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The pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has paused its Covid-19 vaccine trial after a participant experienced an "unexplained illness," The Guardian reported Tuesday. Earlier this month, the European Commission, on behalf of EU member states, signed an agreement for 200 million doses of the company's coronavirus vaccine candidate. In September, another trial for a potential vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University was paused for a second time.

Turkish petro-exploration ship, the Oruç Reis, sailed back into a Greek-claimed maritime zone on Monday, prompting recriminations by Athens. The Reis will come close to outlying Greek islands on a 10-day mission in what "constitutes a major escalation and direct threat to peace and security in the region", the Greek foreign ministry said. Turkey was "provocatively indifferent" to Europe's appeals for de-escalation, Greece added, amid talk of future EU sanctions.

Norway has granted asylum to a Polish man on grounds of political persecution in the first such case since the fall of communism 30 years ago. It said Rafał Gaweł, who used to run an anti-racism NGO and who was charged with fraud and forgery, would not have gotten a fair trial because Poland's right-wing government had seized control of the judiciary, echoing EU concerns on Polish rule-of-law.

President Alexander Lukashenko is going back on an EU blacklist, as Belarusian police gets permission to use live ammunition against protesters.

US social-media firm Facebook has, for the first time, formally banned "any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust" from its worldwide platform. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said he had "struggled with the tension" between free speech and hate crime, but the new policy was "the right balance". "My own thinking has evolved as I've seen data showing an increase in antisemitic violence," he said on Monday.

EU countries are to impose modest sanctions on Russia for its second use of a prohibited chemical weapon in Europe.

The decrease of revenues in 2020 of subnational authorities in France, Germany and Italy alone is estimated to be €30bn for the three countries, a new report by the European Committee of the Regions says.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday a three-tier system aimed at avoiding a patchwork of complicated and confusing coronavirus rules across England, Reuters reported. Restrictions include shutting pubs, bars, gyms, leisure centres, betting shops and adult gaming centres in areas deemed "very high" alert level. "We must act to save lives," Johnson told MPs, who now have to agree the proposal. Scotland and Wales have devolved administrations.

In city elections in Vienna the far-right anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPÖ), plummeted to 7.5 percent, down from nearly 31 percent in 2015, Deutsche Welle reports. The party, led by disgraced far-right politician, Heinz-Christian Strache, will not enter the city's parliament. Strache was involved in a high-profile corruption scandal. The biggest winner was the centre-left SPÖ, led by Mayor Michael Ludwig, with 41.7 percent of the vote.

Belgium has the the EU's second-highest infection rate over a 14-day period, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The Sweden-based agency on Monday said Belgium's cumulative number of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 is 402.5 but also"advised to use all data with caution", given limitations. The Czech Republic has the highest at 493.1, followed by Belgium, and the Netherlands (364.2). Neighbouring Germany has 45.2.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said there is a need to speed up renovation of existing buildings throughout the European Union. "Our buildings are responsible for 40 percent of our energy consumption," she noted, adding at current pace it will take more than a century to bring emissions from buildings to zero. The Associated Press reported the European Commission is set to announce a building-renovation project on Wednesday.

EU countries are set to adopt a 'traffic-light' colour-coding system for coronavirus-affected areas. But member states will have the possibility to set their own strategies, on negative Covid-19 tests or different quarantine periods, for orange and red zones.

Bigots and far-right extremists are using online violence to try to silence feminists and LGBT people. It's a cowardly tactic since perpetrators don't even have to meet their targets. We hear stories from two Europeans on the receiving end

This latest resumption in the conflict, as it is somewhat euphemistically called, is rather a self-declared offensive by Azerbaijan, aimed at achieving its desired outcome to the conflict by force rather than by negotiation.

EU states have agreed to blacklist Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and several other Belarusian figures, in addition to the 40 names they designated earlier this month. Lukashenko had shown "complete lack of will" to talk to the opposition, amid ongoing violence against pro-democracy protesters, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said on Monday. Cyprus had delayed previous attempts with its veto, but, this time, Borrell was "confident" of quick implementation.

EU foreign ministers have agreed to blacklist four individuals and one entity over Russia's alleged poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, diplomatic sources said. The political accord, spearheaded by France and Germany, is to be legally implemented "as soon as possible", and, in any case, before the upcoming EU summit, one diplomat said. Poland had pushed, but failed, for Germany to also stop building the Nord Stream Russia gas pipeline.

Britain might float nets in the English Channel to disable the boats of migrants trying to cross from France, its Home Office "channel threat commander", Dan O'Mahoney, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper this weekend. The nets would "clog propellers and bring boats to a standstill", enabling the coastguard to take people on board and return them to the French coast, he said, despite fears that they could cause dangerous accidents.

EU states, late Friday, agreed new measures to harmonise travel rules. A Swedish-based EU agency will designate European regions as green, amber, red, or grey (insufficient data) based on weekly updates. All states are to allow green-zone visitors and impose the same testing or quarantine rules for red zones. Some Bulgarian, Cypriot, Greek, German, Italian, Nordic and Baltic regions were the only ones that would qualify as green, for now.

Belgian phone networks Orange and Proximus have selected Finnish supplier Nokia instead of Chinese firm Huawei to install 5G data networks amid security fears over Chinese espionage, Reuters reports. "Belgium has been 100-percent reliant on Chinese vendors for its radio networks - and people working at Nato and the EU were making mobile phone calls on these networks," Danish telecoms consultant John Strand said, echoing US concerns on China.

High-level meetings at the European Commission are to exclude assistants, while top officials will face Covid-19 tests prior to attendance and be obliged to wear masks during talks, the commission said Sunday. The move comes after a 90-percent jump in infections in Belgium, the home of the EU institutions, last week, with 113 people a day being hospitalised, rising to 160 on Saturday. Some EU commissioners have also tested positive.