Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Austria is to enter a third lockdown from Boxing Day but will stage mass coronavirus tests in mid-January to determine who will be exempt from certain restrictions, the government announced on Friday.
Italy is preparing to outline new measures that could lead to a complete lockdown over the Christmas and new year period, while the Spanish government has warned of a possible “third wave” of infections.
Michel Barnier has sought to break the deadlock in what he described as the final “few hours” of the post-Brexit trade talks with a new proposal on EU fishing access in British waters, after Boris Johnson called on Brussels to move to seal a deal.
After meetings with aides to the EU’s heads of state and government and fisheries ministers, Barnier was locked in late-night discussions with the UK negotiators led by David Frost, at what Barnier described as a “moment of truth”.
A Belgian minister has blown the lid off a sensitive and commercial secret – the price that the EU has agreed to pay for the leading Covid vaccines.
Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that her country intends to buy from the EU. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.
New documentary questions findings of original investigation into cause of sinking in Baltic Sea that claimed 852 lives
Sweden will seek to lift a ban on inspections of the wreck of the Estonia ferry that sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 with the loss of 852 lives in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority has made a request to amend a law banning dives in order to allow a re-examination of the wreck after a documentary presented evidence of a previously unknown hole in the hull.
Analysis: new president must find a way to contain such hyper-aggressive behaviour from Moscow
It is Joe Biden’s biggest foreign policy headache. As well as confronting the Covid pandemic, the president-elect has to deal with a more familiar problem: Russia. Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election cast a shadow over US politics for four long years.
And now the Kremlin appears to have struck again. This week details emerged of an unprecedented cyber-attack against US government departments. Beginning in March, suspected Russian hackers penetrated Washington’s signature institutions.
Michel Barnier has said the main obstacle to a deal in the final ‘few hours’ of the post-Brexit trade negotiation is whether Brussels will be able to hit British goods with tariffs if the government closes UK waters to EU fishing fleets.
The European parliament has requested a deal by midnight on Sunday. Barnier added that sooner or later the UK and EU would have to have a strong alliance even if an agreement is not reached by the deadline
The United States on Thursday surpassed a total of 17m coronavirus cases, with infections rising by more than a million a week during the early winter surge – while at the start of the year it took three months for the US to accumulate its first million cases.
Nearly a quarter of a million new coronavirus infections and more than 3,600 deaths had been reported just on Wednesday, shattering previous records as the national vaccination campaign against Covid-19 began rolling out across the country this week.
To Australia (where your correspondent currently sits):
The state of Victoria has imposed a ‘traffic light’ restriction system on travellers from New South Wales from tonight.
We are very strongly advising all Victorians not to travel to Sydney. As conditions are expected to deteriorate, and you may not be able to re-enter Victoria without undertaking quarantining for 14 days.
Don’t come from Sydney if you’re planning to come to Melbourne... it won’t be a holiday. It won’t be a Christmas. It won’t be the Christmas or the holiday you were planning. The situation in NSW and Sydney is rapidly evolving.
There are no restrictions on movement in the northern beaches in Sydney, but here is an indication people are complying with requests to stay home, from the MP for Mackellar.
Justice minister says: ‘Now it will be clear, that if both parties do no consent to sex, then it’s rape’
Denmark has strengthened its rape laws by criminalising sex without explicit consent.
The new law passed by parliament on Thursday also widened the circumstances that could constitute rape – under the old legislation, prosecutors had to show the rapist had used violence or attacked someone who was unable to resist.
Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth are on trial for the death of Mario Cerciello Rega in Rome
The US student who admitted stabbing a policeman in Rome last year was shaking and crying inside a police station after learning the attack was fatal, his mother has testified at his trial.
Finnegan Lee Elder, 20, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 19, face life sentences for the July 2019 death of police officer Mario Cerciello Rega during a botched drug bust in Rome while they were on holiday.
One in three on Aegean isles have contemplated suicide amid EU containment policies, report reveals
Years of entrapment on Aegean islands has resulted in a mental health crisis for thousands of refugees, with one in three contemplating suicide, a report compiled by psychosocial support experts has revealed.
Containment policies pursued by the EU have also spurred ever more people to attempt to end their lives, according to the report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on Thursday.
Analysis: amid constitutional changes and Navalny poisoning, Russian president strives to maintain power
For a man who has spent much of 2020 in social isolation, it has been a busy year for Vladimir Putin. He changed Russia’s constitution to allow himself to stay in power potentially until 2036; acted to retain influence over his “near abroad” as protests erupted in Belarus and conflict flared in Nagorno-Karabakh; and, according to a wealth of evidence released this week, ordered the assassination of his leading political opponent with a chemical weapon.
As news breaks of one of the biggest and most significant hacks of the US government in history, with Russia the prime suspect, it seems that Putin and his intelligence services may have retained their appetite for audacious, controversial moves, six years after the annexation of Crimea and four years after the alleged interference to aid Donald Trump’s election campaign.
Poland will enter a national quarantine from 28 December to 17 January, during which all hotels, ski slopes and shopping malls will close, the health minister, Adam Niedzielski, said on Thursday.
“I call on every Pole to be responsible for themselves and their loved ones. But I know that calls won’t help,” Niedzielski told a news conference.
One of Ukraine’s best known veteran politicians, Gennady Kernes, died in Germany early on Thursday from Covid-19 complications, local authorities and members of his family said.
Mayor of the largest eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Kernes, 61, went into politics after making his fortune in the post-communist 1990s.
Member states blame uncertainty over Brexit as reason for breach of next year’s limits
Fish populations will continue to be over-exploited in EU waters, partly as a result of Brexit, after a decision on next year’s fishing quotas among EU countries fell well short of scientific advice.
Fishing limits are set to exceed scientific advice for about a third of EU fish stocks, after EU ministers met on Thursday morning, with EU member states citing the uncertainty regarding fishing rights after Brexit as a reason for breaching limits on sustainable catches.
The king of Sweden said his country's handling of the coronavirus pandemic had been a failure and sharply criticised policies partly blamed for a high death toll among elderly people.
Carl XVI Gustaf used an annual royal Christmas television address to highlight the growing impact of the virus as hospitals in the Stockholm region warned they were struggling to cope with a surge in cases and polls showed public confidence in the authorities had plunged
Vladimir Putin has denied Russia was behind the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, calling a recent investigation by Bellingcat a “falsification”.
“Who needs to poison him,” he said during a nationally televised press conference, denying that Russia’s FSB spy agency was involved. “If they’d wanted to [poison him] then they probably would have finished the job.”
Release of 18 men seized by Khalifa Haftar’s forces ends standoff between countries
Eighteen Italian fishermen, held captive in Libya for more than 100 days, have been freed, ending a political standoff between the two countries over the fate of the men.
The prolonged imprisonment of the group had become an embarrassment for Italy’s government, with critics accusing ministers of failing to stand up to Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who holds sway in eastern Libya.
Emmanuel Macron has been diagnosed with Covid-19 after developing symptoms, the Élysée Palace has announced, forcing several other European leaders who had recently met the French president into self-isolation.
In a brief statement on Thursday, the palace said Macron had a PCR test as soon as the symptoms had appeared and would “self-isolate for seven days in line with the health protocol applicable to everyone”.
PM says no deal is ‘very likely’ after speaking to Ursula von der Leyen
Boris Johnson claimed the Brexit talks were in a “serious situation” after a call with Ursula von der Leyen, even as the EU’s chief negotiator raised hopes of a weekend Brexit agreement by persuading the European parliament to delay its deal deadline to Sunday.
In a statement released after a short stock-take telephone call on Thursday evening with the European commission president, the prime minister repeated his suggestion that it was “very likely” that an agreement would not be reached, with fisheries the standout issue.