Month: January 2019

Rescue crews in Spain appeared to be centimeters of rock away late Friday from the space where a 2-year-old boy is believed to be trapped underground after falling into a borehole 12 days ago.    Julen Rosello fell down the narrow 110-meter-deep borehole (360 feet) on Jan. 13 while his family was preparing a countryside Sunday lunch. His parents had another young son who died in 2017, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.    The tragic accident in Malaga province gripped Spaniards from day one and the country has followed closely every turn of an extremely complex and frequently hampered search-and-rescue mission.    …

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Greek lawmakers have ratified a deal with Macedonia, ending a nearly three-decade-long dispute between the neighbors in which the Balkan country will be renamed North Macedonia. Greece’s parliament narrowly passed the agreement, 153-146, on Friday. The deal normalizes relations between the two countries and paves the way for Macedonia to join NATO and the European Union. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed the ratification and praised the Greek government for its “vision, courage and persistence” in pushing ahead with the historic agreement. Top EU officials also hailed the deal. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the vote took “political …

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The European Commission has added Saudi Arabia to an EU draft list of countries that pose a threat to the bloc because of lax controls against terrorism financing and money laundering, two sources told Reuters on Friday. The move comes amid heightened international pressure on Saudi Arabia after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2. The EU’s list currently consists of 16 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea, and is mostly based on criteria used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body composed by wealthy …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is telling his embattled Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, to “stand tall” in the face of national and international calls to step down amid a political crisis. Maduro’s opponents accuse him of undermining democracy. He has presided over skyrocketing inflation, a collapsing economy and widespread shortages of basic goods. Erdogan said Thursday he was shocked at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president. In response to the announcement, Maduro said Wednesday he was ending diplomatic relations with the United States and ordered U.S. diplomats to leave within …

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Italy pressured the Netherlands on Friday to accept 47 migrants who have spent seven days at sea aboard a humanitarian rescue ship that has been allowed to enter Italian territorial waters due to bad weather conditions. The German aid group Sea-Watch said Friday on Twitter that it has received no response to multiple requests for the Dutch-flagged Sea Watch-3 vessel carrying people rescued off Libya on Saturday to access a port. The boat was permitted to enter Italian waters Friday due to deteriorating weather conditions, and the Italian coast guard said it was about one to two miles off Syracuse, …

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NATO and Russia failed on Friday to resolve a dispute over a new Russian missile that Western allies say is a threat to Europe, bringing closer Washington’s withdrawal from a landmark arms control treaty. At a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, envoys from NATO’s 29 members renewed their call on Moscow’s top diplomat to the alliance to destroy a nuclear-capable cruise missile system before a Feb. 2 deadline. Without a breakthrough, the United States is set to start the six-month process of pulling out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), having notified it would do so …

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Impatient with the lack of World Trade Organization rules to cover the explosive growth of e-commerce, 76 countries and regions agreed on Friday to start negotiating this year on a set of open and predictable regulations. The WTO’s 164 members were unable to consolidate some 25 separate e-commerce proposals at the body’s biennial conference at Buenos Aires in December, including a call to set up a central e-commerce negotiating forum. In a gathering on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, ministers from a smaller group of countries including the United States, the European Union and Japan, agreed …

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A Muslim party said it would launch a legal bid to change the name of Bosnia’s Serb region, enraging all Serbian parties in the volatile country and  prompting calls for calm from the European Union.  The largest Bosnian Muslim party, SDA, said Wednesday that the name Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) discriminated against  Bosniaks and Croats there, and that it would challenge it in the  constitutional court. Under the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country is split into two highly autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the federation dominated by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, linked via a weak central government. SDA leader Bakir Izetbegovic said the legal challenge was …

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The search for a two-year-old Spanish boy who fell into a narrow well Jan. 13 entered its riskiest phase Thursday as miners went down a new 60-meter (197-foot) parallel shaft to start digging across to the well. There have been no signs of life since the boy, Julen, fell into the borehole as his family walked through a private estate in Totalan in southern Spain. Rescuers found the well was blocked with earth, raising fears soil had collapsed onto the child. “Members of the Mines Rescue Brigade sent from Asturias [region] have just accessed the vertical well to start excavation …

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