Europe

    A Danish brewery is drawing on 50,000 liters of urine collected from the largest music festival in Northern Europe in producing a novelty beer aimed at the more adventurous drinker. The beer named Pisner a word-play combining pilsner with local slang for urine contains no human waste, but is produced from fields of malting barley fertilized with human urine rather than traditional animal manure or factory-made plant nutrients. When the news that we had started brewing the Pisner came out, a lot of people thought we were filtering the urine to put it directly in the beer and we had a good laugh about that, said Henrik Vang, Chief Executive of brewer Norrebro Bryghus. Using human waste as fertilizer on such a scale is a novelty, said Denmark’s Agriculture and Food Council, w...

    Centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron extended his lead in the polls over his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Friday, the final day of a tumultuous election campaign that has turned the country’s politics upside down. The election is seen as the most important in France for decades with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and France’s place in the world at stake. The National Front’s Le Pen would close borders and quit the euro currency, while independent Macron, who has never held elected office, wants closer European cooperation and an open economy. The candidates of France’s two mainstream parties were both eliminated in the first round on April 23. According to an Elabe poll for BFM TV and L’Express, Macron will get 62 percent of the votes in th...

    The souvenir T-shirts sold at France’s presidential candidate Marine Le Pen were made in Bangladesh, despite the far-right candidate consistently championing ‘made in France’ as a key pillar of her economic programme, reports The Independent. The far right presidential candidate repeatedly said she would defend French interests against globalisation and the relocation of factories abroad. But the memorabilia sold in her name does not appear to be an example of the ‘economic patriotism’ she has so vigorously advocated. Labels on most the polo shirts, which were on sale at Ms Le Pen’s meeting in the northern Parisian suburb of Villepinte earlier this week had all been cut out, preventing buyers from finding out where the clothes were made. But reporters from BFM TV found the...

    Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street, London, after visiting Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace to mark the dissolution of Parliament for the General Election. Senior EU figures are expected to react later to Theresa May's combative speech in which she accused some in Brussels of "not wanting Britain to prosper". Launching the Conservative Party's general election campaign after the dissolution of Parliament, she suggested leaks and threats had been "deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election". Two senior sources within the European Council refused to comment directly on the accusations when asked by Sky News, but MEPs gave their reaction on Wednesday evening. Mairead McGuinness, vice president of the European Parliament, warned of the ...

    French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen face off in a final televised debate on Wednesday which is expected to be bitter, personal and potentially decisive ahead of voting this weekend. The stakes are high ahead of the contest between the pro-European Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, and far-right leader Le Pen, the 48-year-old scion of the National Front party. Their starkly different views on Europe, immigration, the economy and French identity will be explored for the first time face-to-face, after a week marked by bruising clashes between them. Polls show Macron holding a hefty but narrowing lead in the polls of 59 percent versus 41 percent, but previous debates during the rollercoaster French campaign have quickly shifted public...

    Donald Tusk speaks during a press conference after an EU Council meeting on 29 April about Brexit. The European Union has called on Theresa May to provide immediate serious and real guarantees to its citizens living in Britain. The EU leaders took just four minutes at a special summit to agree unanimously an uncompromising opening stance in the Brexit negotiations. Leaders said they would not discuss a future trade deal with the British government until sufficient progress is made on the issues of Britain’s estimated €60bn divorce bill, the rights of EU nationals in the UK, and the border in Ireland. The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, told reporters at the special summit in Brussels that EU citizens in Britain were the number one priority, and that he ...

    European Union leaders headed into their first Brexit summit are convinced that when it comes to the pending talks with the U.K. they’re already winning. Governments approached Saturday’s meeting in Brussels by repeatedly toughening their negotiating position and reinforcing the united front they adopted since Britain voted to quit the bloc last June. Prime Minister Theresa May’s administration, meanwhile, has shown a willingness to give ground on key matters involving finance, trade and immigration. The British concessions mean EU officials in the 27 countries are increasingly hopeful that May will realize that the terms of Brexit will be set by them more than her. The need for the U.K. to be pragmatic in unraveling 44 years of membership was highlighted this week by Germ...

    A woman in France has reportedly come back to life one hour after being declared dead. The 49-year-old collapsed to the floor after a suspected heart attack at her home in Paris on Wednesday. She was found by her daughter, aged 18, and paramedics raced to the scene to try and resuscitate her. According to French newspaper Le Parisien, the woman was declared dead by the medics at 6.10pm and her death certificate was signed. But one hour later, two police officers turned up and were stunned to find there was movement in her stomach and her heart was beating. They carried out CPR and around half an hour later the woman was breathing again, the BBC reported. Branch secretary of police union the Alliance Police nationale Yvan Assioma said: Our colleagues thought they were in an...

    Newly installed White House adviser Ivanka Trump is in Germany and was booed Tuesday as she was defending her father's record on women's issues. Back home, the reviews of her role in the White House aren't much better. While President Trump has decided to go around anti-nepotism rules and make both Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, his top advisers, polls show Americans are not okay with this. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll over the weekend showed 61 percent of registered voters say Trump should not have put his daughter and son-in-law in his administration. Thirty-four percent say they approved of the decision. Even about 1 in 5 Republicans (22 percent) and Trump voters (17 percent) are uncomfortable with the arrangement, and independents overwhelmingly oppose i...

    French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party. Monday's move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 runoff between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday's first round. Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate, she said on French public television news. Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party's, but her own. French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen voting in round one of the election. Le ...