Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
NGOs in Lesbos have warned that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding on the roads around the still burning Moria camp, where thousands of migrants are allegedly being held by police without shelter or adequate medical help.
Annie Petros, head coordinator of of the charity Becky’s Bathhouse, said she was blocked by police from taking injured people to hospital as she drove them away from the fire.
French health officials are to open 20 new Covid-19 testing centres in the Paris region after demand for tests soared at la rentrée, last week’s grand return to work and classes following the long school holidays.
The authorities said testing capacity in and around the French capital had risen more than fourfold from 45,000 to 200,000 a week and 1 million people were being tested nationally every week – about 140,000 a day – but there were still queues and delays.
Lawyer was one of few remaining leading members of coordination council still free
Belarusian authorities have detained one of the last leading members of an opposition council who remained free, moving methodically to end a month of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lawyer Maxim Znak, a member of the coordination council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with the country’s leader of 26 years on a transition of power, was taken out of the council’s office by unidentified people in ski masks, his associate Gleb German said. He said Znak only had time to text message “masks” before they took the phone away from him.
Blaze at overcrowded Moria camp destroys tents and forced migrants to flee
The Greek prime minister has convened an urgent meeting of cabinet ministers after a devastating fire gutted the overcrowded Moria migrant facility on Lesbos, leaving 13,000 people without shelter.
As riot police were dispatched from Athens to the island, the regional governor for the north Aegean, Kostas Mountzouris, called for a state of emergency to be declared, saying the situation was out of control.
Altering terms of withdrawal agreement on Northern Ireland could damage relations under Biden presidency
Senior Democrats have warned that any attempt by the UK government to backtrack on the Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland would jeopardize a future US-UK free trade deal and could hobble bilateral relations across the board if Joe Biden wins the presidency.
Biden, an Irish American, is a staunch defender of the Good Friday Agreement, of which the US is the guarantor, and which requires an open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Brandon Lewis tells MPs internal market bill will ‘clarify’ Northern Ireland protocol
The government has admitted that its plan to reinterpret the special Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland will break international law.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, astonished backbenchers when he told the House of Commons: “Yes, this does break international law in a very specific and limited way. We’re taking the powers to disapply the EU law concept of direct effect … in a certain very tightly defined circumstance.”
President tells Russian journalists that if he resigned the opposition would destroy Belarus
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has used his first interview since mass protests erupted against his rule to say he does not plan to step down soon.
Lukashenko spoke to a group of pro-Kremlin Russian journalists including the editor-in-chief of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, and made it clear he plans to fight to cling on to power.
Cartoonist ‘Coco’ gives evidence at trial of 14 suspects accused of complicity in 2015 Paris attacks
A survivor of the Charlie Hebdo massacre has described how Islamist terrorists forced her to open the door of the satirical newspaper’s offices at gunpoint as they arrived to murder 11 people.
Corinne Rey, a cartoonist known as “Coco”, told a Paris court she was convinced she was about to die as the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi entered the building saying: “We want Charlie Hebdo.”
Footage released by the Belarusian border committee shows a car said to show the opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova driving to the Alexandrovka border with Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday.
Kolesnikova, who was kidnapped from the centre of Minsk on Monday, reportedly avoided deportation by ripping up her passport. Two other activists with her, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, are in Ukraine, officials in Kyiv confirmed
Maxim Znak says only two members of the Belarus opposition coordination council are still free and in the country, including himself.
On Tuesday, the Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova ripped up her passport in order to avoid being deported from her own country, according to Ukrainian media reports.
As the number of Covid-19 cases rises sharply in parts of Europe, health authorities from the UK to Spain are calling on young people to do more to halt the spread of the virus. This is how the situation looks in a number of major European countries and how it is being tackled.
With nightlife in limbo due to Covid-19, the legendary temple of techno has reinvented itself as art gallery – with works by Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Wolfgang Tillmans and more
Inside a disused power station in east Berlin, a red-and-white buoy is bobbing mid-air, swooping six metres up and six metres down in rhythm to imaginary waves. The artist who had the idea to hang it there, Julius von Bismarck, has connected an automated pulley system via sensors to a real buoy in the Atlantic Ocean, mirroring its movements.
Usually, the waves crashing over the heads of visitors to these halls are made of sound, pumped out of a custom-built PA that many dance music connoisseurs consider the finest in the world: this is Berghain, Berlin’s mythical temple of bassy industrial techno.
Mairead McGuinness to take role in overseeing access for the City of London to EU markets
The veteran MEP Mairead McGuinness has been proposed as Ireland’s new EU commissioner, replacing Phil Hogan, who was forced to resign after breaching coronavirus lockdown rules.
McGuinness, a European parliament vice-president, would take on the portfolio of financial services, giving her a key role in overseeing access for the City of London to EU markets.
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab says safe return of Maria Kolesnikova must be Lukashenko regime’s ‘highest priority’
Germany and Britain have demanded answers on the whereabouts of senior Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova, who was reportedly snatched off the streets in central Minsk.
Kolesnikova was taken along with members of the Coordination Council, which was set up to seek a peaceful transfer of power amid widespread rejection of elections that gave Alexander Lukashenko 80% of the vote.
Brussels suspicions come as European commission chief warns Britain to abide by Northern Ireland protocol
Brussels’ plummeting trust in Boris Johnson has been laid bare in leaked diplomatic cables obtained by the Guardian, as the Brexit negotiations reopen in London with a warning from the European commission president that Britain must respect international law.
Ursula von der Leyen made her extraordinary intervention on Monday as Downing Street struggled to control the damage from disclosures suggesting it was backtracking on agreements made last year to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Spain has become the first western European country to record more than half a million Covid-19 cases, logging a total of 525,549 infections as concerns also grow over the rise in cases in France and the UK.
The Spanish milestone comes amid a continuing surge in infections as millions of children begin returning to school after a six-month hiatus.
Seven Greek islands are being removed from England’s list of locations exempt from 14-day Covid quarantine, in a significant shift in the government’s travel corridor policy.
Speaking in the Commons on Monday, the UK transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that arrivals from the Greek islands will have to isolate for two weeks on their return to England from Wednesday at 4am but not those visiting the country’s mainland.
The Department for Transport press release about Grant Shapps’ announcement has now arrived. This is what it says about the inclusion of the seven Greek islands on the quarantine list for England.
The first changes under the new process were also made today, with seven Greek islands to be removed from exemption list – Lesvos, Tinos, Serifos, Mykonos, Crete, Santorini and Zakynthos. People arriving in England from those islands from Wednesday 9 September 04.00am will need to self-isolate for two weeks. Data from the Joint Biosecurity Centre and Public Health England has indicated a significant risk to UK public health from those islands, leading to Ministers removing them from the current list of travel corridors.
At the same time, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) has updated its travel advice for Greece to advise against all but essential travel to Lesvos, Tinos, Serifos, Mykonos, Crete, Santorini and Zakynthos. The rest of Greece remains exempt from the FCDO’s advice against all non-essential international travel.
Shapps says he is not lifting quarantine for Spain’s Canary or Balearic islands.
He says there might have been a case for this when quarantine was imposed on Spain. But the number of cases in country has risen sharply, he says, and now it has 127 cases per 100,000. He say it is not safe to reduce quarantine for those islands.
Lesvos, Tinos, Serifos, Mykonos, Crete, Santorini and Zakynthos removed from air corridor exemption list.
Barbara Pomfret came to aid of group left homeless in Madrid after forced removal from UK
A British woman living in Spain who helped 11 Syrian asylum seekers who were left homeless and hungry on the streets of Madrid after being forcibly removed from the UK has said she is ashamed of the UK government’s behaviour.
The all-male group were left destitute after being put on a flight to Madrid by the Home Office last week. They had arrived in the UK in small boats from Calais and are part of a Home Office plan to remove almost 1,000 such arrivals.
French people who reject mask-wearing are more likely to be older, educated women who support the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protest movement and the controversial virus specialist Didier Raoult, and would refuse to have a coronavirus vaccination if one were available, according to a new study.
They also describe themselves as free-thinkers who believe the government is meddling too much in their lives, have a distrust of public institutions and often support conspiracy theories, it found.