Euobserver.com

The United States has carried out airstrikes in Syria targeting facilities near the Iraqi border used by Iranian-backed militia groups, The Guardian writes. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member. "The operation sends an unambiguous message: president Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel", the Pentagon said.

Malta has wrapped up its investigation into the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, after a defendant pled guilty and gave evidence, with oligarch Yorgen Fenech accused of being the mastermind of the crime. A European Parliament group said Thursday there was still "a very long road ahead" for justice in the case, amid an ongoing public enquiry into government attempts to cover up corruption and protect her killers.

The Dutch parliament on Thursday passed a non-binding motion saying the treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority in China amounted to genocide, in the first such move by a European country, news agency Reuters writes. Activists and UN rights experts say at least 1 million Muslims are being detained in camps in the remote western region of Xinjiang. The activists accuse China of using torture, forced labour, and sterilisations.

There was no violence in Thursday's attempted "military coup" in Armenia, but it made EU influence in the South Caucasus look smaller than ever.

EU leaders have discussed how to accelerate the rollout of vaccines, amid fears over more transmissible mutations triggering a new surge in cases.

The Hungarian legislation, dubbed 'Stop Soros', was a 2018 amendment to Hungary's criminal code and threatened aid workers and human rights advocates working with asylum-seekers with up to a year in prison.

The European Court of Justice on Thursday fined Spain €15m plus a daily penalty of €89,000 for failing to fulfil its obligations under the directive on protection of personal data during police investigations. "Spain had not adopted the measures necessary to ensure the transposition of the directive nor notified those measures to the commission," it said. Countries had until 2018 to transpose the directive.

Some 14 MEPs have created a group to probe allegations of rights abuse by the EU's border agency Frontex. Its head, Fabrice Leggeri, welcomed its creation and said it "is about time".

A court in Belarus sentenced an anti-government protester to 10 years in prison on Thursday, media and activists said, on charges that the opposition says were trumped up as part of a crackdown to keep president Alexander Lukashenko in power, Reuters writes. Aliaksandr Kardziukou was convicted of attempted murder for attacking security forces who were trying to disperse nationwide protests that erupted last August following a contested election.

Any firm issuing safety certificates for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will find itself in US sanctions crosshairs, the state department has warned.

Norway scrambled two jets to challenge two Russian long-range bombers off the coast of Norway earlier this week, Nato said Thursday, while Nato fighter aircraft from Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey responded to a Russian squadron of bombers and fighter jets over the Black Sea, in a separate incident. The Black Sea squadron had turned off its transponders, devices that communicate flight paths, raising tension and the risk of accidental confrontation.

Amsterdam has overtaken London as the share-trading capital of Europe, just a month after Brexit became official, the Financial Times reported. Trading volumes at three exchanges in the Dutch capital grew fourfold to average €9.2bn per day in January, while average volumes in London fell sharply to €8.6bn last month. An estimated €6bn of European share trading shifted from London to Europe when Brexit officially took effect in January.

Foreign ministers and senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates were meeting with foreign ministers from Greece, Cyprus and Egypt in Athens on Thursday, as Greece seeks to expand alliances to counter tension with Turkey, AP reported. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian joined online. Nato members Greece and Turkey are locked in a dispute over boundaries and offshore resource rights in the Mediterranean.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has accused the EU of "double standards" in letting Australian, Canadian, and US traders do business in Europe, but not City of London ones after Brexit. "Now is not the time to have a regional argument," he told The Times Thursday, referring to economic fallout from the pandemic. At least €6bn of trading and 7,000 financial jobs have moved to Europe since Brexit.

Over 500 scientists called on EU to stop treating the burning of biomass as "carbon neutral" in its renewable energy standards. "In recent years there has been a misguided move to cut down whole trees or to divert large portions of stem wood for bioenergy, releasing carbon that would otherwise stay locked up in the forests," they said in a letter sent on Thursday to EU and international leaders.

French and Spanish liberal MEPs attempted to water down a resolution on Yemen and abstained on key points demanding accountability for EU states that violate arms export rules.

All non-essential travel to and from Belgium remains prohibited until 1 April, the Belgian government clarified on Thursday. On the website of the ministry of foreign affairs it had indicated the rule would last until 1 March. The measure does not apply to frontier workers and travelling for urgent family reasons. Belgium's Easter holiday this year starts on 5 April.

France's foreign ministry warned Iran on Thursday against taking further measures that could breach the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers and as a result jeopardise a diplomatic window opened with the arrival of a new US administration, Reuters reports. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, reported on Wednesday that Tehran had carried out its plan to produce uranium metal.

European police have been working with their counterparts in Myanmar to develop a manual of crowd-control techniques as part of a wider EU-support scheme, The Guardian writes. The project, initiated in 2012, provided training and equipment. It was suspended by the EU last week after the Myanmar military staged a coup, triggering the largest protest movement in the country in more than a decade.

EU ambassadors reached a compromise on the e-Privacy reform after four years of deadlock, paving the way for trialogue negotiations. But the text was slammed for allowing "mass surveillance" under national data-retention laws, a crucial win for France.