Europe
Europe
Teachers calls police on nine-year-old Donnan in Manchester for selling air fresheners, bought packet of four from pound shop then sold them for GBP 1 each outside Tesco petrol station, Sacred Heart Primary School say they contacted authorities over concerns of the boy, while Tesco spokesman said they were touched he raise money to buy little sister a Christmas present and made sure he was safe
British Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries says BBC licence fee will be scrapped after 2027 and freezes annual GBP 159 fee for the next two years in her last licence fee announcement, adding that the days of elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over
Some 560,000 French people lose their Covid pass due to the government changing the requirement to three jabs, outdoor mask mandate abolished after court ruling it an infringement of personal freedom
Marks and Spencer rebrands retro sweets Midget Gems as Mini Gems to please dwarf lobbyist Dr Erin Pritchard who says the word midget is a form of hate speech and contributes to the prejudice that people with dwarfism experience on a daily basis
Marine Le Pen protests against Emmanuel Macron replacing national flag with that of the EU on the Arc de Triomphe for Paris's presidency of the bloc, calls it an attack on the nation's identity because monument honours its military victories and houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Josef Fritzl undergoes psychological tests to determine whether he can be freed from prison in 2024 after serving 15 years for keeping his daughter locked in a dungeon from 1984-2008, raping her thousands of times and fathering seven children with her, it is deemed highly unlikely he will pass the tests or that a judge would grant his freedom
EU drafting law allowing Brussels to seize private property during pandemic emergency, the Single Market Emergency Instrument to have a toolbox which will include controls on exports and powers to obtain information from companies on production, stockpiles and their supply chains as EU will not allow corporate interests to interfere with the greater interest of the European people
European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič says relationship with Switzerland could collapse as the country resists attempts to force it to yield trading sovereignty to Brussels under new draft trade deal as the bloc wants Switzerland to align its laws with EU law, economic ties currently governed by more than 100 bilateral agreements stretching back to 1972
Germany is trying to turn EU into a German Fourth Reich and if Poles agree they will be degraded in different ways, says one of Poland's deputy prime ministers Jarosław Kaczyński, adding that EU's Court of Justice is being used as an instrument for federalist ideas while former German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Poland must fully and completely implement EU law
Judge orders Dutch lawmaker Thierry Baudet (FvD) to take down four tweets where he drew comparisons between Covid-19 lockdown measures and the Holocaust, says the comparison goes beyond what can can be justified in the interests of robust public debate, Baudet calls the judgment insane and will appeal
33-year-old Argentinian striker Sergio Agüero retires from football after five games in FC Barcelona due to heart issue, was taken to hospital with chest pains after a match in October
Police Scotland will record rape offender with a penis as a woman if attacker identifies as a female as response to SNP's new Gender Recognition Act which will remove medical checks for those seeking a gender recognition certificate and shorten time people must live as their new gender before it is legally recognised
Finland buys 64 F-35A Block 4 multi-purpose fighters and air-to-air missiles in 8.4 billion EUR deal, the first training aircraft will be deployed in 2025 and the current F/A-18 fleet is to be phased out by 2030, the deal makes Finland the third Nordic country after Norway and Denmark to buy the F-35
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says EU must consider mandatory Covid jabs and rapidly deploy booster shots in response to the Omicron Covid variant, so far a total of 59 identified Omicron cases in the EU all of which have involved mild symptoms or been asymptomatic
Ukrainian government to be toppled within days in Russian-backed plot, president Volodymyr Zelensky claims, says officials have received audio recordings in which representatives of Russia and Ukrainian officials discuss a coup d’état to take place on December 1-2 allegedly funded by Ukraine’s richest oligarch Rinat Akhmetov
Germany's euthanasia association makes proof of vaccination or recovery from Covid-19 mandatory for anyone wishing to be euthanized
An Austrian Interior Ministry expert group suggests a complete ban on the annual gathering in Bleiburg in southern Austria which commemorates tens of thousands of Ustasa troops and civilians who were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in 1945, in 2016 the Croatian parliament decided to reintroduce state sponsorship of the Bleiburg event after it was withdrawn in 2012, the event has been described as one of the greatest gatherings of ultranationalist and fascist groups in Europe
France sends about 50 members of elite tactical forces to overseas territory Guadeloupe after rioting and looting amid protests against Covid-19 measures, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin says the first message is that the state will stand firm
Austria makes Covid-19 vaccination mandatory from February 2022 and enters nationwide lockdown for a maximum of 20 days from next Monday after record number of Covid-19 cases, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg says it was consensus that a vaccine mandate was not necessary but that they have to face reality
Clashes between around 200 anti-lockdown protesters and riot police with water cannons in The Hague during Friday, the Netherlands re-impose partial lockdown for three weeks due to highest ever number of Covid infection cases, Covid deaths in the country remain low
Belarusian military arms migrants with tear gas, destroy border fences and blind Polish troops with lights and lasers in migration crisis escalation, about 100 migrants crossed the border Saturday morning where they used the tear gas to attack Polish forces
"It's OK to be white" posters in three places spark hate crime investigation in Basingstoke in southern England, resident Priya Brown says the posters constitute divisive tactics used by neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups and have no place in today's society, police spokesman says they are liaising with local community groups as part of the investigation
Three injured of which two seriously after knife attack on the ICE high-speed train between Regensburg and Nuremberg in Germany on Saturday morning, 27-year-old Arab man with a history of psychological problems arrested, investigators rule out a terrorist motive
Turkey probes 30 for tweets suggesting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had died, 67-year-old Erdoğan faces increased speculation about his health after recent videos showing him unstable on his feet and slurring
French prime minister Jean Castex says Britain must be punished for Brexit to show other EU states that leaving is more damaging than staying, in letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in attempt to get backing for new hard-line stance against the UK
Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro says no EU court fines will be paid as the country cannot bow to lawlessness, Poland was fined EUR 500,000 per day in September for refusing to shut down the Turów coal mine and recently EUR 1 million per day for keeping its Supreme Court disciplinary chamber
German police stop more than 50 vigilantes from patrolling along the Polish border, the group is said to have answered a call by far-right party The Third Way to stop illegal immigration from mainly Iraq and Syria, nearby town Guben's Christian Democrat mayor Fred Mahro says he rejects any form of vigilantism
Vladimir Putin slams cancel culture and likens it to reverse racism, says the emphasizing of the racial topic divides people and that teaching children about gender fluidity verges on being a crime against humanity, says that others are in their right to keep deleting their history and discriminate against the majority but that Russia stands for maintaining its spiritual values and historical traditions
Spain returns 1.1 million fines meted out for breaking virus lockdown rules during the first state of emergency between March 14 and June 21 last year, the move follows a top court ruling declaring the restrictions as unconstitutional
France offers EUR 100 hand-out to households earning less than EUR 2,000 per month to soften the impact of rising energy prices, 38 million people expected to be included in the payout, Prime Minister Jean Castex says the increase in prices is likely temporary but that they can't risk hobbling the economic recovery
Poland doubles the amount of troops at its border with Belarus to 6,000 in response to a surge in migration mainly from the Middle East with 612 attempts on Monday alone, Germany offers to send officers to work on Polish territory under Polish command to boost the common border protection interest
47-year-old civil engineer Kristian Dimitrievski sentenced to three years in prison for corporate espionage for Russia, regularly met a Russian diplomat between 2016 and 2019 and handed over copied secret information from Scania, was acquitted of handing over Volvo data as it could not be proven that the information could damage Sweden's security
England ditches vaccine passport plans, Health Secretary Sajid Javid says they looked at the evidence properly and "shouldn't be doing things for the sake of it"
Five people injured including a child slashed in the throat in stabbing spree in Rimini after a Somali man was asked for his bus ticket, police arrested the man after he failed to hijack a car
Scottish government says children aged four can change gender at school without parents' consent, tells teachers not to question a child's request to choose a new name or use a different toilet and schools to have transgender books on their curriculum
Russian woman takes McDonald’s to court claiming it made her break her fast during Lent when a billboard enticed her to buy a cheeseburger, demanding moral compensation of USD 13.5, a source from the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate advises her to go to confession instead
Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro indicates his government could consider leaving EU amid dispute over proposed judicial reforms, saying government will not succumb to the illegal blackmail of the bloc carried out by the Court of Justice
Emmanuel Macron sues billboard owner for depicting him as Adolf Hitler in poster as a statement against the compulsory vaccinations, the poster shows Macron in Nazi uniform with a toothbrush moustache and swastika replaced by his party's abbreviation LREM, next to the slogan "Obey: Get Vaccinated"
UK government to launch surveillance app to track people’s routines and to award those who buy fruit and vegetables or increase their daily exercise, enabeling them to exchange points received through the tracking app for event tickets, discounts and other bonuses, in scheme to manage obesity levels in Britain
Vladimir Putin says Russia has power to launch an unpreventable strike against its enemies and describes some of its new advanced weapons being tested as invincible, while Russia marks the 325th anniversary of the founding of country's navy with ship parades at major ports
Staff of hospital in French department of Drôme goes on indefinite strike to protest against mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 or face losing their jobs, affecting some 200 doctors and 1,500 nurses in the southeastern city Montélimar, gathering outside the hospital denouncing lockdowns and vaccine mandates
Labour MP Karen Buck causes an uproar among UK’s left-wingers after posting a quote from Ayn Rand on Twitter reading "We are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion: the stage where government is free to do as it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission"
Germany announce the creation of a separate military command dedicated to space becoming the latest nation to create a separate military space entity, the German Space Situational Awareness Centre is located in Uedem in the country's North Rhine-Westphalia region
An actor dressed in a rainbow-colored, bare-bottomed monkey costume with a fake penis features at a Redbridge Libraries Summer Reading Challenge event in East London to encourage children to read, all involved parties apologize for the incident with no party coming forward to accept responsibility for causing it
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša on his third day in charge of the rotating EU presidency says Viktor Orbán should be allowed to express his ideas on the future of EU or the union will continue to shrink, while Interior Minister Aleš Hojs says he might start calling a high-ranking member of the European bureaucracy a pig
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel opens talks with Denmark to establish new immigration processing centre in Rwanda to process asylum seekers who want to come to Britain as part of effort to curb soaring migrant numbers and is also set to unveil plans to crackdown on people smugglers
Tens of thousands of anti-lockdown protesters march through central London today calling for freedom, demanded an end to all Covid-19 lockdown regulations, holding signs reading "freedom is not for trade" and "mask wearing zombies wake up or comply and die"
John McAfee found dead in Barcelona prison cell after High Court verdict to extradite him to the US, apparent suicide according to authorities
UK warship HMS Defender sails 3 kilometer into Crimean waters and is met with warning shots from Russian border patrol ship, while the British air-defense destroyer claims it made a routine passage through Ukrainian territorial waters and denies any warning shots were fired
UK government to launch consultation into the privatisation of Channel 4 after tensions between No 10 and executives at the television station over its finances and woke agenda, with Channel 4 News repeatedly being branded left-wing with its one-sided news coverage
Schools teaching white privilege contribute to systemic neglect of white working-class pupils aged five, 16 and 18 who feel anything but privileged, report published by Commons Education Committee in Britain find, sparking furious row among Tories and Labour MPs
All parties in Germany's grand coalition government agree to ban the flag of Palestinian Islamic group Hamas, the move comes after several antisemitic incidents occurred last month in Germany during anti-Israel rallies, last year Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah was banned and designated a terrorist organization making it illegal to show public support for Hezbollah
Damien Tarel who slapped Emmanuel Macron is handed an 18-month jail sentence, saying the President represents the decay of the country and that if he had challenged him to a duel at sunrise he doubts Macron would have responded
Belarus declares Day of National Unity as a new national holiday to be celebrated on 17 September, symbolizing restoration of historical justice and reunification of the Belarusian nation that was forcibly divided in 1921 in line with the Treaty of Riga, on 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union, invaded and then occupied the eastern half of Poland
Thousands of people march in protest against plans to open Chinese Fudan University campus in Budapest, funded mainly by a USD 1.5 billion loan from China, with critics saying it increases Beijing's influence in Hungary and the EU
Pro-independence parties win a majority in Scotland’s parliament and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says she will push ahead with plans for a second independence referendum, adding there is no democratic justification for Boris Johnson to ignore the will of the people
Amnesty International apologize to Alexei Navalny and say they will re-designate him as prisoner of conscience, stripping him of that status on February 24 may have further violated his rights
Priti Patel appoints Robin Simcox as Britain’s new commissioner for countering extremism, the appointment is controversial as he has claimed islamophobia is a word used to limit free speech, violent extremism is a dreamed up way to avoid saying ‘Islamic‘ och ‘Islamist‘ extremism, the definition of hate crime is far too broad and Extinction Rebellion, Unite Against Fascism and the far left need monitoring
Czech Republic expells 18 Russian diplomats identified as secret service personnel over suspicions Russian intelligence services GRU were involved in the ammunitions depot explosions in Vrbětice in the Zlín District in 2014, killing two employees of a private company
French officials in Morez find five gold bars and 1,000 gold coins valued at €600,000 in an old three-storey building in the town centre, when the last of four brothers and sisters, all without children, who had lived in the building died the town hall bought the house, Morez, like many other towns in France, buy up and renovate old buildings to attract families back to its emptying centre
French officials in Morez find five gold bars and 1,000 gold coins valued at €600,000 in an old three-storey building in the town centre, when the last of four brothers and sisters, all without children, who had lived in the building died the town hall bought the house, Morez, like many other towns in France, buy up and renovate old buildings to attract families back to its emptying centre
Julian Assange supporters demanding his release hold vigils outside the Ecuadorian embassy, at Westminster Magistrates' Court and at Belmarsh prison in London on Sunday to mark two years since Assange was imprisoned after being dragged out of the embassy
AfD party conference in Dresden backs resolution rejecting wearing masks in day-care centres and schools and ending disproportionate lockdown measures, co-leader Jörg Meuthen says AfD wants to show there is no need for the country's orgies of prohibition, imprisonment and lockdown madness
Ursula Von der Leyen left without a seat during summit in Turkey as her colleague Charles Michel and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan grab the only two available chairs, leaving her to perch on a nearby sofa for two and a half hours of talks on Turkey's relations with EU
TV host and singer Slavi Trifonov's party There is Such a People and two other anti-establishment parties win a total of over 31% of the vote in Sunday's general election, leaving Prime Minister Boyko Borissov's party GERB with a forecasted 25.2% pleading for a coalition government focused on bringing EU cash to the country
European Commission's scientific expert arm to deem nuclear power a green investment, saying there's no science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm than other electricity production technologies, part of EU's assessment of which economic activities can be labelled as sustainable
EU plans to ban export of 19 million AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses due to be shipped to the UK, saying everything is on the table to protect its citizens, while Britain warns Brussels the world is watching and a ban would damage bloc's reputation
CDU takes major hit in crucial German state elections ahead of general election in September following recent scandals and the mishandling of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, drops four percentage points in Baden-Württemberg and 5.8 points in Rhineland-Palatinate
Russian police detain several liberal opposition activists and local deputies in Moscow at summit, stating it was staged by the foreign NGO Open Russia, which is linked to exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and whose activities have been deemed undesirable in the country
Swiss vote to ban facial coverings in binding referendum on Sunday by a 51.2-48.8% margin, dubbed by many the burqa ban, chairman of the referendum committee Walter Wobmann says Swiss tradition is that you show your face, comes after a vote to ban new minarets in 2009
15,000 people in Vienna protest government’s Covid-19 restrictions on Saturday calling for the resignation of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, with speeches from leaders of the Freedom Party of Austria and some participants being arrested by the police, in the latest of a string of protests in the country
French court finds former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances, is sentenced to three years in jail including two years suspended
Brussels threatens legal action against Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Finland and Sweden for their strict border rules against Covid-19 as it disrupt trade and harms EU's key tenet freedom of movement, warning that countries acting in their own self-interest risk the unity of the bloc
Abu Walaa is sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for recruiting for the Islamic State by a German court, three co-defendants received prison sentences of between four and eight years, Walaa always appeared in online videos with his back to the camera making it more difficult for authorities to gather evidence against him
German police raid more than 25 properties in Berlin and Brandenburg aimed at the Arabic crime family Remmo, investigated for distribution of firearms, large-scale drug trafficking and violent crime, and Chechen clans who clashed with the Remmo family in 2020, two men arrested while a third suspect escaped
Catalan separatist parties reach majority in regional parliament for the first time with 50.9% of the vote after Sunday's election, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya says it will lead the government and seek support of other parties for a referendum on independence
Danish and German police arrest six men in Denmark and one in Germany charged with planning one or more terrorist attacks or attempting to participate in terrorism, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service says
Travellers returning to UK who lie about coming from a red list country face up to ten years in prison under new law which might be in place until the autumn, Health Secretary Matt Hancock unveils, and travellers who fail to stick to ten-day hotel quarantine will be fined GBP 10,000
German farmers drive tractors by Brandenburg Gate in Berlin protesting the Insect Protection Act due to be adopted by the German parliament next week, a bill the farmers believe is motivated by ideology rather than science and which will force many of them out of business
Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expels EU diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden for alleged participation in unauthorized rallies in support of Alexey Navalny, after making formal protests to the three embassies
Denmark to develop digital corona passport to prove people have been vaccinated against Covid-19, allowing them to travel and help ease restrictions on their public life, passport to be introduced in three or four months
Humiliated EU backs down on triggering Article 16 of the Brexit deal, which introduces border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland, after it caused outrage in London, Dublin and Belfast with Northern Ireland's Arlene Foster calling it an incredible act of hostility
Emmanuel Macron says AstraZeneca vaccine is quasi-ineffective for people over 65 and Germany's vaccine commission advice against using it on older people, after EU recommends the vaccine for adults of all ages, while the bloc tries to save face after lagging far behind the UK by introducing export ban to Britain
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte hands in his resignation to the head of state, hoping he will be given an opportunity to put together a new coalition as it will give him more time to find a deal
The Scottish National Party publishes plans for another vote on Scottish independence in a “Roadmap to Referendum", if it wins a parliamentary majority at elections scheduled for May 6 it will pass its own bill so that a referendum can take place once the pandemic is over, forcing the UK government to either accept the referendum or take action to dispute its legal basis