Europhobes has mocked the EU as a peace project for decades, but only days after Brexit negotiations are about to begin, there’s talk of war.

“Zheng Jiajia, 31, an artificial intelligence expert who designs and creates robots in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, created the ‘female’ robot at the end of last year,” Kristin Huang of South China Morning Post reports.

“Ten people have been killed in an explosion between two underground stations in St Petersburg,” BBC News reports.

“Until the referendum, Britons were unbothered by European matters,” The Economist writes.

“Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven says that Sweden ‘has been attacked’ after a truck drove into a crowd on one of Stockholm’s main shopping streets,” The Local reports.

The past few days have been very strange in a normally quite blend Sweden. The terror attack in Stockholm on Friday changed the nation. Thankfully, the police have now caught what seems to be the right man, and tomorrow, the public prosecutor will asks the court to remand the suspect in custody. Life is difficult, but precious.

Tonight, I had a wonderful evening with new friends at Skanör, a seaside a few kilometres south of Malmö. Life is great and the world is beautiful—despite some people’s attempts to make it ugly and unbearable.

Human-rights campaigners report that about a hundred gay men were rounded up and imprisoned in Chechnya last week, with at least three people allegedly murdered. Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the autonomous republic, denies the claims on the grounds that no one in Chechnya is gay. A Russian LGBTQ network, which is running a support line for men fleeing the region, has confirmed the reports of concentration camps.

“Now, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen crib their talking points from ethno-nationalists who, a decade ago, would have been limited to an audience of young men with shaved heads and white shoelaces,” Max Holleran of Slate writes in his review of James Kirchick’s new book, The End of Europe.

Source: Pew Research Center

Countries in each region with increases in government harassment or use of force against religious groups between 2014 and 2015
Europe	53%
Sub-Saharan Africa	48%
Americas	37%
Middle East & North Africa	30%
Asia-Pacific	26%

“At least once a day, Adam’s captors attached metal clamps to his fingers and toes. One of the men then cranked a handle on a machine to which the clamps were linked with wires, and sent powerful electric shocks through his body,” Shaun Walker of the Guardian reports. “As they tortured him, the men shouted verbal abuse at him for being gay, and demanded to know the names of other gay men he knew in Chechnya.”

Homophobia kills.

The result of today’s referendum in Turkey gives the president powers similar to those of a dictator. A slim majority—51,4% to 48.6%—voted in favour of this “reform”.

She writes:

Mélenchon’s rallying cry of “peace” on Earth sounds laudable, but his success would have severe consequences for Europe. Pulling France out of Nato and out of EU treaties, which he wants, would unravel Europe’s architecture. It would mean a leap into the unknown, not unlike that advocated by Le Pen. His radical economic policies would kill any hope of reforming eurozone governance. Meanwhile, his vision of international relations—in which Russia’s revisionism over European borders and the Syrian dictator’s mass killing of his own citizens hardly get a mention, whereas western democracies are constantly critiqued—smacks of moral confusion, and much worse.

“A French police officer was killed on Thursday and another left fighting for his life after an apparent terrorist shooting on the famous Champs Elysées avenue just days before the first round of the presidential election,” The Local reports.

Evil strikes again.

Russia has funded anti-EU political parties in Europe, but experts say its attempts to buy influential individuals is a greater threat to democracy. I think they are right. Russia’s attempt to corrupt Europe is a serious threat to us all.

I’ve spent the weekend in Gothenburg, where the gay wing of the centre-right Moderate Party had its annual meeting.

According to an exit poll broadcast on France 2, Emmanuel Macron will get 23.7% in today’s election.

Edvard Munch’s Scream has long been interpreted as a metaphor for mental anguish, but scientists now hypothesise that the Norwegian painter’s inspiration might in fact have been rare clouds that form in cold places at high altitude.

“Some worry that the rise of robots could force governments to legislate for quotas of human workers,” Jessica Brown of The Week writes.

According to a report by Tokyo-based firm Trend Micro that was published yesterday, Russian intelligence is suspected of having tried to hack the campaign of Emmanuel Macron. The attack was carried out by Pawn Storm, a cyber group with the same digital fingerprints as the Russian military intelligence service, GRU.

“President Donald Trump is threatening to break up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked his executive order banning travel from several nations with large Muslim populations and restricted the acceptance of refugees,” Ed Mazza of the Huffington Post reports.

This the kind of behaviour one expects from dictators.

“The prominence of Ireland’s issues in the EU’s guidelines, including a statement guaranteeing that Northern Ireland could automatically rejoin the EU as part of a united Ireland, is the product of an unprecedented political and diplomatic effort that began even before the UK voted to leave the EU,” Denis Staunton of the Irish Times reports. “The State’s efforts have required strategic planning, detailed analysis, cunning and the cultivation and exploitation of personal relationships.”

I’m in Dublin, and this is what makes the headline here today.

The drug regime that prevents people from contracting HIV will be made available in Wales to those at risk. Great news!