Euobserver.com

South Sudan's country director for the World Food Programme (WFP) says he could save donors some $100m if they were to front-load funds today to stave off hunger in the war-torn country, which saw a mass rape last month.

The Hungarian government has forced Budapest-based Central European University (CEU), founded by US billionaire George Soros, to move to Vienna, CEU rector Michael Ignatieff said Monday. "This is unprecedented. A US institution has been driven out of a country that is a Nato ally. A European institution has been ousted from a member state of the EU," he said. Hungary's nationalist premier Viktor Orban has a long-running campaign against Soros.

The EU transport, telecommunications and energy ministers' council is set to discuss the ending of putting clocks forward and backwards at a meeting on Monday afternoon. The talks follow an online public consultation in July and August, which saw 4.6 million valid replies. The poll showed 84 percent of the view that summertime should be used all the time in future. 70 percent of the replies came from Germany.

French prime minister Edouard Philippe has cancelled his appearance at the COP24 climate change summit in Katowice on Monday in order to meet political party leaders and representatives of the so-called 'yellow vests' in an attempt to defuse tensions after violent protests over the weekend. Around 36,000 people took part in protests on Saturday by the anti-government movement, which was sparked by a rise in taxes on diesel.

The UK Labour party will seek a no-confidence vote in prime minister Theresa May's government if she loses the key Brexit vote on 11 December, in a move that could provoke a new election. If the government survives such a vote of no confidence, Labour would focus on seeking a second referendum on remaining in the European Union, Labour's Brexit secretary Keir Starmer told Sky on Sunday.

Foreign criminals sentenced to deportation from Denmark will in future be sent to the remote island of Lindholm, following a compromise between the country's government and the anti-immigration Danish People's Party on the country's 2019 budget. The public has no access to the island, which has been used for research on viruses such as mad cow disease and swine fever. The research facilities will move to Copenhagen.

Delegates from almost 200 nations met on Sunday in Poland's southwestern mining city of Katowice for a two-week conference to agree a rulebook for curbing global warming, in a follow up to the landmark Paris agreement of 2015. "The United Nations secretary-general is counting on us, all of us, to deliver," said Poland's deputy environment minister, Michal Kurtyka, who is chairing the conference. "There is no Plan B," he said.

A far-right party has for the first time since the death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 won seats in a Spanish parliament, with the Vox party taking 12 seats in the 109-member parliament of the southern Spanish region of Andalusia in Sunday's elections. The region has been dominated by the Socialist Party (PSOE) for the past 36 years. The turnout was low, at only 58.6 percent.

The man tasked with making the EP more transparent has said there are more important issues than making MEP monthly expenses public.

One year ago, the European Union published its first ever blacklist of tax havens. It is crucial that EU governments help end the era of tax havens to ensure the billions currently hidden from public coffers.

The worst rioting in Paris for over a decade injured 65 people and prompted more than 200 arrests on Saturday, the French police said. The protests, over high living costs, saw gangs of armed men burn police cars and vandalise shops in the tourist centre. "No cause justifies that," French president Emmanuel Macron said from a G20 summit in Argentina. Paris also suffered racial riots in its suburbs in 2005.

Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, accused of ordering the gruesome murder of a dissident journalist, met with Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte at a G20 summit in Argentina over the weekend. He also shook hands with British leader Theresa May and spoke with France's Emmanuel Macron. The exchanges come after Germany and others banned arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a move which the UK and France declined to follow.

"The war [in east Ukraine] will continue as long as they [current Ukrainian leaders] stay in power," because "they aren't interested in solving it," Russian president Vladimir Putin said at Argentina's G20 summit Saturday. Russia fired on the Ukrainian navy last week in what the EU and US said was unprovoked. "We're dealing with someone [Putin] that we simply cannot trust," US defence chief James Mattis said also on Saturday.

Iran has test-fired a missile "that allows it to strike parts of Europe and anywhere in the Middle East" with a nuclear payload, if it had one, the US state department said on Saturday. The test broke a UN resolution amid "accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to restore deterrence," the US added. America recently walked away from an EU-backed Iran nuclear arms control treaty.

Bulgaria has agreed to build a €1.4bn pipeline from its border with Turkey to Serbia to pump Russian gas into central Europe. The link is to take gas from TurkStream, a new Russian pipeline to Turkey, bypassing Ukraine. It comes after the European Commission forced Bulgaria in 2014 to halt construction of a direct pipeline to Russia, called South Stream. Bulgaria said it would "eliminate" all "mistakes" this time round.

German chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman tweeted a picture of her shaking Russian leader Vladimir Putin's hand at a G20 summit in Argentina Saturday, one week after Russian warships fired on Ukrainian vessels, an action condemned by the EU. "The focus was on the situation in Syria and the situation between Russia and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov," Merkel's spokesman said.

Austria's far-right agitator will chair talks on how to send more migrants home with fellow EU interior ministers in Brussels, one day after a Romanian circus comes to town.

The European Ombudsman suggested Friday that, when citizens request documents, the European Commission should consider also disclosing those parts not strictly covered by the requester's description. She made the suggestion in the context of an access to documents request by EUobserver about the EU's free wifi fund. Being less rigid in answering such requests would avoid "giving citizens a false impression of a lack of transparency", the ombudsman said.

Members of the European Parliament have received in their letter boxes a copy of a magazine which on the back cover featured an advertisement for an escort service. Greens MEP Pascal Durand and left-wing MEP Malin Bjork have asked parliament president Antonio Tajani and secretary-general Klaus Welle for an investigation. "It is unacceptable that this kind of extremely sexist material is being distributed in the parliament," they wrote.

China has for the first time persuaded an EU state to extradite a Chinese corruption fugitive after Bulgaria handed over Yao Jinqi, a local official wanted for bribery. "This is the first time we have successfully extradited a bureaucrat suspected of work-related crimes from an EU member state," China's National Supervision Commission, its anti-fraud agency, said Friday. Western governments shy from extradition to China due to human rights abuses.