Euobserver.com

The US executed 52-year old Lisa Montgomery, a death row inmate, on Wednesday. Montgomery had committed a gruesome murder but she was also mentally ill. The EU is now demanding the US reverse all pending federal-level executions

"This has been the darkest period for human rights in China since the 1989 massacre that ended the Tiananmen Square democracy movement," the global, New York-based pressure group, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Wednesday, citing China's persecution of the Uighur minority, Hong Kong activists, and Tibetans as examples. HRW director Kenneth Roth said the EU was not serious about Uighur rights in its new China investment treaty.

The dried yellow mealworm or "Tenebrio molitor larva" is safe for human consumption, the European Food Safety Agency (Efsa) in Parma, Italy, said Wednesday, in its first approval of an insect as a "novel food". The Efsa opinion could lead to EU-wide approval after a French firm which farmed the worms, Micronutris, applied for a permit. Novel foods are seen as alternatives to high-CO2 emitting food sectors, such as cattle.

EU officials warned that "one of the biggest challenges" ahead will be fighting the spread of vaccine misinformation and addressing vaccine hesitancy.

Alexei Navalny announced he will return to Russia with the words "meet me", after more than four months recuperating in Berlin from an attempt to poison him with the nerve agent Novichok, the Moscow Times reports. Opposition supporters on social media took his message as an invitation to show up and welcome him. Most commentators, however, expect Russian law enforcement to arrest him at the airport.

European Commission vice-president Vera Jourova said she is committed to putting forward a proposal to create an independent, inter-institutional, ethics body. "I am convinced that we will see the creation of an independent ethics body," she said. Jourova was mandated for the task and said work is needed in the coming months "to achieve concrete progress" before tabling a proposal.

Major cities across Turkey face running out of water in the next few months, with Istanbul possibly having less than 45 days of water left, due to a lack of rainfall, the Guardian writes. Low rainfall has led to the country's most severe drought in a decade. The Ankara mayor, Mansur Yavaş, said earlier this month the capital had another 110 days' worth in dams and reservoirs.

Former Belgian minister Theo Francken gave one of his party friends the power to put Syrian Christians on a list to get Belgian humanitarian visa. This week that colleague was convicted of human smuggling.

The Polish government has praised the move as the beginning of long-awaited "re-Polonisation" of media markets - but journalists, media experts and opposition parties see it as an attack on press freedom, and preparation for local elections.

Let's expand the EU with a Health Union where cutting edge research and world-class applications go hand in hand. For this, it is worth being European, believing in Europe, working on Europe, writes European People's Party leader Manfred Weber MEP.

"We are not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021," World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a briefing on Monday, Deutsche Welle writes. Swaminathan emphasised that measures such as physical distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks continue to be necessary in containing Covid-19's spread for the rest of the year, despite the vaccination programs in several countries.

France has urged the European Commission to hurry up with compensation for French winemakers hit by US tariffs. "I regret the slowness with which the European Commision is responding to our request about a compensation fund. This sector is hard hit and needs European support," French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday. The US tariffs come in a long-standing transatlantic dispute on aviation subsidies.

Turkey held out a grand olive branch to the EU when president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met ambassadors in his Ankara palace on Tuesday.

Italy's largest mafia trial in three decades will begin on Wednesday, with 900 witnesses testifying against more than 350 people, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the powerful Calabrian 'Ndrangheta organisation, The Guardian reports. Almost all of the defendants were arrested in raids, involving 2,500 officers, in December 2019 after a lengthy investigation that began in 2016 and covered at least 11 Italian regions.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has cancelled a trip to Brussels and Luxembourg, saying publicly he needed to stay home to prepare for the transition. But the real reason was because Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn had declined to host him, according to US sources speaking to Reuters and Fox News. Assleborn earlier called outgoing American president Donald Trump "criminal" and a "political pyromaniac" for inciting the Capitol riot.

EU tech regulator Margrethe Vestager has said Twitter and Facebook should have banned outgoing US president Donald Trump earlier for lies and incitement. "Why haven't you [social media firms] done more before?", she said in a Washington Post interview Tuesday. "It's just thought-provoking that you can blatantly lie about essentials in your democracy," she told the American newspaper, amid a debate, in Europe, on where free-speech rights should end online.

EU top negotiator on vaccines contracts defended the EU's joint approach on vaccinations - amid a wave of critics who blame the European Commission for not buying enough doses and calls for increased transparency.

The European Court of Justice told Hungary in December to stop forcing asylum seekers back into Serbia. The European Commission is now demanding Budapest follow the judgement - but Hungary has since reintroduced a special legal order, under Covid-19.

It's alarming that the EU is moving towards making development assistance conditional on the cooperation of third countries with its own migration objectives. This risks skewing priorities and undermining progress.

Last August, German activists almost stormed the Reichstag building to protest the government's corona measures. In the Netherlands, farmers angry at the government's policies to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions rammed the doors of local government buildings with tractors.