Category Archives: Europe

The nuclear arms race is back … and ever more dangerous now

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Donald Trump has increased spending on America’s arsenal while ripping up cold war treaties. Russia and China are following suit

Imagine the uproar if the entire populations of York, Portsmouth or Swindon were suddenly exposed to three times the permissible level of penetrating gamma radiation, or what the nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford termed gamma rays. The outpouring of rage and fear would be heard across the world.

That’s what happened to the roughly 200,000 people who live in the similarly sized northern Russian city of Severodvinsk on 8 August, after an explosion at a nearby top-secret missile testing range. Russia’s weather service, Rosgidromet, recorded radiation levels up to 16 times higher than the usual ambient rate.

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Hands off our treasured railway, say locals in Sóller, Mallorca

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Anonymous investors have launched a hostile €25m bid for Sóller’s locally owned heritage train link to Palma

Indignant residents of the Mallorcan town of Sóller have said their railway is not for sale after a group of investors launched a hostile takeover bid.

The town has been linked to the capital, Palma, with a picturesque narrow-gauge railway since 1912. The train, with its wooden carriages, has been in continuous use ever since, climbing 200 metres and passing through 13 tunnels on its 27km journey.

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Brexit: no-deal exit edges closer as key Tories refuse to back Corbyn

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Oliver Letwin becomes latest figure to reject call for unity government led by Labout leader

Splits in the anti-no deal alliance of MPs in parliament threatened to stymie plans to stop a no-deal Brexit on Friday, as Conservatives and independent MPs ruled out backing plans brokered by Jeremy Corbyn.

The row between the Liberal Democrats and Labour deepened as the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, urged the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, to seriously reconsider Corbyn’s offer to head a temporary government to stop a no-deal Brexit. The Lib Dem’s former leader Vince Cable demanded Corbyn name a unity figure whom he would back if his plan failed.

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No thanks, we’re not for sale, aghast Greenland tells Trump

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Danish politicians dismiss US president’s apparent interest in island as ‘hopefully a joke’

Donald Trump may have expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland for the US, but Denmark thinks the idea is frankly insane and Greenlanders have pointed out their home is not actually for sale.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the US president has asked his aides and the White House counsel to look into the possibility of buying the world’s largest island, a largely autonomous country of the kingdom of Denmark.

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Norway halts Amazon fund donation in dispute with Brazil

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International concerns grow over deforestation surge since Jair Bolsonaro took power

Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.

Related: Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label as data shows deforestation 'exploded'

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Putin’s 20 years in power producing new generation of protesters

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New wave of protest leaders were children when Russian president first came to power in 1999

The young face of Moscow’s protests, a 21-year-old libertarian with 123,000 followers on YouTube, appeared in court on a television screen this week.

Yegor Zhukov, a political science student at Russia’s prestigious Higher School of Economics, faces eight years in prison over controversial “mass unrest” charges. The Kremlin’s critics think the charges are a scare tactic to crush Russia’s largest protests in years, set to continue for their fourth weekend on Saturday.

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German MP sparks row after proposing an end to first-class rail travel

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Co-chair of leftwing Die Linke party says move would reduce overcrowding and save energy

A leading leftwing politician has sparked a row in Germany by proposing the rail operator Deutsche Bahn scraps first-class carriages to reduce overcrowding and improve energy efficiency.

Bernd Riexinger, the co-leader of Die Linke party, said having two classes of travel in regional trains in particular made no sense when the emphasis should be on energy efficiency and making rail travel more accessible.

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Corbyn: Westminster should not block second Scotland poll

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Labour leader opposes UK breakup but says not parliament’s place to bar independence vote

Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed he believes Westminster should not block a second referendum on Scottish independence, but said he opposed the breakup of the UK.

Corbyn implicitly endorsed remarks by his close ally John McDonnell last week where he said a Labour government would not obstruct a fresh independence vote if there was sufficient support for one in the Scottish parliament.

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Gibraltar says it will free oil tanker at centre of Iran row

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Territory says Tehran has promised oil is not for Syria but US is challenging decision

Gibraltar’s chief minister has said he will allow a detained Iranian oil tanker to be released after Tehran gave the territory’s government an assurance that it would not allow its cargo to be discharged in Syria.

But Fabian Picardo acknowledged that his decision could yet be overturned after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) launched a challenge in the territory’s courts.

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Kremlin lauds ‘heroes’ who landed plane in cornfield after gull strike

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Pilots to get state awards for safe landing outside Moscow having collided with flock of birds

The Kremlin has lauded two Russian pilots as heroes and said they would be given state awards after they landed a plane carrying 233 people in a cornfield outside Moscow having struck a flock of birds during takeoff.

The Ural Airlines Airbus 321 came down in a field south-east of Moscow with its landing gear up after colliding with a passing flock of gulls, which disrupted the plane’s engines.

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Barcelona announces ‘drastic’ rickshaw cutback

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Estimates put total around 2,000 but vehicles remain in regulatory vacuum

Barcelona city council has announced it is to take action against the mostly unlicensed rickshaws that have proliferated on the city’s streets in recent years, which some estimates put as high as 2,000.

“Barcelona isn’t Bombay,” said Jaume Collboni, the deputy mayor. “We have cycle lanes that are for bicycles, pavements for pedestrians and we aspire to having a respectful and quality tourism model.”

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The rain in Spain: how an ancient Arabic technique saves Alicante from floods

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To protect itself from destructive flooding, the city has built a park designed to store and recycle rainwater

In Alicante it never rains but it pours. The city in southeast Spain goes without rain for months on end, but when it comes it’s torrential, bringing destructive and sometimes fatal flooding.

Or at least, it used to. In San Juan, a low-lying area of the city, authorities have built a new park with a twist. Called La Marjal, it serves as a typical recreation area and a nature reserve – but its primary purpose is to store, and then recycle, rainwater.

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Migrant ship heads for Italy’s waters after judge overrules Salvini

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Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms has 147 rescued people on board

The Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms was headed for the Italian island of Lampedusa with 147 rescued migrants on board on Wednesday after a judge in Rome suspended far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s decree banning the vessel from Italy’s territorial waters.

The Proactiva Open Arms charity which operates the ship said it would not try to force entry to Lampedusa port, as another rescue vessel, the Sea-Watch 3, did in June, prompting its seizure and the arrest of its captain.

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Labour bloc plans ‘radical’ move to push through Brexit deal

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Call for ‘dramatic intervention’ to thwart no-deal Brexit by passing withdrawal agreement

Labour MPs opposed to a second referendum are considering a “radical and dramatic intervention” to make clear to Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson they are prepared to vote for a Brexit deal, with one estimating that dozens of colleagues are now ready to back the withdrawal agreement.

Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP who coordinates around 30 MPs in a group called Respect the Result, said he believed that passing the withdrawal agreement was the most certain way of stopping the UK crashing out without a deal.

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Outcry as preschool sets up in former Nazi concentration camp

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Kindergarten to join other businesses operating inside Staro Sajmište, in Belgrade, Serbia, as long-planned Holocaust memorial remains unbuilt

The greying, box-like building that houses the Savsko Obdanište kindergarten has had many uses over the years.

At one point it was a restaurant; when you step through the front doors you find yourself surrounded by musty, brown 1970s-style dining furniture.

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Plácido Domingo accused of sexual harassment

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Allegations ‘deeply troubling’ – I believed my relationships were consensual, says opera star

The opera singer Plácido Domingo has been accused by several women of sexual harassment.

Eight singers and a dancer said they were sexually harassed by the Spanish tenor in incidents that spanned three decades from the late 1980s, Associated Press reported.

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Hungary’s far-right government vilifies Finland over rule of law inquiry

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PM Viktor Orbán and his spokesman launch series of attacks on Finnish presidency

Finland has pledged to pursue a hearing into alleged breaches of the rule of law by Hungary’s far-right government after a campaign of vilification led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Related: Europe must stop this disgrace: Viktor Orbán is dismantling democracy | Timothy Garton Ash

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Notre Dame cathedral sealed off for huge lead decontamination operation

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Area around site sealed off for 10 days to remove hazardous dust that has settled since fire in April

Clean-up workers have begun a huge “decontamination” operation around Notre Dame Cathedral after a health scare over lead particles from the fire.

It is the second attempt to remove hazardous dust spread across a swath of central Paris that settled on homes, schools and on the ground after the blaze in April that destroyed the cathedral’s roof and spire.

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Riot police in Russia punch woman during protest for free elections – video

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Russia’s interior ministry has launched an investigation after a video went viral showing a riot police officer punching a woman in the stomach during a protest for free elections. The footage shows Daria Sosnovskaya, 26, being dragged by two masked police officers in riot gear, with one of them punching her in the stomach before reaching down to pick up a baton. The images provoked outrage in the media and on social networks. 

Sosnovskaya, in an interview to the Mediazona website, said she was dragged away by police for protesting against the detention of a disabled man. A decision to block opposition candidates from running for election to Moscow’s city parliament has prompted a wave of protests that are among the largest since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012.

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