Euobserver.com

The European Commission threatened Austria on Wednesday with infringement proceedings after Vienna adopted new rules reducing family allowances to children of non-Austrian EU workers to the standard of living of the country in which the children of employees in Austria lived. European Commission spokesman Christian Wigand said it was a matter of "fairness" and that the commission would not hesitate to use its possibilities as the guardian of the treaties.

Italy has made a show of friendship with Russia despite its nuclear sabre-rattling and new threats of military escalation in Ukraine.

A majority of 30-13 MEPs in the European parliament's Civil Liberties Committee voted on Wednesday to allow temporary border checks at national borders for only one year. Schengen countries are currently allowed to control national borders for a maximum of two years if facing serious threat to public order or internal security. Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway still have border checks following the migratory crisis in 2015.

Howard Wilkinson, a British former trader in Danske Bank's Estonia branch, will testify at public hearings in the Danish parliament on 19 November and the European Parliament on 21 November. A non-disclosure agreement with Danske Bank must however first be lifted for the whistleblower to speak freely about the world's biggest money-laundering scandal. Danske's chairman Ole Andersen and representatives from Dutch lender ING were also invited to the EP hearing.

Chaos and confusion threaten millions of air travellers if Britain leaves the European Union in March without any deal on how to manage air services, International Air Transport Association director general, Alexandre de Juniac, warned on Wednesday. "There are no fallback agreements" for air traffic, he pointed out, while urging the UK to remain in the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) at least.

French leader Emmanuel Macron declined to say if he would back a German-led arms embargo on Saudi Arabia over its murder of a journalist in Istanbul. "I won't answer that question ... whether people like it or not," he told press Wednesday, after France sold €13.6bn of weapons to the retro-kingdom last year. Macron said he would back "international sanctions" against "those responsible", referring to targeted sanctions against Saudi individuals.

Environmentalists seek to tell bigger story of Arctic climate change, after studies show that the polar bear - the main symbol of the problem - does not risk extinction as previously feared.

Germany has warned all nationals visiting Turkey to beware of posting social media messages that criticised Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan or risk to get arrested under Turkish laws against insulting its head of state. "Arrests and prosecution of German nationals have been repeatedly linked with anti-government criticism on social media," its foreign ministry said on Wednesday. "It is enough to share or 'like' a post with such content."

Austria is free to extradite Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash to face bribery allegations in the US, the EU court said in a ruling on cooperation with extra-EU jurisdictions Wednesday. Dubbed Russian leader Vladimir Putin's "bag man" by one EU diplomat speaking to EUobserver, Firtash, who used to oversee Russia-Ukraine gas trade, is believed to hold information on Russian corruption schemes and election-meddling, which could come out in the US trial.

The EU's foreign service says there are no "records" of the Global Tech Panel meetings, but acknowledged foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini writes summary letters. Five MEPs worried about killer robots suggest the panel's composition is skewed.

By sidelining Soviet-era graduates of Russia's most prestigious academic institution - the Moscow State Institute of International Relations - Warsaw is failing to learn a key lesson: Know Your Enemy.

The head of one of Europe's top courts has said MEPs' right to privacy was more important than taxpayers' right to know how they spend their money.

UK prime minister Theresa May will be speaking at the Nordic Council's session in Oslo on 30 October in presence of parliamentarians and prime ministers from the five Nordic countries. Council president Michael Tetzschner said the Nordic countries were keen to keep a close cooperation with Britain after Brexit. While in Norway, May will also attend the Northern Future Forum, a yearly summit bringing Nordic and Baltic prime ministers together.

The audience at Hungary's PM Viktor Orban's commemoration speech in honour of the 1956 uprising against communism in which he railed against the EU were transported by buses belonging to local governments and purchased with EU funds, Hungarian media reported Wednesday. Orban called on eurosceptics to unite and said: "Brussels is ruled by those that want to build a European empire instead of an alliance of free nations."

UK nationals may need to buy visas to enter the EU after Brexit, if that is what the European Commission proposes next month.

The European parliament votes on Wednesday on measures to reduce plastics pollution. The proposal includes a ban on some of the most widely used single-use plastic items such as plates, straws, and light plastic bags, which make up 70 percent of marine litter. Europeans generate 25m tonnes of plastic waste yearly, but less than 30 percent is collected for recycling.

US president Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he plans to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the margins the 100th anniversary of the WWI armistice on 11 November in Paris. Trump has announced the United States will pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty because he believes Russia has violated the agreement. Beijing's growing arsenal also played into the decision to withdraw, he told press.

The European Union is set to complete ratification of a free trade agreement with Japan on 20 December, Jyrki Katainen, the EU commissioner in charge of jobs, growth and investment, told a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday. "EU and Japan are doing different from what the United States is doing," he added. The free trade zone will cover 600m people and a third of global GDP.

Experts warn there is a lot of "hype and misunderstanding" surrounding artificial intelligence - but the interest in AI is justified. The future of AI "will be the defining development of the 21st century".

The EU executive has asked Italy to resubmit its budget in an unprecedented rebuke, while warning Rome that public debt was the "enemy of the people".