Elisabeth Borne, a 61-year-old engineer, was named French prime minister, becoming only the second woman to hold the position after Edith Cresson, a Socialist, who lasted less than a year in the job in the early 1990s.

Borne is one of nearly a dozen female political leaders in Europe, where Ursula von der Leyen became the first president of the European Commission in December 2019.

We look at the situation across the continent:

- Denmark -
Social Democrat leader Mette Frederiksen became her country's youngest-ever prime minister in June 2019 when she was elected premier at the age of 41.

Denmark's first woman prime minister was Helle Thorning-Schmidt, also from the Social Democrats, who served from 2011 to 2015.

- Estonia -
Former EU auditor Kersti Kaljulaid, 52, became the first female president of the Baltic state of Estonia in October 2016. The position is a largely ceremonial one.

Kaja Kallas in January 2021 became Estonia's first woman prime minister. Her father Siim Kallas was prime minister from 2002-2004.

- Finland -
In December 2019, Sanna Marin, a Social Democrat, became the youngest sitting prime minister in the world at the age of 34.

She is Finland's third female prime minister.

- Greece -
Katerina Sakellaropoulou, a trailblazing lawyer, was elected Greece's first female president in January 2020.

While the presidency is a mainly ceremonial role in Greece, Sakellaropoulou had already broken new ground in the judiciary by become president of the country's top court in 2018.

- Hungary -
Katalin Novak, a close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and former minister for family policy, was elected Hungary's first ever woman president in March 2022.

The presidency is a largely ceremonial role.

- Lithuania -
Lithuanian former finance minister Ingrida Simonyte, a 47-year-old rock and ice hockey fan, was appointed prime minister of a centre-right government in December 2020.

Lithuania has a strong tradition of female leadership, with "Baltic Iron Lady" Dalia Grybauskaite spending a decade in power from 2009 to 2019.

- Slovakia -
Liberal lawyer and anti-graft campaigner Zuzana Caputova, 48, took office in June 2019 as Slovakia's first woman president.

A political novice, she had comfortably beaten the ruling party's candidate in elections. In Slovakia, the president has less power than the prime minister but can veto laws and appointments of senior judges.

- Sweden -
Despite being a country that champions gender equality, Sweden never had a woman as prime minister before Magdalena Andersson, a Social Democrat, who won the top job in November 2021.

An economist who had served as finance minister for seven years, Andersson had a rocky start. Hours after becoming premier she resigned after her budget was rejected by parliament and the Greens quit her coalition. Four days later she was re-elected.

- Wider Europe -
Elsewhere in Europe, but outside the EU, other women currently in power are: Georgia President Salome Zurabishvili, Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, Kosovo's president Vjosa Osmani, Moldova's president and prime minister Maia Sandu and Natalia Gavrilita, Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

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Japanese billionaire space tourist Yusaku Maezawa is putting one of his Basquiat artworks up for sale, an auction house has said, hoping for around $13 million profit on the piece.

The 16-foot-wide "Untitled" 1982 by Jean-Michel Basquiat will be sold on May 18 for an estimated price of around $70 million, auction house Phillips said in a statement on Monday in New York.

That would make Maezawa a tidy profit on the artwork, which he purchased in 2016 for $57.3 million.

The mega-rich founder of Japan's largest online fashion mall said in the statement that the past six years of owning the painting were "a great pleasure".

But art "should be shared so that it can be a part of everyone's lives," he added.

Ahead of its sale, the massive artwork will go on international tour, being displayed in London, Los Angeles and Taipei, the statement said.

Maezawa, who in 2017 set a new auction record for Basquiat works when he paid $110.5 million for another painting by the 20th century giant, also said he plans to create a new museum to exhibit his collection.

He founded the Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo and was on the 2017 list of "Top 200 Collectors" by the ARTnews magazine based in New York.

He has been in the headlines more recently for becoming the first space tourist to travel to the International Space Station with Russia's space agency.

His odyssey is believed to have cost around 10 billion yen ($87 million), and he plans to follow it up with a trip around the Moon organised by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

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Michelle O'Neill embodies a new generation of progressive Irish republicans, and will go down in history as the leader who won nationalists power in Northern Ireland for the first time.

The 45-year-old Sinn Fein politician, who on Saturday vowed to provide "leadership which is inclusive, which celebrates diversity", comes from a family well acquainted with the dark days of sectarian strife.

Her father was jailed for IRA offences and her cousin was killed by members of the elite British regiment the SAS.

But O'Neill, vice president to Sinn Fein's all-Ireland president Mary Lou McDonald, is from a generation that came of political age after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement ended "The Troubles".

Her left-wing liberalism, glamorous appearance and slick politicking has found favour with younger voters angry at a loss of access to secure jobs and housing since the 2008 financial crash.

It is also in sharp contrast to the staid, masculine and dogmatic political atmosphere during the era of violence, and with the current unionist leadership in Northern Ireland.

Instead of a singular focus on bringing about the republican dream of a united Ireland, O'Neill's party emphasised policies to tackle surging inflation and encourage stability following the shock of Brexit.

O'Neill was born in County Cork, in the south of the Irish republic, on January 10, 1977.

Her father Brendan Doris served jail time at the height of the Troubles due to his membership of the IRA paramilitary group, and later became a Sinn Fein councillor.

UK authorities believed her 21-year-old cousin Tony Doris was a part of a brigade planning to kill a senior security force member in 1991. He died when his car was ambushed by the SAS.

Another cousin, IRA volunteer Gareth Malachy Doris, was wounded during a firefight in 1997.

- Teenage mum -
O'Neill turned to politics after training as an accounting technician, working as an advisor to Sinn Fein politician Francie Molloy in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

After winning election to the devolved legislature in 2007, she became minister for agriculture and rural development in 2011, and minister of health in 2016.

It was here that she served notice of her liberal philosophy, lifting Northern Ireland's ban on gay men donating blood.

O'Neill became the party's leader in the north in 2017, following the resignation of veteran republican and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness.

She became deputy first minister in the Belfast executive in 2020, sharing power uneasily with the Democratic Unionist Party before the DUP walked out in protest at the UK's post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union.

She lost that position when the executive collapsed in February, but instead will now take on the prize role of First Minister following Thursday's historic win.

The DUP or other unionist forces had always controlled power since Northern Ireland was established in 1921, when the rest of Ireland achieved self-rule from Britain.

And nearly a century after the nationalist party fragmented south of the border during a civil war, it is leading in Irish opinion polls too, possibly bringing the prospect of a united Ireland closer to reality.

O'Neill was married to Paddy O'Neill until they separated in 2014, and has two children. She credits her toughness on being a teenage mum.

"I know what it's like to be in difficult situations, I know what it's like to struggle, I know what it's like to go to school and have a baby at home, and to be studying for your exams," she told the Belfast Telegraph.

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Dutch King Willem-Alexander opened the gates to one of Europe's largest gardening fairs, a once-in-a-decade show focusing this year on how to make cities greener.

But critics have denounced the show, which features displays by 200 participants from 25 countries, as a "money pit" that has massively over-run its budget.

The Floriade 2022 exposition, which runs until early October, is expected to draw more than two million enthusiasts to the central city of Almere.

The Floriade 2022 shows "what a green city could be like in the future... what kind of materials could be used for this and what role the horticultural sector could play in it", said its curator, Annemarie Jorritsma, a former mayor of the city.

"On top of that, when the show is finished it will be a fantastic residential area," she told AFP.

Each decade, a different Dutch city gets to host the gardening extravaganza. Almere, the latest, is a city that was itself created by the Dutch by draining part of the former Zuiderzee bay to reclaim land.

As well as being a showcase for Dutch horticulture, each participating country has its own pavilion.

China's is showing "new ways of using bamboo", said Jorritsma. Italy is focusing on permaculture, while France shows how metallic imitations of trees can be used to cool cities.

The German pavilion is decorated with plants including garden plants, trees, food crops and wildflowers to form a "living ecosystem whose appearance would change throughout the exhibition", organisers said.

"The Floriade is the best place to show what countries have to change their cities," Detlef Wintzen, one of the exhibitors at the German pavilion, told AFP.

- Cost controversy -
The event has however been criticised for budget overruns that threatened its very existence.

Dutch media have reported that Almere has significantly over-run its 10-million-euro budget ($10.8 million) for the project.

Financial daily Financieele Dagblad estimated that costs could be as high as 200 million euros -- with losses of up to 100 million -- but said there was a "thick fog" hanging over the official costs.

First held in Rotterdam in 1960, the organisers of the last three Floriades -- 1992, 2002 and 2012 -- have all been criticised for losses totalling millions of euros.

And some media reports have even suggested that this could be the last-ever edition of the show.

Almere -- the country's youngest city -- plans to have a "green residential area by the water" after the end of the Floriade designed by Dutch architect Winy Maas.

Some 660 homes will be built in the "Hortus" district, many of them made from durable materials such as moss and mushrooms.

An imposing colourful building in the middle of the exhibition will eventually serve as social housing, and "floating homes" are also planned.

Members of the public can visit the Floriade from Thursday onwards.

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A sandy-coloured tower glints in the sunlight and dominates the skyline of the Swedish town of Skelleftea as Scandinavia harnesses its wood resources to lead a global trend towards erecting eco-friendly high-rises.

The Sara Cultural Centre is one of the world's tallest timber buildings, made primarily from spruce and towering 75 metres (246 feet) over rows of snow-dusted houses and surrounding forest.

The 20-storey timber structure, which houses a hotel, a library, an exhibition hall and theatre stages, opened at the end of 2021 in the northern town of 35,000 people.

Forests cover much of Sweden's northern regions, most of it spruce, and building timber homes is a longstanding tradition.

Swedish architects now want to spearhead a revolution and steer the industry towards more sustainable construction methods as large wooden buildings sprout up in Sweden and neighbouring Nordic nations thanks to advancing industry techniques.

"The pillars together with the beams, the interaction with the steel and wood, that is what carries the 20 storeys of the hotel," Therese Kreisel, a Skelleftea urban planning official, tells AFP during a tour of the cultural centre.

Even the lift shafts are made entirely of wood. "There is no plaster, no seal, no isolation on the wood," she says, adding that this "is unique when it comes to a 20-storey building".

- Building materials go green -
The main advantage of working with wood is that it is more environmentally friendly, proponents say.

Cement -- used to make concrete -- and steel, two of the most common construction materials, are among the most polluting industries because they emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

But wood emits little CO2 during its production and retains the carbon absorbed by the tree even when it is cut and used in a building structure.

It is also lighter in weight, requiring less of a foundation.

According to the UN's IPCC climate panel, wood as a construction material can be up to 30 times less carbon intensive than concrete, and hundreds or even thousands times less than steel.

Global efforts to cut emissions have sparked an upswing in interest for timber structures, according to Jessica Becker, the coordinator of Trastad (City of Wood), an organisation lobbying for more timber construction.

Skelleftea's tower "showcases that is it possible to build this high and complex in timber", says Robert Schmitz, one of the project's two architects.

"When you have this as a backdrop for discussions, you can always say, 'We did this, so how can you say it's not possible?'."

Only an 85-metre tower recently erected in Brumunddal in neighbouring Norway and an 84-metre structure in Vienna are taller than the Sara Cultural Centre.

A building under construction in the US city of Milwaukee and due to be completed soon is expected to clinch the title of the world's tallest, at a little more than 86 metres.

- 'Stacked like Lego' -
Building the cultural centre in spruce was "much more challenging" but "has also opened doors to really think in new ways", explains Schmitz's co-architect Oskar Norelius.

For example, the hotel rooms were made as pre-fabricated modules that were then "stacked like Lego pieces on site", he says.

The building has won several wood architecture prizes.

Anders Berensson, another Stockholm architect whose material of choice is wood, says timber has many advantages.

"If you missed something in the cutting you just take the knife and the saw and sort of adjust it on site. So it's both high tech and low tech at the same time", he says.

In Stockholm, an apartment complex made of wood, called Cederhusen and featuring distinctive yellow and red cedar shingles on the facade, is in the final stages of completion.

It has already been named the Construction of the Year by Swedish construction industry magazine Byggindustrin.

"I think we can see things shifting in just the past few years actually," says Becker.

"We are seeing a huge change right now, it's kind of the tipping point. And I'm hoping that other countries are going to catch on, we see examples even in England and Canada and other parts of the world."

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"Go pee on the rhubarb!"

Engineer Fabien Esculier has never forgotten his grandmother's unconventional approach to gardening -- in fact, it has inspired his career.

Human urine may seem like a crude way of fertilising plants in the era of industrial agriculture, but as researchers look for ways to reduce reliance on chemicals and cut environmental pollution, some are growing increasingly interested in the potential of pee.

Plants need nutrients -- nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium -- and we ingest these through food, before "excreting them, mostly through urine", said Esculier, who runs the OCAPI research programme in France looking at food systems and human waste management.

This presents an opportunity, scientists think.

Fertilisers using synthetic nitrogen, in use for around a century, have helped drive up yields and boost agricultural production to feed a growing human population.

But when they are used in large quantities, they make their way into river systems and other waterways, causing choking blooms of algae that can kill fish and other aquatic life.

Meanwhile, emissions from this agricultural ammonia can combine with vehicle fumes to create dangerous air pollution, according to the United Nations.

Chemical fertilisers also create emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, contributing to climate change.

But the pollution does not just come directly from the fields.

"Modern-day sanitation practices represent one of the primary sources of nutrient pollution," said Julia Cavicchi, of the United States Rich Earth Institute, adding that urine is responsible for around 80 percent of the nitrogen found in wastewater and more than half of the phosphorus.

To replace chemical fertilisers, you would need many times the weight in treated urine, she said.

But she added: "Since the production of synthetic nitrogen is a significant source of greenhouse gases, and phosphorus is a limited and non-renewable resource, urine diverting systems offer a long-term resilient model for human waste management and agricultural production."

One 2020 study by UN researchers found that global wastewater has the theoretical potential to offset 13 percent of the world's demand for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in agriculture.

But pee diversion is easier said than done.

- 'Very radical' -
In the past, urban excrement was transported to agricultural fields to be used as fertiliser along with animal manure, before chemical alternatives began to displace them.

But now if you want to collect urine at source, you need to rethink toilets and the sewage system itself.

A pilot project to do just that began in Sweden in the early 1990s in a selection of eco-villages.

Now there are projects in Switzerland, Germany, the US, South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Mexico and France.

"It takes a long time to introduce ecological innovations and especially an innovation such as urine separation which is very radical," said Tove Larsen, a researcher at Switzerland's Eawag aquatic research institute.

She said the early urine-diverting toilets were considered unsightly and impractical, or raised concerns about unpleasant odours.

But she hopes a new model -- developed by the Swiss company Laufen and Eawag -- should solve these difficulties, with a design that funnels urine into a separate container.

Once the pee is collected it needs to be processed.

Urine is not normally a major carrier of disease, so the World Health Organization recommends leaving it for a period of time, although it is also possible to pasteurise it.

Then there are various techniques for concentrating or even dehydrating the liquid, reducing its volume and the cost of transporting it to the fields.

- 'Surprise' -
Another challenge is overcoming public squeamishness.

"This subject touches on the intimate," said Ghislain Mercier, of the publicly-owned planning authority Paris et Metropole Amenagement.

It is developing an eco-district in the French capital with shops and 600 housing units, which will use urine collection to fertilise green spaces in the city.

He sees significant potential in large buildings like offices, as well as houses not connected to mains drainage.

Even restaurants. Also in Paris is the 211 restaurant, equipped with waterless toilets that collect urine.

"We have had quite positive feedback," said owner Fabien Gandossi.

"People are a little surprised, but they see little difference compared to a traditional system."

But are people ready to go to the next level and eat urine-fertilised foods?

One study on the subject highlighted found differences from country to country. The acceptance rate is very high in China, France and Uganda for example, but low in Portugal and Jordan.

- Water works -
Prices of synthetic fertilisers are currently soaring because of shortages caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has also spurred countries to consider shoring up their food security.

That could be an opportunity help "make the subject more visible", said Mercier.

Marine Legrand, an anthropologist working with Esculier at the OCAPI network, said that there are still "obstacles to overcome".

But she believes that water shortages and increased awareness of the toll of pollution will help change minds.

"We are beginning to understand how precious water is," she told AFP.

"So it becomes unacceptable to defecate in it."

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