Category Archives: Europe

Italian PM Giorgia Meloni sues Placebo singer for calling her ‘fascist racist’

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Calls for overhaul of defamation laws in Italy after legal action brought against Brian Molko

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is suing Placebo frontman, Brian Molko, for defamation after publicly calling her “racist” and “fascist”, according to local media reports.

Molko made the comments during a performance by the band at the Sonic Park festival in Stupinigi outside Turin in July. “Giorgia Meloni, piece of shit, fascist, racist,” he appeared to shout in Italian in footage posted on social media by fans who attended the gig.

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Burnt-out ship carrying 3,700 cars towed to Dutch port of Eemshaven

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The Fremantle Highway caught fire last week, raising concerns of an environmental disaster

A burnt-out transport ship carrying thousands of cars has been towed to a northern Dutch port more than a week after catching fire at sea, averting a feared environmental disaster.

Local media images showed tugs towing the Fremantle Highway into Eemshaven after a journey from a holding position.

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Russia-Ukraine war: EU bans drone sales to Belarus and adds state TV presenters to sanctions list – as it happened

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Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is close ally of Vladimir Putin and EU says regime is ‘accomplice in Russia’s unprovoked war’

Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, citing the country’s air force, reports: “At night, air defence forces shot down all 15 ‘Shahed’ drones, which the Russian Federation released over Ukraine.”

Serhiy Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s state emergency service, has posted to social media images of bloodied and injured emergency workers and damaged emergency equipment in Kherson as a result of what Ukraine claims has been a “double tap” attack near a church.

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UK Brexit checks on fresh food from EU delayed for fifth time, reports say

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Government source reportedly says there are concerns extra red tape could fuel further inflation

Brexit checks on fresh farm produce coming to the UK from the EU have been delayed for the fifth time, according to reports.

The decision to suspend plans to enforce the controls, which have been applied in the other direction to British exports to the EU since January 2021, is due to be announced imminently, according to the Financial Times.

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Russia ‘systematically’ forcing Ukrainians to accept citizenship, US report finds

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Ukrainians in occupied territories who refuse Russian passports face threats, intimidation and possible detention or deportation, Yale study says

Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, a new US report has said.

Yale University researchers found that residents of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Russian strikes cause fire at grain store in Odesa after drones shot down over Kyiv – as it happened

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Tis live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here

Reuters has a quick snap that a Russian drone strike caused “serious” damage at Ukraine’s Danube port of Izmail.

Ukraine’s emergency services have issued some photographs showing overnight damage to buildings in Kyiv region.

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Meta to ask EU users’ permission to show targeted advertising

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Facebook and Instagram’s parent company will stop harvesting audience data to create profiles for advertisers after regulatory rulings

Facebook and Instagram are to ask EU users for permission to show them personalised adverts, in a concession that challenges the platforms’ core money-making strategy.

The social media networks’ parent company, Meta, announced the change after a series of regulatory rulings struck down the company’s legal justification for harvesting audience data to create user profiles that can be targeted by advertisers.

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Ireland’s far-right party in crisis amid claims of stolen gold

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Confusion over whether Justin Barrett remains leader of National party after his allegations of theft

It has the ingredients of a Frederick Forsyth thriller: stolen gold bullion, political intrigue, betrayal and a sprinkling of Adolf Hitler.

The saga of Ireland’s far-right National party and its vault of gold bars, however, has played out more like an Armando Iannucci farce.

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Greek PM offers tourists affected by wildfires a free stay in Rhodes next year

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledges ‘inconvenience for visitors’ after 20,000 people were evacuated

Tourists whose holidays on the Greek island of Rhodes were cut short due to intense wildfires are being offered a one-week free stay next year, the Greek prime minister said.

Holidaymakers and local people were forced to flee homes and hotels as the fires burned for days in July, with about 20,000 tourists rescued from danger in the largest evacuation ever undertaken by the country.

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Italian singer Baby K decries selfie ‘madness’ after being hurt by fan

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Artist forced to cancel summer tour after being ‘charged at’ by woman at the end of concert

The Italian singer Baby K has hit out against the “madness” of selfies and called for greater protection for artists after she was injured by a fan and forced to cancel the rest of her tour.

In a video posted on TikTok, she said she suffered “breast trauma” after being “charged at” by a woman at the end of a concert on Monday in Teramo, Italy, as a crowd of fans surged around her for selfies.

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Ukraine’s birth rate plummets in aftermath of Russian invasion, data shows

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In 2023, an average of 16,000 babies have been born a month, compared to as many as 23,000 babies born monthly before Russia’s invasion

Ukraine’s birthrate has fallen by 28% since the start of the war, according to new data, with 38,324 fewer babies born in the country in the first six months of this year compared with 2021, before Russia invaded.

While birthrates have been declining by 7% per yer since 2015, according to Ukrainian data analytics company OpenDataBot, the drop from 2021 to 2023 is the largest since Ukraine gained independence in 1991. The next steepest drop was in 2015, in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

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Warsaw sends troops to border, accusing Belarus of violating its airspace

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Polish military says army helicopters crossed eastern flank, adding to tensions caused by proximity of Wagner fighters

Poland has rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters.

The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused Poland, a Nato member and one of Ukraine’s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops.

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France begins evacuating its citizens and other Europeans from Niger

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Airlift follows coup that toppled President Mohamed Bazoum, as tensions grow between the two countries

France has started evacuating its citizens and other Europeans from Niger, days after a junta toppled the president, Mohamed Bazoum, and seized power in the west African country.

Tensions between Niger and former colonial power France have escalated after the coup on 26 July overthrew one of the last pro-western leaders in Africa’s Sahel region. France’s decision to swiftly evacuate its citizens goes further than its reaction to putsches in recent years in the other former French colonies of Mali and Burkina Faso, where French citizens were not evacuated after military coups.

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Armed robbers escape with up to €15m in jewellery from Piaget store in Paris

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Investigation under way after theft at Swiss luxury watch shop on Rue de la Paix in high-end Place Vendôme area

Armed robbers have raided a store of the luxury Swiss watch brand Piaget in central Paris, escaping with between €10m to €15m ( £8.5m to 12.8m) worth of jewellery, the Paris prosecutors office said.

The robbery took place around lunchtime on Tuesday at the store on the Rue de la Paix in the high-end Place Vendôme area, home to several jewellers, watchmakers and luxury brands. The area has seen a spate of armed robberies in recent years.

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Jeremy Hunt oversaw signing of San Marino low-tax treaty backed by Tory donor

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Exclusive: Maurizio Bragagni, who has given over £700k to Tories and £30k to chancellor, attended event

Jeremy Hunt oversaw the signing of a low-tax treaty with San Marino championed by a leading Tory donor, who with his companies has given more than £700,000 to the party and £30,000 to the chancellor.

Maurizio Bragagni, a prominent businessman and diplomat for San Marino, was present in No 11 when a “double taxation” treaty between the UK and San Marino was signed in May.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Poland to deploy more border troops after Belarus ‘violates airspace’; ‘drone shot down in Crimea’ – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can read the latest news at a glance here:

Here are some of the latest images that have been released from the site of a Russian strike on Kharkiv.

Reuters has a quick snap that Ukraine’s interior minister has claimed an attempt to cross into the country on its northern border in the Chernihiv region by a Russian saboteur group was foiled.

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Drone hits Moscow tower housing ministries for second time, says mayor

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Russian defence ministry blames Kyiv for attack as Ukrainian presidential adviser says Kremlin should expect ‘more war’

A high-rise building in Moscow housing Russian government ministries has been hit by a drone for the second time in three days, the city’s mayor has said, as a Ukrainian presidential adviser said the Kremlin should expect more drone attacks and “more war”.

The Russian defence ministry said two drones were destroyed by air defence systems in the Odintsovo and Naro-Fominsk districts near Moscow in a fresh wave of attacks on Tuesday, while it claimed a third was jammed and went “out of control” before it crashed in the Moscow City business district, a cluster of glass skyscrapers that was built to show Russia’s growing integration into world financial markets. The ministry blamed Ukraine for what it called an “attempted terrorist attack”.

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‘Shameful loss’: wolves declared extinct in Andalucía

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Naturalists decry extinction of species as loss of habitat, poaching and illegal hunting take toll

For centuries, wolves have roamed the mountain ranges of Andalucía in southern Spain, but after years of decline the creature has been officially declared extinct in the region.

Since 2003, the regional government has carried out a census of the wolf (Canis lupus signatus) population in an effort to monitor the species and reduce conflict with the local population, farmers in particular.

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