Italy: Blaming Refugees for Importing Corona

The migrants were "crammed" into the trailers of two trucks, according to the local head of the Human Rights Commission. Most were from the neighboring state of Guatemala.

As temperatures across Europe plummet, thousands of migrants are still stuck in Belarus, hoping to find a route into the European Union — although Brussels insists the bloc will not accept them. DW's Nick Connolly met some of them in Minsk.

The Belarusian strongman has encouraged migrants to continue their journey into the European Union. "We will not try to catch you, beat you, and hold you behind barbed wire," he said.

Many of the migrants currently languishing at the Poland-Belarus border come from Iraq. Most of them hail from the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country. This area is often described as a haven of peace, but the reality is somewhat darker. Our correspondent Lucile Wassermann went to meet the Iraqis ready to risk everything to flee their region.

Russia is one of the countries with the lowest vaccination rates and highest Covid-19 death rates in the world. With just over 30 percent of the population vaccinated, the Russian authorities' vaccination campaign has been deemed a fiasco. And yet when Vladimir Putin announced the launch of the Sputnik V vaccine in summer 2020, it was supposed to "save humanity from Covid". More than a year later, the jab has still not arrived on the European market and the majority of Russians do not trust it.

Citizens of Afghanistan were by far the biggest group of people applying for asylum in the EU, Switzerland and Norway in September 2021.

Militants killed at least 31 people in central Mali on Friday (December 3) when they fired upon a bus ferrying people to a local market, local authorities said - the latest deadly attack in a region racked by violent insurgency. The bus was attacked by unidentified gunmen as it travelled its twice-weekly route from the village of Songho to a market in Bandiagara, 10 kilometres (6 miles) away, said Moulaye Guindo, mayor of the nearby town of Bankass.

Activists who helped migrants reach Greece in 2018 are on trial on the island of Lesbos. The accusations against them include spying and human trafficking. DW caught up with some of those facing the most serious charges.

The Greek and Tunisian coast guards have also reported successful rescue missions. Nonetheless, dozens of people have died in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the past several days.

Nationalists in the UK are hunting down people who have fled across the Channel to England in small boats and claim the government is not doing enough to prevent illegal immigration. The number of migrants arriving this way has reached a new high.

Guatemalan authorities have said they are working "humanely" to return people to their countries of origin. Over the past year, large caravans of migrants have been stopped trying to cross Central American countries.

The birth rate in the world's most populous country, China, has fallen for a fifth consecutive year to hit a record low. The population is ageing and the workforce is shrinking. Despite ending the decades-long one-child policy, the baby boom officials had hoped for never materialised. These rapidly changing demographics foreshadow a crisis that could undercut the country's economic and social stability.