Category Archives: Europe

Italy celebrates ‘most beautiful day’ after double Olympic gold

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Tokyo Games wins in 100m and high jump in space of 11 minutes prompt outpouring of national pride

Stunned and ecstatic after claiming two gold medals in the space of 11 minutes, as Lamont Marcell Jacobs won the 100m final and Gianmarco Tamberi shared first place in the high jump, Italians have been celebrating a golden Sunday at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

“It is Italian sport’s most beautiful day,” said Giovanni Malagò, the president of the Italian Olympics Committee. “They have made history. Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will talk about it. This is better than the Eurocup,” he added, referring to Italy’s Euro 2020 football victory last month.

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Turkey appeals for help to fight wildfires as heatwave continues

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Wildfires break out across much of southern Europe, with temperature reaching 45C in Greece

Turkey has launched an international appeal for help in taming fires raging across the country that have killed eight people in recent days, as what has been described as one of the worst heatwaves in decades intensifies in south-east Europe.

Following criticism of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after it emerged that Turkey has no firefighting planes, authorities in Istanbul were promised water-dropping planes from the European Union. The country is battling deadly wildfires along its coastline for a sixth day.

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Belarus sprinter faces long exile in Poland after seeking refuge

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Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has not directly criticised her government but her parents warned her not to return

Just two years ago, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was greeted by smiling Belarusian athletics and academic officials as she brandished a gold medal from the 2019 Summer Universiade, the young star’s greatest victory for her native Belarus yet.

Now that same bureaucracy is threatening to tear her life apart, as her coach and a delegation official warned a crying Tsimanouskaya on leaked audio that she was “caught in a spider’s web” and suggested that cases of “excessive pride” often lead to suicide.

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100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to be tried

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Man deemed fit to stand trial in Germany and is accused of complicity in murder of more than 3,500 people

A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard will stand trial in Germany in October accused of complicity in 3,518 murders, public prosecutors have announced.

The prosecutor’s office in Neuruppin, which first brought the charges in February, received a medical assessment that confirmed the man was “fit to stand trial” despite his advanced age.

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Ibiza plan for foreign ‘detectives’ to infiltrate parties as Covid cases surge

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Spanish officials are working to recruit foreigners to help police in detecting illegal gatherings

Wanted: foreigners between 30 and 40 years old willing to party in Ibiza in the name of combating the coronavirus pandemic.

Spanish officials on the island are working to assemble a squad from abroad who would be capable of infiltrating parties that breach local coronavirus regulations and flagging them to authorities.

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Aerial footage of Pescara wildfire as residents and tourists evacuated – video

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At least five people were wounded and holidaymakers evacuated after wildfires devastated a pine wood near a beach in Pescara, Italy, as one of the worst heatwaves in decades swept across south-east Europe.

About 800 people were evacuated from their homes, including a convent of nuns, after a fire broke out in the 53-hectare (131-acre) Pineta Dannunziana nature reserve, as the fires continue to be active on different fronts

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Delta blues: why estuaries are the canaries in the climate crisis coalmine

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These fragile ecosystems are where the impacts of the climate crisis are often felt first, say experts

The Ebro delta appears to be in robust health, to a casual observer. There is water gurgling in the canals and irrigation channels, and what appears to be a mighty river flowing into the sea. The dazzling green rice fields are dotted with ibis, egrets and redshanks.

However, all is not what it seems. The Ebro, the only one of Spain’s three great rivers that flows into the Mediterranean, is one of the most abused and exploited in Europe.

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Tourists evacuated from Pescara as Italy records more than 800 wildfires

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Wildfires burn across Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey in heatwave bringing temperatures above 40C

At least five people have been wounded and holidaymakers evacuated after wildfires devastated a pine wood near a beach in Pescara, Italy, as one of the worst heatwaves in decades swept across south-east Europe.

A five-year-old girl was taken to hospital but her condition is not believed to be life-threatening, according to reports.

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The Guardian view on Fortress Europe: a continent losing its moral compass

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The increasingly draconian approach to irregular migration betrays the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention

Seventy years ago, the 1951 UN refugee convention established the rights of refugees to seek sanctuary, and the obligations of states to protect them. Increasingly, it seems that much of Europe is choosing to commemorate the anniversary by ripping up some of the convention’s core principles.

So far this year, close to 1,000 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean, more than four times the death toll for the same period in 2020. Many will have been economic migrants. Others will have been fleeing persecution. Increasingly, Europe does not care. All were “irregular”. And all must be discouraged and deterred through a strategy of cruelty.

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Tourists evacuated from burning Med resorts as fires rage across southern Turkey – video report

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Holidaymakers have been evacuated from beaches by rescue boats in Turkey after wildfires threatened hotels is several resort towns.

Six people have died and more than 500 needed hospital treatment in Turkey’s Mediterranean towns from fires that have raged across the country since Wednesday

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Leaders tackle global question of how to persuade people to get Covid jab

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Spectrum of measures including incentives and hardline laws have met with responses varying from rise in uptake to wave of protests

Last week, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, appeared on television for a late-night address.

The hardliner has previously pushed a shoot-to-kill policy against drug gangs, but had something else on his mind this time: the coronavirus pandemic and those refusing to be vaccinated, who he suggested should be compelled to stay at home.

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EU citizens who applied to stay in Britain facing threat of deportation

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The Home Office appears to be in breach of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, says legal charity

European citizens who have applied for settled status are being detained and threatened with deportation, a development that contradicts assurances from ministers and appears to contravene the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

The Home Office has served EU nationals with removal directions even though they could prove they had applied for settled status, which should protect their rights to remain in the UK.

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Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets

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The land mass that linked Britain to continental Europe was rich in early human life until it flooded

The idea of a “lost Atlantis” under the North Sea connecting Britain by land to continental Europe had been imagined by HG Wells in the late 19th century, with evidence of human inhabitation of the forgotten world following in 1931 when the trawler Colinda dredged up a lump of peat containing a spear point.

But it is only now, after a decade of pioneering research and the extraordinary finds of an army of amateur archaeologists scouring the Dutch coastline for artefacts and fossils, that a major exhibition is able to offer a window into Doggerland, a vast expanse of territory submerged following a tsunami 8,000 years ago, cutting the British Isles off from modern Belgium, the Netherlands and southern Scandinavia.

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Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes

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Daughter of Holocaust survivor pledges to continue her fight for family property seized by Nazi occupiers

A few years ago, Shoshana Greenberg stood outside a building in Lodz, Poland, once owned by her family, with an old photograph in her hands and tears running down her face.

Greenberg, now 74 and living in Tel Aviv, was on a quest to reclaim property lost during the Holocaust. Her father was head of a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Lodz that owned industrial buildings, residential homes and holiday properties.

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Tourists rescued from burning Med resorts by flotilla of boats

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Six dead from wildfires raging across Turkey, Italy and Greece as temperatures hit 40C

Holidaymakers have been evacuated from beaches by rescue boats in Turkey after wildfires threatened hotels in the Aegean resort of Bodrum.

Coastguard vessels were joined by private boats and yachts to bring the tourists to safety, according to Turkish media on Saturday. Videos posted online showed people wheeling their suitcases along the road while smoke from forest fires billowed into the sky.

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French protests grow against extended health pass scheme

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200,000 take to the streets to oppose proof-of-vaccination for hospitals, trains, and cultural and leisure centres

Thousands of people have protested in Paris and other French cities over a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to many public venues, introduced by the government as it battles a fourth wave of infections.

Protesters injured three police officers in Paris, a police spokesperson said. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said on Twitter that 19 demonstrators were arrested, including 10 in Paris.

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Father hopes to reopen case of British woman who disappeared 20 years ago

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Louise Kerton went missing in 2001 after travelling to stay with her boyfriend’s family in Germany

Twenty years since the disappearance of Louise Kerton, who travelled to Germany to holiday with her boyfriend’s family and disappeared, her father is looking for fresh leads.

Phil Kerton is hoping publicity to mark the anniversary might trigger memories or encourage police in Germany, the UK or Belgium – which she is supposed to have travelled through via rail and sea – to reopen the case.

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Submarine robot captures underwater footage of ancient Roman ship laden with wine jars – video

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An ancient Roman ship carrying a cargo load of wine jars, or amphorae, has been found underwater in the Mediterranean Sea off the Italian island of Sicily. The vessel was discovered during an underwater reconnaissance expedition by the island's Regional Agency for Environment Protection. The findings will shed light on Rome’s trade activity in the Mediterranean, where the Romans traded spices, wine, olives and other products in north Africa, Spain, France and the Middle East

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UK minister seeks to calm row over France Covid travel curbs

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Grant Shapps defends decision to put France on UK’s amber-plus list over Beta variant threat

A British cabinet minister has sought to dampen down a growing diplomatic row with France over the imposition of tougher international restrictions on millions of travellers owing to the threat of the Beta variant of coronavirus.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, defended the decision to put France on the “amber-plus” list, after the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, on Thursday suggested the variant’s prevalence on Réunion, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, was partly to blame.

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