Europe

Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest say they reserve the right to remove any Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian symbols at the show next week in Sweden.

The announcement came amid heightened tensions surrounding Israel’s participation in the annual music competition over its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month. Pro-Palestinian groups are expected to stage large protests in Malmo to raise awareness of their cause.
[...]

The ongoing farmer protests are the longest and most impactful of all the farmer protests in the history of the European Union and have led to dangerous changes in EU environmental policy and triggered a new rise of far-right political groups across the EU. In this interview, Natalia Mamonova talks about the limits of neoliberalism, the current state of farmer protests, changes in EU policy and the alarming forecast for the upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June.

When Tesla announced plans to expand its Gigafactory near Berlin and water became rationed, enraged residents organized themselves.

An Italian judge on Friday cleared three migrant sea rescue charities that had been accused of abetting irregular immigration in complicity with human traffickers, throwing out a case opened more than seven years ago.

He [Adam Bodnar] also handed the speakers of both chambers of parliament a document outlining the extent of the use of Pegasus after it was purchased by the then PiS government in 2017.

Bodnar informed them that, between 2017 and 2022, the security services applied “end device operational surveillance” to 578 individuals, reports news website Wirtualna Polska.

A far-right political conference being staged in Brussels with the support of Hungarian groups backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban descended into chaos Tuesday as city authorities tried to shut it down.

Speakers including Nigel Farage, a UK politician who led the Brexit charge, continued to speak at the National Conservatism Conference gathering despite orders from a local mayor to ban the event, citing public safety concerns. About a dozen police officers formed a cordon outside the conference and were blocking people from entering.
(...)

Several streets in the center of Copenhagen were closed during rush hour this morning due to the heavy fire at Børsen. The iconic spire has collapsed. At 7.36am, the first message of the fire in the historic building came in. Emergency services and army are present on a large scale to keep everything under control. […]

European Union countries willing to recognise the State of Palestine should move in tandem in order to "trigger significant progress" in building peace in the war-torn region, European Council President Charles Michel has said. #EuropeNews

On Tuesday, a German Jewish group had its account frozen after the bank demanded a list of its members’ details, in what experts believe is a clear breach of EU law. James Jackson reports from Berlin.

After a young transgender couple was violently attacked by a mob of more than 100 individuals in Greece on Saturday, March 9, a coalition of activists, women’s groups and student organisations gathered for a march against hate the following day.

The pair were pursued in the city centre by a large group who subjected them to homophobic and transphobic slurs. As they managed to find shelter in a restaurant to wait for the police, the crowd continued to verbally harass them from outside the establishment. When the couple left the restaurant, the mob violently threw bottles and objects at them. Fortunately, neither were physically injured.

It went on mostly peaceful, despite clashes between protestors and the riot police present. An anonymous source who took part in the march informed PinkNews that: “There were several clashes between riot police and protesters as protesters marched through the centre of Thessaloniki where cops used tear gas and stun grenades to break up the demo.”

According to the same source, 3,000 to 4,000 people took part in the march to stand in solidarity with the transgender couple after the attack.

(...)

Trans youth will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at NHS England gender identity clinics in a “blow” to gender-affirming healthcare.

Tens of thousands of people… joined protests in Greece, with strike action bringing the country to a standstill, on the first anniversary of a deadly train crash blamed on decades of poor railway management.

As church bells tolled in memory of the 57 men and women who lost their lives in an accident deemed entirely preventable, protesters gathered in major cities to demand justice for the victims.

In Athens, where clashes erupted outside parliament, 20,000 marched through the city centre before convening outside the central offices of Hellenic Train. Many chanted “their profits, our lives”, referring to a utility acquired by the Italian state at the height of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis.
(...)

Pushed past their limits, these migrants took their own lives at the border between the UK, France and Belgium

The governor of western Russia's Kaliningrad region blamed the 18th-century German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant for the outbreak of war in Ukraine. “He is directly related to the military conflict in Ukraine,” Anton Alikhanov, who governs the western exclave of Kaliningrad, said Friday at a local political science forum.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) says the Eurovision Song Contest isn't political, and argues that Russia's ban in 2022 was "fundamentally different".

The energetic buzz in Chamonix’s narrow streets echoed the historic moment during the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB).

Her summer of 2023 not only marked a triple crown by conquering the Western States 100, Hardrock 100, and UTMB in a single season but also solidified her status as an unparalleled force in ultra-running. Dauwalter’s narrative, from a setback in her initial 100-mile race to becoming a dominant force, is a tale of resilience and determination.

The measure passed the national assembly late on Tuesday by a vote of 493 to 30, with almost all members of Macron’s centrist minority coalition as well as leftwing opposition parties approving.

Macron and other French lawmakers called for the right to an abortion – which has been legal in France since 1974 – to be inscribed in the constitution after the US supreme court in 2022 ended an almost half-century national constitutional right to abortion.

The government chose the term “guaranteed freedom” to thread a needle between the lower house, which earlier voted to enshrine the “right” to an abortion, and the Senate, which is dominated by centre-right parties and which so far has approved only “freedom” for abortion.

The Senate will start examining the text on 28 February.

https://archive.is/bcclP

https://archive.is/3DDfr

A fiercely contested immigration bill violates France's constitutional commitment to equality and liberty, the U.N. special rapporteur on racism said, amid nationwide protests against the legislation that is backed by far-right lawmakers.

https://archive.is/R7OVN

The weekend of protests against right-wing extremism continued in Germany, as tens of thousands took to the streets in Berlin, Cologne and Munich.

https://archive.is/Af5Wn

The terminal of the Russian Novatek natural gas company caught on fire in the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko announced on Telegram. Novatek is the largest independent natural gas producer in Russia.

Archive link

Namibian President Hage G. Geingob blasted Germany on Saturday for defending Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, pointing to the genocide Germany itself perpetrated on Namibians in the early 1900s.