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Digital and human rights organisations, led by European Digital Rights, on Wednesday launched a European Citizens' Initiative calling for a ban on the use of biometric mass surveillance in public spaces, such as CCTV cameras or facial-recognition software. Should they collect one million signatures, in at least seven countries, during the next year, the European Commission will have to respond to their demand and open the debate with MEPs.

Russian security forces have taught Siberian schoolchildren how to detain protesters in a simulated riot, according to video published by local television Tuesday, The Moscow Times reports. The footage comes on the heels of a mass crackdown during protest rallies calling for jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny's release. More than 10,000 people were detained nationwide during those protests, with widespread allegations of police brutality against peaceful demonstrators.

A Dutch court has ruled that the government should immediately lift the nationwide Covid-19 curfew. The government wrongly used emergency powers, to bring in the first curfew since the Nazi occupation during World War II, a judge at The Hague district court ruled. Prime minister Mark Rutte asked citizens to respect the curfew anyway, and said the government would appeal against the decision.

A shipment of 550,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, developed by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm, arrived in Hungary on Tuesday, a first in the EU. Hungarian authorities are the first and so far only country in the EU to approve this vaccine, after the government streamlined the approval process. A recent Median poll showed that among those willing to receive a vaccine, only 27 percent would take a Chinese vaccine.

A joint investigation last year by Reuters and The New Humanitarian revealed alleged sexual abuse by people working for the World Health Organization and other leading NGOs. The European Commission has since collected over two dozen documents on the allegations.

The jailing of rapper Pablo Hasél, convicted of insulting the monarchy (among other crimes) has triggered reform of the so-called 'gag law' after nationwide public outrage.

The EU Commission also raised concerns about the proportionality of Belgium's ban on non-essential travel, for people wishing to leave the country.

Jostling for attention across the Indo-Pacific is a motley mix of democracies and authoritarian regimes as well as governments which are quite simply neither one nor the other.

On Valentine's Day, the Myanmar military announced yet another attack on freedom of expression with an enactment of amendments to the penal code and criminal procedure code.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) gave a green light for the global deployment of coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries after it issued emergency approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Low- and middle-income countries can expect to receive their first deliveries of the vaccine at the end of February as part of the 'Covax' shared-procurement programme. The WHO hopes to deliver 336 million doses in the first half of the year.

EU industry needs to produce more electronic components to reduce dependence on Asian manufacturers, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday. "It is essential to reinforce the European industrial strategy with the objectives of retaining Europe's industrial capacities, developing them in the near future and assuring Europe's strategic independence," Le Maire said, speaking alongside the French EU single market commissioner Thierry Breton at a press briefing in Paris.

The EU has urged Kosovo's incoming government to continue EU-mediated talks with Serbia on normalising relations. "The EU expects the new authorities in Pristina to engage constructively with a view to a continuation of the meetings of the EU-facilitated dialogue," the EU foreign service said Monday after elections in Kosovo last weekend. The likely new prime minister, Albin Kurti, is fiercely critical of Serbia, auguring badly for the peace process.

Russia has said it wants closer ties with friendly EU states, but that relations with EU institutions were a dead "carcass".

The UK's official medicines watchdog is examining manufacturing processes at the world's largest vaccine-producer site in India, which could pave the way to ship the AstraZeneca vaccine from there to the UK, Reuters reported on Monday. The Serum Institute of India is already producing vaccines for low and medium-income countries like Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Britain has ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Queues of trucks stretched 20km on the Czech side of the border on Monday as Germany cited the risk of Covid-19 variants for implementing tougher border checks. Under the new rules, only a handful of people are permitted to cross the border, including lorry drivers. Carmakers warned that the restrictions could bring factories to a standstill, as Czech factories are a key part of the supply chain.

French authorities have fined Google €1.1m for misleading consumers over hotel rankings. In a statement on Monday, a French consumer watchdog and the finance ministry found Google guilty of "misleading commercial practice." The ministry had launched the probe against the tech giant in September, 2019.

Israel and Cyprus announced a tourism agreement to allow citizens who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus to travel between the countries without the need to quarantine, the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini reports. Last week, Israel reached a similar deal with Greece. "This opens up the possibility of restarting tourism in the near future," Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "Cypriot tourists in Israel and Israeli tourists in Cyprus."

Greek NGO Refugee Support Aegean says the state system is traumatising and failing people who are victims of torture by expediting their cases - without offering them any help as required by law.

People living in poverty around the world are in danger of food shortages as the coronavirus crisis continues, the UN's food envoy Agnes Kalibata warned, with the risk worse this year than in the period shortly after the pandemic began, The Guardian writes. "Food systems have contracted, because of Covid-19. And food has become more expensive and, in some places, out of reach for people," she said.

Catalonia's separatist parties for the first time won more than half of the votes in Sunday's regional election - triggering renewed calls for a dialogue between Madrid and Barcelona.