Category Archives: Europe

Trump on whether US will strike Iran: ‘You will soon find out’ – live

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President says ‘stay tuned for next week’ when asked if he will authorize strike against Tehran in retaliation for attack on US drone

Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose unsuccessful 2017 campaign for US Senate was marred by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, is going to try again.

The Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, defeated Moore by a narrow margin in a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became US attorney general. Jones was the first Democrat in a quarter-century to be elected to the US Senate in Alabama.

AP is reporting that Roy Moore will jump into the Alabama Senate race https://t.co/gsALWyjY5v

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders hold narrow leads in a theoretical showdown with President Trump in North Carolina ahead of the 2020 presidential race, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday.

From The Hill:

Forty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed said they would back Biden in a match-up against Trump, while 46 percent said they would support the president. Five percent, meanwhile, said they are unsure who they’d back.

In a match-up against Sanders, 48 percent of North Carolina voters said they’d back the Vermont senator, compared with 47 percent who said they would vote for Trump; 5 percent said they were unsure of their pick.

No other candidate leads Trump in the poll.

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Merkel-Macron meeting fails to resolve row over EU leadership

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Donald Tusk ‘more cautious than optimistic’ that leaders can reach a deal this week

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have clashed again over who will fill the EU’s most senior posts, prompting one frustrated national leader to claim it would be easier to elect a pope.

An unproductive meeting on Thursday between the German chancellor and the French president appeared to dash any hope of a swift resolution to their dispute over the future leadership of the EU’s institutions, including a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European commission.

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Slovakia’s new president buoys Czech liberals on first foreign visit

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Zuzana Čaputová’s arrival in Prague comes as activists plan fresh protests against rightwing Czech government

Slovakia’s newly installed liberal president, Zuzana Čaputová, has arrived in the Czech Republic on an official visit that will culminate in a symbolic visit to the grave of Václav Havel, the former dissident who was the first post-communist leader of the former Czechoslovakia.

Čaputová lay flowers at the Havel family plot in Prague’s Vinohrady cemetery in a mark of respect to a man she has identified as a role model and a statement of her own self-avowed values of tolerance and decency. Havel led the protests that resulted in the fall of the communist regime in the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

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Giulio Regeni’s parents demand Italy recall Cairo ambassador

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Family of researcher say Egypt is impeding investigation into Regeni’s death

The family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian doctoral student who was murdered in Egypt in 2016, are demanding that Rome withdraw its ambassador to Cairo for a second time in response to what they say is Egyptian pressure on their lawyers and efforts to prevent investigation into their son’s death.

“Enough is enough,” Paola and Claudio Regeni said in a joint statement with their lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini. “The withdrawal of the Italian ambassador from Cairo can no longer be postponed.”

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Ten cities ask EU for help to fight Airbnb expansion

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Cities say short-term holiday lettings market is contributing to soaring long-term rents

Ten European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday rental websites, which they argue are locking locals out of housing and changing the face of neighbourhoods.

In a joint letter, Amsterdam, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Krakow, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Vienna said the “explosive growth” of global short-stay lettings platforms must be on the agenda of the next set of European commissioners.

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German politicians’ support for refugees prompts death threats

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Email warns recent murder of Walter Lübcke was first in a line of ‘upcoming purges’

Several German politicians who have publicly stood up for refugees have received death threats since what police are treating as the alleged politically motivated murder of one of Angela Merkel’s party allies.

An email sent to politicians and media organisations across the country on Tuesday night warned that the alleged murder of the Christian Democratic Union politician Walter Lübcke, allegedly by a man linked to the far right, was the first in a line of “upcoming purges” and called for terror attacks on left-leaning politicians, refugees and Jews in Germany.

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Cory Booker attacks Biden for ‘civil’ relationship with segregationist lawmakers – as it happened

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After the Senate majority leader dismissed the idea of reparations, Coates testified before Congress about ‘campaign of terror’ against black Americans

Closing out live coverage this evening, with an updated summary of today’s news from Amanda Holpuch and me:

Watch some of the key moments from today’s Congressional debate over reparations:

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MH17: Four suspects named for shooting down plane – video

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Four suspects, three of them Russian, will face murder charges for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, international investigators have said. A trial is due to start next March in the Netherlands. The suspects were named as Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s FSB spy service; Sergey Dubinskiy, employed by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency; Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier with the GRU’s special forces Spetsnaz unit; and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian man.


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MH17 court case will finally put truth on record

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Legal process essential even if those charged over killing of 298 passengers never go to jail

Wash kits, bags of duty-free shopping and sections of overhead compartment lay strewn across the fields. In one spot, there was a stack of holiday reading. The body of a young Malaysian boy had landed outside a babushka’s cottage.

The aftermath of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was a landscape of carnage and chaos. Parts of the plane and its contents landed across several kilometres of the normally peaceful Ukrainian countryside, where villages had already been disturbed by months of war and people now witnessed bodies falling from the sky.

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La Scala poised to name Dominique Meyer as manager

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Milan opera house expected to choose Frenchman to replace Alexander Pereira

Dominique Meyer, the French director of the Vienna State Opera, is poised to be named as general manager of Milan’s La Scala opera house.

Giuseppe Sala, La Scala’s president and the mayor of Milan, said the board had reached an agreement on who would replace the Austrian Alexander Pereira, and that an official decision would be made on 28 June.

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French scepticism over vaccines reflects distrust of government

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French people’s ‘pathological’ relationship with the state may be a factor in anti-vax trend

France is more sceptical about vaccine safety than any other nation, research suggests. A third of French people disagree that vaccines are safe, according to the Wellcome Global Monitor survey.

This scepticism over vaccinations reflects the public’s comparatively high distrust of politicians, say experts on France’s anti-vaccine movement. The Wellcome study found France had among the highest levels of distrust of government.

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Survey shows crisis of confidence in vaccines in parts of Europe

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Just half of people in eastern Europe think vaccines are safe, compared with 79% worldwide

A global survey of attitudes towards science has revealed the scale of the crisis of confidence in vaccines in Europe, showing that only 59% of people in western Europe and 50% in the east think vaccines are safe, compared with 79% worldwide.

Around the globe, 84% of people acknowledge that vaccines are effective and 92% say their child has received a vaccine. But in spite of good healthcare and education systems, in parts of Europe there is low trust in vaccines. France has the highest levels of distrust, at 33%.

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Hundreds of Roma ‘forcibly removed’ from Russian village

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Governor blames tensions on US after about 650 believed evicted from Chemodanovka

Hundreds of Roma people have been forcibly evicted from a village in western Russia, the head of the village council has admitted, after one ethnic Russian was killed and another left in a coma.

The regional government quickly tried to backtrack on the comments by Sergey Fadeev, who told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta: “Buses were brought and all the [Roma] who lived here were taken to Volgograd, where the local diaspora had agreed to accept them. It was done forcibly. Now we are studying the legality of their living in our village.”

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Two boys, 14, convicted of classmate’s murder in Ireland

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Victim Ana Kriégel was lured from her home, beaten and sexually assaulted in May 2018

Two 14-year-old boys have been found guilty of murdering a female classmate who was lured to an abandoned house, savagely beaten and sexually assaulted in a case that has shaken Ireland.

The battered and partially clothed body of Ana Kriégel was found in a derelict farmhouse in Lucan, a Dublin suburb, on 17 May 2018, three days after she went missing.

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MH17: prosecutors to identify suspects and file first charges

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Inquiry expected to name first four suspects over downing of flight that killed 298 in 2014

Dutch prosecutors are to identify suspects and file the first criminal charges over the 2014 downing of flight MH17 over east Ukraine which killed 298 people in the worst atrocity in five years of war between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists.

The charges are likely to target members of a Russia-backed separatist movement and may include Russian service personnel who commanded or helped transport the anti-aircraft missile system used to bring down the plane.

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Matteo Salvini: Italy wants to be Washington’s closest partner in Europe

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Hard-right leader speaks on arrival in US of ‘common vision’ with Trump administration amid EU turmoil

Matteo Salvini has said Italy wants to be Washington’s closest partner in Europe during the hard-right leader’s visit to the US capital for talks with the Trump administration.

Salvini made it clear that he sees an opportunity to forge a closer US-Italian relationship at a time of European turmoil and alignment between populist governments in both countries.

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Belgian monks finally launch website to sell ‘world’s best beer’

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Beer lovers will still have to travel to St Sixtus abbey to pick up their allotted crates

It has been described as the world’s most sought-after beer. Just over 5,000 barrels are brewed annually by the 19 Trappist monks of St Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren, Flanders, and drinkers tempted by the regular appearance of its darkest brew at the top of the world rankings must travel in person and on appointment to pick up their allotted two crates.

But even the reclusive brothers are having to change with the times – to an extent. In order to stay one step ahead of those seeking to sell on their beer at steeply inflated prices, the abbey has announced it is going digital. A website has been set up where customers can order their two crates, with priority given to recent and new customers.

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Romanian immigrant elected German mayor after anti-AfD alliance

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Actors and directors called on Görlitz voters to not succumb to far-right party’s ‘hate and enmity’

A 51-year-old immigrant has been elected mayor of a town in eastern Germany after beating a candidate from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a campaign that drew international attention.

Octavian Ursu, a classical musician who came to Germany from Romania in 1990s, stood for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union party, receiving 55.1% of the vote in Sunday’s election in Goerlitz. Preliminary returns showed his AfD opponent, Sebastian Wippel, an ex-policeman received 44.9%.

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France to declare natural disaster after storms rip through crops

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‘Orchard of France’ is badly hit by extreme weather that has killed two people

France will declare a state of natural disaster after rain and hail storms lashed a swathe of the south-east on Saturday, devastating crops.

The flash storms, which brought hailstones as big as pingpong balls to some areas, killed two people in France and Switzerland, and injured at least 10 others.

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Berlin’s Alexander Haus regains its soul after painstaking restoration

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Lakeside house where a Jewish family lived before fleeing the Nazis spans a century of German history

Elsie Alexander called it her “soul place”, the lakeside house on the outskirts of Berlin where her family had spent long happy summers before they were forced to flee the Nazis.

Eighty-three years on, her grandson, Thomas Harding, along with members of the local community, reopened it to the public on Sunday after a painstaking restoration process in which the house by the lake – the subject of his bestselling 2015 book of the same name – was saved from demolition and turned into a educational meeting place for young Europeans.

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