Month: February 2018

British officials reacted angrily Monday to President Donald Trump’s stark criticism of the U.K. health care system, which he said was breaking down. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he is proud of the National Health Service and rejected Trump’s claim that it’s collapsing. The “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” he said. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called Trump’s comments “wrong” and said Britons love the NHS. The latest dispute between Trump and Britain started when Trump criticized …

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Russia sentenced 43 people to jail over online posts last year, a rights group said Monday, warning that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip. The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on “the creeping criminalization of the internet,” in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year. The report said there was a rise in physical attacks and criminal convictions, with the 43 people sentenced to prison in 2017 up from 32 in 2016. In a new trend, five people were placed in isolation in psychiatric …

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Prime Minister Theresa May’s office underscored Monday that Britain will not remain in a customs union with the European Union after the U.K. breaks with the 28-nation bloc. After a weekend of conflicting statements from government officials, a source in May’s office, speaking only on customary condition of anonymity, told British media that it is not their policy to be in a customs union. The comment comes as Britain seeks to clarify its position ahead of a new round of talks between Britain and the EU. May’s party has been split between those who want a complete break from the …

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Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili on Monday said an appeals court rejected his appeal for protection against possible extradition in a decision he said was politically motivated. The former president of Georgia entered Ukraine last September despite being stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship in a protracted standoff with the Kyev authorities, whom he accuses of corruption. He is wanted in Georgia on four charges including abuse of office, which he says are trumped up. The Ukrainian court upheld an earlier ruling to deny him the status of a person in need of additional protection. “This is yet another decision by …

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Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades won reelection to second five-year term Sunday, promising to continue economic recovery and the island’s reunification efforts. The conservative Anastasiades beat his leftist challenger Stavros Malas 56 to 44 percent. The two also faced-off in the 2013 election. “I will continue to be president for all Cypriots,” Anastasiades told cheering supporters in Nicosia. “Tonight, there are no winners of losers. There is only a Cyprus for all of us.” Malas told his backers they can be disappointed, but said “the battle” does not begin or end with a single election. He said he telephoned Anastasiades and …

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Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Athens Sunday to protest a potential compromise between Greece and Macedonia over a long-standing name dispute. Police estimated a crowd size of about 140,000, while organizers of the march claimed 1.5 million people from Greece and the Greek diaspora gathered to urge the government against brokering a deal regarding neighboring Macedonia’s official name. “The million protesters that the organizers imagined was wishful thinking,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a statement released by his office. “The crushing majority of Greek people conclude that foreign policy issues should not be dealt with with …

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After nearly two years in solitary confinement at a maximum security jail, the top surviving suspect of the deadliest terror attack in recent French history goes on trial Monday in Brussels. The four-day trial of 28-year-old Salah Abdeslam will not deal directly with the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 people around Paris, but rather a shootout with police months later. But it is being closely watched, in hopes it may shed insight into the tangle of alliances and events that link the Paris attacks with the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro. The trial may turn …

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U.S. President Donald Trump is contending that a controversial memo alleging that the FBI abused its power in probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “totally vindicates” him, but that view was challenged Sunday by one of the memo’s own authors. Trump complained in a Saturday Twitter comment that the “Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!” But Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, one of the key …

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IOC President Thomas Bach has strongly criticized the midweek ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that lifted Olympic doping bans for 28 Russian athletes, calling it “extremely disappointing and surprising.” “The IOC, we would never have expected this,” Bach said Sunday in Pyeongchang, where the Winter Olympics start Friday. “We feel that this decision shows the urgent need for reforms in the internal structure of CAS.” The CAS ruling on Thursday overturned doping bans on 28 Russians, citing insufficient evidence. Russia said it wanted to send 15 of the 28 to Pyeongchang, including gold medal-winning skeleton slider Alexander …

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