Anne-Marie Trevelyan urges people not to travel to country on coronavirus amber list ‘unless you have to’
Britons have been urged not to travel to Spain after the country opened its doors to tourists from the UK.
Spain has lifted its restrictions on holidaymakers from the UK but the business minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan has urged people not to go there unless there is an urgent reason.
Continue reading...European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says ‘hijacking must be sanctioned’ ahead of EU leaders’ meeting on Monday
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has joined European leaders in condemning Belarus for forcing a Ryanair flight carrying an opposition activist to land in the Belarusian capital Minsk.
European leaders – some of whom have already denounced the move to arrest blogger Roman Protasevich as an “act of state terror and kidnapping” – will meet on Monday to discuss what action could be taken against Belarus, for forcing the plane’s diversion during its flight from Athens to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
Continue reading...Casualties reported after cable car with 15 passengers collapsed near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy
Italy was in shock on Sunday after a cable car crashed to the ground in a northern Italian beauty spot, killing 14 people including a nine-year-old child.
The cable car is believed to have been carrying 15 people on the 20-minute ride between the resort town of Stresa and the Mottarone mountain in the Piedmont region when it plummeted into the woods near Lake Maggiore shortly after midday.
Continue reading...Experts warn of a ‘huge ecological disaster’ after blaze in the Geraneia mountains
Hundreds of firefighters battled Greece’s first major forest fire of the summer on Saturday, as experts warned of a “huge ecological disaster” in a nature conservation area near Athens.
The fire, which broke out late on Wednesday in the Geraneia mountains 55 miles (90km) west of the capital, is “one of the biggest in the past 20 to 30 years, and has come early in the season”, fire chief Stefanos Kolokouris told ANT1 television.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru
Continue reading...More than 700 people have died in the Mediterranean this year. But Sea-Eye, a German charity, is fighting hard to save lives
Amani clutches her son, Mohammed, as she is pulled from an unstable wooden boat in the Mediterranean. “Please help. My baby is soaked in water and freezing,” says the 23-year-old Syrian refugee.
It’s shortly before 2am, last Monday and about 80 miles (130km) from the Libyan coast a group of maritime emergency responders from the Sea-Eye 4 are on patrol.
Continue reading...MailOnline published actor’s identity as complainant in rape case against French director
Associated Newspapers has paid substantial damages and apologised to actor Sand Van Roy for revealing her identity as a complainant in a rape case against the French film director Luc Besson.
In May 2018, Van Roy filed a complaint with French police alleging that she had been raped by Besson. She expected to remain anonymous, as is her right under French law, but details of her complaint were leaked and reported in the French press, breaching her right to anonymity, the high court heard.
Continue reading...Spanish PM says negative test not needed even as Boris Johnson warns against travel to amber list countries
Spain will allow British holidaymakers into the country without the need to provide a negative Covid test from 24 May.
In a move aimed at restarting the country’s battered tourist industry, the Spanish government has announced that visitors from the UK will be free to enter Spain “without restrictions and without health requirements”. The same applies to visitors from Japan. All arrivals are still required to fill out a health form.
Continue reading...The Carnavalet, devoted to the city’s history, has been shaken out of its dusty and confusing former shape
One of the first cities in Europe to award itself a museum devoted to its own history, Paris will soon have one of the continent’s most modern as the Musée Carnavalet reopens this month following a spectacular five-year, €58m (£50m) renovation.
Opened in 1880 at the suggestion of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who realised 20 years earlier that the mammoth programme of urban renewal he was carrying out would obliterate much of the city’s past, the museum had not been overhauled since.
Continue reading...Dutch cycling union claims city has turned on them by making centre more difficult to navigate
Its reputation is that of an idyll for cyclists, a city freed from the torment of cars. But while Amsterdam remains a model to most of the world, there are signs of trouble in paradise.
A series of developments have led the Amsterdam branch of the Fietsersbond, the Dutch cyclists’ union, to claim the municipality has turned on them, unfairly prioritising pedestrians in the city’s historic centre.
Continue reading...Berlin wary of setting legal precedent as talks near completion on reconciliation deal for atrocities against Herero and Nama tribes
Germany has categorically ruled out financial reparations forming part of a planned formal apology to Namibia for colonial atrocities at the start of the 20th century, amid fears such payments could set a legal precedent for further claims.
Angela Merkel’s government has since 2014 negotiated with Namibia to “heal the wounds” of what historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, when between 1904 and 1908 tens of thousands of indigenous people were shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down the rebellious Herero and Nama tribes in what is now Namibia.
Continue reading...Region including Benidorm and Alicante has a much lower Covid infection rate than Spain as a whole
The president of the Valencia region is to meet Britain’s ambassador to Spain next week to press for the region to be added to the UK’s green list of acceptable travel destinations.
Valencia, which includes the resorts of Benidorm and Alicante on the Costa Blanca, claims to be the safest place in Europe, with a Covid infection rate of 29 cases per 100,000 inhabitants compared with Spain’s overall rate of 140 per 100,000.
Continue reading...Rising number of British B.1.617.2 cases to push back Brussels decision by two weeks
A decision in Brussels to add the UK to an EU “white list” of countries from where tourists will be welcome this summer is to be delayed, it is understood, due to concerns over the Covid variant first identified in India.
EU diplomats were expected to use a revised threshold of infection cases to extend the list of countries at a meeting on Friday but sources said that the decision will be put back by two weeks.
Continue reading...Freistadt Clinic apologises for ‘tragic mistake’ which local media said the patient did not initially recognise because of his illness
An Austrian hospital amputated the wrong leg of a patient, it said on Thursday, blaming human error for what it called a “tragic mistake”.
The elderly patient was suffering from many illnesses, the Freistadt Clinic, in a town of the same name near the Czech border, said in a statement. Previous sicknesses have affected his legs, to the point that his left leg required amputation.
Continue reading...Tit-for-tat sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs puts halt on investment agreement
The European parliament has voted overwhelmingly to “freeze” any consideration of a massive investment deal with China, following recent tit-for-tat sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang province.
According to the resolution, the parliament, which must ratify the deal, “demands that China lift the sanctions before parliament can deal with the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)”. Some MEPs warned that the lifting of the sanctions would not in itself ensure the deal’s ratification.
Continue reading...Luna Reyes targeted by far-right supporters after footage of gesture goes viral
The image captured the raw humanity of the moment: a Red Cross volunteer tenderly consoling a Senegalese man moments after he stepped foot in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta.
Hours after the footage went viral, however, Luna Reyes set her social media accounts to private after she was targeted by a torrent of abuse from supporters of Spain’s far-right Vox party and others incensed by the unprecedented arrival of 8,000 migrants in Ceuta.
Continue reading...Case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women over implants made by French company and certified as safe by German firm
Thousands of victims of the PIP breast implant scandal, including 540 British women, will receive compensation after a Paris appeals court ruling.
The case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women who said they had suffered long-term health effects after receiving implants manufactured by a French firm which were filled with cheap, industrial-grade silicone not cleared for human use.
Continue reading...Novel, which weaves together the stories of Mexican migrants with those of a US family on a road trip south, was picked for the prize by a Barcelona library
Earlier this year, a library in Barcelona submitted a nomination for its favourite book of the year: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. On Thursday, thanks to Biblioteca Vila De Gràcia, Luiselli was named winner of the world’s richest prize for a novel published in English, the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin literary award.
“It’s a beautiful, relatively small library in Barcelona who nominated me,” said Luiselli. “I’m going to kiss its rocks one day, because I probably won’t be able to kiss its librarians because of Covid.”
Continue reading...Vaccines work against new variants but ‘increased mobility may lead to more transmission’
Covid vaccines in use in Europe appear to protect against all new variants but progress in region remains “fragile” and international travel should be avoided to prevent pockets of transmission quickly spreading into “dangerous resurgences”, the World Health Organization has said.
Weekly official cases in Europe have fallen by almost 60% from 1.7m in mid-April to nearly 685,000 last week with deaths also in decline, the WHO regional director, Hans Kluge, said on Thursday, but incidence rates remained stubbornly high in eight countries.
Continue reading...Arrival of thousands of migrants in Spanish enclave is just latest example of issue that affects whole of ‘Fortress Europe’
On the outskirts of the Spanish city of Ceuta, a warehouse has been hastily transformed into a makeshift shelter for young people, their actions watched over by hired security. Days after joining an unprecedented influx of 8,000 migrants into Spain, the fate of these minors who arrived alone has become a thorny issue, stretching far beyond the north African enclave.
“It’s important to understand that we’re seeing children that are much younger than the usual – children of seven, eight, nine years old,” Spain’s minister for social rights, Ione Belarra told broadcaster RTVE on Wednesday. “Many of them didn’t understand the consequences of crossing the border and we’re finding that many of them want to return home.”
Continue reading...