Europe

Gucci parts ways with star designer Michele

PARIS, France (AFP) – Italian designer Alessandro Michele on Wednesday left Gucci, where he has overseen a surge in sales at the fashion powerhouse since 2015 but seen his star fade in recent seasons. “Gucci today announces that Alessandro Michele is stepping down as creative director of Gucci,” said French conglomerate Kering, which owns the Italian house. It said he had played “a fundamental part in making the brand what it is today through his groundbreaking creativity”. […]

Russia, declared ‘terror’ state by EU lawmakers, batters Ukraine grid

by Ania TSOUKANOVA with Max DELANY in Strasbourg Agence France-Presse KYIV, Ukraine (AFP)  — Fresh Russian strikes battered Ukraine’s already failing electricity grid, causing blackouts across the war-torn nation and in neighboring Moldova, in attacks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN were “an obvious crime against humanity”. The Ukrainian energy system has been left in tatters and millions have been subjected to long periods without electricity after weeks of Russian bombardments, with the World […]

Air pollution killed 238,000 Europeans prematurely in 2020: EEA

Copenhagen, Denmark (AFP) Fine particle air pollution led to 238,000 premature deaths in the European Union in 2020, the bloc’s environmental watchdog said Thursday, a slight rise from the previous year. Across the 27-nation bloc that year, “exposure to concentrations of fine particulate matter above the 2021 World Health Organization guideline level resulted in 238,000 premature deaths,” the European Environment Agency said in a new report. That was slightly more than those recorded in 2019 in […]

Newborn killed in Russian strike on Ukraine maternity ward: rescuers

KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) – A newborn baby was killed following a Russian strike that hit a maternity ward in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, Ukrainian emergency services said Wednesday. Overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday, “in the city of Vilniansk in Zaporizhzhia region, as a result of a rocket attack on the territory of the local hospital, the two-storey building of the maternity ward was destroyed,” rescuers said on social media. They […]

Gazprom wins appeal against 6.2 bn euro Polish fine

WARSAW, Poland (AFP) – A Polish court on Monday overturned a decision by Poland’s anti-monopoly watchdog to impose a 6.2 billion euro ($6.3 billion) fine against Russian gas giant Gazprom, the watchdog said. The fine imposed in 2020 against Gazprom and five other companies, including British-Dutch giant Shell, was over construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Supplies through the gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany have since been halted because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. […]

Two arrests in Estonia over $575 mn cryptocurrency fraud

TALLINN, Estonia (AFP) – Two men have been arrested in Estonia on suspicion of defrauding $575 million (562 million euros) from hundreds of thousands of people in a cryptocurrency scheme, Estonian police said on Monday. Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin were arrested on Sunday in a joint operation by Estonian police and the FBI and Washington has requested extradition of the two men, the police said in a statement. “This is one of the largest fraud […]

Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

Paris, France | AFP | by Daniel Lawler Say hello to ronnagrams and quettametres: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday for new metric prefixes to express the world’s largest and smallest measurements, prompted by an ever-growing amount of data. It marks the first time in more than three decades that new prefixes have been added to the International System of Units (SI), the agreed global standard for the metric system. Joining the ranks […]

Zelensky says over 10 mn Ukrainians without electricity

Kyiv, Ukraine | AFP | President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that millions of Ukrainians had no electricity, as fresh Russian strikes hit cities across Ukraine and crippled the country’s energy infrastructure. “Currently, more than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity,” he said, adding that the regions of Odessa, Vinnytsia, Sumy and Kyiv were most affected. “We are doing everything to normalise the supply,” Zelensky added. Ukraine has faced strikes against its power grid following battlefield […]

New wave of Russian strikes batter Ukraine grid as first snow falls

by Ania TSOUKANOVA Agence France-Presse KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) — Fresh Russian strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Thursday, crippling the country’s energy infrastructure and plunging millions into darkness as winter sets in and temperatures drop. Repeated barrages have disrupted electricity and water supplies across Ukraine, but the Kremlin blamed civilians’ suffering on Kyiv’s refusal to negotiate, rather than on Russian attacks. AFP journalists in several Ukrainian cities said the latest assault coincided with the season’s […]

One dead in Greece migrant dinghy sinking: coastguard

ATHENS, Greece (AFP) – Greece’s coastguard on Thursday said a man drowned and several more were rescued in the latest migrant boat sinking in the Aegean Sea. The coastguard said two of its patrol boats responded to a distress call near the island of Kos late on Wednesday. They found 11 men in the water, one of them unconscious. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Kos harbor, the coastguard said. Two weeks ago, two migrant […]

UK orders Chinese-owned firm to sell most of chip maker

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – The UK government on Wednesday ordered a Chinese-owned company to divest most of Britain’s biggest semiconductor maker, in a move likely to antagonize Beijing. Business Secretary Grant Shapps was blocking the full takeover of Newport Wafer Fab by Nexperia following a “detailed national security assessment”, a government spokesperson said in a statement. Shapps was requiring Nexperia to sell at least 86 percent of the Wales-based chip fabricator “to prevent against potential […]

Zelensky asks allies for ‘all data’ in Poland missile row

KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) – President Volodymyr Zelensky called Wednesday for Ukraine’s allies to share “all the data” held on the missile that landed in Poland, which Kyiv insists was fired by Russia, a claim contradicted by Warsaw. Two people were killed on Tuesday when at least one missile hit the village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border, during a mass Russian bombardment aimed at civilian infrastructure inside Western-backed Ukraine. In the immediate aftermath of the incident […]