Tag Archives: Europe

The Omicron coronavirus variant kept spreading around the world on Sunday, with 13 cases found in the Netherlands and two each in Denmark and Australia even as more countries imposed travel restrictions to try to seal themselves off. Dutch health authorities said the 13 cases of the variant were found …

Britain and Germany each detected two cases of the new Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new steps to contain the virus, while more nations imposed restrictions on travel from southern Africa. The discovery of the variant has sparked global concern, a wave of …

Thousands of Spanish police officers marched through Madrid on Saturday to protest against a proposed reform of a security law that they say will hamper their ability to do their work. Politicians from Spain’s three main conservative parties joined police officers in the protest against proposed changes to the 2015 …

The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed the latest developments in the file of Iraqi migrants stranded at the Belarusian border with the European Union countries on Friday. The Ministry’s Spokesperson, Ahmed Al-Sahaf, said in a press statement that the ministry “has been following the developments of the Iraqi migrant …

Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson quit as prime minister on Wednesday less than 12 hours after being appointed when her coalition collapsed, plunging the country into political uncertainty. Andersson said a decision by the Green Party, the junior party in the coalition, to quit had forced her to resign but …

German Social Democrat Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday he had reached a coalition deal to form a new government that will try to modernise Europe’s largest economy and bring the curtain down on the Angela Merkel era. Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the ecologist Greens, and the libertarian Free Democrats …

Coronavirus infections broke records in parts of Europe on Wednesday, with the continent once again the epicentre of a pandemic that has prompted new curbs on movement and made health experts think again about booster vaccination shots. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary all reported new highs in daily infections …

Slovakia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus among backyard poultry, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Tuesday. The outbreak followed several outbreaks among poultry farms in Europe and Asia in recent weeks in a sign the virus is spreading quickly …

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday there could be a further 700,000 deaths from COVID-19 in Europe by March, taking the total to above 2.2 million, as the world body urged people to get vaccinated. Total cumulative deaths from respiratory disease in the 53 countries of the WHO’s …

Early exit polls showed Bulgarian President Rumen Radev ahead of his rival, academic Anstas Gerdzhikov, in the decisive runoff round of the presidential vote. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev is projected to win another term with nearly two-thirds of the vote, according to exit polls published after the Sunday election by …

Five police officers were injured in the Netherlands and at least 40 people detained across three provinces as violent protests against COVID-19 restrictions continued for a second night into Sunday. Dutch authorities used water cannon, dogs, and mounted police to stop rioting youths who set fires and threw fireworks in …

Poland accused Belarus on Sunday of continuing to ferry migrants to its border, despite clearing camps close to the frontier earlier this week, as Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki toured Baltic states to seek support in the crisis. Europe accuses Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East …

The number of migrants trying to force their way into Poland from Belarus fell again on Friday after an apparent change in tack by Minsk that could help calm a crisis that has escalated into a major East-West confrontation. The Polish Border Guard said on Twitter that there were 195 …

A senior British minister said on Friday that he was confident London could break an impasse with the EU over post-Brexit trade arrangements for Northern Ireland without having to trigger emergency measures to safeguard the movement of goods. Britain and the EU agreed to intensify efforts to resolve Northern Ireland …

Ukraine summoned the Bulgarian ambassador on Friday after Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said the Crimean Peninsula was part of Russia after being annexed from Ukraine in 2014. In a presidential debate ahead of Bulgaria’s run-off presidential vote on Sunday Radev said Western sanctions against Moscow were not delivering the expected …

Austria will become the first country in western Europe to reimpose a full COVID-19 lockdown, it said on Friday as neighbouring Germany warned it may follow suit, sending shivers through financial markets worried about the economic fallout. The fourth wave of infections has plunged Germany, Europe’s largest economy, into a …

Slovakia has become the latest European country to implement lockdown restrictions on people who haven’t had the Covid vaccine, as it seeks to prevent a resurgence in infections and hospital admissions over the winter. Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced the new measures in a press conference on Thursday, declaring …

Belarus authorities have cleared the two main migrant camps at the border with Poland, bringing the remaining migrants that had been camped in the woods to nearby warehouses, the Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Thursday. The move, if confirmed, could be a major development in the crisis at …

Polish security forces turned water cannon on migrants across the Belarusian border, where thousands have gathered in a chaotic attempt to reach the European Union, video footage shared by authorities showed on Tuesday. The crisis has led the EU to prepare further sanctions against Belarus, which it accuses of attempting …

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Western countries, rather than Belarus, were ultimately responsible for a migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border, pointing to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia is a key ally of Belarus, which the European Union has accused of mounting a “hybrid attack” by …