Month: August 2017

Russia said Sunday that the U.S. is soon sending its envoy for negotiations over unrest in eastern Ukraine to Moscow for talks about the ongoing violence. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the announcement after an hour-plus meeting in Manila with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It was the first high-level contact between the two countries since U.S. President Donald Trump last week reluctantly signed new sanctions into law to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election to help him win. Lavrov said U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker would meet with Russia’s envoy for the Ukraine crisis, Vladislav Surkov. …

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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that Russian interference in last year’s presidential election created “serious mistrust,” and that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed “a lot of work” that has to be done regarding U.S.-Russia relations. The two top diplomats held talks on the sidelines of a regional forum in the Philippines where Tillerson said he told Lavrov the U.S. will respond by Sept. 1 to Russia’s order to remove hundreds of diplomats and other staff from U.S. diplomatic facilities in Russia. “I told the foreign minister that we had not made a decision regarding …

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Turkish police said they were working with Australian authorities to investigate a foiled plot to bomb an Etihad Airways flight using explosives which Canberra said were flown in from Turkey. In a statement issued late on Saturday police said they had contacted Australian authorities as soon as they received news of the foiled plot. The two sides have “started working to clarify unclear and unconfirmed matters regarding the possibility that explosive substances were sent from Turkey three months ago,” said the statement carried by Turkish media. Australian police said on Friday that an Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to …

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Emmanuel Macron’s honeymoon didn’t last long.   Less than three months after his election, France’s energetic and image-conscious president has seen his popularity drop after announcing budget cuts, launching a divisive labor reform and engaging in a damaging dispute with the military.   A series of opinion polls last week showed the percentage of French citizens who said they were satisfied with Macron’s policies and trusted their young leader to deal with the country’s problems plunging. The reversal might not affect the visible international profile he has cut since taking office, but it could hurt Macron’s ability to secure his …

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Britain is prepared to pay up to 40 billion euros ($47 billion) as part of a deal to leave the European Union, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported, citing three unnamed sources familiar with Britain’s negotiating strategy. The European Union has floated a figure of 60 billion euros and wants significant progress on settling Britain’s liabilities before talks can start on complex issues such as future trading arrangements. The government department responsible for Brexit talks declined to comment on the Sunday Telegraph article. So far, Britain has given no official indication of how much it would be willing to pay. The …

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The shift this Saturday morning starts early — to catch male weekend vacationers heading to the beach. The first women on the main road running through the decaying Italian seaside resort of Castel Volturno, 30 kilometers north of Naples and home now to an estimated 20,000 African migrants, are older Central Europeans, but younger Nigerians aren’t far behind. By 9 a.m. there are about 30 sex workers touting for business along the strip — a small fraction of the nighttime contingents. Castel Volturno is one of Italy’s ground zeros when it comes to a migration crisis roiling Italian politics and …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin stripped to his waist to brave the cold waters of a mountain lake as part of a three-day fishing and hunting trip in the Siberian wilderness, the Kremlin said. Putin, 64, is renowned for his strong-man publicity stunts, which have contributed to his sky-high popularity ratings. The trip comes eight months before Russia’s presidential election next March and, though he has yet to announce his candidacy, Putin is widely expected to run and to win comfortably. The hunting and fishing expedition took place on Aug. 1-3 in the republic of Tyva in southern Siberia, on the …

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Russia’s former ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak, said on Saturday his conversations with former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn had been transparent and focussed on matters of U.S.-Russia cooperation. Kislyak ended his tenure in Washington in July but remains a key figure in ongoing U.S. investigations into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became known that he had failed to disclose the content of conversations he had with Kislyak and misled U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence about their meetings. “We only spoke about the most simple things… but …

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A new study shows that deaths that result from extreme weather in Europe could increase 50 times by the end of the century if the effects of global warming are not curbed. In the study published Saturday by The Lancet Planetary Health journal, scientists say weather-related disasters could kill more than 152,000 people a year by 2100, up from 3,000 per year recently. The researchers say the toll could be especially high in southern Europe. “Unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency and appropriate adaptation measures are taken, about 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful …

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Alaska is the biggest – yet one of the least populated American states. There are just over 741,000 people living there – oil industry workers, adventurers from all over the U.S., Native Alaskans, immigrants. Within this complex cultural mosaic there is a group known as Russian Old believers. Nearly 50 years ago, they established a village called Nikolaevsk on Alaska’s Kenai peninsula. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from there. …

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Top U.S. intelligence officials are refusing to back down over concerns about Russia, even as U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian officials lament what they describe as deteriorating relations between the two countries. “Our values and our interests are not aligned naturally,” Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a small group of reporters this week. “Russia desires to be the center of influence in the European theater,” Stewart said. “There will be a perpetual contest between us and the Russian state for either regional or global dominance.” Stewart, who spoke before the latest public sparring …

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Mikheil Saakashvili, since last week the world’s only stateless former president, says he could have remained safely in the United States, or perhaps settled with his family in his wife’s home nation, the Netherlands. But instead, the former Georgian leader, who last week was stripped of his adoptive Ukrainian citizenship, turned up without notice Thursday in Poland, where he stands at risk of being deported to Georgia to face criminal charges that he says are politically motivated. “No, I could have [received residency in the United States], I was even offered to do it, but I didn’t want to take …

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