Greetings, citizens! Things have been happening in Crimea, which is now part of Russia, or Ukraine is a bit smaller, whichever way you want to look at it. If you stay with me for all the serious news, I have a funny non-news-story from *whispers* The Daily Mail for you in the end. Oh yes.
On Sunday, an unsurprising 96.8% of the votes in the Crimean referendum were in favour of the peninsula joining Russia, and yesterday, Vladimir Putin officially announced that Crimea is now part of Russia. I guess we haven’t heard the last of this, and since everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten the rest of Ukraine, there’ll be plenty of news next week. (Ed. note: It probably helps that 123% of Sevastopol residents apparently voted to rejoin Russia. Residents, not registered voters. Seems legit!)
Seven Syrian refugees died when their boat capsized off the Greek coast. (I just looked around the Internet to find this story from a different news source, but it looks like seven dead Syrians aren’t much of a story…)
In a similarly terrible vein, a small boy was killed in what is believed to be a Mafia hit in Italy.
While the biggest news from France was the one-day driving ban in Paris due to air pollution, something else is a little more worrying: more and more French Jews are being driven out of the country by anti-Semitism.
More than a million young people in Britain are either working in low-paying jobs or not working at all. Such are the findings of a study that is being presented to the British government this week, which better figure out a solution to this.
In Turkey, protests against the government have intensified after the funeral of a teenager killed in earlier clashes. Two more people have died, but the prime minister has so far downplayed the protests and urged for peace ahead of local elections this month.
And because this week’s news stories are bad enough, let’s have two weird and wonderful items!
- Piip Show. What is it? It’s genius, and I’d watch that!
- Husband locked wife in garden shed because she kept chanting ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead’ after his mother died. There, I spelled it out for you so you won’t have to click on a Daily Mail article. You’re welcome. See you next week!
2 replies on “News in Europe: Ukraine Just Got Smaller”
The situation in Ukraine reminds me of why The Hunger Games means so much to me. It was what finally made something click in terms of “understanding” political corruption and the the ruthlessness of propaganda and control. The context of the book just made sense to me and – to get back to my mangled point – is why I look at the Ukraine situation differently than I might have before and am rather frightened by it.
In short: a wonderful round up, Karo!
I had a chat with my brother-in-law last night, and talking about it with an actual person, rather than reading millions of newspaper articles, makes it much easier to understand and all the more terrifying. Holy, holy crap.