Month: March 2018

“I brought tea for you — English tea, from Fortnum and Mason, the very best,” chirped the financial adviser in the foyer of a plush Moscow hotel near the Kremlin.  “You have a package for me, I think,” he added before scurrying off with his Russian client. The adviser, like many of his British colleagues, has been making routine rounds to reassure clients since the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain, an attempted assassination Britain accuses the Kremlin of orchestrating. British ministers and their Kremlin counterparts have been threatening further reprisals after retaliatory expulsions of diplomats …

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Time to check that mailbox.   Kensington Palace said Thursday that invitations for the wedding between Prince Harry and his American fiancée Meghan Markle have been dispatched.   Some 600 people have been invited to the May 19 nuptials at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. All 600 have also been invited to a lunchtime reception given by Queen Elizabeth II at St George’s Hall.   The invitations, which are beveled and gilded in gold along the edges, feature Prince Charles’ three-feather badge. They were made by Barnard & Westwood, which has held the Royal Warrant for printing and bookbinding …

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Poland’s government distanced itself Thursday from comments made by the prime minister’s father, who claimed Jews willingly entered ghettos during the German occupation of Poland to get away from their Christian neighbors. The comment by Kornel Morawiecki, a senior lawmaker and father of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, is the latest episode in weeks of bitterness that have erupted over a controversial new Holocaust speech law. Kornel Morawiecki claimed in a recent interview that Jews were not forced into ghettos by Germans but went willingly because “they were told there would be an enclave where they could get away from nasty …

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Saudi Arabian airstrikes are to blame for most civilian deaths and injuries in Yemen, says a report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council by the U.N. Secretary-General and High Commissioner for Human Rights. Yemen is entering its fourth year of conflict, a conflict the United Nations says is getting worse, with no end in sight. In late March 2015, Saudi Arabia began bombing Houthi rebels in support of the government.Since then, the U.N. Human Rights Office has verified 6,100 civilian deaths,more than one quarter of them children, and nearly 9,700 injuries. U.N. Deputy High Commissioner Kate Gilmore, who …

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The political fallout from an allegedly illegal Libyan campaign financing scandal continues to shake France, even as former president Nicolas Sarkozy strongly denies wrongdoing. Sarkozy claims that he has been accused without physical proof and that allegations of Libya illegally financing his 2007 campaign have made his life hell, according to Sarkozy’s alleged statement to investigating magistrates, published Thursday by France’s center-right Le Figaro newspaper. The 63-year-old Sarkozy is under formal investigation, a move that has shaken France’s political establishment.  At issue are allegations he accepted millions of dollars from the regime of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to finance …

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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was handed preliminary charges Wednesday over allegations he accepted millions of euros in illegal campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. A judicial official told The Associated Press that investigating judges overseeing the probe had charged the ex-president with illegally funding his successful 2007 campaign, passive corruption and receiving money from Libyan embezzlement. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The charges involving illegal campaign funding from a foreign dictator are the most serious faced by a former French president in recent history. They were presented after Sarkozy was …

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Tear gas was thrown into the Kosovo parliament Wednesday, but it failed to stop lawmakers from approving a major border agreement that is key to eventual membership in the European Union. Police arrested several opposition politicians who tossed tear gas several times just before voting was to take place, forcing lawmakers to evacuate the chamber. Despite the tactic, parliament passed the measure 80 to 11. The deal was hammered out in 2015. It sets Kosovo’s borders with neighboring Montenegro and fulfills a key requirement for Kosovars to enjoy visa-free travel throughout the European Union. It also moves Kosovo one step …

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Russia’s top election official has lashed out at U.S. State Department criticism that in the recent presidential election, Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) denied observer status to 4,500 monitors linked to anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, along with 850 others with ties to Golos, the independent Moscow-based election watchdog. “This is an absolutely illiterate lie,” CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova was quoted Tuesday as saying to Russia’s state-run TASS news organization. She was responding to a comment by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, who on Friday tweeted about widespread news reports of election monitoring violations. “The #Russian Central Election Commission’s decision to deny …

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The U.S. says it had constructive talks with its European partners last week on changes to the Iran nuclear agreement, but it is making contingency plans in case the talks fail and President Donald Trump decides to pull out of the landmark 2015 deal. Lead negotiator and State Department Policy Planning Director Brian Hook told reporters Wednesday he cannot predict whether U.S. talks with Britain, France and Germany on forging a supplemental agreement to address what Trump sees as deficiencies in the Iran nuclear agreement can meet a May deadline. May 12 is when the Trump administration is supposed to …

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The U.S. and French presidents, Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron, agreed in a phone call Wednesday on “the need to take action to hold Russia accountable” for its use of a nerve agent in the attack in Britain on a former Russian spy and his daughter, the White House said. In a statement, the White House said Trump and Macron “reiterated their solidarity with the United Kingdom in the wake of Russia’s use of chemical weapons against private citizens on British soil.” Britain has blamed Moscow for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the British city …

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A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions as authorities stepped up efforts to determine if the personal data of social-media users has been used improperly to influence elections. The request comes amid allegations that a data-mining firm based in the U.K. used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has denied wrongdoing. However, the firm’s board of directions announced Tuesday evening that it had suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an independent investigation of his actions. Nix made comments to …

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Despite tensions, sanctions and recriminations between the United States and Russia, two American astronauts will join a Russian cosmonaut blasting off Wednesday from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station. Even when things get nasty between the two countries, experts say the space program rarely suffers. The United States has depended entirely on Russia to deliver astronauts to the ISS since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. After President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for annexing Crimea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested U.S. astronauts could get to the International Space Station by trampoline. …

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