Alan Mitcham says leftwing parties must make ending war their priority, Gillian Homeri encourages citizens to be more politically active and Barry Kushner says centrist parties must reach across the class divide

I read your reports on the European elections, including your assessment that the political landscape has moved to the right ( EU elections 2024: how did key countries vote and what does it mean?, 10 June ). Although this is correct, I feel that it doesn’t tell the whole story.

The main and paramount criteria for my vote (here in Germany) was to vote for a party which proposes a diplomatic solution to the various wars that are raging. To me it is obvious that no other problems (especially the issue of climate change) can really be solved until the wars stop. I voted for Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which surged from a standing start of zero to six seats, because this party proposes a diplomatic solution to the wars. The only other viable party proposing negotiations with Russia is the AfD – so, despite everything, if BSW had not been available, I, a liberal, would have voted AfD.

Eight tonnes of cocaine seized and 40 people arrested after four-year investigation led by Spain’s Guardia Civil

• How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?

Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine seized as the result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via West Africa and the Canary islands.

The long-running investigation – which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol’s operational taskforce – discovered that a Balkan cartel was using logistical hubs in West Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into European Union countries.

Wall Street Journal reporter faces ‘false and baseless charge’ and ‘sham trial’, say paper’s publisher and editor in chief

Russian authorities have indicated that the jailed American reporter Evan Gershkovich will soon stand trial in Ekaterinburg more than a year after his arrest on espionage charges that he, his employer, and the White House have decried as politically motivated.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison since last March in the highest profile arrest of an American journalist in Russia since the cold war.

Budapest ordered to pay €200m by European court of justice, and €1m a day until it complies with EU refugee laws

Hungary has been ordered to pay a €200m (£169m) fine for its refusal to uphold the rights of asylum seekers in what was described as an “unprecedented” breach of EU law by the bloc’s highest court.

The European court of justice in Luxembourg also ordered Budapest to pay €1m a day until it complies with EU laws guaranteeing refugees the right to claim asylum inside Hungarian borders.

Since Kremlin staged fresh incursion on 10 May, strikes have increased threefold, destroying buildings and killing dozens

The apartment at 24 Liubovi Maloi avenue was an eerie ruin. Its roof and outer walls had disappeared. In one corner a row of suits hung in a wardrobe. There was a TV, a coffee cup, and a maroon jacket on a peg. And a black and white photo album with old family snaps, taken in communist times. The flat’s inhabitants, however – Svitlana Vlasenko and her grown-up daughter Polina – were not coming back.

The Russian missile that fell on their building on a Friday night killed them and six of their neighbours. Twenty-six people were injured, two of them children. The street in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, was not near any military objects. It was a quiet place, of flowerbeds, communal benches and a sandy children’s play area. Residents walked their dogs in a resin-scented pine forest – also hit in the strike on 31 May by five S-300 rockets.

Dutch hauliers say facilities at border posts where some trucks are held for up to 20 hours are inadequate

• Italian driver’s lorry held for 55 hours at UK border post
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Lorry drivers could start rejecting jobs bringing goods from Europe to the UK unless delays are reduced and driver conditions improved at post-Brexit border posts, the biggest trade body for Dutch hauliers has warned.

Transport en Logistiek Nederland (TLN), which represents 5,000 Dutch transport companies, said its members were facing average waits of more than four hours in Britain because of the new checks brought in after the UK’s exit from the EU, with some being held at border posts for up to 20 hours.

Waad al-Kateab’s documentary Death Without Mercy collects agonising experience from the aftermath of 2023. She reflects on a natural disaster made much worse by politics, and how she is trying to help

Waad al-Kateab has always looked for hope, but when it came to making her latest documentary, Death Without Mercy, the moments were difficult to find. After the nightmarish earthquake shook Turkey and Syria in February 2023, she felt hopeless counting the passing seconds, hours and days from her home in east London as she waited for an emergency visa to visit her family in Gaziantep city, near the Syrian border she crossed years earlier fleeing the Assad regime. “It could have been us,” the film-maker, now a refugee in the UK, tells me with tears in her eyes.

At 32, al-Kateab has a talent for making the devastatingly personal universal. In her debut film, For Sama , she documented life under siege in Aleppo to much acclaim . But when it came to making her third documentary, which follows two Syrian families – her “dear friends” Fadi Al Halabi and Fuad Sayed Issa – over 10 days as they face the devastation wrought by the earthquakes that claimed more than 60,000 lives , the experience was not comparable.

Irish TV reporters interview evacuees after fire alarm, only to find incredibly upbeat Hollywood star

Dublin TV viewers watching news coverage on Wednesday night of a hotel fire were surprised to find themselves tuning in to an interview with a Hollywood legend.

RTÉ News dispatched a camera crew to the Shelbourne hotel in the city centre, only to discover that one of the guests who had been evacuated was the Happy Days star Henry Winkler .

Although barely visible on TV, the UK’s 700,000-strong community has a growing presence in music, books and film. We meet some of its hidden stars

With its high-tempo use of Multicultural London English and blend of drum’n’bass and acoustic guitar, the song Five by Bedford-based rapper Pat is instantly recognisable as a product of the UK’s contemporary rap scene. Yet even the most fast-mouthed stars of British grime would probably struggle to integrate the word niezapowiedzianych (“unannounced”) into their rhyme schemes.

Born in Silesia, western Poland, Patryk “Pat” Wojcik moved with his family to England in 2007, three years after Poland joined the European Union. He learned to speak English by listening to British rappers such as Jme and Devlin, and makes music that pays homage to his native country and his adopted home, with lyrics such as “I chase cash like I’m Mateusz Gotówka” – a nod to the Anglo-Polish Aston Villa footballer also known as Matty Cash.