Month: December 2021

French schoolchildren clung nervously to their parents as they entered a vast vaccine center west of Paris on Wednesday — then walked excitedly away with a decorated “vaccination diploma,” as France kicked off mass COVID-19 inoculations for children age 5 to 11. It’s not a moment too soon for the French government, which is facing the highest recorded infection rates since the pandemic began but trying to avoid a new lockdown. The health minister said Wednesday that the swiftly-spreading omicron variant is expected to be dominant in France by next week, but ruled out additional restrictions on public life for now. Officials are hoping that a …

READ MORE

Russian and U.S. negotiators will hold talks in January to discuss Moscow’s demand that NATO halt its eastward expansion into the countries of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Wednesday. “We don’t want a war,” Lavrov said. “We don’t want to take the path of confrontation. But we will firmly ensure our security using the means we consider necessary,” he said in an interview with Russian RT television. The foreign minister’s remarks came as Russian energy giant Gazprom continued to restrict natural gas supplies to Europe, prompting renewed accusations the Kremlin is …

READ MORE

Turkish authorities arrested a U.S. diplomat in Turkey last month for allegedly selling a bogus passport to a Syrian national, according to Istanbul police. Authorities identified the diplomat Wednesday by his initials, D.J.K. Officials also said they had video of the envoy handing the passport to a person they described as suspicious at Istanbul airport The police said the diplomat, who works at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, remains in detention after they arrested him on November 11 with $10,000 in his possession. He was later charged with suspicion of selling the document, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. …

READ MORE

Dutch prosecutors have demanded life sentences for four suspects on trial for the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people.  The prosecution closed three days of final arguments Wednesday by saying Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Igor Pulatov, along with Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, collaborated to get a Buk missile system from Russia to support separatists in Ukraine.  An international investigation in 2018 concluded a missile launcher used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 came from Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. Prosecutors said the missile was brought to its launch site “by …

READ MORE

Greece’s coast guard says one migrant has died and dozens are feared missing after a boat sank off the coast of the island of Folegandros.  The body of the unidentified man was recovered during an ongoing search and rescue operation launched early Wednesday after the boat sank some 180 kilometers (112 miles) southeast of Athens. The coast guard said 12 people, all believed to be from Iraq, had been rescued and transported to the nearby island of Santorini.  Most survivors said there were originally 32 people on the boat, but one told authorities there were about 50.  The coast guard said …

READ MORE

Poland and Lithuania have backed Ukraine in urging Western powers to immediately impose sanctions on Russia over its military buildup along the Ukrainian border. As fears mount of a Russian invasion, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday “called upon the international community to step up sanctions on the Russian Federation over its ongoing aggression against Ukraine.” In a statement issued after the leaders met in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains, they “once again urged the Kremlin to de-escalate the situation by withdrawing its troops from the Ukrainian borders.” Despite U.S. President Joe Biden …

READ MORE

The United States believes bilateral talks with Russia over its massive troop buildup along the Ukrainian border could start in January, said the State Department’s top diplomats, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the U.S. and its allies for tensions in the region.  “We’re prepared to engage diplomatically through multiple channels,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a press conference Tuesday.  “I think you’ll see relatively early in the new year engagements in all of those areas, to see if we can advance the differences diplomatically,” added Blinken, referring to the existing U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue and through …

READ MORE

A Belarusian blogger has been sentenced to three years in prison on charge of “insulting” Alexander Lukashenko by writing in a post that the country’s authoritarian ruler was “illegitimate” amid a wave of protests against the results of a presidential election last year that opposition figures say was rigged. A court in the western town of Shchuchyn pronounced its ruling against Vadzim Ermashuk, also known in his posts on social media as Vadimati, on December 21. The 36-year-old blogger, who was also charged with desecrating the flag for a post in which he called it a “rag,” rejected the charges …

READ MORE