Category Archives: Europe

Russia-Ukraine war live: new Russian law shows Moscow expects lengthy conflict, warns UK — as it happened

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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.

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Macron signs controversial pension changes into law after months of protests

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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.

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Germany’s last three nuclear power stations to shut this weekend

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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.

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‘Something special’: same-sex couple wed in UK year on from fleeing Ukraine

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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.”

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Joe Biden breaks down as he meets priest who gave his son the last rites

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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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French court approves Macron’s unpopular plan to raise pension age

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Constitutional council’s ruling means government can pass law to increase minimum eligible age as early as next week

France’s highest constitutional court has approved Emmanuel Macron’s proposals to raise the minimum pension age from 62 to 64.

The ruling means the government can pass the French president’s unpopular plans to increase the minimum eligible pension age as early as next week, to be in force by the end of this year.

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Joe Biden ends Ireland tour with passionate address to thousands

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US president turned his farewell speech outside St Muredach’s cathedral in Ballina into a celebration of Irish and American values

Joe Biden has concluded his visit to Ireland with a passionate riverside address to tens of thousands of people at his ancestral town in County Mayo.

The US president turned his farewell speech outside St Muredach’s cathedral in Ballina on Friday night into a celebration of Irish and American values that appeared partly aimed at US voters.

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Italian court suspends order to put down bear that killed jogger

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Animal rights groups appealing against decision to kill bear after death of Andrea Papi

A court in the north Italian province of Trentino has suspended an order to put down a 17-year-old female bear that killed a man while he was jogging in the woods.

Andrea Papi, who died on 7 April and whose funeral was held on Wednesday, was the first person in Italy in modern times to be killed in a bear attack.

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China agreed to secretly arm Russia, leaked Pentagon documents reveal

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Intercept of Russian intelligence shows Beijing wanted to disguise lethal aid as civilian items, says report

China approved the provision of lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine but wanted any shipments to remain a secret, according to leaked US government documents.

A top-secret intelligence summary dated 23 February states that Beijing had approved the incremental provision of weapons to Moscow, which it would disguise as civilian items, according to a report in the Washington Post.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy and UK prime minister discuss accelerating military support for Ukraine – as it happened

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

China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, will visit Russia from 16 to 19 April, and meet Russian military officials, Reuters reports the Chinese defence ministry said on Friday.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has claimed in its daily intelligence briefing that Ukrainian troops have been forced to make ‘orderly withdrawals’ from positions they previously held in the highly contested town of Bakhmut, and that the last two days have seen an intense artillery bombardment from Russian forces.

Russia has re-energised its assault on the Donetsk oblast town of Bakhmut as forces of the Russian ministry and Wagner group have improved cooperation.

The Ukrainian defence still holds the western districts of the town but has been subjected to particularly intense Russian artillery fire over the previous 48 hours.

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‘It’s worrying’: Greek election ban on extremist party may be too little, too late

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Crackdown on Hellenes and its Golden Dawn leader Ilias Kasidiaris could cause more problems than it solves

For two years Ilias Kasidiaris, a convicted leader of the now disbanded neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has used social media to address supporters from Domokos prison in central Greece.

Month after month the former MP has railed against the inability of the “corrupt political regime” to govern the country in a stream of hate-filled speeches. For his 134,000 subscribers on YouTube, the exhortations are a lifeline to Kasidiaris and the Hellenes, the small nationalist party he set up shortly before being handed a 13-and-a-half-year prison term for his role in Golden Dawn. And they seem to be paying off.

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Russian ally Serbia denies supplying weapons to Ukraine

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President says Belgrade ‘has not nor will it’ send Kyiv arms, after leaked Pentagon paper claimed Serbia had agreed to send weapons

The Serbian president says his country has not sold arms to Ukraine and would not do so, after a leaked Pentagon report said Belgrade had agreed to provide arms to Kyiv, according to foreign media reports.

“Serbia has not nor will it export weapons to Ukraine,” Aleksandar Vučić told reporters on Thursday, according to the Beta news agency.

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US attorney general confirms arrest of air national guardsman suspected of being behind intelligence leaks – as it happened

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Overnight the Times of London has reported that MPs have warned that British lives have been put at risk by the leak of classified US intelligence documents. It writes:

Tobias Ellwood, [the Conservative MP] who chairs the defence select committee, said the US leaks could “endanger lives”.

“Given our long-established lead in scale and capability when it comes to elite forces it will come as no surprise that our special forces are doing much of the heavy lifting,” he said.

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Viktor Orbán’s political allies in Hungary in sights of US sanctions

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Congress group drafts legislation targeting officials and government supporters, mainly affiliated to Fidesz party

A bipartisan group in Congress is drafting US sanctions that would target leading Hungarian political figures tied to the Orbán government, as the relationship between the two countries continues to spiral downwards.

The sanctions bill would name former officials and government supporters, mostly affiliated with the Fidesz party of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

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European Council chief denies ‘extravagant spending’ on travel

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Charles Michel says higher bills due to demands of Covid pandemic and Ukraine war after use of private jets comes under scrutiny

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has denied running up “extravagant” travel bills, after his use of private jets came under scrutiny.

Michel, who is responsible for organising EU summits, said his travel bill was higher than his predecessors because of the demands of representing Europe on the world stage during the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

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French protesters storm luxury group LVMH offices before pensions ruling

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Emmanuel Macron back from Netherlands amid sustained unrest over plan to raise pension age to 64

Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across France on Thursday, with trade unionists and strikers briefly storming into the Paris headquarters of the luxury goods company LVMH, in a fresh round of protests against Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plans to raise the minimum pension age from 62 to 64.

“You’re looking for money to finance pensions? Take it from the pockets of billionaires,” said the Sud Rail trade unionist Fabien Villedieu, as the LVMH headquarters filled with red smoke from flares.

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Ukrainian orchestra’s key members refused visas to play in UK

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Promoter claims ‘catastrophe’ has cost it more than £88k and accuses British government of hypocrisy

Key members of a Ukrainian state orchestra were refused visas to play a series of concerts in the UK this month in a “catastrophe” that the promoter claims cost it more than €100,000 (£88,000).

The Khmelnitsky Orchestra was due to tour the UK this month with two shows: The Magical Music of Harry Potter, and The Music From the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit andThe Rings of Power.

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‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

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Mathias Döpfner’s reported comments on climate, Muslims and east Germany – and his apparent political manoeuvring – create shock waves

The German CEO of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.

The internal chats, emails and text messages published by the German weekly Die Zeit on Wednesday clash with the public presentation of Axel Springer SE’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who recently said he wanted to bring “non-partisan” journalism to a too-polarised US media landscape through his acquisition of the English-language title Politico.

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