EUROPE: Green Finance Wise, or Otherwise

A plan to give the European Union's lending arm a beefed-up mandate for financing the fight against climate change has drawn a sceptical response from campaigners on green and economic justice issues.

US-TURKEY: Armenian Genocide Vote Threatens Ties at Key Moment

Thursday's vote by a Congressional committee condemning the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as "genocide" is almost certain to complicate U.S. ties with Turkey, a long-time strategic ally and increasingly influential player in the Middle East and central and southwest Asia.

HEALTH: Potato Drags GM Food Into Europe

Genetically modified (GM) foods appear to be back on the European Union's political menu - thanks to a potato.

EUROPE: Economists Blame Germany for Mediterranean Crisis

Germany’s obsession with maintaining a trade surplus, in line with its mercantilist traditions, is one cause for the severe economic crisis that has gripped several Euro-Mediterranean countries, say economists.

DR-CONGO: EU Urged to Ban ‘Conflict Minerals’

After the United States senate’s move to stem the flow of money from mineral mines fuelling the brutal civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the watchdog group Global Witness (GW) is calling on Europe to follow suit.

EUROPE: Violence Comes Home

Development does not protect women. The number of women physically and psychologically abused at home is at alarming levels across Europe.

EAST EUROPE: Taxing Fast Foods for Health

Health experts have called on European governments to use a pioneering tax on fast foods to be introduced in Romania as a model for the entire continent as the battle with obesity spreads to the former communist bloc.

RIGHTS-AUSTRIA: Migrants Issue Stokes Political Passions

Support for the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) in Austria has soared amid debate over controversial plans for the construction of a new centre to house asylum seekers.

ECONOMY-GREECE: Austerity Measures Unsettle Public

Xristos Kiriakou, 30, joined the Feb. 24 strike against the austerity measures announced by the Panhellenic Socialist Party (Pasok), although he has never been involved in public protests before.

MIGRATION: France Urges EU to Tighten Mediterranean Borders

The European Union is studying a range of measures aimed at strengthening its external borders to deter undocumented migrants from entering via Mediterranean member states such as Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

RIGHTS-GERMANY: ‘Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests’

The Catholic Church has for decades protected paedophile priests and clerics who sexually abused children from judiciary prosecution, according to German theologians, law experts, and internal church documents.

RIGHTS: What Fish may do for Western Sahara

Legal advice stating that European vessels have no justification to fish off Western Sahara - a territory occupied by Morocco - has provoked a row between the main political institutions in Brussels.

RUSSIA: Outpaced by China in Africa

Russian efforts to acquire oil and gas fields in Africa and prospect for minerals on the resource-rich continent have yielded little success over the past decade due to lack of a coherent national strategy, experts say.

RIGHTS-EUROPE: Military Technology to Track Down Migrants?

Arms manufacturers have been asked to advise an official European Union (EU) body on how their products can be used to stop asylum seekers entering the bloc’s territory.

RIGHTS-FRANCE: Policy Ignores Deeper Questions of Migration

European Union immigration ministers will hold a special meeting Thursday to adopt a new policy to protect the region's external borders against undocumented migration, French immigration minister Eric Besson has announced.

EUROPE: Tax Evasion Rampant Despite Treaties With Tax Havens

New cases of tax evasion in several European countries are showing the limits of the informal agreements reached between the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and tax havens such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

MADEIRA: Disaster Blamed on Chaotic Urban Planning

Prominent Portuguese environmentalists blamed the Dantesque scene in the tourist island of Madeira Monday, in the wake of flash floods that claimed at least 42 lives over the weekend, on seriously flawed urban planning.

CULTURE-FRANCE: Alexandre Dumas Loses Colour in Film

A new film about Alexandre Dumas, the author of ‘The Three Musketeers’, has sparked a racial row here because a white actor is playing the role of one of France’s most-read writers who was of mixed race.

Q&A: “We Have a Take-Make-Waste Economy”

To halt the planet's declining biodiversity and loss of critical natural resources, both the economy we live in and communication about science needs to be changed profoundly, says a prominent Dutch ecologist.

BULGARIA: Govt Forced Down on Genetically Modifed Crops

Campaigning by environmental groups and the general public has weakened the determination of the Bulgarian government to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in this country.

ECONOMY: Euro not for Europe’s Poor

For 329 million, people shopping with the euro is a part of everyday life. Since its notes and coins were introduced on New Year's Day 2002, this single currency has made it possible to travel across a 16-country zone stretching from Cyprus to Ireland without having to change the money in one's pocket or handbag.