Category Archives: Europe

World’s oldest European hedgehog discovered in Denmark

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‘Emotional’ posthumous discovery of 16-year-old hedgehog gives conservationists hope for the mammals’ future preservation

A 16-year-old European hedgehog called Thorvald has been crowned the oldest in the world, smashing the previous record by seven years.

The male hedgehog lived near the town of Silkeborg in the centre of Denmark. Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at Oxford University, who led the Danish Hedgehog Project that discovered Thorvald, said she was overwhelmed when she discovered how old he was.

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German ballet director offers no apology over dog faeces incident

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Marco Goecke says he acted in heat of the moment after years of ‘annihilatory' criticism’

An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.

Marco Goecke admitted in an interview with the broadcaster NDR that his “means of attack” was “certainly not super” but said he had acted on impulse on seeing the journalist, Wiebke Hüster.

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Ukrainians blow up bridge in Bakhmut amid reports Russia closing in

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Kyiv denies retreat imminent as Kremlin throws troops at capturing city before one-year anniversary of war

Ukrainian forces have reportedly blown up a bridge near the eastern city of Bakhmut, in a sign they may be planning to retreat from the area, which would give Russia a significant, symbolic boost ahead of the first anniversary of the war.

Troops blew up the bridge on Monday, according to a local Donetsk region news site. Ukraine denies it intends to leave Bakhmut, despite six months of heavy fighting and reportedly dwindling stockpiles.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Putin has already lost ‘strategically, operationally and tactically’, says US general – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more about the Russia-Ukraine war here

An air alert has been declared across several southern areas of Ukraine including Mykolaiv, Kherson and Odesa.

Earlier, Volodymyr Litinov, head of the Beryslav district administration in the Kherson region reported on Telegram that Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours had damaged “the hospital building, residential buildings and farm buildings” in the area, but that “fortunately, there were no civilian casualties.”

This is Martin Belam in London taking over the live blog.

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Ford to cut nearly 4,000 jobs in Europe, including 1,300 in UK

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US carmaker blames losses on rising costs and need to switch to electric vehicle production

The British car industry faces the prospect of further steep job cuts without urgent government support for electric vehicle investment, a union leader has warned, after Ford revealed 1,300 UK redundancies in its internal combustion operations.

The US carmaker said it planned to eliminate 3,800 product development and administration jobs across Europe, citing rising costs and the need to speed up its switch from petrol and diesel engines to electric vehicles.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Nato seeing start of new Russian offensive already, says Stoltenberg

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As it happened: Nato secretary general said Putin sending thousands more troops and accepting big losses to pile pressure on Ukrainians

Reuters reports that an unverified video is being circulated on social media which appears to show the murder with a sledgehammer of a former Russian mercenary who fled the Wagner mercenary group while fighting in Ukraine, in a clip similar to that which showed the killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin in November last year.

In the video published by the Grey Zone Telegram channel, which is linked to Wagner, a man identifies himself as Dmitry Yakushchenko, 44. In the clip the agency reports that facing the camera in a seated position, Yakushchenko appears to recite his name and year of birth.

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Moldova president accuses Russia of plotting to oust pro-EU government

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Maia Sandu says plan revealed by Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been confirmed

Moldova’s president has accused Russia of plotting to overthrow the country’s pro-EU government through violent actions disguised as opposition protest.

Maia Sandu said authorities had confirmed an alleged Russian plot to destabilise her country that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had revealed last week.

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German ballet director ‘smeared dog faeces on critic’s face’ after bad review

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Marco Goecke allegedly confronted Wiebke Hüster at Hanover State Opera, furious at her verdict on a previous show

The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.

Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.

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Portugal: Catholic clergy abused nearly 5,000 children since 1950, inquiry finds

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Independent commission reaches conclusion after hearing evidence from over 500 survivors last year

Catholic clergy in Portugal have abused nearly 5,000 children since 1950, an independent commission said on Monday after hearing hundreds of survivors’ accounts.

Thousands of reports of paedophilia within the church have surfaced around the world, and Pope Francis is under pressure to tackle the scandal.

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Gibraltar’s chief minister threatens top rights lawyers with defamation

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Lawyers call for apology and withdrawal of threats made during inquiry into alleged government corruption

Two leading London-based human rights lawyers have been threatened with defamation proceedings for making submissions on behalf of their client, in a highly unusual development.

The threat was made by lawyers representing the Gibraltar government and senior ministers, including the chief minister, Fabian Picardo, at an inquiry exploring alleged corruption at the top of the British overseas territory’s administration.

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EU tipped to avoid recession after gas crisis eases

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Economic growth forecast to be 0.8% in 2023 but households still face cost of living pressures

The EU is predicted to narrowly avoid recession as a result of a milder-than-expected energy shock, although households face difficult times ahead as cost of living pressures ease only gradually, the European Commission has said.

Economic growth for the 27 countries of the EU is forecast to be 0.8% in 2023, compared with a 0.3% projection last autumn, when fears of winter power outages and the rising cost of living ran high. In the 20-country eurozone, the economy will expand by 0.9% in 2023, boosted by a better-than-expected performance in Germany and Italy, as well as relatively stronger growth in Spain.

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Nikos Christodoulides elected Cyprus’s president with 52% of vote

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Former foreign minister, who ran as independent, was backed by groups hostile to talks on island’s reunification

Nikos Christodoulides, a former foreign minister, has been elected the eighth president of Cyprus, beating the career diplomat Andreas Mavroyiannis in a high-stakes, closely fought race.

Christodoulides, 49, won 51.92 per cent of the vote compared with 48.09 per cent for his opponent, who had been backed by the leftist party AKEL. A mere 15,041 ballots had divided the loser from the winner.

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‘It’s too cruel’: family stuck in Ukraine after UK host dies suddenly

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Exclusive: Nadiia Luba is one of 9,700 Ukrainians still waiting on visa decision under Homes for Ukraine scheme

Nadiia Luba was sheltering in a basement in central Ukraine earlier this month when she learned that her family’s chances of escaping to Britain had been dashed.

After nearly eight months of waiting for visas for her and her two sons, she got a text to say that the British host who had been so ready to welcome them had died suddenly. “I couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “My brain didn’t want to accept it.”

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Wagner head warns it could take two years to achieve Moscow’s objectives – as it happened

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Yevgeny Prigozhin says Moscow’s stated aim of capturing eastern regions unlikely to happen in 2023. This blog is now closed

Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, who headed the country’s negotiating team in the early phases of the conflict, has said “talks are out of the question”.

Podolyak posted to Twitter that Moscow was refusing to withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territories and to admit to “crimes”.

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Russia’s plans to seize eastern Ukraine could take two years, says Wagner boss

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Yevgeny Prigozhin’s comments suggest Moscow is preparing for a long conflict, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy renews appeal for fighter jets

• Ukraine war live

The boss of the Russian mercenary Wagner group said it could take Russia two years to seize the entire east of Ukraine in a rare interview that suggests at least some key figures in Moscow are gearing up for a protracted conflict.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has emerged from the shadows to become a high-profile figure since the start of the war, suggested Russia’s focus was now on capturing the rest of the Donbas region it has not occupied since the start of the war nearly a year ago.

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Tintin drawing by Hergé sells at auction for record £1.9m

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Belgian cartoonist’s black and white artwork from 1942 was used for the cover of Tintin in America

An artwork by Tintin creator Hergé has set the world record for the most valuable original black and white drawing by the artist after selling at auction for more than €2m.

The drawing, Tintin in America – created in 1942 – was used for the colour edition of the Belgian cartoonist’s 1946 book of the same name.

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Alarming levels of PFAS in Norwegian Arctic ice pose new risk to wildlife

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Oxford University-led study detects 26 types of PFAS compounds in ice around Svalbard, threatening downstream ecosystems

Norwegian Arctic ice is contaminated with alarming levels of toxic PFAS, and the chemicals may represent a major environmental stressor to the region’s wildlife, new research finds.

The Oxford University-led study’s measurements of ice around Svalbard, Norway, detected 26 types of PFAS compounds, and found when ice melts, the chemicals can move from glaciers into downstream ecosystems like Arctic fjords and tundra.

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French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah released from Iran prison

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In 2020 Iranian authorities sentenced Adelkhah to five years in jail on national security charges, which she denied

Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah was released from Iran’s Evin prison, France said, but it was unclear what the conditions of her release were.

Adelkhah has been in prison since Iranian authorities arrested her in 2019 during a visit. She is one of seven French nationals detained in Iran, a factor that has worsened relations between Paris and Tehran in recent months.

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