BRUSSELS — Eurostar services between London and mainland Europe resumed on Wednesday after a major disruption in the Channel Tunnel left thousands of passengers stranded a day earlier. The high-speed rail operator had canceled most of its London-bound and outbound services on Tuesday after an overhead power supply fault inside the tunnel was compounded by a failed Le Shuttle train, which transports passengers and vehicles through the crossing. The incident blocked all routes through the tunnel, causing hours-long delays and widespread cancellations. Some trains in Europe that do not use the Channel crossing, such as the Paris-Brussels route, were also suspended due to the overall delays. A Eurostar spokesperson told POLITICO that services were to resume at 7 p.m. Brussels time (6 p.m. London time) on Tuesday evening, after a “partial reopening of the Channel Tunnel.” Getlink, the company that operates the Channel Tunnel, said work continued through the night to fix the power issue, allowing rail traffic in both directions to restart early Wednesday, BBC reported. Eurostar apologized to passengers for the disruption and warned of possible knock-on delays and last-minute cancellations on Wednesday as services return to normal. Travelers were urged to check their journeys before heading to stations. On Tuesday, Eurostar “strongly” advised passengers to postpone travel where possible and not to head to the train station if their train had been canceled.

You can only walk 6 kilometers per hour if you want to follow the law in Slovakia. The Slovak parliament Tuesday afternoon adopted an amendment to the traffic law that sets a maximum permitted speed on sidewalks in urban areas at 6 kph. The limit applies to pedestrians, cyclists, skaters, and scooter and e-scooter riders — all of who are allowed on sidewalks — and aims to avoid frequent collisions. “The main goal is to increase safety on sidewalks in light of the increasing number of collisions with scooter riders,” said the author of the amendment, Ľubomír Vážny of the leftist-populist Smer party of Prime Minister Robert Fico, which is part of the ruling coalition. The amendment will be useful in proving violations, the lawmaker said, “especially in cases where it’s necessary to objectively determine whether they were moving faster than what’s considered an appropriate speed in areas meant primarily for pedestrians.” Although the law will come into force Jan. 1, 2026, proponents haven’t publicly spelled out how they plan to enforce it. The average walking speed typically ranges between 4 to 5 kph. However, the British Heart Foundation reports that a pace of 6.4 kilometers per hour is considered moderate for someone with excellent fitness. The opposition criticized the change, and even the Slovak Interior Ministry said it would be more appropriate to prohibit e-scooters from the sidewalks than impose a general speed limit. Martin Pekár of the opposition liberal party Progressive Slovakia said pedestrians face danger from cars, not cyclists or scooters, and that the amendment penalizes sustainable transport. “If we want fewer collisions, we need more safe bike lanes, not absurd limits that are physically impossible to follow,” Pekár said. “At the mentioned speed, a cyclist can hardly keep their balance,” he added. The amendment has sparked a wave of amusement on social media, with some wondering whether running to catch a bus could get them fined.

LONDON — Britain’s technocratic ministers aren’t the most obvious candidates to don MAGA-style red caps and belt out punchy slogans. But Britain’s housing secretary has a real fight on his hands, and he’s not afraid to channel Donald Trump in waging it. Steve Reed took office in early September with a colorful promise to “build, baby, build.” Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis. The availability of affordable housing has plummeted, Brits are getting on the housing ladder later in life, and many families and renters are living in overcrowded, substandard and insecure homes. To try to fix this, the government came to power promising to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of the parliament. Reed and his team went into this fall’s Labour conference wearing hats emblazoned with the Trump-style three-word phrase, a rabble-rousing address and a social media strategy to match. But his MPs are already worried that the tradeoffs Reed and the U.K. Treasury are pushing to get shovels in the ground ride roughshod over the environmental protections that Brits cherish — and put some vulnerable Labour seats at risk. The three-word slogan is “completely counterproductive,” said one Labour MP who was granted anonymity to speak candidly like others quoted in this piece. The government must acknowledge “that nature is something that people genuinely love, [which] improves health and wellbeing.” PLANNING BATTLE Front of their minds are a host of changes to the U.K.’s planning bill, which is snaking its way through parliament. The bill aims to cut red tape to fast-track planning decisions, unlock more land for development, and create a building boom.  The legislation is on a journey through the U.K.’s House of Lords, and has been tweaked with a slew of government amendments on its way. In October, Reed introduced further amendments to try to speed up planning decisions and overrule councils who attempt to block new developments.  But the first MP quoted above said they are concerned Reed’s “build, baby, build” drive will only see Labour shed votes to both Zack Polanski’s left-wing Green Party and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform. The government announced that the quotas for affordable housing in new London developments would be slashed from 35 percent to 20 percent. | Richard Baker/Getty Images “Making tough decisions about how we use our land for important purposes, such as energy, food, security, housing and nature, is what government is about,” the first MP said. But they added: “We need to make sure that we are making the right decisions, but also telling a story about why we’re making those decisions, and dismissing nature as inconvenient is going against the grain of the British public.” They added: “Nobody disagrees with [building more homes] as a principle, but ending up with a narrative that basically sounds like you’re speaking in support of the [housing] developers, rather than in support of the communities that we represent, is just weird.” MAKING CHANGES Last week, Reed opened up another front in his battle. The government announced that the quotas for affordable housing in new London developments would be slashed from 35 percent to 20 percent. City Hall said the measures would help speed up planning decisions and incentivize developers to actually build more houses. But cutting social housing targets is an uncomfortable prospect for many in the Labour party.   The government’s message is “build, baby build — but not for poor people,” a Labour aide complained.  Reed firmly defended the change, telling Sky News last week: “There were only 4,000 starts in London last year for social and affordable housing. That is nothing like the scale of the crisis that we have.” He added of the quota: “35 percent of nothing is nothing. We need to make schemes viable for developers so they’ll get spades in the ground.” BLOCKING THE BLOCKERS NARRATIVE Reed has the backing of the U.K.’s powerful Treasury in waging his battle. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said the government wants to back the “builders not the blockers,” language a second Labour MP, this one in a rural seat, described as “terrible” and an approach that “needs to stop.” Such rhetoric will fail to persuade constituents worried about new developments that trample nature to support new housing. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” they warned. “It’s all vinegar.” The government has already shown that it’s willing to take the fight to pro-environment MPs — sometimes dismissed in the U.K. as “NIMBYs,” short for “not in my backyard.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said the government wants to back the “builders not the blockers.” | Pool Photo by Joe Giddens via Getty Images 2024 intake MP Chris Hinchliff was stripped of the Labour whip in July after proposing a series of rebel amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and attacking the legislation for having a “narrow focus on increasing housing supply.” While there is vocal opposition to the “build, baby, build” strategy within Labour, there are also MPs who align themselves with the general message, if not the exact wording. “I would not go out to my constituents who are concerned about the Green Belt wearing a [build, baby, build] cap,” said a third Labour MP, also in a rural seat, “but at the same time, you have to be honest with people about the trade-offs.” They accused the opposition to Reed of “fear-mongering” and stoking the idea that England’s green belt — a designated area of British countryside protected from most development — risks being “destroyed.”  “That has killed off responsible discussions on development,” they argued. “Do I love the slogan? No. Am I going to lose sleep over it? No, because as a constituency MP you can have reasonable conversations.” THE RED HAT BRIGADE Reed also has a cohort of willing warriors on his side. The 2024 intake of Labour MPs brought with it some highly vocal, pro-growth Labour factions. The Labour YIMBY group and Labour Growth Group have been shouting from the rooftops about building more. Labour Growth Group chair and MP Chris Curtis says: “We have some of the oldest and therefore coldest homes of any developed country. We have outdated, carbon intensive energy infrastructure, hardly any water storage, pipes that leak, old sewage infrastructure that dumps raw sewage into our rivers, and car dependency because we can’t build proper public transport.  “Anybody who thinks blocks on building has been good for nature is simply wrong,” he added. “Protecting our environment literally depends on us building well, and building quickly.” Labour MP Mike Reader, who worked in the construction and infrastructure sector before becoming an MP and is part of the pro-building caucus, was sanguine about Reed’s message. “The U.K. is the most nature-depleted country in Western Europe,” he said. “So to argue for the status quo … is arguing for us to destroy nature in its very essence. The legislation that we [currently] have does not protect nature.” As for concern that the government is too close to housing developers, Reader shot back: “Who do they think builds the houses?” Steve Reed introduced further amendments to try to speed up planning decisions and overrule councils who attempt to block new developments. | Aaron Chown/Getty Images “I want each [MP who rejects the ‘build, baby, build’ message] to tell the thousands of young families in temporary accommodation that they don’t deserve a safe secure home,” he said. “If they can’t do that they need to grow a pair and do difficult things. That’s why we’re in government. To change lives. And build, baby, build.” A fourth unnamed Labour MP said the slogan is “a bit cringe and Trumpian,” but added: “I’m not really arsed about what slogans they’re using if they’re delivering on that as an objective.” There’s also unlikely praise for the effort from the other side of the U.K. political divide. Jack Airey, a former No. 10 special adviser who tried to get a planning and infrastructure bill through under the last Conservative government, said “people that oppose house building often have the loudest voice, and they use it … and yet, the people that support house building generally don’t really say it, because why would they? They’ve got better things to do.” “I think it’s really positive for the government to have a pro-house building and pro-development message out there, and, more importantly, a pro-development caucus in parliament and beyond,” he said. In a bid to steady the nerves of anxious MPs, Reed told the parliamentary Labour Party last week that his Trump-style slogan is a “bit of fun” that hides a serious point — that there simply aren’t enough houses being built in the U.K. And an aide to Reed rejected concerns from Labour MPs that nature is not being sufficiently considered, saying “nobody understands [nature concerns] more than Steve. “We reject this kind of binary choice between nature and building,” they said. “We think that you can do both. It just requires imaginative, ultimately sensible and pragmatic policy-making, and that’s what we’re doing. “We’re not ashamed to campaign in primary colors,” the Reed aide said. Noah Keate contributed reporting.

Over three-quarters of Europeans live in cities, but their quality of life varies wildly — especially when it comes to factors that have a big impact on health. A group of international researchers developed a new Healthy Urban Design Index (HUDI) to track and assess well-being in 917 European cities, using indicators ranging from access to sustainable public transport and green spaces to air pollution exposure and heat islands.  The tracking tool was developed by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health using data gathered for a study to be published in this month’s Lancet Planetary Health journal. According to its findings there is a clear continental divide in conditions that favor healthy urban living. Analyses reviewed by POLITICO’s Living Cities showed that municipalities in Western Europe — especially in the U.K., Spain and Sweden — received significantly higher scores than comparable cities in Eastern European countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. Natalie Mueller, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Pompeu Fabra University, said access to public funds plays a major role in this divide. “If there are financial constraints in cities, investing in sustainable and health-promoting urban forms and infrastructures, and defining environmental policies may be probably less of a priority than tackling other more pressing social and economic issues,” she said. Mueller also noted lingering cultural differences in environmental consciousness and the link between urban design and health. “Eastern European cities still have a strong car culture, where cars are still status symbols,” she said, adding that in some areas, active mobility options like cycling are frowned upon. “They still strongly cater to car traffic with necessary infrastructure, which leads to poor environmental quality and worse health outcomes.” By comparison, lower levels of air pollution, greater access to green spaces, and the reduced presence of urban heat islands enabled Europe’s smaller cities, with 50,000 to 200,000 inhabitants, to earn the highest HUDI scores. Topping the list is Pamplona — a regional capital in Spain that lies in a lush valley at the foot of the Pyrenees and that has used the considerable revenues from its annual “Running of the Bulls” festival to invest in active mobility infrastructure.  MADRID MAKES GOOD Earning the highest score among Europe’s urban areas with more than 1.5 million inhabitants was Madrid, another Spanish city. Like other big cities it ranked well on sustainable transport and housing density. However, Madrid’s placement was remarkable given that the Spanish capital routinely violated the EU’s air quality rules until 2023. Urbanism Councilor Borja Carabante told POLITICO this was precisely why the city had adopted aggressive measures to improve its expansive public transport system. “We’re the first EU capital to have a completely clean urban bus system,” he said, highlighting the number of electric or zero-emissions mass transport vehicles in the network. “We also have Europe’s largest low-emissions zone.” Carabante explained that the public transport initiatives accompanied subsidies for residents seeking to replace their cars or boilers with more sustainable models, or wanting to install e-charging stations in their buildings. Madrid is also taking on major infrastructure projects while building on the success of the Madrid Río regeneration project, which buried a major swathe of the capital’s ring road to recover the Manzanares River. | Jesus Hellin/Europa Press via Getty Images Madrid is also taking on major infrastructure projects while building on the success of the Madrid Río regeneration project, which buried a major swathe of the capital’s ring road to recover the Manzanares River. Work is currently underway on a scheme to redirect a major highway underground and to reconnect five neighborhoods that have been divided since 1968. The redeveloped 3-kilometer area will be a green axis with trees, playgrounds and space for pedestrians and cyclists.  Carabante said the project is emblematic of the city’s commitment to becoming a more desirable — and healthier — place to live. “While cities like Berlin, Rome, Paris and London continue to surpass the nitrogen-dioxide levels considered safe for humans, Madrid has drastically reduced it, complying with European standards, and has become a healthier, more pleasant and more sustainable city than ever before.” Citing examples from the study, Mueller emphasized there are plenty of low-cost measures that local authorities can implement to improve well-being within their municipalities. “You can open up streets and blocks to give people space to walk and cycle, as they’ve done in Barcelona’s superblocks, in London’s low-traffic neighborhoods or Berlin’s Kiezblocks,” she said. The researcher also recommended replacing parking spots with trees and other greenery to protect locals from deadly heat, or to prioritize public transport investments to boost connectivity and slash fares. Using the example of Amsterdam — which went from being a car-choked, smoggy port city in the 1970s to a global model for urban well-being — Mueller stressed that consistent long-term action is the key to making Europe’s cities healthier. Of course, the kind of measures that improve well-being in urban landscapes can be a challenge for municipal leaders, who are up for reelection every four years and are under pressure to prefer projects with immediate results. But Mueller urged them to think big.  “Building healthier urban infrastructure needs long-term, sustained investments,” she said. “Sometimes over many decades.”

LONDON — Britain’s left-behind voters are flocking to populist Nigel Farage. Labour’s Rachel Reeves is hoping she can buy them back. The U.K.’s chief finance minister will Wednesday attempt to convince voters living in towns and cities outside Britain’s prosperous capital she has their backs, as she publishes a spending blueprint which will define the first term of Britain’s center-left government. Reeves has already announced billions of pounds of investment in public transport in the north of England and the Midlands in the run-up to Wednesday’s spending review, along with a cash injection into the science and technology industry. She will also set out investment in security, health and the economy — although unprotected areas such as the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and local councils were bracing for difficult decisions. “This government is renewing Britain. But I know too many people in too many parts of the country are yet to feel it,” Reeves will tell MPs Wednesday.  “This government’s task — my task — and the purpose of this spending review — is to change that. To ensure that renewal is felt in people’s everyday lives, their jobs, their communities,” she will add. Farage’s Reform UK has been surging ahead in the polls as voters protest declining living standards, amid stark regional inequalities in the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has identified the upstart party as his major electoral rival, despite it having just five MPs. But while Labour MPs eyeing Reform competitors will welcome a renewed focus on regional growth, Reeves risks a row with Britain’s high-profile London Mayor Sadiq Khan. IN THE RED Red Wall MPs have been primed. In the run-up to Wednesday, MPs in constituencies with increasingly fickle voters in the Midlands and the north of England — who historically supported the Labour Party but went Conservative in 2019 under Boris Johnson, and are now flirting with Reform UK — have been reassured they will see cash diverted into their areas, with investment in skills and jobs. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has been surging ahead in the polls as voters protest declining living standards, amid stark regional inequalities in the U.K. | Neil Hall/EFE via EPA They are expecting the Treasury to fund an independent commission on neighborhoods to identify just over 600 of the most-deprived areas, which one MP thinks will become a focus of spending. “Most of those are across the Red Wall,” the MP said. “We’ve had the painful early decisions and now we start needing to make a positive case,” the MP added, branding it “No. 11’s way of reviving leveling up, but based on actual need rather than areas bidding for cash.” WHAT ABOUT THE LOSERS? Reeves’ rhetoric will quickly be put to the test when the full spending review documents are published, and the detail of exactly where the ax will fall emerges. Expectations that cash will be diverted away from Britain’s capital risk angering the powerful Khan. Figures close to the capital’s mayor were furious at plans to cut London’s allocation from the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund to zero in future years. The fund was established to support the long-term economic development of towns and cities in place of EU structural funds after Brexit. “If the Treasury goes ahead with this cut, it would be incredibly shortsighted. They say they want economic growth but their actions in failing to invest in new infrastructure in the capital and cutting local growth funds will actually damage our economy, not improve it … they say they want regional mayors to be the drivers of growth but then remove their levers to achieve growth,” an individual close to Khan told POLITICO’s Playbook. A government official pointed out that in London alone, the Treasury has backed the extension of four airports, alongside funding HS2 to Euston and approval of City Hall plans to pedestrianize Oxford Street. LEVELING UP 2.0 Weary voters may think they have heard it all before. Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne championed the Northern Powerhouse as he sought to detoxify his party’s brand in the north of England. Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s flagship leveling-up agenda also sought to convince traditional Labour voters, who voted Conservative for the first time in 2019 following the Brexit vote, to stick around. That vote collapsed for the Tories. Labour’s new Housing Secretary Angela Rayner later ditched the “leveling up” title from her government department, declaring there would be “no more government by gimmick.” Luke Tryl, executive director of the research company More in Common, who regularly conducts focus groups, said he had not understood why Labour pivoted away from leveling up. “It was always the right diagnosis the fact that the social contract was letting too many people in specific parts of the U.K. down, and that is what drives Reform,” he said. “Regions like the North have the potential to drive national growth and prosperity — we aren’t short of investable projects,” Rosie Lockwood, head of advocacy at the IPPR North think tank, said. “But we’ve been subject to empty rhetoric for far too long,” she added.  Tryl agrees it is crucial Reeves makes good on her promises. “There is no doubt that raising expectations then letting them down contributed to making trust even worse,” he said. Andrew McDonald contributed reporting

The massive blackout that left the Iberian Peninsula in the dark on Monday appears to have been sparked by the unexplained disappearance 15 gigawatts of power from Spain’s electricity grid. “This has never happened before,” said a grave-looking Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at a press conference late on Monday evening. “And what caused it is something that the experts have not yet established — but they will.” He added that “no hypothesis has been rejected, and every possible cause is being investigated.” A spokesperson for the Spanish government told POLITICO that “at 12:33 p.m. 15 gigawatts of the energy being produced [in Spain] suddenly disappeared and remained missing for five seconds.” They added that the amount of electricity that had suddenly vanished from power grid was equivalent to 60 percent of the total being consumed nationwide at that time. The sudden drop in available power destabilized Spain’s electricity grid, which is highly integrated with Portugal’s and linked  to the rest of Europe through a small number of cross-border interconnections with France. Eduardo Prieto, director of Spanish transmission system operator Red Eléctrica, on Monday said the blackout had been caused by a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that led Spain’s power system to “disconnect from the European system, and the collapse of the Iberian electricity network at 12:38.” 30,000 members of the the country’s police force and the Civil Guard gendarmerie corps had been deployed. | Alberto Estevez/Getty Images The situation, which affected public transport networks, traffic lights, hospitals, and payment systems, is unprecedented. Spain’s opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and its support for Ukraine against Russia’s aggression have made it a major target for cyberattacks, and throughout the day there was heightened speculation that the crisis could be the result of nefarious action. The Joint Cyberspace Command, which reports to the Defense Staff and oversees cybersecurity, and the National Cryptologic Center, have both launched investigations into the blackout. Saying that it would likely be “a long night,” Sánchez said that it could take longer than expected to restore power to the entire country. He added that Spaniards should prioritize their welfare and try to work from home on Tuesday if possible. “Spanish citizens should and can feel calm,” the prime minister said, adding that security forces are ensuring that order is maintained throughout the country. 30,000 members of the the country’s police force and the Civil Guard gendarmerie corps had been deployed across the country on Monday, and additional reserve units have been placed on stand-by ready to be activated if needed. This article has been updated.

A massive blackout in Spain and Portugal on Monday left customers and businesses without means of electronic payment, brutally exposing the risks of completely moving away from cash. The massive blackout affected everything from public transport to hospitals and manufacturing across the Iberian Peninsula. According to Spanish newspaper El País, banks and payments systems were hit, with only some banks allowing payments through the point of sale (POS) terminals that they operate. Bank branches and ATMs are also closed. However, the Bank of Spain said that, as of 3:30 p.m. local time, the national and cross-border payments system was working normally, and that any residual problems were down to a lack of back-up power available to bank branches, merchants or consumers. At retailers, it noted, the point-of-sale terminals used to process payments may have run out of battery. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has actively tried to reduce the use of cash in Spain in recent years in an effort to reduce tax evasion. In 2021, Spain lowered the amount of physical cash that businesses could receive in a single transaction to €1,000 from €2,500. However, according to European Central Bank data, Spain still boasts a relatively high degree of cash usage, which accounts for 57 percent of retail transactions. Around 39 percent of Spanish payments that aren’t online are done through either card or mobile apps. The vulnerability of cashless payments to disruption — either unintentional or deliberate — hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last month, Sweden’s central bank warned that it was important for resilience reasons for citizens to keep physical currency ready to use in case of emergency situations. Riksbank Governor Erik Thedéen referred to the “deteriorating security situation” in his comments, a nod to nearby Russia. The incident comes only a few weeks after an equipment malfunction caused an outage lasting several hours at the European Central Bank’s TARGET system for processing wholesale payments. In this instance, however, the most important part of the eurozone’s financial plumbing continued to operate normally, the ECB said. The vulnerability of cashless payments to disruption — either unintentional or deliberate — hasn’t gone unnoticed. | Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA

Russia is stepping up its hybrid attacks against the Netherlands and its European allies to influence and weaken their societies, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD said Tuesday. The agency’s annual report said that Russia attempted to disrupt the 2024 European election by launching cyberattacks on websites belonging to Dutch political parties and public transport companies, aiming to make it harder for Dutch citizens to vote. “The MIVD does not see the Russian threat against Europe decreasing but increasing. Even after a possible end to the war with Ukraine,” MIVD Director and Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the report. “There are turbulent developments in international politics and in the alliance field … The speed with which this is happening and the potential effect on our security is unprecedented,” he added. The MIVD revealed several recent Russian operations in the Netherlands, including the first known cyber sabotage attack by a Russian hacker group targeting an unspecified Dutch public facility’s digital systems in 2024. According to the report, the impact of the attack was minimal and did not lead to any damage. The agency also detected a Russian cyber operation targeting critical infrastructure in the Netherlands, potentially in preparation for future sabotage. The operation did not succeed, the report noted. “We live in a gray zone between war and peace,” Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans commented on the report. “To prevent vulnerabilities in the face of Russia, a swift scaling up of our armed forces and defense industry is essential. Only then can we prevent further Russian aggression in Europe,” he added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has launched a huge crackdown to strengthen his grip on power by detaining his most serious political rival, raiding the homes of 106 opponents and banning protests for four days. The initial shock of the Islamist president’s dramatic strike in the NATO heavyweight of 85 million people hauled the lira down nearly 13 percent against the dollar to a new all-time low, although it later clawed back some losses. The BIST-100 benchmark stock index fell more than 8 percent. The authorities’ primary target was Ekrem İmamoğlu, the highly popular opposition mayor of Istanbul, who had been expected to emerge as the presidential candidate for the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the coming days.  The original move against İmamoğlu had focused on whether his university diploma was valid — something that would be necessary for running for the presidency.  The investigation snowballed on Wednesday, however, when he was arrested on charges of extortion, bribery, fraud and being both the leader and member of a criminal organization. He was also accused of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. İmamoğlu responded by dashing off a handwritten note, saying he was the victim of a political stitch-up.  “Our nation will give the necessary response to the lies, conspiracies, traps, lies, those who violate people’s rights, and those who steal the will of the people,” he wrote, repeating the word “lies” in his hurry. “A blow is being dealt against the will of the people,” he posted on X.   İmamoğlu is a particular bugbear for Erdoğan, himself once mayor of Istanbul, because the CHP has now won three fiercely fought municipal elections in Turkey’s biggest city — overturning districts traditionally held by the ruling Islamist party in the latest race.  The move against İmamoğlu came as part of a broader operation in which the homes of  journalists, CHP politicians, businessmen and even a singer were raided.  Despite the ban on protests and public transport closures, people turned out in the streets in several cities to demonstrate and hundreds of students pushed back riot police at Istanbul University.  Turkey’s Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç protested the judiciary was politically independent and claimed Erdoğan had nothing to do with the arrest of the mayor. “It is impudence, to say the least, to associate the investigations and cases initiated by the judiciary with our president. Separation of powers is fundamental in our country with its legislative, executive and judicial branches. The judiciary does not take orders or instructions from anyone.” he said. The detention of the mayor of Istanbul poses a huge dilemma for the CHP, which was supposed to name its presidential candidate on March 23. The party will have to decide whether to fight on with İmamoğlu, or switch to Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş as presidential candidate.  Yavaş said the action against İmamoğlu posed serious questions about rule of law in Turkey. “Yesterday’s diploma cancellation, today’s detention procedures against the police and their team who gathered in front of Mayor Ekrem’s house in the early hours of the morning … This picture does not suit a state governed by the rule of law,” he said on X. Erdoğan’s political ally, ultra nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli, defended the actions of the authorities:  “No one is untouchable, unreachable, inaccessible, and unaccountable…I have full confidence in the Turkish judiciary.” on his X account. On the European-level, the center-left EU Socialist party condemned “a full-scale attack by Erdoğan on the democratic opposition and civil society in Turkey.” Since taking office in 2019, İmamoğlu has faced multiple legal cases that had the potential to ban him from politics, including allegations of official misconduct, tender-rigging, bribery and threatening an official engaged in “fighting terrorism,” all leveled by government authorities. He has previously alleged that Erdoğan is seeking to jail him for up to 25 years.

ATHENS ― Greece will come almost entirely to a standstill Friday as grief, anger and accusations of high-level political corruption reach a head. Public transport, airplanes, schools and courts ― even supermarkets, shops, cafés, theaters, bars and clubs ― will close their doors, while huge demonstrations are expected to paralyze the country. The national strike is unprecedented in its breadth in this country of 10 million. While on their surface the protests merely mark the two-year anniversary of the country’s worst rail tragedy ― an accident that killed 57 people ― at its core are the emotions and unsettling questions the crash provoked. Those go far beyond the disaster itself.  Amid an atmosphere of blame, recrimination and suspicion that the government isn’t being honest with its citizens, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis faces his biggest challenge since taking office in 2019. Given public concerns over the administration’s commitment to democracy and legal freedoms, his reaction to the protests is being watched closely. According to opinion polls, the vast majority of Greeks believe the government is attempting to cover up what really happened, and who was really to blame, when a freight train and a passenger train packed with students crashed head-on just before midnight on Feb. 28, 2023. There is speculation ― neither proved nor entirely disproven ― that highly flammable chemicals were being transported. It doesn’t help that two years on, a trial has yet to even begin amid constant delays in the investigation. Greeks have lost trust in their country’s judicial system, the surveys say, while the government denies any wrongdoing. EXPLOSION AND A FIREBALL Friday’s protests, which are being organized by the families of the crash victims, will take place in more than 350 cities both in Greece and abroad, places as diverse as Akureyi in Iceland, Mexico City and South Korea. While the government of the center-right New Democracy party was reelected after the tragedy, its handling of the fallout since has only served to intensify the scrutiny.  The pressure became intense in January after audio recordings from inside the train were leaked. The evidence indicated that some victims had survived the impact and may have died due to asphyxiation or burns from a massive explosion and fireball that ripped through the carriages. It included a young woman’s last words ― “I have no oxygen” ― in a call to emergency services.  “Serious information went missing because the site of the accident was not sealed,” said Christos Papadimitriou, the head of Greece’s National Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Organization, which was created after the crash. Papadimitriou hailed the families of the victims who had taken on the “titanic task” of investigating the accident scene themselves and had commissioned private experts in the absence of a coordinated state response. “Everyone owes them an apology,” he said. Friday’s protests, which are being organized by the families of the crash victims, will take place in more than 350 cities both in Greece and abroad, places as diverse as Akureyi in Iceland, Mexico City and South Korea. | Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images The government also failed to heed a call from the European public prosecutor to take action regarding the potential criminal liability of two former transport ministers following the crash. “Those who delayed [the implementation of the railway contract] have contributed decisively to the death of these children,” Papadimitriou said. The main opposition, the center-left Pasok party, said it would file a no-confidence motion in parliament against the government. However, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis ruled out the possibility of early elections and accused Pasok of opportunism and attempting to exploit the tragedy for electoral gain. ‘MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN’ A long-awaited report on the investigation was released on Thursday, blaming human error, the country’s outdated infrastructure and major systemic failures for the deadly crash. The 178-page report by the Accident Investigation Organization confirmed suspicions that an “unknown” substance may have contributed to a massive explosion and fireball. Intense speculation has surrounded the cargo that was being transported by the freight train that night, and multiple investigations have probed the possibility of oil smuggling. Trace amounts of xylene and benzene, chemicals used in the manufacture of gasoline, were detected at the scene. Accident Investigation Organization experts said that vital information was lost by improper handling of the accident site. Wrecked carriages were removed, and the site was covered with rubble three days after the crash, at a time when families were still hoping to recover the remains of the victims. It remains unclear who gave that order. “What happened ― with the evidence being destroyed in three days ― must never happen again,” lead investigator Kostas Kapetanidis said at a press conference. The investigators also cited procedural errors for the failure to identify the type of fuel being transported. The report describes a chaotic situation in the aftermath of the accident. “There was no actual coordination, whether at operational or strategical level, of the different services at the scene of the collision. Each service continued to operate under its own orders, initiatives, and personnel without any interaction at the organizational level,” it said. “One particular result of this is the fact that no proper mapping of the accident investigation site was performed.”