Euobserver.com

Google announced on Monday that it will only apply human control to recorded conversations if users give consent. "We won't include your audio in the human review process unless you've re-confirmed [it]," said Google. It was recently reported that Google carried out "quality control" of its Google Assistant device through staff listening and transcribing private conversations. The company stopped these practices following an investigation by the German data protection authority.

Germany's North Channel Bank in Mainz accepted on Monday to pay 110 million Danish crowns (€15m) in fines for assisting tax-fraud against the Danish state. The bank's CEO, Gunnar Volker, admitted it made €7.5m in profits on fictional trading of shares. A cross-border journalistic investigation, CumExFiles, revealed in 2017 that Europe's taxpayers were in total swindled out of €55bn through the scam.

The UK Supreme Court will hand down its verdict on British prime minister Boris Johnson's highly-controversial decision to suspend parliament on Tuesday at 10.30AM UK time, it announced. The case was brought against the government by activists who claimed Johnson's five-week proroguing of parliament was intended to avoid scrutiny ahead of a no-deal Brexit. The prime minister insisted it was to draw up a new domestic legislative programme.

A report presented to the UN climate action summit on Monday shows the gap between targets set up to tackle climate change, and the actual reality - as an urgent call to action for the politicians attending the summit.

Spanish police arrested on Monday ten suspects, linked to the Committee for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) in Catalonia, in connection with allegedly planning violent attacks for the anniversary of the 2017 independence referendum. The suspects were charged with terrorism and rebellion, after police found explosive material during the arrests, reported Spanish media. The CDR called for demonstrations over the arrests on social media.

More than half (53 percent) of Europeans say that discrimination based on sexual orientation is widespread in their country. And, according to a Eurobarometer survey, under 40 percent of respondents in Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria believe that LGTBI people should have the same rights as heterosexuals. "Discrimination, harassment, hate speech, and violence continue to be a daily reality for many LGBTI people in the EU," said commissioner Vera Jourová.

The interior ministers from France, Germany, Italy, and Malta are meeting on Monday to discuss a new temporary and voluntary agreement for the relocation of asylum seekers, that will prevent EU countries from negotiating case-by-case.

Two out of the three members of a new Maltese taskforce to look into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 were compromised by personal links to people she accused of money-laundering, her family has warned. "These clear conflicts will poison the inquiry's work," one of her sons, Andrew Caruana Galizia, said. The Maltese government announced a new "independent" inquiry Friday following a Council of Europe appeal.

Some 50,000 people held a protest in Bratislava on Sunday calling for the country to ban abortions. The rally, organised by the Roman Catholic church's Conference of Bishops of Slovakia and Kanet, a Bratislava-based NGO, comes as parliament prepares to debate a new bill on the subject. The protesters also urged authorities to protect the "unique status of the marriage of man and woman" in their manifesto.

Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel agency founded in 1841, stopped operating on Sunday night, after it failed to agree on a financial rescue plan from investors. Around 150,000 people worldwide are stranded at their holiday locations as all flights of Thomas Cook were cancelled and 105 airplanes are grounded. European governments, together with insurance companies, are coordinating repatriation plans, while 22,000 Thomas Cook employees lost their job.

Up to 400 people have been arrested since protests erupted on Friday in several places in Egypt. The protests were sparked by video messages of a former military contractor in which he accused Egypt's president Abdel Fattah Sisi and his family of corruption and of building lavish presidential palaces. The news came after years of increasing hardship for common Egyptians, as well as harsh repression of critical voices.

Consumer choice and affordability of cars would get a "seismic" shock from a no-deal Brexit due to disruption of factory supply chains, the heads of 23 car-making associations have said in an open letter. "Brexit is not just a British problem, we are all concerned in the European automotive industry, and even further," Christian Peugeot, the head of the French car industry association, the CCFA, said in the statement.

France's foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters that his priority during the UN general assembly in New York this week is to de-escalate the tensions between the US and Iran, rather than making US president Donald Trump and Iran's president Hassan Rouhani meet. The United States accused Iran of being responsible for the attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil installations, while Iran denied any involvement.

Spain has confirmed it would revoke the rights of its 366,000 British residents if the UK did so to the 180,000 Spanish people living in Britain in the event of a harsh Brexit. "We have told them that our royal decree will ensure everything remains the same in the case of a no-deal Brexit. But for that, reciprocity is necessary," Spain's EU affairs minister, Luis Marco Aguiriano, told El Pais.

Mainstream British politicians have a responsibility to find ways how to counter the growing far-right extremist threat. Overturning Brexit will only serve to intensify it.

Insiders at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the EU's smallest institution, have described a culture-of-fear environment in the workplace, in the wake of the probationary appointment of its newest secretary-general.

Iran and climate change likely to dominate as French president Emmanuel Macron speaks for Europe at the UN general assembly in New York this week.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said on Friday that negotiations are still far from a deal that could resolve the Irish backstop, since there is a "wide gap" between the UK and the EU, and Brussels is "still waiting for serious proposals" from London, according to the BBC. "I think we need to be honest with people and say that we're not close to that deal right now," said Coveney.

The UK has barred the European Commission from sharing with member states the three informal papers on Brexit it forwarded to Brussels Thursday, British daily The Guardian reported, citing a commission email to EU states' embassies. "The UK labelled the documents as HMG property and requested us not to do any onward disclosure," the commission said. The obstacle to wider talks comes amid concern of a no-deal Brexit in October.

More than 250 protests were organised across Spain on Friday to declare a "feminist emergency" after the violent cases of murder, rape, and harassment that occurred in Spain this summer in which 19 women were murdered. In 2019, 42 women were murdered in domestic violence attacks - making a total of 1,017 since 2013. According to Spanish media, there will be also demonstrations in Colombia, Argentina, and France.