News in Europe: Natural Deliveries

Greetings, citizens, and let’s start with good news: The German cave researcher trapped in the country’s biggest cave system has been rescued after almost two weeks, and he’s recovering well.

Here are some pretty amazing pictures of the rescue mission.

Also, Spain has a new king!

And we’re moving swiftly on to the bad news. In Ukraine, another helicopter has been shot down by pro-Russian seperatists. A ceasefire proposed last week doesn’t seem to be helping, and now even Putin has called for peace talks.

In Mitrovica, Kosovo, tensions between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbs have broken out into violent protests.

In Sweden, a man threatening to set off explosives inside a political party’s headquarters in Stockholm gave himself up to the police after hours of negotiations.

Spain has given the green light to oil exploration around the Canary Islands. Environmentalists and residents had appealed against the granting of prospecting rights to energy company Repsol.

A little more uplifting news from the European Parliament, where right-wingers from France and the Netherlands have failed to gain support from other countries to form a new caucus. So many idiots, so little they can agree on. Ha.

There’s something rotten in the state of Poland… A magazine has revealed a number of illegally taped conversations between politicians, and the latter have not come across as particularly well-behaved and restrained. There is now even talk of new elections, while Radek Sikorski, the Foreign Minister whose verbal attacks on the US have not gone down well with the Americans, calls the leak “an organized attack of a criminal group on the government.” Sikorski has been put forward for a prestigious new job within the EU and is generally seen as a good egg, so one has to wonder about his private opinions, his language, and the source of the leaks. How very intriguing…

Stop presses! The Vatican cricket team is coming to England for a four-match tour in September! Because there’s nothing like a bit of cricket when you’re up to your neck in scandal.

Not particularly news or this week, but here’s an interesting piece about design and crime in Scandinavia.

And finally, because you’ve all been waiting so patiently, here’s the big story of this week: A US exchange student in Germany managed to get himself stuck inside a giant vagina so completely that it took 22 firefighters to get him out. German vaginas are the strongest vaginas. Vagina vagina. Sing it with me!

See you next week, my dears.