Category: Євросоюз

In a move that many hailed as a salve for the historic wounds between Europe and Africa, Germany last December returned 22 artifacts looted during the Colonial Era to what is now Nigeria. But five months on, questions are being asked in Germany as to whether cultural guardians were wise to hand back the priceless treasures, known as the Benin bronzes. Controversy erupted after Nigeria’s outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, suddenly declared in March that the artifacts would be returned to a traditional ruler — and not to the Nigerian state, as Germany had expected. The recipient named by Buhari is …

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Forensic scientists will on Monday begin the exhumation of 128 victims of the Spanish Civil War from a vast burial complex near Madrid, El Pais newspaper reported. It will be the first exhumation of its kind involving people whose bodies were moved from elsewhere after the 1936-1939 war and reburied without their families’ permission in the Valley of Cuelgamuros, which was formerly known as Valley of the Fallen. El Pais reported that forensic scientists have installed a laboratory inside the vast burial site, which includes a monument and 150-meter-high cross, on the outskirts of Madrid prior to the exhumation work …

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David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November.   When Smith shared his shape with the world in March, excited fans printed it onto T-shirts, sewed it into quilts, crafted cookie cutters or used it to replace the hexagons on a soccer ball — some even made plans for tattoos. The 13-sided polygon, which 64-year-old Smith called “the hat,” is the first single shape ever found that can completely cover an infinitely large flat surface without ever repeating …

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Iran’s supreme leader said Sunday a deal with the West over Tehran’s nuclear work was possible if the country’s nuclear infrastructure remained intact, amid a stalemate between Tehran and Washington to revive a 2015 nuclear pact. Months of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington to salvage the nuclear accord with six major powers have stalled since September, with both sides accusing each other of making unreasonable demands. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s guarded approval comes days after both Tehran and Washington denied a report that they were nearing an interim deal under which Tehran would curb its nuclear program in return for …

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Latest developments: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree Sunday, sanctioning 178 Russian nationals, including Constitutional Court judges, for five years. The sanctions include asset freezes, trade restrictions, travel bans and other measures. Russia launches Iranian-made Shahed “kamikaze” drones on Ukraine during the night to detect and “exhaust” Ukrainian air defenses and to fire missiles from its aircraft or missile carriers. Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, The Kyiv Independent Reports. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prighozin said Sunday that his mercenary fighters would not sign any contract with the Russian ministry of defense after Russian …

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A U.S. musician and former paratrooper has been arrested in Moscow on drug dealing charges and his court appearance, locked in a metal cage, has been shown on state television. Russia’s court system named the detained American as Michael Travis Leake, 51, who was formerly a songwriter and musician in the Russian “Lovi Noch” (“Catch the night”) rock band. Rossiya 24 state television showed him standing in a court cage while REN TV showed a picture of him being detained on June 6 in Moscow, lying on the floor in his underpants and a T-shirt with his hands restrained behind …

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The world has moved on from former British prime minister Boris Johnson and the governing Conservative Party and the rest of the country do not miss the drama of his period in office, energy minister Grant Shapps said on Sunday. Johnson quit parliament late on Friday in protest against an investigation by lawmakers into his conduct as prime minister during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdown-breaking parties were held in Downing Street. Asked about criticism from Johnson and his allies that he was forced out, Shapps told Sky News: “The world has moved on. He is the one …

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Montenegro was holding an early parliamentary election Sunday, a vote that could put an end to deep political divisions and years of instability that have hampered the small NATO-member country on its route to joining the European Union. Some 542,000 voters are eligible to choose among 15 parties and coalitions fielding candidates, ranging from groups that are staunchly pro-Western to ones that are pro-Serbian and pro-Russian. Unlike in previous elections, when the focal point of campaigning was whether the country should be leaning toward the EU or closer to Russia and Serbia, the economy and living standards dominated the issues …

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Romania has recalled its ambassador to Kenya after Dragos Tigau allegedly compared Africans to monkeys. Tigau is reported to have said, “The African group has joined us,” when a monkey appeared outside a window during a meeting in April at a United Nations building in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. CNN reports it has obtained documents showing that African diplomats formally condemned the Romanian diplomat’s remarks during a meeting with Eastern European envoys at an April meeting. CNN reports that it has also seen two letters of apology Tigau sent to the diplomats. Romania said Saturday that it had just recently learned …

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Huge strides in life expectancy worldwide are bringing new challenges that come with increased longevity, the Dutch health minister told VOA this week. “If you look at it from a global perspective, we’ve seen that over the past 25 years, on average we added more than five years of global life expectancy,” Ernst Kuipers, Dutch minister of health, welfare and sport, noted during a stop in Washington. Looking at it another way, the former internist continued, “It actually means that for more than 20 years in a row, every week we added more than a day to the life expectancy …

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The southern reach of the Dnipro river is likely to return to its banks by June 16 following a vast flood unleashed by the breach of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam this week, a Russian-installed official said Saturday. The flood has inundated towns and villages below the dam, trapping residents and sweeping away entire houses on both sides of the Dnipro, which separates Ukrainian-controlled Kherson province from the southern section that Russian forces control. Vladimir Saldo, who heads the Russian-controlled part, said the water level at Nova Kakhovka, the town adjacent to the dam on the downstream side, had dropped by 3 …

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Lithuania’s capital was flooded with pink food, decor, and colorful outfits on Saturday, as residents celebrated the Baltic nation’s love for a cold beetroot dish commonly known as “pink soup.”  While beetroot soup is beloved in many eastern European nations, Lithuania lays claim to Saltibarsciai — made of kefir, cucumbers, beetroot, and dill — eaten cold and a favorite on a hot summer’s day.  “It’s not just soup – it’s a way of life,” said the city’s tourism agency Go Vilnius, which organized the inaugural festival in its honor.  French student Victor Delcroix came dressed as a bowl of “Pink …

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An explosion at a rocket and explosives plant in Turkey caused a building to collapse Saturday, killing all five workers inside, an official said.  The explosion occurred at around 8:45 a.m. at the compound of the state-owned Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, on the outskirts of the capital, Ankara, Gov. Vasip Sahin told reporters.  Sahin said the explosion was likely to have been caused by a chemical reaction during the production of dynamite. Prosecutors have launched a formal investigation, he said.  Gray smoke was seen rising from the compound as ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the area, private NTV …

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French judges Saturday handed preliminary charges of attempted murder to a man suspected of stabbing four young children and two adults in a French Alps park, an attack that reverberated across France and beyond.  The suspect, a 31-year-old Syrian refugee with permanent Swedish residency, has a 3-year-old daughter living in Sweden, regional prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said. Witnesses told investigators that the suspect mentioned his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ during the attack Thursday targeting a playground in the lakeside town of Annecy.  The victims, who came from multiple countries, are no longer in life-threatening condition, the prosecutor said. The …

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The United Nations and Russia began talks Friday about Russia’s continued participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which facilitates the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products from Back Sea ports. Rebecca Greenspan, secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, held discussions with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin. Before the talks, however, Vershinin said some recent Ukraine developments could not be overlooked in the talks. Those events include the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the Kharkov region and the destruction of Russia’s Togliatti Odessa ammonia pipeline, also in Kharkov. The pipeline is one of …

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The United States and Kosovo are continuing to engage in an unusual public spat, after the staunch U.S. ally’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, resisted calls to take steps that the West says are necessary to de-escalate ethnic tensions in the country’s north. Tensions flared last week as ethnic Albanian mayors entered municipal buildings with the backing of police, despite having won with only 3.5 percent of the vote in local elections that ethnic Serbs boycotted. U.S. Special Envoy for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar and EU Special Envoy Miroslav Lajcak visited Kosovo and Serbia this week, where they asked the …

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U.S. President Joe Biden is set to meet outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House on Monday as jockeying to secure his successor intensifies. While the White House says the official agenda for the meeting is to discuss the alliance’s July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the issue of who will be next at NATO’s helm during this difficult period in its 74-year history will no doubt be front and center, as the alliance faces Russia’s war in Ukraine. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, is the longest-serving NATO chief in a generation and has had his tenure extended …

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From up close, the catastrophic destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine appears worse than how it’s depicted in news reports and far off satellite imagery, according to U.N. officials who assessed conditions in the area on Friday. “We have been visiting this morning with the authorities the communities, the small villages along the river that have been completely submerged by the flooding,” said Denise Brown, one of several U.N. officials who addressed journalists via satellite from the town of Bilozerka, on the west bank of Dnipro River. “The status situation is dramatic,” said Brown, humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine for …

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French President Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, traveled to the French Alps Friday to be with families of the victims stabbed Thursday in a lakeside park in the city of Annecy.  The couple’s first stop was a hospital in the French city of Grenoble, where three of the four young children are receiving treatment.   Government officials said all four children have undergone surgery and are “under constant medical surveillance,” with one child in critical condition.  The fourth child is being treated in Geneva, in Switzerland.   It is not immediately clear whether the president and his wife will go …

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In early May, The New York Times Magazine published an in-depth story about Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic with details about his alleged connections with a criminal group that is being prosecuted for a range of crimes including drug trafficking and murder. The story drew broad attention internationally, not just in the Balkans where local investigative outlets have reported many of the same allegations, which Vucic denies. The State Department declined to comment on the merit of the allegations in the story, however at least one high-ranking State Department official shared the story on social media. And the allegations were raised …

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