Category Archives: Europe

Polish far-right trial raises spectre of ‘false flag’ tactics

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German journalist with links to Russia allegedly organised arson attack in Ukraine to stoke tensions, court told

The plot allegedly involved three Polish extremists and a German journalist with ties to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, as well as to a number of Kremlin-friendly Russian news outlets.

Their alleged task was to carry out a “false flag” operation in western Ukraine: burn down a Hungarian cultural centre, and make it look as though Ukrainian nationalists were responsible. The main beneficiary of the ensuing recriminations would be Russia.

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US asks world to ‘pick a side’ on Venezuela as UK calls for fair elections

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Mike Pompeo urged countries to disconnect from Maduro’s government financially as Britain issued eight-day ultimatum

Britain has issued the embattled Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a stark ultimatum, warning him it would throw its weight behind the country’s self-declared interim leader unless he called an election within the next eight days – as the US government called on the world to “pick a side” in the crisis.

Echoing calls from Berlin, Paris and Madrid, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said on Saturday it was clear Maduro was no longer the legitimate leader of the Latin American country after last year’s “deeply flawed” election.

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Thieves drive off with Banksy mural on Bataclan fire door

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Artwork thought to be homage to the 90 people who died in an Islamist attack on Paris venue

A mural by British street artist Banksy on a fire-exit door at Paris’ Bataclan theatre, where Islamist militants killed 90 people three years ago, has been stolen, the venue has said.

The work, one of a series of murals painted last June in the French capital and attributed to Banksy, showed a veiled female figure in a mournful pose.

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Juncker warns May: permanent customs union is price for revisiting backstop

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Deputy Frans Timmermans accuses Tory Brexiters of a ‘cavalier’ approach to peace

Jean-Claude Juncker has told Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her red lines in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop.

Without a major shift in the prime minister’s position, the European commission president told May that the current terms of the withdrawal agreement were non-negotiable.

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Can selling its homes for the price of an espresso save this Sicilian town?

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Buyers flocked to Sambuca last week when it put empty houses on sale at €1 each in a bid to reverse decline. We joined the queue…

Darkness falls on the small town of Sambuca di Sicilia, where the council offices on Corso Umberto have been closed for more than three hours. And yet the phones keep ringing, hour after hour.

“They’re calling from Sydney, London, New York,” says the exhausted deputy mayor, Giuseppe Cacioppo. A week after the town announced it was putting up abandoned homes for sale at a euro each, he has fielded requests for information from all over the globe. By Wednesday last week the council had received more than 300 calls and 94,000 emails. Many prospective buyers, not wanting to miss out, grabbed the first available flight to Palermo.

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Key EU medicines regulator closes London office with loss of 900 jobs

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European Medicines Agency heads for Amsterdam 63 days before Brexit

The European Medicines Agency, one of the biggest EU regulators and one of the first casualties of Brexit, has closed its doors in the UK for the last time with the loss of 900 jobs.

Staff lowered and folded up the 28 national flags that adorned the lobby in London’s Canary Wharf headquarters on Friday night and bid farewell before moving to their new offices in Amsterdam.

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Rescuers find body of toddler who fell down Spanish well

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Two-year-old Julen Rosseló fell down 100-metre borehole near Málaga 13 days ago

Specialist teams have found the body of the two-year-old boy whose fall down a 100-metre borehole in southern Spain 13 days ago prompted a major rescue operation that has transfixed the country.

Julen Rosseló was having lunch with his family in the countryside on 13 January when he fell down the 25cm-wide hole in Totalán, near Málaga.

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Egypt frustrates Giulio Regeni investigation three years on

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Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016

Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.

In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.

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Germany extradites ‘laser man’ killer John Ausonius to Sweden

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Far-right extremist, 65, received life terms for shootings of immigrants and a Holocaust survivor in the 1990s

Germany has extradited to Sweden John Ausonius, the convicted killer known as the “the laser man” for using a precision-scope rifle to target immigrants.

“He was extradited on Thursday,” said Frankfurt state prosecutor Nadja Niesen.

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Greek MPs ratify Macedonia name change in historic vote

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Majority back move amid angry cries of ‘traitors’ from nationalists who oppose deal

MPs in Greece have ratified a historic accord that allows the country’s northern neighbour Macedonia to change its name.

In a roll-call vote, punctuated by angry cries of “traitors” from nationalists opposed to the deal, 153 MPs voted in favour of the pact.

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Europe ‘coming apart before our eyes’, say 30 top intellectuals

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Group of historians and writers publish manifesto warning against rise of populism

Liberal values in Europe face a challenge “not seen since the 1930s”, leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections.

The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”.

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Death of Count of Paris sparks pretend game of thrones in France

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Jean d’Orléans, descendant of Louis XIV’s brother, inherits a place in a theoretical tussle

The pretender to be French king is dead. Long live the other pretenders, all three.

France might have thought it had done with monarchs, first in 1793 when it sent Louis XVI to the guillotine during the French Revolution, and again when it exiled Napoleon III in 1870.

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Emiliano Sala’s sister begs rescuers to restart search for missing footballer

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Romina Sala says she believes he is still alive after plane vanished over Channel Islands

The family of the footballer Emiliano Sala have pleaded for rescuers to continue searching for the player and a pilot after their light aircraft went missing over the Channel Islands.

Sala’s sister, Romina Sala, speaking after the search was called off, said she believed the Argentinian striker and the pilot Dave Ibbotson, from Lincolnshire, were still alive and in the Channel three days after their plane vanished.

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Court in Italy rules Matteo Salvini should be tried for kidnapping

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Leader of far-right party under investigation after preventing 177 migrants from disembarking in Italy

Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is one step away from facing trial after a surprise court ruling determined that he be tried for kidnapping.

In August, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, placed Salvini, who is leader of the far-right party the League, under investigation for the alleged kidnapping and detention of 177 migrants whom he prevented from disembarking the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti.

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Gilets jaunes name 10 candidates for European elections

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Protest group in France says it wants to ‘transform the anger into a human political project’

The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have named 10 candidates for the European parliament elections in May and called for more of their fellow demonstrators to put their names forward.

The French protest movement that, until now, has had no official leaders or formal organisation, announced on Wednesday that it would take part in the vote on 26 May after 10 weeks of occasionally violent demonstrations across the country.

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Military buildup in Arctic as melting ice reopens northern borders

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As ice melts and shipping lanes open up, geopolitical tensions are growing and old cold war bases are being reopened

The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice.

That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations.

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Amanda Knox: European court orders Italy to pay damages

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American wants conviction of malicious accusation over Meredith Kercher’s murder overturned

The European court of human rights has ordered Italy to pay Amanda Knox €18,400 for police failures to provide her access to a lawyer and a translator during questioning over the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia.

The ruling opens the way for Knox’s lawyers to challenge her last remaining conviction, for malicious accusation, in the Italian courts.

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No-deal Brexit ‘poses threat to global stability’ – CBI head

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Carolyn Fairbairn warns bosses at Davos that damage caused by disorderly exit could spread far beyond the UK

Fears are growing internationally that a no-deal Brexit poses a threat to the stability of the global economy, the head of Britain’s leading business body has warned.

Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the failure to sort out Britain’s departure from the European Union was damaging Britain’s brand abroad and had joined a list of systemic risks to the world economy.

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