Tebrito in Orsa located in middle Sweden wanted to get Swedes to eat insects by producing food from industrially bred mealworms. Despite raising SEK 45 million (€3,84 million) from investors, the company was unable to get its finances in order and has now been declared bankrupt.
Tebrito was founded in 2016 by Nils Österholm and Åsa Martén. When the Swedish National Food Agency announced just over three years ago that it would approve mealworms as food, many investors thought the company had a bright future. This was not the case.
“The company has worked hard to find a long-term, sustainable financial solution. But despite constructive dialogues with potentially very interesting partners with the aim of scaling up the company, it has unfortunately not been possible to solve the most acute financial situation”, founder Nils Österholm writes in a statement.
As recently as last year, Österholm claimed in an interview with Bonnier-owned DN that he was convinced that insects would soon become a natural part of grocery store shelves.
– One day we will get there. Right now there is a lot going on behind the scenes. It takes time to create a large enough production, to develop the product itself and the marketing, and to get all the approvals, he said.
Impact Loop notes that Mycorena – a company that “would change the entire food industry with its mushroom-based ingredients” – also recently went bankrupt, and that players involved in developing alternative protein sources are in a tough spot right now. This is partly explained by the fact that the summer is a “difficult time to secure capital”.
Last year, Tebrito had sales of SEK 531,000 (€45 200) and a loss of SEK 13.6 million (€1,16 million). Just last month, the company raised SEK 4.1 million (€350 000) from outside investors – which does not seem to have helped.
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EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has demanded that those responsible be “held accountable” after Israeli soldiers opened fire near a diplomatic delegation during a recent visit to the Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank, with several EU countries now demanding immediate explanations from Israel.
The delegation, which according to the Palestinian Authority included diplomats from the EU, France, Britain, Italy, Canada, Russia, China, Denmark, and other countries, had visited a refugee camp in Jenin when several shots were fired. No one was injured, but video footage shows delegates being forced to flee and seek shelter during the shooting.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry claims that the delegation left an “approved route” and was in an area where they “were not authorized to be”. The statement on social media claims that the soldiers fired “warning shots” to disperse the group.
Critics, however, are skeptical of the explanation and that it would be reasonable or proportionate to start shooting at a group of diplomats instead of trying to communicate with them.
– Any threats on diplomats’ lives are unacceptable, Kallas said at a press conference on Wednesday. She emphasized that even so-called warning shots are considered gunfire and that those responsible must be “held accountable”.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) say they regret the incident and are launching an investigation. They promise to inform the countries concerned of the results, but at the same time do not acknowledge that their actions were wrong.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot confirmed that a French diplomat was at the scene:
– A visit to Jenin, in which one of our diplomats was participating, was fired upon by Israeli soldiers. This is unacceptable, he said, announcing that Israel’s ambassador in Paris had been summoned for talks.
The German Foreign Ministry also reacted sharply:
– It was a matter of luck that nothing worse had happened, they wrote in a statement describing the shots fired by Israeli soldiers as “unprovoked”. Minister Johann Wadephul has spoken with diplomats on the ground and is demanding an explanation from his Israeli counterpart.
Demanding “convincing explanations”
Belgium’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Maxime Prévot, confirmed that a Belgian diplomat was also in the group.
– Fortunately, he is all right. Belgium demands convincing explanations from Israel, he said.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry called the incident a “heinous crime” and accused Israeli forces of deliberately firing live ammunition at an accredited international delegation.
Images of the incident, published by the Palestinian Authority, show chaotic scenes with delegates running in panic while shots are heard in the background.
The occupation forces opened heavy fire from inside the Jenin refugee camp to intimidate the diplomatic delegation that is conducting a field tour around the camp to witness the extent of the suffering endured by the residents of the area.
The incident occurred just one day after Kallas announced that the EU would review its association agreement with Israel – an agreement governing political and economic cooperation – citing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian catastrophe that followed in its wake.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, wrote on social media that he too had summoned Israel’s ambassador to Rome to demand official clarification about the shooting in Jenin.
The office building of @Enabel, the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation, in #Gaza has been bombed and is completely destroyed.
Attacking civilian buildings is and remains totally unacceptable.
During Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza, a large number of journalists, photographers, aid workers, and UN personnel have been killed without any major consequences.
However, European diplomats and government officials have so far been relatively spared from the violence – even though the Israeli army bombed Belgium’s development aid office as recently as February this year. As far as is known, this incident did not lead to any significant consequences either.
During a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with accusations that genocide is currently being committed against white farmers in the country.
To emphasize the seriousness of the situation, Trump ordered the lights in the Oval Office to be dimmed and showed a five-minute film detailing how South African politicians are inciting murder and systematic violence against the country’s white minority.
Trump said he had not yet “made up his mind” whether it was appropriate to use the term “genocide” in this context, but stated that “thousands” of white South Africans had so far sought refugee status in the US and that he wanted to “save lives”.
The film included clips in which Julius Malema, leader of the left-wing populist party Economic Freedom Fighters, can be clearly heard calling for murder and violence.
– Revolution demands at some point there must be killing, the notorious politician claims in the film.
Several sequences showed Malema dancing in front of tens of thousands of spectators while he and his comrades chanted “kill the Boer, the farmer!” and declared that “we are cutting the throat of whiteness!”
HOLY CRAP! President Trump just DIRECTLY confronted the President of South Africa with videos of his government calling for WHITE GENOCIDE
“Turn the lights down and roll the video!”
“These are burial sites — crosses marking murdered White farmers”
In another clip, former president Jacob Zuma (2009–2018) was seen singing a well-known black protest song that includes the same chorus with “kill the Boers”. According to critics, this song has contributed to increased tensions and more attacks on white farmers. The film also showed roadside memorials dedicated to what were said to be dozens of murdered white farmers.
Trump also criticized a new South African law that allows the South African state to confiscate unused land – land that is often owned by the white minority. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now a close advisor to Trump, was also present at the meeting and listened as the president recounted what an acquaintance had told him:
– They take your land and they kill you if you’re white.
– I will say, apartheid, terrible. That was the biggest story – that was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What’s happening now is never reported, the president continued, wondering why Malema was not imprisoned when he called for genocide in front of television cameras and tens of thousands of spectators.
“Not government policy”
Ramaphosa remained very calm during the hour-long conversation held before the assembled press and firmly denied that Malema’s calls for genocide reflect the South African government’s position:
– What you saw, the speeches that were being made, one that is not government policy. Our government policy is completely, completely against what (Malema) was saying, he asserted.
Vi vet vad massmedia hade kallat det här om det hade varit vita sydafrikaner som hade skanderat detta om svarta.pic.twitter.com/Q43H3kAzMV
In an attempt to appease the Trump administration, Ramaphosa chose to highlight the South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who are popular in the US and accompanied him on the trip, and to thank Trump for the US’s delivery of ventilators during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.
South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture Jan Steenhuisen, who is himself white, also attended the conference and argued that the security situation in rural areas is indeed very poor. However, he did not want to call it genocide or even suggest that white farmers were particularly vulnerable.
– It requires a lot of effort to get on top of it. It’s going to require more policing resources, it’s gonna require a different strategy to be able to deal with it. But certainly, the majority of South Africa’s commercial and smallholder farmers really do want to stay in South Africa and make it work, he claimed.
Steenhuisen claimed that his party, the liberal Democratic Alliance, which won 21 percent of the vote in the last election, entered into a coalition with Ramaphosa’s ANC (approximately 40 percent of the vote) precisely to keep people like Malema out of power.
Malema’s EFF and Zuma’s MK, which are significantly more openly hostile and disapproving of the white minority than Ramaphosa’s ANC, together have around 25 percent of the vote.
A “violent country”
Zingiswa Losi, president of the country’s largest trade union, COSATU, had also been flown in and tried to convince Trump that South Africa is a “violent country” – and that people are killed regardless of their ethnic background.
– If you go into the rural areas where the black majority are, you will see women, elderly, being raped, being killed, being murdered. The problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime, she claimed.
Ramaphosa himself could not deny that senseless violence and murder continue to be part of everyday life in South Africa – but he claims that this is due to “inequality and unemployment” – and that the problems can be solved by improving South Africa’s economy.
– Our main, main, real reason for being here is to foster trade and investment, so that we are able to grow our economy, with your support, and so that we are also able to address all these societal problems.
When Ramaphosa left the White House after three hours, he told reporters that the meeting “went very well”.
Mocked white refugees
However, not everyone is impressed by the South African leader’s defense, and several have pointed out how he recently mocked white South Africans who fled to the US to escape persecution and oppression.
GENOCIDE: South African President Ramaphosa insists that the whites facing genocide do so as men and not flee to America like cowards. White farmers must pay for the sins of their ancestors with their lives. pic.twitter.com/fYAMlEfpVX
In a speech, he claimed before a laughing audience that Afrikaners are fleeing for “fictitious reasons” – and asserted that South Africa is “united in diversity”.
– None of us should ever feel that they have lost courage and now become cowards and want to run, the president said, mocking the white refugees.
Earlier this year, The Nordic Times highlighted the Afrikaners’ uncertain future and their centuries-long history in the country in a lengthy cultural article.
Photo: AUR Alliance for the Union of Romanians/CC0 1.0
Simion states, among other things, that the electoral register contained 1.7 million fictitious names and that illegal voters were bussed in from Moldova.
Right-wing nationalist and EU-skeptic presidential candidate George Simion is demanding that Romania’s presidential election be declared invalid. He accuses France and Moldova of trying to influence the outcome of the election – claims that are also supported by Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
Simion, leader of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) party, claims that the election was compromised by “foreign interference” and says he has formally requested that Romania’s Supreme Court invalidate the results.
In a post on the X platform on Tuesday, Simion, who was leading in the polls ahead of the election, wrote that there is evidence of undue influence from “external state and non-state actors” – and specifically named two countries as responsible:
“Neither France nor Moldavia , nor anyone else has the right to interfere in the elections of another state”.
“To all Romanians: ask urgently the Constitutional Court to annul this farce. We will not give up and we will not betray! This is only the beginning of a great victory!” he continued.
I officially ask Constitutional Court TO ANNUL Romanian presidential elections (May 2025).
For the very reasons December elections were annulled: EXTERNAL INTERFERENCES by state and non-state actors.
This time proven with evidence! Neither , nor , nor anyone else has…
Simion also claims that the electoral register contained 1.7 million fictitious names and that the government had transported voters from neighboring Moldova. His party accuses Moldova’s pro-European government, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), of urging the country’s million-strong diaspora in Romania to vote for his opponent Nicusor Dan.
Dan, mayor of Bucharest, won Sunday’s second round of voting with 54 percent of the vote. He is widely seen as pro-EU, pro-NATO, and pro-US. The election was held after the Constitutional Court invalidated the November results, in which the NATO-critical independent candidate Calin Georgescu won with 23 percent of the vote. The court cited “irregularities” and reports of Russian interference, which Moscow has denied.
It is noteworthy that Simion’s accusations have received unexpected support from Pavel Durov, founder of the messaging app Telegram. Durov has previously claimed that French intelligence services tried to pressure him to censor conservative Romanian channels ahead of the election.
“I am ready to come and testify if it helps Romanian democracy”, he wrote in a post shared alongside Simion’s statement.
France has denied Durov’s allegations and claims that they are disinformation and smear tactics.
“The recent accusations against France are merely a diversionary maneuver from the real threats of interference targeting Romania. France calls on all Romanian political actors to exercise responsibility and defend democracy, the statement said.
Romanian authorities have in turn accused Russia of illegal election interference, but so far without publishing any concrete evidence to support this.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations and called the election “strange”. He claimed that the most popular candidate, Calin Georgescu, had been “forcibly removed”, and criticized what he described as the EU’s long history of interfering in other countries’ elections.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova went even further in her criticism, dismissing the Romanian election results as completely illegitimate.
France is planning a new prison in the jungles of French Guiana with the stated aim of isolating dangerous criminals and Islamists. The decision has raised hopes of a reduction in drug trafficking, but also concerns among the local population.
In Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, deep in the rainforest of French Guiana, France is now taking a radical step in the fight against organized crime.
A new prison with 500 places, 60 of which are reserved for high-security prisoners such as drug offenders and radical Islamists, is to be completed in 2028.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin is promoting the project as a necessity to deal with criminal networks, particularly those involved in drug trafficking from South America to Europe.
France has been hit by a series of attacks on prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has described as “terrorist acts” in response to the government’s new legislation.
With a price tag of around €400 million, the facility aims to permanently isolate the most dangerous criminals, according to reports by the British state broadcaster BBC and French newspaper Le Figaro.
French Guiana, a French overseas department, serves as a strategic hub for drug trafficking, with smuggling routes from Brazil to Europe. The region’s high crime rate, with 20.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, underscores the need for decisive action.
The prison will also have a special section for 15 Islamist extremists and promises strict security procedures to prevent prisoners from maintaining contact with their criminal circles.
Bravo à Gérald Darmanin qui frappe un grand coup en rouvrant Cayenne, ou plutôt en construisant une nouvelle prison dans la jungle amazonienne ! Ils pourront faire les malins, les p’tits cons la bas, avec leur livraisons par drones ou catapultes, leurs 18 cellulaires et leurs… pic.twitter.com/dU2a9vTO84
The decision has also been met with criticism from the local population. Local leaders, such as Senator Marie-Laure Phinéra-Horth, are calling for investment in schools and roads instead. In an interview with Franceinfo, Jean-Luk Le West, vice president of the regional authority, expressed frustration that the news first reached them via the French media.
Concerns have also been raised that the prison will cement French Guiana’s reputation as a backwater for France’s problems, which could scare away tourists and investors. As historical background, it is worth mentioning that the French Guiana municipality of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni was once the gateway to France’s notorious penal colonies.
