Euobserver.com

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are racing to contain a possible Ebola outbreak, after a woman died from the virus near the eastern city of Butembo, The Guardian reports. The woman showed symptoms on 1 February in the town of Biena, North Kivu. She died in hospital in Butembo two days later. She was married to a man who had contracted the virus in a previous outbreak.

The Russian LGBT Network, an NGO, has cried out for international support for two gay men - Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isayev - saying their lives were in "mortal danger", the BBC reports. The appeal came after Russian police forcibly returned them to Russia's semi-autonomous Chechnya province last week. The men were previously tortured by Chechnya's homophonic regime on grounds of sedition, amid dozens of similar cases of LGBTI persecution.

Residents of the eastern Greek island of Chios continued, on Saturday, to protest plans for the creation of a new closed migrant camp, with a motorcade stretching more than 2 kilometres, Ekathimerini writes. The new centre, according to Greek migration minister Notis Mitarakis, will replace an existing overcrowded structure. With some asylum-seekers being transferred to the mainland, the new closed facility will be smaller, with a capacity of 1,500 people.

Export volumes going through British ports to the EU fell by a massive 68 percent in January 2021 compared to January 2020, mostly due to Brexit-linked red tape, Richard Burnett, the head of the UK's Road Haulage Association, has said in a letter to British cabinet minister Michael Gove seen by The Guardian newspaper. The British Ports Association said the 68 percent figure sounded "broadly in line" with its data.

European charity SOS Méditerranée has said Italy gave it permission to disembark 422 migrants in the Sicilian port of Syracuse Sunday. Its boat, the Ocean Viking, rescued them off the coast of Libya over the past week. Some of the people came from the Ivory Coast, Mali, and Sudan, German news agency DPA reported. Two had to be airlifted to Malta for health reasons and eight tested positive for coronavirus.

EU borders agency Frontex has given shady security firms sweeping access to officials, the Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels-based NGO has said. Some 91 out of the 125 lobbyists, or 72 percent, Frontex met in 2018 and 2019 had not subscribed to the EU's voluntary transparency register. Frontex' "vision of border control based on more and more firearms and biometric surveillance has major human rights implications," the NGO said.

Some MEPs have called for the top diplomat's resignation over his trip to Moscow, while Germany's stubborn backing for a Russia pipeline risks aggravating EU division.

European leaders of countries hit worst by the first coronavirus outbreak failed to exploit the potential of social media, and their own millions of followers, to encourage citizens to comply with the rules, a new study has found.

After the damaging performance by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Moscow last week, MEPs will grill the EU foreign affairs chief on his visit to the Russian capital following the jailing of opposition activist Alexei Navalny.

Slovakia and Czechia were not in a position to support the draft Council conclusion on enlargement and, to our surprise, we were labelled as troublemakers. We therefore need to clarify our motivations, write the Czech and Slovak foreign ministers.

Portugal's taking over the EU presidency puts the tax transparency law for corporations - which has been fought over for years - to a vote in the Council of Ministers. The resistance of the German government has failed.

Russia's expulsion of three EU diplomats on Friday showed, "right now", that Moscow was "quite far from the rule of law", German chancellor Angela Merkel said. Russia ejected diplomats from Germany, Poland, and Sweden on grounds they had attended opposition protests. But that was "unjustified", Merkel said, as it was normal practice for diplomats to attend opposition rallies. French president Emmanuel Macron echoed Merkel's reaction in an online press briefing.

Russia expelled three European diplomats and harangued the EU on human rights, while Europe's top diplomat talked about Cuba instead of jailed dissidents.

Russia has expelled three European diplomats, from Germany, Poland, and Sweden, on grounds they attended illegal rallies in support of jailed opposition hero Alexei Navalny, EU sources said. They did it during a press conference between EU top diplomat Josep Borrell and the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Friday, one source told EUobserver. Lavrov also roasted Borrell over alleged EU human rights abuses at the press briefing.

"America is back" to help Europe protect herself against Russian aggression, US president Joe Biden has said in a keynote foreign policy speech.

Alexei Navalny's supporters will stop staging protests demanding his release until at least this spring, a key aide of the imprisoned Kremlin critic said Thursday, the Moscow Times reports. Leonid Volkov, head of Navalny's regional network of campaign-style offices, cited the forceful police crackdowns and concerns more arrests would hamper the organisation's plans to campaign ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Nearly four in 10 people in France and 23 percent in Germany say they definitely or probably will not get vaccinated against Covid-19, the Guardian reports. Hesitancy was markedly lower in Italy (12 percent), the UK (14 percent), and the Netherlands (17 percent), according to a seven-country survey, which revealed a close correlation between people's reluctance to be vaccinated and their trust in central government.

Transparency International carried out three separate studies on integrity, of the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council (representing member states). The European Parliament refused to cooperate.

Local and regional authorities have voiced concerns at EU-level about the differences in speed of the vaccine rollout, calling for a European dashboard that monitors vaccines' availability and distribution at sub-national level.

There are around 4,000 variants of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 around the world so all vaccine manufacturers are trying to improve their vaccines, the British minister on vaccine development said. "It's very unlikely that the current vaccine won't be effective on the variants whether in Kent or other variants especially when it comes to severe illness and hospitalisation," Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News on Thursday.