Europe

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the Covid-19 vaccine made by the US-German partnership Pfizer-BioNTech for children aged 12 to 15, allowing kids in the bloc to be vaccinated against the virus for the first time. New data shows that the ‘Comirnaty’ vaccine is safe for the younger cohort, …

More than 100 years after the crimes were committed, Germany formally confessed on Friday to having committed genocide as the colonial power in what is now Namibia. After years of negotiations, the German government recognized the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama ethnic groups as genocide and said reparations …

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko flew into Russia on Friday to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin amid an uproar in Europe over the dramatic grounding of a passenger jet in Minsk and the arrest of a dissident blogger. The talks in the Black Sea city of Sochi were organised before …

A man stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman in the town of La Chapelle-Sur-Erdre in western France on Friday, and he later died following a shoot-out with officers, the national gendarmerie force said. The assailant was cornered after a manhunt that involved two police helicopters and more than 200 officers, …

The issue has been described as one of the loose ends of the Brexit deal. Being a British overseas territory, Gibraltar shares a border with Spain, an EU and Schengen area member. To avoid a hard border, London and Madrid struck a deal in December that, among other things, stipulates …

Austria on Thursday slammed Russia after it refused to allow an Austrian Airlines flight to be rerouted to avoid Belarusian airspace, resulting in the Vienna-Moscow service being cancelled. “Based on a recommendation by the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Austrian Airlines has suspended flights through Belarusian airspace until further notice. …

A Russian court on Thursday fined Twitter 19 million roubles ($259,000) for failing to delete content considered illegal by Moscow, in the latest episode of a long-running dispute between Russia and the social network operator. Twitter has been subjected to a punitive slowdown in Russia since March, part of a …

Six Armenian servicemen have been captured attempting to cross the Armenian-Azeri border, TASS news agency reported on Thursday citing the Azeri defence ministry. Earlier this week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of firing at Armenian positions. Azerbaijan denied the accusation.

The European Commission is suing AstraZeneca in a bid to force the drug giant to deliver 90 million more doses of its coronavirus vaccine before July. EU lawyers asked Belgian judges to fine the Anglo-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca millions of euros on Wednesday, as a long-running row over the supply …

The European Commission warned the decision will erode EU-Swiss relations. Switzerland on Wednesday canceled talks to salvage a long-delayed cooperation agreement with the EU, saying that it could not accept Brussels’ demands on issues like citizen’s rights and wages. “Taking into account [domestic] consultations and based on the results of …

The Russian state prosecutor’s office banned three German non-governmental organizations on Wednesday after labeling them “undesirable”, the TASS news agency reported. The groups were identified as the Forum Russischsprachiger Europäer, the Zentrum für die Liberale Moderne and the Deutsch-Russischer Austausch, the report said.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday a journalist pulled off a plane that was forced to land in Minsk had been plotting a rebellion, and he accused the West of waging a hybrid war against him. In his first public remarks since a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight …

France’s foreign minister has expressed rare concern over the recent Israeli violence against Palestinians in al-Quds and elsewhere, warning of the risk of “long-lasting apartheid”. “It’s the first time and it clearly shows that if in the future we had a solution other than the two-state solution, we would have …

More than five years after an Italian student’s body was found in Cairo, a Rome judge says four senior Egyptian security officials should face trial over his kidnapping, torture, and murder. Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University postgraduate student, disappeared in January 2016. His body was so badly disfigured his mother …

Athens is investing in new measures to monitor camps, but experts fear the moves will deepen divides. Parwana Amiri first noticed the concrete walls being built around her refugee camp on the Greek mainland one morning a few weeks ago. “It was a feeling that when we were sleeping, they …

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez accused Morocco of failing to protect its borders on Tuesday after thousands of migrants crossed into the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla last week. “The neighbour (Morocco) needs to control its borders as well, and this did not happen,” Sanchez added. “We’re talking …

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry on Tuesday denied accusations by Armenia that it had fired across the border at Armenian positions. Armenia’s defence ministry said earlier that an Armenian soldier had been killed during a shootout with Azeri forces on its eastern border with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said in a statement …

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Geneva on June 16, the White House and the Kremlin said on Tuesday amid sharp disputes over election interference, cyberattacks, human rights, and Ukraine. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that both countries were lowering expectations for big breakthroughs …

Pressure mounts on Minsk as more carriers suspend flights while the journalist’s father says Protasevich has likely been beaten. More air carriers have suspended flights over Belarusian airspace in response to Minsk’s forced plane diversion, as fears grew for the journalist on board who was arrested after landing in the …

‘Stop fuelling Kyiv’s militaristic sentiment,’ Russia says, after Ankara’s pledge to support Ukraine in recent clash. Russia’s foreign minister on Monday warned Turkey against what he said were attempts to fuel “militaristic sentiment” in Ukraine after Ankara moved to boost cooperation with Kyiv. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month …