The week at a glance...Europe

Reykjavík, Iceland

Porn ban: Iceland is considering installing Internet filters to block Icelanders from viewing porn. If that ban goes ahead as expected this spring, the country will be the first Western democracy to attempt to censor the Internet. Iceland already forbids the creation and distribution of print pornography, and in the past few months a national consensus has emerged that pornography is harmful to the women who perform in it and promotes sexist or even violent attitudes in men. Installing appropriate filters could be tricky, but Halla Gunnarsdottir of the Interior Ministry is convinced it can be done. “Surely if we can send a man to the moon,” she said, “we must be able to tackle porn on the Internet.”

London

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Assange for Senate: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hopes soon to be able to stop hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange, who has been holed up there since June to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, has announced a bid to run for the Australian Senate this September for the newly created WikiLeaks Party. Assange says if he were a senator, the U.S. would drop its espionage investigation against him for fear of causing a diplomatic incident, and the U.K. and Sweden would then stand down too. Australian analysts are divided over whether it’s even legal for him to run from overseas.

Brussels

Diamond heist: In a coolly executed professional heist, men armed with submachine guns stole $50 million worth of diamonds as they were being loaded onto a plane in Brussels’s airport. The men, dressed as police, drove two cars with flashing lights through a fence and onto the tarmac. They pulled up to the plane, ordered workers to unload the loot, and quickly left without firing a shot. The diamonds had come from Antwerp, world center of the diamond trading industry, and were to be flown to Switzerland. “It was incredible how easy it all went,” said Caroline de Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Center.