Up to 3,200 pedophiles worked in French Catholic Church since 1950, independent commission says

(CNN) Between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile clergymen have worked in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s, the president of an independent commission on sexual abuse told CNN Sunday.

"We had to cross historical, sociological, medical and psychiatric perspectives. We had to call upon skills in the area of child protection, social work, questions of abuse and also bring to bear skills in the area of theology and law," said Jean-Marc Sauvé, ahead of the release of the commission's final report on Tuesday.

Read in Le Monde earlier today:

• Jean-Marc Sauvé called the 2900-3200 range "a minimal estimate"
  
• About 115,00 priests, in total, were exercising during the 70 years between 1950 to date

Politico.eu |  5 takeaways from Italy's local elections

National government intact
[...]
Democrat success
[...]
Right suffer, but not that much
[...]
From 5Stars to zero stars
[...]
Meloni on the rise

Politico.com |  5 takeaways from Italy's local elections
ditto

Mytilineos lands major RES project in Italy

The RSD Business Unit is strategically positioned in the Italian market with a 1.7-gigawatt solar energy storage and green hydrogen pipeline. The projects are at different stages of development and located in 15 regions.

Latest Corona-related news in brief:

NATIONAL EMPLOYERS ORGANIZATION NHO wants state officials to clarify whether employers can legally demand that any sick employees test themselves for the Corona virus. As many return to the workplace after 18 months in home offices, it's unclear who's responsible for testing and covering the costs of sick pay.

EU finance ministers strike three countries off tax haven ["]blacklist["], ignoring Parliament's calls

EU finance ministers met on Tuesday (5 October) and approved the removal of Anguilla, Dominica, and Seychelles from the list.

archived a RAFT of documents 2017, Lagarde list 2012

The Netherlands too has a shortage of 10,000 truck drivers: NOS

Many truckers who work for Dutch firms come from eastern Europe, but are often denied salaries in line with their Dutch colleagues, according to trade union federation FNV. Some companies use complicated cross-border constructions to get round the Dutch pay scales. In July, for example, a Dutch transport company was ordered to give 10 Hungarian lorry drivers back pay which could run into hundreds of thousands of euros for failing to pay them a salary in line with Dutch requirements.
[...]
n the UK, where the shortage is much more serious, just 27 people have applied so far for one of 300 visas set aside for lorry drivers to deliver fuel to petrol stations, the Times reported on Tuesday.

Romania's Covid 'fourth wave' surpasses first outbreak, 4 Oct
"With a total record of over 11,000 daily Covid cases, Romania significantly outpaces both the European and world average. ... Plummeting vaccine interest in Romania comes from a long-standing mistrust in authorities, vaccine-scepticism, plus officials' poor approach in dealing with the virus.... "We need to overcome the political gridlock. We need authorities to be able to fight the coronavirus, as well as rising gas and electricity prices", Iulius Marian Firczak MP told EUobserver"
Romanian political parties prepare for a no-confidence vote
"To overthrow the government, 234 votes are needed. The three parties that want to oust the prime minister have more than 280, but their common interests stop there."
Romanian government falls after losing no-confidence vote, poll of polls

The opposition center-left Social Democratic Party (PSD) and far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) were joined in supporting the no-confidence motion by ex-coalition members from the Union to Save Romania (USR, formerly known as USR-PLUS). The government collapse could lead to early elections in Romania, which are triggered when a prime minister and their cabinet are rejected twice in a row by MPs. That could take months, leaving the country in limbo. The PSD has demanded an election as soon as possible.

French senators arrive in Taiwan amid tensions with China

The group, led by senator Alain Richard, will meet with President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwanese economic and health officials and the Mainland Affairs Council. Richard, a former French defense minister, previously visited Taiwan in 2015 and 2018, according to Taiwan's semi-official Central News Agency, and heads the Taiwan Friendship group in the French Senate.
[...]
The visit is part of normal and regular parliamentary exchanges between France and Taiwan, which were not politicized in the past, said Mathieu Duchatel, director of the Asia Program at the Institut Montaigne in Paris.
[...]
China [sic; s/b CCP] and Taiwan [sic; s/b KMT] split amid civil war in 1949. Today they have extensive trade and investment ties but no official relations, and China has increasingly mobilized military, diplomatic and economic pressure to undermine Tsai's independence-leaning administration.

Biden says he and China's Xi agree to abide by Taiwan agreement
channeling surrender of the CSA to Teh Union at Apptomatox, VA, which concluded the US war of Northern Aggression, sort of

Opposition wins surprise majority
"Together, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition won 27.7% of the vote, while Pirates and Mayors, another opposition group, got 15.5%."
CNN Newsource | Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's populist party loses grip
"With 98.84% of votes counted, the center-right alliance Spolu (Together) leads the count with 27.58% of the ballots, followed by Babiš's ANO party with 27.32%, and the centrist PirStan coalition with 14.45%."

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announces resignation

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Saturday announced that he would step down amid allegations of financial impropriety against his office.

Kurz said he would move to parliament as leader of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). Foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg will replace him as chancellor, he said.

"My country is more important to me than myself," Kurz said in a televised statement.

"What we need now are stable conditions,'' he told reporters in Vienna. "So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability."

Kurz said he wanted to "make space to prevent chaos".

Finland lobbied EU to declare nuclear power sustainable after unpublished cabinet decision supported by Greens
"If nuclear power gets the so-called 'green label', financing for nuclear projects will be easier to come by and the terms of any loans will be softer than for other energy projects. ... Finland's decision was reached at a meeting of ministers on 9 July, but not announced publicly."
US President nominates new Finland ambassador
"The Associated Press reports that [Douglas T.] Hickey is a prominent Democratic fundraiser and telecom executive."
Coronavirus latest: 1,618 new cases over the weekend; Child poverty grows; PM denies restrictions lifted too early, illustrated
"The government's telecommuting recommendations are scheduled to end in the middle of October, but employee opinions are divided on whether returning to the workplace is a good idea."

They haven't even finished voting, but the result is clear.

Now it's reached a "peer reviewed" publication, the European Journal of Epidemiology. (For anyone like me who is not in "the biz", there is hardly anything about this on wikipedia, just boilerplate/PR.)

"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States"
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people."

Full article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

Court slaps $1.2M daily fine on Poland in rule-of-law fight

the [ECJ] said in a news release that the daily fine was necessary "to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law." The court said it would issue a full ruling at a later date.

archived practice, practice, practice

[EC] investigates ["US-based"] Nvidia's purchase of ["UK-based"] chip designer Arm

"Our investigation aims to ensure that companies active in Europe continue having effective access to the technology that is necessary to produce state-of-the-art semiconductor products at competitive prices," said EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who's in charge of competition and digital issues for the bloc. [...] The commission has until March 15 to decide whether to clear the deal. The EU concerns echo those cited by the U.K's competition watchdog, which opened its own investigation earlier this year.

European Commission to launch Chips Act in bid for strategic autonomy