EU

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The Russian military has flown 11 planeloads of equipment and medical experts to Serbia to help it fight the coronavirus spread.

(AFP) — Britain’s main opposition Labour party on Saturday announced that Keir Starmer had been elected as its new leader, replacing Jeremy Corbyn who resigned after its crushing December election defeat.

The President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen has apologised to Italy for a lack of solidarity over the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, as anger towards the political bloc grows.

The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) has predicted that warmer temperatures this summer are unlikely to halt the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The Spanish government bought 640,000 EU-certified coronavirus tests from a Chinese company. They do not work.  

BRUSSELS (AP) – European Union leaders gave Albania and North Macedonia the greenlight Thursday to begin EU membership talks, ending a long series of setbacks and disappointments for the two Balkans nations’ quest to join.

Scenes resembling the First World War are unfolding are unfolding on Europe’s frontier, with Greek border forces bathed in noxious fumes as Turkish police and, allegedly, Turkish-armed migrants bombard them with tear gas. 

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, urged bosses not to lay off workers in sectors largely closed down by the Chinese coronavirus outbreak sector, vowing to fund 80 per cent of workers’ pay if they put them on furlough instead.

Streaming giant Netflix has announced that it will be taking action to reduce the bitrates of streams in Europe, freeing up bandwidth, following a conversation between the European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

The E.U. has reportedly urged streaming platforms such as Netflix and YouTube to reduce the quality of their streams in order to lighten the load being placed on the Internet by the increased number of people working from home due to the Wuhan coronavirus

U.S. tech giant Apple has reportedly been fined €1.1 billion euros ($1.37 billion) by France’s competition watchdog for anticompetitive practices.

The European Union refused to fund border fencing between Greece and Turkey prior to both the current border crisis and the 2015-16 border crisis, denouncing it as “pointless”.

The European Union has said that the Greek government must allow migrants to apply for asylum, despite its rhetorical support for their efforts to prevent the Turkish government from facilitating a wave of illegal migration into Greece.

Three Turkish men have been sentenced for the killing of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose drowning was the catalyst for the 2015-16 migrant crisis. 

Appearing Thursday on CNN’s “New Day,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he agrees with President Donald Trump’s decision to ban travel from most of Europe to prevent further coronavirus cases in the United States from the continent. 

Saudi Arabia and a number of African states have imposed travel restrictions on Europe — and unlike the Trump administration do not appear to have attracted any accusations of racism for doing so. 

The border between Greece and Turkey is becoming increasingly militarised, with heavily armed personnel from either side continuing to pour into the region as illegal migrants seek to punch through the European Union’s common external border with Turkish president’s blessing.

The Greek government has released a night-vision video which they claim shows a Turkish armoured vehicle obtained through European Union funding trying to rip down border fencing and allow illegal migrants to penetrate the Greek border. 

The Turkish president’s Minister of the Interior, Süleyman Soylu, has predicted that mass migration across the Greek border will change Europe’s governments, bring down their economies, and collapse the stock market.

The Nissan Motor Company has announced that it will be doubling down on its investments in the United Kingdom, bucking predictions by anti-Brexiteers that the British car industry would crumble after Brexit.

AMORIO, Greece (AP) – Over the years, villagers who live near Greece’s border with Turkey got used to seeing small groups of people enter their country illegally. The Greek residents often offered the just-arrived newcomers a bite to eat and directed them to the nearest police or railway station.

Dramatic pictures and video are emerging of fires raging along the border between Greece and Turkey, as migrants — aided and even armed by the Turks, according to the Greeks — continue their efforts to force their way in.

Finland’a millennial feminist-led government faces a vote of no confidence after pledging to send personnel to the Greek border — to help migrants claim asylum.

The Greek government has released a video claiming Turkey is ferrying illegal migrants to Europe’s borders and arming them with tear gas.

Violent clashes erupted on the European Union’s common external border over the weekend as Greek border guards tried to stop migrants promised they could travel to Europe by the Turkish president from entering.

Tensions on Europe’s borders with Turkey are rising as thousands of migrants are brought to the frontier on unmarked buses and state-owned railways.

Dame Emma Thompson has quit the home country she once described as “a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island” for Venice, Italy, in the wake of Brexit.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) – The centre-right populist opposition claimed victory in the parliamentary election in Slovakia, ending the reign of the country’s long-dominant but scandal-tainted leftist party that governed on an anti-immigration platform.

KASTANIES, Greece (AP) – The United Nations said Sunday that at least 13,000 people were massed on Turkey’s land border with Greece, after Turkey officially declared its western borders were open to migrants and refugees hoping to head into the European Union.

Former Conservative Party leader and Cabinet minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith believes the European Union is “panicking” as the “transition” period Brexit negotiations get underway, and that Britain holds “the whip hand”.