Month: August 2017

A bus carrying construction workers drove off a pier in southern Russia on Friday, killing at least 16 people, officials said. The bus was carrying workers who were building a pier for an oil company on the Black Sea coast not far from Crimea, the Investigative Committee said. Several oil companies are drilling for oil off the Russian Black Sea coast. Official accounts of how many workers were on the bus that plunged into the sea changed several times Friday morning. By noon, the Emergency Situations Ministry said 41 people had been on the bus — the 16 people killed …

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Norway and China have resumed talks on a bilateral free trade deal, Norway’s Industry Ministry said Thursday, in another sign that their relationship was thawing after a row over the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo. Beijing suspended discussions immediately after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Liu in 2010. The dissident was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms. Liu died on July 13 from liver cancer. China and Norway agreed to resume …

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A new U.S. study has found an “extreme level” of wealth inequality in Russia that has increased much more significantly than it has in former Eastern European communist countries and in China since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The study, conduced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found inequality in Russia has been driven by the transition from communism, during which wealthy Russians accumulated offshore wealth about three times larger than the net value of the country’s foreign reserves. This offshore wealth is comparable to all the financial assets held by households throughout Russia. …

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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday during a visit to Ukraine that the Trump administration was “actively reviewing” whether to provide lethal defensive weapons to the war-torn country. When asked whether Russia might see such a move as a threat, Mattis responded, “Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you’re an aggressor.” The previous U.S. administration held the view that sales of defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine would unnecessarily provoke Russia, but Trump administration officials have reopened consideration of the previously rejected plan. “The morality of doing something that would have a counterproductive result struck [President Barack] Obama as a …

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Russian and U.S. officials traded accusations on Thursday over their respective policies in Afghanistan, pointing fingers of blame at each other. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed regret that the main focus of U.S. President Donald Trump’s new Afghanistan strategy is “regulation by methods of force.” “We are certain this is a futile course,” Lavrov said. Asked for a response by VOA, a senior U.S. administration official said what Trump put forward Monday in a nationally televised address “is not a military-only strategy. There’s a strong diplomatic, political element, even economic element to the strategy. So, it’s just …

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U.S. interim co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Ambassador Richard Hoagland, is retiring on August 28. Announcing his plans at a roundtable discussion at the Washington Foreign Press Center, Hoagland, currently the State Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, said he will be replaced by Andrew Schofer, a career foreign service officer who most recently served as charge d’affaires of the U.S. Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna. “He has experience in the settlement of the Cyprus and other conflicts,” Hoagland said.  “I think the Secretary of State and the State …

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A Spanish High Court judge on Thursday ordered another one of the four suspects arrested over twin attacks in Catalonia last week, Salh El Karib, to be freed on certain conditions, according to a court source. El Karib ran an internet cafe in the northeastern Spanish town of Ripoll where most of the alleged members of the 12-strong cell lived. Investigating judge Fernando Andreu had originally asked for him to remain in police custody pending further investigation of his possible role in the attacks, which killed 15 people in Barcelona and the coastal resort of Cambrils. El Karib will have …

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Two people were injured by an explosion in the center of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Independence Day, police said on Thursday. The blast occurred at 1406 (1106 GMT), police said in a statement, giving no more details. The local television channel 112 showed a woman lying on the ground in the street near the building of the Ukrainian government. …

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Net migration to Britain has fallen to a three-year low as a growing number of European Union nationals left the country following last year’s Brexit referendum, according to official figures released Thursday. The figures from the Office for National Statistics provide evidence that the uncertainty and economic jitters caused by Britain’s vote to quit the EU are having an impact on immigration. The statistics office said net migration – the difference between arrivals and departures – was 246,000 in the year to March 31, a fall of 81,000 on a year earlier. More than half the change was due to …

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Officials in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on Wednesday canceled a performance by the American rock group Allah-Las following a tip from Spanish police that a terror attack might be imminent. Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said at a hastily arranged news conference that police were questioning the driver of a van loaded with gas tanks that was found near the concert venue. The vehicle was registered in Spain. Concert organizer Rotown said on Twitter that the concert venue, a former grain silo and elevator called Maassilo, had been evacuated. The decision to cancel the event was made less than …

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