Euobserver.com

Amnesty found that companies including Microsoft, Renault and Volkswagen were failing to ask basic questions about where the cobalt in their batteries came from.

Ideas that are attacked are actually being promulgated. That has been the case for centuries, at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas. And that is certainly the case today with Facebook and Twitter.

Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan said Thursday's statement by more than 40 military chiefs urging him to resign was an attempted coup and called on his supporters to come out onto the streets in Yerevan. The feverish atmosphere comes after Azerbaijan reconquered the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia last year. Neighbouring Georgia, the most pro-European country in the South Caucasus, also erupted in anti-government protests this week.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has warned the EU against trying to force the €681 trillion market in euro-denominated 'derivatives' (financial instruments) to move from London to the mainland in the wake of Brexit. Such an EU step would be a "serious escalation," he told press Wednesday. "That would be highly controversial and it would be something we would have to and want to resist very firmly," Bailey said.

Four Russians are about to join an EU list of the world's worst human rights abusers, but who are they and what message does it send to Moscow?

The European Commission proposed on Wednesday extending roaming rules, due to expire in 2022, for another 10 years. New rules will ensure customers have the same speed of their mobile network connection abroad as at home, while raising awareness on possible fees from using value-added services. Use of data-roaming increased 17-fold in the summer of 2019, compared to the summer before the abolition of roaming charges.

The US has listed 18 European companies which backed out of the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under threat of American sanctions, in a document obtained by Reuters Wednesday: Aaegis Managing Agency; Arch Insurance; Aspen Managing Agency, AXA Group, Baker Hughes, Beazley Furlonge; Bilfinger; Canopius ; Chaucer Syndicates; Chubb Underwriting Agencies; DNV GL; Hiscox; Markel; MS Amlin Underwriting; Munich Re; Tokio Marine Kiln; Travelers Syndicate Management; and Zurich Insurance.

British PM Boris Johnson was an "inveterate liar" who will "hide the bill for Brexit under the Covid carpet, valued at more than £200bn [€232bn] for 2020, almost as much as the UK's total contribution to the EU since its accession in 1973, which was £215bn," Frances former ambassador to London, Sylvie Bermann, said in a new book out Wednesday. Brexiteers hated Germany and wallowed in WW2 history, she added.

"Meat from our fields = a healthy child" and "Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses" French farmers said, in unsubstantiated claims, on placards in protest in Lyon Wednesday, after the French culinary capital's mayor stopped serving meat in school canteens. The temporary switch to vegetarian meals, which cause less CO2 emissions, was because canteens did not have time to offer two meal options due coronavirus restrictions.

Authorities in Germany and Belgium have seized 23 tonnes of cocaine, The Guardian reports. The drugs were all bound for the same destination in the Netherlands, Dutch police said. "The seized mega-shipments to the Netherlands together form an absolute record. Never before has so much cocaine been intercepted at once," police said. 16 tonnes of the drug was found at the port of Hamburg, 7.2 tonnes in Antwerp.

The Covax programme of the World Health Organization has delivered its first Covid-19 doses in a milestone for the ambitious programme that seeks to offset "vaccine nationalism" by wealthy countries and ensure poor ones do not wait years to start inoculating people, The Guardian writes. An aircraft carrying 600,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine landed in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Ivory Coast's capital Abidjan will be the next destination.

A German court has found a former Syrian regime official guilty of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity, in a historic trial against president Bashar al-Assad's war crimes in Syria, The Guardian reports. Eyad al-Gharib, a 44-year-old former colonel in the Syrian intelligence service, carried out orders in one of Syria's notorious prisons. Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared in the regime's state-run torture system.

Three families who made it to an asylum camp on the Greek island of Lesbos were hours later set adrift in a life raft by masked men. The case could be a first, if confirmed.

At their summit, EU leaders will also discuss through a videoconference Covid-19 certificates, travel restrictions, and how to speed up the vaccine roll-out.

Extreme climate-related events cost the EU's economy €12bn annually. Brussels aims to reduce the so-called climate protection gap - the difference between insurance protection and total losses - which is widening due to more frequent extreme weather events.

Suspension or cancellation of Nord Stream 2 does not call for a drawn-out search for unanimity by the EU's foreign ministers, nor complex ratification procedures in the European Parliament or member states' parliaments, write three former EU prime ministers.

A snap early election in Greenland throws into focus mining of rare earths - needed for Europe's green transition, and coveted by both China and the US, but opposed by environmentalists.

The head of the European branch of the World Health Organization, Hans Kluge, on Wednesday urged European governments "to share vaccines once they have vaccinated their health workers and risk groups, so others countries can do the same". While 33 out of 34 high-income countries are vaccinating priority groups, only seven out of 15 upper middle-income countries are doing so. None of the poorer countries have started vaccinations.

Greek doctors went on a day-long strike on Tuesday, with some in Athens also marching in protest at what OEGNE, the medical trade union, called "suffocating" conditions at intensive-care wards, which were 80 percent full due to the pandemic. "There is a serious risk both for critically ill Covid-19 patients and critically ill patients with other diseases," OENGE said. Doctors called for segregated wards for corona patients and extra funds.

The EU's Portuguese presidency hopes to agree on the set up of the conference on the future of Europe this week, with the EU Commission aiming to kick it off on 9 May. EU institutions have been locked in a debate on who should lead the conference designed to involve EU citizens in policy-making. "We are on the final phase," Ana Paula Zacarias, Portuguese EU affairs state secretary said Tuesday.