Category Archives: Europe

Ireland extends Covid-19 lockdown to 18 May before phased exit

Posted on by

Three-month easing includes some retailers opening from 18 May and restaurants from 29 June

Ireland has extended its lockdown for another two weeks to 18 May, when it will introduce a phased, five-stage exit over three months.

The country’s lockdown regime has been much stricter than the UK’s, but Friday night’s announcement offers a clear, step-by-step map out of the lockdown for schools, shops and businesses as well as the global Irish diaspora including more than 300,000 in the UK, many of whom would normally make visits home in the summer.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong calls foreign criticism of crackdown on pro-democracy figures ‘irresponsible’

Posted on by

Hong Kong’s government calls allegations from the US, UK and European parliament ‘totally unfounded’

The Hong Kong government has accused foreign politicians of being ignorant and irresponsible after they criticised its recent crackdown on pro-democracy figures and accused Beijing of “flagrant breaches” of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

While it did not name anyone, the Hong Kong government’s statement on Friday said allegations voiced by “certain officials and politicians” from the US, UK and European Parliament were “totally unfounded and amounted to a serious intervention in Hong Kong’s affairs”.

Continue reading...

Five crew of Canadian helicopter presumed dead after crash off Greek coast

Posted on by

Search and rescue mission that began after Wednesday’s crash is called off with one body and additional remains found

Five missing crew members of a Canadian navy helicopter that crashed during a Nato operation this week into the Mediterranean Sea are presumed dead.

A search and rescue mission that began on Wednesday when the aircraft with six crew on board went missing has been turned into a recovery effort, the Canadian defence ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Continue reading...

European schools get ready to reopen despite concern about pupils spreading Covid-19

Posted on by

Germany’s top coronavirus expert says children play as big a role as adults in spread

More countries across Europe are preparing to reopen schools in the coming weeks despite conflicting advice from scientifist, some of whom caution against underestimating children’s potential to spread the coronavirus.

Some schools and nurseries in Denmark and Norway have already reopened, and grandparents in Switzerland are allowed to hug grandchildren under 10, following a ruling by the health ministry’s head of infectious diseases that it is safe to do so.

Continue reading...

Exiled Pakistani journalist found dead in Sweden

Posted on by

Sajid Hussain, who wrote about human rights violations, went missing in March

A Pakistani journalist living in exile in Sweden and who had been missing since March has been found dead in a river.

Sajid Hussain, who was granted political asylum in Sweden in 2019 after fleeing Pakistan, had been missing since 2 March. He was last seen boarding a train to Uppsala, a city 35 miles (56km) north of Stockholm.

Continue reading...

Has Sweden’s coronavirus strategy played into the hands of nationalists? | Gina Gustavsson

Posted on by

Talk of Swedish exceptionalism and wounded national pride has echoes of the forces unleashed in Britain by Brexit

Sweden has persisted with the strategy of coronavirus mitigation that the UK government eventually abandoned in March. The policy is widely supported by the public, even though the Swedish Covid-19 mortality rate is among the 10 highest in the world, at 240 per million population and steadily rising, and many of the nursing homes in Stockholm are now affected.

The typical explanation for this continued public support is that Swedes are trusting and unflappable. The country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the public face of the Swedish response to the pandemic, is after all a dry scientist-turned-bureaucrat, not some populist politician trying to whip up nationalist go-it-alone emotion.

Continue reading...

‘No food, water, masks or gloves’: migrant farm workers in Spain at crisis point

Posted on by

Workers in lockdown trapped in dire conditions on fruit and salad farms that supply UK supermarkets, UN warns

Migrant workers on Spanish farms that provide fruit and vegetables for UK supermarkets are trapped in dire conditions under lockdown, living in cardboard and plastic shelters without food or running water.

Thousands of workers, many of them undocumented, live in settlements between huge greenhouses on farms in the southern Spanish provinces of Huelva and Almeria, key regions for European supply chains.

Continue reading...

Danes and Czechs say easing lockdowns has produced no Covid-19 surge

Posted on by

Encouraging signs from EU states who acted early, as South Korea reports no new cases

Denmark and the Czech Republic have said partially easing their lockdowns has not led to a surge in new coronavirus infections, as the WHO continued to urge extreme caution and Germany relaxed some restrictions but extended others.

As EU governments grappled with the complex and conflicting imperatives of easing the lockdowns crippling their economies while avoiding a disastrous second wave of infections, meanwhile, South Korea reported no new cases for the first time.

Continue reading...

Germany and Spain ease lockdown as Eurozone slumps 3.8% – as it happened

Posted on by

This blog is now closed.

We’ve launched a brand new blog at the link below. Follow me there for the latest coronavirus news from around the world, live:

Related: Coronavirus live news: Trump claims to have evidence virus started in Wuhan lab as UK is 'past the peak'

Hello, Helen Sullivan with you now. I’ll have the blog for the next few hours, so please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

Continue reading...

Fears Brexit talks could collapse in June but UK still optimistic

Posted on by

‘Limited progress’ in bridging gaps on fisheries, health, environment and workers’ rights

The UK is still optimistic about striking a trade deal with the EU but warned that talks could collapse in June unless Brussels abandons its demands for a common fisheries policy and a level playing field, a source close to the UK’s negotiating team said.

The source said only “limited progress in bridging the gaps between us” had been made at last week’s talks, but there was “confidence that progress can be made quite quickly”.

Continue reading...

Swedish city to dump tonne of chicken manure in park to deter visitors

Posted on by

Lund council hoping ‘stink’ keeps people away on Walpurgis Night

The university town of Lund in Sweden is to dump a tonne of chicken manure in its central park in a bid to deter up to 30,000 residents from gathering there for traditional celebrations to mark Walpurgis Night on Thursday.

“Lund could very well become an epicentre for the spread of the coronavirus on the last night in April, [so] I think it was a good initiative,” the chairman of the local council’s environment committee, Gustav Lundblad, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

Continue reading...

Czech PM must resign if conflict of interest is confirmed, say MEPs

Posted on by

Leaked report from stormy visit to Prague tells Andrej Babiš to stamp out ‘oligarchies’

The Czech government needs to stamp out “oligarchic structures” in the spending of European funds, a leaked EU report into an alleged conflict of interest centred on the country’s billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has concluded.

The report, by the European parliament’s budgetary control committee, calls on Babiš to stand down as prime minister or sell his business, if a conflict of interest is confirmed. Babiš should also renounce his seat at the table in upcoming negotiations on the European Union’s next seven-year budget “until his potential conflict of interests is fully resolved”, the MEPs say.

Continue reading...

Brussels and UK at odds over proposed EU office in Belfast

Posted on by

Clashes expected over plan which Britain says would sow division in Northern Ireland

Brussels and UK officials will clash over the increasingly fraught question of whether the European Union can open an office in Belfast.

At the inaugural meeting on Thursday of a special committee of officials charged with enforcing a de facto Irish Sea border, the European commission is expected to press the case to open “a technical office” in Belfast, three days after the government rejected an EU “mini-embassy” in the Northern Irish capital.

Continue reading...

Spain and Germany deal blow to hopes of tourism revival

Posted on by

Minister rules out imminent reopening in Spain as Germany extends travel warning

Spain has ruled out any early reopening of its tourism sector and Germany is set to extend a travel warning for all leisure trips outside the country until mid-June, casting further doubt on when would-be holidaymakers will be able to venture abroad again.

With airline fleets mostly grounded, cross-border train traffic slashed and many EU countries, including France, requiring all arrivals bar their own citizens to formally justify their journey, leisure travel within Europe is at a near standstill.

Continue reading...

2020 GDT Nature Photographer of the Year

Posted on by

The German Society for Nature Photography (GDT) has selected its Nature Photographer of the Year 2020.

The winning image is part of a series of photographs taken in Dortmund’s north by Peter Lindel. Compared with many international nature photography hot spots, this region has little to offer. Lindel spent a lot of time and blood, sweat and tears working on this project on his doorstep. It is a beautiful statement about the long-term exploration of a single species and region.

Continue reading...

Ford set to restart main European car factories on Monday 4 May

Posted on by

Production will begin slowly with UK plants remaining shut until later in the spring

Ford said it would restart its main European car factories on Monday 4 May, but its UK plants in Dagenham and Bridgend will stay closed until later in the spring.

The US car giant, which closed its European and North American factories at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March, said production would begin slowly with strict standards on social distancing and safety precautions.

Continue reading...

Three women killed in Spain as coronavirus lockdown sees rise in domestic violence

Posted on by

A steep drop in police reports indicates isolation may be making it harder to get help

It was 2.30am when Daniel Jiménez was woken by his neighbour’s screams. When he went outside his home in the Los Pajarillos neighbourhood of Valladolid in north-east Spain, he saw a woman being dangled from a third-storey window by her husband. Another neighbour rushed out with mattresses to help break her fall but he was too late. She fell to her death.

Although the circumstances of the killing of the 56-year-old woman are still under investigation, the interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, declared it a crime of gender violence, making the woman the third victim of femicide since Spain’s strict lockdown came into force on 14 March.

Continue reading...

Norwegian tycoon charged over wife’s disappearance in 2018

Posted on by

Businessman held on suspicion of murder in case first treated by police as kidnapping

One of Norway’s richest men has been arrested and charged with suspected “murder or complicity in the murder” of his wife in a case that has made headlines in the low-crime Scandinavian country.

Tom Hagen, a hitherto low-profile property and energy tycoon aged 70, was arrested on his way to work, Norwegian media reported.

Continue reading...

Completion of new Genoa bridge seen as symbol of hope in Italy

Posted on by

Opening hailed but offers little comfort to families of Morandi bridge collapse victims

On the 14th day of each month, the relatives of some of those who died in the collapse of Genoa’s Morandi bridge tie flowers to railings close to the site of the disaster.

“We live in different places and so haven’t always managed to get there every month,” said Egle Possetti, whose sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew were among the 43 killed on 14 August 2018. “But there’s a woman in Genoa who brings flowers on behalf of all of us.”

Continue reading...

Coronavirus has revealed the EU’s fatal flaw: the lack of solidarity | Shahin Vallée

Posted on by

There has been little political will to pool taxes, borrowing and spending to support states worst hit. But it is the only way out

The European summit last week was hailed as a moment of truth. In a recent interview, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, laid out how European leaders had a rendezvous with history and needed to come together, and show that Europe under duress was able to respond with a common voice and with common means to the Covid-19 crisis. By all measures, this rendezvous with history was missed. European leaders in effect agreed to keep calm and carry on.

They endorsed a roadmap to exit lockdown after each country had in fact already decided and announced their own uncoordinated exit plans. In some countries, such as Germany, deconfinement measures are not a prerogative of the federal government and coordinating between states is challenging enough, let alone coordinating with other countries.

Continue reading...