Euobserver.com

Founded in 2012 by local Greeks, Pikpa is a community refugee shelter on the Greek island of Lesbos. Now Greek authorities are threatening to shut down the facility, which won a UN humanitarian prize award.

The Spanish government invoked a two-week state of emergency on Friday to impose a partial lockdown on Madrid, after weeks of tension with the regional government of the capital, El País reported. Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez previously urged the regional government chief, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, to impose restrictions to limit the movement of citizens in Europe's worst Covid-19 hotspot - after a Madrid court had struck down the measures.

Mathieu Michel, brother of European Council president Charles Michel, and himself a Belgian state secretary, has tested positive for Covid-19, the office of prime minister Alexander De Croo said. Mathieu Michel is going into quarantine. The Belgian federal government will not go into quarantine, as the state secretary did not have high-risk contacts with other members of the government, the statement said.

China has officially joined World Health Organization-led Covid-19 vaccine programme, Covax, which aims to distribute 2bn vaccines around the world by the end of 2021, The Guardian reported. "This is an important step China has taken to uphold the concept of a shared community of health for all and to honour its commitment to turn Covid19 vaccines into a global public good," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Friday.

After a lengthy captivity by Islamist insurgents, freed Malian politician Soumaila Cisse, French aid worker Sophie Petronin and two Italians arrived in Bamako on Thursday aboard a Malian military transport plane, Reuters reports. French president Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter that with this the last French hostage in the world was freed.

Belgium's ambassador to the EU noted, during Brexit talks in Brussels Wednesday, that British king Charles II had granted 50 Flemish fishermen from Bruges "eternal rights" to use British fishing waters some 350 years ago in 1666, The Guardian reports. The ambassador said it to make the point Belgian-British relations had long roots. Charles II had sheltered in Belgium after a civil war in the UK.

MEPs are requesting additional, new funding of €39bn for 15 EU programs. The German presidency argues that budget ceilings, agreed by EU leaders at a marathon summit in July, will be impossible to change without a new leaders' meeting.

The German EU presidency is striving to sort a political agreement on the migration and asylum pact before the end of the year. In reality, it means two months when factoring Christmas holidays.

A group of 86 MEPs wrote on Thursday to the European Commission urging a ban on all cages for farmed animals, highlighting that over 300 million farmed animals in Europe spend all, or a significant part, of their lives in such captivity. They said many EU countries have introduced national laws going beyond EU standards, while calling on the commission to create a level playing-field for farmers.

Two Belgian regional governments, the Brussels regional government and the government of the region of Wallonia have gone into quarantine after a minister in each tested positive for Covid-19. The minister-president of the Brussels region, Rudi Vervoort, announced on Thursday that he had also tested positive. On Wednesday the Brussels government decided to close all bars for at least one month as corona numbers are rising in the Belgian capital.

A Madrid court on Thursday struck down a government order imposing a partial lockdown on the city and nine surrounding towns, Reuters reported. The court sided with regional government chief Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who had opposed the order, saying it would ravage the region's economy. The court said the restrictions are an "interference by public authorities in citizens' fundamental rights without the legal mandate to support it."

A Paris appeals court on Thursday upheld an order for Google to negotiate with media groups in a dispute over revenues from online news, AFP reported. The ruling came as the US internet giant said it was close to a deal on compensating French media groups for news shown in Google search. Google has so far refused to comply with new EU rules giving more copyright protection to media firms.

Germany recorded more than 4,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, with health minister Jens Spahn calling the latest numbers "alarming", according to DPA newswire. Top health officials warned of a second wave that could be more severe than the one in the spring. The numbers showed 4,058 new infections, compared to 2,828 on Wednesday.

A crossparty group of British MPs urged the government to consider removing Huawei from the country's 5G networks as soon as 2025 saying there is "clear evidence of collusion" between Huawei and the Chinese state.

According to the World Health Organisation, poor mental health claims the lives of 140,000 people per year by suicide in the European region. Their lives could be saved if mental health care and support were properly funded.

While the leaders of Greece's Golden Dawn facing lengthy jail terms, the atmosphere remains tense in Athens and some other parts of Greece. Depending on the exact sentencing, further clashes between anarchist-leftists and remnants of the extreme-right may ensue.

The European Commission signed on Thursday its third contract for a potential Covid-19 vaccine, with the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. The deal will allow member states to purchase vaccines for 200 million people - with the possibility to extend that to an extra 200 million doses. The commission has previously sealed deals with AstraZeneca and Sanofi-GSK, but it is also negotiating with CureVac, BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.

The European Commission signed on Thursday a €70m joint-procurement contract with the pharmaceutical firm Gilead for the supply of up to 500,000 doses of Remdesivir - the only medicine with a marketing authorisation in the EU for the treatment of Covid-19 patients needing oxygen. All EU and EEA countries, the UK, as well as six candidate and potential candidate countries are participating in this joint procurement.

Cambridge Analytica, the British data-mining firm disgraced for meddling in US elections, did not abuse information to steer the Brexit debate or help Russia to influence British voters, Elizabeth Denham, the UK's information commissioner, said Wednesday, following a three-year investigation. The firm's power "may have been an exaggeration" used by its own marketing, she said. Cambridge Analytica pitched to work with Ukip, a pro-Leave party, but was never hired.

"Everyone is concerned that the number of [coronavirus] infections is on the rise" and "everybody knows that the most difficult months are ahead of us," German chancellor Angela Merkel said at a summit in Brussels Friday. "I hope that they recover well from their coronavirus infection and are soon completely healthy again," she said, on news that the US president and his wife had tested positive for Covid-19 overnight.