Category: Євросоюз

Emergency services on the Spanish Canary Islands said Wednesday that more than 500 migrants have reached there in four large wooden boats this week. One of the boats was carrying 280 migrants, the islands’ emergency service said on X, formerly known as Twitter. The state news agency EFE says it was the largest number in a single boat since human traffickers began to regularly use the Canary Island route in 1994. Spanish Red Cross coordinator José Antonio Rodríguez Verona told The Associated Press he had not seen so many people in one boat since 2008, when 234 arrived in a …

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The White House says a recent high-level call “reaffirmed the strong partnership between South Africa and the United States” — a move that analysts said Tuesday improves what has long been a tense relationship, marred by a public diplomatic spat and Pretoria’s reluctance to disengage from Russia. In a readout issued late Monday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he spoke by phone to his South African counterpart, Sydney Mufamadi, and that the two “recommitted to advance shared priorities including trade and investment, infrastructure, health, and climate.” Sullivan also thanked South Africa for hosting an upcoming high-level meeting on the …

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This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced Wednesday in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.  The announcement will be made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the Physics prize Tuesday to three nuclear scientists for their individual experiments in “exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules.” The academy said Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.” The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Americans Carolyn …

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Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have agreed on a plan they hope will help expedite Ukrainian grain exports, officials said Tuesday, with needy countries beyond Europe potentially benefiting from speedier procedures. The deal means that grain inspections will shift from the Ukraine-Poland border to a Lithuanian port on the Baltic Sea, according to a statement from the Ukrainian farm ministry. The move seeks to facilitate the transit of Ukrainian exports through Polish territory, the statement said, without providing further details. From the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, where the inspections for pests and plant diseases will take place from Wednesday, the grain …

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster could signal a shift in the U.S. House of Representatives on aid to Ukraine, with some of his possible successors strongly in favor of assisting Kyiv, but others staunchly opposed.  The House voted for the first time on Tuesday to remove its leader, as eight of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans voted with 208 Democrats against him. There was no immediate indication of who might succeed McCarthy, but the next speaker could quash more Ukraine aid before a proposal reaches the House floor if that person opposes the idea.  The vote to oust McCarthy came just three days …

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Russian prosecutors are seeking a 9½-year sentence for a fugitive former state TV journalist who famously stormed a live news broadcast in protest a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova, who formerly worked as an editor at state-controlled Channel One in Russia, now lives in exile in France after escaping house arrest and fleeing Russia with her daughter last year. Now, prosecutors are demanding the nearly decadelong sentence at Ovsyannikova’s trial in absentia for distributing “fake news.” This news comes a few days after American journalist Evan Gershkovich marked six months in a Russian jail over espionage charges …

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Meta is proposing to offer European users subscription-based versions of Instagram and Facebook if they would rather not be tracked for ads, a source said on Tuesday. The idea, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as the social media giant seeks to comply with a growing list of EU regulations designed to curb the power of U.S. big tech. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg makes its billions of dollars in profit by offering advertisers highly individualized data on users, but new European regulations and EU court decisions have made that practice harder to do. The proposal has …

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A court in Spain’s southeastern city of Murcia opened an investigation into a fire that tore through two adjoining discos, killing 13 people. It is the country’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than 30 years. The discos, Teatre and Fondo Milagros, were popular dance spots, located on the outskirts of town. In January 2022, city officials ordered the venues closed after Teatre’s owner divided the building it was in to establish Fondo Milagros. The order was disregarded. The fire erupted just before sunrise Sunday. Authorities said the inferno probably spread quickly through air vents. A firefighter said that six of …

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Armenia has voted to ratify the founding statute of the International Criminal Court, or ICC — a decision that could obligate the nation to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he were to set foot in Armenia. Armenia earlier assured Russia that, despite the country’s ratification of the Rome Statute, Putin would not be arrested if he were to visit Armenia, but Russia had warned against Armenia’s decision. Moscow said Armenia and Russia have been longtime allies, but that Moscow would call into question Armenia’s current leadership if the ratification took place.  The Armenian president, Vahagn Khachaturyan, now has 60 days …

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The annual Nobel Prize announcements continue Tuesday in the Swedish capital Stockholm when the winner – or winners – of the physics prize will be revealed.  The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Anton Zeilinger of Austria.  The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, cited the three scientists for “pioneering quantum information science.” The committee said each man carried out “groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated.” The Nobel announcements began Monday …

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The Armenian parliament on Tuesday voted to join the International Criminal Court, which earlier this year indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes connected to the deportation of children from Ukraine.   The move is likely to further strain Armenia’s deteriorating relation with its ally Russia, which last month called Yerevan’s push to join the ICC an “unfriendly step.”   Countries that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC are bound to arrest Putin if he sets foot on their soil.   Armenian officials say the effort to join ICC has nothing to do with …

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Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda. The Vatican published a letter Monday that Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage. New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the letter “significantly advances” efforts …

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The Serbian army has cut the number of troops stationed on the border with Kosovo by nearly half, top Serbian military officials said Monday, denying U.S. and other reports of a mass military buildup in the wake of a shooting over a week ago that killed four people and raised fears of instability in the volatile region.  Troop numbers are now at their “regular” level of some 4,500 soldiers, reduced from 8,350 in the wake of violence on September 24 in northern Kosovo between heavily armed Serb gunmen and Kosovo police, the Serbian Army Chief of Staff Gen. Milan Mojsilovic …

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A senior Ukrainian official called on Monday for a reassessment of Western anti-aircraft systems being supplied to Ukraine, saying simpler and cheaper weapons could be more cost-efficient in countering Russia’s Iranian-made Shahed drones. The Shahed drones are deployed in Russian attacks virtually every day. Ukraine has become skilled at downing them though some still hit industrial and residential sites despite Moscow’s assurances that it does not target civilians. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the issue was not just one of securing more anti-aircraft systems “but primarily solving a mathematical problem lying in the economics of …

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The last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh left the region Monday, completing a grueling weeklong exodus of over 100,000 people — more than 80% of its residents — after Azerbaijan reclaimed the area in a lightning military operation.  The bus that entered Armenia carried 15 passengers with serious illnesses and mobility problems, said Gegham Stepanyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman. He called for information about any other residents who want to leave but have had trouble doing so.  In a 24-hour military campaign that began on Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing …

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The start of October in Spain this year has been the warmest since records began, the country’s meteorological agency AEMET said on Monday, with nearly 40% of weather stations recording maximum temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit). The early autumn season is so far offering Spaniards little respite after a summer with four heatwaves spread out over 24 days, part of a global pattern of rising temperatures that is widely attributed by scientists to human activity. “In most of the Iberian Peninsula, temperatures on Oct. 1 were between seven and 14 degrees above normal for this time of the …

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At memorials to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in an unexplained plane crash exactly 40 days ago, dozens of mourners hailed the mutinous mercenary chief as a patriotic hero of Russia who had spoken truth to power.   The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was traveling to St. Petersburg crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on Aug. 23, including two other top Wagner figures, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards and a crew of three.  It is still unclear what caused the plane to crash two months to the day since Prigozhin’s failed mutiny. The Kremlin said on Aug. …

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Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here. The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards. First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9. Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes: An Idea More Powerful Than Dynamite …

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he All-Ukrainian Environmental League is a grassroots organization that has been operating since 1997. As part of its portfolio, it trains groups of volunteers to fight wildfires. But in times of war, the firefighters’ responsibilities have expanded. Tetiana Kukurika has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergiy Rybchynski. Video editing by Vitaliy Hrychanyuk and Anna Rice. …

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A United Nations mission arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh Sunday, Azerbaijani media reported, as a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from the region began drawing to a close following an Azerbaijani military offensive last month. The mission, led by a senior U.N. aid official, is the global body’s first access to the region in about 30 years. Armenia has asked the World Court to order Azerbaijan to withdraw all its troops from civilian establishments in Nagorno-Karabakh and give the United Nations access. The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, in February ordered Azerbaijan to ensure free movement through …

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