Month: September 2019

The head of Ukraine’s state-owned oil company says Kyiv will remain able to supply Europe with natural gas from its subterranean storage units even if European Union-mediated talks don’t pan out. “We are fully confident that Ukraine can maintain gas supply … at least during the first quarter of 2020,” Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev said Friday at a public event in Brussels. On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine held their third round of ministerial-level talks in Brussels about the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe, where all parties hoped to negotiate a new long-term agreement on gas flows before the …

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Protesters burned a Chinese flag and police fired pepper spray during a march Saturday in an outlying district of Hong Kong in renewed clashes over anti-government grievances.   Police accused protesters of spraying water at officers during the march by several thousand people in Tuen Mun in Hong Kong’s northwest. Reporters saw at least one person arrested.   The event was relatively small compared with previous demonstrations that have taken place every weekend since June. The protests started with opposition to a proposed extradition law and have expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.   …

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Dozens of demonstrators were arrested at yellow vest protests in Paris on Saturday as more than 7,000 police were deployed to quell any violence by the movement and its radical, anarchist “black blocs.” There were also fears that the demonstrators could try to infiltrate a march against climate change in the French capital. The yellow vest movement erupted 10 months ago and blindsided President Emmanuel Macron, whom protesters accused of being out of touch with the needs of ordinary French people. FILE – Yellow vest protesters wait near the Seine River for other members to join them, Sept. 7, 2019. …

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Rare small protests were staged overnight in Cairo and other Egyptian cities calling for the removal of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, but authorities quickly dispersed them and arrested dozens, a security source said. Hundreds of citizens took to the streets late Friday to protest, chanting slogans including “Leave, Sissi!” and holding up placards. At least 74 were arrested overnight, a security source told AFP, with plain clothed police patrolling sidestreets of downtown Cairo. The country effectively banned protests under a 2013 law and a state of emergency is still in full effect. Police fired tear gas and deployed forces in …

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Young people afraid for their futures protested around the globe Friday to implore leaders to tackle climate change, turning out by the hundreds of thousands to insist that the warming world can’t wait any longer. Marches, rallies and demonstrations were held from Canberra to Kabul and Cape Town to New York. More than 100,000 turned out in Berlin.   Days before a U.N. climate summit of world leaders, the “Global Climate Strike” events were as small as two dozen activists in Seoul using LED flashlights to send Morse code messages and as large as mass demonstrations in Australia that organizers …

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President Donald Trump irritably defended himself Friday against an intelligence whistleblower’s complaint, including an allegation of wrongdoing in a reported private conversation Trump had with a foreign leader.    The complaint, which the administration has refused to let Congress see, is “serious” and “urgent,” the government’s intelligence watchdog said. But Trump dismissed the matter, insisting he did nothing wrong.    He declared Friday that the complaint was made by a “partisan whistleblower,” though he later said he did not know the identity of the person. He chided reporters for asking about it and said it was “just another political hack …

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Two reporters for the U.S.-based Bloomberg news agency have appeared in court accused of trying to undermine Turkey’s economic stability with a story they wrote on last year’s currency crisis. The trial against Kerim Karakaya and Fercan Yalinkilic opened in Istanbul on Friday. Thirty-six others have also been charged for their social media comments on the story written in August 2018, increasing concerns over media freedoms in Turkey. The trial is part of a fierce crackdown on journalists and media outlets. The Turkish Journalists Syndicate says at least 126 journalists or media workers are currently in prison. Karakaya and Yalinkilic …

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Sixty years ago, children accounted for more than one-third — 36% — of the U.S. population. Today, that number is 22% and shrinking faster than anticipated. The U.S. Census Bureau had not expected the kid population to drop that low until 2030, but the reality hit more than a decade ahead of projection. Last year, the U.S. birth rate dropped to its lowest number in 32 years.  The births of 3,788,235 babies in 2018 is a 2% drop from 2017. That’s the lowest number of babies born in the U.S. since 1986. The birth rates declined among all racial groups …

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Police in Zimbabwe say the leader of a doctors’ strike, who allegedly was abducted by government agents, is receiving care at a Harare hospital and is not under arrest. Dr. Peter Magombeyi reappeared in the village of Nyabira late Thursday, five days after he went missing. In his absence, doctors and nurses held protests in Harare, demanding the government find him and ensure his safe return. Speaking Friday to VOA’s Zimbabwe service, national police spokesperson Paul Nyathi said Magombeyi is under observation at a hospital.   “He has been examined by his own medical team and a government team,” Nyathi …

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Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, along with their infant son, Archie, are making their first official tour as a family, starting Monday in a troubled South Africa whose president says women and children are “under siege” by shocking violence. South Africa is still shaken by the rape and murder of a university student, carried out in a post office that sparked protests by thousands of women tired of abuse and impunity in a country where more than 100 rapes are reported every day. This is “one of the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman,” President …

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