After wartime trauma, Europe’s youngest country has developed an outsize musical clout that packed this year’s Sunny Hill festival in Pristina. What fuels its pop success?

The fields above the Kosovan village of Bërnicë e Poshtme offer a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside. Blue skies are cut through with silhouettes of the mountains surrounding Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. The horizon is punctured by thin, silvery minarets and red-roofed houses. As day turns to night, this scenic backdrop turns to black, as the stages light up and the bass starts to thud.

This is the Sunny Hill festival, a four-day pop music fest organised by international star Dua Lipa and her father, Dukagjin Lipa. The crowd here looks like a screenshot of TikTok’s For You Page: trendy crop tops and wide-leg flares abound, with many attendees under 18. Vesa and Urta, both 17, live in Pristina and are attending the festival for the first and second time respectively. “The nightlife here is crazy,” they enthuse. “We love the vibe and the energy.”

Having only declared independence from Serbia in 2008, Kosovo is the youngest country in Europe in more ways than one: the average age of its citizens is 29.5, possibly aided by the fact that young Kosovars until recently could not take advantage of freedom of movement inside the EU. Its population of 1.8 million is less than a quarter of New York City’s, its land mass only 3% of Germany’s – which makes the small Balkan country’s outsized impact on international pop music even more remarkable.

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We’re vulnerable to presidential whims – and that’s opened the door to the far right. We urgently need to build a Sixth Republic

When Emmanuel Macron called a shock election after the French far right’s victory in the 9 June European elections, he gambled on one of the shortest and most high-risk electoral campaigns in our country’s history. At a moment when the far right had just gained a record number of seats in the European parliament, the president’s unilateral and reckless act – deciding to dissolve parliament three years before elections were due – plunged the country into fear and uncertainty.

Macron was certainly not banking on the left forming a new alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP) and putting a solid programme together in record time to contest the elections. In the end, enough voters mobilised against the far right as a threat to the republic, and the election led to the consolidation of three parliamentary blocs in the national assembly. The NFP came first, beating Macron’s centre-right alliance, Ensemble, into second place. Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (the National Rally ) came third.

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Comments come on third day of Ukrainian attack on southern Russian region, with troops advancing about 10km over the border. What we know on day 898

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Tears, hugs and spontaneous sing-alongs as thousands turn disappointment into celebration on streets of Austrian city

Taylor Swift fans have reached out to each other in emotional gatherings across Vienna after the singer’s three-night run of concerts in the city were cancelled following a foiled terrorist plot.

Many fans traded their bracelets threaded with beads spelling out the words of their favourite Swift songs, hung them from trees in the Austrian capital’s parks, and joined in spontaneous street-side sing-alongs of tracks from her back catalogue. In a city better known for classical music than for pop idols, some Viennese looked on in bemusement, while others offered free food and drink to the visitors.

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Austrian, 19, arrested alongside 17-year-old for allegedly planning Islamist attack at Vienna venue

The 19-year-old prime suspect in an alleged plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert that led to the cancellation of the singer’s three-night run in Vienna had collected chemicals with the intention of building a bomb, senior Austrian security officials have said.

The Austrian suspect was arrested along with a 17-year-old who recently started working for a services company providing support for the concerts, on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack. A third person, 15, was taken into custody late on Wednesday in connection with the investigation.

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Fugitive former regional president addressed supporters in Barcelona before disappearing, sparking police operation

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Catalan police have launched an operation to find and arrest Carles Puigdemont and set up roadblocks on routes to the French border after the fugitive former regional president returned to Spain for the first time in seven years to address a crowd of several thousand in Barcelona and then disappeared.

The driver of the car in which he escaped – an officer in the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police – was arrested amid serious questions for the force, which was at the rally in strength, as traffic in Barcelona was brought to a standstill in the search for the former president.

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Zelenskiy aide says ‘root cause of any escalation’, including into Kursk, is Moscow’s ‘unequivocal aggression’

Ukraine publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces were advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.

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Tom Doherty, 67, messaged his family to say he had fallen and could not move shortly before they lost contact

The family of a retired British doctor have issued an urgent appeal after he went missing in the French Pyrenees almost 48 hours ago.

Tom Doherty, 67, from St Albans was hiking and camping near Col d’Escots when his family lost contact with him on Tuesday evening, just after he sent messages saying he had fallen and couldn’t move.

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Activists say the rollout of laws permitting recreational use of the drug has been hampered by a ‘bureaucratic monster’

Joints now mingle openly with pints among fans watching the European football championship in host nation Germany, which in the spring became the first big EU country to legally allow personal recreational use of cannabis .

That is, provided the fan is over 18, only carrying a small amount of the narcotic, not smoking in the stands of a stadium and not in possession of more than three plants at their officially registered home.

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