Month: February 2018

French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to Corsica on Tuesday to confront demands for greater autonomy for the restive Mediterranean island by nationalists buoyed by unprecedented political strength. Macron paid homage to Claude Erignac, the island’s prefect who was shot dead by separatists in Ajaccio two decades ago, and will later meet nationalist leaders before setting out his vision for Corsica in a speech on Wednesday. Corsica’s relationship with mainland France has long troubled French presidents. Separatists waged a 40-year militant campaign, blowing up police stations and mansions owned by mainlanders and carrying out assassinations, before laying down arms in 2014. …

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Czech parties launched talks Tuesday on a law making it easier to call national referendums, presenting a tricky balancing act for the ruling ANO party as it seeks support for a new government while preventing an unthinkable Czexit vote. Since Britain voted in 2016 to exit the European Union, European officials have been determined to avoid more anti-EU votes elsewhere, including the Czech Republic, one of the bloc’s most euroskeptic countries according to polls. Governments in Prague have been largely cool to deeper EU integration and the bloc’s migration policies, although membership has not yet come into question. But with …

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North Korea has been getting equipment and technology for its nuclear weapons program through its embassy in Berlin, Germany’s intelligence chief says. “When we detect something of this sort, we prevent it,” BfV head Han-Georg Maassen told German public television NDR Monday. “But we can’t guarantee that we will be able to detect and thwart all cases.” Maassen says German authorities suspect underground markets and shadow buyers got their hands on the parts and the North Koreans procured them in Germany.  He did not say exactly what equipment the North Koreans bought, but said it is likely duel-use technology, meaning …

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European Central Bank head Mario Draghi said Monday that it’s too soon to declare victory over weak inflation – indicating it would be premature to set a definite end date for the bank’s money-printing stimulus despite a strengthening economy. Draghi’s statement to a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, said that continuing economic growth means inflation would eventually tick up toward the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent, from an annual 1.3 percent in January.  “While our confidence that inflation will converge towards our aim of below, but close to, 2 percent has strengthened,” Draghi said, “we …

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The United States says it is confident that both the U.S. and Russia will have honored their commitments under the bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) by the Monday deadline.  U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said there is good news to report on deadline day, which is also the eighth anniversary of the new Start treaty taking effect. “The United States has met the central limits of the New Start treaty in August 2017. We assess at this time that Russia has also progressed toward meeting those limits. We have no reason to believe that the Russian government …

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Lithuania’s president said Monday Russia has deployed additional nuclear-capable missiles in its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad on a permanent basis, calling it a threat to Europe.   President Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters after visiting NATO troops in the central Lithuanian town of Rukla that “Iskander missiles are being stationed in Kaliningrad for permanent presence as we speak.” She called it a threat not only to Lithuania but to “half of all European countries.”   NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, who also visited the Rukla base where the military alliance’s multinational battalion is stationed, said Grybauskaite’s assertion, if true, …

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Opponents of Silvio Berlusconi accused the former prime minister on Monday of being to blame for a surge in migrants to Italy in recent years as campaigning for a national election turned increasingly ugly. The build up to the March 4 vote was shaken at the weekend when a neo-Nazi shot and injured six African migrants in central Italy, in a racially motivated attack after a Nigerian man was arrested on suspicion of murdering a local teenager. While denouncing the gunman as “insane,” Berlusconi, whose center-right coalition is leading in the opinion polls, on Sunday adopted a new, hardline on …

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Israel’s education minister is set to visit Warsaw amid uproar over proposed legislation that would outlaw blaming Poland for crimes committed during the Holocaust. Naftali Bennett said Monday he would “make it clear: the past can’t be rewritten, the future should be written together.” The bill sparked outrage in Israel, raising tensions with a close ally. It calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people. Israel sees it as an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews …

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