Annual event in June is designed to make service in volunteer army more attractive amid looming threats

The German parliament has passed a bill creating the first post-unification Veterans’ Day, breaking with a long-held taboo around veneration of soldiers as the country faces up to new looming threats.

MPs in the Bundestag lower house approved the proposal to create a memorial day on 15 June each year, after an agreement between the government and the conservative opposition earlier this month.

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Plan ‘betrayal’ of values, says French president in speech covering defence, Europe’s waning influence and negative effects of Brexit

• Europe live – latest updates

Emmanuel Macron has criticised migration policies that involve sending migrants to African countries as “a betrayal of our [European] values”, just days after the UK government passed its Rwanda deportation bill.

The French president made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech on Thursday aimed at warning Europe against over-dependence on other countries for security and trade.

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Government accused of trying to undermine independent media with move to replace public broadcaster and its director-general

Journalists in Slovakia are protesting against a government move to overhaul the country’s public broadcaster, warning that the populist prime minister, Robert Fico, and his allies are undermining media freedom.

On Thursday, many journalists wore black, a day after Slovakia’s government approved a controversial draft law that would replace the public broadcaster RTVS, remove its director general and allow a council partly selected by a ministry to appoint a new chief.

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Some residents say €5 fee aimed at curtailing over-tourism goes against principle of freedom of movement

Venice’s entrance charge for day-trippers has got off to a shaky start, bewildering people staying in hotels who needed to prove their exemption and drawing protests from some residents.

The €5 (£4.30) charge, aimed at curtailing over-tourism, has ignited fury among some residents. The charge kicked in at 8.30am on Thursday and will apply on 29 peak days until 14 July as part of a trial phase.

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Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks were due to start next week but committee raises concerns over delays to plan

• UK politics – latest updates

MPs have cast doubt over the UK government’s readiness for post-Brexit border control checks, which are due to come in next week, arguing that a scaling back of its plans appeared to represent a sixth delay to their long-awaited introduction.

The environment, food and rural affairs select committee (EFRA) has written to the government demanding clarity over the exact nature of the physical inspections on plant and food products, after it emerged these may be significantly scaled back due to fears of delays at the border.

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Today, we remember the 1974 Carnation Revolution. But as memories of dictatorship fade, anti-democratic forces are on the rise

Fifty years ago, on 25 April 1974, a military-led movement in Portugal took down the rightwing authoritarian regime that had governed the country for 41 years. The Carnation Revolution , named after the flowers people offered soldiers on the streets, led the country to democracy and an era of immense social progress – reducing infant mortality and illiteracy rates , for example, which were comparatively very high in 1974. By 1986, Portugal had made enough strides to be able to join the European Communities, now the EU.

I was born in the early 1990s, but even in my generation 25 April is a hallowed anniversary for many. Growing up as a teenager interested in politics generated a strong emotional attachment to a national holiday centred on the celebration of political freedom.

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Kerry Condon plays a potty-mouthed IRA gang leader and Neeson is the quiet antihero in this action thriller set at the height of the Troubles

Producer-director and veteran Clint Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz is now saddling up for this “Donegal western”. It is an action thriller that finds the cowboy spirit in the lush rolling grasslands of County Donegal in Ireland’s north-west, neighbouring Northern Ireland but geographically sequestered from the rest of the Republic.

In 1974, at the height of the Troubles, an IRA gang led by icy-hearted and potty-mouthed Doireann (Kerry Condon) accidentally kills a bunch of kids with a Belfast bomb blast. Without especially regretting the collateral damage, she leads her crew as they escape over the border into Donegal to lie low, fetching up on the outskirts of a village that appears populated by adorable stereotypes. These include a stolid Gardai officer (Ciarán Hinds), and his best mate, widower Finbar Murphy (Liam Neeson), a quiet man who apparently makes a living dealing in secondhand books – and shyly courting neighbour Rita (Niamh Cusack).

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Chemical thought to be in emerald green covers of four 19th-century books identified by Poison Book Project

France’s national library has removed four 19th-century books from its shelves whose emerald green covers are believed to be laced with arsenic.

The library said on Thursday that handling the books, which were printed in Britain, would probably cause only minor harm, but it was taking them away for further analysis.

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Suspects alleged to have posed as academics to access books and replace them with copies, says Europol

• Europe live – latest updates

Police have arrested nine Georgians suspected of running a sophisticated criminal operation stealing valuable antique books – including an original Alexander Pushkin manuscript – from national libraries across Europe.

Shelves of 19th-century Russian-language literature had been ransacked over two years across several countries and replaced by fakes, Europol, the EU police agency revealed on Thursday.

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