Category Archives: Europe

Digger review – family tensions are unearthed in slow-burn Greek drama

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A corporate destruction project offers a symbolic backdrop for this poignant drama about a father-son relationship

Its plot featuring a giant mining corporation known as “the monster” tearing up the landscape and causing bitter division among the hard-drinking local populace, this handsomely shot drama could be taking place in rust-belt America. But this is backwoods Greece, where forest rancher Nikitas (Vangelis Mourikis), first seen fending off a landslide caused by the miners’ activities, is fighting a running battle to keep them from despoiling the haven he loves. A motorbike throttle at midnight announces the arrival of his estranged son Johnny (Argyris Pandazaras), whose need to claim his inheritance adds to the pressure on Nikitas to ship out.

Related: Europe in 25 films: the critics’ choice

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‘I won’t go back’: why Libyans are joining the boats leaving their shores

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Libya, a transit stop for migrants trying to reach Europe, is now facing an exodus of its own people

After witnessing abuse and discrimination, Sherif Targi*, 21, decided to leave Libya for Europe.

“I saw killing and massacres because of the conflicts between Tuaregs and the Tebu [ethnic minorities],” he says.

Targi is a Tuareg from the desert city of Ubari in Libya’s south-west. Under Muammar Gaddafi, Tuareg people were marginalised – not issued government IDs, and restricted from getting work and public services. Things didn’t improve after the dictator was ousted.

In October 2019, Targi left home, travelling more than 600 miles (1,000km) to the coastal city of Zuwara. From there, he and about 200 other people, mainly Syrians, Moroccans and Sudanese, crammed themselves on board an overloaded wooden boat, and set off on a dangerous 18-hour journey.

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How a Spanish town pioneered dolls with Down’s syndrome

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The town of Onil has changed the lives of children everywhere

The first time Kelle Hampton glimpsed a doll with Down’s syndrome, anger boiled up inside her. Its exaggerated features bore little resemblance to the sweet facial characteristics that she loved about her daughter Nella, who was born with the genetic disorder.

The experience set the US blogger and author firmly against such dolls. But to her surprise, years later she found herself smitten with another doll. This time it had been carefully crafted to subtly capture the characteristics that made Nella unique. “This one was simply a beautiful doll any child would want to play with,” she said.

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Catalonia election poll suggests separatists will retain majority

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Catalan Socialist party finishes first as secessionists win more than half the vote on turnout of only 53%

Catalan pro-independence parties have increased their parliamentary majority following a regional election in which the unionist Socialists took the largest share of the vote and the far-right Vox party outperformed its conservative rivals to win its first seats in the northeastern Spanish region.

Sunday’s election was overshadowed by the Covid pandemic and dominated by the continuing debate over independence that has shaped and divided Catalan politics for the past decade.

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Women form human chains in Russia in support of Navalny’s wife

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About 300 women gathered in Moscow holding a white ribbon in -13C temperatures

Several hundred women formed human chains in Moscow and St Petersburg on Sunday, using Valentine’s Day to express support for the wife of the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and other political prisoners.

About 300 women gathered on Arbat Street in Moscow’s city centre holding a long white ribbon in temperatures of -13C (8F).

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Open sesame: Alibaba’s push into Europe a mixed blessing for Liège

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Apart from the pollution, there are concerns the Chinese firm’s new airport hub may not revive the fortunes of the Belgian region

Braving an ominously grey sky, Ine Brants, 33, perches precariously at the top of a stepladder at Liège airport’s perimeter fence. “Ah, the green queen,” she says, raising the long lens of her camera to Challenge Airlines’ green-liveried jumbo jet as it flies into view. “You can get a 747 rush hour here. It has definitely got busier since coronavirus.”

Brants’ lens is capturing the Alibaba effect. Quietly over the last three years, Liège, Belgium’s third largest city, has been transformed into a launchpad for the Chinese e-commerce group’s push into the European marketplace, a dynamic boosted by the coronavirus pandemic. It is a cause for celebration for some and worry for others.

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Raab shrugs off Brexit troubles, urging people to take ‘10-year view’

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Foreign secretary talks up global growth opportunities and says Brussels ‘imposing obstacles’ to trade

Potential losses in UK trade with the EU because of Brexit will be more than made up by more opportunities in developing markets, Dominic Raab has claimed, saying people should take a “10-year view” of the current troubles faced by companies.

Questioned about warnings from a number of firms that bureaucracy and duties means they will go out of business, or have to relocate operations inside the EU, the foreign secretary also appeared to blame Brussels, saying it was “imposing” obstacles to trade.

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Coronavirus live news: New Zealand puts Auckland in level 3 lockdown; Australia to receive first Pfizer vaccine delivery this week

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Victoria’s Holiday Inn outbreak rises to 16 cases on second day of state lockdown; Boris Johnson urges G7 leader to unite against virus. Follow the latest updates live

The press conference in Wellington, held in response to the discovery of three community cases in Auckland, has now finished. As of 11.59PM tonight Auckland will be placed under tougher restrictions, at level three, while the rest of the country will be moved to level two restrictions. (Details of the alert levels can be found online here).

Ardern said she was asking the public “to be strong and to be kind”:

I know we all feel the same way when this happens, we all get that sense of - not again. But remember we have been here before and that means we know how to get out of this again, and that is together. If you know someone in Auckland reach out, please check on them. If you are in Auckland please check on your neighburs and ensure they are looked after and supported.

Related: New Zealand Covid outbreak: Ardern puts Auckland into three-day lockdown

Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health, said officials were working under the assumption that the new Auckland cases were one of the new variants of Covid-19. “Regardless of where people have come from, these are the common variants and we do know they are more transmissible,” he said.

Ardern said that the decision to introduce tougher restrictions was “not taken lightly”. However, the cost to the economy would be far greater, she said, if the country was slow to react.

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France hospitals in ‘crisis organisation’ – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:

We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:

Related: Coronavirus live news: UK variant hits New Zealand; CDC says 'absolutely' too soon to lift US mask mandate

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Migrant boat sinks off Lampedusa with one dead and 22 missing

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Tunisian navy had to end rescue effort early due to bad weather but pulled one body from the water

One migrant is dead and 22 others are missing after their boat sank in the Mediterranean sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian navy has said.

Bad weather interrupted rescue operations around 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Lampedusa, the navy said on Saturday, adding that the body of one migrant had been pulled from the water, while 22 were missing.

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Catalan parties talk of separation, but for voters, health is the priority

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In tomorrow’s election, public services are a huge concern for the people as politicians debate independence

Much has changed in Poblenou over the past four years – not least the arrival of a pandemic that has devastated tourism and employment – but the people of the traditional working-class barrio in the north of Barcelona are struggling with a nagging sense of deja vu over Sunday’s regional election.

“All the talk is about independence but what most of us want from politicians is to solve social problems,” says Nuria Vallejo, a doctor working in the public sector who has lived in the neighbourhood for 20 years. “Number one is the health crisis, and then there’s the education system and questions of sustainability.”

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Mario Draghi sworn in as prime minister of Italy

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Former European Central Bank chief to lead unity government as it tackles Covid and economic slump

The former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has been sworn in as Italy’s prime minister at the head of a unity government called on to confront the coronavirus crisis and economic slump.

Draghi, a respected figure at home and internationally, managed to convince almost all of the country’s main parties to support his government, with leaders from the far-right League and populist Five Star Movement (M5S) adopting more moderate, pro-European tones in recent days.

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Mario Draghi’s new government to be sworn in on Saturday

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Italians optimistic as former ECB chief appoints mix of political and technocratic ministers to cabinet

Italy’s new government, led by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, will be sworn in on Saturday, ending weeks of political turmoil.

Draghi, 73, announced his cabinet, which contains a mix of political and technocratic ministers, to president Sergio Mattarella on Friday.

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‘A gift for Holocaust deniers’: how Polish libel ruling will hit historians

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The authors of a study on the fate of Polish Jews under Nazism have been told to apologise to a woman for defaming her uncle. The implications for future historical work are alarming

Poland’s nationalists have won their latest battle to defend the country’s wartime reputation. On Tuesday, the Warsaw district court ordered two leading historians to apologise to a woman for defaming a relative in their book about the Holocaust. The landmark ruling has serious implications for academic freedom and the future of Holocaust research, with historians around the world condemning the judgment.

“These are not matters to be adjudicated by courts, this is a point that can be discussed by scholars or interested readers in the exchange of opinions. In that sense, it’s really scandalous,” says Jan Tomasz Gross, whose seminal book Neighbours was a watershed in Poland’s public discussion of the Holocaust more than 20 years ago. “It’s part of a broad effort to stifle any inquiry and particularly the complicity of the local population in the persecution of Jews during that time.”

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Alexei Navalny back in court on charges of slandering war veteran

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Opposition leader accuses state of orchestrating case to damage his image among Russians

Alexei Navalny, the leading opposition figure whose jailing this month sparked protests across Russia, has been back in court to face charges of slandering a war veteran in a separate case.

Navalny denies the charges and has accused the state of orchestrating the case to damage his image among the Russian public.

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Gove and Šefčovič reiterate commitment to NI protocol after crisis talks

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Joint statement between UK and EU agrees to ‘spare no effort’ in implementing solutions

Michael Gove and the European commission’s vice-president have reiterated their “full commitment” to the Northern Ireland protocol following crisis talks in London.

A joint statement said Gove and Maroš Šefčovič had a “frank but constructive discussion” on Thursday evening, in which they agreed to “spare no effort” in implementing solutions.

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Brexit cost will be four times greater for UK than EU, Brussels forecasts

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Departure to cost EU 0.5% of GDP but UK 2.25% by end 2022, according to first official estimate since deal was agreed

The economic blow dealt by Brexit will be four times greater in the UK than the EU, according to the latest forecasts by Brussels.

A month into the new relationship, the European commission said the UK’s exit on the terms agreed by Boris Johnson’s government would generate a loss in gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of 2022 of about 2.25% in the UK compared with continued membership. In contrast, the hit for the EU is estimated to be about 0.5% over the same period.

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Undercover footage at French pig farm shows ‘abusive’ conditions

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The unit, which supplies the Herta brand, had been cleared by French state vets and claimed to be addressing concerns

French veterinary officials have been accused of publishing “falsely reassuring” inspection findings after undercover footage at a farm appeared to show pigs in conditions that continued to breach regulations following allegations of abuse in December.

The farm is a supplier for the Herta brand of frankfurter, part-owned by Nestlé, which is sold by most major UK supermarkets.

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Greek students at the barricades in dispute over education bill

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Government accused of taking law and order agenda to new heights with plans for campus police force

Before the sun had risen over Thessaloniki on Wednesday, Stergios Grigoriou and his fellow students had surrounded the Greek metropolis’s main university site and barricaded every entrance to it.

The act of defiance was not a one-off. In a country where protest politics reign large, students are on a mission: to overturn a bill that, in the name of bringing order to unruly universities, foresees the creation of disciplinary councils and a special campus police force. “Our demand is simple. The educational bill has to be withdrawn,” said Grigoriou. “It’s a repressive law that far from serving our needs only serves the fake needs of a conservative few.”

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Listen as a 17,000-year-old conch shell is played once more – video

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After laying silent for more than 17,000 years, an ancient instrument Is heard again – a deep, plaintive bleat, like a foghorn from the distant past. When archaeologists realised that a large conch shell discovered in the Marsoulas cave in the Pyrenees had been modified thousands of years ago to serve as a wind instrument, they invited a French horn player to play the conch in a sound studio.  The horn produced clear C, C-sharp, and D notes.

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