List of All Articles with Tag 'europe'

Some 15,000 people, including many tourists, pasted each other with tomatoes on Wednesday as Spain’s annual “Tomatina” street battle took place in the eastern town of Buñol. Workers on trucks tipped 120 tonnes of overripe tomatoes into the main street of the town for participants to throw. The street fight leaves both the street, its houses and participants drenched in red pulp. Tickets for the festival start at 12 euros ($13). The town hoses down the area and the revelers shower off within minutes of the hourlong noon battle finishing. The festival, held on the last Wednesday of August, was inspired by a food fight between local children in 1945 in the town, located in a tomato-producing region. Media attention in the 1980s turned it into a national and international event, drawing participants from every corner of the world. Participants use swimming goggles to protect their eyes and usually dress in T-shirts and shorts. The party is ranked by Spain as an international tourism attraction. Read More Revelers hurl tomatoes at each other and streets awash in red pulp in Spanish town's Tomatina party Rubiales crisis hangs over European soccer ahead of gala award ceremony in Monaco Alumni grieve for Jesuit-run university seized by Nicaraguan government that transformed their lives

Two Russian soldiers have been jailed for refusing to return to the frontline in Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. In an intelligence update posted on Twitter, the ministry said two Russian soldiers were sentenced to serve at least two years in a penal colony by a military court for refusing to obey orders to return to the front in Ukraine. It comes after Russian independent media outlet Mediazona reported that Russia was convicting close to 100 soldiers a week for refusing to fight. The defence ministry predicted “there will be approximately 5,200 convictions a year for refusing to fight” if the trend continues. The high rate of convictions demonstrates the “poor state of morale” and “reluctance” to fight in the Russian Army, the MoD said. The update continued: “Refusal to fight likely reflects the lack of training, motivation and high stress situations Russian forces face along the entire Ukrainian frontline.” However, the defence ministry said it is likely Russia mitigates losses in soldiers by “committing a mass of poorly trained soldiers to the frontline.” “Since Russia’s September 2022 partial mobilisation, Russia has adapted its approach to warfare by utilising sheer mass for offensive and defensive operations,” the update explained. In September 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation of 300,000 military reservists for the war in Ukraine. The call-up prompted hundreds of thousands of men to flee the country. Outbound flights were full and neighbouring countries received large influxes. Soon afterwards, Mr Putin toughened up penalties for desertion and refusal to fight, making the offences punishable by up to 10 years in prison, or 15 years for voluntary surrender to enemy forces. But first-time offenders may be exempted from criminal liability “if he took measures for his release, returned to his unit or place of service and did not commit other crimes while in captivity”, according to the new law. Within weeks of the boost to Russian numbers, UK defence chiefs concluded many of the newly mobilised soldiers were poorly equipped, possibly with weapons in a “barely usable” condition. Earlier this year, the MoD suggested Russian troops were using shovels for hand-to-hand combat in Ukraine because of an ammunition shortage. In the latest development in Putins’s war in Ukraine, at least four of Russia’s military transport planes were damaged after Ukraine launched its biggest drone attack on Russian soil since the beginning of the invasion. The Il-76 transport aircraft were damaged after drones hit an airport in the western Pskov region, located 660km north of the Ukrainian frontier and near the borders of Estonia and Latvia. Read More Ukraine: Largest drone attack on Russian territory since invasion began as cargo planes destroyed Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv’s huge drone attack as Putin floods frontline with ‘poorly trained troops’ Russian hard-line nationalist ordered to stay in prison after accusing Putin of weakness The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni softened her tone on plans to impose a windfall tax on banks and

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Inflation in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia rose to 5.9% on the year in August, up from

Standard Chartered Plc will offer at least 20 weeks of paid leave to new parents starting next month,

Sweden’s biggest nuclear reactor will be offline for more than two weeks after suffering an unplanned outage early

Soldiers seized power in OPEC member Gabon, the BBC reported, four days after the central African nation held