Joanna Gill

The empty building on Rue de la Loi street in Brussels is crowded and run-down, but the roughly 100 asylum seekers who are squatting there say they have nowhere else to go if police carry out an eviction order.

"We don't know what to do - if we leave, we won't have a place to stay," Amil, a 30-year-old man from Afghanistan, who asked not to use his full name, told Context last week as the eviction date drew near.

Simmering public anger about Poland's tough curbs on abortion could push the issue up the agenda in campaigning for a closely fought election expected in October or November, political analysts and abortion rights campaigners say.

The death of a 33-year-old woman triggered protests in June over the country's abortion law, among the strictest in Europe, which only allows the procedure in cases of rape, incest and threat to the woman's life or health.

From Zimbabwe's lithium-rich rocks to Democratic Republic of Congo's cobalt, minerals critical for clean energy technologies are increasingly in demand from Africa's trade partners as part of the global green transition from planet-warming fossil fuels.

Yet on a continent long blighted by the so-called "resource curse" - whereby nations rich in oil or gold, for example, have failed to convert this into wider prosperity - governments have increasingly restricted or banned mineral exports in recent years in a bid to boost processing and retain more of the gains.

With a proliferation of festivals like Glastonbury and gigs by stars from Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen attracting ever-bigger crowds, the music industry's carbon footprint and impact on the environment are increasingly in the spotlight.

Live concerts and festivals contribute to planet-warming emissions in many ways - be it artists and fans travelling around the world or the high energy consumption of events, not to mention factors like catering and mass-produced merchandise.

The scented stands of pine trees stretching along France's southwestern Atlantic coastline were reduced to charred stumps and stacks of blackened timber by the massive fires that ravaged the tourist hotspots of the Landes forest last summer.

In July and August 2022, more than 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of forest went up in smoke - a record since mega-fires hit the region in 1949. The scars in the local community run as deep as those on the landscape.

From homes to transport, culture to policing - artificial intelligence (AI) technology is transforming our everyday lives.

Rights experts warn this rise has come at a significant cost: undermining our privacy, entrenching societal biases, and creating opaque systems that lack accountability.

Millions of European gig workers could be recognised as employees with rights to pensions, paid leave and workplace accident insurance under draft labour rules approved by European Union lawmakers this week.

The proposals aim to stamp out what EU lawmakers describe as "bogus self-employment" among gig workers using digital platforms, from food delivery couriers and drivers for ride-hailing apps through to domestic workers and microworkers who complete small tasks such as content moderation online.

The grey skies were a welcome sight for drought-hit farmers in France's Nouvelle Aquitaine region. But rare rains earlier this month offered only brief respite for agricultural producers, whose weather woes are now being compounded by growing conflict over scarce water.

Tensions between environmental campaigners and farmers over the construction of giant irrigation reservoirs have sown division in rural communities in this picturesque part of western France.

Every day, dozens of people brave the morning chill to stand in line outside the drab concrete asylum registration centre in downtown Brussels to see if they can get a home for the night.

"I guess every single person has a big story that could be a movie," said Omar, describing the reasons he and other asylum seekers had ended up in Belgium.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year sparked the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, but also a wave of solidarity as thousands opened their homes to Ukrainians and EU states gave them rights and benefits akin to their own citizens.

The European Union swiftly granted temporary protection to millions of fleeing Ukrainians, giving them immediate rights to work and access to education, healthcare, welfare and housing, almost the same as local nationals.