Latest news bulletin | February 20th – Evening
Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/02/20/latest-news-bulletin-february-20th-evening
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Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/02/20/latest-news-bulletin-february-20th-evening
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
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NewsTranscript
00:00Two women have been killed in a knife attack at a shopping center in the Czech Republic.
00:07It happened in a store where both of the women were reportedly employees in the northern city of Hradec Kraljeve.
00:14Police say a 16-year-old youth has been detained in connection with the stabbings.
00:20She suspected that we arrived about 10 minutes, not a kilometer from the crime scene.
00:26She was detained at the crime scene.
00:29Reports initially said the victims had been injured but police later said both had died.
00:35Neither of the women have been identified.
00:38The motive for the attack isn't immediately known but an investigation is ongoing.
00:43Police say the situation is under control and there's no further danger to members of the public.
00:50German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and opposition leader Friedrich Merz
00:59faced off in a final debate on Wednesday ahead of elections next Sunday.
01:03During the debate, the candidates touched on migration, the economy and security.
01:10While pre-election polls have put Merz's center-right union bloc in the lead,
01:17Scholz said he believes many voters remain undecided.
01:20Merz has made migration and the economy central to his campaign.
01:46And if we don't solve these two problems, you and we and all democratic parties in the political middle
01:53won't be able to avoid a next big change of government.
01:57That's why we're doing this here.
01:59Then we'll eventually slip into right-wing populism.
02:02So yes or no?
02:04I'm here to prevent that.
02:06Merz's call for a more restrictive approach to migration prompted opponents, including Scholz,
02:11to accuse him of willingness to work with the far-right AfD.
02:16Merz insists his position is unchanged and that he won't work with the party.
02:20While Merz and Scholz discuss their differences, they seem to agree on a fair amount of issues as well.
02:29Emmanuel Macron's gamble starting to pay off after organizing two emergency summits in Paris this week
02:45with EU nations and NATO member states to come up with a united front to the lightning rapprochement
02:52between Moscow and the US.
02:54Well, it looks like Europe is finally invited to the negotiating table.
02:58Just after the second emergency meeting in Paris this Wednesday,
03:03US President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz,
03:07announced that both Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer
03:11will be invited to the White House next week.
03:14One of the main fears today is that Trump could reach an agreement with Russia
03:19that would work against the security interests of both Ukraine and the EU.
03:24But other than the general consensus that Russia is a threat,
03:27the 27th bloc is still deeply divided on how to respond to this,
03:32especially when it comes to whether or not to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
03:37However, the French President announced on his ex-account, former Twitter,
03:42that decisions concerning European security will be taken in the coming days and weeks,
03:48stating that the 27th bloc is convinced of the need to increase the defense and security spending
03:54and capabilities of Europe.
03:56Sofia Katsenkova reporting from Paris for Euronews.
04:03Cutting pesticide use by half in the EU by 2030 was a key goal of the European Green Deal,
04:09but that target, put on hold by the European Commission last year,
04:13has now been shelved indefinitely.
04:15In an interview with Euronews,
04:17EU Agriculture Commissioner Christoph Hansen confirmed that reviving this idea
04:22is no longer on the EU executives' agenda.
04:26It didn't work out and now we have no progress at all.
04:30But still it's off the table.
04:32It is off the table, exactly, so no progress at all.
04:35And I believe with this process where we take the farmers on board
04:39and we take the civil society on board in the European Board on Agriculture and Food,
04:44we determine there and discuss about solutions that are applicable
04:49and effective on the ground to achieve those targets.
04:52The plan to halve pesticide use in the EU was withdrawn by the Commission one year ago
04:57following mounting opposition from right-wing parties and widespread farmer protests.
05:03At that time, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that the pesticide reform
05:08would stay on the agenda with possibility of a more mature proposal.
05:12But now Hansen says any new EU initiative on pesticides
05:17will focus on trade and innovation aspects rather than on reduction targets.
05:22It is important that we encourage them rather with incentives to achieve goals
05:33rather than to say just from the top down this is the number
05:38and we exactly see what happened with those numbers when it goes to the co-legislative process.
05:43It is like a big auction who gives more on percentage.
05:50Instead of tightening environmental standards,
05:53the Commission's new vision for agriculture and food unveiled this week
05:57prioritizes making farming a more attractive job, particularly for young generations.
06:03A clear sign that for now environmental ambitions are taking a back seat to economic and political realities.
06:11Therefore, our farming and food producing community...
06:17US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he plans to impose 25% tariffs on auto imports
06:23as well as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
06:26It comes after he already announced the same rate on steel and aluminium imports.
06:32Trump has long railed against what he calls the unfair treatment of US automotive exports in foreign markets.
06:40The European Union collects a 10% duty on vehicle imports,
06:44four times the US passenger car tariff rate of 2.5%.
06:49You know, the EU has been very unfair to us.
06:51We have a deficit of $350 billion.
06:53They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products,
06:57they don't take almost anything, they take very little.
07:00And we're going to have to straighten that out and we will, I have no doubt about it.
07:05Trump claims the playing field is tilted against American companies
07:09as other countries usually tax American exports at a higher rate than America taxes theirs.
07:15But many economists that criticize the move argue that the additional tax on importers
07:20usually gets passed on to consumers.
07:29Pope Francis continues his recovery from pneumonia,
07:31eating breakfast out of bed on Thursday morning after a sixth peaceful night at the hospital, the Vatican said.
07:37The Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni issued a new update after confirming late Wednesday
07:42that new blood tests showed a slight improvement in some of the inflammations.
07:46The pontiff was visited on Wednesday by Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni, his first known VIP visitor.
07:52She reported after their 20-minute visit that the Holy Father was in good spirits and had joked around as always.
08:00Pope Francis was admitted to Rome's Gemelli Hospital on February 14 after a bout of bronchitis.
08:06He is diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs on top of a polymicrobial infection in his respiratory tract,
08:12meaning a combination of bacteria, virus and fungi.
08:17He is taking several antibiotics as well as cortisone for what doctors diagnose as asthmatic bronchitis.
08:24Hamas returned the bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday,
08:30including a mother and her two children who have long been feared dead.
08:35Hamas claimed they were killed in Israeli airstrikes early in the war.
08:40Hundreds of people, mostly masked Hamas fighters, gather at the handover site
08:45on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunus.
08:50Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 living hostages in recent weeks
08:55under a fragile ceasefire that paused over 15 months of war.
09:01The handover on Thursday will provide a grim reminder of those who died in captivity
09:06as the talks leading up to the truce dragged on for over a year.
09:11On the other hand, it could also provide impetus for negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire
09:18that have hardly begun.
09:21The first phase of the negotiations is set to end at the beginning of March.
09:49Especially in Latvia and Estonia.
09:52In the Estonian capital Tallinn, almost every second child grows up with Russian.
09:56In the north-east of the country, Russian is even more widespread.
10:01I'm on my way to Narva, Estonia's third-largest city,
10:05right next to the border to Russia.
10:07Over 90% of the people speak Russian.
10:17Stalin had tens of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians deported to Siberia.
10:23In return, tens of thousands of Russians were settled in the Baltic states.
10:27Ethnic deportations and Russification went hand-in-hand.
10:32Russification continued even after Stalin's death.
10:36Thousands of industrial workers and soldiers settled in the big cities.
10:42The official language in the Soviet-occupied areas of the Baltic was Russian.
10:47With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia regained their state independence
10:53and Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian abolished Russian as an official language.
11:01Today, the Baltic EU states fear that Putin is trying to manipulate the Russian minorities.
11:08Moscow-controlled Sendan was therefore stripped of its license after the Russian attack on Ukraine.
11:14And Latvia and Estonia use Latvian and Estonian as their sole official language at all schools.
11:23The latest studies in Estonia show that almost half of the Russian minority is poorly integrated.
11:29This should change with the school reform.