Month: March 2017

The U.S. State Department has “strongly condemned” the detention of hundreds of protesters throughout Russia including the country’s opposition leader on Sunday. Tens of thousands of Russians demonstrated in cities across the country in support of a call by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for accountability among Russia’s elite.  Nearly 500 people were detained around Moscow’s Pushkin square, including Navalny, for protesting without permission. “Detaining peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. He said the United States was “troubled” by the arrest of …

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Interior minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday the British government did not yet know what kind of cost there may be for trying to get the “widest possible access” to the European Union’s single market. Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty on Wednesday, hoping to secure what she calls a “good deal” of close cooperation on the economy and security while being able to control immigration. “I certainly do think that we should try to have the widest possible access to the single market … we don’t know what that cost would be, …

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Bulgarians were voting in a snap general election on Sunday, with the center-right GERB party challenged for power by Socialists who say they will improve ties with Russia even if it means upsetting the country’s European Union partners. Many Bulgarians feel a strong cultural affinity for Russia, with which they share the Cyrillic script and Orthodox Christianity and a decade after joining the EU, the Balkan country remains the bloc’s poorest member with corruption rife. The Kremlin’s most loyal satellite during the Cold War era, Bulgaria remains a popular holiday destination for Russians attracted by its Black Sea beaches and …

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There are an estimated 1.1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 500,000 of them are children. For many of them, getting enough food and water are their biggest challenges. Children who are hearing impaired face even bigger obstacles. But some of them are getting help, thanks to a U.S. based charity called Deaf Planet Soul. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

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A state election Sunday in western Germany offers Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives a tough test against their resurgent center-left rivals six months before Merkel seeks a fourth term in a national vote. The election for the state legislature in Saarland, a region of just less than 1 million people on the French border that Merkel’s Christian Democrats have led since 1999, is the first of three regional votes before Germany’s September 24 national vote. Test for Merkel, Schulz It’s being watched closely as the first electoral test since the center-left Social Democrats nominated Martin Schulz as Merkel’s challenger in January. …

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Francois Fillon’s aides used an umbrella to shield him from eggs thrown by protesters in southwest France on Saturday as the beleaguered conservative fell further behind centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-rightist Marine Le Pen in opinion polls. The contrast between former front-runner Fillon, embroiled in a financial scandal, and new poll favorite Macron was striking as both candidates campaigned 29 days before the first round of France’s unpredictable presidential election. Addressing a rally in the French island of La Reunion, in the Indian ocean, Macron departed from typical campaign speeches by inviting members of the audience — including a 6-year …

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Tens of thousands of pro-EU demonstrators rallied in London, despite heightened concerns about the terrorism threat, to mark the European Union’s 60th anniversary — just days before Britain’s exit from the EU is expected to formally begin. Organizers said about 80,000 people joined the march calling for Britain to stay in the EU on March 25. The demonstration came four days before British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would formally start Britain’s exit negotiations by invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. Hundreds of blue EU flags were carried by protesters in the procession as it stretched through …

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Riot police in Belarus launched a massive crackdown Saturday on protesters trying to hold a banned march in Minsk. Hundreds were reported arrested, and a human rights leader said many of the detainees had been beaten by police and needed medical attention. An estimated 700 people were trying to march through a central part of the capital, part of a wave of anti-government protests against a new tax on workers. Truckloads of police intercepted the protesters and attacked them with clubs. Witnesses said unarmed civilians also were assaulted, and a Reuters reporter said at least 10 journalists were arrested. Earlier …

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Riot police in the Belarusian capital have raided the office of a human-rights group hours ahead of an attempt by opposition activists to mount a large protest march. Authorities banned the demonstration planned for Saturday afternoon and dozens of police detention trucks were deployed in the center of Minsk. The authoritarian former Soviet republic has seen an unusually persistent wave of protests over the past two months against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled since 1994. After tolerating the initial protests, authorities cracked down. Lukashenko this week alleged that a “fifth column” of foreign-supported agitators was trying to bring him …

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Leaders of the European Union met in Rome Saturday to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding treaty and demonstrate that the EU can survive the impending departure of major power Britain. Under heavy security as the Italian capital braced for anti-EU protests later in the day and the risk of attacks such as that by an Islamic State follower in London last week, the 27 national leaders gathered in the Campidoglio palace where the six founding states signed the Treaty of Rome, March 25, 1957. Britain absent Conspicuous by her absence was British Prime Minister Theresa May, who …

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The man who killed four people outside Britain’s Parliament was in Saudi Arabia three times and taught English there, the Middle Eastern country’s embassy said.    A Saudi Embassy statement released late Friday said that Khalid Masood taught English in Saudi Arabia from November 2005 to November 2006 and again from April 2008 to April 2009.    The embassy said that he had a work visa. It said he returned for six days in March 2015 on a trip booked through an approved travel agent.   The Saudi Embassy said that he wasn’t tracked by the country’s security services and …

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A Syrian monitor says at least 16 people have died in airstrikes on a prison in northwestern Syria. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Saturday said prisoners and staff were killed in the strikes in the rebel-held city of Idlib. The Observatory says it has received reports that some of those killed were fleeing after the airstrikes and were shot by prison staff members. Idlib is an opposition stronghold where Russian warplanes have been known to carry out strikes in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has killed 400,000 people, wounded more …

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