European Union

Over the past few days, lawyers and relatives of a number of well-known political prisoners in Russia have been informed that the prisoners are no longer in the jails where they had been held up to now. Their current location is unknown. The missing prisoners include 18-year-old German student Kevin Lick, the artist Sasha Skochilenko, the human rights activist Oleg Orlov and politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Two women boxers who were disqualified from the 2023 world championships after failing the gender tests are being allowed to fight in the Olympics: Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting and Algeria's Imane Khelif, who will compete against the Italian Angela Carini today. Members of Italy's far-right conservative government are now calling it an unfair fight, claiming that Khelif is trans and male.

For years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used the stage of the Summer University in the Romanian, but predominantly Hungarian-speaking Băile Tușnad to give highly provocative speeches. This year his vitriol was again directed at Brussels, Washington and Warsaw. But this time Poland's Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, did not beat about the bush in his response: Orbán should ask himself why he is still in the EU.

Austria's conservative-led coalition government is nominating conservative Finance Minister Magnus Brunner as its next European Commissioner, Chancellor Karl Nehammer said in a statement on Wednesday (31 July).

Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled upfront payments for volunteers to fight in Ukraine on Wednesday (31 July), a move aimed at facilitating military recruitment but likely to create imbalances in the overheated economy.

Olympians dived into the River Seine on Wednesday (31 July) after a pre-dawn notice informed teams that its waters were safe enough to proceed with the triathlon, sparing France the embarrassment of a central Paris 2024 promise being swept away.

Potentially massive quantities of naturally produced hydrogen were discovered in France last year. Since then, prospectors across Europe have been on the lookout for more deposits and are calling for greater public support for their efforts.

Disinformation and propaganda, long mainstays of war, have been digitally supercharged in the battle for Ukraine, the biggest conflict the world has seen since the advent of smartphones and social media.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, facing mounting pressure to offer evidence his election victory was valid, said that opposition leaders should be imprisoned following deadly protests across the country.

A large fire broke out in Rome on Wednesday (31 July) on a hill near the Italian capital's court of justice and a public TV broadcasting centre, forcing the evacuation of several buildings and offices, firefighters said.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday (31 July) met with Warsaw Uprising veterans and asked for their "forgiveness" during a visit to Poland on the eve of the revolt's 80th anniversary.

The Slovak Supreme Audit Office compiled an analysis of the pandemic. The summary report highlighted the insufficiencies in the Slovak health system’s pre-pandemic preparedness and pandemic management.

Bulgarian state and municipal hospitals can now take part in a special programme of state loans to save them from bankruptcy and improve their patient services. Specialist staff at one hospital went unpaid for seven months.