Category: Євросоюз

new york — Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin’s top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir, which will be released October 22. The New Yorker published excerpts from the book Friday, featuring writing from Navalny’s prison diary and earlier. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022. “There will not be anybody to say goodbye to … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.” Navalny had been serving a 19-year …

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STOCKHOLM — Meta Platforms said on Friday that it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian speakers in Moldova ahead of the country’s October 20 election, for violation of the company’s policy on fake accounts. Authorities in Moldova, an ex-Soviet state lying between Romania and Ukraine, said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chat bots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in a referendum on European Union membership held alongside the presidential election. Pro-European President Maia Sandu is seeking a second term in the election and called the referendum on joining the …

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london — The U.K. government was urged Friday to raise the case of jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai with China, after reports that David Lammy, the foreign minister, is heading to Beijing.  Lai, 76, is the founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily, which supported mass pro-democracy protests in the economic hub.  Detained in 2020, he is awaiting trial on charges including colluding with foreign forces and sedition.  In London, his legal team said they hoped Lammy would put Lai’s case “front and center” during his visit, which has not been confirmed by his department.  Lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher …

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paris — Scientist Jim Wild has traveled to the Arctic Circle numerous times to study the northern lights, but Thursday night he needed only to look out of his bedroom window in Lancaster, England. For at least the second time this year, sky-gazers in many parts of the world were treated to colorful auroras at latitudes beyond the polar extremes where they normally light up the skies.  The dazzling celestial shows were caused by a gigantic ball of plasma — and an accompanying magnetic field — that erupted from the sun earlier this week.  When this eruption, called a coronal mass …

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zurich — Two months before FIFA is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as the 2034 World Cup host, the soccer body was urged again Friday to allow independent scrutiny of the kingdom’s human rights obligations for the tournament. A group of law and human rights experts plus Saudi activists abroad want FIFA to mandate ongoing reviews — and a potential termination clause — into the 2034 World Cup hosting contract. The advisers who came to Zurich on Friday want FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is closely tied to Saudi political and soccer leaders, to learn from how Qatar was picked to …

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kyiv, Ukraine — A Russian missile slammed into a commercial building in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight, killing four people including a 16-year-old girl, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Friday. It was the fourth Russian attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa and the nearby region in the last five days. Kiper said a day of mourning had been announced for Friday in the region to remember people killed in a Russian drone attack on October 9. “In two days Russian terrorists killed 13 civilian people in the Odesa region and most of them are youth,” Kiper said on …

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STOCKHOLM — Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.   Below are some facts about the background and efforts of the movement.   Atomic bombing of Japan    In 1945 the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to bring an end to World War II and avoid a hugely costly invasion of the Japanese home islands.   The two bombs killed an estimated 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while many thousands more died of burns and radiation injuries in the following …

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ROME — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was city-hopping across Europe on Thursday to promote a “victory plan” that he said “aims to create the right conditions for a just end to the war” against Russia, detailing the proposals to European allies after a summit with President Joe Biden was derailed by Hurricane Milton. Zelenskyy’s talks in London with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte were quickly followed by another meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, who just the previous day sent a strong signal of support for Ukraine by visiting Ukrainian troops being trained in …

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washington — The article in the Seattle Tribune had everything: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Adolf Hitler and a $15 million classic car. Unsurprisingly, it spread like wildfire across Russia’s state and pro-Kremlin media. But the subject was a strange one for a news site about a U.S. city; such outlets usually cover only local stories. In fact, the article with headline “Hitler’s parade car bought by Ukraine’s Zelensky” was another fake spread by Russian propaganda. There is no such media outlet as the Seattle Tribune, just a website masquerading as a full-fledged publication. And the article itself was a compilation of …

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STOCKHOLM — Swedish police said on Thursday they were investigating a shooting near an Israeli target in the city of Gothenburg, which the national broadcaster said was a unit of Israeli defense electronics firm Elbit Systems.  Police said in a statement it had apprehended a young suspect at the scene and launched a probe into suspected attempted murder and serious weapons crimes.  They did not identify the company, but Elbit Systems Sweden CEO Tobias Wennberg told Reuters there had been a serious incident outside its premises on Thursday, adding that no one was injured in the incident.  “Elbit Systems Sweden otherwise …

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WASHINGTON — Russian opposition politician and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza was released from a Russian prison on August 1 as part of a wide-ranging exchange of prisoners between Russia and several Western countries. He had been jailed in April 2022 on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. He was almost fatally poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017. Since his release, Kara-Murza has been actively involved in the Russian opposition’s diplomatic efforts, meeting with the U.S. and French presidents and the German chancellor. During a recent visit to Washington, he sat down for interviews with Voice of America journalists. Speaking …

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WASHINGTON — Neither rising death tolls nor plunging temperatures are likely to change the trajectory of Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to senior U.S. officials charged with supporting Kyiv’s fight against Moscow’s forces.  The officials, briefing reporters Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss battlefield developments, said fighting over the past several weeks has resulted in only minor changes to the front lines, with few indications Russia is making any adjustments. “It’s an attritional strategy,” said a senior U.S. military official. “It’s kind of the Russian way of war that they continue to throw mass into the problem.” That willingness …

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WASHINGTON — “What Americans are really worried about now is not wars, shootings or homelessness. It’s the puzzling absence of any issues with China,” declares a blonde influencer on TikTok, speaking in near-fluent Mandarin. “A U.S. presidential candidate recently stated that America should learn from China and stop causing trouble,” she added, displaying an image of President Biden. The influencer, who says her name is Alina and claims to be a Russian living in Singapore, promotes what she says are “high-quality Russian and Chinese products” on her account. However, the same blonde Russian woman also appears in other posts on TikTok …

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WASHINGTON — A prominent Ukrainian news outlet reported Wednesday it is facing “ongoing and systematic pressure” from the office of the Ukrainian president that is threatening the outlet’s work. In a statement on its website, the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda said officials are being blocked from communicating with the outlet’s journalists, its reporters are being denied access to official events and businesses are being pressured to stop advertising on its website. In the statement, the outlet also highlighted a tense exchange between Ukrainska Pravda journalist Roman Kravets and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a recent press conference. During the interaction, Zelenskyy …

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LONDON — That long-held Wimbledon tradition of line judges dressed in elegant uniforms is no more.  The All England Club announced Wednesday that artificial intelligence will be used to make the “out” and “fault” calls at the championships from 2025.  Wimbledon organizers said the decision to adopt live electronic line calling was made following extensive testing at the 2024 tournament and “builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology that has been in place for many years.”  “We consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our …

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BEIJING — China’s anti-dumping measures against brandies imported from the European Union are “legitimate trade remedy measures,” the commerce ministry said on Wednesday, a day after imposing the temporary curb. French brands such as Hennessy and Remy Martin will face the strictures, adopted just days after the 27-nation bloc voted for tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), sparking its biggest trade row with Beijing in a decade. China’s commerce ministry said preliminary findings of an investigation showed that dumping of brandy from the European Union threatened “substantial damage” to domestic industry. On Wednesday the ministry said the EU’s actions against Chinese …

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BEIJING — Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy will visit China next week, sources familiar with the plan said, as the new Labor government seeks less confrontational ties with the world’s second-largest economy and to resume trade and investment talks. British officials have said they want to recalibrate many of the previous Conservative Party-led government’s positions on China, which it described as an “epoch-defining challenge,” particularly around accepting Chinese job-creating investment. But Britain is unlikely to budge on issues such as Chinese firms’ involvement in providing key infrastructure, human rights and restoring the license of state broadcaster CGTN, as it is controlled …

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