Critics of 2020 law allowing gay couples to marry gather 61,027 signatures to force national vote
Switzerland will hold a referendum on whether to push ahead with same-sex marriage after opponents forced the government to hold a binding vote on a 2020 law allowing gay couples to marry.
The Swiss parliament passed a bill recognising same-sex marriage last December, several years after most other western European states.
Continue reading...Rome had long urged Paris to detain 10 people found guilty of terrorist acts from late 1960s to early 80s
Seven Italian far-left guerrilla fighters, who hid in France for decades after escaping terrorism convictions that left “an open wound” in Italy, have been arrested.
French authorities are also searching for three other Italians convicted on terrorism charges linked to bombings and assassinations between the late 1960s and early 1980s.
Continue reading...UK and EU senior figures hail moment as a ‘new chapter’ of friendly relations after four years of division
The European parliament has given its overwhelming backing to the Brexit trade and security deal, prompting senior figures on both sides to speak of hope for a “new chapter” of friendly relations after four years of division.
Five MEPs voted against the deal, with 660 in favour and 32 abstentions, although in an accompanying resolution the chamber described the referendum result of 23 June 2016 as a “historic mistake”.
Continue reading...Digital health certificates could show whether tourists have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from the virus
Spain plans to reopen to overseas holidaymakers from June under the Covid digital health certificate scheme, which could show whether tourists have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from the virus.
According to the country’s secretary of state for tourism, the scheme will prove “fundamental to offering travellers certainty”.
Continue reading...Spaniards David Beriáin and Roberto Fraile, and Rory Young, a Zambian-born Irish citizen, ambushed by jihadists
Two Spanish journalists and an Irish conservationist have been killed after they were ambushed by jihadists while on an anti-poaching mission in Burkina Faso.
On Tuesday, Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, said 44-year-old David Beriáin, a reporter, and 47-year-old Roberto Fraile, a photographer, were believed to have been murdered on Monday, after they were identified from an image provided by Burkinabe authorities.
Continue reading...Former leader of neo-Nazi party convicted in absentia in 2020 faces extradition to Athens
When the authorities caught up with Ioannis Lagos, they caught up with him fast. The MEP, once a feared leader of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has been arrested hours after he was stripped of his immunity as an elected member of the European parliament and told he would be extradited to Athens.
Seized in his Brussels home on Tuesday, the convicted lawmaker had been sentenced to 13 years after a Greek court determined at the end of a landmark trial in 2020 that Golden Dawn was a criminal organisation masquerading as a political party.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions
The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.
The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.
Continue reading...Vladislav Ivanov says he regretted his decision to join Produce Camp 2021 but fans refused to vote him out
The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended after nearly three months.
Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final.
Continue reading...Witnesses will be asked to respond to claims the ’Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in City of London
In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group.
Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.
Continue reading...UN-led meeting in Geneva aims to re-energise efforts to end dispute four years after talks collapsed
Leaders from either side of Cyprus’s ethnic divide have flown to Geneva for a UN-led summit aimed at exploring whether the time is ripe to resume the peace process four years after the collapse of talks to reunify the island.
The foreign ministers of Greece, Turkey and Britain – Cyprus’s three guarantor powers – will join Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot teams in the hope of re-energising efforts to end the west’s longest-running dispute.
Continue reading...Vaccinated Americans could be let into Europe this summer, while UK talking to member states such as Greece
The EU is at an advanced stage of talks with the US over mutually recognising vaccine passports to boost transatlantic tourism this summer, but Brussels is yet to open discussions with the British government.
A spokesperson for the European commission said that while discussions had been held with US officials and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, there were “no contacts at present with the UK”.
Continue reading...Firm says it will ‘strongly defend itself’ against claim it breached agreement to supply Covid jab
AstraZeneca said it would “strongly defend itself in court” and highlighted its supply of 50m Covid vaccine doses to European countries as Brussels launched legal action against the pharmaceutical company over delivery shortfalls.
The Anglo-Swedish firm said it regretted the decision by the European commission to start a legal case over alleged breaches of an advance purchase agreement.
Continue reading...Dozens of high-profile actors feature on website making fun of Germany’s coronavirus restrictions
For half a century, the police procedural Tatort (“Crime Scene”) has provided a rallying point for Germany’s culturally diverse regions, gathering viewers around their television sets every Sunday night to watch detectives from across the country solve gruesome murders over the course of 90 minutes.
But 13 months into living with a virus that can’t be put behind bars, Tatort has become the scene of a different kind of crime: a series of satirical videos making fun of coronavirus restrictions, recorded by TV actors associated with the crime drama, has plunged lockdown-fatigued Germany into a bitter culture war.
Continue reading...Film about a former resistance fighter travelling to visit the concentration camp where her brother died wins prize at the 93rd Academy Awards
• Watch the Guardian’s Oscar winning film, Colette
Colette, a film released by the Guardian, has won the Oscar for best documentary short at the 93rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
Written and directed by Anthony Giacchino, and produced by Alice Doyard, Annie Small and Aaron Matthews, Colette tells the story of 90-year-old former French resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine, who visits the concentration camp where her brother was murdered during the war with a young history student, Lucie Fouble.
Continue reading...Elbaz redefined the party dress, showing how glamour could be sensual rather than overtly sexy
Alber Elbaz will be remembered for his heart. Emotion was at the core of every dress he designed. The signature that ran through every one of his catwalk shows was not a hemline or a logo, but a feeling of joyfulness. His jewel-coloured, goddess-draped dresses made women feel happy and confident – and because they felt happy and confident, they looked beautiful.
Elbaz, who has died from Covid-19 aged 59, was at the centre of the fashion industry for over three decades, riding both its highs and its lows as he transformed the fortunes of the dormant house of Lanvin before being unceremoniously dropped in 2015.
Through three turbulent decades, no one in the industry had a bad word to say about him – quite an achievement in the fickle world of thousand-pound frocks. Warm and funny with a shy, neurotic charm, he was a confidant and therapist to his movie-star clients and his loyal seamstresses alike. When he appeared at the end of a catwalk for his brief bow, looking like a bespectacled teddy bear in a bow tie, the applause was always thunderous. His death has sent shockwaves through the industry, not just for being sudden and unexpected, but because Elbaz was loved.
Continue reading...Fifteen people have emerged from a cave in south-west France after 40 days underground in an experiment to see how the absence of clocks, daylight and external communications would affect their sense of time
Continue reading...Marine archaeologist unearths evidence suggesting biblical king’s riches were based on voyages he funded with Phoenician allies
King Solomon is venerated in Judaism and Christianity for his wisdom and in Islam as a prophet, but the fabled ruler is one of the Bible’s great unsolved mysteries.
Archaeologists have struggled in vain to find conclusive proof that he actually existed. With no inscriptions or remnants of the magnificent palace and temple he is supposed to have built in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, the Israelite king has sunk into the realm of myth.
Continue reading...MPs and activists urge their leader to commit to aligning Britain with Brussels and restoring EU programmes
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is coming under pressure from Europhile MPs and party activists to support sweeping changes to the Brexit deal as concern rises about the damage it is doing to Britain’s economy and jobs and the freedom to move and work across the continent.
A report for the leftwing group Another Europe is Possible and separate research by the non-aligned, internationalist Best for Britain organisation both strongly support the case for more active engagement with the EU to improve the deal and rebuild relations with member states.
Continue reading...Last week, a dinghy full of migrants sank near Libya. Those who were part of the rescue mission tell of a needless tragedy
The weather was already turning when the distress call went out. A rubber dinghy with 130 people on board was adrift in the choppy Mediterranean waters.
On the bridge of the Ocean Viking, one of the only remaining NGO rescue boats operational in the Mediterranean, 121 nautical miles west, stood Luisa Albera, staring anxiously at her computer screen and then out at the rising storm and falling light at sea.
Continue reading...President called Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday to inform him US would make designation on 106th anniversary of the genocide
Joe Biden has become the first US president declare formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, more than a century after the mass killings by Ottoman troops and opening a rift between the new US administration and Ankara.
Related: Biden vows US will work with Russia on climate
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