Experts say ‘incredible discovery’ is the earliest known version of the early 17th century artist’s Holy Family works
A painting that hung for decades in a municipal building in Brussels has been authenticated as the work of Flemish master Jacob Jordaens.
After analysis including dendrochronology – dating works from the wood panels they are painted on – experts determined that it is the oldest known version of The Holy Family by Jordaens, painted in the early 17th century.
Continue reading...Radio equipment stolen from Ilyushin-80 aircraft designed to protect Putin and top officials
Thieves have targeted a Russian “doomsday” plane, the military aircraft that would be used by top officials, including Vladimir Putin, in case of a nuclear war.
The robbery of the Ilyushin-80, a mobile command post specially designed to keep officials alive and in command of the military during a nuclear conflict, took place at an airfield in southern Russia, state media reported.
Continue reading...UK prioritising over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents; France unlikely to end lockdown on 15 December; Brazil to make vaccines free
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Good Morning Scotland the next doses of the vaccine will arrive next week. He said:
The next scheduled arrival will be next week and the numbers depend on how quickly Pfizer can manufacture it.
It is being manufactured in Belgium and obviously right across the UK the job is to be able to get the vaccinations done as quickly as the manufacturer can create it, so we’ve been all working together really closely, the UK Government, which has been buying the vaccine and getting it delivered into the country, and then the NHS in the four nations of the UK.
We’ve got a broad schedule, there will be several million for the UK as a whole, so several hundred thousand for Scotland over the remainder of this month.
We’ve got that as a broad delivery schedule but obviously the manufacturing process itself is complicated, so we’ve got to get the stuff in the country and then once it’s in the country we can be confident that we’re able to deliver it, and I’m sure the NHS across Scotland and across the whole of the UK is up to the challenge.
We are not proposing to have a sort of immunity certificate that allows you to do different things.
Got a bit of a lump in the throat watching this. Feels like such a milestone moment after a tough year for everyone.
The first vaccines in Scotland will be administered today too. https://t.co/KKaEhf19Jo
NHS nurse Mrs Parsons said it was a “huge honour” to be the first in the country to deliver the vaccine to a patient.
She said:
It’s a huge honour to be the first person in the country to deliver a Covid-19 jab to a patient, I’m just glad that I’m able to play a part in this historic day.
The last few months have been tough for all of us working in the NHS, but now it feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Continue reading...PM to make trip in 11th-hour effort to break impasse, raising hopes of a deal on trade and security
Boris Johnson will travel to Brussels for a face-to-face summit with the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in an 11th-hour attempt to break the impasse in the Brexit negotiations.
A long-awaited crunch meeting will be held in the “coming days”, the two leaders said in a joint statement following a phone call lasting over an hour, keeping hopes alive of agreement on a trade and security deal. Sources on both sides pointed to Wednesday or Thursday as the most likely dates.
Continue reading...Paris’s concerns about UK demands are widely shared, analysts, politicians and EU diplomats say
Emmanuel Macron may be talking tougher than the rest of the EU27 as Brexit talks reach their endgame, but despite claims to the contrary in London and by a UK media that always enjoys pointing fingers across the Channel, France is far from isolated.
Headlines such as “Le bust-up” and “France derails Brexit talks” do not reflect European reality, analysts, politicians and EU diplomats have insisted, saying Paris’s fundamental concerns are widely shared across the EU27.
Continue reading...Latest updates: EU’s chief Brexit negotiator says gaps on level playing field, governance and fisheries are still not bridged
RTE’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly, has posted a thread on Twitter with the full comments from Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, this morning.
Full remarks of Irish foreign min @simoncoveney to @rtenews this morning:
“Having heard from Michel Barnier this morning, really the news is very downbeat. I would say he is very gloomy, and obviously very cautious about the ability to make progress today.
2/ "There was news last night on some media sources that there was a breakthrough on fishing. That is absolutely not the case from what we’re hearing this morning,” he said.
Mr Coveney said that fisheries, the level playing field and governance remain “very problematic.”
3/ “There really was no progress made yesterday, that’s our understanding and so we’ve got to try to make a breakthrough at some point today, before the two principals, the Commission president and the prime minister speak later on this evening.
4/ “Unfortunately, I’d like to be giving more positive news, but at the moment these negotiations seem stalled, and the barriers to progress are still very much in place.
5/ “We haven’t, through the negotiating teams, found a way to find compromises that can progress these negotiations towards a successful conclusion.
6/ “There is still time. Lunchtime seems a long way away now, given the intensity of these discussions, but that’s where we are, and anyone who is briefing that there are breakthroughs in either of these two big areas...I don’t think is accurate.”
Continue reading...California confirmed record new cases on Sunday; South Korea expands testing amid case surge; Biden picks California Attorney General Becerra to lead pandemic response
The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5,000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France*s top coronavirus experts said today.
Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.
It’s back to school today for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising Covid-19 infections.
The city’s public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade, whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.
We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools, our schools are clearly safer. This is what our health care leaders say. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City. So, I really think everyone in the school community can feel secure because so many measures are in place to protect everyone.
Terms on access to UK waters all but finalised, but Franco-German demand over EU laws remains an obstacle
A major breakthrough has been made in Brexit negotiations on the rights of European fleets to fish in UK waters, EU sources said last night, leaving a Franco-German demand that Britain follow EU laws as the final hurdle to a historic trade and security deal.
Sources in Brussels said the two sides had all but finalised terms on the level of access for EU boats to seas within the UK’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone, with a transition period for phasing in changes understood to be between five and seven years.
Continue reading...PM lauds 1978 constitution after some former armed forces members rue demise of Franco dictatorship
Spain has celebrated the 42nd anniversary of the constitution that ushered the country back to democracy following the end of the Franco dictatorship, as some former members of the armed forces made inflammatory declarations.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the 1978 constitution was “the greatest success of our collective history” and hailed 42 years of “peace, co-existence and freedom”.
Continue reading...Heirs of Jewish art dealers bring case over Guelph Treasure that defence lawyers say could open floodgates
A 12-year wrangle over a rare collection of medieval ecclesiastical art sold by Jewish art dealers to the Nazis in 1935 will arrive in front of the highest court in the US on Monday, in a landmark case defence lawyers say could open the floodgates for restitution battles from all over the world to be fought via the US.
The supreme court will hear oral arguments on whether the dealers’ heirs can sue in US courts to retrieve the church reliquaries, known as the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, from Germany.
Continue reading...Ceding of land to Azerbaijan by Nikol Pashinyan in return for peace sparks fury in Yerevan
Tens of thousands of opposition supporters have marched through the Armenian capital to call for the resignation of the country’s prime minister because of his handling of the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In six weeks of fierce fighting that ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal on 10 November, the Azerbaijani army reclaimed lands that Armenian forces have held for more than a quarter of a century.
Continue reading...Phone talk between PM and European commission president Ursula von der Leyen ended without a breakthrough
Brexit negotiations will resume in Brussels on Sunday after Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, agreed that a trade and security deal was still possible in the immediate days.
In a joint statement, the two leaders said they would talk again on Monday evening, with the two sides searching for a breakthrough with just three weeks until the UK leaves the single market and customs union.
Continue reading...Riot officers fire teargas and charge protesters in one incident after fireworks launched at their lines
The French government’s attempts to calm growing public fury over new legislation deemed a danger to civil liberties was challenged with a new wave of protests across the country on Saturday.
A largely peaceful march against the contested global security law and police violence in Paris degenerated after hooded and black-clad casseurs – vandals – disrupted the demonstration for the second weekend in a row. Clusters of hooded youths set fire to vehicles, smashed shop windows and hurled stones and molotov cocktails at police, who responded with water cannons and teargas.
Continue reading...From non-polluting transport to sustainable industries, urban areas are perfect for testing radical solutions to global problems
• Ada Colau is the mayor of Barcelona
The pandemic will leave behind a very different world from that of a year ago. Thousands of people have died; entire industries have been brought to the brink; welfare states have been shaken. In the coming years, the major challenge facing all public leaders will be charting a path of recovery through the devastating human, social and economic marks that Covid-19 has left on our societies.
But rather than redoubling on the fragile world of the pre-pandemic age, we should be taking advantage of this moment to build one that is more just, balanced and sustainable.
Continue reading...Rightwing prime minister Viktor Orbán reignites anti-Soros rhetoric with EU dispute
Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is threatening to veto the new EU budget over a provision that would link some funding to rule-of-law concerns. As the standoff intensifies, he has found a familiar enemy to blame: the 90-year-old financier and philanthropist George Soros.
Orbán has reinvigorated his government’s anti-Soros campaign, which has often been marked by conspiratorial and antisemitic rhetoric, as Hungary and Poland have tussled with other European leaders over the so-called “rule-of-law” mechanism. The dispute is holding up final agreement on the EU’s €1.7tn (£1.5tn) seven-year budget and recovery package.
Continue reading...Biden will ask Americans to wear masks for his first 100 days in office; Cyprus announces new measure to ease travel; Iran’s cases top 1m
In the UK saliva tests for Covid-19, which are being introduced for NHS workers as part of the government’s mass testing programme, pick up only 13% of people with low levels of the virus and not 91%, as the official assessment has claimed, according to experts.
Two members of the Royal Statistical Society’s working group looking at the accuracy of Covid tests have questioned the results and the way they have been evaluated.
Related: Experts question claimed accuracy of Covid-19 saliva tests
Revelations of distorted corona virus tallies have caused growing controversy in Greece reports our correspondent Helena Smith in Athens.
Figures released by the government nightly have been slammed for not reflecting the truth after reports of mismanagement by the national public health organisation, EODY.
Continue reading...Special reporters take government to task over proposed legislation that would give police more power
UN experts have urged France to completely revise a proposed new security law, deeming it “incompatible” with international law and human rights.
Five independent UN special reporters took the French government to task over the proposed legislation and said tinkering with it by rewriting certain clauses was not enough.
Continue reading...Close ally of Macron says Paris may act unilaterally if terms not right as negotiations falter
Downing Street has warned that the Brexit negotiations have hit a “very difficult point”, as France threatened to wield its veto to kill a trade and security deal brought back from London by the EU’s chief negotiator.
With the negotiations hitting troubled waters at the 11th hour, Clément Beaune, France’s European affairs minister and a close ally of president Emmanuel Macron, said his country could act unilaterally if the terms were not right.
Continue reading...UK PM and European commission president to speak on Saturday after negotiators fail to reach agreement
The Brexit talks will enter their final act on Saturday with a shift to direct negotiations between Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, following the failure to find agreement in London.
In a joint statement, David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, said they had not been able to come to terms on the final issues and that the historic trade and security negotiation would be paused.
Continue reading...Mosque’s application for special recognition is refused after advice from security services
The Belgian government has refused permission for the Grand Mosque in the EU quarter of Brussels to be recognised as a local faith community, claiming that the place of worship has been infiltrated by Moroccan spies.
The decision to deny the application was made by the justice minister, Vincent Van Quickenborne, following advice from the security services, according to media reports. Recognition as a faith community secures financial support and assistance from the government.
Continue reading...