Category Archives: Europe

Revealed: billionaires are ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ linked to €3bn of EU farming subsidies

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Thousands of small farms have closed according to analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states

The European Union gave generous farming subsidies to the companies of more than a dozen billionaires between 2018 and 2021, the Guardian can reveal, including companies owned by the former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and the British businessman Sir James Dyson.

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

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Moldova votes for president in runoff election as Russia hovers

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Pro-EU president Maia Sandu faces Alexandr Stoianoglo in polls marred by accusations of Kremlin vote-buying

Moldovans are going to the polls for a second-round vote to choose between the incumbent pro-EU president, Maia Sandu, and a Russia-friendly challenger.

Despite securing 42% of the vote in the first round, Sandu faces a tough challenge in Sunday’s runoff against an opposition bloc led by Alexandr Stoianoglo of the Socialist party, which aligns with Moscow.

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy urges allies to stop just ‘watching’ amid North Korea threat

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Ukrainian president calls on countries to step in before troops sent to Russia by Pyongyang reach battlefield

Ukraine’s president urged allies to stop “watching” and take steps before North Korean troops deployed in Russia reach the battlefield, while the army chief said his troops were facing “one of the most powerful offensives” by Moscow since the full-scale war began.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy raised the prospect of a pre-emptive Ukrainian strike on camps where the North Korean troops are being trained and said Kyiv knows their location. But he said Ukraine can’t do it without permission from allies to use western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.

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Spain’s apocalyptic floods show undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us | Jonathan Watts

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The devastating flooding should spur this month’s Cop29 climate conference to press for immediate action, not look away

Move on. Nothing to see here. Just another ordinary, everyday apocalypse.

If past experience is any guide, the world’s reaction to the floods in Spain last week will be similar to that of motorway drivers at a crash scene: slow down, take in the horror, outwardly express sympathy, inwardly give thanks that fate picked someone else – and foot on the accelerator.

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Pakistani firm apologises for directing Dubliners to nonexistent Halloween event

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Thousands lined streets of Irish capital waiting for falsely advertised Mácnas parade after website’s ‘human error’

A Pakistan-based company has issued an embarrassed apology to Dubliners after a “human error” on its events website led to thousands of people turning up on the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare for a nonexistent Halloween parade.

Footage on Thursday night showed throngs of people lining both sides of O’Connell Street waiting for a supposed procession of giant Halloween puppets made by one of Ireland’s best known theatre groups, the Galway performance company Mácnas.

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Spain floods: 10,000 troops and police drafted in to deal with disaster

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Pedro Sánchez orders largest peacetime troop deployment to deal with flooding that has killed 211 people

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest peacetime military deployment, announcing that 10,000 troops and police officers will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions.

Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games.

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‘Welfare for the rich’: how farm subsidies wrecked Europe’s landscapes

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The steep and stark environmental decline was not supposed to happen under the common agricultural policy

Revealed: the growing income gap between Europe’s biggest and smallest farms

The Rhine overflowed last winter, covering fields miles from the river and in some places leaving just the tops of trees visible.

But Thomas Bollig, who farms just a few miles from the banks of the Rhine, was not worried. Even as floods inundated the fields of his neighbours, making sowing impossible, his holdings were largely unaffected. Bollig farms organically, and the natural methods he uses to improve his soil allow his fields to hold more water when it rains, and release it gradually, coping well with floods and droughts.

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Revealed: the growing income gap between Europe’s biggest and smallest farms

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Big farms rake in record profits when food prices soar, while small farms struggle on razor-thin margins

‘Welfare for the rich’: how farm subsidies wrecked Europe’s landscapes

The income gap between the biggest and smallest farms in Europe has doubled in the past 15 years and hit record levels at the same time as the number of small farms has collapsed, a Guardian analysis of agricultural income data has found.

Figures from the European Commission’s Farming Accountancy Data Network (FADN) and Eurostat suggest farmers across the continent raked in record profits when the war in Ukraine sent food prices soaring, boosting a long-running trend of rising average incomes that has outstripped inflation.

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Roof collapse kills at least 14 people at Serbian train station

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Young child among the dead at Novi Sad’s main station as country’s president vows to punish those responsible

At least 14 people have been killed after part of an outdoor roof collapsed at a train station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, the country’s president has said.

The roof, which provided shade over benches near the station’s entrance, came crashing down early on Friday.

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Man jailed for claiming he had fought for Wagner group in Ukraine

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Piotr Kucharski wore insignia for proscribed terror group on combat clothing at Suffolk Viking re-enactment

A builder has been jailed for claiming at a Viking re-enactment that he had fought for the Wagner group in Ukraine.

Piotr Kucharski, 49, wore combat clothing bearing badges with insignia for the proscribed terror organisation to an event in Stonham Aspal, in Suffolk.

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Imported Christmas trees cost more thanks to post-Brexit checks

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Nearly all are deemed ‘high-risk’ and so will need customs declarations and phytosanitary certificates

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Christmas trees make the journey into the UK to take pride of place in living rooms across the country.

But the the cross-border operation faces a new hurdle this year. Plants coming from the EU will be subject to post-Brexit border checks that importers are warning will increase costs for sellers, and probably push up prices for consumers.

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Andy Warhol prints stolen and damaged in ‘amateurish’ Dutch gallery heist

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Thieves steal two works after ripping them from their frames as they were too big for their car

Thieves have blown open the door of an art gallery in the southern Netherlands to try to steal four works from a famous series of Andy Warhol screen prints, but damaged them all and only managed to get away with two in the botched heist.

The gallery’s owner, Mark Peet Visser, said the thieves had attempted to steal the works from a 1985 series by the US pop artist called Reigning Queens, which features portraits of the then-queens of the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Swaziland, which is now called Eswatini.

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Russia sends ex-US consulate employee to prison for ‘secret collaboration with foreign state’

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Robert Shonov worked for 25 years for consulate and was arrested on suspicion of passing secret information about war in Ukraine to US

A Russian former employee of the US consulate in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state”.

Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.

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Finland exports snow-saving mats to ski resorts hit by climate crisis

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Preserving previous year’s snow for start of season can combat increasingly unpredictable winters

Before the arrival of electric fridges and freezers, people across Finland would saw a block of ice from a river or lake before the spring thaw, thickly cover it in an insulating layer of sawdust and stack it in barns, pits or ice cellars to protect produce from the warm air of the summer months.

Amid global heating and increasingly unpredictable shorter winters, a modern twist on the traditional jään säilöminen (ice preservation) technique is now being touted as a way to save Europe’s struggling low- and medium-altitude ski resorts.

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Weather tracker: More rain forecast in Spain as storms push in

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Heightened risk Cádiz river could overflow, with yellow and orange rainfall warnings for southern regions

The low-pressure system responsible for Spain’s most devastating floods in decades in Valencia also set new rainfall records across south-eastern Spain. In Jerez de la Frontera, 115mm of rain fell in 24 hours on Wednesday – the wettest day on record for the southern Spanish city. The deluge caused widespread flooding and road closures, and there is a heightened risk that the River Barbate in Cádiz could overflow as more rain is forecast through Friday and into the weekend.

While the rare red warning issued on Thursday for Valencia has expired, Spain’s national meteorological service, Aemet, has maintained yellow and orange rainfall warnings for southern and Mediterranean regions as storms continue to push in.

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About 8,000 North Korean soldiers at Ukraine border, says US

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Antony Blinken warns that Russia is preparing to deploy the troops into combat ‘in the coming days’

About 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Russia on the border with Ukraine, the US secretary of state has said, warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”.

Antony Blinken said the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.

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EU citizen who applied for pre-settled status is to be deported from Scotland

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Greek Cypriot Costa Koushiappis to be removed from UK even though his application is pending with Home Office

An EU citizen caught up in a Home Office backlog of applications for post-Brexit residency status is to be deported by Border Force officials in Scotland.

Costa Koushiappis, 39, who is Greek Cypriot, has been told to show up at Edinburgh airport at 7am on Friday to be forcibly put on a flight to Amsterdam just weeks after he received an email from the Home Office to say it could take a further 24 months to process his application for status.

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Spain floods death toll passes 150 as country begins three days of mourning

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People urged to stay at home as more bad weather forecast, with number of dead expected to rise further

The death toll from devastating floods in eastern Spain has risen to 158, regional authorities and emergency services have said, as the country began three days of mourning and the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, urged people to stay at home.

With forecasts of more bad weather prompting storm alerts farther north, Sánchez urged residents on Thursday to “please, follow the calls of the emergency services … Right now the most important thing is to save as many lives as possible.”

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Spain floods: number killed passes 150 as scientists say climate change ‘most likely explanation’ – as it happened

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At least 155 people have reportedly died with more rain forecast for the flood-hit region of Valencia

Experts have been giving their reaction to yesterday’s disaster - sounding a warning about our preparedness and ability to cope.

Extreme weather events are becoming more intense, are lasting longer and are occurring more frequently as a result of human-induced climate change, scientists say.

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Sweden abolishes tax on plastic bags despite warnings usage could rise

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Levy that reduced usage by more than three-quarters in four years fell victim to rightwing culture wars, say critics

A tax that has reduced plastic bag consumption in Sweden by more than three-quarters in four years is being abolished on Friday, despite warnings that the move could lead to usage rising back towards previous levels.

Since the introduction of the 3 kroner (£0.21) tax in May 2020, plastic bag usage in the country has slumped. In 2019, before the levy was introduced, people in Sweden used an average of 74 plastic bags (15-50 micrometres thick) per person each year each. In 2023 that number had dropped to 17.

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