Former French prime minister and wife Penelope given jail sentences over fake jobs scandal
The former French prime minister François Fillon and his Welsh wife, Penelope, were sentenced to jail on Monday for embezzling public funds as part of a “fake jobs” scandal.
A court found the couple guilty of fraud after a trial heard he had paid her and two of the couple’s children about €1m for non-existent jobs as his parliamentary assistants.
Continue reading...Norilsk Nickel suspends workers at metals plant who dumped the water in ‘flagrant violation of operating rules’
A Russian mining giant said on Sunday it had suspended workers at a metals plant who were responsible for pumping wastewater into nearby Arctic tundra.
Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published videos from the scene showing large metal pipes carrying wastewater from the reservoir and dumping foaming liquid among nearby trees.
Continue reading...Andrzej Duda, ally of rightwing PiS party, could face liberal Rafał Trzaskowski in presidential runoff
The incumbent Andrzej Duda won the most votes in Sunday’s Polish presidential election, but fell short of the 50% he would need to win without a second round of voting, an exit poll has suggested.
The Ipsos exit poll suggested that Duda, allied with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, had received 41.8% of the vote, with second place going to the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, with 30.4%.
Continue reading...Socialist mayor retains capital, with Macron’s LREM losing out to the ecology party
France was swept by a green wave on Sunday as ecology candidates won a number of major victories in the country’s local elections.
Early results suggested the biggest winners of the delayed vote would be the green party, Europe Ecologie Les Verts (EELV), while the election delivered the predicted blow to Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party, which has failed to take root locally since it was founded four years ago.
Continue reading...Villanueva de Algaidas reacts after complaints force council to take down its rainbow flag
The 8-metre long rainbow flag flew from the town hall for less than 48 hours. But after a trio of complaints led to its removal, residents in the southern Spanish town of Villanueva de Algaidas responded swiftly, plastering the town’s bars, buildings and balconies with more than 500 rainbow flags of their own.
Officials in the town of about 4,200 people had flown the flag at the town hall to mark pride month since 2018. This year was no exception, despite a recent supreme court ruling barring administrations in Spain from hanging unofficial flags on government buildings.
Continue reading...Experts believe up to 500 people guillotined in period may be buried in Chapelle Expiatoire
Experts believe the remains of up to 500 people guillotined during the French Revolution may be buried in the walls of a listed monument in Paris.
The discovery blows apart the accepted historical account, which suggests the bodies of famous guillotinés, including Louis XV’s mistress Madame du Barry, Olympe de Gouges and Maximilien Robespierre, revolutionary architect of the Reign of Terror, were moved to the network of catacombs under the city.
Continue reading...Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger at globalisation to smuggle in ideology
The poster advertising the evening of debate and organic canapés in Halle’s university district looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans: a rugged pair of hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular biodynamic food brand.
The only hint the event wasn’t organised by sandal-wearing good-lifers but a local group of far-right nationalists was in the subtitle: “Let’s chase the globalists off our acres!”
Continue reading...Environmentalists have welcomed news that the 43-year-old Fessenheim reactor will close, nine years after it was first planned
France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.
The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
Continue reading...The ‘gobocracy’ that surrounds the PM is capable of doing Russia’s work for it
As Boris Johnson is leading Britain’s first government of pundits, “a gobocracy”, if you like, it is worth repeating Humbert Wolfe’s scathing poem on the press: “You cannot hope to bribe or twist,/ thank God! the British journalist./ But, seeing what the man will do/ unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
In a gobocracy, there’s no need to become too conspiratorial about why a prime minister betrays his country. Put a Telegraph columnist in charge, throw in Michael Gove from the Times and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave’s propaganda arm, and their bottomless cynicism and instinctive charlatanism will bring ruin with or without foreign assistance.
Continue reading...One-person protests sparked by charges against woman for ‘spreading pornography’
Russian police on Saturday detained more than 30 people, most of them women, who were staging separate one-person protests in central Moscow against charges of spreading pornography levelled against a prominent LGBT activist, a monitoring group said.
One activist was also detained in St Petersburg, according to OVD-Info, which monitors law enforcement issues in Russia.
Continue reading...Fianna Fáil leader forms government with Fine Gael and Greens vowing end to ‘civil war politics’
The Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has been elected as the Republic of Ireland’s taoiseach – prime minister – after the formation of an historic coalition government.
The three-way coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green party is the first time the first two parties – former civil war rivals – have been in government together.
Continue reading...Incumbent Andrzej Duda expected to face run-off against liberal mayor of Warsaw
Poles will vote on Sunday in a postponed presidential election that will determine whether the ruling rightwing populist party continues to have full control over the country’s political system.
Andrzej Duda, an ally of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, is standing for re-election in a crowded field of candidates, with the closest challenger expected to be Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw.
Continue reading...Officials draw up ‘safe list’ of countries whose residents can visit, with Russia and Brazil also excluded
The European Union is set to restrict most US residents from visiting the region when travel restarts due to concerns about the coronavirus, according to multiple reports.
EU officials are in the process of settling on a final “safe list” of countries whose residents could travel to the bloc in July, but the US, Brazil and Russia are set to be excluded, Reuters reported. With coronavirus continuing to spread in the US at alarming rates, the possibility of allowing American tourists into the EU is not even part of the ongoing discussion, six diplomats familiar with the talks told the Washington Post.
Continue reading...Ministers also expected to end policy of quarantining arrivals to the UK for 14 days
Overseas holidays will be given the green light from early next month, with the government expected to suspend the 14-day quarantine period for a series of countries and also to set up so-called air bridge arrangements for overseas destinations.
While the full list of countries involved is still being confirmed, the initial phase of travel opening up is expected to involve European nations including France, Greece, Spain and possibly Portugal, with other potentially more distant locations to follow.
Continue reading...Bid for 20% of OneWeb to replace Galileo after Brexit ‘looks like nationalism trumping industrial policy’
The UK government’s plan to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a satellite broadband company has been described as “nonsensical” by experts, who say the company doesn’t even make the right type of satellite the country needs after Brexit.
The investment in OneWeb, first reported on Thursday night, is intended to mitigate against the UK losing access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system.
Continue reading...Residents have clashed in a coastal town near Naples after five large blocks of flats were put under a strict 15-day lockdown. More than 40 people living there had tested positive for Covid-19. The Italian army was deployed to the area in the small town of Mondragone after some people broke the lockdown to go to work. Residents also protested against the lack of information, and racism towards a Roma community involved in seasonal fruit-picking
German leader signals trade compromise less likely as she hardens tone on no-deal Brexit
The UK will have to “live with the consequences” of Boris Johnson ditching Theresa May’s plan to maintain close economic ties with the EU after Brexit, Angela Merkel has said, hardening her tone over the prospect of a no-deal scenario at the end of the year.
After more than three years in which the German chancellor repeatedly emphasised her openness to a deal that would maintain the UK’s current flows of trade with the bloc, she suggested the door leading to such a compromise had now closed.
Continue reading...Get-out-the-vote effort includes prize giveaways while campaign avoids focus on president
The people of Moscow received text messages this week telling them they had been registered to win “millions of prizes”.
The catch? They have to vote on constitutional amendments that include allowing Vladimir Putin to remain in the Kremlin potentially until 2036.
Continue reading...It has taken a shocking Covid-19 death toll to dent the national self-image of moral superiority. But dented it has been
“Haverist” is a Swedish word meaning “shipwrecked person”. During the course of Sweden’s shambolic response to Covid-19, dissent – whether from epidemiologists or journalists – has often been met with this insult, which implies the critics are fighting a losing battle. It’s telling of the way Sweden has handled its failure.
Through a uniquely slack approach (seen by many as the largely debunked “herd immunity” approach, even if the government denies this), Sweden reached the highest Covid-19 deaths per capita in the world in May. It still circles around the top, with more than 5,200 deaths – five times as many as in Norway, Finland and Denmark combined. After months of a mainly one-sided debate, critical voices are mounting. Even Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, admits to fault. But this has not been enough to change his agency’s strategy, which a majority of Swedes still have confidence in – although that support has waned.
Continue reading...Political parties demand Sweden’s strategy be reviewed before next election in 2022
Swedes are losing trust in authorities’ handling of the coronavirus, as the man behind the country’s light-touch approach called lockdowns a form of madness and political parties demanded the Swedish strategy be reviewed before the next election in 2022.
An Ipsos survey this week for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper showed confidence in the country’s management of Covid-19 had fallen 11 points to 45% since April, with backing for the national public health agency down 12 points.
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