Facebook messages from the Italian student killed in Cairo in 2016 show his concerns about studying in the country
The Facebook messages written by the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni in the weeks leading up to his murder give the lie to any notion he was a spy or political agitator.
Even before he left England, Regeni was concerned about the risks he might face doing his thesis on trade unions in Egypt, a sensitive subject in the country.
Continue reading...Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, would be doing the right thing by pardoning the organisers of 2017’s illegal referendum
Madrid’s Plaza de Colón is home to the largest Spanish flag in the world, making it a natural focal point for demonstrations of rightwing patriotic fervour, particularly on matters related to Catalonia. On Sunday, it was packed again. Thousands of protesters made their feelings clear following reports that Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is about to pardon the 12 Catalan politicians who were convicted over their roles in the illegal independence referendum of 2017.
The imprisonment of leading separatists such as Oriol Junqueras, the president of the Republican Left of Catalonia party (ERC), was a draconian response to an episode of foolhardy brinkmanship by the pro-independence movement. The jail sentences handed out to Mr Junqueras and eight other separatist leaders two years ago ranged from nine to 13 years. But a majority of Spaniards are in no mood for showing clemency. The Plaza de Colón demonstration may have been attended by Spain’s three main rightwing parties, but a recent poll found that fully 61% of respondents, and 53% of socialist voters, opposed the idea of pardons. Fewer than 30% were in favour. The failure of the jailed politicians to express any regret for their actions has hardened public opinion and was not lost on the judges of the Spanish supreme court, which has stated that issuing pardons would be “unacceptable”.
Continue reading...Lawyers criticise 10-year terms given to four asylum seekers, saying three should have been tried in juvenile court
Draconian prison sentences handed down to four Afghan youths found guilty of starting the fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year have been described as a “parody of justice”.
Defence lawyers called the penalties “unfair”, saying three of the accused were under the age of 18 at the time and should have been tried before a juvenile court. The asylum seekers received 10-year jail terms each.
Continue reading...Protest at Plaza de Colón in Madrid draws 25,000 people, including leaders of three rightwing parties
Tens of thousands of people, including the leaders of the three parties on Spain’s right, have rallied in Madrid to protest against the government’s deeply divisive moves to pardon the 12 Catalan independence leadersconvicted over their parts in the failed secession attempt almost four years ago.
The event on Sunday, held beneath the enormous Spanish flag in the capital’s Plaza de Colón, came almost two and a half years after a similar demonstration against the Socialist government’s handling of the Catalan independence crisis.
Continue reading...Despite Covid restrictions, pubs are getting ready for supporters to see their team take on England
Ed Thomas has never shown the European Championships in his bar, but this time he’s hung up the bunting and will watch his team play their first Euro 2020 opening match with muted glee.
But who to support in today’s England v Croatia game, a “rematch” of the 2018 World Cup semi-final? For Thomas is half-Croatian and half-English.
Continue reading...European leaders made their feelings about the Northern Ireland protocol known to a PM desperate to score a PR victory
The setting is a small English village on the Cornish coast, but the message that Boris Johnson wants projected from the beachside summit in Carbis Bay is one of big British influence across the globe.
The three-day G7 meeting of world leaders, which ends on Sunday, was identified months ago by the prime minister as the moment to launch his vision of a confident post-Brexit “global Britain”.
Continue reading...2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh region left minefields that have continued to inflict casualties, including three recent deaths
Azerbaijan says it has handed over 15 Armenian prisoners in exchange for a map detailing the location of landmines in Agdam, a region relinquished by ethnic Armenian forces as a part of a deal to end their short war of 2020.
Prisoners of war are a key issue for Armenia, while landmines continue to inflict casualties in Azerbaijan. Two journalists and a local official were killed on 4 June when a landmine exploded in Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar district on territory that was vacated by ethnic Armenian forces in November.
Continue reading...With a general election due next year, Hungary’s government has put the divisive project in the capital’s heart on hold
Protests against the construction of a Chinese university in Budapest have energised the Hungarian opposition ahead of elections next year, and forced the government into a rare U-turn.
Outrage at plans to build a campus of Shanghai’s Fudan University became a rallying cry for the opposition, drawing thousands to protest in defiance of government regulations
Continue reading...Northern Ireland border row hits summit in Cornwall as prime minister tells other leaders UK is ‘a single country’
Boris Johnson was embroiled in an extraordinary public spat with EU leaders over Northern Ireland on Saturday as tensions over Brexit boiled over at the G7 summit in Cornwall.
After a series of tense bilateral meetings at which the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told their summit host the UK must implement the Brexit deal in full, an unrepentant Johnson said he had urged his EU colleagues to “get it into their heads” that the UK is “a single country”.
Continue reading...Country confounds post-Covid predictions as transatlantic holidaymakers flood in ready to spend
A fresh wind blows down Adrianou. Seated in front of his rug store on the street that cuts through the heart of ancient Athens, Theo Iliadis takes in the scene. At 47, he’s seen “a lot of bad stuff” in recent years. The global pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time for Greece, already gutted by prolonged economic crisis.
But barely a month after the tourist-dependent country opened its doors, the entrepreneur is in ebullient mood. There’s a glint in his eye and a lightness in the air of the carpet-stacked cavern behind him. “Americans are in town,” he smiles. “Business is good, the loom is good and I’ve got drinks on ice.”
Continue reading...The Brexit sausage war is nothing new: it follows an inglorious lineage that stretches all the way back to Hogarth’s Gin Lane
It’s summer at last! Time to gather a few neighbours round, start a fire, and throw another sausage war on to the flames. This one is about the complicated triangulation between the EU, Northern Ireland and Westminster over frictionless trade. Still awake? Let’s put it in terms “the public” can understand and, as former Brexit chief negotiator David Frost did, thunder about the right of “the shopper in Strabane” to get their favourite sausages or chicken nuggets. In fact, from Hogarth’s Gin Lane, right through to the pasty tax, politicians have scored political points around food, as a distraction from more important matters, such as whether children get fed.
If you were of telly-watching age in 1984, there might be a familiar whiff to Frost’s words. In Yes, Minister the not overly competent but endlessly fortunate minister, Jim Hacker, grappled with a rumoured proposal from Brussels to have the British sausage renamed the “emulsified high-fat offal tube”. Westminster is traditionally reluctant to get involved in our personal relationship with our shopping baskets and arteries. It still feels the pain of burnt fingers from the “hot pasty tax”; or Edwina Currie’s throwaway 1988 remark about the prevalence of salmonella in British egg production, which crashed consumer confidence overnight (it was reported that the industry had to slaughter four million hens). The knotty issues around processed meat products are delegated to food and health campaigners who would like Britons to eat a lot fewer, for the sake of our health, our waistlines and the welfare of the animals who end up in them.
Continue reading...Rightwing parties condemn prime minister’s call to work for ‘co-existence’ with separatists
On Sunday thousands of people, among them the leaders of the three parties on Spain’s right, will once again gather in the Madrid square that boasts the world’s largest Spanish flag to protest against the Socialist-led government’s handling of the Catalan independence crisis.
In February 2019, in a deeply controversial moment immortalised in photographs of the occasion, the conservative People’s party (PP), the centre-right Citizens party and the far-right Vox party joined forces in the Plaza de Colón to accuse the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of betraying Spain, and to call for an early election.
Continue reading...Bayes Ag Bakabo was prime suspect in 2013 kidnapping and shooting of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon
French soldiers have killed a Malian jihadist suspected of being responsible for the kidnapping and death of two French journalists in 2013.
Florence Parly, the defence minister in Paris, said French forces in the Sahel region killed “four terrorists” during an operation in northern Mali on 5 June, including Bayes Ag Bakabo, the prime suspect in the deaths of Radio France International (RFI) reporters Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon.
Continue reading...Russian ruler says relations with US at their lowest point in years as the two presidents prepare to meet in Geneva
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years, in an interview before his meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, next week.
Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.
Continue reading...As Dutch capital reopens post-Covid, city is taking ‘extra measures’ to discourage excess
Amsterdam has said it will not allow a return to the “nuisance and massive crowds” the city endured before the pandemic, sending a blunt warning that visitors “whose intention is to booze and misbehave, dressed like a penis” should go elsewhere.
As much of the EU prepares to open up to tourists who are vaccinated, have recovered from the coronavirus or can provide a negative test from 1 July, the Dutch capital’s city hall said in a statement it was taking “extra measures” to discourage excesses.
Continue reading...‘Priceless’ pieces removed from Rai’s offices by employees and replaced with fakes, police believe
“Disloyal employees” at Italy’s public broadcaster, Rai, are suspects in the theft of dozens of works of art from its offices thought to date back to the 1970s.
In what the daily newspaper Il Messaggero has described as “the sack of Rai”, the “priceless” artworks were removed from the broadcaster’s headquarters in Rome and units across the country and replaced with fakes. The works included original paintings by Renato Guttuso and etchings by Claude Monet and Amedeo Modigliani.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of Germans plan to go away soon, as government reduces risk rating of favoured destinations
Germans are in the midst of holiday fever following the widespread relaxation of coronavirus restrictions at home and abroad, opening the prospect of travel again for a nation that considers the summer break to be a basic human right.
A considerable improvement week on week since May in the country’s virus incidence rate, which stood at 22 per 100,000 on Thursday, a 42% decrease on last week, a vaccine campaign that was slow to start but has picked up pace, and relaxations of rules in holiday destinations such as Mallorca, have prompted a boom in bookings.
Continue reading...Gil Arias Fernández says EU border agency, which is under investigation for illegal migrant pushbacks, cannot stop far-right infiltrating its ranks
The former deputy head of Europe’s border and coastguard agency has said the state of the beleaguered force “pains” him and that it is vulnerable to the “alarming” rise of populism across the continent.
In his first interview since leaving office, Gil Arias Fernández, former deputy director at Frontex and once tipped for the top post, said he was deeply worried about the agency’s damaged reputation, its decision to arm officers, and its inability to stop the far-right infiltrating its ranks, amid anti-migrant movements across Europe.
Continue reading...Father suspected of killing six-year-old and dumping body at sea, amid surge in domestic violence
Protests against gender-based violence are to be held across Spain after the discovery of the body of a six-year-old girl who is suspected to have been murdered by her father and dumped at sea.
A surge in domestic violence cases has coincided with the end of Spain’s state of emergency restrictions last month.
Continue reading...The son of the footballing legend is carrying on his father’s quest to trace the children taken from parents murdered by the junta
Diego Armando Maradona Jr, son of the late Argentine football legend, is urging Italians to submit DNA to help the Argentinian government trace hundreds of children who were stolen and their parents murdered by the military junta that controlled the country four decades ago.
Maradona Jr is doing radio interviews in Italy and using his 400,000-strong social media following to broaden the search, which has already seen DNA testing programmes rolled out in Madrid and Rome.
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