Owner of Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot brands pushes back against rules that force sale of more electric vehicles
The owner of car brands including Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot has reported a steep fall in sales, blaming production delays and flagging European demand.
Stellantis reported revenues on Thursday of €33bn (£27.6bn) for the July to September quarter, a drop of 27% compared with the same period a year earlier.
Continue reading...Formal investigation opens amid concerns Chinese shopping website is breaching Digital Services Act
The EU has launched formal proceedings against the Chinese shopping website Temu amid concerns it is failing to halt the sale of illegal products online.
A formal investigation was opened on Thursday with the European Commission citing concerns over the platform, which is a cut-price rival to Amazon.
Continue reading...EU and US demand investigation as opposition and pro-European president cry foul
Officials in Georgia said a partial recount confirmed the ruling party had won its disputed election, while a global research and data firm called the official results reported by the electoral commission “statistically impossible”.
The pro-western opposition on Thursday repeated its earlier assertions that the parliamentary vote had been “stolen” by the ruling Georgian Dream party and it refused to recognise the results, plunging the Caucasus country into uncertainty.
Continue reading...Scores of people have died as country is hit by deadliest floods in decades
At least 150 people have died in Spain after torrential rains triggered the country’s deadliest floods in decades, unleashing a deluge of muddy water that turned village streets into rivers, destroyed homes and swept away bridges, railways tracks and cars.
An unknown number of people remain missing, while thousands of others are without electricity or phone service. The majority of those killed were in the coastal region of Valencia, where the state-run agency said that nearly a year’s worth of rain had fallen in just eight hours.
Continue reading...Victims say ‘water was already here’ by the time warning was issued, as military prepares to start searching worst-hit areas
Rescue workers in Spain are searching for more victims after deadly floods, as questions are raised about how one of the world’s most developed nations failed to respond adequately to such an extreme storm.
Torrential rains that began at the start of the week led to flooding that has left at least 95 people dead, the deadliest such disaster in the western European country since 1973.
Continue reading...Lloyd Austin says deployment near Ukraine border is a dangerous and destabilising development
North Korean troops wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment are moving to the Russian region of Kursk, near Ukraine, according to the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, who described the deployment as a dangerous and destabilising development.
Austin was speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon with the South Korean defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, as concerns grow about Pyongyang’s deployment of as many as 11,000 troops to Russia. The US and South Korea said some of the North Korean troops are heading to Kursk, on the border with Ukraine, where the Kremlin’s forces have struggled to push back a Ukrainian incursion.
Continue reading...Soldiers aid search for dozens still missing as prime minister warns extreme weather may not be over
At least 95 people have died in eastern, central and southern Spain after torrential rains triggered the country’s deadliest floods in three decades, unleashing torrents of muddy water that surged through cities, towns and villages, trapping people in their homes, bringing down trees, and cutting off roads and railway lines.
As the search for dozens of missing people continued, motorists were urged to stay off the roads and away from swollen rivers amid warnings that the severe weather was not over and that the number of deaths could still rise.
Continue reading...Western powers call for investigation into Georgian Dream party election win amid reports of voter intimidation and fraud
The European Commission has said it will not recommend opening EU membership talks with Georgia unless the country changes course, days after the increasingly anti-western Georgian Dream (GD) party won pivotal parliamentary elections amid reports of irregularities and voter intimidation.
The commission recommended that Georgia be granted EU candidate status last year – something Ukraine and Moldova had already achieved – but made clear at the time that this could be withdrawn if the government in Tbilisi did not follow through on agreed reforms.
Continue reading...Knocked-over bag led to unintended use of drug to counter nerve agents, which may have saved former Russian spy
A paramedic has described the extraordinary moment he knocked over a drugs bag as he treated the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and then by chance gave him a nerve agent antidote that may have saved his life.
Emergency services workers who went to help Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, after they were poisoned with the nerve agent novichok, initially suspected they may have been experiencing the effects of a recreational drugs overdose.
Continue reading...Clip of Russian and Ukrainian flags with angry-face and heart emojis is alleged to have ‘discredited’ army
Police in Russian-annexed Crimea have charged a woman with child neglect after her 10-year-old daughter allegedly posted a video online that “discredited” the Russian army, authorities said on Wednesday.
The video, shared on Russian Telegram channels, showed a girl choosing between Russian and Ukrainian flags, with an angry-face emoji next to the Russian flag and a heart emoji next to the Ukrainian one.
Continue reading...Scientists say violent weather battering Mediterranean is a harbinger of what the rest of Europe can soon expect
Residents of Chiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia, can expect a grim future of worsening drought as the planet heats up and the country dries out. But on Tuesday, they also witnessed a year’s worth of rainfall in a matter of hours.
The torrential rains that flooded southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday night, ripping away bridges and tearing through towns, have killed scores of people. Fossil fuel pollution plays a role in warping both extremes of the water cycle: heat evaporates water, leaving people and plants parched, but hot air can hold more moisture, increasing the potential for catastrophic downpours.
Continue reading...Former pupils of Catholic schools say corporal punishment was ‘hourly occurence’ in 60s and 70s
The Irish government has been urged to extend the scope of a statutory inquiry into historical child abuse in schools to include corporal punishment, including a practice known as “leathering”.
Survivors of physical assault in Catholic schools have complained they were told there was no scope to include corporal punishment in an investigation into sexual abuse, announced in September.
Continue reading...Unspecified number of bodies found as flood waters push cars through streets, closing roads and cancelling train services in Valencia
Several dead bodies have been recovered by emergency workers after torrential rain caused flash floods in southern and eastern Spain, shutting roads and high-speed train connections.
Raging mud-coloured flood waters swept through the town of Letur in the eastern province of Albacete on Tuesday, pushing cars through the streets, images broadcast on Spanish television showed.
Continue reading...Daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd says family let down by US and German governments’ failure to save him
Germany has recalled its ambassador to Tehran and summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Berlin in protest over the execution of a German-Iranian dual national, Jamshid Sharmahd, accused of terrorism by Iran.
His daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, who had pressed the German and US governments hard to save him, said she and her brother felt let down by the failure of both governments to do more. Sharmahd was executed on Monday.
Continue reading...Campaigners say 21% of people at workshops did not disclose on their applications relationships with firms being discussed
More than one in five attenders at EU events on regulating big tech companies did not disclose links to the industry when applying to take part, according to transparency campaigners who say hidden networks are distorting public debate.
Researchers at three NGOs analysed nearly 4,000 registrations at European Commission workshops organised earlier this year to test companies’ compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law to curb anti-competitive behaviour.
Continue reading...Manslaughter inquiry launched after 14-year-old went into anaphylactic shock after dining with her family at pizzeria
Prosecutors in Rome have opened a manslaughter investigation after a British girl with a peanut allergy died during a holiday with her family.
The 14-year-old had dined at a pizzeria in the Gianicolense district and went into anaphylactic shock about 15 minutes later after the family returned to their hotel.
Continue reading...Actor ran last part of course pushing friend Emma Fogarty who has genetic condition known as butterfly skin
Colin Farrell has raised €774,000 (£644,000) for a charity supporting people with a rare skin condition by running the Dublin marathon while pushing one of the oldest survivors of the disease in Ireland around part of the course in her wheelchair.
The actor, who was born in the Irish capital, raised the money for Debra Ireland, an organisation that supports people with the incurable genetic condition epidermolysis bullosa (EB), or “butterfly skin”, which causes people to have very fragile and blistering skin.
Continue reading...Oleksii Sivak has set up a support group for others who have suffered widespread but unspoken abuse
Russian troops tortured Oleksii Sivak for weeks, applying electric shocks to his genitals in a freezing basement in his home city of Kherson in punishment for resisting their rule.
When Ukrainian troops freed the city in the autumn of 2022, Sivak was presented with a long list of medical specialists who could help his recovery and asked to tick the ones he needed.
Continue reading...Researchers found 38,000 fewer people – 10 times number of murders – would have died if atmosphere was not clogged with greenhouse pollutants
Climate breakdown caused more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study has found.
Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found 38,000 fewer people would have died from heat if humans had not clogged the atmosphere with pollutants that act like a greenhouse and bake the planet. The death toll is about 10 times greater than the number of people murdered in Europe that year.
Continue reading...Past threats former president – and present Russian ones – have spurred Europe to invest in self-defence, but as conflicts rise the alliance still looks vital
Politeness and convention dictate that European leaders try to sound noncommittal when asked whether a Donald Trump presidency would hurt Nato. But despite the rhetoric about “Trump-proofing”, Nato cohesion will be at risk from a hostile or isolationist Republican president, who has previously threatened to leave the alliance if European defence spending did not increase.
“The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter. “Take the new Nato command centre to coordinate assistance for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is inside a US army barracks, relying on US logistics and software.”
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