Category Archives: Europe

Greek train crash: effort to find bodies expected to end as anger grows

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Operation to locate missing passengers likely to be concluded three days after crash near Larissa that killed at least 57

Rescuers are expected to wrap up efforts to find the bodies of victims of a head-on collision of two trains in central Greece, as anger grows over the deadly crash.

Three days after the Thessaloniki-bound passenger train slammed into an oncoming freight train outside the town of Tempe, killing at least 57, the operation to locate missing passengers would likely be concluded, officials said.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Biden and Scholz hold talks as Russian forces close in on Bakhmut – as it happened

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Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, says Russian ‘pincers are getting tighter’ around contested city

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Russia “will not let the west blow up gas pipelines again” and said that Moscow would no longer rely on the west as an energy partner.

Reuters reports Lavrov was speaking at an event in India a day after attending a meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

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Belarus jails Nobel peace prize-winning dissident Ales Bialiatski

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Pro-democracy activist sentenced to 10 years as part of Alexander Lukashenko’s purge of opponents

Belarus has sentenced the Nobel peace prize-winning dissident Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison as part of Alexander Lukashenko’s purge of opponents after the 2020 pro-democracy protests against his rule.

Bialiatski, a pro-democracy activist, is the founder of Viasna, the authoritarian country’s most prominent human rights group. He was detained in July last year and charged with smuggling cash into Belarus to fund his group’s activities, but is widely recognised as being persecuted for his opposition to Lukashenko.

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King Charles to make first state visits to France and Germany

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Monarch will become first UK sovereign to address French senate and Bundestag on six-day trip

The king will make his first state visits to France and Germany, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

King Charles and Camilla, the queen consort, will travel to Paris and continue to Berlin during a six-day visit which begins on 26 March.

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Sister of Sicilian mafia’s ‘last godfather’ arrested over secret notes

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Matteo Messina Denaro’s hand-typed instructions found hidden in sofa at home of his sister Rosalia, say police

The sister of Italy’s recently jailed top mobster, described as “the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia”, has been arrested after police searching her house found pizzini – slips of paper that the boss used to deliver his hand-typed instructions.

According to investigators, Rosalia Messina Denaro, the sister of Matteo Messina Denaro – who was Italy’s most wanted man until his arrest on 16 Janurary – had helped her brother evade capture for 30 years and acted on his behalf as the “cashier” of the “family”, while also running the transmission network of the pizzini, thus enabling the mafia boss to maintain relations with his organisation during his long period as a fugitive.

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ECB looking out for price gouging as fears grow over ‘greedflation’

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Concerns that a big driver of price rises may be firms using inflation as excuse to increase profit margins

Fears that Europe’s companies are exploiting high inflation to increase their profit margins have prompted a warning from the European Central Bank that it is closely monitoring potential price gouging of consumers.

Policymakers have repeatedly called for wage restraint but concerns are mounting that a bigger driver of the wave of price rises may be companies using inflation as an excuse to increase profit margins, a trend unions have described as “greedflation”.

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Greek train crash: anger grows as officials admit rail network problems

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Government says rail projects beset by ‘chronic public sector ills’, as death toll from crash rises to 57

Thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets for a second day of protests as anger mounts over the loss of life in Tuesday night’s head-on train crash.

Braving torrential rain and thunder, demonstrators marched from the office headquarters of Hellenic Train in Athens to the Greek parliament, chanting “this crime will not be forgotten”.

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Sunak’s Brexit deal under pressure after opposition from Boris Johnson and DUP

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Negative comments by former PM and senior unionists suggest revised Northern Ireland protocol has not won over key figures

Rishi Sunak’s hopes of ending years of Brexit infighting with a revised deal for Northern Ireland have suffered a double blow as Boris Johnson came out against the plan while pressure mounted within the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to reject it.

In his first public comments since the Windsor framework was unveiled on Monday, Johnson used a speech to a conference in London to say he would find it “very difficult” to back the plan, arguing it would stifle the UK economically.

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Bags containing 2.3 tonnes of cocaine wash up on Normandy coast

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Drug with street value of £133m found in two batches of watertight packages

Sealed bags containing a total of 2.3 tonnes of cocaine have washed up on the northern French coast in the past few days, a source with knowledge of the find has said.

The drug was found in two batches of watertight packages on the Normandy coast, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday, the source told Agence France-Presse on Thursday.

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Russia blames ‘terrorists’ after reports of fighting near Ukraine border

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Anti-Putin émigré group claims its fighters crossed into Russia after Kyiv dismisses reports as ‘false flag’ attack

The Kremlin has claimed Russia has been attacked by “terrorists” after conflicting reports of firefights emerged from the Bryansk and Kursk regions, which Russian media blamed on Ukrainian “sabotage groups” and Ukrainian sources called a “provocation”.

The reports of fighting in Russia near the Ukrainian border began on Thursday morning. The head of the Bryansk region claimed that a “sabotage group opened fire on a moving automobile. As a result, one resident was killed; a 10-year-old child was injured.”

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Russia accuses west at G20 of blackmail and claims it has China’s support

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Stormy meeting in Delhi breaks up without joint statement as west and Moscow spar over Ukraine

Russia has accused the west of blackmail and threats and claimed it had China’s support for its position at a stormy meeting of G20 foreign ministers in India, dominated by the war in Ukraine.

The event broke up with no joint communique, only a summary of the meeting prepared by the host, India, the group’s current chair.

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Blinken tells Lavrov US will support Kyiv for as long as it takes during meeting in margins of G20 summit – as it happened

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US secretary of state speaks to Russian foreign minister in what is believed to be their first one-on-one conversation since invasion of Ukraine. This live blog is closed

Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, has tweeted about the overnight attack on Zaporizhzhia, writing:

Zaporizhzhia bravely resists the Russian aggressor. In retaliation, it attacks civilians. A high-rise building was deliberately hit last night. Three floors are completely destroyed. People died. We continue to search under the rubble. My condolences to the victims. We will not forgive this.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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Romania PM unveils AI ‘adviser’ to tell him what people think in real time

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Nicolae Ciuca says bot named Ion is a world first and that using artificial intelligence is ‘an obligation’ to make better decisions

Romania’s prime minister has presented his “new honorary adviser” – an artificial intelligence assistant named “Ion” that Nicolae Ciuca hailed as the first of its type.

Developed by Romanian researchers, Ion’s main task will be to scan social networks to inform the government “in real time of Romanians’ proposals and wishes”, Ciuca said on Wednesday.

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Kherson torture centres were planned by Russian state, say lawyers

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Investigators say sites set up during occupation of Ukrainian city were part of ‘calculated plan to terrorise’ locals

Evidence collected from Kherson in southern Ukraine shows Russian torture centres were not “random” but instead planned and directly financed by the Russian state, according to a team of Ukrainian and international lawyers headed by a UK barrister.

The city was under Russian control for eight months, from 2 March last year until Ukrainian forces entered the city on 11 November.

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‘An unimaginable tragedy’: Greece train crash death toll likely to rise

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President says ‘we are mainly mourning young people’ after collision in which 43 have been confirmed dead

The death toll from the head-on collision of two trains in central Greece is likely to rise with officials acknowledging that scores of people have yet to be accounted for nearly 24 hours after it left at least 43 dead and many more injured.

Rescue services worked against the clock to find survivors as by late Wednesday it became ever more apparent the country was dealing with a train crash the likes of which had not been seen in Europe in decades. Many of the dead were students. By midmorning 35 bodies had been taken to the general hospital in Larissa, the nearest town, some burned beyond recognition, forcing relatives to give DNA samples.

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Paris pays tribute to futuristic fashion of late Paco Rabanne

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Designer Julien Dossena thanks maison’s founder, who died last month, for his ‘radical expression’

In silver chainmail hoods and Perspex dresses, aluminium-foil suiting and gleaming white space boots, the faithful came to pay their respects. At the first Paco Rabanne catwalk show since the founder’s death last month at the age of 88, the loyal clients and fans who packed the front row alongside the eminent designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Nicolas Ghesquière mirrored a newly minted catwalk collection which was packed with dazzling silver and rustling tinsel in tribute to the futuristic fashion that made Rabanne famous.

Fake fur skirts and trousers made from shards of crystal rustled and shimmied in homage to Rabanne’s delight in fashioning clothes from unlikely materials. The delicate chainmail evening bags which have been a signature and house bestseller for decades made several appearances.

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Peer urges unionists to ignore ‘communal rhetoric’ in assessing Brexit deal

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Paul Bew calls on people to respond to substance of Rishi Sunak’s revised Northern Ireland deal alone

A peer and Northern Ireland expert has urged unionists to respond to the substance of Rishi Sunak’s revised Brexit deal alone, rather than the “communal rhetoric” that has been whipped up by others.

Paul Bew told MPs on Wednesday it was “important” that people recognised the tricky political task facing the Democratic Unionist party leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, who must balance the views of the party and its base when making a decision on whether to support the Windsor framework.

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Kyiv-made: Litkovska brings chic clothes and Ukraine strength to Paris

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Camel, toffee and charcoal feature in Ukrainian collection created under Russian bombs

You would never guess from the immaculate tailoring and finely turned silhouettes of the Litkovska collection shown at Paris fashion week that its production was frequently interrupted by air-raid warnings, which forced the 23-strong team of tailors and stylists to flee the design studio for a bomb shelter. It remains the only Ukrainian brand on the Paris catwalks and is still designed and produced in Kyiv by Lilia Litkovska and her team.

The bombardments are just one of the logistical challenges faced by the designer and her team in Kyiv. “There are problems every day, but we find solutions every day,” said Litkovska backstage before her show.

“We are very lucky because our studio is close to a good bomb shelter,” added Olena Iakovenko, one of four team members who travelled to France with Litkovska to stage the event.

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Russian man detained after daughter’s pro-Ukraine drawings

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Alexei Moskalyov charged with ‘discrediting Russian army’, while daughter taken into care

A Russian man has been detained for making anti-war statements and his 12-year-old daughter temporarily taken into state care after the family faced pressure from authorities for drawings the girl made at school depicting Russia bombing a family in Ukraine.

Alexei Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, has been arrested for making anti-war statements on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social network.

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Moscow loses at least 130 tanks in Vuhledar, report says; Putin preparing to meet China’s Xi in Moscow – as it happened

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Ukraine officials say ‘epic’ fight on plain near Vuhledar produced the biggest tank battle of the war. This live blog is now closed

Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, has posted to Telegram to say two people were injured in Chuhuiv as a result of Russian shelling. He wrote:

According to the information of the regional centre of emergency medical assistance, a 52-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy were injured as a result of the morning shelling of Chuhuiv. The man was hospitalised with shrapnel wounds. The boy has minor injuries, was treated at the scene and did not require hospitalisation.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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