Category Archives: Europe

Romanian PM to boycott Olympic closing ceremony in gymnastics protest

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  • Ana Barbosu demoted from bronze while celebrating
  • Romanian great Nadia Comaneci also criticises decision

Romania’s prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said he will boycott the Olympic closing ceremony after his country were denied a medal in the women’s gymnastics.

Ana Barbosu had already begun celebrating her bronze for the floor event on Monday when coaches for Jordan Chiles, of the United States, entered an appeal to judges over Chiles’s score. The inquiry resulted in a 0.1 boost for Chiles, enough to overtake Barbosu for the last spot on the podium.

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Global markets partly recover but analysts fear ‘we’re not out of woods’

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Shares on Wall Street and in Asia and Europe start to recover after Monday’s rout

Shares on Wall Street rose and many Asian and European markets staged a recovery after this week’s global stock market rout, but analysts warned: “We might not be out of the woods.”

The FTSE 100 index in London rose 18 points, or 0.2%, on Tuesday to close at 8,026.69, after losing 166 points, or 2%, on Monday, its biggest one-day points drop in more than a year.

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German court convicts activist for leading ‘from the river to the sea’ chant

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Judge says phrase ‘denied right of Israel to exist’ but woman’s lawyer says ruling is a defeat for free speech

A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.

The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.

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‘It made me cry’: photos taken 15 years apart show melting Swiss glaciers

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Married couple from Bristol attract awe and abuse on X with photos that show ‘staggering’ changes in the Alps

A tourist has posted “staggering” photos of himself and his wife at the same spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.

Duncan Porter, a software developer from Bristol, posted photos that were taken in the same spot at the Rhône glacier in August 2009 and August 2024. The white ice that filled the background has shrunk to reveal grey rock. A once-small pool at the bottom, out of sight in the original, has turned into a vast green lake.

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Bloomberg fires reporter for ‘premature’ publication of Evan Gershkovich release – reports

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At least one reporter appears to have been fired for a decision that would’ve been reviewed by senior editors

Bloomberg News said it had taken “disciplinary action” against a number of its editorial staff after the outlet “prematurely” published news of the historic prisoner swap between Russia and the United States last week that it said could have endangered the safety of the Americans being released.

In an email to staff on Monday, editor-in-chief John Micklethwait wrote that a number of staff members had been disciplined, although the company did not say who, how many or what their punishment had been. At least one reporter on the story appears to have been fired in a rare case where a journalist was punished for a decision to publish a major news story that would likely have been reviewed by senior editors at the outlet.

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‘Delicate, authentic, charismatic’: Dolce & Gabbana launches €99 dog perfume

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Italian brand makes first foray into pet scents – but RSPCA warns against such products as dogs rely on sense of smell

If the axiom that a dog is man’s best friend holds any credence, Dolce & Gabbana has now elevated it with the introduction of its latest perfume: a mist for dogs.

But the RSPCA has warned against messing with dogs’ sense of smell by giving them their own fragrance, warning the odour could come across as unpleasant for them – and hamper their ability to connect with their surroundings.

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UK ‘stop the boats’ policy raising risk of deadly crushes on dinghies, NGOs say

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Groups say people are dying of crushing and suffocation as ever-growing numbers are packed into fewer vessels

Refugees are being crammed into boats on French beaches in ever-increasing numbers, human rights groups have said, leading to an increased risk of crushing and suffocation as a result of the UK’s “stop the boats” policy.

A seven-year-old girl is among at least eight people who have died of suffocation on a dinghy in the Channel in less than a year.

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‘Everything is a target’: Dnipro suffers consequences of Russia’s bloody war

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Ukrainian city of 1 million people hit by number of deadly aerial attacks seemingly aimed at terrorising the population

At 5pm on 28 June, Lana Yefimova left work as usual, walking from her office in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Minutes later a Russian rocket hit the nine-storey apartment block opposite her workplace and crashed through the upper floors, ripping through ceilings. “I ran back to find a fire. It was huge. My colleague Yulia was hurt. She broke her pelvis. I was in shock,” Yefimova said.

Four people were killed inside the residential building at 24a Vikonkomivska Street and 12 injured, including a pregnant woman and a baby. The attack was seemingly random – another erratic death-bringing moment in Russia’s bloody war. “They want to frighten us so we leave,” Yefimova said. “It’s politics. And terror.”

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A death at work in the age of extreme heat – podcast

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Samira Shackle and Jeff Goodell explain the dangers resulting from extreme heat, and what society can do to mitigate them

David Azevedo died because of the heat. A construction worker living in a small city in central France, he had recently started a new job when a heatwave struck in the summer of 2022. He would not even see out his first week.

The journalist Samira Shackle interviews his sister Anne-Marie about what happened, and how her family have feared every heatwave since.

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Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s, says Zelenskiy

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President confirms long-awaited arrival of US-made fighter jets as Ukrainian pilots fly overhead

Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, confirming the long-awaited arrival of the US-made fighter jets more than 29 months since Russia’s invasion.

Ukraine’s president announced the use of F-16s, which Kyiv has long lobbied for, as he met military pilots at an airbase flanked by two of the jets, with two more flying overhead.

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UK food industry says lack of testing capacity forcing imports back to EU for checks

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Trade bodies blame lack of lab facilities at Brexit border posts for longer delays and shorter shelf life of food

Imported food coming into the UK through Brexit border posts is being sent back to Europe to be tested due to a lack of laboratory capacity in Britain, food bodies have said.

The SPS Certification Working Group, which represents 30 trade bodies covering £100bn worth of the UK’s food supply, has written to the government warning that members are being advised that some samples of imported foods are being sent to countries such as Germany to be tested before they can be released at the border.

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Sheep and goat plague won’t halt production of feta, say Greek farmers

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Producers insist they have enough milk despite culling of thousands of animals due to livestock virus

Greek farmers have denied that production of feta cheese is likely to be hit hard by the outbreak of a deadly virus among goats and sheep that has led to the culling of thousands of animals.

Livestock industry officials sought to dispel fears that the cheese, a mainstay of the Mediterranean diet, could be imperilled because of the rate at which the highly infectious disease has spread.

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Zelenskiy praises Ukraine’s strikes on military targets inside Russia

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Ukrainian army reports several hits on sites including Russian airfields, oil refineries and logistics

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, praised his forces on Saturday for hitting military targets inside Russia, after his army reported several strikes including on an airfield and an oil depot.

“I would like to thank each of our soldiers and all those who work in our defence industry for striking Russian airfields, oil refineries and logistics,” he said in his daily statement.

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Russian dissidents freed in prisoner swap speak of deal ‘dilemma’

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Activists say they never agreed to leave their homeland and vow to continue fighting for democracy in Russia

Russian dissidents freed as part of a prisoner swap between Moscow and the west have shared their mixed feelings about the deal and vowed to continue their political activity from abroad.

The exchange represented a “difficult dilemma”, said the Russian liberal opposition politician Ilya Yashin at an emotional press conference in Bonn.

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Russian prisoner swap deal was to have included Alexei Navalny

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Negotiations, which began months earlier, originally included release of late opposition leader

At Cologne airport on Thursday evening, a group of associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny gathered waiting for a plane to arrive from Ankara. On board were 13 people who, until that morning, had been incarcerated in Russian prisons, including three people who had worked as Navalny’s regional coordinators in various Russian cities and been jailed for “extremism”.

After a swap in Turkey, they were now free, along with the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans, who were heading back home on a separate plane.

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Evan Gershkovich’s most tireless advocate to secure his release: his mother

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Ella Milman pressed world leaders and researched the scheme that would eventually lead to the release of her son

Much has been made of the public diplomacy behind the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the US since the cold war, with officials from at least seven countries spending years making calls and holding secret meetings in far-flung capitals.

But since Evan Gershkovich, the formerly imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter, and others stepped off the plane in Maryland on Thursday, new details have emerged about the role of a crucial player in that effort: his mother.

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Kremlin admits Vadim Krasikov is a Russian state assassin

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Spokesperson hints killer exchanged in prisoner swap was linked to Putin’s personal guard

The Kremlin has admitted that Vadim Krasikov, the assassin freed by Germany in a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), essentially an acknowledgment that his 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin was a state-ordered hit.

It also hinted that he was linked to Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.

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Russia-US prisoner swap: Kremlin confirms hitman Vadim Krasikov worked for FSB security service – as it happened

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Yesterday evening, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other freed American prisoners just hours after Washington and Moscow completed their largest prisoner exchange since the cold war.

Gershkovich spoke about his feelings boarding the bus with the other freed detainees on Thursday and said he was happy to see Russians on board as well.

He also said: “I spent a month in prison in Yekaterinburg where everyone I sat with was a political prisoner. Nobody knows them publicly, they have various political beliefs, they are not all connected with Navalny supporters, who everyone knows about. I would potentially like to see if we could do something about them as well.”

The Kremlin said that Vladimir Putin’s decision to meet released prisoners as they arrived by plane in Russia “was a tribute to people who serve their country and who after very difficult trials, and thanks to the hard work of many people, have been able to return to the Motherland.”

The Kremlin also confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, a hitman returned by Germany as part of yesterday’s major prisoner swap, was an employee of Russia’s FSB security service and had served in Alpha Group, the FSB’s special forces unit.

France urged Moscow to set free French citizen Laurent Vinatier and other people still “arbitrarily” detained.

Amnesty International has welcomed the release of people held in Russia but stressed that “this isn’t the end” and “Russia must free all persons jailed for peaceful dissent.”

For a few seconds, no one even noticed that Evan Gershkovich had taken his first steps back on US soil as a free man.

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Fear of US recession rattles global markets as tech shares fall

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Europe’s main indices all decline and Japanese equities suffer worst day since 2020 while gold hits fresh record

Stock markets in Europe, Asia and New York tumbled on Friday as fears of a US economic slump grew and technology shares were hit by underwhelming earnings.

Concerns that the US could be sliding towards a recession spurred a global sell-off, which accelerated after a poor employment report on Friday showed that the US jobs market was cooling fast, pushing up the unemployment rate.

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