Europe at a glance
Hamburg, Germany
Streets renamed: Germany’s second-largest city is to rename ten of its streets in honour of notable German women, such as the comic actress and writer Helga Feddersen and the 17th century Jewish diarist and businesswoman Glückel von Hameln. The port city is well known for its St Pauli red-light district, home to the Reeperbahn; and now a street in the neighbouring Altona district is to be named after dominatrix Domenica Niehoff (pictured), who died in 2009. A former prostitute, she became famous in the 1980s as a campaigner for the rights of sex workers. She also worked to help women struggling with drug addiction.
Paris
Jewel heists: Two Qatari women in their 60s have become the latest victims in a series of armed robberies of rich visitors to Paris. The two sisters were being driven into town from Paris-le Bourget Airport, where they’d arrived by private plane, when masked men forced their chauffeurdriven Bentley off the motorway and attacked them with pepper spray. The robbers made off with jewellery and other valuables worth around £4.3m. There have been several such motorway attacks: last year a Korean woman travelling by taxi was robbed of jewels worth about £3.4m; and a Saudi prince lost s250,000 in cash (£215,000) in a 2014 raid on his ten-vehicle convoy. Armed thieves have also targeted rich foreigners in their Paris apartments. Kim Kardashian lost £8mworth of jewellery last month when men broke into her apartment. And last week the Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat was assaulted in the lobby of a block of flats.
Geneva, Switzerland
Mass drownings: At least 365 refugees and other migrants drowned in the Mediterranean within the space of three days last week, in six separate sinkings. According to figures from the International Organisation for Migration, this makes this November’s death toll already six times worse than the corresponding month a year ago. “This really is a calamity in plain sight,” said a spokesman for the Geneva-based organisation. The latest deaths – mostly of West Africans fleeing Libya for Italy – bring the number of known migrant drownings in the Mediterranean this year to 4,655.
Berlin
Merkel to run again: Angela Merkel has ended months of mounting speculation by confirming she will run for a fourth term in office as chancellor, in elections due next year. Merkel has led Germany since 2005; if she serves a full fourth term until 2021, it will equal the record 16 years served by Helmut Kohl, from 1982-98. Merkel told her Christian Democratic Party (CDU) at the weekend that her decision had been “anything but trivial after 11 years in office”, and that she would “fight for our values and way of life” in an election that she expected to be her toughest yet. The centre-right CDU is currently on around 33% in the polls, nine points less than it polled in the 2013 election. But despite the growing threat from the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (polling at 13%), most analysts expect Merkel to win re-election as chancellor by forming another left-right “grand coalition” with the Social Democratic Party.
Souda, Chios
Migrant camp attacked: A far-right mob armed with Molotov cocktails and large rocks attacked a refugee camp last week on the Greek island of Chios, where hundreds of men, women and children are being held while they wait to hear if they’ll be granted asylum. Video footage of the incident showed masked men armed with baseball bats prowling through the Souda camp, as Un-branded tents went up in flames around them. A Syrian asylum seeker was reported to have been seriously injured, and two volunteers were beaten up by a 30-strong gang. The mayor of Chios said the attackers are thought to be affiliated with Greece’s main far-right party, Golden Dawn; a team of its MPS had visited Chios days earlier and called for the asylum seekers to be removed. There are currently about 16,000 asylum seekers and migrants in camps on the Greek islands: the official capacity is 7,500.
Moscow
Rejecting the ICC: President Putin has withdrawn Russia from the process of joining the International Criminal Court (ICC), a day after the court ruled that Russia’s annexation of Crimea amounted to an “ongoing occupation”. Russia signed the statute founding the ICC in 2000, but has never ratified the agreement to become a full member. It is far from being the only nation to reject the ICC: the US also signed the statute and later withdrew; China and India have never signed. South Africa, Burundi and Gambia all recently said they intend to pull out of the court, claiming it is biased against Africa. But Russia’s decision is a symbolic blow to the court’s aim of establishing a global legal order for pursuing genocide and war crimes.
Ankara
Underage sex bill withdrawn: In a rare case of President Erdogan’s government backing down in the face of popular opposition, Turkey’s PM Binali Yildirim has withdrawn a controversial bill that would have pardoned men convicted of sex with underage girls if the men then married their victims. The U-turn followed a wave of street protests, and fierce criticism from both foreign and Turkish groups, including a women’s rights group whose deputy chief is Erdogan’s own daughter, Sümeyye Erdogan Bayraktar. The government had said the aim of the bill was to exonerate those men who’d married an underage girl with her or her family’s consent. Though the legal age of consent is 18 in Turkey, underage religious weddings are widespread. Critics say girls are pressed into such marriages, and that the bill would have legitimised rape and encouraged the practice of taking child brides.