Category Archives: Europe

One person dead in FSB centre blast in Rostov-on-Don, Russian agencies say

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Footage shows thick black smoke billowing from security service building near eastern Ukraine

At least one person has been killed and two people injured in a blast and fire at a building belonging to Russia’s FSB security service in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, according to officials quoted by Russian news agencies.

Footage captured on Thursday by Reuters showed thick black smoke billowing into the air near residential buildings and a shopping centre in Rostov, the capital of a region that adjoins parts of eastern Ukraine where battles with Russia are raging.

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Russia-Ukraine war: UN says Russia has committed ‘wide range’ of war crimes; Poland to transfer four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine – as it happened

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War crimes in Ukraine include wilful killings, systematic torture and deportation of children, says UN report; Polish president says handover to come within days

Suspilne correspondents are reporting that explosions have been heard in Kherson this morning.

Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, reports that the Russian military destroyed and damaged private houses and infrastructure facilities in two settlements in the Kharkiv region overnight. The claim has not been independently verified.

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US releases footage of Russian jet crashing into American drone over Black Sea

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Pentagon says video has been edited for length but shows events in sequential order

A remarkable video released by the Pentagon shows the moments before a Russian fighter crashed into a $32m US Reaper drone after spraying it with jet fuel on Tuesday morning over the Black Sea.

The declassified footage shows an Su-27 Flanker jet making two exceptionally close passes of the uncrewed drone, spraying fuel in front of it, a harassment tactic that US experts say has not been seen before.

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Rural populist party emerges as big winner in Dutch elections

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Success of Farmer-Citizen Movement in provincial vote is heavy blow to Mark Rutte’s four-party coalition

A new populist party surfing a wave of rural anger at government environmental policies has emerged as the big winner in Dutch provincial elections, dealing a heavy blow to the four-party coalition of the prime minister, Mark Rutte.

The success of the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in Wednesday’s vote, which will determine the makeup of the senate, casts doubt over the government’s ability to pass key legislation, including its plans to slash nitrogen emissions.

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ECB faces dilemma over interest rate rise amid Credit Suisse crisis

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European Central Bank could opt for smaller increase as concerns spread over health of banking system

The European Central Bank is facing a dilemma over whether to push ahead with its plans for a large interest rise on Thursday amid fears over the strength of the banking system after Wednesday’s heavy sell-off of the Swiss banking firm Credit Suisse.

After raising interest rates since last summer at a record pace to tackle high inflation across the eurozone, the ECB had in effect committed to another 0.5 percentage point increase in borrowing costs this week.

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Russian soldier who confessed to killing Ukrainian civilian jailed over ‘fake news’

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Daniil Frolkin handed 5.5-year sentence in move widely seen as attempt to silence other servicemen

A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army.

In an interview with the independent news outlet Istories last August, Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the start of the invasion.

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Credit Suisse takes $54bn loan from Swiss central bank after share price plunge

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After largest shareholder was unable to provide backing, Europe’s 17th largest lender says it will use government help to become ‘simpler and more focused’

Credit Suisse has announced that it will take a CHF50bn ($53.7bn) loan from the Swiss central bank, in an action it says will “pre-emptively strengthen its liquidity” as it moves to stem a crisis of confidence a day after its share price plummeted.

This additional liquidity would support the bank in taking the “necessary steps to create a simpler and more focused bank built around client needs”, its statement said. The bank said it was also making buyback offers on about $3bn worth of debt.

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Russia-Ukraine war: US says drone incident with Russia ‘is being investigated’ – as it happened

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US secretary of state Antony Blinken says collision of Russian fighter jet with US drone was ‘reckless and unsafe action’

Thanks for following along – that’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Martin Belam will take you through the rest of the day’s news.

AFP has this flash of news, saying Russia has called on the US to halt what it calls its “hostile” flights, after the collision of a Russian fighter jet with a US MQ-9 Reaper drone that the Pentagon said was conducting a routine flight.

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Russia plans to recover wreckage of US drone downed over Black Sea

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‘I certainly hope for success,’ says senior Kremlin official of hopes of raising debris from seabed west of Crimea

Moscow has said it intends to recover the wreckage of a US drone brought down on Tuesday following an interception by Russian fighter jets, but the White House said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible.

“I don’t know if we can recover [it] or not, but we will certainly have to do that, and we will deal with it,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, said on Wednesday. “I certainly hope for success.”

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Turkey has made its mind up about our Nato membership, says Finland

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Swedish prime minister also said he hopes Sweden’s accession will be ratified by Ankara after May elections

Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has said he expects his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to tell him whether Turkey is endorsing the Nordic country’s Nato membership application when the two meet in Ankara later this week.

“It was known that once President Erdoğan has made his decision concerning ratification of Finland’s membership of Nato, he would wish to meet and fulfil his promise directly from president to president,” Niinistö told Reuters on Wednesday.

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Contest launched to decipher Herculaneum scrolls using 3D X-ray software

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Global research teams who can improve AI and accelerate decoding could win $250,000 in prizes

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 laid waste to Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum where the intense blast of hot gas carbonised hundreds of ancient scrolls in the library of an enormous luxury villa.

Now, researchers are launching a global contest to read the charred papyri after demonstrating that an artificial intelligence programme can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray images of the fragile, unrolled documents.

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SVB collapse may be start of ‘slow rolling crisis’, warns BlackRock boss

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Larry Fink tells investors more ‘shutdowns and seizures’ in US possible and predicts inflation and interest rates to rise

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank could just be the start of “a “slow rolling crisis” in the US financial system with “more seizures and shutdowns coming”, the chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager has warned.

The CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, also predicted in a letter to investors and company bosses that inflation would persist and rates continue to rise, trends that both contributed to SVB’s collapse.

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Spanish monastery admits girls to choir for first time in 700-year history

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Mixed group to take over duties of Escolania choir at Montserrat monastery one weekend a month

Women and girls are to be admitted to a choir at the Montserrat monastery near Barcelona, home to the famous Escolania all-boys choir, for the first time in its 700-year history.

The new chamber choir, made up of a mix of about 25 boys and women and girls aged 17 to 24, will be separate from the Escolania, which comprises 45 boys aged nine to 14.

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Russian downing of US drone marks escalation of confrontation near war zone

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Russia’s and China’s ‘signalling’ to US aircraft in international airspace is nothing new, but downing a craft is a worrying development

On any given day around Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, Russian and Nato aircraft and naval vessels, manned and unmanned, buzz around in close proximity, a constant recipe for a superpower crisis along the edges of a war.

The stakes are raised by the fact that both sides have thousands of nuclear warheads as a weapon of last resort, and the risks are raised considerably by reckless behaviour.

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Polish court convicts activist for helping woman get abortion pills

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Justyna Wydrzynska sentenced to community service after telling court she sent pills to victim of domestic violence

A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.

“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”

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France faces another day of strikes ahead of key vote on pension reforms

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Rubbish piles up and record number of people take to streets in protest against raising retirement age to 64

French unions have called for a show of force with a final day of strikes and protests in the run-up to a crucial vote on Emmanuel Macron’s fiercely contested pensions overhaul in parliament.

The call for an eighth day of national mobilisation on Wednesday comes as rubbish piles up in Paris and a number of other French cities after continuing strikes by refuse collectors who oppose the bill that will increase the official retirement age from 62 to 64.

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Catalonia launches operation to clear fish from reservoir to save drinking water

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Focus is on Sau reservoir, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990

Officials in Catalonia have launched what is being described as an extraordinary operation to clear as many as 1.5 tonnes of fish a day, including many invasive species, from a rapidly dwindling reservoir in the hopes of salvaging drinking water as drought continues to grip the region.

The operation is focused on the Sau reservoir, a sprawling body of water flanked by mountains and tree-covered hills about 60 miles north of Barcelona, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990.

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Farmers-led party set to prosper in key Dutch regional elections

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Green transition in spotlight as party opposed to nitrogen emission cuts surges in polls

A new party led by farmers fighting cuts to nitrogen emissions looks set to be the big winner in key Dutch regional elections that could severely weaken the government and, analysts suggest, herald a Europe-wide backlash against the green transition.

The BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB) was launched in 2019 and has just one MP, but its people-against-the-elites platform has struck a chord with disaffected voters, and polls suggest it could finish as the second-largest or even the largest party in Wednesday’s vote.

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Russia says it does not recognise Hague court amid reports of arrest warrants

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International criminal court prosecutor is said to be preparing to formally open two war crimes cases

Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine.

“We do not recognise this court; we do not recognise its jurisdiction,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday morning.

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