Category Archives: Europe

The house that Hoxha built: dictator’s villa to become public space

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Enver Hoxha’s villa in central Tirana, once sealed off by the Albanian secret service and home to party elites, is to be opened to the public

The interiors of Enver Hoxha’s cavernous three-story villa are mostly just as they were when Albania’s communist leader died in 1985. By then, Hoxha had led a Stalinist dictatorship in the country for four decades, turning Albania into one of the most isolated and repressive states in the world.

During the communist period, the whole area around Hoxha’s house in Albania’s capital city, Tirana, was sealed off by police and secret agents. Known as the Blloku, the district functioned as a kind of wall-less Kremlin in the heart of Tirana, reserved for the party elite and their families.

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Vauxhall Astra to be built in UK if ministers avoid no-deal Brexit

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PSA Group’s decision is boost to British car industry and workers at Ellesmere Port plant

PSA Group said it will build its new Vauxhall Astra car at its Ellesmere Port plant but only on the condition the government secures a good Brexit deal.

The decision is a major boost for the embattled British car industry and the 1,100 employees at the plant, whose future had been thought to be dependent on winning the Astra contract.

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Women arrested after reporting ‘hitman’ they hired to Spanish police

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Mother and daughter say man swindled them out of €7,000 fee to kill mother’s partner

A Spanish woman and her daughter have been arrested after going to a police station to complain that the man they hired to carry out a murder had swindled them out of the €7,000 (£6,300) they paid him.

The incident seemed to begin earlier this month, when the pair told police in Madrid that the mother’s partner had cheated them out of a total of €60,000.

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Number of asylum seekers sent back to Italy triples in five years

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EU countries sending growing numbers back to country of arrival in bloc

The number of asylum seekers returned to Italy from elsewhere in Europe under a controversial EU regulation has almost tripled in five years, amid concern over their treatment in Italy and Germany.

Under the terms of the Dublin regulation, member states can send people back to their country of arrival in the EU – usually Italy or Greece.

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Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal claims rubbished by Guy Verhofstadt

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EU Brexit coordinator likens Tory frontrunner’s claims to ‘false promises’ of referendum

Boris Johnson’s claims about the prospects of rewriting the Brexit deal have been compared by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator to the “false promises, pseudo-patriotism and foreigner-bashing” he is said to have used to win the EU referendum.

The suggestion from the Conservative leadership frontrunner that he will be able to dump Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, withhold the UK’s £39bn divorce bill and still negotiate a free-trade deal in Brussels was savaged by Guy Verhofstadt.

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Spain fights huge forest fire as European heatwave intensifies

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Blaze fanned by strong winds and high temperatures could burn through 20,000 hectares

More than 500 firefighters and soldiers are working to bring a huge forest fire under control in north-eastern Spain as the early summer heatwave intensifies across Europe.

The fire, in the Catalan province of Tarragona, has been fanned by strong winds and high temperatures and has so far burned across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land.

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Iran holds back on threat to breach nuclear deal

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Country may be waiting on outcome of talks setting out plans to kickstart trade with EU

Iran has held back on its threat to make its first breach of the nuclear deal and may be waiting for the outcome of talks with EU powers, China and Russia in Vienna.

At the talks on Friday the EU countries will set out plans to kickstart trade between Tehran and the bloc, one of the Iranian preconditions for sticking with the deal.

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Angela Merkel seen shaking for second time in just over a week

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German chancellor will travel to G20 despite visibly shaking at public event in Berlin

Angela Merkel has travelled to the G20 summit in Japan, despite experiencing a second bout of shaking in just over a week at a public event, her spokesperson has said.

“Everything is going ahead as planned,” Steffen Seibert told German media. “The chancellor is doing fine.”

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Former Manus Island detainee tells UN ‘human beings are being destroyed’

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Abdul Aziz Muhamat delivers a plea for urgent action to the Human Rights Council

Since Abdul Aziz Muhamat left Manus Island for the last time, he has climbed a mountain in his new home of Switzerland, and then returned to advocating for the resettlement of the hundreds of men and women he left behind.

The Sudanese refugee spent more than six years in Australia’s offshore processing and detention system in Papua New Guinea, before he was granted residency in the European nation earlier this month.

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Half-tonne birds may have roamed Europe at same time as humans

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Huge thigh bone in Crimean cave belonged to largest bird found in northern hemisphere

Giant flightless birds that dwarfed modern ostriches and weighed nearly half a tonne roamed Europe when the first archaic humans arrived from Africa, scientists say.

Researchers unearthed the fossilised thigh bone of one of the feathered beasts while excavating a cave on the Crimean peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea. It is the first time such a massive bird has been found in the northern hemisphere.

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Europe heatwave: cities take steps to limit effects of record temperatures

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Germany imposes speed limits on highways while schools in France remain closed

European cities are taking exceptional steps to limit the impact of a historic early summer heatwave as temperatures across the continent approached monthly and, in some places, all-time records.

Authorities have warned that temperatures could pass 40C and reach 45C in parts of the continent by Saturday as a plume of hot air moves north from the Sahara, sucked northwards by a stalled storm over the Atlantic and high pressure in central Europe.

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Austrian far-right leader searched on suspicion of forming terrorist group with Christchurch shooter

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Investigation widens to include Martin Sellner’s fiancee Brittany Pettibone following her contact with Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell

The Austrian identitarian leader, Martin Sellner, has been subjected to further searches by Austrian police in connection with the Christchurch shooter, according to Austrian media reports and videos on Sellner’s own YouTube channel.

The investigation has also reportedly widened to include Sellner’s US-based fiancee, Brittany Pettibone, and her own alleged connections with Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell.

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Jeremy Hunt says Boris Johnson can’t be trusted on Brexit promises

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Foreign secretary says Conservative leadership rival cannot fulfil promises

Jeremy Hunt has suggested there is “no trust” in Boris Johnson to fulfil his promises on Brexit, telling the BBC he believes he has the better personality to be prime minister.

Speaking after a war of words with his Conservative leadership rival, whom Hunt branded a coward for turning down a debate with him on Sky News on Tuesday night, Hunt said 31 October was a “fake deadline” and could lead to a snap general election.

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Denmark’s youngest prime minister leads new leftist government

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Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democratic party forms minority government

Denmark has became the third Nordic country this year to form a leftist government after the Social Democratic party leader, Mette Frederiksen, finalised terms for a one-party minority government. Aged 41, she becomes the country’s youngest ever prime minister.

“It is with great pleasure I can announce that, after three weeks of negotiations, we have a majority to form a new government,” Frederiksen said on Tuesday.

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Kaiser’s descendant loses court battle to regain 13th-century castle

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Court rules against Georg Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia’s claim on Rheinfels Castle

A German court has ruled against a claim by the great-great-grandson of the country’s last kaiser to the picturesque ruins of a 13th-century castle overlooking the Rhine valley.

Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, argued the ruins of Rheinfels Castle should be returned to the Hohenzollern family because the current owners had breached a century-old agreement, a claim rejected on Tuesday by a court in Koblenz.

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Austria approves US extradition of Ukrainian tycoon

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Supreme court clears way for Dmytro Firtash to face trial on bribery charges

Austria’s supreme court has upheld a decision granting a request by the US to extradite the Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash on bribery charges.

A US grand jury indicted Firtash in 2013, along with a member of India’s parliament and four others, on suspicion of bribing Indian government officials to gain access to minerals used to make titanium-based products. Firtash denies wrongdoing.

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Ukraine walks out of Europe human rights body as Russia returns

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Delegation leaves Council of Europe assembly in protest at readmission of Russian MPs

The Ukrainian delegation at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has walked out in protest after Russian MPs were allowed to return to the human rights body five years after the annexation of Crimea.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he was disappointed by the decision of the assembly (Pace) to readmit Russian members, while the head of the delegation said Ukraine would halt its work at the assembly.

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Dublin disappoints: what happened to city cycling’s great hope?

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In 2013 the Irish capital was ranked among the world’s top 20 bike-friendly cities, but only a small part of the promised cycle network was ever built

One sunny May afternoon in Dublin, as the Spice Girls prepared to kick off their Spice World 2019 tour at Croke Park stadium, the coaches bringing their fans unwittingly sparked another reunion – the city’s cycle activists.

It had been two years since the direct action group I Bike Dublin had mobilised to protect cycle tracks from car parking – uniting around twice a week under the hashtag #freethecyclelane – but as police officers directed coach drivers to park in the bike lane by Dublin Bay, blocking the track, the protesters were back.

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Requiescat in pace: Finland’s Yle radio axes Latin news show after 30 years

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Public broadcaster cancels weekly summary Nuntii Latini as original presenters retire

Finland’s public broadcaster Yle has ended its weekly Latin language news bulletin, after three decades on the air, the broadcaster announced.

Since its debut in 1989, Nuntii Latini has offered a five-minute summary of the week’s national and foreign news in the classical language.

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