Britain misses out on building second Ineos vehicle, after company chose France for original model
Ineos, the company founded and run by the British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, will build an electric version of its new Grenadier off-road vehicle in Austria.
The electric version of the 4x4 will be developed with the Canadian car parts manufacturer Magna and production is scheduled to start in 2026.
Continue reading...Former leader to be only third chancellor to be given Großkreuz, as her energy policy in particular comes under sharp scrutiny
Germany’s former leader Angela Merkel is to be awarded the country’s highest order of merit despite criticism over her legacy.
Merkel will be presented with the honour by the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin on Monday evening in recognition of her contribution to German political life at an event to be attended by her political allies, including the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the former national football coach Jürgen Klinsmann and family and friends.
Continue reading...Paris court clears aviation giants over disaster that killed 228 people flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris
A Paris court has cleared Air France and Airbus of involuntary manslaughter over the crash of flight 447 in 2009 that killed 228 people.
Giving its verdict on Monday, the court said if there had been faults committed, “no certain causal link” with the accident could be shown.
Continue reading...Li Shangfu travelled to Moscow where he said ties between the countries ‘surpass military-political alliances of the cold war era’
Vladimir Putin and China’s defence minister Li Shangfu have vowed to deepen military cooperation between China and Russia after the men met in Moscow over the weekend.
Li, who met the Russian president on Sunday on his first trip overseas in the role, said China was willing to work with Russia to have close strategic communications between their militaries.
Continue reading...A court in Moscow has sentenced the opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years prison; Slovakia will temporarily halt imports of grains and other selected products from Ukraine
Continue reading...Pedro Sánchez asks victims for forgiveness after change allows some offenders to reduce sentences
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has apologised to victims for a loophole in a landmark new law that was intended to toughen penalties for sexual crimes but has allowed some convicted offenders to reduce their sentences.
The legislation, popularly known as the “only yes means yes” law, came into effect last October. It overhauled the criminal code by making sexual consent – or lack of it – key in determining assault cases, in an effort to define all non-consensual sex as rape.
Continue reading...Intense fighting in middle of eastern city as Russia claims advances; Sloviansk death toll rises to 11 while Russian shelling also kills two in Kherson
More on a story we reported earlier that Poland is to ban imports of Ukrainian grain to protect its own agricultural sector.
A Polish ban on imports of Ukrainian grain and other food will also apply to the transit of these products through the country, the development and technology minister has said, according to Reuters.
Poland and Hungary said on Saturday that they had decided to ban imports from neighbouring Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector after a flood of supply depressed prices across the region. The Polish ban came into effect on Saturday evening.
Continue reading...Cathedral service overseen by clerics independent of Russian-affiliated patriarchate for first time since 17th century
Dawn did not break over wartime Kyiv on Orthodox Easter Sunday. It was more that the darkness gradually paled, leaving the pinnacle of the 18th-century bell tower wreathed in a wan mist.
Soon after 5.30am, the faithful began to trickle into Dormition Cathedral, which stands at the heart of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves.
Continue reading...The longest-running production in Germany, restaged for a new generation of theatregoers, is a curious mixture of 80s nostalgia and politics … with great tunes
The four men dressed in widow’s weeds of black bombazine had hardly stepped on to the stage when the first yelps of delight rippled through the audience at Berlin’s Grips theatre, an intimate 360-seat venue in the west of the city. By the time the quartet in drag have locked arms to kick up their heels, the mixed-age crowd is clapping in time to the oompah beat.
The Wilmersdorf Widows song is to Volker Ludwig’s musical Linie 1 (Line One) what All That Jazz is to Chicago, or Time Warp to The Rocky Horror Picture Show: the catchy showstopper that brings the house down.
Continue reading...Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges jokes about prison food in letter home
Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, has said in his first direct communication to his parents in the US that he is not “losing hope”, and joked in the letter about the quality of the prison food.
Gershkovich, 31, became the first American journalist to be detained in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war when he was detained in the city of Ekaterinburg, 1,100 miles (1,800km) east of Moscow, on 29 March.
Continue reading...Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions remind many of first steps taken by ‘illiberal’ governments in Budapest and Warsaw
At the height of the protests in Israel over Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned judicial changes early last month, a Polish minister gave a revealing radio interview in Warsaw.
“Of course, we are talking with Israel, and to some extent we shared our experiences in this regard,” said the deputy foreign minister, Paweł Jabłoński, when asked for his views on the proposed Israeli laws.
Continue reading...Mikheil Saakashvili warned of Putin’s ambitions 15 years ago. Now he tells of torture by a regime that panders to Moscow
Locked up in a Tbilisi hospital, Mikheil Saakashvili is slowly wasting away.
“I am asking to be transferred to Poland, as it is crystal clear that in Georgian hospital I will die,” Georgia’s former president wrote in response to questions from the Observer last week. His answers were scrawled in blue ballpoint pen on sheets of paper, passed to his lawyers.
Continue reading...Death toll from Russian attack on Sloviansk apartment block rises to 11; Moscow claims Wagner forces have captured two more areas of Bakhmut
The death toll from a Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukraine city of Sloviansk has risen to 11. A block of flats was badly damaged and rescue crews were continuing on Saturday to try to rescue people trapped underneath rubble.
Russian shelling in Kherson killed two women on Saturday, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
The Wagner mercenary group has captured two more areas of Bakhmut, Russia’s defence ministry said. Ukraine’s military said pro-Kyiv forces were still holding on amid “bloody and fierce battles”. The claims have not been independently verified.
A Russian official has claimed four people were killed and 10 injured in Ukrainian shelling of a town in Russian-controlled Donetsk. Denis Pushilin said a seven-year-old girl was among those wounded in Yasynuvata.
Russia has been using drones to attack Ukrainian police in Kherson, according to the region’s police force. It said a police car was attacked in the Korabel area, injuring two officers and damaging the car, while in Beryslav one officer was injured and cars damaged.
A new international economic support package of $115bn is giving Ukraine more confidence it can prevail against Russian forces amid growing recognition the war could continue for longer than expected, the Ukrainian finance minister said on Saturday. Serhiy Marchenko said Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers assured him during International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington this week that they would support Ukraine for as long as needed.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Saturday. In two tweets, the Ukrainian president said they had discussed Macron’s recent visit to China to meet President Xi Jinping.
Poland and Hungary have banned imports of grain and other food from Ukraine to protect local farmers, officials from both countries said on Saturday. Ukraine’s grain exports have been transiting through the European Union to other countries since Ukraine’s Black Sea routes were blocked by Russia’s invasion, leading to prices being driven down.
A new Russian law has removed an obstacle that has allowed some men to dodge the draft and suggests Moscow anticipates a lengthy conflict in Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence says. Vladimir Putin was reported to have signed a bill on Friday to create a digital draft system, making it easier to mobilise Russians into the army and stirring fresh fears in the country.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said the US should stop “encouraging war” in Ukraine “and start talking about peace”. In that way, the international community would be able to “convince” the Russian and Ukrainian presidents that “peace is in the interest of the whole world”, Lula told reporters in Beijing at the end of a visit where he met president Xi Jinping.
Continue reading...Luxury train operator cuts service ahead of biometric passport checks so passengers will have to join train in Paris
When the Orient Express began operating in the 19th century, passports were optional – the only paperwork required by British travellers was a copy of the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable.
But Brexit and 21st-century biometric checks are killing off the romance of crossing borders for modern passengers looking for the nostalgia of the luxury train journey that inspired Agatha Christie and Hollywood.
Continue reading...UK Ministry of Defence says Kremlin has made it harder for civilians to avoid being drafted into the army
Five Ukrainians from Russian-occupied Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia oblast will be tried by a Russian court for being part of a “terrorist group”, according to Russian state media.
The five Ukrainians were transported from Melitopol to Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, and subsequently transferred to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre in Moscow, the Kyiv Independent reports.
Continue reading...France’s highest constitutional court approved the law on Friday, leading to widespread demonstrations
French president Emmanuel Macron has signed his controversial pension reform into law, defying three months of protests and pleas from unions not to implement the legislation.
The alterations became law on Saturday, after the text was published overnight in France’s official journal. This followed the approval on Friday by France’s highest constitutional court of the essence of the legislation, including the banner change of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Continue reading...Closures, delayed after Russia reduced Europe’s gas supplies, leave conundrum for energy policymakers
Germany’s three remaining nuclear power stations will shut down on Saturday, 12 years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan accelerated the country’s exit from atomic energy.
The closures mark the conclusion of a stop-start approach to atomic energy and a victory for the country’s vociferous anti-nuclear movement.
Continue reading...Yulia and Tetiana knew they would have to marry abroad – but never in the context of an invasion
Yulia and Tetiana had spent a while deliberating over a date for their wedding before they decided it had to be 1 March – exactly a year to the day they fled the war in Ukraine.
“That date should be a sad anniversary, the anniversary of us leaving our old life behind, but we decided to rewrite this story and made it our special anniversary,” said Tetiana, 42. “We lost a lot and there is a lot of evil in this world, but we’ve turned that evil into something good.”
Continue reading...Nine killed and 21 wounded in Russian missile attack on apartment blocks in Sloviansk; Vladimir Putin signs bill sparking fears of new wave of mobilisation
Continue reading...US president, whose son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, tearful after chance meeting with Fr Frank O’Grady in Co Mayo
Joe Biden broke down in tears on the final day of his four-day trip to Ireland after a chance meeting with the priest who gave his son Beau the last rites before he died in 2015.
Fr Richard Gibbons, parish priest and rector of Knock Shrine, said Fr Frank O’Grady – the chaplain who was by Beau Biden’s side as he died – had moved to Knock to work there, leading to an unplanned meeting with the president.
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