German court sentences Syrian doctor to life in jail for crimes against humanity
The crimes committed by Alaa Mousa, 40, during the Syrian civil war were 'part of a brutal reaction by Assad's dictatorial, unjust regime', said the presiding judge at the higher regional court in Frankfurt, Christoph Koller.
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The Independent
08-08-2025
- The Independent
FTSE 100 edges down despite hopes of end to Russia-Ukraine war
The FTSE 100 edged down on Friday on a mixed day for European equities despite new optimism about an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine. The FTSE 100 index closed down 5.04 points, 0.1%, at 9,095.73. The FTSE 250 ended 20.45 points higher, 0.1%, at 21,958.55 while the AIM All-Share finished down 1.05 points, 0.1%, at 762.46. For the week, the FTSE 100 rose 0.3% and the FTSE 250 advanced 1.2%. In Europe, the Cac 40 in Paris rose 0.4%, while the Dax 40 in Frankfurt eased back 0.1%. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.3%, the S&P 500 was 0.6% higher, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.8%. Bloomberg said Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion. According to Bloomberg sources, US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the report added. Brent oil was quoted at 66.63 dollars a barrel in London on Friday, up from 66.48 dollars late on Thursday. Elsewhere, President Donald Trump named the leader of his White House economic panel to fill a recently vacated seat on the Federal Reserve board, as he seeks to boost his sway over the independent central bank. 'It is my great honour to announce that I have chosen Dr Stephen Miran, current chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, to serve in the just vacated seat on the Federal Reserve Board until January 31 2026,' he announced on his website, Truth Social. 'In the meantime, we will continue to search for a permanent replacement,' Mr Trump added. Dr Miran will finish the term of Adriana Kugler, an appointee of former president Joe Biden who announced her resignation last week. The pound rose to 1.3450 dollars late on Friday afternoon in London, compared to 1.3412 at the equities close on Thursday. The euro traded at 1.1666 dollars. The yield on the US 10-year Treasury was at 4.29%, widened from 4.23%. The yield on the US 30-year Treasury was 4.86%, stretched from 4.80%. Back in London, gambling operators were in the red after the Guardian reported that a rise in gambling levies is thought to be 'near-guaranteed', as part of a package of tax rises in the autumn budget. Ladbrokes and Coral owner Entain fell 5.8%, Paddy Power owner Flutter Entertainment dropped 8.1% and William Hill owner Evoke slid 7.2%. Casino and bingo operator Rank was 4.8% lower. On Thursday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: 'We've already launched a review into gambling taxes. We're taking evidence on that at the moment, and again, we'll set out our policies in the normal way, in our budget later this year.' Further weighing on Flutter Entertainment was a mixed reaction to half-year results, despite the firm raising annual guidance. After the US market close, Flutter said Fan Duel, favourable sporting results and iGaming growth helped push sales and earnings higher in the second quarter, improving prospects for the rest of the year. But Peel Hunt said Flutter's US strength is somewhat diluted by international weakness as it downgraded the stock to 'hold' from 'add'. Noting shares have recovered well from April lows, Peel Hunt said: 'There may be more upside, particularly if management can demonstrate that it can reinvigorate the aggregate performance of the international division. However, for now, we see no reason to push our valuation further.' US gold futures hit a record high after Trump's administration imposed tariffs on imports of one-kilo and 100-ounce bars. On the FTSE 100, GSK rose 0.9% after stating said it will receive an upfront payment of 370 million dollars from CureVac, following a patent settlement involving BioNTech and Pfizer over messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine technology. The deal will see the London-based pharmaceuticals firm collect a 1% royalty on US sales of Pfizer and BioNTech's influenza, Covid-19, and related combination mRNA vaccines from the start of 2025. Of the upfront settlement, 320 million dollars will be paid in cash, with the remainder reflecting changes to GSK's existing licence agreement with CureVac. WPP remained in free fall, down a further 6.2%, leaving it down 56% in 2025 so far. The advertising firm has been dogged by falling sales amid threats from artificial intelligence. On Thursday, it said pre-tax profit declined by 71% in the six months that ended June 30, sinking to £98 million from £338 million. WPP cut its interim dividend per share to 7.5p, half the previous year's 15p payout. The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Glencore, up 7.8p at 288.2p, Antofagasta, up 50p at 2,024p, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, up 160p at 7,030p, Mondi, up 21.5p at 1,079p and JD Sports Fashion, up 1.5p at 87.7p. The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were WPP, down 24.3p at 367.5p, Entain, down 58p at 938p, Intercontinental Hotels Group, down 358p at 8,824p, Rightmove, down 30.4p at 788p, and Sage Group, down 37p at 1,161.5p.
Reuters
08-08-2025
- Reuters
Thyssenkrupp investors to vote on defence spin-off
FRANKFURT, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Shareholders in Thyssenkrupp ( opens new tab are scheduled to vote on a planned spin-off of its defence division on Friday, as a radical shift in European spending on defence has raised expectations its value could surge. In response to the stance of U.S. President Donald Trump, NATO's European members are increasing their defence budgets, which has driven up the shares of companies in the sector. The order book of Thyssenkrupp's division TKMS - which makes submarines, frigates and develops mine-sweeping technologies - has swollen to more than 18 billion euros ($21 billion) from 11.7 billion at the end of September last year. That has in turn boosted shares of its parent, which have more than doubled year-to-date. Thyssenkrupp plans to spin off 49% of TKMS to its existing shareholders while keeping the remaining stake. The general meeting will start at 0800 GMT and a vote will be held later in the day following an exchange between management and investors, which include the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach foundation, Thyssenkrupp's largest shareholder. Analysts expect the spin-off and separate listing to take place later this year, although Thyssenkrupp has yet to specify the timing. Last month, Berlin reached a preliminary agreement with Thyssenkrupp that guarantees it will retain influence at TKMS as the government seeks to keep a certain level of control over strategic defence assets. ($1 = 0.8583 euros)
Times
03-08-2025
- Times
RIP Mitteleuropa — the tragedy of a lost civilisation
For more than a week in autumn 1790 the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt was the scene of one of the oldest and most extravagant political rituals on the European continent: kings, queens, princes, ambassadors and assorted aristocrats gathered for a series of events culminating in the coronation of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as Holy Roman Emperor. Goethe, a native of the city, claimed that anyone watching could not fail to consider the celebration as the 'crowning glory of his whole life'. The future statesman Klemens von Metternich called it 'one of the most sublime and simultaneously magnificent spectacles that the world has ever seen'. A concert given by Mozart, who had travelled from Vienna in an attempt to revive his flagging career, proved a sideshow. Leopold, who, like many of his predecessors, was a member of the House of Habsburg, died of pneumonia just 18 months later before having had the chance to implement many of his planned liberalising reforms. Francis II, his more conservative son, managed 14 years, but in 1806, after military defeats by Napoleon, was obliged to abolish the title and continued to rule as mere Emperor of Austria. The coronation of the new head of a curious entity that Voltaire famously quipped was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire is an appropriate starting point for this detailed study of the part of the continent where the Germanic, Slavic and Romance worlds meet. The term Central Europe, or rather Mitteleuropa in German, was coined — appropriately enough also in 1806 — by Georg Hassel, a German geographer who defined it as the space between Russian-dominated northern and eastern Europe and the British Isles and France to the west. There is no shortage of histories of the various peoples of the region, nor of the Habsburgs, who ruled much of the area for more than 600 years. Luka Ivan Jukic, a London-based author and journalist, aims instead 'to disentangle the history of Central Europe from the histories of the many nations that have emerged from it and to show that Central European history is much more than the sum of its parts'. • How Europe forgot its history and sleepwalked into crisis Foremost among these parts were the German-speakers, long the dominant political, economic and cultural force — something they came to consider proof of their innate superiority, with disastrous consequences under Hitler. They shared the space with Hungarians, various types of Slavs — from the Poles in the north to the Croats in the south — as well as northern Italians, Lithuanians and Jews. Jukic writes fluently and peppers his book with colourful anecdotes. His decision to weave the different peoples' respective stories into a single chronological narrative makes sense, especially for times such as 1848, when a wave of revolutions promised to transform Central Europe (as would happen in 1989). The same is true of phenomena such as industrialisation and the construction of the railways. Often, though, the sheer number of separate narratives and the need to switch back and forth between places can be overwhelming. The book is subtitled The Death of a Civilization and the Life of an Idea. Central Europe, he contends, was killed as a distinct civilisation by the Nazis as they marched eastwards. Nor did Allied victory in 1945 herald its return: the continent's rigid division into capitalist west and communist east left no space for anything in between. The idea endured, however, in the minds of cultured Czechs, Poles and Hungarians resentful of having been forcibly separated from the European mainstream after centuries and trapped on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain — as evinced by the Czech writer Milan Kundera in his 1983 essay The Tragedy of Central Europe. • The 21 best history books of the past year to read next The collapse of communism at the end of that decade brought another change of direction: admission to Nato and then to the EU from the late 1990s required the adoption of what Jukic calls the 'prescriptive bundle of policies that accompanied becoming a 'normal' western country' — from the rule of law to an economic system based on the primacy of free markets. The first generation of post-communist leaders such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa were happy to oblige. Their citizens' reward for enduring an initial few painful years of 'shock therapy' were soaring living standards and the satisfaction of escaping a Russian-dominated world in which their neighbours to the east remained mired. But what of Central Europe today? The emergence of the so-called Visegrád Group of Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak republics in the 1990s pointed to a sense of shared regional destiny. The illiberal approach of Hungary's Viktor Orban and Poland under its former Law and Justice Party government to touchstone issues such as gay rights and immigration could be taken as reflecting more conservative attitudes in the middle of the continent than in Europe's liberal west. Jukic nevertheless believes the differences between the countries of Central Europe outweigh their similarities — all the more so if Germany is considered one of their number. If anything unites them it is the legacy of their years of communism rather than the centuries spent under Habsburg rule. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List 'What emerged from the ruins of communist eastern Europe was not a suppressed cosmopolitan Central Europe but a series of nation-states forged in the upheavals of the early 20th century that had destroyed that very same Central European world,' he concludes. 'It is only natural that since 1989 each of these nation-states has interpreted that legacy in their own way, trying to come to terms with their own histories and places in a new world not as Central Europeans but as Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats.'Peter Conradi is author of Who Lost Russia? From the Collapse of the USSR to Putin's War on Ukraine (Oneworld £10.99) Central Europe: The Death of a Civilization and the Life of an Idea by Luka Ivan Jukic (Hurst £25 pp344). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
