European leaders have responded to Meta's indirect warning to shut down its Facebook and Instagram operations across Europe if the social media giant is no longer able to process Europeans' data on US servers.

In a new regulatory filling this month, Facebook parent company Meta renewed its threats to pull both Facebook and Instagram in the European Union over privacy laws. Regulators in the EU, however, have quickly called Meta’s bluff, and even went as far east to say that “life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook.”

Facebook and Instagram may be shut down across Europe, parent company Meta has said. The issue comes down to European data regulations that prevent Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, from transferring, storing and processing Europeans’ data on US-based servers.

Self-charging hybrid cars, which operate on both an internal combustion engine and a battery, outsold diesel cars in Europe for the first time in 2021, albeit by just 48 vehicles, data showed on Wednesday. One in 11 cars sold were battery-electric, the data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association showed, totalling just under 880,000 vehicles.

After a years-long process, data protection officials across the European Union have ruled that Europe’s ad tech industry has been operating unlawfully. The decision, handed down by Belgium’s APD (.PDF) and agreed by regulators across the EU, found that the system underpinning the industry violated a number of principles of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has declared victory in its protracted battle against the authority which administers much of the advertising industry on the continent: IAB Europe.

Britain, Poland and Ukraine are working to strengthen their three-way cooperation in the face of the threat of a new Russian military intervention, the leaders of the two eastern European countries said in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The European Parliament, the legislative body for the European Union (EU), has voted in favor of its Digital Services Act (DSA), which seeks to limit the power of American internet giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google.

A folk singer from the Czech Republic has died after deliberately catching Covid, her son has told the BBC. Hana Horka, 57, was unvaccinated and had posted on social media that she was recovering after testing positive, but died two days later. Her son, Jan Rek, said she got infected on purpose when he and his father had the virus, so she could get a recovery pass to access certain venues.

On the last day of 2021, as final preparations were being made for the New Year’s Eve firework display in central Berlin, outside the German capital another era was drawing to a close. It was the beginning of the end of Germany's decades-long dalliance with nuclear power.

The airline company Lufthansa will operate 18,000 “empty, unnecessary” flights this winter that would have otherwise been cancelled due to lack of passengers. The empty flights will run because of rules imposed by the European Union which mean that airlines must use 80 percent of their airport slots. If they don’t, they risk losing their take-off and landing rights to rival carriers.

Germany has pulled the plug on three of its last six nuclear power stations as it moves towards completing its withdrawal from nuclear power as it turns its focus to renewables. The government decided to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power following Japan's Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the coastal plant in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Which European country will legalize cannabis in 2022? The short answer to this question doesn't exist. Although the European continent represents a tempting market for international companies and stakeholders interested in recreational cannabis, its legal framework is widely fragmented, and finding a satisfying answer is challenging.

How should governments have responded to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, when at the time so little was known? That’s the question researchers have posed in a study on the response from three European governments to the first and second waves of COVID-19.

Carbon emissions trading is poised to go global, and billions of dollars — maybe even trillions — could be at stake. That's thanks to last month's U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, which approved a new international trading system where companies pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else, rather than doing it themselves.

The man is so keen to get a vaccine pass he turns up with a plastic arm, but doctors aren't fooled.

Facebook could be sued by consumer groups for privacy violations, an adviser to Europe's top court said on Thursday, in a German online gaming case that could pave the way for similar action across the EU.

The Ukrainian president said the country’s richest man, his rival, was being drawn into the plot.

Countries have downplayed hazards of air pollution despite evidence that it leads to 430,000 shortened lives a year.

Reports of online abuse directed toward women and girls — along with LGBTQ and nonbinary people and other marginalized groups — have risen during the nearly two years of the coronavirus pandemic, studies show. Even as governments grapple with a growing impetus to regulate behemoth social media companies and stop cybercrimes, this overarching fact of life online — that women and girls face a heightened risk of abuse and harassment — is often missing from legislative efforts for change, anti-abuse activists say.

Single-use plastic plates and cutlery and polystyrene.