Austria

Italy and Austria are on the verge of completing the longest underground rail tunnel in the world. The €10.5 billion ($12.3 billion) infrastructure project is set to transform travel through one of Europe’s most rugged natural barriers, burrowing deep beneath the Alps to cut cross-border travel times by more than half and significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Among Jewish people around the world, there’s a growing movement that’s challenging the pairing of Zionism with Judaism. In Vienna, Austria, where the idea of modern political Zionism was born, Jewish organizers held a first-of-its-kind congress to challenge the idea.

The World’s Host Marco Werman speaks with Colin P. Clarke of the Soufan Group about the canceled Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna and about music shows as targets of terror attacks.

Since the Brexit vote of 2016, hundreds of thousands of Britons have applied for citizenship of European countries, allowing them to continue to work and travel freely while holding onto their British passport. Thousands have been able to acquire passports of other European nations through sometimes distant Jewish roots.

Critical State, a foreign policy newsletter by Inkstick Media, takes a deep dive this week into the power and politics of collective memory when it comes to partitions. “If states told ghost stories, they would tell them of past partitions,” Kelsey D. Atherton writes.