Month: May 2018

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to launch a new offensive against Kurdish militants along the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq. Turkey has conducted two previous operations aimed at Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, militants Ankara considers an extension of Kurdish fighters the Turkish government has been clashing with for three decades for control of southeastern Turkey. In an address to thousands of supporters in Istanbul in advance of June’s snap election, Erdogan said, “We will not give up on constricting terrorist organizations. In the new period, Turkey will add new ones to the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch …

READ MORE

High school students in Germany have gathered tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying the test was much harder than in previous years. By Sunday, the students from the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had gathered almost 36,000 signatures — even though only 33,500 people took last month’s statewide exam.   They complained that text excerpts from American author Henry Roth’s 1934 novel “Call it Sleep” were too difficult and obscure to analyze and asked for the grading to be more lenient this year.   The final high school exams in …

READ MORE

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that war could ensue if U.S. President Donald Trump withdraws from the 2015 deal in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. “We would open the Pandora’s box. There could be war,” Macron told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. But he added: “I don’t think that Donald Trump wants war.” Trump is set to decide by May 12 whether to pull out of the Iran deal. Trump has all but decided to withdraw but exactly how he will do so remains unclear, two White House officials and a …

READ MORE

Polish rescue workers on Sunday found the body of 38-year-old coal miner, the first fatality after an earthquake hit a coal mine in southern Poland. Three other miners have been missing some 900 meters (2,950 feet) below ground since Saturday morning at the mine in the town of Jastrzebie-Zdroj, close to Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. One of them has been located but was not rescued yet, a mining official said Sunday.   The head of the Jastrzebie Coal Company, Daniel Ozon, said the latest miner pulled out of the Zofiowka mine was pronounced dead after he had been …

READ MORE

Nearly a year ago, an investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller was tasked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with exploring any links or coordination between the Russian government and “individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” and, additionally, “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” according to the appointment order. Since the order was issued on May 17, 2017, the investigation has grown into a multipronged effort that has resulted in criminal proceedings against 19 people — five U.S. nationals, 13 Russians and one Dutch national — and three Russian organizations. Here …

READ MORE

Two missing coal miners were found hurt but conscious after a quake struck a mine Saturday in southern Poland, and scores of rescue workers were still trying to reach five other missing miners, a Polish mining company said.  The rescue operation was launched at 11:25 a.m. Saturday after a temblor occurred at the Zofiowka coal mine, said Katarzyna Jablonska-Bajer of the Jastrzebie Coal Company. The mine is located in the southern town of Jastrzebie-Zdroj near Poland’s border with the Czech Republic.  She said four miners were quickly brought to the surface but contact was lost with seven others who were …

READ MORE

Trauma surgeons in London said U.S. President Donald Trump had missed the point after he linked a wave of knife crime in the British capital to a ban on handguns. Anger also flared in France after Trump, in a speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA), used his hands in a gesture to mimic the shooting of victims in Paris in 2015.  Trump, who is due to visit Britain on July 13, told members of the NRA in Dallas, Texas, on Friday that a “once very prestigious” London hospital, which he did not name, had become overwhelmed with victims of …

READ MORE

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the “pain of colonization” Saturday during a visit to New Caledonia that was rich with symbolism and emotion as the South Pacific archipelago prepares to vote on whether to break free of French rule. Wrapping up a three-day trip, Macron said, “France would not be the same without New Caledonia” — but he was careful not to openly campaign for the territory to stay French when it holds an independence referendum in November. The territory east of Australia has about 270,000 inhabitants including the native Kanaks, who represent about 40 percent of the population. New …

READ MORE

Russian’s most widely known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, along with hundreds of his supporters, were detained Saturday as street demonstrations unfolded in Moscow and 90 other Russian cities to protest Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fourth presidential term. Within minutes of Navalny’s arrival at a protest in central Moscow, he was arrested along with his ally, Nikolai Lyaskin. Baton-wielding riot police — and even men dressed in traditional Cossack uniforms — repeatedly waded into the Moscow crowd of mostly younger Russians to make arrests. The independent monitoring group OVD-Info estimated that 1,300 people had been detained nationwide by police, who dubbed …

READ MORE