There was no violence in Thursday's attempted "military coup" in Armenia, but it made EU influence in the South Caucasus look smaller than ever.

EU leaders have discussed how to accelerate the rollout of vaccines, amid fears over more transmissible mutations triggering a new surge in cases.

The Hungarian legislation, dubbed 'Stop Soros', was a 2018 amendment to Hungary's criminal code and threatened aid workers and human rights advocates working with asylum-seekers with up to a year in prison.

Some 14 MEPs have created a group to probe allegations of rights abuse by the EU's border agency Frontex. Its head, Fabrice Leggeri, welcomed its creation and said it "is about time".

Amnesty found that companies including Microsoft, Renault and Volkswagen were failing to ask basic questions about where the cobalt in their batteries came from.

Ideas that are attacked are actually being promulgated. That has been the case for centuries, at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas. And that is certainly the case today with Facebook and Twitter.