Category Archives: Europe

AstraZeneca expected to miss EU Covid vaccine supply target by half in second-quarter – report

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Expected shortfall of 90m doses could hit the EU’s ability to meet its target of vaccinating 70% of adults by summer

AstraZeneca has told the European Union it expects to deliver less than half the Covid-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply in the second quarter, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday.

Contacted by Reuters, AstraZeneca did not deny what the official said, but a statement late in the day said the company was striving to increase productivity to deliver the promised 180m doses.

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Iranian officials should be charged over shooting down of Ukrainian plane, UN expert says

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In letter to Tehran, human rights advocate outlines six-month investigation into disaster

Many high level Iranian officials should be charged for the shooting down of a Ukrainian commercial airliner in January 2020, a UN human rights expert has said, describing the killing of the 176 people aboard as a “profound and serious indictment” of the country’s civil and military authorities.

Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, delivered a 45-page letter to the Iranian government which was made public on Tuesday, outlining her findings from a six-month investigation into the disaster, and complaining about the lack of Iranian cooperation, which has left many of her questions unanswered.

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Last public statue of Spanish dictator Franco is removed

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Monument in north Africa commemorates the fascist leader’s earlier role in the Rif war of the 1920s

The last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been removed from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the north-west African coast.

Without much fanfare, a group of workmen took down the statue on Tuesday, using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, before lifting it off by a chain around its neck and carting it away in bubblewrap on a pickup truck.

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Gérard Depardieu charged with rape and sexual assault

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French star is being investigated over an incident with a female actor at his Paris home in 2018

The French actor Gérard Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault, allegedly committed in 2018 against an actor in her 20s, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.

An initial investigation into the rape accusations against Depardieu, 72, was dropped in 2019 for lack of evidence but reopened last summer, leading to criminal charges filed in December, the source said.

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Mount Etna: footage captures volcano erupting at night, illuminating sky – video

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Spectacular eruptions of red lava from Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, continued overnight from Monday into Tuesday, illuminating the night sky. The volcano’s lava fountains soared to 1,500 metres, according to the Etna Observatory at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology

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Prototype Covid test delivers results three times faster than lateral flow

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Test developed in France is as accurate as PCR test and does not require lab processing

French researchers have developed a coronavirus test that they say delivers results three times faster than rapid lateral flow antigen tests with – according to initial trial data – almost the same accuracy as more reliable, but slower, PCR tests.

The electrochemical test, which uses nanobodies taken from the camelid group of animals, returns a result within 10 minutes and, in an early test of 300 samples, proved 90% as accurate as a PCR test for both positive and negative results. It is being developed by scientists at Lille and Marseille universities and from the French national scientific research centre CNRS.

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Coronaangst ridden? Overzoomed? Covid inspires 1,200 new German words

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Linguist who compiled list of words says they help tell story of life during pandemic

From coronamüde (tired of Covid-19) to Coronafrisur (corona hairstyle), a German project is documenting the huge number of new words coined in the last year as the language races to keep up with lives radically changed by the pandemic.

The list, compiled by the Leibniz Institute for the German Language, an organisation that documents German language in the past and present, already comprises more than 1,200 new German words – many more than the 200 seen in an average year.

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Mount Etna illuminates night sky with 1,500-metre lava fountain

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Europe’s most active volcano produces one of most striking eruptions in decades

Mount Etna’s spectacular eruptions reached a peak on Monday when the volcano’s lava fountains soared to 1,500 metres – a display described by one expert as “one of the most striking in the last few decades”.

Europe’s most active volcano has been on explosive form in recent weeks, spewing incandescent magma and a copious shower of ash, reaching as far as Catania.

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Thousands of UK language students left in limbo as Brexit hits travel plans

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Universities say they have received inadequate guidance on red tape and costs for academic years abroad

Thousands of UK students hoping to spend the year abroad are caught in limbo after facing major disruption to their travel plans due to post-Brexit red tape and costs, in respect of which universities say they received inadequate guidance from the government.

Coordinators of academic years abroad who spoke to the Guardian said there had been limited information from the Foreign Office ahead of Brexit on the onerous requirements that the shift in their status would incur in EU countries.

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‘A lifetime sentence’: children of the gulag fight to return from exile

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Millions of Soviet citizens were sent to vast network of prison camps under Stalin. Now their descendants seek recompense

Alisa Meissner is paying to this day for the Soviet Union’s decision to exile her whole family from Moscow for their German heritage.

She still lives in a town just 30 miles from the gulag village where her family were sent in the 1940s after the outbreak of the second world war. And despite the rehabilitation of her exiled family, the denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has never been able to leave.

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Spanish police rescue migrants hidden in waste containers – video

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Spanish authorities have rescued several people who had been hiding in recycling containers in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the tip of Morocco, where each year thousands of migrants attempt to reach the Spanish mainland from northern Africa. Footage released by Spain’s Guardia Civil shows individuals partially buried in a container of glass bottles and another inside a bag of toxic ash

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Italian ambassador to DR Congo dies in attack on UN convoy

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Luca Attanasio and two others killed in attempted kidnapping north of Goma in eastern DRC

Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and two other people have been killed in an attack on a United Nations convoy in the restive east of the central African country.

The convoy from the World Food Programme (WFP) was attacked at about 10.30am local time (0830 GMT) during an attempted kidnapping near the town of Kanyamahoro, about 10 miles north of the regional capital, Goma, a spokesperson for Virunga national park said.

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Engine parts drop from Boeing 747 cargo plane in Netherlands

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Longtail Aviation cargo plane scatters small metal parts over Meerssen, injuring woman

Dutch authorities are investigating after a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane dropped engine parts shortly after takeoff from Maastricht airport.

The Longtail Aviation Flight 5504 cargo plane scattered mostly small metal parts over the southern Dutch town of Meerssen on Saturday, causing damage and injuring a woman.

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‘Painted by a madman’: The Scream graffiti reveals Munch’s state of mind

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Inscription on painting that has been subject of debate has been reattributed to the artist himself

It is an image that has intrigued the art world for more than a century and become synonymous with existential angst, and recently inspired its own emoji, but now some graffiti has added a new layer to the story of Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, The Scream.

A tiny pencil inscription in the top left corner of one of the four versions of the painting, which reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman”, has been the subject of debate over who wrote it – it was originally thought to be by Munch, but was later attributed to a vandal – but new analysis by experts at the National Museum of Norway suggests it is indeed in the hand of the artist.

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Spain braces for fifth nigth of protest over arrest of Pablo Hasél

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Police and demonstrators clashed again in Barcelona during demonstrations over the jailing of Pablo Hasél

Police and demonstrators in Barcelona clashed for a fifth night on Saturday, with thousands taking to the streets across Spain to protest against the jailing of a controversial rapper for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.

Angry demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, and took him to jail to start serving a nine-month sentence in a highly contentious free speech case.

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Bird flu: humans infected with H5N8 strain for first time in Russia

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Seven poultry workers found to be infected, but no evidence of transmission between humans

A H5N8 strain of bird flu has been detected in humans for the first time, among seven workers who were infected at a Russian poultry plant in December.

There is no evidence of the strain being transmitted between humans, but Russia has reported the transmission to the World Health Organization.

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Ports feel the chill as trade re-routes around Brexit Britain

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In Holyhead, traffic has fallen 50% as hauliers stymied by Brexit find their way from Ireland to France without entering the UK

Perched on the shores of Anglesey, the island linked by road bridges to the north-west coast of Wales, Holyhead’s geography has given it a leading role in British-Irish trade since the early 19th century.

About 50 miles directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin, a journey of just three-and-a-quarter hours by ferry, Holyhead was until December the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in the UK after Dover. About 450,000 trucks rumbled through each year on their way to Dublin, with cargoes of meat and agricultural produce, secondhand cars and items destined for the shelves of Irish supermarkets.

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Violence over jailing of rapper rocks Spain for third night

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Protesters burn barricades in centre of Barcelona as case of Pablo Hasél risks dividing ruling leftwing coalition

Spanish police and protesters have clashed for a third night as the backlash against the jailing of a rapper for controversial tweets continued.

Dozens of people have been arrested since Tuesday night when angry demonstrations erupted after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, who had been holed up in a university in Catalonia to avoid going to jail in a highly contentious free speech case.

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