Category Archives: Europe

Former Stasi officer jailed for 10 years over 1974 Berlin border shooting

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Martin Naumann, 80, shot Czesław Kukuczka in the back at close range as he tried to cross into West Berlin

A former officer in the East German secret police has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for the murder of a Polish firefighter at a Berlin border crossing 50 years ago.

Martin Naumann, now 80, shot Czesław Kukuczka in the back at close range on 29 March 1974 as Kukuczka walked towards the last in a series of control posts at a transit area in the divided city, having been told he had a free pass to escape to West Berlin.

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Europe’s medical schools to give more training on diseases linked to climate crisis

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New climate network will teach trainee doctors more about heatstroke, dengue and malaria and role of global warming in health

Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria will become a bigger part of the curriculum at medical schools across Europe in the face of the climate crisis.

Future doctors will also have more training on how to recognise and treat heatstroke, and be expected to take the climate impact of treatments such as inhalers for asthma into account, medical school leaders said, announcing the formation of the European Network on Climate & Health Education (Enche).

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European audit of democracy standards too positive, says human rights watchdog

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European Commission report ‘completely ineffective as an enforcement tool’, according to civil liberties organisation

The European Commission’s exhaustive annual audit of democratic standards across the bloc is overly positive and ultimately ineffective because it is not tied to any kind of enforcement mechanism, a leading European civil liberties network has said.

The yearly rule of law reports were launched five years ago and are presented by the commission as a key weapon in its armoury against democratic backsliding, including corruption and attacks on independent media and judiciary, across the union.

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Families seek to clear names of men who refused to fight for former Dutch colony

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Conscientious objectors refused to take part in military campaign against Indonesian independence in 1940s

Families of 20 men who were jailed for refusing to fight to preserve the former Dutch colony in Indonesia have formally asked for their names to be cleared, arguing that instead of “deserters, traitors and cowards” their relatives deserve to be recognised as having been on the right side of history.

An official investigation into the period when Dutch colonies asserted their independence after the second world war found a failed military campaign in Indonesia had systematically used “excessive violence” and massacred hundreds of innocent villagers, whose families eventually won compensation.

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Iceland’s PM calls November snap election as coalition collapses

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Government disbanded due to disagreements on issues including foreign policy and asylum seekers, says Bjarni Benediktsson

Iceland’s prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, has announced the end of the country’s governing coalition and called for elections to be held on 30 November, Icelandic public broadcaster RUV reported.

In a press conference, Bjarni blamed growing disagreements between the three governing parties “on issues ranging from foreign policy to asylum seekers issues”.

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Joe Biden set to visit Germany to discuss Ukraine and Middle East

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US president likely to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz within next week during rescheduled trip, say sources in Berlin

Joe Biden will visit Germany this week, government sources in Berlin said, after he cancelled a planned trip last week due to Hurricane Milton.

The senior German officials who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed media reports that the US president would travel to Berlin, probably within the next week, but declined to provide further details. Planning for the visit was believed to be ongoing.

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Three-armed robot conductor makes debut in Dresden

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German city’s Sinfoniker says aim is not to replace humans but to play music human conductors would find impossible

She’s not long on charisma or passion but keeps perfect rhythm and is never prone to temperamental outbursts against the musicians beneath her three batons. Meet MAiRA Pro S, the next-generation robot conductor who made her debut this weekend in Dresden.

Her two performances in the eastern German city are intended to show off the latest advances in machine maestros, as well as music written explicitly to harness 21st-century technology. The artistic director of Dresden’s Sinfoniker, Markus Rindt, said the intention was “not to replace human beings” but to perform complex music that human conductors would find impossible.

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Christopher Columbus may have been Spanish and Jewish, documentary says

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Claim raises idea explorer was from community expelled by his Spanish patrons, but experts view it with caution

A 20-year genetic investigation of the remains of Christopher Columbus has turned conventional historical wisdom on its head by concluding that the explorer whose voyage to the New World changed the course of global history may have been a Spanish Jew rather than a son of Genoa.

The claim raises the intriguing prospect that the man who played a central part in the creation of Spain’s mighty empire hailed from the very community that his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, expelled from their kingdom in the same year Columbus reached the Americas.

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UK government must say what Brussels ‘reset’ means, says EU delegation head

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Sandro Gozi calls for detail from Labour administration and says ‘new phase in bilateral relationship’ is possible

Keir Starmer’s government must spell out what it wants from a reset of Britain’s relationship with the EU, the European parliament’s lead MEP on the UK has said.

In his first interview since being elected chair of the European parliament’s delegation to the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly earlier this month, Sandro Gozi, an Italian former European affairs minister, said there was potential for a reset with the Starmer government, which had shown “a change in attitude”.

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Family of British woman who fell to her death in Spain call on Met to investigate

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Guardia Civil report on Piia Hokkanen indicates Spanish detectives believe cause of death was suicide

The family and friends of a British IT executive who fell to her death from an apartment block in Spain on the evening of her 50th birthday have called on the Metropolitan police to intervene in a Spanish police investigation into the fatality.

Piia Hokkanen, who at the time of her death had borrowed her sister’s holiday home for a three-day mini-break in Torrevieja, near Alicante, was found lifeless after falling from a communal window on to a neighbour’s patio shortly after midnight on 4 September.

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Enrico Berlinguer: the 1970s communist hero inspiring Italy’s youth – and the far right

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Italian PM Giorgia Meloni among those admiring Berlinguer as new film and exhibitions celebrate his role as a unifier

Enrico Berlinguer was a giant of the Italian left in the 1970s and 80s, coming close to leading the Communist party into government through a “historic compromise” with the country’s Christian Democrats, and championing “Eurocommunism”, a liberal, anti-Stalinist version of Marxism that briefly swept the continent.

But his death 40 years ago, and the collapse of Europe’s communist parties in the late 1980s, eclipsed Berlinguer’s legacy, and Italy has since moved across the political spectrum, electing the far-right Giorgia Meloni as prime minister in 2022.

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Woman dies after going overboard from cruise ship off Channel Islands

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French navy helicopter winched woman from the sea, but she was later pronounced dead

A woman has died after going overboard from a passenger ship off the Channel Islands.

The French coastguard said it received a distress message saying a woman in her 20s had gone overboard north of Les Casquets rocks, west of Alderney, shortly after midnight on Saturday. The woman went overboard from the Maltese-flagged cruise ship MSC Virtuosa.

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Alexei Navalny believed he would die in prison, memoir reveals

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In secret journal, Putin’s fiercest critic writes: ‘If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them’

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny believed he would die in prison, excerpts from his memoir reveal.

Navalny was the most prominent foe of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in Russia. He died in a remote Arctic prison in February while serving a 19-year sentence on several charges, including running an extremist group, which he said were politically motivated.

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Monster pickup trucks accelerate into Europe as sales rise despite safety fears

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A Dodge Ram 1500 is bigger than a Panzer I tank and campaigners say heavy trucks are ‘lethal’ in collisions

The engines rev, the guitars thrum and a gruff narrator lays out why the vehicle occupying the driveway is more than just a machine. “A truck is a tool,” he says, “but a Ram – a Ram is life.”

So begins an advert for the Ram 1500, a pickup truck slightly bigger than the Panzer I tanks of Nazi Germany and almost as heavy. It is growing in popularity in Europe, with the number of Rams arriving on the continent up 20% in 2023 from the year before, according to registration data from the European Environment Agency. Road safety and environmental campaigners in the UK and Europe are aghast as the latest, most extreme cases of North American car bloat – giant pickup trucks – are increasingly crossing the Atlantic.

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French government faces first major test over deep budget cuts

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Bill aims to find €60bn to plug deficit but opposition parties could demand concessions and even topple the administration

The new French government is facing its first major test in a hostile parliament as it tries to push through a budget of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy and big companies aimed at saving €60bn (£50bn) and reining in a ballooning fiscal deficit.

The rightwing prime minister, Michel Barnier – who was appointed last month by Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to end the political paralysis following an inconclusive snap election – said France was facing a debt crisis and had to act.

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EU unable to retrieve €150m paid to Tunisia despite links to rights violations

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Concerns are growing that funds from the migration deal are connected to abuses by the repressive regime in Tunis

The EU will be unable to claw back any of the €150m (£125m) paid to Tunisia despite the money being increasingly linked to human rights violations, including allegations that sums went to security forces who raped migrant women.

The European Commission paid the amount to the Tunis government in a controversial migration and development deal, despite concerns that the north African state was increasingly authoritarian and its police largely operated with impunity.

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Hospitals evacuated in Cologne after discovery of second world war bomb

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1,000kg US ordnance to be defused at building site after complex evacuation that also included thousands of homes

Authorities in the German city of Cologne have evacuated three hospitals and thousands of homes after the discovery of an unexploded second world war bomb during construction work on a new medical campus.

The 1,000kg US aerial bomb, equipped with a front and rear impact detonator, is due to be defused on Friday.

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Talks on UK rejoining EU could start in 10 years’ time, says Peter Mandelson

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Labour peer says in meantime it is essential to try to reduce damage of Brexit deal struck by Boris Johnson

Peter Mandelson has suggested the UK could start talks on rejoining the EU in 10 years’ time, much earlier than Keir Starmer believes.

Lord Mandelson told an audience in Edinburgh the “truth is that [reversing Brexit] could be a conversation which starts in 10 years’ time”, but only if EU member states were willing to consider it.

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Italian migration centres open in Albania under controversial deal

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Fears agreement will set dangerous EU precedent with up to 3,000 men a month held during asylum processing

Italy has formally opened two centres in Albania where it plans to hold men who are intercepted in international waters while trying to cross from Africa to Europe.

The Italian ambassador to Albania, Fabrizio Bucci, said the centres were ready to accommodate people while their asylum applications were processed, but could not say when the first ones would arrive. “As of today, the two centres are ready and operational,” Bucci told journalists at the port of Shëngjin on Albania’s Adriatic coast where the people picked up will land.

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DNA study confirms Christopher Columbus’s remains are entombed in Seville

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Scientists have ‘definitively’ proved identity of remains – with navigator’s precise origins to be revealed

Scientists in Spain claim to have solved the two lingering mysteries that cling to Christopher Columbus more than five centuries after the explorer died: are the much-travelled remains buried in a magnificent tomb in Seville Cathedral really his? And was the navigator who changed the course of world history really from Genoa – as history has long claimed – or was he actually Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Jewish or Portuguese?

The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second is … wait until Saturday.

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