Category Archives: Europe

Europe’s caution over Oxford vaccine about more than the science

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Analysis: the evidence for side-effects is scant but governments have other factors to consider

As France and Germany join Ireland, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands in suspending the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – even though the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization are advising people to continue taking it – the common refrain in European governments is that they are acting out of “an abundance of caution”.

There have been a handful of reports of blood clots in people recently vaccinated and also a rarer condition called thrombocytopenia, in which people do not make enough platelets. That can result in excessive bleeding. Deaths have been reported in Austria and Italy, which stopped the use of one batch of vaccine for fear it was contaminated. Meanwhile a further death from thrombocytopenia has been reported in Norway, as well as three hospitalisations.

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Lawsuit targets Russian mercenary company over role in Syria

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Brother of Syrian man aims to force Moscow to investigate possible role of Wagner Group in his killing

The brother of a Syrian man killed by suspected Russian mercenaries has called on the authorities in Moscow to investigate the incident and the possible role played by the Wagner Group, a mercenary group run by one of Vladimir Putin’s close allies.

Video footage published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta shows a group of six men torturing a Syrian detainee. The victim, Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah, is believed to have deserted from President Bashir al-Assad’s army and then been captured.

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Alexei Navalny moved to ‘concentration camp’ known for strict control

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Kremlin critic reveals on Instagram he has arrived in penal colony north-east of Moscow and has a ‘freshly shaven head’

The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of Russia north-east of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician’s Instagram account confirmed on Monday.

Navalny’s precise location had been unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been moved from the nearby Kolchugino jail and that they had not been told where he was being taken.

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Climate crisis: recent European droughts ‘worst in 2,000 years’

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Study of tree rings dating back to Roman empire concludes weather since 2014 has been extraordinary

The series of severe droughts and heatwaves in Europe since 2014 is the most extreme for more than 2,000 years, research suggests.

The study analysed tree rings dating as far back as the Roman empire to create the longest such record to date. The scientists said global heating was the most probable cause of the recent rise in extreme heat.

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Cheese sales soar in French lockdown – but an Italian is biggest winner

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Consumption at home rose sharply last year, with mozzarella up 21% and raclette machines in high demand

How did the French keep smiling through the Covid lockdown? Not by saying “cheese” but by eating it, figures suggest.

Researchers say cheese consumption at home soared last year as the confined sought comfort food. And in a nation that boasts 246 kinds of cheese, as the former president Charles de Gaulle once said, it was Italian mozzarella that benefited most, with a 21.2% rise in sales in 2020.

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Biden urges UK and EU to preserve Northern Irish peace amid Brexit row

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Remarks follow EU formally launching legal action over protocol arrangements in the region

The White House has urged London and Brussels to work together to preserve the peace in Northern Ireland, after the EU formally launched legal action against the UK over Brexit arrangements in the region.

Joe Biden’s spokesperson said: “We continue to encourage both the EU and the UK government to prioritise pragmatic solutions to safeguard and advance the hard-won peace in Northern Ireland.”

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Why Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific region

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Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real

Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.

Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.

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Netherlands election: Mark Rutte set to win big – but what next?

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Analysis: PM is on course for fourth term in office. What is his secret and how is next coalition government likely to look?

The outgoing prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, appears headed for a comprehensive victory and fourth successive term in office as the Dutch go to the polls in national elections on Monday, with voting spread over three days due to coronavirus restrictions.

Polls predict Rutte, who has headed three coalition governments of different political complexions since 2010, and his centre-right People’s party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) will win twice as many parliamentary seats as his nearest rival.

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Spain to launch trial of four-day working week

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Government agrees to proposal from leftwing party Más País allowing companies to test reduced hours

Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea.

Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Más País announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. Talks have since been held, with the next meeting expected to take place in the coming weeks.

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Angela Merkel’s CDU slumps to historic lows in former strongholds

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State election results could be sign tide is turning against conservatives as country gears up for national poll

Angela Merkel’s party has slumped to historic lows in two former stronghold regions at state elections, in a sign that the tide may be turning against Germany’s conservatives just as the country gears up for a national vote in six months’ time.

The incumbent Green premier of Baden-Württemberg and the Social Democrat leader of Rhineland-Palatinate both look certain to retain their offices in the two south-western states, after exit polls showed significant losses for the second-placed Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Sunday.

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Italian ex-prime minister Enrico Letta elected to lead Democratic party

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Letta to lead second largest party in Draghi government as Giuseppe Conte in talks to lead Five Star Movement

A former Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, has been elected leader of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), the second largest party in Mario Draghi’s government, as another former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was in talks to become leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), its largest.

Letta takes over from Nicola Zingaretti, who abruptly quit the party’s leadership earlier this month over what he called an “unending stream” of criticism, and was elected on Sunday with 860 votes in favour and two against.

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Ireland suspends AstraZeneca Covid vaccine over blood clot concerns

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Deployment of Oxford vaccine temporarily deferred after latest reports from Norway

Ireland is suspending use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a precautionary measure following further reports of blood clots in people who have received it, this time from Norway.

The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said Ireland’s advisory body on vaccines had recommended that deployment of the AstraZeneca jab should be “temporarily deferred” with immediate effect. He stressed, though, that there was no proof that the vaccine had caused blood clots.

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Third Covid wave sweeps across EU and forces new restrictions

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New variants blamed as Italy, France, Germany and Poland see infection rates surge

A third wave of the Covid pandemic is now advancing swiftly across much of Europe. As a result, many nations – bogged down by sluggish vaccination campaigns – are witnessing sharp rises in infection rates and numbers of cases.

The infection rate in the EU is now at its highest level since the beginning of February, with the spread of new variants of the Covid-19 virus being blamed for much of the recent increase.

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Actor strips at ‘French Oscars’ in protest at closure of theatres and cinemas

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Corinne Masiero criticises coronavirus strategy with words ‘no culture no future’ on her chest

A French actor stripped naked on stage during a scaled-back César Awards ceremony in Paris to protest against the government’s closure of theatres and cinemas during the coronavirus pandemic.

Corinne Masiero had “no culture no future” written on her chest and “give us art back Jean” on her back, in a message to the prime minister, Jean Castex.

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Yellow review – a gripping epic about fascism in Belgium

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Available online
Part two in NTGent’s Sorrows of Belgium trilogy is a visually arresting account of the rise of the Rex party and the horror of the second world war

Director Luk Perceval’s Sorrows of Belgium trilogy charts three dark chapters in the nation’s history, starting with colonial oppressions in the Congo in Black (produced by NTGent in 2019) and ending with the Brussels terrorist attacks of 2016 in Red (yet to be staged). The second instalment, Yellow, dramatises the rise of the fascist party Rex, which led to collaboration with Nazi occupiers.

What is immediately arresting in NTGent’s live-stream, with English subtitles, is the cinematic quality of the production. It is exquisitely filmed by Daniel Demoustier in the theatre, though not always on the stage. Shot almost entirely in black and white with some intermittent hues of yellow, it seems variously like a dance and a series of sorrowful tableaux of human suffering and collective delusion. Camera angles draw us into the roused faces of Belgian fascists, circling them dizzily as they spit out their rhetoric, and then drawing away to show them as a choreographed ensemble. Annette Kurz’s set design seems more like a moving painting, with the actors often performing on or around a table that serves as a miniature stage.

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Spanish police seize narco-submarine in Málaga raid

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Officers discover vessel during wider operation in which hundreds of kilos of drugs were seized

Spanish police have announced the seizure of a homemade narco-submarine able to carry as much as two tonnes of cargo.

Police discovered the nine-metre (30ft) vessel last month while it was being built in the southern city of Málaga, during a broader international drug operation involving five other countries and the EU crime agency, Europol.

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Boris Johnson rules out return of Parthenon marbles to Greece

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Prime minister says sculptures taken by Lord Elgin would remain in Britain as they had been legally acquired

Boris Johnson has used his first interview with a European newspaper since becoming the UK’s prime minister to issue a point-blank rejection of the Parthenon marbles being returned to Greece.

Johnson insisted that the sculptures, removed from the monument by Lord Elgin in circumstances that have since spurred one of the world’s most famous cultural rows, would remain in Britain because they had been legally acquired.

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Moroccan police accused of burning migrant shelters near Spanish enclave

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Refugees and migrants camped along border to Melilla say there have been repeated raids following 150 people attempting to cross

Migrants in northern Morocco said they had been forced to sleep out in the open after repeated raids by police, who allegedly burned down their shelters in camps near the Spanish enclave Melilla.

Those camped along the border said Moroccan forces returned for a fourth day on Friday despite having already torched most of their tents.

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Merkelism without Merkel: Green hopes high before German state vote

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Pragmatic state premier with flat-top ahead in polls as CDU faces defeat in country’s south-west

Winfried Kretschmann, a white-haired former biology teacher who has been the state premier of Baden-Württemberg since 2011, can look forward to this Sunday’s elections in his wealthy corner of south-west Germany with ease.

In the home state of Daimler, Porsche and Bosch, he has not just won the support of the metal and electronics industry, but that of conservative voters, 65% of whom have in surveys expressed their wish for the 72-year-old Catholic to retain his office.

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Italy braces for widespread closures as Covid cases rise

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Schools, restaurants and shops expected to shut with hospitals under strain from new wave

Italy’s government is expected to announce the closure of schools, restaurants and shops across most of the country as a new wave of coronavirus infections puts hospitals under strain.

The prime minister, Mario Draghi, will hold a mid-morning cabinet meeting on Friday to decide new restrictions for the eurozone’s third-largest economy, which on Thursday recorded almost 26,000 new Covid-19 cases and 373 deaths.

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