Category Archives: Europe

Court cases threatening human rights group Memorial start in Russia

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Cases under ‘foreign agents’ law mark attack on civil society and attempt to recast Soviet history

Russia may dissolve Memorial, the country’s premier human rights group, in an attack on civil society and symbolic reversal of the freedoms won by dissidents at the fall of the Soviet Union.

A supreme court case, to be heard on Thursday, may mark a watershed in Vladimir Putin’s campaign to recast Soviet history by banning International Memorial, which began meeting in the late 1980s to shed light on atrocities and political repression under Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders.

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German parties agree coalition deal to make Olaf Scholz chancellor

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Social Democrat, Green and liberal parties agree to form government after two months of talks

Germany’s new three-way coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and liberals has addressed the public for the first time, pledging to put climate protection at the top of its agenda but stressing its first priority was to control the coronavirus pandemic.

Replacing Angela Merkel as chancellor after 16 years, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats used his opening speech to deliver a dramatic appeal to Germans to get vaccinated, announcing a seven-point plan to tackle the health emergency, which he called “very serious”, stressing that hospitals were close to capacity, and that his government would be considering the introduction of a vaccine mandate.

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Belgian court awards damages over ‘saviour sibling’ IVF mix-up

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Parents wanted a second child to act as bone marrow donor to their son but ended up with more

A hospital in Belgium has been ordered to compensate a couple for their “shock” and “impoverishment” after they ended up having three children by IVF treatment owing to a mistake at its fertility clinic.

It is the first time the Belgian courts have found that a healthy child can be the cause of loss to parents.

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Covid deaths in Europe to top 2 million by March, says WHO

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Dr Hans Kluge describes situation as ‘very serious’ with increasing strain on health services

Total deaths across Europe from Covid-19 are likely to exceed 2 million by March next year, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, adding that the pandemic had become the number one cause of death in the region.

Reported deaths have risen to nearly 4,200 a day, double the number being recorded in September, the agency said, while cumulative reported deaths in the region, which includes the UK, have already surpassed 1.5 million.

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Covid live news: cases increase in 75% of UK local authorities; France reports sharp rise in cases

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Latest updates: Torridge in Devon had the highest rate in UK followed by Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland; France reports over 30,000 cases

Here’s the latest from Reuters on the situation in Germany, where the acting health minister called on Tuesday for further restrictions to contain a “dramatic” surge in coronavirus cases as the country’s infection rate hit a record high and the United States advised against travel there.

The seven-day incidence rate - the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week - hit 399.8 on Tuesday, up from 386.5 on Monday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.

Access to healthcare is expensive and, in an emergency, villagers are forced to walk for hours to the nearest health facility. For women, the lack of facilities, combined with patriarchal attitudes, means they have had no control over their reproductive health. But Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) organises mobile healthcare outreach to poorly served communities such as Lekiji. Chat identifies vulnerable communities with limited access to health facilities and significant family planning needs, and brings health provision and education to their door.

Lack of roads is no barrier to their work. If they cannot reach the communities by car, they switch to an older form of transport: camel. In the past three years Chat has reached more than 100,000 people with behaviour-changing messages that focus on family planning but include TB, HIV and Covid prevention services across 14 counties in Kenya.

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Bulgaria bus crash kills at least 45 people

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Twelve children are among the dead after a bus from North Macedonia crashed and caught fire on highway

At least 45 people including 12 children have died as a bus carrying mostly North Macedonian tourists crashed in flames on a highway in western Bulgaria hours before daybreak on Tuesday.

Seven people who leapt from the burning bus were taken to hospital in Sofia and were in stable conditions, hospital staff said. They had suffered burns and one had a broken leg.

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As China threat rises, can Aukus alliance recover from rancorous birth?

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Questions mount about pact’s ultimate purpose and implications for other Asean countries

It was initially seen as an audacious enlistment by Joe Biden of Australia into the 21st-century struggle against China, elevating the country in the process to a significant regional military power and finally giving substance to Global Britain and its tilt to the Indo-Pacific.

But since then the “ruckus” about Aukus, as Boris Johnson described it, has not stopped. If this was the start of a new “anti-hegemonic coalition” to balance China’s rise, it has not quite blown up on the launchpad, but nor has it taken off as smoothly as intended.

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Covid live: UK records 44,917 new cases; strict restrictions for unvaccinated come into effect in Greece

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UK also reports 45 further Covid-related deaths; from today Greeks barred from all enclosed public spaces if they are unvaccinated

Here’s some more detail from Agence France-Presse in Vienna on Austria’s move into its fourth Covid lockdown:

People in Austria are not allowed to leave home except to go to work, shop for essentials and exercise, as the country returned to a Covid-19 lockdown on Monday morning.

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Germany and Netherlands face fresh Covid rules as Austria enters lockdown

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Reintroduction of restrictions has led to violent protests in European cities

Germany and the Netherlands have been told they should face still tougher Covid restrictions as the German health minister, Jens Spahn, made the startling prediction that most of his compatriots would be “vaccinated, cured or dead” by the end of winter.

With Europe again the centre of the pandemic, ushering in tighter controls mainly on the unvaccinated across the continent, on Monday Austria became the first west European country to re-enter lockdown since vaccination began earlier this year.

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Aid workers say Mediterranean a ‘liquid graveyard’ after 75 feared dead off Libya

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People smugglers are putting hundreds to sea this autumn despite stormy weather

More than 75 people are feared dead after their boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while attempting to reach Europe in one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year, according to the UN.

Fifteen survivors were rescued by local fishers and brought to the port of Zuwara in north-western Libya. They said there were about 92 people onboard the vessel when the incident took place on 17 November. Most of those who died came from sub-Saharan Africa.

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Meredith Kercher killer Rudy Guede could be freed within days

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Man convicted of murdering British student asks for sentence, due to end in January, to be reduced

Rudy Guede, the only person definitively convicted of the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher, could be freed in the coming days after completing 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

Guede’s sentence is due to end on 4 January, but he has asked magistrates to reduce it by a further 45 days.

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‘All my friends went home’: a fruit picker on life without EU workers

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With fellow Europeans leaving the UK, and no British workers taking their place, Eleanor Popa’s job harvesting strawberries has gone from tough to tough and lonely. Will the farm survive another year?

Eleanor Popa used to sleep in a six-berth caravan on the site of Sharrington Strawberries, a 16-hectare (40-acre) strawberry farm in Melton Constable, Norfolk. Now, there are only four people in her caravan: everyone else has left to work in EU countries. “My friends,” she says, “they went home, or to work in Spain and Germany. A lot of them did not come back to work this year.”

Popa, who is from Bulgaria, has been a fruit picker for two years. “It’s hard work,” she says. “We have to get up early and pick. It’s 6am in the summer. Now we get up at 7.30am. And we work in tunnels. Sometimes it’s cold, sometimes it’s hot. Sometimes it’s windy. It can be boring.” Picking strawberries is skilled work. “It took me a month to learn how to pick the fruit,” she says.

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Violence breaks out in Brussels in protests against Covid restrictions – video

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Riot police and protesters clashed in the streets of Brussels on Sunday in demonstrations over government-imposed Covid-19 restrictions, with police firing water cannon and teargas at crowds. Protesters threw smoke bombs, fireworks and rocks at officers. Belgium tightened its coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday, mandating wider use of masks and enforcing working from home, as cases surged in the country

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Covid live: UK reports 40,004 new cases and 61 new deaths; Brussels protest turns violent

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Latest updates: tens of thousands of people march in Belgian capital against Covid measure; UK health secretary says vaccination must be voluntary

From Monday, people aged 40-49 in England will be able to book a Covid jab, the Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed. Sixteen and 17-year-olds will also be able to book in for their second jab.

Taking up the offer of a second or third dose will help protect the progress of the vaccine rollout in the face of waning immunity, and mean people can “enjoy Christmas safely”, the Department of Health and Social Care said.

We simply don’t know how many people who didn’t come forward during Covid-19, during the pandemic, will actually come forward, and therefore we are in a bit of a guessing game about exactly how many.

But the bit I can assure you is that NHS staff and NHS leaders are working incredibly hard at the moment to create that plan to ensure that we can get through that backlog as quickly as possible.

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Violence in Belgium and Netherlands as Covid protests erupt across Europe

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Anger at government restrictions spreads to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and Croatia

Violence erupted at demonstrations in Belgium and the Netherlands over the weekend as tougher Covid-19 restrictions to curb the resurgent pandemic led to angry protests in several European countries.

Ten of thousands of people marched through central Brussels on Sunday to protest against reinforced restrictions imposed by the Belgian government to counter the latest rise in coronavirus cases. The march, which police estimated involved 35,000 people, began peacefully but descended into violence as several hundred people started pelting officers, smashing cars and setting rubbish bins on fire. Police responded with teargas and water cannon.

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People used as ‘living shields’ in migration crisis, says Polish PM – video

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The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, says people from the Middle East are being used as 'living shields' as his country faces a 'new type of war', in reference to the migration crisis on its border with Belarus.

Critics in the west have accused Belarus of artificially creating the crisis by bringing in people – mostly from the Middle East – and taking them to the border with promises of an easy crossing into the EU

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Film-maker Julia Ducournau: ‘Women kicked serious ass this year’

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Only the second woman to win the ​prestigious ​Palme d’Or, the French director behind Raw and new film Titane discusses the boom in female-led horror and ​how she’s terrified of being booed

“When I see a stereotype,” says French director Julia Ducournau, “I try to kill it.” She certainly did that in July by winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival. The most revered and exalted award in cinema, a world away from the erratic glossiness of the Oscars, the Palme d’Or tends to honour films that both further the language of cinema and shed light on the loftier questions of earthly existence. You expect humanism, seriousness, perhaps a dash of difficulty. What you don’t expect is in-your-face sexuality, serial slaughter, a ferocious, electrically coloured techno-metal aesthetic – and radical DIY nasal surgery.

But that’s what you get in Ducournau’s Titane – only the second Palme d’Or winner by a female director, the first being Jane Campion’s shared win with The Piano in 1993. Her win, says Ducournau in transatlantically inflected English, “was incredibly powerful to me. Through this prize, a lot was happening. It took 28 years [since Campion’s win] and I believe it’s not going to take 28 years again.” She points to 2021’s award successes for women – Chloé Zhao at the Oscars with Nomadland, Venice winner Audrey Diwan (Happening), Romania’s Alina Grigore in San Sebastián (Blue Moon). “That can’t be looked past. Women kicked serious ass this year.”

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Instability grips a weakened Europe as global predators smell blood

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Threats from Russia and China, a weaker US security alliance and internal discord expose fundamental strategic weaknesses

Is Europe entering a dangerous new age of instability? Not since the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union has it looked so vulnerable to hostile forces.

Accumulating external threats and internal divisions, coupled with a weakening US security alliance, relentless Russian subversion, and power-hungry China’s war on western values are exposing fundamental strategic weaknesses.

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China downgrades diplomatic relations with Lithuania over Taiwan row

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China’s move was in protest at Baltic country allowing the opening of a diplomatic office using the name Taiwan

China has officially downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania to the “charge d’affaires” level in protest at Taiwan establishing a de facto embassy in Vilnius.

Lithuania allowing Taipei to formally open an office using the name Taiwan was a significant diplomatic departure that defied a pressure campaign by Beijing, which tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the global stage.

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