The EU has added Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and his son Viktor to its sanctions blacklist of Belarus officials, bringing the total to 59. The 15 added on Friday also include KGB secret police chief Ivan Tertel and President Lukashenko’s chief of staff Igor Sergeenko. The EU rejects Mr Lukashenko’s claim to have won re-election on 9 August and deplores his crackdown on opponents. His son Viktor, 44, is a national security adviser.

Protests have swept the country since its long-time leader said he had won the vote, which was widely viewed as rigged. The main opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, said she had attracted between 60 to 70% of the vote and was forced into exile in neighbouring Lithuania immediately after the election. The election-monitoring organisation, OSCE, said on Thursday that human rights abuses since the vote “were found to be massive and systematic and proven beyond doubt”, and called for the official result handing Mr Lukashenko victory to be annulled “due to irregularities at all stages of the process“.(BBC)…[+]

Johnny Depp has left the Fantastic Beasts film franchise, days after losing a libel case over a newspaper article which called him a wife beater. In a letter to fans, Depp said he had been “asked to resign” from his role as Gellert Grindelwald and had “respected that and agreed to that request”. He called the libel judgement “surreal” and confirmed his plans to appeal. Film studio Warner Bros confirmed Depp’s departure and said his role would be recast. “We thank Johnny for his work on the films to date,” it said in a statement. Depp, 57, had sued the publisher of The Sun newspaper over a 2018 article, which claimed he assaulted his ex-wife Amber Heard. Earlier this week, Judge Mr Justice Nicol ruled The Sun had proved the article to be “substantially true”.(BBC)…[+]

Austrian officials have revealed new intelligence failings ahead of the murder of four people in Vienna on Monday night, prompting the city’s anti-terror chief to step aside. Erich Zwettler was being suspended at his own request, police said. It has already emerged the Austrians were told in July that the suspect had tried to buy ammunition in Slovakia. Now, the Austrians have admitted the gunman met two people from Germany who were already under observation. Interior Minister Karl Nehammer has spoken of “obvious, and in our view intolerable mistakes”.

In a further development, a mosque and a mosque association frequented by the 20-year-old have been closed, which Integration Minister Susanne Raab said had contributed to his radicalisation. He had repeatedly visited the mosques in the suburbs of Ottakring and Meidling. The Ottakring mosque association was notorious for its links to militant Islamists: a preacher there is said to have led a German-speaking brigade to Syria before being killed in a drone strike.(BBC)…[+]