Europe

    Italy’s new far-right interior minister has suggested setting up migrant processing centres in North Africa with the aim of regulating the number of people travelling to Europe. Matteo Salvini on Monday visited Libya after telling voracious foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to leave search and operations to Libya’s coastguard. Mr Salvini met Libyan interior minister Abdulsalam Ashour and deputy prime minister Ahmed Maiteeq in Tripoli for talks about the refugee crisis. “Reception and identification centres should be set up in the south of Libya,” he told reporters after the meeting, suggesting there could be a way of processing EU asylum applications outside the bloc’s territory. The proposal is expected to be considered by the European Council at a su...

    Britain is to team up with France, Germany and other willing nations to launch a military crisis force operating outside the framework of the European Union after Brexit . In all nine nations, including Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Estonia, Spain and Portugal, are due to sign a letter of intent in Luxembourg on Monday to take part in the so-called European Intervention Initiative (EII) a coalition of willing states prepared to react to crises near Europe's borders without help from NATO or the United States. Speaking to Le Figaro newspaper on Sunday, Florence Parly, France's defence minister,  said: European defence needs a common strategic culture. The initiative involves joint planning work on crisis scenarios that could potentially threaten European securi...

    New Zealand's prime minister has named her baby daughter Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford, as she and partner Clarke Gayford left hospital. Ms Ardern said the couple had struggled for months to decide on a name but had decided to wait until their baby was born to see which one suited her. She said Neve meant bright, radiant and snow. We chose Neve because we just liked it, and when we met her we thought she looked like she suited the name. Te Aroha was our way of reflecting the amount of love this baby has been shown even before she even arrived it's also the place where all my family are from and I grew up under that mountain. Aroha means love in Maori, while Mt Te Aroha is a 952-metre mountain in the Kaimai Range, on New Zealand's North Island. Mr Gayford said tha...

    Brussels could make Britons buy £52 visas to travel to EU countries after Brexit. A draft plan by the European Commission proposes that Britain be put on either a visa required or visa free list. Martin Selmayr, a senior civil servant in the European Commission told MEPs last week that the EU has to decide whether UK citizens would need visas after Brexit. Should Britain be placed on the visa required list, travellers could be charged £52 for a visa for a short stay of 90 days or less in any 180 day period. Alternatively, should Britain be put on the visa free list, UK nationals will not require a visa. According to The Times, officials in Brussels said it was unlikely that Britons will have to apply for visas. However, it is likely that Britons will have to pay...

    Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has given birth to her first child amid a flurry of excitement in New Zealand.Ardern posted the news to her Facebook page, saying her daughter was born at 4.45pm. Welcome to our village wee one, she wrote, next to a picture of her and partner Clarke Gayford cuddling the newborn. Feeling very lucky to have a healthy baby girl that arrived at 4.45pm weighing 3.31kg (7.3lb) Thank you so much for your best wishes and your kindness. We’re all doing really well thanks to the wonderful team at Auckland City Hospital. Earlier, a statement from the prime minister’s office said Ardern and Gayford had arrived at Auckland hospital at 5.50am on Thursday. Winston Peters, the deputy prime minister, is now acting prime minister. The head of the popul...

    Brexiteers accused Brussels of an 'outrageous' threat to holiday makers today after the EU risks chaos in the skies by banning aviation chiefs from preparing no deal continengcy plans. Tory Simon Clarke told MailOnline the tactics of EU negotiator Michel Barnier were an abuse of process that threatened the interests of passengers and business. Senior figures in the airline industry warned today there will be no chance of cobbling together a last minute deal if Brexit talks collapse in the run up to exit day on March 29, 2019. Flights over Britain and Europe are tightly regulated in Open Skies arrangements bound up in the UK's membership of the EU. A shut down of the skies threatens thousands of holiday bookings and would devastate routine business travel until a d...

    Germany’s state rail operator has shelved plans for international high-speed services between London, Cologne and Frankfurt due to changes in the economic environment, The Independent has learned. Deutsche Bahn (DB) said the services to London would now not be on the agenda in the foreseeable future, despite just last year saying they were still interested. The company would neither confirm nor deny whether uncertainty caused by floundering Brexit talks had played a part in their decision to mothball the project, saying they did not want to wade into politics. DB had already begun early preparations to run the trains, successfully obtaining an operating certificate to run services through the Channel Tunnel in 2013 and even going as far as to display one of its sle...

    The first ship in the Aquarius aid convoy docked Sunday at the Spanish port of Valencia, ending a weeklong ordeal for hundreds of people who were rescued from the perilous Mediterranean only to become the latest pawn in Europe's battle over immigration. Medical staff boarded the Italian coast guard vessel Dattilo after it arrived just before 7 a.m. Sunday and the 270 migrants on board soon began to disembark. The rescue ship Aquarius and another Italian navy ship, the Orione, will arrive in the coming hours, discharging 630 migrants in all. After days of bickering and food and water running low on the rescue ship, Spain stepped in and offered to grant the rescue boat entry some 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away. The journey across the Mediterranean to Valencia took ...

    Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest. Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign. The Observer has seen documents which a senior Tory MP says, if correct, raise urgent and troubling questions about his relationship with the Russian government. The communications suggest: Multiple meetings between the leaders of Leave.EU and high-ranking Russian officials, from November 2015 to 2017. Two meetings i...

    The UK could miss out on an EU-wide price cap on the cost of phone calls and texts New European copyright laws could outlaw memes on the internet, campaigners have claimed. Digital rights groups are petitioning against the Copyright Directive, a new law that is supposed to protect rights-holders from copyright infringement on the web, which the European Parliament will vote on later this month. Critics fear this will destroy the hugely popular internet culture of sharing and modifying recognisable images, often referred to as memes on social media. The pictures in question, which typically consist of scenes featured in popular films and TV series, may constitute a breach under the new law. Campaigners at Copyright 4 Creativity said the proposals risk censoring free...