Category Archives: Europe

Germany’s Greens name Annalena Baerbock as chancellor candidate

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Robert Habeck tells party co-chair ‘the stage is all yours’ as CDU/CSU rivals squabble over candidate choice

Germany’s Green party has named its co-chair Annalena Baerbock as candidate for chancellor in autumn’s federal election, as the party rides high in the polls and the ruling conservative bloc squabbles over its own choice to succeed Angela Merkel.

Baerbock, 40, viewed as a tenacious, down-to earth centrist with an eye for detail, and an expert on climate change and how to tackle it, told a small party gathering she aimed to “make politics for society at large”. She described her candidacy as “an offer, an invitation to lead our diverse, prosperous, strong country into a good future”.

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Huawei ‘may have eavesdropped on Dutch mobile network’s calls’

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Chinese firm could have been monitoring calls of KPN’s 6.5m users without its knowledge, report claims

The Chinese telecoms equipment supplier Huawei was able to monitor all calls made on one of the Netherlands’ largest mobile phone networks, according to a confidential report seen by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

The report, made for KPN by the Capgemini consultancy firm in 2010, concluded that the Chinese company could have been monitoring the calls of the provider’s 6.5m users without the Dutch company’s knowledge, according to the newspaper.

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Alexei Navalny moved to hospital as fears grow for life of Putin critic

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Doctors say opposition leader, who is on hunger strike, is in danger of a heart attack or kidney failure

Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a prison hospital as concerns have grown among supporters that the opposition leader is dangerously ill and could die “at any minute”.

Navalny’s transfer came after his doctors released paperwork showing that the Kremlin critic, who has been on hunger strike for nearly three weeks, said he was in danger of a heart attack or kidney failure.

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Russia expels 20 Czech diplomats in tit-for-tat response

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Czechs expelled 18 Russians over Skripal suspects’ alleged role in deadly warehouse blast in 2014

Moscow has expelled 20 Czech diplomats in a tit-for-tat response after Prague accused Russian military intelligence of setting off a deadly blast at an ammunition warehouse in 2014.

Video from Moscow showed the Czech ambassador being summoned to the foreign affairs ministry where he was informed that four-fifths of his diplomatic envoys would be given 24 hours to depart the country.

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German NGO files legal case against Chechen officials over anti-gay purges

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Exclusive: five Ramzan Kadyrov allies subject of criminal complaint for crimes against humanity

Five officials from the inner circle of Chechnya’s autocratic leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, are the subject of a criminal complaint in Germany for crimes against humanity, in a legal attempt to seek justice over the semi-autonomous Russian republic’s anti-gay purges.

The 97-page charge sheet, extracts of which have been seen by the Guardian, accuses the Chechen military and state apparatus of persecution, unlawful arrests, torture, sexual violence and incitement to murder at least 150 individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation since February 2017.

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Alexei Navalny allies call for mass protests in Russia to save his life

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Kremlin critic’s team want showdown as Vladimir Putin delivers state of the nation address

Allies of Alexei Navalny have called on his supporters to stage mass protests on Wednesday in towns and cities all across Russia, amid a dire warning that the jailed Kremlin critic and opposition leader is now dangerously ill and could die “at any minute”.

Navalny’s team said the situation had got so desperate that there was no time to delay. They had previously said street protests would resume once they reached 500,000 signatures in support – with the current tally about 50,000 short.

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Germany’s surging Greens step up election race to succeed Merkel

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Robert Habeck or Annalena Baerbock will be named as party’s candidate for chancellorship

Five months before national elections, a Green party that once styled itself as the rebel of German politics is finding itself in an unusually respectable position.

The party’s standing in the polls – in second place at 21-23% of the vote – means it will on Monday, for the first time in its 41-year history, nominate a candidate for chancellor. Furthermore, that candidate will have a realistic chance of filling the top job in German politics by the end of the year.

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Dominic Raab: UK fully supports Czech hunt for Skripal suspects

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Foreign secretary hints he believes same Russian cell behind Salisbury poisoning and Czech explosion

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the UK stood in “full support” of the Czech Republic after the country’s police announced they were hunting two Russians, suspected of carrying out the Salisbury poisonings, in relation to an explosion at an arms depot.

The Czech authorities said on Saturday they were seeking Alexander Petrov, 41, and Ruslan Boshirov, 43, in connection with a previously unexplained 2014 explosion at a munitions dump in Vrbětice, which left two dead.

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British families took bigger hit to income during Covid pandemic than Europeans

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UK’s greater inequality levels made impact worse for the less well off, study suggests

British households were plunged into the Covid pandemic with lower savings, more debt and weaker welfare support than their French and German counterparts, according to analysis revealing how inequality increased the impact of the UK crisis.

High levels of income inequality also weakened the financial resilience of poorer households as the pandemic hit. The greater exposure of British households, revealed in an analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to be published in full this week, comes despite similar levels of average income with our European neighbours.

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Could Marine Le Pen finally triumph with her third tilt at French presidency?

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Next year’s Élysée race looks like a battle between a fading Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader. And some believe she might win this time

In Paris’s symbolic Place de la République, under the watchful gaze of France’s allegorical figurehead Marianne, the skateboarders are not in the mood to discuss politics.

For the young here, as everywhere, life has been paused during a pandemic that has halted studies, jobs, socialising and parties. What they want is their lives back, not to talk about an election.

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Revealed: Lord Byron’s £4,000 cheque that helped create modern Greece

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The poet’s generosity 200 years ago helped to pave the way to independence, and he is still seen as a hero

Racked by fever, prone to fits of delirium, consumed by his last great passion – the liberation of Greece – Lord Byron lay on his sickbed. It was 18 April 1824. The great Romantic poet would be dead the next day.

“I have given her [Greece] my time, my means, my health,” he is recorded as saying in a moment of lucidity. “And now I give her my life! What could I do more?”

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Russia to expel Ukrainian diplomat, prompting vow of retaliation from Kyiv

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Disagreement over Alexander Sosonyuk, who was allegedly caught trying to obtain sensitive information, escalates tensions after troop buildup

Russia on Saturday said it would expel a Ukrainian diplomat, prompting an immediate pledge of retaliation from Kyiv, further escalating tensions after Moscow’s troop buildup on Ukraine’s eastern flank.

The detention of a Ukrainian consul in the second city, St Petersburg, comes at a time of global concern over a possible repeat of Moscow’s 2014 aggression, when Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea and backed separatists in Ukraine’s east. Moscow claimed that the diplomat had been caught “red-handed” trying to obtain sensitive information.

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Matteo Salvini to face trial over standoff with migrant rescue ship

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Italy’s former interior minister says he was doing his job by refusing to allow ship with 147 people on board to dock

A judge in Sicily has ordered the former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial for refusing to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people at sea for days.

Judge Lorenzo Iannelli set 15 September as the trial date during a court hearing in Palermo, LaPresse news agency reported.

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‘It’s a day off’: wiretaps show Mediterranean migrants were left to die

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Exclusive: Transcripts of conversations between Italian officials and Libyan coastguard contained in leaked file

At 8.18am on Friday 16 June 2017, the Libyan coastguard Col Massoud Abdalsamad received a long-distance phone call from an Italian coastguard official who told him that 10 migrant dinghies were in distress, many in Libyan territorial waters.

“It’s a day off. It’s a holiday here. But I can try to help,” Abdalsamad told the official. “Perhaps we can be there tomorrow.”

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Russian prosecutors move to liquidate Navalny’s ‘extremist’ movement

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Seeking to designate organisation as extremist group is most sweeping assault on opposition supporters yet

The Moscow prosecutor’s office has announced that it will seek to designate Alexander Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and his regional political headquarters as “extremist groups”, moving to in effect liquidate the jailed opposition leader’s political organisation in Russia.

It is the most sweeping assault yet on supporters of Navalny, and comes after his two-and-a-half-year sentence on embezzlement charges and the arrest of his top aides on various charges following large protests in January and February.

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Spain’s Endesa power firm sued over electrocution of birds

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Landmark case says thousands of birds including endangered eagles die needlessly each year

In Leonard Cohen’s famous song, a bird on a wire is a symbol of freedom, but for thousands of birds it is the equivalent of being sent to the electric chair.

Now, in a landmark case, a Spanish electricity company is being prosecuted over the deaths of hundreds of birds electrocuted on pylons and overhead cables and for failing to comply with regulations designed to protect wildlife.

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‘They capture history’: the projects saving Spain and Portugal’s shop signs

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A collective of projects across Iberia is protecting commercial signs to create a living archive

Fire engine red, bordered by polka dots and stretching the length of three cars, the sign for the Orte clothing store had long loomed over Madrid’s Alcalá thoroughfare, its presence steady even as fast-food restaurants and chain stores began moving into the area.

When the store closed its doors and the space was poised to be rented, news swiftly reached Alberto Nanclares. Within days he was on site, working with a team to painstakingly pry the sign from the facade where it had sat for more than five decades.

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EU and UK hold ‘productive’ talks on Northern Ireland crisis

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Brexit minister David Frost says momentum has been established in efforts to ease tensions

Talks between the EU and UK to ease tensions in Northern Ireland have been described as “productive” and “constructive” with momentum now established to achieve a solution to the crisis, the Brexit minister, David Frost, has said.

But the EU used the first face-to-face meeting since lockdown between Lord Frost and the European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, to warn that the outcome needed to be jointly agreed.

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Biden hits Russia with new sanctions in response to election meddling

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Ten diplomats expelled as part of fresh package of sanctions announced by US president as Russia says retaliation ‘inevitable’

The Biden administration has announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and broad sanctions against Russian officials and companies in retaliation for Moscow’s interference in elections and cyber-espionage campaigns such as the SolarWinds hack.

The sanctions, which were the Biden’s largest punitive action against the Kremlin yet, also targeted six Russian cybersecurity companies deemed to be involved in the SolarWinds hack, as well as 32 individuals and entities deemed to be involved in efforts to influence the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

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Third of French wine lost after rare cold snaps devastate vines

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Unseasonal frost is ‘agricultural disaster of 21st century’ as ice after warm weather decimates grape harvests

At least a third of French wine production worth almost €2bn (£1.7bn) in sales will be lost this year after rare freezing temperatures devastated many vines and fruit crops across France, raising concerns over the climate crisis.

“This is probably the greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century,” the French agriculture minister, Julien Denormandie, said this week as the government declared an “agricultural disaster” and began preparing emergency financial measures.

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