Category Archives: Europe

European MPs seek to publicise plight of jailed Iranian protesters

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Politicians particularly in Germany taking responsibility for lobbying for the safety of individual prisoners

Politicians from Europe have begun sponsoring jailed Iranian protesters in the hope that by highlighting individual cases of injustice, the authorities will be forced to step back from handing down lengthy jail sentences or carrying out executions.

The executions of two demonstrators and threats to kill others suggest Tehran is set on the use of repression and fear to quell the protests.

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MoD to revive Belfast shipbuilding with contract for three naval vessels

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Rishi Sunak announces £1.6bn contract led by shipyard Harland and Wolff that will create 900 jobs in Belfast

Shipbuilding is to be revived in Belfast after 20 years as part of a £1.6bn Ministry of Defence contract for three new naval vessels, Rishi Sunak has announced.

A consortium led by the shipyard Harland and Wolff has secured the preferred bidder status which will create 1,200 jobs across three companies, 900 of which will be in Belfast.

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Ukraine army chief warns Moscow preparing for new Kyiv attack as Putin seeks new economic ties – as it happened

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Valeriy Zaluzhny warns Putin’s forces regrouping before renewed attack in 2023; Russia looking to overcome impact of sanctions. This live blog is closed

European Union member states failed to agree on a ninth package of Russia sanctions in talks late on Wednesday, diplomats said as EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Thursday for their last summit of the year.

Countries moved closer to a deal in Wednesday’s negotiations but Poland and some other countries still have objections, one EU diplomat told Reuters, adding a new draft was expected to be circulated on Thursday evening.

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Linz to rename Porsche Street after investigating Nazi past of car creator

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Austrian city also intends to rename three other thoroughfares bearing ‘tainted’ names after commission’s report

The Austrian city of Linz has announced plans to rename a street honouring the founder of the luxury carmaker Porsche after a commission investigating controversial names found his Nazi past “problematic”.

The renaming of streets and other public places is still a hotly debated issue in Austria – Adolf Hitler’s birthplace – which Nazi Germany annexed in 1938 and which long cast itself as a victim.

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Poland’s police chief wounded after gift from Ukraine official explodes

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Warsaw seeking explanation from Kyiv after Jarosław Szymczyk taken to hospital with minor injuries

Poland’s police chief, Jarosław Szymczyk, has been taken to hospital with minor injuries after a gift he received from a senior Ukrainian official exploded, the interior ministry said on Thursday.

“Yesterday at 7.50am there was an explosion in a room next to the office of the police chief,” a statement said. “One of the presents the police chief received during his working visit to Ukraine on December 11 and 12 exploded.”

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European parliament may ban Qatari officials from premises

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President Roberta Metsola promises wide-ranging reforms aimed at tackling ‘cash for influence’ scandal

The European parliament will consider banning Qatari officials from its premises in response to a “cash for influence” investigation that has become the biggest scandal in the institution’s history.

The parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, said the assembly’s senior leaders would discuss a possible ban and that a “wide-ranging reform” package would be implemented in response to a Belgian police investigation that has led to four people being charged with money laundering and corruption, including a serving MEP.

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Irish soldier killed on UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon

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Convoy of two armoured utility vehicles travelling to Beirut came under small arms fire, Ireland’s defence forces said

An Irish peacekeeper has been killed and another seriously wounded in a gun attack after a hostile crowd surrounded Irish members of the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

The incident happened on Wednesday night when a convoy of two armoured utility vehicles with UN markings passed near the village of al-Aqbieh, just outside the force’s area of operations in a strip along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.

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Celebrations on the Champs-Élysées as France fans hail ‘magnificent game’

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Excitement builds for final against Argentina as spectators, some draped in French and Moroccan flags, praised play of both teams

Amid a cacophony of beeping car horns, fireworks, and people hanging from car windows waving flags, cheering football fans poured on to Paris’s Champs-Élysées on Wednesday night to celebrate France beating Morocco to reach the World Cup final, hoping it would become the first country in 60 years to retain the title.

“We’re in the final!” yelled Romain, 16, who had high school the next day but was planning a late night celebrating. “When France won the World Cup in 2018, I was 12 and couldn’t really celebrate in the streets,” he said. “It feels brilliant tonight, but facing Argentina will be close, nail-biting.”

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Russia faces ‘critical shortage’ of artillery shells, says UK defence chief

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Tony Radakin said Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is ‘rapidly diminishing’ as a result

Russia faces a “critical shortage” of artillery shells and Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is “rapidly diminishing” as a result, Britain’s armed forces chief has said.

Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank on Wednesday that the Kremlin had only planned for a short period to subjugate Ukraine, and has instead found itself embroiled in a conflict lasting nearly 10 months.

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Channel deaths: desperate call from boat raised alarm for rescue operation

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Skipper of fishing vessel tells how his crew spent two hours pulling 31 people from the freezing water

Four people died and more than 40 were rescued after a desperate call to a charity warned that a boat carrying asylum seekers including children had capsized in the Channel on Wednesday morning.

An unidentified man on the sinking vessel, in a recording obtained by the Guardian, asked at 2.53am for the alarm to be raised to save his family who were in the icy waters.

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‘You could see the panic’: how the Channel small boat incident unfolded

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Experts said lessons appeared to have been learned from previous incidents as teams scrambled into action after dinghy capsized

The emergency call came through at 2.53am. “Please help me bro, please, please, please. We are in the water. We have a family.”

The unidentified man, on a stricken dinghy, used WhatsApp to contact the French NGO Utopia 56, a humanitarian association, which works to support migrants in the camps in northern France.

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Greek MEP at centre of Qatar corruption inquiry has hearing postponed

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Eva Kaili awaits bail decision as lawyer says prison strike stopped her attending court

The Greek MEP at the centre of a corruption scandal engulfing the European parliament will have to wait in prison until next week to find out whether she will be released on bail pending a trial.

The Greek Socialist MEP Eva Kaili is one of four suspects arrested last week in connection with a major police investigation into cash for influence involving Qatar’s government.

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Revealed: MEP in prisoner resolution row made undeclared Bahrain visit

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European parliament due to vote on Thursday on resolution calling for release of Bahraini activist

A senior MEP is facing questions over trips to Bahrain and his support for a “one-sided” resolution on a political prisoner from that country that echoes the talking points of the authoritarian Gulf state.

Tomáš Zdechovský, a centre-right Czech MEP, who chairs the European parliament’s Bahrain friendship group, was found by the Guardian to have made an undeclared visit to the country in April 2022, where he met Bahrain’s chamber of commerce.

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US ‘has no expectation’ fighting in Ukraine will stop in winter; Russian rockets hit administration building in Kherson – as it happened

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White House spokesperson says war in Ukraine will continue ‘for some time’; no one reported hurt as two floors of central building damaged. This blog is now closed

The Kyiv city administration says another drone has been shot down, bringing the total number of Shahed drones downed in this morning’s attacks to 11.

In a post on Telegram, the administration said that air alerts were still in place.

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Ukraine forces shoot down drones as Kyiv hit by multiple explosions

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Officials say 13 Iranian-made drones shot down as air raid sirens sound in capital and surrounding area

The Ukrainian military shot down 13 Iranian-made drones over Kyiv and the surrounding region early on Wednesday as a series of explosions hit the capital in what authorities described as a continuation of Russia’s “energy terror” against the country.

Kyiv’s city administration said two of its administrative buildings had been damaged by the falling debris of a drone. There were no victims, the spokesperson for Kyiv’s rescue services, Svitlana Vodolaga, told Ukraine’s Suspline news.

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Trinity College Dublin considers returning Inishbofin skulls

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Skulls’ removal from island in 1890s was colonial-era violation, say campaigners

Under cover of darkness in 1890, two headhunters climbed over a gate and crept into a graveyard on Inishbofin, a remote County Galway island on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. In the ruins of a medieval monastery they found dozens of skulls. They selected 13.

“When the coast was clear we put our spoils in the sack and cautiously made our way back to the road,” Alfred Haddon later wrote in his diary. He and his accomplice, Andrew Dixon, smuggled the skulls on to a boat and sailed away.

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Greece: thousands march after death of Roma boy shot in police chase

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The 16-year-old was shot in the head after reportedly driving from service station without paying for 20 euros of petrol

Thousands of protesters have marched through Thessaloniki and Athens, as Roma community leaders appealed for calm after the death of a teenager shot in the head last week during a police chase.

The 16-year-old boy, who has not been officially named, died on Tuesday, eight days after he was shot by a police motorcyclist after reportedly driving away from a service station without paying for 20 euros of petrol.

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Russia-Ukraine war: US finalising plans to send Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine, reports say – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can find our latest Ukraine coverage here:

European Union countries’ energy ministers must decide on Tuesday if they are ready to reach a deal on an EU-wide gas price cap, the Czech Republic’s industry minister, Jozef Sikela, said.

“This is now purely up to the ministers to show if they are ready to reach an agreement or not,” Sikela said on his arrival to a meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels, where they aim to agree on the price cap.

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Lingerie firm Agent Provocateur under pressure over Moscow franchise stores

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Retailer among companies listed by Leave Russia project but says it does not itself operate there

In its three decades in British retail, the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, the 1990s brainchild of Dame Vivienne Westwood’s son, has rarely shied away from controversy.

Whether it be its daring window displays or that 2001 TV advert featuring Kylie Minogue riding a velvet bucking bronco, the brand has stirred up some strong emotions. But it had not, until now, been accused of inadvertently helping to finance a war in Europe.

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