Euobserver.com

Following a draft law approved by Moldovan parliament, the Russian language will now get a special status as the "language of interethnic communication", and becomes mandatory for all civil servants.

German investigators have detained a 34-year old Australian man, the alleged operator of DarkMarket, said to be the world's largest illegal online marketplace, prosecutors in Koblenz said on Tuesday. DarkMarket was shut down on Monday, and its servers, located in Ukraine and Moldova, taken off the internet, German news wire DPA reported. The site was used for the sale of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or falsified credit cards, and malware.

An appeals court in Slovakia has upheld a ruling sentencing Marián Kočner, a businessman allegedly linked to a journalist's murder, to a 19-year jail term in a separate case of forgery, AP reported. In September, Kočner was acquitted of allegedly ordering the 2018 murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová. Prosecutors have appealed that verdict. The Supreme Court will rule on it later.

The EU foreign service has urged Israel not to advance construction of 850 settler homes in Palestine's occupied West Bank, as announced in the last days of US Donald Trump's presidency. The settlements were "illegal" and an "obstacle to building trust", the EU said Tuesday. Trump also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognised Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, changing the map in Europe's southern neighbourhood.

European industry, national governments, and EU experts are to launch an "alliance" to build new rocket-launcher technology, the European Commission said Tuesday. The project represented a "more offensive and aggressive" strategy than before, it said, to "ensure an autonomous access to space" for European satellites in the context of Chinese and US competition. The EU is spending €15bn on joint space programmes in the 2021 to 2027 period.

Germany's largest lender, Deutsche Bank, will no longer do business with outgoing US president Donald Trump-affiliated entities, according to reports in the New York Times and Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, on Tuesday. The move comes after Trump incited a lethal riot in the Capitol last week. A bank spokesman declined to comment to EUobserver for "legal reasons". The bank has reportedly loaned the Trump Organization $340m [€280m].

AstraZeneca and Oxford University filed a formal bid for temporary authorisation of their coronavirus vaccine, the European Medicines Agency said on Tuesday. A decision could come by 29 January, the Amsterdam-based regulator added. "An opinion on the marketing authorisation could be issued by 29 January, provided that the data submitted on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine are sufficiently robust and complete," the agency said.

"Freedom of the media as well as an effective and independent judiciary are central elements of our relations with Ukraine," Peter Stano, the EU foreign service spokesman, said Tuesday following new developments in the trial, in Kiev, of the alleged killers of journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016. The EU has "repeatedly called on the Ukrainian authorities" to ensure "those responsible for this atrocity [were] brought to justice", Stano said.

City of London bankers are losing hope in normal rights to trade in euro-registered shares in the wake of Brexit. "This is the beginning of market fragmentation," Conor Lawlor, director for Brexit at UK Finance, a bankers' group, told a British parliament hearing Tuesday, after €6bn of trades shifted from London to Amsterdam and Paris in one day last Monday. The EU had no incentive to open up, he added.

Brussels, the EU capital, is seeing a new surge in corona-infections after expats returned home from other member states after Christmas holidays. "In the past two weeks, we have had some 50,000 travellers returning from red zones," a government spokesman told the VRT broadcaster Monday. The expat-heavy Brussels districts of Etterbeek, Ixelles, and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre saw the steepest rises, amid a 62 percent jump between 31 December and 6 January.

The US is planning to deploy some 15,000 National Guard troops to Washington and state capitals nationwide in the run-up to president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on 20 January, amid fears of protests by armed, far-right groups in support of outgoing president Donald Trump, who has claimed, falsely, that November's election was rigged. The move comes after EU leaders voiced "shock" last week when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building.

A World Health Organization (WHO) team of experts will arrive to China on 14 January to investigate the origin of the pandemic, Chinese authorities said on Monday. China previously blocked their arrival over a "misunderstanding". "We look forward to working closely with our counterparts on this critical mission to identify the virus source and its route of introduction to the human population," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Foreigners face a ban from Amsterdam's cannabis coffee shops as part of wide-ranging plans to discourage organised crime and cut back on drugs tourism, the Guardian writes. The city's mayor, Femke Halsema, said 58 percent of foreign tourists in Amsterdam come mainly to consume cannabis. She has proposed allowing only Dutch residents to enter its 166 marijuana-selling coffee shops. The measure will likely come into force sometime next year.

Arnaud Fontanet, a member of the scientific council that advises the French government on Covid-19 policy, on Monday said the country should consider closing its border with the UK. "It is important that we consider whether we need to close the borders to a limited number of countries, notably the United Kingdom and Ireland," he told BFM television. Fontanet described the new variant as "nearly a new epidemic".

Ukrainian police in EU to seek new evidence on Belarusian link to murder of one of eastern Europe's star journalists four years ago.

European seems to be most attached to their cars. Only 11 percent of citizens said that giving up their car would be the easiest choice to make to fight climate change.

German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against Twitter for banning US president Donald Trump, following his incitement for violence ahead of the riots in the Capitol last week. "The chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president as problematic," said her spokesperson, Steffen Seibert. Similar comments were made by French junior minister for EU affairs, Clement Beaune, who said he was "shocked".

National authorities have warned citizens about "difficult" weeks ahead, as more than a quarter of EU countries are seeing strained health systems - amid a blame-game over the slow rollout of the vaccine in some member states.

The European Commission refused to comment on Monday on a proposal by Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to update the 2016 migration pact, meant to stop people from reaching the Greek islands. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Erdoğan had spoken by phone over the weekend. "This is a conversation, which is taking place in a process," said chief commission spokesperson, Eric Mamer.

Can the EU do more to hold back the kinds of malign forces that overran the US Capitol? It's not an idle question. Democratic shortcomings in the EU are regularly invoked by the far-right to whip up nationalist sentiment.