Category Archives: Europe

Man suspected of Cyprus serial killings ‘has confessed in writing’

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Nikos Metaxas, 35, has reportedly admitted killing five women and two children

An army officer suspected of murdering at least seven people in Cyprus reportedly confessed to the serial killings in writing, saying he wanted “to go to prison”.

As Scotland Yard detectives joined police in investigating crimes described as unprecedented in scale, local media said the Greek Cypriot suspect decided to confess to the deaths of five foreign women and two children when he realised the evidence against him was unassailable.

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Clashes as May Day protesters march in cities across Europe

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Worst violence occurs in Paris but trouble also flares in Berlin, Gothenburg and St Petersburg

Police and protesters have clashed, sometimes violently, in cities across Europe as tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and other demonstrators marched in traditional May Day rallies.

The worst confrontations were in Paris, where riot police fired teargas and stingball grenades as a 40,000-strong crowd, included gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters and an estimated 2,000 masked and hooded “black bloc” activists, marched from Montparnasse station to Place d’Italie.

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May Day: teargas and arrests in protests across Europe – video report

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Police and protesters have clashed in cities across Europe as tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and other demonstrators march in traditional May Day rallies. The worst confrontations were in Paris, where riot police fired teargas and stingball grenades as a 40,000-strong crowd marched from Montparnasse station to Place d'Italie

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The Correspondent apologizes for US office ‘screw up’ after fundraising $2.6m

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Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site posts public apology for misleading more than 45,000 donors about New York office

A Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site which raised $2.6m ahead of “launching in the US” has apologized and said it “screwed up”, after announcing its headquarters will actually be in Amsterdam.

In December 2018, the Correspondent, a planned English-language version of the Dutch De Correspondent, raised $2.6m from more than 45,000 donors in a widely publicized fundraising campaign. In March, however, it said it would not after all open a newsroom in New York.

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Anger as Corbyn faces down calls for Labour to back new Brexit vote

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Labour NEC resists pressure to unequivocally support second referendum in EU election manifesto

Jeremy Corbyn has faced down a challenge spearheaded by his deputy, Tom Watson, for Labour to signal its unequivocal backing for a second Brexit referendum in the forthcoming European election campaign.

In a move that sparked an immediate backlash among remain-supporters, Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), announced that its manifesto for the election would be “fully in line” with its longstanding policy.

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Eurozone growth rises, unemployment falls, and Italy escapes recession – business live

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Eurozone economy grew by 0.4% in the last quarter, faster than expected, as Italy escaped its third recession in a decade

Earlier:

Italy’s farms, factories and service sector companies all made a positive contribution to growth in the last quarter, Istat says.

Net exports also boosted growth, which is an encouraging signal.

In another boost to the eurozone, Italy has returned to growth after its third recession in a decades.

Italy Q1 preliminary GDP +0.2% vs +0.1% q/q expected https://t.co/bZacGKzKXT pic.twitter.com/6Nl0Eqd7KZ

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Ferrexpo could have done without the side show to its Deloitte spat

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A wiser board might have stopped Chris Mawe’s £400,000 share sale the morning before auditor quit

It is a rare for an auditor to quit the role at a London-listed FTSE 250 firm. So one might conclude it was merely unfortunate that Chris Mawe, the finance director at Ferrexpo, chose last Thursday morning to sell £400,000-worth of shares, just before events moved rapidly at the Swiss-based miner of iron ore in Ukraine. In the evening of the same day, Deloitte quit. On Friday morning, when the firm’s resignation was made public, Ferrexpo’s share price plunged by 28%.

The company had not received Deloitte’s letter of resignation at the time of the share sale, so there is – to be clear – no suggestion rules were broken. Even so, one has to ask if it was sensible for Mawe to sell last Thursday when so many unanswered questions hung in the air.

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Italians try to crack Leonardo da Vinci DNA code with lock of hair

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Hair tagged as polymath’s in US collection to be tested against remains in French grave

Two Italian experts are set to perform a DNA test on a lock of hair that they say might have belonged to Leonardo da Vinci.

The hair strand was found in a private collection in the US and will go on display for the first time at the Ideale Leonardo da Vinci museum in Vinci (the Tuscan town where the artist was born), from 2 May, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.

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Actor who played young mobster is stabbed in Naples

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Artem Tkachuk, 18, of Piranhas film is believed to have been attacked by a ‘baby gang’ in city

An actor who appeared in an award-winning film about child criminals in Naples has been stabbed by an alleged member of one of the Italian city’s “baby gangs”.

Artem Tkachuk, 18, originally from Ukraine, played a young mobster in The Piranhas, which told the story of the phenomenon of baby gangs, criminal groups led by youngsters, in Naples.

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Austrian deputy leader endorses far-right term ‘population replacement’

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Heinz-Christian Strache says term associated with extreme right is a ‘term of reality’

Austria’s deputy leader has said his party is fighting against a “replacement” of the native population, endorsing a term usually employed by the extreme right, as the country’s rightwing populists double down on their rhetoric before the European elections.

Heinz-Christian Strache, the deputy chancellor in Austria’s conservative-nationalist coalition government and the leader of the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), told the Krone newspaper on Sunday that his party was “consistently following the path for our Austrian homeland, the fight against population replacement, as people expect of us.”

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Spain’s socialist PSOE party mulls next move after victory without majority

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PSOE aims to govern alone with support of Podemos after rival People’s party loses seats in face of far-right surge

Spain’s socialist party has begun weighing up its options for government after storming past its traditional conservative rival in Sunday’s snap general election but failing to win a majority.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, led his socialist PSOE party to its first victory since 2008, winning 123 seats and taking 29% of the vote.

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Spanish socialists’ win is latest sign of Europe’s centre-left upturn

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Victory of PSOE in Sunday’s election comes at expense of centre-right that tried to outflank extremists

A decisive socialist win in Spain’s election on Sunday may be seen in Europe as evidence of a gathering centre-left recovery – but it also underlines the dangers to moderate conservatives of courting the far right.

Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party (PSOE) won 123 seats and 29% of the vote in Sunday’s election, well up on the 85 seats and 23% they got in 2016. The conservative People’s party (PP) lost half its vote share and half its MPs, finishing second with 66 seats.

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Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail?

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One shop sells nothing but buttons, another sells only liquorice, and another is ‘the world’s first textile butcher shop’. In the age of Amazon, it seems the way to thrive is to specialise

On the first floor of a nondescript 1,000 sq metre industrial unit in Berlin’s Steglitz district, four workers are cautiously placing pregnant queen ants into test tubes in order to dispatch them across Europe. This is Antstore, the world’s first specialist ant shop, a business with around two dozen employees, a glass-cutting workshop, plastic and plaster modelling studios and a full-time social media manager.

It is just one of the surprisingly large number of shops in Berlin that sell only one thing, be it crawly insects, salty sweets, sticky tape or miniature string instruments. With online retail sales changing the face of high streets in cities around the world, many wonder if this hyper-specialisation could be more than an accidental side effect of the German capital’s tumultuous history, and also a blueprint for the high street of the future.

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Paolo Di Paolo’s Italy in the 1950s and 60s – in pictures

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The Paolo Di Paolo: Lost World exhibition presents more than 250 largely unseen images from the photographer’s archive. Di Paolo chronicled life in his country as an economic boom followed the destruction of the second world war. Although those were the years of la dolce vita he was an anti-paparazzo – he shunned the salacious and respected his subjects. The exhibition is at MAXXI in Rome until 30 June

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Whale with harness could be Russian weapon, say Norwegian experts

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Fisherman raised alarm after white whale sporting unusual strapping began harassing their boats

Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.

Fishermen in waters near the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga reported last week that a white beluga whale wearing a strange harness had begun to harass their fishing boats.

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How the far right gained a foothold in Spain

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With Vox’s vote rocketing, the election has seen the end of Spanish exceptionalism – and Catalonia was the catalyst

Spanish exceptionalism – the country’s supposed immunity to the far-right parties that have seeped into mainstream European politics – has finally succumbed to the wounds it received last December.

Four months after picking up 12 seats in the Andalucían regional election, the upstart Vox party led by Santiago Abascal is to enter the national parliament, winning 24 seats in the congress of deputies and taking 10% of the vote.

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Spanish election: socialists win amid far-right gains for Vox party

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PSOE wins 123 seats on 75% turnout and likely to seek coalition to reach 176-seat target for working majority

Spain’s ruling socialists won the most votes but fell short of a majority in Sunday’s snap general election, a contest marked by the breakthrough of the far-right Vox party and a disastrous performance by the country’s traditional conservative party.

Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) won 123 seats, the conservative People’s party (PP) 66, the centre-right Citizens party 57, the anti-austerity Unidas Podemos and its allies 42, and Vox 24.

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Ukraine president offers Russians citizenship in snub to Putin

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy hits back at Russia’s offer of passports for Ukrainians

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the comedian who last week won Ukraine’s presidential election, has dismissed an offer by Vladimir Putin to provide passports to Ukrainians and pledged instead to grant citizenship to Russians who “suffer” under the Kremlin’s rule.

The Russian president on Saturday said Moscow was considering plans to make it easier for all Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship, after it earlier moved to grant passports in the country’s separatist east.

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Trieste half-marathon backtracks on exclusion of Africans

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Organisers invited only Europeans to draw attention to exploitation of African athletes

The organisers of a half-marathon in the northern Italian city of Trieste have backtracked on their decision to exclude African athletes from the race following accusations of racism.

“After launching a provocation that hit a nerve, drawing great attention to a fundamental issue, contrary to what was communicated yesterday, we will also invite African athletes,” Fabio Carini, the manager of the Trieste running festival, said in a statement.

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Spain elections: voters head to polls for third time in four years

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Far-right Vox party could prove kingmaker after an election unlikely to produce a majority

Spain heads to the polls for the third time in four years, with the ruling socialist party expected to win the most votes but fall short of a majority and the far-right Vox party poised to achieve a national breakthrough.

The general election was called by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, in February after Catalan separatists joined rightwing parties in rejecting his 2019 budget.

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