Category Archives: Europe

Russian authorities arrest cult leader who claims to be Jesus – video

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The leader of a cult who claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus was arrested in Russia in a special operation.

Armed officers stormed communities in the depths of Siberia that have been run by Sergei Torop, known to his followers as Vissarion, for the past three decades, with masked troops leading the 59-year-old to a helicopter.

Russia’s investigative committee said it would charge him with organising an illegal religious organisation, alleging that the cult extorted money from followers and subjected them to emotional abuse

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Maltese police arrest former PM Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff

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Keith Schembri is under investigation for money laundering linked to sales of passports to rich foreigners

Police in Malta have arrested Keith Schembri, the former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff, as part of an investigation into alleged kickbacks connected to the sale of Maltese passports.

Schembri was arrested just after midnight on Tuesday, hours after a court issued a wide-ranging order for all his assets and those of his family and companies to be frozen. Being questioned alongside Schembri is the high profile Maltese accountant Brian Tonna, and one of his associates, who are also subject to the same freezing order. All three men deny wrongdoing.

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Cult leader who claims to be reincarnation of Jesus arrested in Russia

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Former traffic officer Sergei Torop, AKA Vissarion, arrested in special operation in Siberia

Russian authorities have mounted a special operation to arrest a former traffic police officer who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus and has run a cult based in the depths of Siberia for the past three decades.

Helicopters and armed officers stormed communities run by Sergei Torop, known to his followers as Vissarion, and arrested the leader and two of his aides. Russia’s investigative committee said it would charge him with organising an illegal religious organisation, alleging that the cult extorted money from followers and subjected them to emotional abuse.

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Number of new weekly coronavirus cases at record high, says WHO

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Announcement comes as Covid deaths increased by 27% in Europe week on week

The weekly number of new recorded coronavirus infections worldwide was last week at its highest level to date, the World Health Organization has announced, as deaths from Covid-19 in Europe increased by more than a quarter week on week.

Almost 1 million people have now died from the coronavirus since it emerged in China at the beginning of the year.

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Theresa May says ‘reckless’ Brexit bill risks UK’s reputation

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Ex-PM says internal market bill could lead to a united Ireland and undermine trust in UK

Theresa May has launched a blistering attack on the government’s plan to give itself powers to renege on the special arrangements for Northern Ireland in the Brexit deal.

She described the plans as “reckless” and “irresponsible” and said they “risked the integrity of the United Kingdom”, as they would not only tarnish Britain’s reputation globally as an upholder of the law but could contribute to a reunited Ireland.

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Far-right Brothers of Italy on course to gain Marche region from left

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Party set to end 27 years of leftist rule and take its second regional presidency in elections

A candidate for the far-right Brothers of Italy looks set to end 27 years of leftwing rule in the eastern Marche region, and take the party’s second regional presidency.

The centre-left is likely to retain its stronghold of Tuscany, however, according to exit polls for key Italian regional elections.

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Michael Lonsdale, Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker, dies aged 89

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The César-winning actor appeared in films by François Truffaut and Alain Resnais, and played religious figures in Of Gods and Men and The Name of the Rose

Michael Lonsdale, the French-British actor whose best known role was the villain Drax in Moonraker but who also appeared in a string of films by auteur directors such as François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Alain Resnais, has died aged 89. Lonsdale’s agent, Olivier Loiseau, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the actor had died at his home in Paris.

Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson said in a statement: “He was an extraordinarily talented actor and a very dear friend. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this sad time.”

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Labs found novichok in and on my body, says Alexei Navalny

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Russian opposition leader demands in blogpost clothes be returned as evidence

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said in his first blogpost since emerging from a coma that western laboratories had found traces of novichok in and on his body and demanded that Moscow return his clothes.

Navalny, who is recovering in Berlin’s Charité hospital, fell critically ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and spent two days in hospital in Russia before being airlifted to Germany.

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Madrid’s Teatro Real cancels opera after social distancing protests – video

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Audience members clapped and shouted in protest over a lack of social distancing measures in Madrid on Sunday night causing an opera to be pulled at the last minute.

A performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball at the Teatro Real was abandoned after two failed attempts to begin. The decision was made to bring down the curtain at about 9.10pm.

One member of the audience said there were rows of more than a dozen people without any gaps between them. In a statement, theatre management said the house had been operating at just 51.5% of its total capacity

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Madrid opera halted by audience protest over lack of social distancing

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Spectators at Teatro Real say they were crammed into seats without space between them

A performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball was abandoned in Madrid on Sunday night after audience members protested over the lack of social distancing measures – especially for those in cheaper seats.

One member of the audience at the Teatro Real opera house said there were rows of more than a dozen people without any gaps between them.

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Global report: US Covid deaths near 200,000 as UK ‘heads in wrong direction’

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Israeli protesters return despite lockdown; Australian state of Victoria reports fewest infections in three months; New Zealand eases restrictions

The US is nearing the stark milestone of 200,000 deaths, nine months after the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as cases in the UK rose to a four-month high and Europe continued to see rising infections.

The number of deaths in the US, the highest in the world, stood at 199,509 on the Johns Hopkins University tracker on Monday morning, roughly a fifth of the global total. Nearly 6.8m of the world’s 30.1m infections are in the US.

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Protests in Madrid over coronavirus lockdown measures

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Protesters call for regional president who blamed ‘way of life of immigrants’ for rise to resign

By midday on Sunday, the chants of “Unity!” and “Healthcare!” that echoed around a busy crossroads in north-east Madrid had given rise to a more specific demand: “Ayuso resign!”

On Friday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Madrid region, announced that 850,000 people – many of them living in some of the poorest parts of the city and surrounding area – would be placed in partial lockdown from Monday in an attempt to arrest the second wave of the virus.

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‘We pick your food’: migrant workers speak out from Spain’s ‘Plastic Sea’

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In Almería’s vast farms, migrants pick food destined for UK supermarkets. But these ‘essential workers’ live in shantytowns and lack PPE as Covid cases soar

Photographs and drone footage by Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita

It is the end of another day for Hassan, a migrant worker from Morocco who has spent the past 12 hours under a sweltering late summer sun harvesting vegetables in one of the vast greenhouses of Almería, southern Spain.

The vegetables he has dug from the red dirt are destined for dinner plates all over Europe. UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi all source fruit and vegetables from Almería. The tens of thousands of migrant workers working in the province are vital to the Spanish economy and pan-European food supply chains. Throughout the pandemic, they have held essential worker status, labouring in the fields while millions across the world sheltered inside.

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Coronavirus live news: India sees 92,000 new infections; China faces fifth wave, expert says

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India now has 5.4m cases; China fears winter infections; NZ records new cases

Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope, Pablo Gutiérrez and Seán Clarke write. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly:

A clown juggled and acrobats launched themselves through the air above a stage in an open field in Seoul at the weekend as the audience watched from the safety of their cars, cocooned from the risk of coronavirus.

The annual circus – usually held in May – was pushed back twice this year because of the virus until organisers turned it into a drive-in event, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Cho Beong-hee, the manager of the Seoul Street Art Creation Centre, said:

The performing arts are very important even during a pandemic. So we came up with different ideas in trying to make this event happen and the drive-in option was chosen as it was deemed the safest idea.

I think watching performances in cars is great. I think it can be done in the future, with other performances like musicals.

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Global preparation: how different countries planned for the second wave of Covid-19

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Lockdowns brought temporary relief to some but, everywhere, test and trace is key

The first wave of coronavirus swept through a world unprepared. Authorities struggled to test for the disease, and didn’t know how to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Lockdowns brought the virus under temporary control in some places, including the UK, buying a window for the revival of education and the economy, and time to prepare for future waves that epidemiologists said were almost inevitable.

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Justice and the Rohingya people are the losers in Asia’s new cold war

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Attacks against the Muslim minority in Myanmar have gone unchecked as regional players focus on their own interests

The persecution, ethnic cleansing, and attempted genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state is an affront to the rule of law, a well-documented atrocity and, according to a top international lawyer, a moral stain on “our collective conscience and humanity”. So why are the killings and other horrors continuing while known perpetrators go unpunished?

It’s a question with several possible answers. Maybe poor, isolated Myanmar, formerly Burma, is not important enough a state to warrant sustained international attention. Perhaps, in the western subconscious, the lives of a largely unseen, unknown, brown-skinned Muslim minority do not matter so much at a time of multiple racial, ethnic and refugee crises.

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More than 100 cats – and owner – evicted from Spanish flat

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Huge clan is believed to have originated from a pair of cats taken in three years ago

Animal charities in southern Spain were urgently seeking homes for 110 cats on Saturday after they and their owner were evicted from a flat in the Valencia region.

Spama Safor, an animal shelter in the south-eastern seaside town of Gandia, had initially thought there were only 96 cats in the flat. But by Saturday evening, the charity said it had removed a total of 110 cats and urgently needed help to shelter them “at least until they are vaccinated or sterilised”.

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Hurricane Ianos turns towards Crete after sweeping across Greece

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Two dead, one missing and nearly a thousand rescued as floods damage Thessaly

After pounding parts of western and central Greece meteorologists have predicted a rare Mediterranean hurricane is headed south towards the island of Crete.

Authorities struggling to contain the impact of the cyclone – a so-called medicane, named Ianos – said two people had died and at least one was missing as torrential rain and gale-force winds wielded a trail of destruction.

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Hundreds of women detained during Belarus protest march

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Protesters dragged into police vans at rally to demand removal of Alexander Lukashenko

Riot police detained hundreds of women as opposition protesters marched through the Belarusian capital, Minsk, demanding an end to President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule.

About 2,000 women took part in the “Sparkly March”, wearing shiny accessories and carrying the red-and-white flags of the protest movement.

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Woman throws drink over Leo Varadkar as he gives Dublin interview

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Footage shows woman tossing liquid in white cup over tánaiste’s face in Merrion Park

A woman wearing a face mask was filmed throwing a drink over Leo Varadkar as he gave an interview in Dublin.

Footage shared on social media shows the woman, who was carrying a skateboard, walking over to where the tánaiste and a camera crew were standing in Merrion Park at about 3pm on Friday.

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