Military conflicts

Two-thirds of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses delivered to Belgium have yet to be distributed to vaccination centres, officials have admitted, as the country became the latest in Europe to report a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.

Belgium said infections were up 24% compared with the previous week, at a daily average of 2,300. All age groups were affected except for over-80s, who have been prioritised for vaccinations.

The development appears to be part of a worrying trend for health authorities across the EU, with the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) reporting that as of last Sunday 13 countries had seen a week-on-week rise in infection rates. Angela Merkel said this week that Germany was heading into a third wave.

The last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been removed from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the north-west African coast.

Without much fanfare, a group of workmen took down the statue on Tuesday, using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, before lifting it off by a chain around its neck and carting it away in bubblewrap on a pickup truck.

The statue, erected in 1978, three years after Franco’s death, commemorated his role as commander of the Spanish Legion in the Rif war, a conflict fought in the 1920s by Spain and France against the Berber tribes of the Rif mountainous region of Morocco.

Georgian police have stormed the country’s opposition party headquarters and arrested their leader, escalating a political crisis in the former Soviet country that government critics say risks a descent into authoritarianism.

In a dramatic morning raid, riot police entered the headquarters of the United National Movement (UNM), using teargas and batons as they arrested its leader, Nika Melia, on criminal charges and detained at least a dozen others.

Footage broadcast on Georgian television showed Melia being dragged from the building. He is charged with inciting violence at 2019 anti-government demonstrations when protesters stormed parliament and faces nine years in prison. His supporters have said that the charges are politically motivated.

The crisis pits supporters of the UNM, the opposition party founded by the former president Mikheil Saakashvili, against the dominant Georgian Dream, the ruling party founded by the billionaire and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili.

The raid deepened a crisis in Georgia that began after disputed parliamentary election results last year, which nominally ended in a resounding victory for Georgian Dream. UNM has boycotted the new parliament.

The decision to arrest Melia caused misgivings among government supporters. Giorgi Gakharia, a member of Georgian Dream, resigned as prime minister last week over a court decision to arrest Melia, saying it could lead to protests and harm the wellbeing of the country’s citizens.

In his place, Georgian Dream nominated Irakli Garibashvili, a former defence minister and ally of Ivanishvili, who quickly ordered the arrest of Melia at his party headquarters. After the raid, Garibashvili called Melia “an ordinary criminal” and asked: “When did the political party become a safe haven for such criminals?”

The escalation has forced western countries to intervene – at least verbally – calling on both the opposition and the government to exercise restraint and avoid risking a political standoff that could descend into bloodshed.

Georgia, which fought a short war with Russia in 2008, is an important ally in the Caucasus region to the United States and the EU. The country has sought to join the Nato military alliance and has received billions of dollars of support for its military, democratic institutions and civil society.

“Shocked by the scenes at UNM headquarters this morning,” Mark Clayton, the UK ambassador to Tbilisi, wrote in a tweet. “Violence and chaos in Tbilisi are the last thing Georgia needs right now. I urge all sides to act with restraint, now and in the coming days.”

The US embassy had previously issued a “call on the authorities and the opposition to exercise maximum restraint in the wake of tonight’s ruling. Violence serves no one except those who want to undermine Georgia’s stability. This must be resolved peacefully.”

Georgian police officials defended Tuesday’s raid, saying they used “proportional force” against the opposition members.

It is an image that has intrigued the art world for more than a century and become synonymous with existential angst, and recently inspired its own emoji, but now some graffiti has added a new layer to the story of Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, The Scream.

A tiny pencil inscription in the top left corner of one of the four versions of the painting, which reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman”, has been the subject of debate over who wrote it – it was originally thought to be by Munch, but was later attributed to a vandal – but new analysis by experts at the National Museum of Norway suggests it is indeed in the hand of the artist.

Mai Britt Guleng, a Munch specialist and curator at the museum, began investigating the inscription, first discovered in 1904, and after consulting with colleagues deduced it was the work of the master.

A former French government minister has been sentenced to jail after an appeal court convicted him of the rape and sexual abuse of a staff member at the town hall where he is mayor.

Two former municipal employees had accused Georges Tron, who claimed to be an expert reflexologist, of making them submit to foot massages that turned into sexual assaults in 2007 and 2010.

Tron was cleared of the charges in 2018 after a court decided there was no evidence that the women had been forced into sexual acts, but at an appeal trial this week the jury upheld the accusations from one of the plaintiffs.

The court decided that the “seriousness of the accusations”, Tron’s “persistent denials” and “the pressure exercised on witnesses and victims” justified a jail sentence.

European space chiefs have launched their first recruitment drive for new astronauts in 11 years, with particular emphasis on encouraging women and people with disabilities to join missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday that it was looking to boost the diversity of its crews as it cavassed for up to 26 permanent and reserve astronauts.

Russian state prosecutors has asked a court to fine the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny 950,000 roubles (£9,300) for slandering a second world war veteran, a charge he calls politically motivated.

President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic was jailed this month for almost three years for parole violations he said were trumped up. The west has condemned the case and is discussing possible sanctions on Russia.

The judge said the verdict would be announced on Saturday – the same day that Navalny is due to appeal against his imprisonment.

The 44-year-old anti-corruption activist is accused of defaming a veteran who took part in a promotional video backing constitutional reforms last year. The reform, approved in a referendum, will let Putin run for two more terms in the Kremlin after 2024 if he wants to.

A proposed undersea tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland has hit some credibility problems with one senior Conservative MP describing it as a Doctor Dolittle fantasy designed to distract from post-Brexit border check problems.

“The trains could be pulled by an inexhaustible herd of unicorns overseen by stern, officious dodos,” tweeted Simon Hoare, the Tory MP who chairs Westminster’s Norther Ireland affairs committee.

“A PushmePullYou could be the senior guard,” he said, alluding to the Doctor Dolittle creature with a head at each end of its body, “and Puff the Magic Dragon the inspector”.

The idea was a fantasy that distracted from efforts to smooth post-Brexit checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, said Hoare. “Let’s concentrate on making the protocol work and put the hallucinogenics down.”

Politicians and business leaders have lined up to scorn the idea, calling it a distraction from efforts to adapt to the Northern Ireland protocol, a part of the Brexit deal with requires customs checks on some goods entering the region from Great Britain.

“It’s time the prime minister woke up to that reality, people here simply don’t want a Boris bridge, a Boris burrow, frankly a Boris anything,” said Nichola Mallon, Northern Ireland’s infrastructure minister. “They want jobs, opportunities, stability and a brighter future.”

Aodhán Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, said it took 30 years to build the Channel tunnel, that there was a munitions dump blocking the way and that any tunnel to Northern Ireland would not obviate border checks.

The most direct route passes Beaufort’s Dyke, a 1,000ft deep trench in the Irish Sea where the government dumped about 1m tonnes of unused explosives and chemical weapons, including sarin and mustard gas.

The High Speed Rail Group has proposed the tunnel in its submission to a review to a group tasked with exploring ways to improve connectivity between the four constituent parts of the UK, saying it would bind Northern Ireland closer to Great Britain and “address problems in economic status of Northern Ireland post-Brexit”.

The preferred route, based on 120-year-old research by the Victorian engineer James Barton, would be diverted to avoid Beaufort’s Dyke.

Sir Peter Hendy, who is leading the group, is expected to publish his interim report within weeks.

It appears to be a sequel to the bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland that Downing Street mooted last year. Critics called it a fantasy designed to mollify unionists worried that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal would undermine the region’s position in the UK.

The Ulster Unionist party leader, Steve Aiken, dismissed the tunnel as impractical. “Can we just have 10% of the multi-billions that it would cost to fix our infrastructure – oh, and maybe some zero-emission ferries [built here] – now that would make more sense [also get rid of the Irish Sea border].”

After more than six weeks of virtual radio silence on Brexit, the Labour leader has yet to make a sustained challenge of any sort to the prime minister on the issue. This is despite hauliers reporting massive falls in trade volumes to the EU and half of 470 UK exporters telling the British Chambers of Commerce in a survey that they are facing real problems.

When Johnson announced the limited free trade deal with the EU on 24 December, Starmer made a statement saying Labour would accept the deal to avoid any risk of a no deal outcome. But he insisted it was limited and flawed and that Labour would stop at nothing to expose its shortcomings.

The celebrated Russian stage and screen director Kirill Serebrennikov, convicted last year in an embezzlement case seen as retribution for his politically charged work, has been forced out of the Moscow theatre he led for eight years.

Serebrennikov transformed Moscow’s Gogol Center from a small, overlooked theatre into one of the capital’s most vibrant cultural venues with experimental updates of Russian classics and plays that indirectly addressed official corruption.

The move follows pressure on other Russian artists and comes as the Kremlin continues its crackdown on dissent over the jailing of Alexei Navalny, the opposition figure who returned to Russia in January after recovering from a near-fatal poisoning.

“The Gogol Center as a theatre and as an idea will continue to live,” Serebrennikov wrote on Instagram as he confirmed his departure this week. “Because theatre and freedom are more important, larger, and therefore more enduring than bureaucrats of all kinds.”

Serebrennikov was last year found guilty of fraud and given a three-year suspended sentence after prosecutors accused him and others of siphoning off funds intended for cultural projects. The director denied the charges and the case at times descended into absurdity, such as when prosecutors claimed a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – which won plaudits and was seen by thousands of people – had never taken place.

Cultural figures in Russia and abroad, including Cate Blanchett and Sir Ian McKellen, called for what they saw as a politically motivated case to be dropped.

Before the trial Serebrennikov spent almost two years under house arrest, unable to attend the premiere of his ballet based on the life of Rudolf Nureyev at Moscow’s Bolshoi theatre. The production proved controversial because of its frank treatment of the Russian dancer’s homosexuality, and an earlier opening was cancelled at the last minute.

Despite being restricted to his flat, Serebrennikov continued to work, watching rehearsals of new productions on videos delivered by his lawyer and writing back with comments. He said in an interview before his sacking that the process had prepared him for life under coronavirus restrictions.

At the weekend the Russian Association of Theatre Critics appealed to the Moscow department of culture, asking it to allow him to stay on. “The Gogol Center is impossible without Serebrennikov. Moscow in the 2020s is impossible without the Gogol Center,” the association said in an open letter, adding that shows at the venue were sold out until the spring.