Europe
Europe
Possession of up to 25 grams of cannabis and three plants for adults becomes legal in Germany from 1st of April after a vote in the Bundesrat and the drug will no longer be classified as a narcotic
German 16-year-old Loretta B. taken by police from classroom after she posted video on Tiktok in support of Alternative for Germany and Elon Musk draws attention to the incident on X, her mother says there is nothing criminal in the video but yet her daughter is still treated as a criminal
Former Stasi officer Martin Naumann, 80, faces charges for murder of Pole Czesław Kukuczka who tried to escape to West Berlin in 1974, at least 140 people were killed between 1961 and 1989 trying to cross the Berlin Wall and officials have previously been charged for manslaughter for which the statute of limitations would have expired in this case
Alternative for Germany wins the election in Großschirma near Dresden with 59 percent of the vote in the first round and their candidate Rolf Weigand becomes the party's third mayor
Recording of top ranking German military officials discussing potential German operation to bomb Crimea Bridge leaked by Russia who intercepted the conversation and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says what is being reported is a very serious matter and that is why it is now being investigated very carefully, very intensively and very quickly
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visits Volodymyr Zelenskyj in Kharkiv and agrees to speed up the process of delivering fighter jets of the F-16 model to Ukraine and according to Rutte, they will be in place later in 2024
EU Parliament approves law which means that at least 20 percent of all European land and sea areas must be restored by 2030, forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers and lakes are explicitly covered, needs approval from all member states before it comes into force
52-year-old Tunisian imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi, who has lived in France since the 80s, is being sent home after being arrested for calling the Tricolor satanic in a viral video, the deportation order cites that his sermons create an intolerant and violent image of Islam that can encourage action against French values, discrimination against women, tensions with the Jewish community and jihadist radicalization
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny died in the Russian penal colony IK-3 in Siberia after, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, he felt ill after a walk and lost consciousness, was sentenced in 2021 to 19 years in prison for extremism and survived poisoning with the nerve agent novichok in 2020
Germany is introducing pre-loaded payment cards for asylum seekers to be used for basic necessities and local newspaper Reutlinger General Anzeiger reports that the introduction of the card appears to be inspiring some to look for work and others to return to their countries of origin
Poland's former interior minister and vice president of the Law and Justice party, Mariusz Kamiński, and former deputy interior minister Maciej Wąsik are on hunger strike for two weeks after being arrested on January 9 and released after being pardoned for the second time in the same case by President Andrzej Duda
Farmers have been protesting against higher taxes and lower subsidies since December in Germany, for almost two weeks in Romania and in France in recent days, in Berlin, for example, thousands of tractors and an estimated 30,000 protesters gathered
Denmark gets a new regent as 55-year-old King Frederik X takes the throne after Queen Margrethe II abdicates on Sunday, his wife, Mary Donaldson of Australia, becomes Queen Mary and their son, 18-year-old Christian, becomes crown prince
René Springer, representative of Alternative for Germany, says they plan to send foreigners to their home countries, counted in the millions, and the party, which has just received 24 percent in a national opinion poll, writes in a statement that 2024 must be the year of return migration
69 percent of Germans support the farmers protests in the country despite the fact that a fifth of the respondents themselves were affected by the protests, according to a survey by the German research company INSA
The EU home affairs commissioner as well as a Swedish social democrat, Ylva Johansson, says the EU needs one million additional migrants annually to compensate for the demographic deficit as the working population in the EU is decreasing by one million annually
About 150 farmers from North Frisia meet arriving ferry with Germany's finance minister and vice chancellor Robert Habeck, who is advised by security personnel to not discuss the differences on land and instead invites them on board, which the farmers refuse, farmers have resented scrapped subsidies on agricultural diesel as well as new taxes on vehicles
More than 155,750 foreigners arrived in Italy by sea in 2023, which is an increase of almost 50 percent compared to the previous year, in April 2023 the Italian government declared a six-month state of emergency over migration and Giorgia Meloni took office as Prime Minister in October 2022
Russia carries out the single largest air attack on Ukraine since the outbreak of war on Friday, killing 18 people, according to the Ukrainian army which claims 158 robots and drones were fired
28-year-old Jordan Bardella, party leader of the National Assembly in France, challenges Marine Le Pen in popularity, which has been shown in recent surveys, has received media attention in connection with recent terrorist attacks and debate on an immigration reform bill
McDonald's opens a new restaurant 20 kilometers outside Kiev, has an area of 430 square meters and 234 seats, becomes the 100th restaurant in Ukraine but before the war the chain had 109 restaurants
EU is expecting well over one million asylum applications in 2023 and according to the European Union Agency for Asylum, 937,000 applications have been received up to and including October, which is an increase of 22 percent compared to the previous year, after Syria the most common nationalities are Venezuela, Turkey, Colombia, Bangladesh and Pakistan
Russia announces full control of the city of Maryinka, 30 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, while Ukrainian spokesman says it is incorrect to talk about a complete capture and says the city is completely destroyed
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been located at the penal colony IK-3 in Kharp in Siberia after being in an unknown location since December 6, is since 2021 serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism
Norway's Equinor will supply Germany with a third of its industrial gas needs following a EUR 50 billion deal with German energy company Sefe, formerly Gazprom Germania which was nationalized in 2022, deliveries starting on January 1, 2024
Alternative for Germany gets its second mayor when 53-year-old Tim Lochner, who is not a party member but ran on the party's ballot, takes over the post of Pirna in Saxony with 37,000 inhabitants, Clara Bünger of the left-wing party Die Linke writes on X that "advent , advent, democracy burns"
The party of Serbia's incumbent President Aleksandar Vučić, the Progressive Party of Serbia, wins the parliamentary elections in the country and seems to receive absolute majority in the parliament, opposition leader Radomir Lazović claims election fraud
46 percent of Finns support stopping asylum seekers in Finland and instead wish to send aid to refugee camps abroad according to a survey commissioned by a think tank linked to The Finns Party, 41 percent were against the proposal
Thousands of truckers stuck at Ukraine's borders with Poland and Slovakia after conflict with Poland who wants to reintroduce quotas for Ukrainian hauliers that were lifted at the start of the war, the European Commission says it is impossible because it is incompatible with the road transport agreement between the EU and Ukraine, which runs until June 2024
Officials at the UK Home Office admit during a parliamentary committee hearing that they do not know what has happened to 17,000 foreigners whose asylum applications have been withdrawn, the current backlog of processing asylum applications in the country is 122,000
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says they must not allow people to forget about the war there, that one already can see the consequences of the international community shifting because of the tragedy in the Middle East and expresses that Ukrainians understand that they also need to fight for attention
Romanian, Swedish citizen and yoga guru Gregorian Bivolaru, 71, arrested in France on charges of rape, human trafficking and kidnapping along with some 40 other cult members, 175 police officers participated in the raid and 26 women were released
In response to the European Commission proposing to create joint procurement of military equipment within the EU, Europe's largest arms producers, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden, are critical of the Commission taking responsibility at the expense of the nation's capitals, according to a leaked document
Poland's likely future prime minister Donald Tusk is considering putting central bank governor Adam Glapiński on trial for failing to curb inflation and current prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki says he will warn the IMF, World Bank and ECB that the independence of Poland's central bank is under threat
Davyd Arakhamia, high-ranking member of Volodymyr Zelenskyi's Servant of the People party, says on Ukrainian TV that Kiev could have ended the war after a month if they agreed to be neutral and not join NATO but that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised against, he is also saying that all other considerations were uninteresting and just rhetoric for Russia
Former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman writes letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after being sacked saying she only supported him because he promised specific action on immigration and reducing intersectionality in schools and says he has failed to deliver on every single one of the policies and that means that he is either incapable of it or that he never intended to keep the promises
Finland closes parts of border with Russia after increasing numbers of Africans and Arabs with incomplete documents apply for asylum and apparently use Russia as a transit country, President Sauli Niinistö says they are constantly reminded that Finland has joined NATO
Britain's Indian Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sacks the country's Indian home secretary, Suella Braverman, after she writes op-ed about London police largely ignoring law-breaking pro-Palestinian protesters, criticized by London's Muslim mayor as well as Scotland's Muslim first minister, former prime minister David Cameron returns as a minister
1 850 police mobilized ahead of pro-Palestinian demonstration in London where 500 000 people are expected on Armistice Day on November 11, which is usually commemorated with a two-minute silence at monument The Cenotaph
Former Partido Popular party leader and one of the founders of the right-wing Vox party, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, was shot in the head in Madrid on Thursday and the Socialist PSOE signed an amnesty deal for Catalan separatist politicians to secure the presidency sparking seven days of major protests
The European Commission recommends starting accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and the final decision to start the negotiations is taken in a vote on the 14th and 15th December in the European Council, which consists of the heads of state and government of the member states
Hennadii Chastiakov, assistant to Ukraine's commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is killed while opening presents when a grenade explodes, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, he had come home with gifts from colleagues, one of which was a box of new Western grenades, and during an exchange with his 13-year-old son, one of these detonated, more grenades have been found