UK battles to keep Jaguar Land Rover’s planned EV production

Britain lagging behind in race to build vital large-scale and local battery factories

Britain is locked in a battle to hold on to production of Jaguar Land Rover’s future range of electric vehicles as concerns grow that the UK is falling behind in the race to build vital large-scale battery factories.

The company, which is owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata, said it continued to “explore all options” for battery supply amid reports it could build electric cars in eastern Europe.

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Ukraine: UN says more than 1.3 million have fled since Russian invasion began

United Nations calling exodus Europe’s fastest-moving refugee crisis since end of second world war

More than 1.3 million Ukrainians have crossed borders since the Russian invasion started on the 24 February in what the United Nations is now calling Europe’s fastest-moving refugee crisis since the end of the second world war.

Figures released today by the United Nation’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR) show that to date 1.37 million people have fled Ukraine into neighbouring European countries after the military offensive ordered by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

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As 1.3 million people flee, Ukraine’s refugee crisis is only just beginning

Analysis: despite the EU’s solidarity in helping those escaping war, aid agencies are overwhelmed with many people stuck at borders

Just over a week after Russian rockets first began to slam into Ukraine, more than 1.3 million people have fled over the borders of neighbouring European countries into a frightening and uncertain future. What we are witnessing, the United Nations has warned, is the largest refugee crisis in a century.

All week, the world has watched families fighting to board trains in chaotic crowds, fathers kissing their children goodbye through car windows, and seen the shock and exhaustion on the faces of those who have made it to safety.

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Germany ‘at crossroads’ as Covid cases surge across Europe

Urgent measures needed to avoid ‘chaos’, warns expert, as Spain, Portugal and Netherlands tighten rules

Germany’s top health officials have raised the prospect of a national lockdown, warning that a rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases and a dramatic increase in the number of patients in intensive care meant contact reduction was the only way of tackling the crisis and avoiding “the road to chaos”.

“We need a massive contact reduction immediately,” said Prof Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s federal disease control agency.

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Covid live news: cases increase in 75% of UK local authorities; France reports sharp rise in cases

Latest updates: Torridge in Devon had the highest rate in UK followed by Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland; France reports over 30,000 cases

Here’s the latest from Reuters on the situation in Germany, where the acting health minister called on Tuesday for further restrictions to contain a “dramatic” surge in coronavirus cases as the country’s infection rate hit a record high and the United States advised against travel there.

The seven-day incidence rate - the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week - hit 399.8 on Tuesday, up from 386.5 on Monday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.

Access to healthcare is expensive and, in an emergency, villagers are forced to walk for hours to the nearest health facility. For women, the lack of facilities, combined with patriarchal attitudes, means they have had no control over their reproductive health. But Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) organises mobile healthcare outreach to poorly served communities such as Lekiji. Chat identifies vulnerable communities with limited access to health facilities and significant family planning needs, and brings health provision and education to their door.

Lack of roads is no barrier to their work. If they cannot reach the communities by car, they switch to an older form of transport: camel. In the past three years Chat has reached more than 100,000 people with behaviour-changing messages that focus on family planning but include TB, HIV and Covid prevention services across 14 counties in Kenya.

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Flying car makes successful test run between airports in Slovakia – video

A flying car is seen completing its first intercity flight in Slovakia. The prototype, called AirCar, takes off from Nitra airport and lands in Bratislava 35 minutes later. Using wings that fold away in less than three minutes and a propeller at its rear, the dual-transportation vehicle has now completed more than 40 hours of test flight

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WHO voices concerns over Sputnik V Covid vaccine plant

WHO reports issues with quality control data and test results as Slovakia announces it is offloading 160k doses

The World Health Organization has said it has concerns about the methods used at one plant producing the Sputnik V vaccine, as Slovakia announced it would sell or donate 160,000 of the 200,000 doses it has ordered of the Russian shot.

The WHO, which along with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is reviewing Sputnik V for eventual approval, said in a report on Wednesday it had issues with the integrity of quality control data and test results at one of the four production sites it had seen.

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Poland v Slovakia: Euro 2020 – live!

22 min: Poland mdfielder Gregorz Krychowiak is booked for a foul on Tomas Hubocan, who also received a yellow card for some indiscretion or other in the immediate aftermath of the goal.

20 min: That was a terrific goal from Mak, although the Polish defending was questionable to say the least. It has actually been credited to Szszesny, who should have kept it out after the ball took a deflection off Glik. Mak was faceing the touchline out wide, but managed to turn, cut inside and beat two defenders before firing goalwards. His goal came against ther run of play.

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Violence against women ‘a pandemic’, warns UN envoy

A decade after Istanbul convention was drawn up to end gender-based violence, activists report decline in women’s rights and safety

A decade after the launch of the Istanbul convention, the landmark human rights treaty to stop gender-based violence, women are facing a global assault on their rights and safety, according to campaigners.

This week marked 10 years since the first 13 countries signed up to the convention, seen as a turning point in efforts to address violence against women.

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Doubts over Russian Covid vaccine doses delay rollout in Slovakia

Sputnik V order that led to PM’s resignation cannot be used owing to incomplete or inaccurate information

A 200,000-dose order of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine that triggered a political crisis in Slovakia should not be administered yet because of incomplete or inaccurate information from the manufacturer, the national medicines agency has said.

The Dennik N news site quoted the agency as saying it could not properly assess the shots, which it said were different from the vaccine whose favourable peer-reviewed late-stage trial results were published in The Lancet medical journal in February.

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Leaders at a loss as coronavirus catches up with central Europe

Politicians struggle to explain why a region so much less affected in spring is so badly hit now

In the countries of central Europe, which during spring seemed to provide a best-practice model for keeping coronavirus at bay, case numbers have risen sharply, and governments in the region fear that their health systems are close to capacity and may struggle to cope. Central Europe is now just as badly hit as countries further west, and by some parameters is doing worse.

The Visegrad Four group of nations – Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – were all notable for their success in keeping case numbers low earlier in the year, even as gruesome statistics of deaths and hospitalisations came out of western Europe on a daily basis.

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UK and others look for lessons from Slovakia’s Covid mass-testing project

Downing Street sent advisers before UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool

Authorities in Slovakia say they hope a nationwide programme in which two-thirds of the country’s population were tested for Covid-19 in just two days last weekend will halve the number of cases of the virus in the country.

The Slovak testing programme has drawn interest from across Europe, as debates continue about whether or not blanket testing is the best way to fight coronavirus. A Downing Street team travelled to Slovakia last weekend to witness the testing, keen to draw lessons before a mass testing programme due to be launched in Liverpool this weekend.

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Slovakia carries out Covid mass testing of two-thirds of population

Country aims to be one of first to test entire population of 5.4 million people for virus

Two-thirds of Slovakia’s population of 5.4 million people were tested for coronavirus over the weekend as part of a programme aimed at making it one of the first countries to test its entire population.

Antigen tests were carried out on 3.625 million people – of whom 38,359, or 1.06%, were found to be positive.

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Half of Slovakia’s population tested for coronavirus in one day

More than 2.5 million Slovaks took swab tests on Saturday, with 25,850 testing positive

Nearly half of Slovakia’s entire population took Covid-19 swabs on Saturday, the first day of a two-day nationwide testing drive the government hopes will help reverse a surge in infections without a hard lockdown.

The scheme, a first for a country of Slovakia’s size, is being watched by other nations looking for ways to slow the virus spread and avoid overwhelming their health systems.

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As Covid cases rise again, how are countries in Europe reacting?

Tighter measures are being imposed, but they vary across the continent

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Coronavirus is now contaminating Europe’s democracy | Jarosław Kuis and Karolina Wigura

Viktor Orbán is using the pandemic to seize more power. This backsliding could permanently change the face of the EU

To say that Europe is united by its divisions is an exaggeration – but only a small one. Closing national borders during the pandemic may have been a rational health response, but the longer term political consequences become more troubling when we look at the order in which European governments began to reimpose frontiers.

Italy made the decision on 10 March, when the number of confirmed cases had already exceeded 10,000. Over the next five days, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary closed their borders one after the other, even though by that time in any of them the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases had not reach a hundred.

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‘Do not let this fire burn’: WHO warns Europe over coronavirus

Europe now centre of pandemic, says WHO, as Spain prepares for state of emergency

The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.

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Slovakia election: seismic shift as public anger ousts dominant Smer-SD party

Igor Matovic’s centre-right OLaNO party rides wave of outrage over the murder of a journalist to a stunning victory

Slovak voters have handed a resounding victory to the centre-right, anti-graft OLaNO opposition party in an election dominated by an angry backlash over the 2018 murder of a journalist investigating corruption in the eurozone state.

Having vowed to immediately push through anti-corruption measures should he win office, the OLaNO party leader, Igor Matovic, galvanised voter outrage over the murder of Jan Kuciak and his fiancee and the high-level graft their deaths exposed.

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