Category Archives: Europe

France not complicit in Rwanda genocide, says Macron commission

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Report says France did not do enough to halt the 1994 killings but found no evidence of complicity

France bears the burden of “heavy and damning responsibilities” in the Rwandan genocide but was not complicit in the slaughter, according to the findings of an official commission set up by Emmanuel Macron.

As many as 800,000 people, mainly from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic population, were massacred in a wave of killings in 1994. The report released on Friday confirmed long and persistent accusations that France did not do enough to halt the killings, but said there was no evidence of complicity in the massacres.

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At least 20 livestock ships caught in Suez canal logjam

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Concerns for animals’ welfare if Ever Given blockage crisis is protracted


At least 20 of the boats delayed due to a stricken container ship in the Suez canal are carrying livestock, according to marine tracking data, raising concerns about the welfare of the animals if the logjam becomes protracted.

The 220,000-ton Ever Given is causing the longest closure of the Suez canal in decades with more than 200 ships estimated to be unable to pass, and incoming vessels diverting around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

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France claims UK will struggle to source second Covid jabs

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EU will not be blackmailed over Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, says foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian

The war of words with the EU over vaccines has escalated as France’s foreign minister claimed Britain will struggle to source second Covid jabs but that Brussels would not be “blackmailed” into exporting doses to solve the problem.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, a close political ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, claimed that the UK’s success had been built on driving forward with first jabs without having secured the second doses necessary for full vaccination.

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Russian conservationists hail rare sighting of Amur leopard with cubs

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Sighting in Primorye region said to show success of fight against poachers and steps to boost species population

Russian conservationists have hailed a rare sighting of an Amur leopard mother with three cubs in the far-eastern region of Primorye as proof of the efficiency of the country’s efforts to boost the population of the endangered species.

Scientists in a Russian national park in Primorye on the border with China obtained the images using a remote camera trap. The video footage shows the feline family standing on top of a hill in the Land of the Leopard national park.

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French monks locked down with 2.8 tonnes of cheese pray for buyers

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Raw-milk product normally sold only to restaurants or visitors to Cîteaux Abbey is marketed online

A French monastery in the heart of Burgundy has launched an emergency online sale to get rid of thousands of its artisanal cheeses, which are languishing in its cellars as Covid-19 keeps buyers away.

The Cîteaux Abbey, just south of Dijon, birthplace of the Cistercian Catholic order, usually sells its raw-milk, semi-soft discs only to restaurants or visitors to its on-site shop. But a drop in demand since the coronavirus crisis erupted last year has left the abbey’s 19 Trappist monks with 4,000 cheeses too many, a 2.8-tonne problem.

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‘They can see us in the dark’: migrants grapple with hi-tech fortress EU

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A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers

Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.

But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.

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Gibraltar looks to post-Covid era as vaccine drive nears completion

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British overseas territory is positioning itself as real-time case study in relaxing restrictions

This month Gibraltar’s health minister snapped a photo from her first dinner out in months, showing two glasses of red wine sitting prominently on the table and a face mask cast off in the background. “Operation freedom begins,” tweeted Samantha Sacramento alongside the photo.

Operation Freedom, the name given to Gibraltar’s vaccination programme, is now closing in on its target: in the coming days the British overseas territory will become one of the first places in the world where every willing resident over the age of 16 has been fully vaccinated.

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Ursula von der Leyen backs authorisation mechanism for Covid vaccine exports – video

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Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU is transparent and open, and welcomes other countries to be transparent with their exports.

Speaking at a virtual summit, she said contracts should be fulfilled before exporting vaccines and should keep reciprocity, which needs to be transparent so supply chains stay intact.

The president of the European commission said companies that honour their contracts are important to the vaccine programme, both in Europe and worldwide.

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EU leaders back ‘global value chains’ instead of vaccine export bans

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Refusal to support measure despite Ursula von der Leyen highlighting 21m doses sent to UK

EU leaders backed “global value chains” rather than support Brussels in using new powers to block Covid jab exports to highly vaccinated countries, despite being told that 21m doses had been sent to the UK.

At a virtual summit, attended briefly by Joe Biden, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighted the large shipments sent over the Channel, amounting to two-thirds of the jabs given in the UK.

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France limits outdoor gatherings to six as Covid infections rise

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More areas of the country get mobility restrictions while Hungary and Poland face crises

Concern is mounting among health experts that France is not doing enough to curb a rise in coronavirus infections, particularly among younger people, as a third wave fuelled by the B117 variant first detected in the UK accelerates across Europe.

Announcing 45,000 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the French health minister, Olivier Véran, on Thursday banned outdoor gatherings of more than six people and added three more départements, including the area around Lyon, to 16 already placed under tougher mobility restrictions.

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Cruise ships to be kept away from St Mark’s Square in Venice

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Italian government announces ‘temporary’ move to force ships to dock at industrial port instead

Cruise ships will no longer sail past St Mark’s Square in Venice and will be made to dock at the lagoon city’s industrial port, the Italian government has said.

The ministers for infrastructure, culture, tourism and the environment jointly took the decision “to protect a cultural and historical heritage that belongs not only to Italy but to the entire world”, a statement said on Thursday.

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UK diplomacy masks private fury in Covid vaccine row with EU

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Tussles over supplies could last months despite commitment in public to work together

Tussles with the EU over vaccine supplies could continue for months, UK government insiders fear, despite a joint statement in which both sides committed to working together.

From Boris Johnson’s phone calls to EU leaders to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s discreet lobbying on the fringes of this week’s Nato meeting, a significant amount of senior government time and energy is being invested in trying to resolve the issue.

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EU leaders push back against bloc’s plans to halt Covid vaccine export

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More sceptical member states hope ‘stick will never be used’ amid concerns over supply chain

EU leaders are likely to shy away from supporting the use of new powers to block Covid vaccine shipments to countries such as the UK with better jab coverage than the bloc, according to a draft statement ahead of a meeting of EU leaders today.

The European commission has increased its scope for blocking vaccine exports but disquiet among capitals is set to be reflected in a muted statement at the end of the virtual summit on Thursday evening.

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‘Just write STOP’: the teenager helping Polish women flee abuse

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Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during Covid

In April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.

Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company.

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Covid curfew and clock change threaten to call time on Spain’s drive-in cinemas

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Country’s oldest autocine is calling for exemption from 10pm rule so it can survive summer’s later sunsets

At 7.30 on Friday evening, Godzilla and King Kong are scheduled to converge on a large lot in eastern Spain to trade blows and bellows, rip fistfuls of fur and scales off each other and generally wreak CGI havoc for an appreciative, car-bound audience.

Their titanic sparring, however, could be short-lived. This weekend, the wading reptilian metaphor for atomic warfare and the conflicted, skyscraper-bothering ape could find themselves cowed by the setting sun, the changing of the clocks and the local coronavirus curfew.

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AstraZeneca plant investigated by Italian police at EU’s request

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Investigation is fresh sign of breakdown in relations between Brussels and Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier

An AstraZeneca plant has come under investigation by the Italian police at the request of Brussels in a sign of the breakdown in relations between the Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier and the EU.

Officers were sent into the facility in the town Anagni, east of Rome, on Saturday evening after the European commission contacted the Italian government with concerns.

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Germany eases citizenship rules for descendants of Nazi victims

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Measure helps close legal loopholes that led to many victims’ descendants having applications rejected

The German government has agreed a draft law to naturalise some descendants of Nazi victims who were previously denied citizenship.

Described by Berlin as a symbolic step, the measure helps close legal loopholes that had led to many victims’ descendants having their citizenship application rejected.

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The beluga whale who became famous: Aleksander Nordahl’s best photograph

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‘He was called Hvaldimir and he would play in front of crowds at Hammerfest harbour in Norway. One woman dropped her phone and he fetched it for her’

In April 2019, a beluga whale appeared alongside fishing boats off the coast of Norway. He was wearing a harness. A fisherman called Joar Hesten freed him, and saw the harness had stamped on it “equipment of St Petersburg”. The media went crazy, with talk of a “spy whale”, and the creature was named Hvaldimir, a combination of hval, the Norwegian word for whale, and Vladimir, a nod to Russia’s President Putin.

The whale became famous. There were Instagram videos of him playing in Hammerfest harbour in front of crowds. One woman dropped her phone in the water and the whale fetched it for her. He would bring up bones from the depths to show people, almost like little gifts. It became this huge moment on social media: everyone in the country fell in love with the whale. Even the hardcore fishing villages melted for Hvaldimir.

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UK singled out for failing to export Covid vaccines to EU

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European commission revising export authorisation mechanism ‘to ensure vaccination of EU’

Britain has been singled out for failing to export Covid vaccines to the EU as Brussels empowered officials to prohibit shipments of doses to countries with a better vaccination coverage than within the bloc.

Valdis Dombrovskis, a European commission vice-president, said the commission was revising its export authorisation mechanism in order to “ensure vaccination of our own population”.

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Vladimir Putin receives first dose of Russian-made Covid vaccine in private

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Russian president declines to have first dose in public after delaying jab for months

Vladimir Putin has received his first dose of a Russian-made coronavirus vaccine in private, his spokesman has confirmed, in an apparent effort to boost Russia’s fledgling vaccination drive after months of delaying his jab.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told news agencies late on Tuesday that the 68-year-old president had been vaccinated but did not specify which one of the three Russian-made vaccines was administered.

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