Category Archives: Europe

‘Killed by indifference’: France shocked by death on busy Paris street

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Swiss photographer René Robert died from hypothermia after falling and being ignored for nine hours

The death of an 85-year-old man who reportedly succumbed to hypothermia after falling and spending nine hours sprawled and ignored on a bitterly cold street in central Paris has prompted grief, anger and incredulity in France and beyond.

René Robert, a Swiss photographer known for his shots of some of Spain’s most famous flamenco stars, died last week after slipping while on one of his nightly walks around the busy Paris neighbourhood where he lived.

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Putin accuses Nato of ignoring Russia’s concerns as Ukraine crisis simmers

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Russian president’s first public comments on response to Moscow’s proposals come in readout of phone call with Macron

Vladimir Putin said the US and its Nato allies had ignored Russia’s main security concerns, but promised to continue talks with the west, in a call with Emmanuel Macron amid simmering tensions over possible war in Ukraine.

In his first public comments on US and Nato responses to Russian proposals to rewrite the post-cold war security architecture, Putin said Moscow’s concerns about the expansion of Nato and the deployment of strike weapons near its borders had not been taken into account, according to a Kremlin readout of the phone call with his French counterpart.

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Le Pen feud deepens as French far-right leader’s niece withdraws support

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Marine Le Pen calls Marion Maréchal’s decision not to back presidential bid ‘brutal, violent and painful’

France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen has described her niece’s decision not to support her presidential campaign as “brutal, violent and painful”.

Marion Maréchal, who dropped Le Pen from her name in 2018, said she was considering whether to transfer her allegiance to Éric Zemmour, who is even further to the right.

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Too quiet for comfort: on the frontline in Ukraine – a photo essay

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Photojournalist Guillaume Herbaut’s latest visit to Ukraine reveals a disturbing silence on the frontline as international posturing ramps up tensions and diplomats work to avert a full-scale conflict

Since 2014, the French photographer Guillaume Herbaut has been going to Ukraine several times a year to cover the war in a country divided between those turned toward Europe and those drawn to Russia.

A Ukrainian soldier walks in a trench in the former Zenit military airbase. The base has become one of the Ukrainian army’s positions on the frontline

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Russia remains open but ‘not optimistic’ over Ukraine talks

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Moscow unhappy with rejection of demand for veto over Ukraine’s potential Nato membership

Russia has said it is willing to continue talks with the US over European security, but is not optimistic about their prospects after Washington and Nato allies again rejected a key part of the Kremlin’s proposed new order for post-cold war security.

Tensions have soared in recent weeks as Russia massed more than 100,000 soldiers and heavy weapons at its border with Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion.

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Protests flare across Poland after death of young mother denied an abortion

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Family of Agnieszka T say they want to ‘save other women in Poland from a similar fate’, as case met with anger over restrictive termination laws

Protests are under way across Poland after the death of a 37-year-old woman this week who was refused an abortion, a year since the country introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

On the streets of Warsaw on Tuesday night, protesters laid wreaths and lanterns in memory of Agnieszka T, who died earlier that day. She was pregnant with twins when one of the foetus’ heartbeat stopped and doctors refused to carry out an abortion. In a statement, her family accused the government of having “blood on its hands”. Further protests are planned in Częstochowa, the city in southern Poland where the mother-of-three was from.

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Poland starts building wall through protected forest at Belarus border

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Barrier will stretch for almost half the length of the border and cost 10 times migration department’s budget

Poland has started building a wall along its frontier with Belarus aimed at preventing asylum seekers from entering the country, which cuts through a protected forest and Unesco world heritage site.

The Polish border guard said the barrier would measure 186km (115 miles), almost half the length of the border shared by the two countries, reach up to 5.5 metres (18ft) and cost €353m (£293m). It will be equipped with motion detectors and thermal cameras.

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Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline won’t open if Russia invades, says US – live coverage

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Russian president Vladimir Putin is being briefed on a US paper reaffirming support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership

The United States has not given a positive response to Russia’s most important security question, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

The Russian news agency Ria Novosti quotes Lavrov as telling reporters that there was “no positive reaction” on the main question.

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No decision on ‘fully vaccinated’ definition as at least 72 Covid deaths recorded – as it happened

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Atagi still considering whether to change vaccination advice; nation records at least 72 Covid deaths with 13 in SA including reconciled data of death notifications from past fortnight; Central Land Council calls for central NT lockdown. This blog is now closed

Back to the EU ambassador, and he has confirmed the European Union would respond if Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border.

Nurses and midwives at Sydney’s Liverpool hospital are striking today, demanding the government take action to address the staffing crisis impacting health care across the state.

Some of them are in tears here this morning, just come off a night shift. They are caring for, sometimes, one nurse for eight to 10 people and Covid has made their situation so harrowing.

Our hospital system really is at a breaking point and they are asking for ... fair, safe staffing levels here in our hospitals. Here in south-western Sydney, these nurses saw the brunt of the Delta outbreak, a failure of national quarantine, a failure of the vaccine rollout, and now they are seeing with Omicron the failure of the rapid antigen testing.

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Qatar in talks to supply gas to Europe if Russia cuts supplies

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Emir expected to tell US president Qatar can provide short-term emergency liquid gas to help replace any loss of supplies

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is expected to tell the US president, Joe Biden, that his country will provide some short-term emergency liquid gas to help replace any shortages if Russia cuts off supplies to Germany.

Qatar is looking to supply Europe through transferring excess gas in storage in east Asia. It is also hoping to return to the European market on a bigger scale as its own production levels rise, but wants to see an end to a European Commission anti-trust investigation.

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Polish state has ‘blood on its hands’ after death of woman refused an abortion

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Family says young mother’s health deteriorated rapidly after the twins she was carrying died a week apart in the womb

The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.

The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

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US weapons arrive in Ukraine as Biden faces test over allies’ unity – live

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Joe Biden will meet with several CEOs this afternoon to discuss Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, the $1.75tn spending package that includes massive investments in healthcare, childcare and climate initiatives.

“This afternoon, I’m meeting with CEOs who support passing my Build Back Better Agenda to discuss how it’ll invest in American workers, grow our economy, and lower inflation in the long-term,” Biden said on Twitter.

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Ukraine tensions: what is the Normandy format and has it achieved anything?

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French, German, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats are meeting in Paris in the latest effort to de-escalate the crisis

The Normandy format is an informal forum that was set up by French, German, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats in 2014, after Russia kickstarted a separatist conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. It takes its name from the Normandy landings in the second world war. The first meeting took place in Normandy on the margins of the ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the allied landings.

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Catalonia expected to pardon up to 1,000 people accused of witchcraft

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Hundreds of people, mostly women, condemned during witch-hunts that persisted well into 18th century

The Catalan parliament is on Wednesday expected to pass a resolution to pardon up to 1,000 people – the majority of them women – condemned for the crime of witchcraft in the region 400 years ago.

The move follows similar gestures in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway after more than 100 European historians signed a manifesto titled: They weren’t witches, they were women.

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Focused Russian attack on Ukraine seen as more likely than full-scale invasion

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Officials and experts say several elements missing for full-scale invasion despite recent troop movements

Russia does not currently have enough troops on the border with Ukraine to carry out a full-scale military invasion and occupation of the country, according to western experts and senior officials in Kyiv.

They believe a Russian attack to capture most or all of Ukraine in the near future is unlikely, despite an unprecedented buildup of about 125,000 Russian soldiers, and military exercises due to take place next month in Belarus, within striking distance of the capital.

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‘A resort of ghosts’: on the Ukraine frontline waiting for war again – video

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The Guardian's Luke Harding travels to the eastern Ukraine coastal city of Mariupol to see how preparations are being made for a potential Russian attack. With tensions in the region high and Russian troops gathering on the border, Ukrainian soldiers remain defiant, despite their depleted firepower. And while the world's attention has returned to the region for the first time since Russia took Crimea in 2014, for Ukrainians the war has been ongoing

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‘The biggest task is to combat indifference’: Auschwitz Museum turns visitors’ eyes to current events

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Director wants visit to former Nazi concentration camp to spark reflection on ‘silence of bystanders’

Piotr Cywiński has spent a lot of time pondering a question that has exercised historians, philosophers and politicians ever since the end of the second world war. What lessons should we draw from one of the darkest pages in human history, the organised mass killing at Auschwitz?

A 49-year-old Polish historian, Cywiński has been director of the Auschwitz Museum since 2006. His office is housed in a former hospital and pharmacy built for the camp’s SS guards, and his windows look out over a crematorium and gas chamber.

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Why are Germany and France at odds with the Anglosphere over how to handle Russia?

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Analysis: Differing views over Russia within Nato alliance resurface in Ukraine crisis

Can the western alliance against Russia over its buildup of troops on the Ukrainian border hold together? It is a question that politicians and diplomats are increasingly grappling with amid fears that Germany and, to a lesser extent, France are in danger of dividing from the US and the UK, not only over how to respond to any future Russian act of aggression in Ukraine, but also in their assessment of the imminence of the threat.

Every effort is being made to minimise the differences within the Nato alliance, including through regular calls such as the one led by Joe Biden on Monday, but they may be impossible to avoid since they reflect not just different short-term assessments on intelligence, but a deep fissure going back decades about what Germany and France, as opposed to the Anglosphere, regard as the best way to handle Russia.

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Biden warns Russia of ‘enormous consequences’ if it invades Ukraine – live

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Staff turnover in the Biden administration is nowhere near what it was under Donald Trump, when senior aides came and went as through a revolving door in a hurricane.

Nonetheless, the press always likes a bit of speculation about who might be in and who might be out, and here comes the Washington Post with an exhaustive examination of how Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, has not had the smoothest first year in the job.

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US finalizing plans to divert gas to Europe if Russia cuts off supply

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Officials working with global suppliers to avoid European gas crisis if flow from Russia is cut as Biden says he would consider personal sanctions against Putin

The US has helped prepare for the diversion of natural gas supplies from around the world to Europe in the event that the flow from Russia is cut, in an effort to blunt Vladimir Putin’s most powerful economic weapon.

As fears of an invasion of Ukraine have grown, US officials said on Tuesday that they had been negotiating with global suppliers, and they were now confident that Europe would not suffer from a sudden loss of energy for heating in the middle of winter.

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