Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pledged on Sunday to outlaw prostitution in the country. Speaking to supporters at the end of his Socialist Party’s three-day congress in Valencia, Mr Sanchez said that the practice “enslaves” women. Prostitution was decriminalised in Spain in 1995 and in 2016 the UN estimated the country’s sex industry was worth […]
A deadly bow and arrow attack in Norway which left five people dead appears to have been an act of terror, Norway’s security service (PST) said. The suspect, a 37-year-old Danish citizen named Espen Andersen Brathen, had converted to Islam and there were fears he had been radicalised. However a motive has not yet been […]
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the Netherlands since 2001 but it has always been assumed that it could not apply to the crown as there would have to be an heir to the throne. Now caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte has made clear any king or queen could also marry a person of the […]
Nobel Prize The head of the academy that awards the Nobel Prizes in science has said it will not introduce gender quotas. Goran Hansson, head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said they want people to win “because they made the most important discovery… not because of gender or ethnicity”. Since its inception […]
Pandora Papers The Czech Republic’s billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his ruling ANO party are set to lose their bid for re-election, partial results suggest. With some 99% of voting districts reporting, Czech Television predicts two opposition coalitions will win 108 of 200 seats. Both coalition groups have said they will not work […]
Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has stepped down, after pressure triggered by a corruption scandal. He has proposed Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg as his replacement. Mr Kurz and nine others were placed under investigation after raids at a number of locations linked to his conservative ÖVP People’s Party. He denies claims he used government money to […]
Police in Berlin say they are investigating after staff at the US embassy reported experiencing symptoms of the so-called Havana syndrome. The probe into an “alleged sonic weapon attack on employees of the US Embassy” began in August, police said. More than 200 US officials have reported suffering from the illness since 2016. On Friday […]
Poland’s top court has rejected the principle of the primacy of EU law over national legislation in certain judicial matters, in a major challenge to the EU’s legal framework. The Constitutional Tribunal said some EU treaty articles were incompatible with Poland’s constitution. It ruled that the Polish constitution took precedence over EU law. Polish judges, […]
German federal election 2021 Ten days after Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats won parliamentary elections, the Greens and pro-business liberals have agreed to start exploratory coalition talks with them. Thursday’s talks with the “kingmakers” mean centre-left leader Olaf Scholz is a step closer to the job of chancellor. It is a blow to the conservatives’ […]
Some 216,000 children – mostly boys – have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found. The head of the inquiry said there were at least 2,900-3,200 abusers, and accused the Church of showing a “cruel indifference towards the victims”. Pope Francis “felt pain” on […]
