advocacy adviser, Meron Ameha Knikman. The two laws were passed with strong support from the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) and three nationalist and far-right groups. The votes were the latest sign of a new dynamic in the European parliament after the election of a record number of nationalist and far-right MEPs to the right of the traditional Christian Democrats in 2024. While critics accused the EPP of breaking the cordon sanitaire, voting lists revealed a more complex picture. The centre-left was deeply divided, with significant minorities of socialist and centrist MEPs voting in favour of the new laws, while many centrists abstained.