Category Archives: Europe

‘No sport has had such success in so short a time’: padel takes off in Italy

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When Covid stopped contact sports, Italians took to padel, a sport popular in Spain, similar to tennis with a dash of squash

At one of Italy’s darkest moments in the pandemic, the government introduced a list of draconian rules to halt the outbreak of Covid, including which sports Italians would be allowed to practise.

Among the activities the authorities considered safe were a few Italians barely knew. One was padel, a fast-paced racket sport popular in Spain, similar to tennis but with a dash of squash thrown in. For Italians, it was love at first smash.

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Greta Thunberg condemns UK firm’s plans for iron mine on Sami land

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Beowulf Mining ‘hopeful’ for decision on mine in Sápmi despite opposition from activist, UN and Swedish church

A British company has fallen foul of Greta Thunberg, Unesco, Sweden’s national church, and the indigenous people in the north of the country over plans for an open-pit mine on historical Sami reindeer-herding lands.

The clamour of opposition was voiced as Beowulf Mining, headquartered in the City of London, suggested it was “hopeful” of a decision within weeks of a 5 sq mile iron-ore mine in an area where Sami communities have lived for thousands of years.

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‘Things could go crazy quickly,’ Biden warns on Ukraine as talks in Berlin fail

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US president urges all Americans to leave Ukraine immediately, while British defence secretary heads to Moscow

US president Joe Biden has warned that “things could go crazy quickly” in Ukraine and again urged American citizens to leave immediately, as the UK’s defence secretary headed to Moscow in the latest round of diplomacy.

“American citizens should leave, should leave now,” Biden said in an interview with NBC News. “We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. This is a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”

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Macron was kept away from Putin in Kremlin for ‘refusing Russian Covid test’

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‘We could not accept that they get their hands on the president’s DNA’ a member of Macron’s entourage said

Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian Covid-19 test when he arrived to see Vladimir Putin this week, and was therefore kept at a distance from the Russian leader, two sources in Macron’s entourage told Reuters.

Observers were struck by images of Macron and Putin sitting at opposite ends of 4-metre-long (13 ft) table to discuss the Ukraine crisis on Monday, with some diplomats and others suggesting Putin might have wanted to send a diplomatic message.

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Russian teenager jailed over ‘Minecraft plot to blow up virtual spy HQ’

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Boy of 16 sentenced to five years for alleged plan to target FSB building created in computer game

A Russian teenager has been sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly planning to blow up a virtual FSB security service building in the video game Minecraft.

The ruling falls into a broader pattern under President Vladimir Putin in which young Russians are put behind bars on controversial and preemptive terrorism charges.

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‘Mercenaries have skills armies lack’: former Wagner operative opens up

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Marat Gabidullin has written memoir about fighting for Wagner because Russians should know ‘mercenaries exist’

Sitting in a cafe in an upmarket Moscow suburb, the former mercenary Marat Gabidullin looked a long way from the battlefields of Syria where he fought half a decade ago.

Gripping his recently finished memoir, In the Same River Twice, the first published account of fighting for the secretive Russian mercenary outfit Wagner, Gabidullin said: “I wrote this because I realised it’s time for our country to face the truth: mercenaries exist.”

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EU close to launching committee of inquiry into Pegasus spyware

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Approval for rare move expected after evidence government critics in Hungary and Poland were targeted

The European parliament is preparing to launch a committee of inquiry into the Pegasus spyware scandal after evidence emerged of government critics in Poland and Hungary being targeted with the surveillance software.

The cross-party body will seek testimony from member states’ intelligence services, elected politicians and senior officials, with a previous inquiry into alleged European facilitation of CIA “black sites” providing a model.

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Triangle tower: building starts on rare Paris skyscraper decried as ‘catastrophe’

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At 180 metres tall, pyramid-shaped glass and steel skyscraper will be city’s third-highest building

Construction of a 42-floor, pyramid-shaped skyscraper began in Paris on Thursday despite local opposition and objections from environmentalists who have called the project “catastrophic”.

The Triangle Tower (Tour Triangle) will, at 180 metres (590ft), become the city’s third-highest building after the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, and the Montparnasse Tower, which opened in 1973.

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Paris police authority bans ‘freedom convoy’ Covid protests

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Protesters have set out from southern France inspired by demonstrators in Canada

“Freedom convoys” of motorists that have set off from half a dozen French cities in protest against the country’s coronavirus restrictions will not be allowed to enter Paris, the capital’s police authority has said.

“The stated objective of these demonstrations is to ‘block the capital’ by preventing road traffic from circulating in order to further their demands … from Friday, before moving on to Brussels on Monday,” the authority said.

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The rise in global inflation – the hit to living standards across the world

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Analysis: From Pakistan to the US, Australia to Germany, the cost of living is rising to new highs and causing new hardships

After decades lurking in the shadows, inflation is back. On Amazon, you can find fridge magnets printed with words spoken 40 years ago by Ronald Reagan, before the election that swept him into the White House.

“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

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Liz Truss warns Russia of sanctions during tense Ukraine talks

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Foreign secretary issues warning as Sergei Lavrov describes UK’s contribution to talks as ‘just slogans’

The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has personally warned Moscow of tough sanctions that are to be imposed if Russia attacks Ukraine, during tense talks that Russia’s top diplomat said were like a conversation of “the mute with the deaf”.

The British sanctions package remained under government review on Thursday, somewhat undermining Truss’s threat as she led a British diplomatic effort to head off a potential Russian offensive in Ukraine.

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Scientists discover new planet orbiting nearest star to solar system

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Proxima d is the third planet to have been spotted circling Proxima Centauri four light years away

Astronomers have found evidence for a new planet circling Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun.

The alien world is only a quarter of the mass of Earth and orbits extremely close to its parent star, at one tenth of the distance between the sun and Mercury, the solar system’s innermost planet.

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Amnesty granted to illegal Spanish strawberry farmers despite protests over damage to wetlands

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Andalucían decision to ‘regularise’ land near Doñana national park attacked by ecology groups

Rightwing MPs in southern Spain have ignored protests from the central government, the EU, Unesco and several ecological groups by voting to grant an amnesty to illegal strawberry farmers who have been tapping water from the aquifer that feeds one of Europe’s largest protected wetlands.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Andalucían regional parliament approved the proposal, which will “regularise” 1,461 hectares (3610 acres) of land near the Doñana national park, thereby allowing farmers who have sunk illegal wells and built illicit plantations on the land to legitimise their operations.

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Liz Truss heads to Moscow with ‘toughest sanctions’ plan delayed

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Foreign secretary told MPs laws would be in place by 10 February but nothing has been put to parliament

The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, will meet her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Thursday with her plan to have put the UK’s “toughest sanctions regime against Russia” on the statute book in time for the trip having fallen through.

Truss told MPs the laws would be in place by 10 February, but nothing has been put to parliament, raising suspicions among opposition MPs that government lawyers are struggling to frame the sweeping and unprecedented new laws.

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‘Neanderthal Pompeii’: dig places humans in Europe earlier than thought

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Researchers find Homo sapiens moved into Madrin cave in France one year after Neanderthals abandoned it

Homo sapiens ventured into Neanderthal territory in Europe much earlier than previously thought, according to a new archaeological study.

Up to now, archaeological discoveries had indicated that Neanderthals disappeared from the European continent about 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of their “cousin” Homo sapiens, barely 5,000 years earlier and there was no evidence of an encounter between these two groups.

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Can Ukraine and Russia be persuaded to abide by Minsk accords?

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Analysis: As Macron tries to revive 2015 agreement, Ukraine believes it is impossible to fulfil as it could hand power to Russia

In the often acrimonious back-and-forth between Russia and Ukraine in recent years, “fulfilling Minsk” has become something of a meaningless mantra: all sides agree to abide by the 2015 Minsk accords in public, but neither has any real intention of implementing the provisions of the agreement.

Yet in his intensive peacemaking efforts this week, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, appears to be pinning his hopes on a renewed attempt to breathe life into the seven-year-old agreement.

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Is England an outlier in abandoning Covid isolation rule?

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How does England’s move to end self-isolation compare with rules in other European countries?

Boris Johnson has announced plans to abolish the legal requirement for people in England to self-isolate, even if they test positive for the coronavirus and have symptoms.

The move, planned for later this month, would represent “an important step for this country as we move out of the pandemic”, said the prime minister’s spokesperson. “It shows that the hard work of the British people is paying off.”

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Eight trafficked people found in ‘horror box’ under lorry in Austria

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Several suffered from hypothermia during journey and some fainted from exposure to exhaust fumes

Austrian police found eight people from Turkey hidden in life-threatening conditions in a narrow wooden pallet box attached to the underside of a lorry.

Police said the group had been trafficked from Romania via Hungary. Several of them suffered from hypothermia during the trip in freezing temperatures, and some fainted because they were exposed to exhaust fumes for hours.

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Belarus military drills to begin as Russia ratchets up Ukraine tensions

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Satellite imagery shows much Russian hardware has been moved to locations close to Ukraine border

Russia and Belarus will begin 10 days of joint military drills on Thursday, setting in train one of the most overtly threatening elements of the Kremlin’s buildup of forces around Ukraine’s borders.

Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian general staff, arrived in Belarus on Wednesday to oversee the drills.

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Can bitcoin be sustainable? Inside the Norwegian mine that also dries wood

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Kryptovault’s operation is part of a fightback against criticism of the famously energy-intensive industry

A line of large blue skips full of chopped wood sit at the back of a site belonging to Norway’s biggest bitcoin mining operation, a 5,000 sq metre warehouse on the outskirts of Hønefoss, a small town 40 miles west of Oslo.

Hot air is being pumped into the 12 skips through bendy corrugated pipes curling out from the warehouse. Despite the snow, it will take a few days for the logs to be dried out, after which a local lumberjack, grateful for the free service, will take them away for sale.

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