Condition of Russian opposition leader who was poisoned with novichok is improving
The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken out of an induced coma and is responding to speech, the Germany hospital treating him has said.
The Charité hospital in Berlin, which has been treating Navalny since 22 August, said his condition was improving and that he was also being weaned off mechanical ventilation.
Continue reading...UK on collision course with EU and Ireland over unilateral powers for British ministers
Downing Street has defended plans to give British ministers unilateral powers over Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland, putting them on a collision course with the EU and Irish leaders in a week of crunch negotiations.
A No 10 spokesman said the measures were “limited and reasonable” and insisted the UK would remain compliant with the Northern Ireland protocol – despite anger from Brussels and Dublin at the plans leaked overnight.
Continue reading...Kolesnikova on council calling for a peaceful transfer of power amid post-election protests
Unidentified masked men snatched the leading Belarusian opposition figure, Maria Kolesnikova, from the street in the centre of the capital, Minsk, on Monday and drove her away in a minivan, witnesses told local media.
Kolesnikova was one of the campaign partners of the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory against the long-ruling president, Alexander Lukashenko, in disputed elections on 9 August.
Continue reading...Pandemic has stalled party’s momentum but it still has strong chance of entering government next year
In pandemic times, public health takes precedence over the wellbeing of the planet, as Germany’s Greens have had to learn the hard way. With Covid-19 shoring up electoral sympathies around a crisis-seasoned Angela Merkel, the buoyant upstarts in opposition have lost much of the momentum they had built up over the last 12 months.
And yet, paradoxically, the environmental party’s chances of entering government in 2021 have never looked greater.
Continue reading...Why should black founders jump through more hoops to earn funders’ trust?
I was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, when I heard about the shooting of another black man, Jacob Blake, by US police. Close by is a mural of George Floyd, painted on a wall near where I grew up, a reminder that the current upheaval surrounding race in the US has global repercussions. Just as calls for racial justice echo in American and European streets, government offices and boardrooms, we must not forget that the legacy of racial injustice extends far beyond those borders and any honest reckoning must include open dialogue around race in international development.
In Africa, white-led institutions have shaped the development and social entrepreneurship landscape, deciding who succeeds and who fails. Only recently has there been a growing recognition of these imperialist dynamics, which uplift foreign-led practitioners more than local ones. There is a growing consensus that the future should and must be created and led by Africans, because real progress requires it to be on our own terms. And yet, this is just talk until funders shift resources and power, at scale, towards local solutions.
Continue reading...A row over over borders, gasfields and national pride risks regional disorder
Some claim it has been centuries since the Mediterranean has been viewed as the cockpit of history. But great powers and coastline states, wishing to capture hydrocarbon riches, are today vying for mastery of the sea – or at least its eastern waves. The trouble surfaced last month when a Turkish frigate escorting an oil-and-gas exploration ship collided with a Greek naval vessel. Since then, tempers have flared, with the unresolved question of Cyprus providing a flashpoint between the two nations. Greek ships were last week joined by France, Italy and the United Arab Emirates in the waters around Cyprus. Turkey announced that Russia will hold naval exercises. Nato is right that the temperature needs lowering and ought to be congratulated for kickstarting talks aimed at de-escalation. Nato members ought to trade words, not blows.
In Turkey there has been a lurch towards authoritarianism under the executive presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while the country’s military, economic and cultural power has expanded. Not since the Ottoman empire has the Turkish military had such a sprawling global footprint, with troops and drones recently saving a UN-recognised government in Tripoli from defeat. Despite a Covid recession, Turkish companies retain a global edge – taking advantage of cheap labour, made even cheaper by a weak Turkish lira, and access to European markets. Mr Erdoğan has also won favour in the Sunni Arab world by hosting 4 million Syrian refugees.
Continue reading...Similar marches held in other cities including Brest a month after disputed election
Huge protests have taken place across Belarus against the embattled regime of Alexander Lukashenko, with demonstrators marching on the president’s residence in the capital, Minsk, for a fourth weekend in a row.
More than 100,000 people filled Minsk’s Independence Avenue calling for Lukashenko to step down. There were similar marches in other cities, including Brest, Vitebsk and Grodno.
Continue reading...Gavin Barwell angered by David Frost’s suggestion that May government ‘blinked’ in negotiations
Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, of having a “brass neck” after he said the UK government had “blinked first” in negotiations.
Gavin Barwell, a key member of the former prime minister’s negotiating team, said Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement was “95% the work of his predecessors” and a deal had only been secured by conceding to the EU’s demand for some customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain, which May’s team had not agreed to.
Continue reading...Terminally ill French man is told his plan was blocked because it could promote self-harm
Facebook has blocked a terminally ill French campaigner for assisted dying from livestreaming his own death.
Alain Cocq, who has been suffering for 34 years from a rare and incurable degenerative disease, has stopped taking food, drink or medicine, and says he wants his death to be seen to help persuade French authorities to lift a ban on medically assisted suicide.
Continue reading...David Frost says the country is fully ready for Australia-style agreement with the EU
The UK’s chief negotiator has said the government is not scared of walking away from talks with the European Union without a deal and vowed not to blink in the final phase.
David Frost is due to hold another round of key negotiations in London with his counterpart, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, next week as they look to agree a trade deal before autumn sets in.
Continue reading...Country’s deposed president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, flying out to UAE for medical treatment
Mali’s military junta began talks with opposition groups on Saturday on its promise to hand power back to civilians, after mounting pressure from neighbouring countries in the weeks since it overthrew the nation’s leader.
The West African country has long been plagued by instability, a simmering jihadist revolt, ethnic violence and endemic corruption, prompting a clique of rebel soldiers to detain the president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, last month.
Continue reading...Fans gather in a German church to hear the first new sound in composition, Organ/ASLSP, for six years
Hundreds of fans have attended a special kind of musical happening at a church in Germany: a chord change in an organ piece that is supposed to last for an entirety of 639 years.
The performance of the Organ/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) composition began in September 2001 at the St Burchardi church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 — if all goes well.
Continue reading...At least 6,000 people say they caught coronavirus in Ischgl, dubbed ‘Ibiza on ice’, and their class action is gaining pace. Those who were there recall a terrifying week
In the first week of March, Charlie Jackson had an argument with his wife. The recruitment agent, 53, from Pangbourne in Berkshire, was due to catch a flight to Innsbruck for a three-day “boys’ holiday”, skiing in the Tirolean Alps. Jackson’s wife, Carol, felt Ischgl, the resort booked by the group, was a bit too close to the parts of northern Italy that had recently been shut down to contain the spread of a mystery flu-like illness. But Jackson threw caution to the wind: he had already spent more than £1,000 on the trip.
Ischgl, one of the most popular ski resorts in Europe, is what Jackson calls “a boyish kind of place”. He and his friends had been visiting the town in the Paznaun valley, Austria, for the past nine years. The snow is reliably powdery from November to May. The compact nature of the place means you don’t need a car to get around. The facilities are well-run: Ischgl has 45 state-of-the-art ski lifts, three of which take you directly from the edge of town to the mountain.
Continue reading...President says US must look seriously at case but suggests media should be looking into China
President Donald Trump said the United States must look “very seriously” into the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that his administration had not yet seen any proof.
“I think we have to look at it very seriously, if it’s the case,” he said, before talking at length about his diplomatic efforts in North Korea and nuclear non-proliferation in Russia. “I don’t know exactly what happened. It’s tragic. It’s terrible, it shouldn’t happen. We haven’t had any proof yet, but I will take a look.
Continue reading...Children aged between one and eight were found dead in beds in case that has shocked country
German prosecutors have said they will charge a 27-year-old woman with murder after five of her young children were found dead at their home in the western city of Solingen.
Heribert Kaune-Gebhardt, a prosecutor in nearby Wuppertal, told reporters that postmortem examinations on the dead children between the ages of one and eight showed signs of sedation and suffocation, but it was still unclear how exactly they died.
Continue reading...Meeting of EU leaders this month will instead focus on post-Covid recovery and China relations
Boris Johnson’s hopes of a Brexit deal have been dealt a fresh blow as Brussels ruled out EU leaders intervening in the troubled negotiations at a summit this month.
According to EU diplomats, both the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and Downing Street have lobbied for 27 heads of state and government to seize control of the talks given the current impasse.
Continue reading...Two-metre-long sturgeon found in pantry of Danish king’s vessel that sank in 1495
A two-metre-long sturgeon, a species today near extinction, has been found preserved in the pantry of a 500-year-old Danish royal shipwreck in the Baltic Sea.
“During archaeological excavations in 2019, a wooden barrel submerged inside the shipwreck revealed the almost complete and well-preserved remains of a sturgeon fish,” archaeologists from Lund University in Sweden wrote in a recent article in the Journal of Archeological Science.
Continue reading...Greek government suggests need for ‘closed and controlled’ structures but NGOs fear virus is pretext for increased restrictions
The first recorded coronavirus case in Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, where just under 13,000 people are living in a space designed for 3,000, has led to fears that the government will use the pandemic as a pretext to create closed camps.
Notis Mitarachi, the minister for migration, told local news that the coronavirus situation demonstrated the need for “closed and controlled” structures. The migration ministry also released a statement on Thursday, which said that plans to create closed structures on the islands of Lesbos and Chios were progressing.
Continue reading...Russian president has used various tactics over the years to avoid voicing his critic’s name
Over the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has referred to Alexei Navalny as “a poor excuse for a politician” and “a certain political force”. He has called him “the character you mentioned” and “this gentleman”.
He has never in public called him Navalny.
Continue reading...US stock market is suffering its worst day since June, as Apple and Tesla lead stock markets into the red
Earlier:
US traders can now catch their collectives breath after the choppiest trading session in several weeks.
It wasn’t as dramatic as the massive selloffs back in February and March (which still give me the shivers), but certainly a volatile day.
Related: Coronavirus live news: Robert Pattinson 'tests positive for Covid-19, halting Batman production'
Today’s losses mean the Dow is slightly negative for 2020, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index is still up 27% since January.
Continue reading...