Europe
Ukraine war: Russia hits most settlements in one day
On 1 November, Russia unleashed a barrage on 118 Ukrainian towns and villages within 24 hours, marking the highest number of settlements hit in a single day this year, according to Ukrainian interior…
France: combatting the rise in anti-semitism
Prime minister Elisabeth Borne has pledged to combat rising antisemitism vigorously after anti-Jewish graffiti was discovered on buildings in various Paris neighbourhoods. She emphasised that the situation in the Middle East should not…
Saudi Arabia: football, human rights, nuclear programme
News that Saudi Arabia is on course to host the 2034 football World Cup is grim. The country might not win the cup, but its capacity for state murder is world class: 112…
Germany: petrol bombs thrown at Berlin synagogue
On 18 October two people threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Berlin, as anti-Semitic violence escalated in Europe. The attacks came after Hezbollah called for a ‘day of rage’ over the explosion…
EU countries welcome Polish election result
Politicians across Europe have been encouraged by the result of the Polish election on 15 October - especially in Germany, the favourite target of the ousted Law and Justice (PiS) party. A German…
Italy: evangelical group condemns Vatican ecumenical meeting
Italian evangelical Christians have protested against the ‘active and public’ participation of Thomas Schirrmacher, secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in a large ecumenical prayer vigil organised in the Vatican on 30…
Türkiye: first new church in 100 years
On 11 October, a long-awaited day, St Ephrem Church in Istanbul was opened - the first Christian place of worship to be built in Türkiye in a hundred years. Around 20,000 Syriac Orthodox…
Poland: bitter election campaign splits country
In the old shipyard in Gdansk, where striking workers were once the catalyst for major political change, young Poles now worry that the rights and freedoms won by the Solidarity movement over three…
Russia seeks to freeze Ukraine’s counteroffensive
In the 85th week of the war, Russia is trying to freeze Kyiv’s four-month-old counteroffensive which has succeeded in wresting back half the territory captured earlier this year and depriving Russia of control…
Canary Islands: wildfire forces 3,000 to evacuate
Almost 3,000 people have had to evacuate their homes in Tenerife as a wildfire, caused by embers left smouldering from an August blaze, re-ignited on the Spanish island. Unseasonably hot weather (up to…
