Category Archives: Europe

Ireland’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil close to forming coalition government

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Party leaders agree to seek ‘full and equal partnership’ for five years and rotate taoiseach role

Ireland’s ruling Fine Gael party and its longtime rival Fianna Fáil have moved closer to forming an unprecedented coalition government.

Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, and Micheál Martin, the Fianna Fáil leader, agreed on Tuesday to seek a “full and equal partnership” for five years, during which they would rotate the position of taoiseach. The pair will brief their parties on the details on Wednesday.

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Concerns over Polish government tightening abortion laws during Covid-19 crisis

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With street protests now an impossibility, human rights groups fear that Poland’s conservative government will push through ‘dangerous legislation’

Poland’s parliament will this week discuss a controversial proposal to tighten abortion laws in the country, as opposition politicians and women’s rights groups warn that the country’s conservative government may use the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to push through the legislation.

Poland already has some of the strictest legislation in Europe on abortion, and previous attempts to tighten the laws further were abandoned after mass protests in 2016. The proposal comes from a citizen initiative, and it is unclear if the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party will support it, but president Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, has said he would sign the law if it reaches his desk.

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One year after Notre Dame fire, officials struggle to keep restoration on track

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Cathedral can still be repaired by 2024, says general, but decisions must be made fast

The army general in charge of rebuilding Notre Dame has said it is still possible for the cathedral ravaged by fire exactly one year ago on Wednesday to reopen in 2024 as pledged by Emmanuel Macron, if everyone “rolls up their sleeves”.

Jean-Louis Georgelin insisted unexpected delays in work to restore the 13th-century cathedral to its previous glory – including the coronavirus lockdown – need not derail the five-year deadline.

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Coronavirus live news: cases worldwide near 2 million as Trump repeats WHO funding threat

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UK daily deaths likely to rise this week; France to ease lockdown starting 11 May

The Slovak government will release a plan next Monday on when and how shops will reopen after forced closures due to the spread of the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports him as saying that Slovakia aims to protect the 70% of the economy that is running from being affected by the spread of the virus and the reopening of retail will be cautious.

The European commission is urging EU states to coordinate as they begin to ease lockdown measures, warning that failure to do so could result in new spikes of the coronavirus epidemic.

Several EU states have announced plans or have already begun to relax restrictions imposed to contain the outbreak, as pressure grows to revive their battered economies.

It is time to develop a well-coordinated EU exit strategy. The exit strategy should be coordinated between the Member States, to avoid negative spillover effects.

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Growth in surveillance may be hard to scale back after pandemic, experts say

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Coronavirus crisis has led to billions of people around the world facing enhanced monitoring

The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back.

Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal contact with others, CCTV networks equipped with facial recognition, permission schemes to go outside and drones to enforce social isolation regimes.

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Man accidentally ejects himself from fighter jet during surprise flight

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Sixty-four-year-old lands in field after grabbing ejection handle to steady himself, French air investigators find

A surprise outing in a fighter jet unnerved one defence company executive so much he accidentally ejected himself while flying at over 500km/h (320mph), an investigation into the debacle in France has found.

The 64-year-old civilian got the most unwelcome ride of his life after the force of the take-off made him “float” off his seat, causing him to stand up and involuntarily grab the ejection handle to steady himself.

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Ukraine: wildfires draw dangerously close to Chernobyl site

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Witnesses accuse government of covering up severity of blaze near site of nuclear disaster

Wildfires in Ukraine have spread to just over a mile from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and a disposal site for radioactive waste, according to activists, as more than 300 firefighters work to contain the blaze.

A video posted by a Chernobyl tour operator showed flames and a cloud of smoke rising within sight of the protective shelter over the carcass of Chernobyl’s Unit 4 nuclear reactor, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.

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France to remain in strict lockdown for another month

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Emmanuel Macron admits failings and tells nation that end to crisis not yet in sight

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced that the country will remain in coronavirus lockdown for another month.

In a national address on Monday evening, he said that only by respecting the confinement rules would the battle against Covid-19 be won.

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UK missed three chances to join EU scheme to bulk-buy PPE

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Exclusive: Britain did not take part in €1.5bn order for kit to protect against Covid-19 despite shortages in NHS

Britain missed three opportunities to be part of an EU scheme to bulk-buy masks, gowns and gloves and has been absent from key talks about future purchases, the Guardian can reveal, as pressure grows on ministers to protect NHS medics and care workers on the coronavirus frontline.

European doctors and nurses are preparing to receive the first of €1.5bn (£1.3bn) worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) within days or a maximum of two weeks through a joint procurement scheme involving 25 countries and eight companies, according to internal EU documents.

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Italian death toll passes 20,000; more than 1.87m Covid-19 cases reported worldwide – as it happened

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Spain records another drop in daily death toll; Singapore sees biggest daily jump in infections; China reports highest daily cases in over five weeks. This blog is now closed

We’ve launched a new global coronavirus liveblog at the link below where I’ll be bringing you rolling coverage throughout the day:

Related: Coronavirus live news: cases worldwide near 2 million as Trump repeats WHO funding threat

Dr. Fauci opens by saying he does not claim to know anything about economics. “But the one thing we do know as health experts is... some people think it will be like a light switch on and off. But it won’t be.”

Each state is different, he says. There will be a “rolling re-entry,” says Dr. Fauci. “It’s not one size fits all.”

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Calls in Italy to rescue people at sea after fears of more migrant deaths

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Politicians urge government to act as EU states are accused of abandoning boats in distress

Italian parliamentarians have urged the government to rescue people at sea amid fears that many migrants may have drowned over the weekend as they tried to make their way to Europe from Libya.

EU member states have been accused of abandoning people at sea after failing to respond to information provided by NGOs that four boats, carrying 258 migrants between them, were in distress.

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Spain relaxes lockdown as daily coronavirus death toll falls to 517

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Some businesses reopen but shops, bars and public spaces to remain closed

People in Spain were being handed masks at transport hubs on Monday as the government relaxed some tough lockdown measures and a few businesses including from the construction and manufacturing sectors tentatively reopened.

With the country entering its second month of lockdown, firms unable to operate remotely were allowed to resume work, sparking criticism from some regional leaders who fear a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Half of coronavirus deaths happen in care homes, data from EU suggests

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Figures from Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium suggest UK may be underestimating care sector deaths

About half of all Covid-19 deaths appear to be happening in care homes in some European countries, according to early figures gathered by UK-based academics who are warning that the same effort must be put into fighting the virus in care homes as in the NHS.

Snapshot data from varying official sources shows that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium between 42% and 57% of deaths from the virus have been happening in homes, according to the report by academics based at the London School of Economics (LSE).

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UK could have Europe’s worst coronavirus death rate, says adviser

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Daily death toll shows situation is comparable with other badly hit countries, says Jeremy Farrar

The UK could end up with the worst coronavirus death rate in Europe, one of the government’s leading scientific advisers has said.

Prof Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a pandemics expert on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the figures of almost 1,000 daily hospital deaths showed the UK was in a similar situation to other European countries that had been badly affected.

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Putin’s People by Catherine Belton review – relentless and convincing

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This is the most remarkable account so far of Putin’s rise from a KGB operative to deadly agent provocateur in the hated west

In 1985, a young KGB officer arrived in provincial East Germany. His name was Vladimir Putin. What exactly Putin got up to in Dresden is a mystery. The official version says not much: he drank beer, put on weight, lived in an ordinary apartment with his wife, Lyudmila, and their two daughters. While other Soviet spies were having adventures, Putin – so the story goes – sat out the late cold war in a paper-shuffling backwater.

The investigative journalist and former Financial Times reporter Catherine Belton has dug deeper. Her groundbreaking book, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West, offers a far more terrifying version. Putin was a senior liaison officer with the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, she suggests. And Dresden was a key base for KGB operations, including murderous ones, in which Putin allegedly played a direct part.

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Coronavirus: US records 2,000 dead in a day as Italy and India extend lockdowns

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Spain to let some non-essential staff return to work, but Italians shut in until at least 3 May

The US has become the first country to record more than 2,000 deaths from coronavirus in a single day, as its overall toll surpassed that of Italy, making it the worst-hit country in the world.

White House experts said there were some signs the spread of the disease may be levelling off, but the US now has more than half a million confirmed infections and in the last 24 hours 2,108 people died. Hotspots include New York, Detroit, Louisiana and the capital, Washington DC.

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Spain to begin return to work despite fears of resurgence

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Health minister says ban on non-essential workers leaving home was temporary, but country is ‘not de-escalating’

The Spanish government has defended its decision to allow some non-essential workers to return to their jobs in factories and construction sites this coming week despite warnings that any relaxation of confinement measures could lead to a rise in contagion.

The World Health Organization has said there could be a “deadly resurgence” of the coronavirus if countermeasures are lifted too soon, while one of the Spanish government’s own experts has said he thought it would have been sensible to keep non-essential workers at home for longer.

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Coronavirus: who will be winners and losers in new world order?

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Are state responses to the virus shifting the balance of power between China and the west?

Andrà tutto bene, the Italians have taught us to think, but in truth, will everything be better the day after? It may seem premature, in the midst of what Emmanuel Macron has described as “a war against an invisible enemy”, to consider the political and economic consequences of a distant peace. Few attempt a definitive review of a play after the first three scenes.

Yet world leaders, diplomats and geopolitical analysts know they are living through epoch-making times and have one eye on the daily combat, the other on what this crisis will bequeath the world. Competing ideologies, power blocs, leaders and systems of social cohesion are being stress-tested in the court of world opinion.

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Fire at Siberian penal colony after riot sparked by claims of brutality

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Videos on social media show buildings alight in prison near Angarsk near Lake Baikal

Fire has engulfed a penal colony in Siberia after a riot broke out – reportedly sparked by accusations of brutality.

Videos posted to social media on Friday showed buildings ablaze at the IK-15 prison in the Siberian city of Angarsk, 2,500 miles southeast of Moscow and near Lake Baikal’s southern shore

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Poland marks 10 years since plane crash that killed ruling elite

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Nationalists renew criticism of Moscow’s handling of disaster which killed president and other senior politicians and military officers

Poland’s ruling nationalists held scaled-down events to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a plane crash in Russia that killed top politicians and military officers, and renewed criticism of Moscow’s handling of the disaster.

Senior officials laid wreaths on Friday at a monument in the capital, Warsaw, to honour the late president Lech Kaczynski, who died. They walked in single file, guarded by police wearing surgical masks.

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