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NGOs on Thursday urged the EU and member states to reevaluate their relationship with Egypt and to address "the human rights crisis" in the country at the meeting of foreign affairs ministers next week. "Business cannot continue as usual with Egypt as long as the Egyptian authorities maintain their brutal crackdown on human rights," reads the letter sent to EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.

A new report from the European Court of Auditors reveals that EU aid for education in conflict areas reaches more boys, even though it is girls who are more likely to drop out of school, experience violence and marry early. It also identified that most projects are too short for the educational needs of children living in protracted crises, calling on the European Commission to foster longer-term, self-reliant solutions.

Some 33 businesses, industry associations, NGOs, and think tanks have combined to call for avoiding the use of hydrogen in building renovations, prioritising existing sustainable solutions and boosting the integration of renewables. The direct use of hydrogen for heating is seen as "problematic" because "it comes with many uncertainties linked to the scalability, costs of its production and inefficiencies," reads the letter sent to the European Commission on Thursday.

"Banknotes are still to stay," European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde said at a recent conference, "but I think we will have a digital euro."

Hungary's drug regulator has given preliminary approval for the coronavirus vaccines made by the UK's AstraZeneca and Russia's Sputnik V, prime minister Viktor Orbán's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The two vaccines have not yet been approved by the EU's regulatory body. Foreign minister Péter Szijjártó was travelling to Moscow for talks about the vaccine on Thursday, Gulyás added.

Russian authorities have applied for registration of their Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in the European Union, the country's sovereign wealth fund financing the jab said on Wednesday, The Moscow Times reports. The first review of the documents filed by the 'RDIF' fund is expected February. In August, Russia registered Sputnik V - named after a Soviet-era satellite - before the start of large-scale clinical trials, which left some experts wary.

A large explosion killed at least three people and destroyed most of a building in the Spanish capital Madrid on Wednesday, Deutsche Welle writes. A witness told local newspaper ABC that "everything shook like a bomb" and that "much of the façade has fallen." Some 11 other people were also injured in the blast, which appeared to have been caused by a gas leak.

The liberal group in the European Parliament has expelled Lithuanian MEP Viktor Uspaskich with "immediate effect" over an anti-LGBTI Facebook post earlier this month. "There is no place for homophobia in the Renew Europe family," group leader, Romanian MEP Dacian Cioloș, said after Wednesday's vote. Uspaskich had called gay people "perverts ... deviants" in a video clip on 10 January, among other slurs, but later apologised for his "mistake".

Reducing air pollution to World Health Organisation-recommended levels in the EU could prevent 51,213 premature deaths each year, or as much as 125,000 if regulators went beyond targets, according to a new study published in leading medical journal The Lancet Wednesday. Cities in northern Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic had the highest associated mortalities. Some 2,500 premature deaths a year also occurred in Paris, the study said.

Some 43 people drowned trying to leave Libya for the EU by boat in the first lethal incident of its type this year, UN agencies have said. Their boat capsized shortly after departure on Tuesday morning. Ten people were saved by the coast-guard. The casualties included people from Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria. More than 1,200 people died on the same route last year, the UN said.

The EU should revive a 1960s railway-building project called 'Trans Europe Express' to curb emissions from short-distance flights if the bloc is to meet its global warming targets, according to a German-funded report by four NGOs Wednesday. Flights of fewer than 1,000 km inside Europe emitted 28 tonnes of CO2/year, but "almost all of these journeys could be shifted to rail," which now accounted for just 8 percent of journeys.

Some 40 leading NGOs, including Transparency International and the European Federation of Journalists, have signed a letter urging Monaco and Croatia to let British whistleblower Jonathan Taylor go home. Taylor has spent some 180 days in Dubrovnik, away from his family, fighting an extradition order to Monaco. The principality accused him of extortion after he exposed bribery at Monaco-based firm SBM Offshore, prompting hundreds of millions of euros in fines.

More than 100 British musicians, including pop stars such as Elton John and Ed Sheeran, as well as classical music virtuosos, such as violinist Nicola Benedetti, have signed a letter to The Times excoriating the British government for its recent Brexit deal, which, they said, left a "gaping hole" where the "promised free movement for musicians should be". New costs of performing in Europe would bankrupt some artists, they warned.

US president Joe Biden has overturned America's exit from the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organisation in his first moments in office, as EU leaders "openly rejoiced".

Trump's social-media ban and the power of platforms has come under public scrutiny in Europe. So what went wrong? And what's the best way forward?

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, will be meeting three EU commissioners to discuss a "prospective update of [the] EU-Turkey Statement" on migrants.

While some member states hope vaccine certificates could revive tourism, EU officials point out that it is not clear if vaccinated people can still carry the virus and infect others.

Why do authoritarian leaders on the fringes of Europe, such as Turkey's Erdoğan, bother trying to romance the EU?

Brexit prompted some 50 entities, 2,500 financial services jobs, and "at least €170bn in assets" to move from the UK to France by the end of 2020, French central bank governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau told press Tuesday. The exodus came "despite the pandemic", he noted. "Other relocations are expected and should increase over the course of this year," he said, while calling for a new "union of capital markets".

Italy's prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, on Tuesday won a confidence vote in the Senate, with 156 senators supporting him, 140 against, and 16 abstentions, after having won a vote in the lower house earlier. It ended a government crisis after a small coalition party, led by former prime minister Matteo Renzi, left the government. In a speech, Conte attacked Renzi for "placing mines" under the coalition in difficult times.