Euobserver.com

UK prime minister Boris Johnson will travel to Brussels for face-to-face talks with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in a last attempt to break the impasse in Brexit negotiations. In a joint statement following a phone call which lasted over one hour on Monday evening, both leaders said the Brussels meeting will be held in the "coming days".

Hundreds of people recently attended the funeral, in a Chechen village, of Abdullakh Anzorov, the man who murdered French teacher Samuel Paty, according to videos uploaded to Islamist websites, The Guardian reports. Anzorov's hero-like treatment comes after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov harangued French president Emmanuel Macron for defending the right to show cartoons of Mohammed. Western leaders who antagonised Muslims were "forcing people to commit crimes", Kadyrov has said.

The annual meeting of elite politicians and businessmen, the Davos Economic Forum, is to hold its 2021 event in May in Singapore, where Covid-rates are far lower, instead of in Switzerland, as usual, it has said. Current restrictions in Singapore do not allow meetings of more than five people. But Davos said delegates will be tested on arrival and fitted with special contact-tracing apps to help keep them safe.

EU states have formally approved new sanctions against human rights abusers, modelled on the US 'Magnitsky Act'.

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has set a new deadline for the Brexit negotiations, warning that the talks will not go beyond Wednesday, the Guardian writes. During briefings to MEPs and EU ambassadors in Brussels, Barnier said the negotiation was "not far from the very endgame", and talks are expected to continue into midweek but no further.

A new report published on Monday revealed that 50 to 80 percent of methane emissions in Hamburg stem from leaky gas pipelines. Methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, is a highly-potent greenhouse gas responsible for at least 25 percent of global warming. During their research, scientists discovered increased methane concentrations at 145 points in the Hamburg city area, 50 of which are due to gas utility leaks.

French president Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that concerns over human rights violations in Egypt would not affect the sale of French arms, as Cairo should retain its ability to fight terrorism in the region, Deutsche Welle reports. "It is more effective to have a policy of demanding dialogue than a boycott which would only reduce the effectiveness of one of our partners in the fight against terrorism," Macron said.

Sunday's parliamentary elections in Venezuela, which cemented president Nicolás Maduro's grip on power, "failed to comply with the minimum international standards for a credible process," the EU said in a statement on Monday. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó had led a boycott of the vote. The EU urged Maduro to hold "credible" elections instead. It also urged Maduro and Guaidó to create a "Venezuelan-led transition process", amid ever-worsening humanitarian conditions.

A group of 169 climate leaders and scientists on Tuesday urged EU governmets to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, saying this international agreement impedes the transition towards clean energy. "If governments want to be seen as leaders on climate change then they need to step away from investment agreements that tie their hands and continue to protect fossil fuels at the taxpayers' expense," they said in a letter.

With Brexit talks intensifying, MEPs are pressing negotiators to cut UK access to the EU's Schengen Information System, a database used by police and border guards.

EU ministers have set the scene for imposing sanctions on Turkey at this week's summit - but will Germany agree?

A report found the wealthiest 10 percent of EU citizens emitted the same amount of carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the bloc from 1990 to 2015.

A senior EU diplomat said Poland and Hungary should lift their veto or give a signal they are willing to do by Tuesday - otherwise there will be alternative plans for a recovery fund with the other 25 member states.

Poland is cracking, and Britain is flailing - if the EU presses its advantage at this week's summit, it has more political capital and leverage than might appear.

Women do better than men in a Nordic labour market characterised by digitalisation and rapid technological development. However, new Nordic research shows that traditionally male-dominated sectors are at risk of polarisation.

Police detained over 300 people in Minsk on Sunday, Belarus' interior ministry said, after thousands joined opposition rallies for the 18th consecutive weekend since the disputed election in August. The EU is drawing up a third round of sanctions against the regime of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, due to be imposed in mid-December. It blacklisted him and his oldest son, Viktor, last month amid reports of police torture.

Top-level talks between Brussels and London over the weekend failed to bridge gaps in Brexit talks, according to a joint statement by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and British prime minister Boris Johnson Saturday. "Significant differences remain on three critical issues: level playing field, governance, and fisheries," they said, adding that negotiators would resume talks on Monday morning and leaders would speak again by phone on Monday evening.

"How well I'm screwed," was the then Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat's first thought on 16 October 2017, when he found out his country's best-known journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, had just been murdered by a car bomb.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has continued to bait French president Emmanuel Macron ahead of an EU summit on Turkey relations. "With Macron, France is living in very dangerous times. I hope France gets rid of the Macron problem as soon as possible," Erdoğan said in Istanbul Friday, outside Hagia Sophia, a re-consecrated mosque. Erdoğan earlier called Macron "mentally ill" over a dispute on Macron's crackdown against Islamist radicals.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has said he welcomed "the chance to work once again with a US president who doesn't consider us a foe" in a blog post Tuesday, referring to the outgoing Donald Trump. "The past four years ... saw some of the principles that we considered as the bedrock of the transatlantic partnership being eroded, and sometimes even emptied of their substance," he said.