Month: June 2018

Britain’s biggest companies will from 2020 be legally required to publish the gap between the salaries of their chief executives and what they pay their average U.K. workers, under proposed government rules. Business Minister Greg Clark said that the government would set out new laws in Parliament on Monday directing that U.K.-listed companies with more than 250 employees would have to reveal their pay gaps and justify their CEOs’ salaries. “We understand the anger of workers and shareholders when bosses’ pay is out of step with company performance,” Clark said in a statement Sunday. He said the new laws would improve transparency and boost accountability for both shareholders and workers, …

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Police in the Kurdistan region of Iraq said Saturday that a 20-year-old Iraqi man had admitted killing a 14-year-old girl in Germany, where the case has stoked the immigration debate. The body of Susanna Feldman, of Mainz, near Frankfurt, was found Wednesday in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, near a refugee center where the alleged attacker had lived, German police said. An autopsy showed she had been the victim of a violent and sexual attack. Feldman was Jewish, but police said there was no evidence her religion had been a factor in the attack, and the Central Council of Jews in Germany cautioned against attributing …

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Gena Turgel, a Holocaust survivor who comforted Anne Frank at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before the young diarist’s death and the camp’s liberation a month later, has died. She was 95. Turgel died Thursday, Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said on Twitter. The news triggered tributes from some of the people the Polish native touched in the decades she shared her World War II experiences, including witnessing the horrors of the Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. After World War II, Turgel married one of Bergen-Belsen’s British liberators, Norman Turgel, earning the nickname “The Bride of Belsen.” Her wedding …

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Prime Minister Theresa May will gather together squabbling British ministers at her country residence after this month’s European Union summit to settle on details of a much-anticipated Brexit policy paper. May has yet to agree on some of the fundamental details of what type of trading relationship she wants to have with the European Union after Britain leaves next March. As a result, talks with the EU have all but ground to a halt, raising fears among businesses and in Brussels that Britain could end up crashing out of the bloc without an agreed-upon deal. “There’s going to be a lot happening over the next few weeks. You know, …

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Newly crowned French Open champion Simona Halep said she was inspired to win her first Grand Slam title by her manager Virginia Ruzici’s feats 40 years ago at Roland Garros. Ruzici’s 1978 Paris triumph over Mima Jausovec was the last time a Romanian, man or woman, had won a Grand Slam, but Halep ended that long wait Saturday in defeating American Sloane Stephens, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1. In doing so, Halep equaled the feat of American seven-time French Open champion Chris Evert, who also suffered three Grand Slam final losses before capturing the 1974 French title. “It’s a motivation and inspiration,” Halep, …

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Prince Harry and his new wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, joined the pageantry of the annual Trooping the Color ceremony Saturday in London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday. The duke and duchess, who married three weeks ago, made the short trip from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade in a horse-drawn carriage as royal fans lining the Mall cheered and waved. After the event, the couple joined other members of the royal family on the palace’s front balcony to watch the Royal Air Force fly by. The 92-year-old queen, who recently had a successful cataract operation, watched …

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Pope Francis has told the world’s oil executives that a transition to less-polluting energy sources “is a challenge of epochal proportions.” On the last day of a two-day conference Saturday, the Roman Catholic leader urged the executives to provide electricity to the one billion people who are without it, but said that process must be done in a way that avoids “creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future.” Reuters reports the unprecedented conference was held behind closed doors at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The news agency …

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Plastic and chemical pollution has been detected in most samples of snow and seawater taken by researchers in Antarctica, said the nongovernmental environmental group Greenpeace. Greenpeace scientists gathered water and snow samples from the southernmost continent during a voyage from January to March of this year. Laboratory analysis revealed humanity’s footprint on this most remote corner of the globe. “It was about one microplastic piece at least per liter. When you think of extrapolating that out to the scale of the Antarctic Ocean, it’s really, really significant. And previously we thought that the Antarctic Ocean might sort of be protected …

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A Kremlin spokesman says Vienna could be a site for a possible summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.  Dmitry Peskov said Saturday the two leaders had talked in March about meeting and Vienna was mentioned as a possible location.  Peskov said, however, no decision has been made about the meeting or a venue.  Peskov, speaking in Qingdao, China, where Putin is attending a regional summit, said, “there have been no concrete agreements or understanding, and no specific discussions are being conducted now.”  Trump is in Canada at the annual G-7 meeting.He leaves later Saturday for …

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Poland’s LBGT community celebrated a rainbow made of water and light in a Warsaw square as members geared up for the country’s largest pride parade. Light projected onto water created a “water hologram” rainbow for four hours starting late Friday, getting people in the spirit for the yearly “Equality Parade” in the Polish capital Saturday afternoon. The pride celebrations come as LGBT activists say a conservative turn in Poland is forcing them to fight harder for their rights, even though their hope of seeing same-sex marriage legalized has no real chance in the country now. Conservative strongholds  A record number …

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