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The new EU trade strategy unveiled by the European Commission contains much to be welcomed, but not much that is new, writes Isabelle Brachet.

"The US administration is not looking to take sides in this disagreement", a senior aide to US president Joe Biden said Wednesday, on the UK and EU's dispute on Northern Ireland customs law, Reuters reports. The "trade issue" was for Europe to solve by discussing "implementation of the agreement", the official said. Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin held virtual meetings with Biden and others in view of St. Patrick's Day Wednesday.

Irish authorities were obliged to put Irish as well as English on veterinary-medical labels, the EU Court of Justice ruled Wednesday. The victory came for Peadar MacFhlannchadha, an Irish-language campaigner, in the first-ever case heard in Irish in the EU tribunal. The ruling also came out on St Patrick's Day, but represented a largely moral victory, as a new EU law superseding the pro-Irish label one is on its way.

Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid infections surging to the highest rate since November, The Guardian writes. The country's health minister Adam Niedzielski said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning. Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.

'Chasse à la glu' - a French tradition of catching birds by putting glue on sticks is against EU law, the European Court of Justice said Wednesday, in a victory for the League for the Protection of Birds, a French conservationist group. No EU country should allow hunting that caused serious harm to "by-catch" (unintended target-species), the court ruled. French hunters had defended it as being used for songbirds only.

Acht Menschen wurden am Dienstag im US-Bundesstaat Georgia in drei Massagesalons erschossen. Nun ist der 21-jährige Tatverdächtige, Robert Aaron Long, wegen Mordes angeklagt.

Australia said it will ask the EU to release 1 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region, Reuters writes. "We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour," Australian PM Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The European Commission has presented a common approach to vaccine certificates to facilitate travel. All EU-wide approved vaccines will be accepted for this document, but member states can decide to accept other vaccines too.

EU governments' lack of coordination in the first and second wave of the pandemic has caused concerns around supply chains, long queues at borders, and practically froze the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.

A Milan court acquitted energy companies Eni and Royal Dutch Shell, plus a series of past and present managers including Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, in the oil industry's biggest corruption scandal, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined and for a number managers from both companies to be jailed.

Das Pflegepersonal kommt immer mehr ans Limit und fürchtet sich nun vor einer dritten Welle. Zudem bangt der Hotelfach-Student Sean Barua um Myanmar und seine Eltern in der Heimat.

Greece denies any illegal pushbacks at sea. The EU takes their version of events as face value, in a system unable and unwilling to shed doubt on Greek authorities - posing accountability questions on the EU's border guard agency Frontex.

Enrico Letta will need all his diplomatic skills to unify a party in a state of perpetual civil war, where former communists co-exist with former Christian Democrats, and which has had nine different secretaries since it was founded in 2007.

Studies show that accommodation of the radical-right by mainstream parties leads to increasing vote share - for the radical-right. This is precisely what Emmanuel Macron is doing - and Marine Le Pen is gaining in the polls.

Jeder zweite Erwachsene weltweit ist voreingenommen gegenüber älteren Menschen. Das gehe aus einer Analyse mit 83'000 Befragten in 57 Ländern hervor, berichtete die WHO am Donnerstag.

Der Rover «Perseverance» hat erstmals eine Audio-Aufnahme von einer Fahrt über den Mars geschickt. Es handele sich um die erste Aufnahme dieser Art überhaupt, teilte die US-Raumfahrtbehörde Nasa in der Nacht zum Donnerstag mit.

Die Berge der Alpen sind gemäss einer Langzeitstudie im Winter wesentlich weniger lange weiss als noch in den Siebzigerjahren. Die Schneesaison unterhalb von 2000 Metern sei je nach Höhenlage und Region um 22 bis 34 Tage kürzer geworden, berichten Forscher.

Ein internationales Team mit Beteiligung der Uni Genf hat erstmals fadenförmige Strukturen des kosmischen Netzes mit dem «Very Large Teleskop» (VLT) in Chile beobachtet. Diese Filamente verbinden weit entfernte Galaxien und können Milliarden von Lichtjahren lang sein.

Erstmals seit 1984 hat die Swatch Gruppe wieder einen Verlust in den Büchern. Nach dem verpatzten Corona-Jahr 2020 sieht Boss Nick Hayek (66) nun aber Zeichen der Erholung – vor allem in den Ländern, wo die Läden wieder geöffnet haben.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish party was fighting for its political survival on Wednesday (17 March) after a prosecutor asked the country's top court to shut it down for alleged links to militants waging a deadly insurgency against the state.