EU summit intervenes to thwart Mette Frederiksen’s plan to marry her very patient ‘fantastic man’
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, thought she had finally found a date for her wedding, but has now had to postpone it for a third time due to an EU summit, she said on Thursday.
Many a wedding plan has been upended by the Covid-19 pandemic and it seems not even world leaders are immune.
Continue reading...Rifkin’s Festival, which was shot in the Spanish city last year, chosen to headline annual film festival
Rifkin’s Festival, the new film by Woody Allen, has been selected to open the San Sebastián film festival in Spain.
Starring Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel and Gina Gershon, Rifkin’s Festival was shot in and around the city in 2019, and according to the plot synopsis takes place during the festival itself. “It tells the story of a married American couple who go to the San Sebastián festival and get caught up in the magic of the event, the beauty and charm of the city and the fantasy of movies. She has an affair with a brilliant French movie director, and he falls in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who lives there.”
Continue reading...Elena Yoncheva demands investigation into tape of man with voice like Boïko Borissov’s
A Bulgarian MEP has demanded an investigation following the emergence of an audio recording of a man who sounds like the country’s prime minister, Boïko Borissov, vowing to “burn” her.
Elena Yoncheva, a former journalist who has been engaged in a campaign to expose government corruption, said the public prosecutor needed to scrutinise the seven-minute recording, which has been heard by more than a million Bulgarians since it was posted anonymously on YouTube and other social media.
Continue reading...Exclusive: David Sassoli says UK appeared unenthusiastic in recent trade negotiations
Boris Johnson appeared unwilling to compromise in order to secure a trade and security deal with Brussels when he joined EU leaders for a summit last week, one of the three who attended the meeting has told the Guardian.
David Sassoli, the president of the European parliament, punctured a recent outbreak of optimism over a potential deal by warning that the EU had been left concerned at the end of a video conference call by the lack of “enthusiasm” to find common ground on the most contentious issues.
Continue reading...Asylum seekers discharged from island holding centres are given little support to find accommodation and work
It never occurred to Sarah Husseini that one day she might think of Moria camp with something approaching affection. The 22-year-old Afghan spent two years in the infamous holding facility on Lesbos and, throughout, her young daughters were “sick, sick, sick”.
But then she, her husband Ali and their two toddlers were instructed to board a ferry to Piraeus and their world changed. “The UN told us ‘the government wants you to leave, you have papers now, you can’t stay here any more’,” she says, explaining why she has ended up semi-destitute in central Athens.
Continue reading...Reaction in Gütersloh highlights the problems governments may face if restrictions return
Residents and local businesses in a community in Germany’s most populous state that has been forced back into strict lockdown following a coronavirus outbreak at a local abattoir are demanding that those responsible are held to account.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Gütersloh district, which has over 360,000 inhabitants, on Wednesday had its first full day under a reimposed coronavirus lockdown after more than 1,700 employees at the Tönnies abattoir and meat processing plant tested positive.
Continue reading...Amnesty says pandemic has led to greater ‘marginalisation, stigmatisation and violence’ in 12 countries including UK
The “disinfecting” of Roma communities by low-flying planes and the high number of fines handed to minority groups has been cited in a report as evidence of the racial bias in the policing of the coronavirus lockdowns in Europe.
The report by Amnesty International, examining the enforcement of physical distancing measures in 12 European countries, concludes that the pandemic has led to greater “marginalisation, stigmatisation and violence”, echoing the long-standing concerns aired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Continue reading...Court examining crimes during 1998-99 war also charges nine other former separatist fighters
A prosecutor investigating crimes committed during Kosovo‘s 1998-99 independence war with Serbia has indicted Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The indictment was announced as Thaçi was on his way to Washington for a White House meeting with Serbia’s president organised by Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s controversial ambassador to Germany who was also appointed as the administration’s Balkan peace envoy.
Continue reading...Russia is holding its postponed Victory Day military parade despite rising coronavirus infections. The parade celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany and has grown since Vladimir Putin came to power
Continue reading...In the Danish town that is home to Lego HQ, Wow Park is a forest wonderland of swings, ziplines and treehouses immersed in nature
The birdsong is louder 14 metres up and there’s a citrusy tang of pine in the air. Scrambling to the top of a conifer with a six-year-old who suffers from vertigo wasn’t top of my post-lockdown bucket list, but after staring at the same four walls for weeks on end, there’s a welcome sense of perspective to spending time in a forest of 7,000 trees.
This is Wow Park in Billund, the Danish town that’s the home of Lego HQ, and that calls itself the “Capital of Children” – with ambitions to become the most child-friendly place in the world to live and work. Billund’s newest attraction is a treetop wonderland, the largest of its kind in the country, including suspension bridges, nets in the sky, giant bouncy balls, swings and ziplines; all crafted around the trunks of giant trees. It’s like Go Ape gone Viking, with a rough and ready, hand-whittled feel.
Continue reading...Britain should acknowledge that millions were complicit in the crimes of empire, just as Germans like my grandfather enabled nazism
Before the second world war, remembering history served only to glorify nations, to stir up revanchism or to sanctify heroes. Then Germany invented Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the attempt to deal with its Nazi shame by collectively confronting the unspeakable crimes of the Third Reich rather than evading them. This process, which started at the end of the 60s after two decades of collective amnesia, allowed something positive to grow from a negative legacy: Germany’s rehabilitation and reconstruction into one of the strongest democracies in the world.
Germany’s culture of remembrance could inspire countries such as Britain which have trouble understanding that in order to transform the weight of the past into wealth, it must confront history’s shadows – not ignore them.
Continue reading...Four police officers questioned for involuntary homicide over death of Cédric Chouviat
A French delivery driver who died after being arrested in Paris pleaded “I’m suffocating” several times as police held him to the ground.
Footage has emerged of 42-year-old Cédric Chouviat saying he could not breathe seven times in 22 seconds as officers pinned him to the ground.
Continue reading...Workers taken ill after suspicious package emitting pungent odour causes panic
An overwhelming smell coming from a suspicious package at a Bavarian post office caused six workers to be taken to hospital and many more to be evacuated – only for police to discover that durian fruit, and not a dangerous gas, was the reason for the panic.
Police and firefighters rushed to the scene in Schweinfurt on Saturday over fears that a parcel was releasing a harmful substance. Twelve postal workers received treatment for nausea, including six who were taken to hospital as a precaution, the German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk reported.
Continue reading...Barcelona's El Liceu opera house reopened on Monday with a concert to an audience of 2,292 potted plants. The event took place a day after Spain's three-month state of emergency came to an end. It was the work of Spanish conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia, who said the inspiration came from a connection he built with nature during the pandemic: 'I watched what was going on with nature during all this time. I heard many more birds singing. And the plants in my garden and outside growing faster. And, without a doubt, I thought that maybe I could now relate in a much more intimate way with people and nature'
Continue reading...Exclusive: Christopher Steele claims May government turned blind eye to Trump allegations
Boris Johnson and Theresa May ignored claims the Kremlin had a “likely hold” over Donald Trump and may have covertly funded Brexit, the former spy Christopher Steele alleges in secret evidence given to MPs who drew up the Russia report.
In testimony to MPs, the MI6 veteran accused the government led by May and in which Johnson was foreign secretary for two years of turning a blind eye to allegations about Trump because they were afraid of offending the US president.
Continue reading...Company thought money was in two Asian banks but search hits dead end in Philippines
Wirecard has said that €1.9bn (£1.7bn) in funds missing from its bank accounts may not exist, as the accounting scandal at the German payments company deepens.
The firm processes tens of billions of euros in credit and debit transactions each year and is a former darling of Germany’s tech sector. It had previously said it believed the money was held in escrow accounts at two Asian banks.
Continue reading...New infections in and around Seoul; Spain reports 36 new outbreaks; New Zealand strengthens borders
Authorities in South Korea have said the country is experiencing a second wave of the coronavirus in and around Seoul, and warned that stronger physical-distancing measures will be reimposed if the daily increase in infections does not come down.
Confirmation of the new wave came as the Israeli government said a lockdown could be reintroduced amid a sharp rise in cases, and a team of contact tracing experts prepared to deploy to the Australian state of Victoria to tackle a new outbreak in Melbourne.
Continue reading...Suspect accused of torturing man in prison run by Syrian intelligence service in 2011
A Syrian doctor living in Germany has been arrested on suspicion of crimes against humanity in his country of origin, prosecutors have said, in the latest German move against suspected war crimes in Syria.
The suspect, identified as Alaa M, is accused of having “tortured a detainee ... in at least two cases” at a prison run by the Syrian intelligence service in the city of Homs in 2011, according to German federal prosecutors.
Continue reading...Many have attempted to claim that ‘things are better here’ for black people than in the US. This ignores both Europe’s colonial past and its own racist present. By Gary Younge
Continue reading...Virgil van Dijk and Sari van Veenendaal hit out at pundit and say ‘enough is enough’
The captains of the Dutch men’s, women’s and youth national football teams are boycotting a leading sports TV programme over the racist comments of a longstanding pundit, warning: “Enough is enough.”
The Liverpool centre-back Virgil van Dijk, and the Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal have led the way after years of the behaviour of Johan Derksen on the Veronica Inside show being explained away as straight-talking humour.
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