Category: Євросоюз

Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58.   Representatives for Stevenson told The Associated Press that he died Sunday but had no other details to share Monday.   Stevenson was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a …

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Pope Francis will travel to Portugal for World Youth Day in the first week of August and include a stop at the popular Marian shrine in Fatima, the Vatican said Monday. The August 2-6 visit is longer than originally expected and covers almost the entire week of the big Catholic rally that St. John Paul II inaugurated to try to invigorate young people in their faith. Francis is staying in Lisbon for the length of the visit but will make a day trip to Fatima on August 5. Francis previously traveled there in 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of …

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The U.S. State Department and media analysts have criticized Russia over its refusal to allow regular consular access to a U.S. journalist who has been detained in Moscow since his arrest in late March. The State Department had sought a meeting this Thursday with Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, but Moscow denied the request, the paper reported. A State Department spokesperson was cited as saying officials strongly objected to Russia’s failure to comply with its responsibilities under international consular agreements governing access to detained Americans.  “Regardless of the hurdles, our team is focused on ensuring timely consular access to all …

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Leaders of South Korea and the European Union agreed Monday to increase pressure on Russia over its war against Ukraine and condemn North Korea’s ballistic missile tests. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Seoul, after the three leaders attended the weekend summit of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations in Hiroshima, Japan. “We agree to maintain and increase the collective pressure on Russia, particularly through effective implementation of the respective restrictive measures,” they said in a joint statement. “We are committed to support …

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Spanish soccer has a racism problem, football federation chief Luis Rubiales said on Monday, after Real Madrid lodged a complaint following alleged insults hurled at their Brazilian star Vinicius Jr.  The top-flight LaLiga is under pressure to do more to combat racism after the Brazilian president, FIFA and fellow stars such as Kylian Mbappe voiced support for Vinicius, even as LaLiga President Javier Tebas wrote on Twitter that it is doing enough and Vinicius should inform himself “before you criticize and slander LaLiga”.   “The first thing is to recognize that we have a problem in our country,” Rubiales said at …

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The European Union fined Meta a record $1.3 billion on Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. digital snooping fears. The privacy fine of 1.2 billion euros from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is the biggest since the EU’s strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon’s 746 million euro penalty in 2021 for data protection violations. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s lead privacy regulator in the 27-nation bloc because the Silicon Valley tech giant’s European headquarters is based in Dublin. …

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Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose conservative party scored a landslide election Sunday but without the seats in parliament to win outright, indicated Sunday he will seek a second election in a bid to consolidate victory without need of a coalition partner.  Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party was a full 20 percentage points ahead of its main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, nearly complete results showed. But a new electoral system of proportional representation meant his 40% vote share still was not enough to secure a majority of the 300 seats in parliament. To form a government, he would either have …

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Tens of thousands of Moldovans rallied in the capital Chisinau on Sunday to support their pro-Western government’s drive toward Europe amid what officials have said are Russian efforts to destabilize their country.  Moldova has been badly hit by the impact of Moscow’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which Chisinau has repeatedly condemned, and applied to join the European Union.  President Maia Sandu has accused Russia of seeking to sabotage its European integration by fueling anti-government protests and propaganda. Moscow denies meddling in Moldova’s affairs.  “Moldova does not want to be blackmailed by the Kremlin,” Sandu said at the rally, which was …

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Protests over pension reforms have roiled France in recent months, but demonstrations have been kept largely at bay at one of the country’s glitziest events, the Cannes Film Festival. On Sunday, dozens of protesters gathered in Cannes to oppose the raising of the reforms pushed through parliament by President Emmanuel Macron’s government. Those protests, however, were far removed from the central hub of the festival, the Palais des Festivals, or Cannes’ seaside boulevard, the Croisette. Instead, they gathered on the edge of the city, on the Boulevard Carnot. “We are against the retirement reforms which will make many people die …

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The floods that sent rivers of mud tearing through towns in Italy’s northeast are another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes, something that has been happening around the globe, scientists say. The coastal region of Emilia-Romagna was struck twice, first by heavy rain two weeks ago on drought-parched ground that could not absorb it, causing rivers to overflow overnight, followed by this week’s deluge that killed 14 and caused damages estimated in the billions of euros. In a changing climate, more rain is coming, but it’s falling on fewer days in less useful and more dangerous downpours. The …

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Seven young activists protesting against climate change climbed into the Trevi Fountain in Rome on Sunday and poured diluted charcoal into the water to turn it black. The protesters from the “Ultima Generazione” (“Last Generation”) group held up banners saying “We won’t pay for fossil [fuels],” and shouted “our country is dying.” Uniformed police waded into the water to take away the activists, with many tourists filming the stunt and a few of the onlookers shouting insults at the protesters, video footage showed. In a statement, Ultima Generazione called for an end to public subsidies for fossil fuels and linked …

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German police are investigating the possible poisoning of exiled Russians after a journalist and an activist reported health problems following a Berlin meeting of dissidents, a spokesman for the force said on Sunday. The probe is being handled by the state security unit, a specialized team that examines cases related to terrorism or politically motivated crimes, a Berlin police spokesman told AFP. “An investigation has been opened. The probe is ongoing,” he said, declining to provide further details. Russian investigative media outlet Agentstvo this week published a report saying two participants who attended a April 29-30 meeting of Russian dissidents …

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In Hiroshima, Japan, the Group of Seven industrial powers Sunday convened the summit’s working session on the war in Ukraine, guest starring Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president made his dramatic entrance to city the day earlier in a French plane, following his appearance at the Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Friday, where he appealed for support for Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russian aggression. Hours after Zelenskyy’s arrival, Moscow announced that its forces had occupied Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city under fierce fighting that Zelenskyy’s troops have tried to defend for months. Zelenskyy appeared to confirm that …

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Bakhmut was “only in our hearts,” hours after Russia’s defense ministry reported that forces of the Wagner private army, with the support of Russian troops, had seized the city in eastern Ukraine. Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden at the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelenskyy said he believed the city had fallen, but added: “You have to understand that there is nothing,” saying of the Russians, “They destroyed everything.” “For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts,” he said. “There is nothing in this place.” The Russian ministry statement on …

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Tens of thousands of people rallied in Serbia’s capital Friday for a third time in a month in protest at the government’s handling of a crisis after two mass shootings in the Balkan country earlier this month, even as officials rejected the criticism and ignored their demands.  In a show of defiance, the nationalist right-wing party of autocratic Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic organized a counter-protest in a town north of Belgrade attended by thousands of his supporters.  The opposition protesters in Belgrade were chanting slogans against Vucic, demanding the resignations of two senior ministers and the revocation of broadcasting licenses …

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A powerful Auschwitz-set psychological horror film, The Zone of Interest, is emerging as the hot ticket at the Cannes Film Festival, with reviews Saturday were near-unanimous in their praise. British director Jonathan Glazer’s film focuses on the family of Rudolf Hoess, the longest-serving commandant of the Auschwitz camp, who lived a stone’s throw from the incinerators. While the screams and gunshots are audible from their beautiful garden, the family carries on as though nothing was amiss. The horror “is just bearing down on every pixel of every shot, in sound and how we interpret that sound… It affects everything but …

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New developments: Russia warns Western alliance they will face “colossal risks” if they provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, TASS news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as saying on Saturday. U.S. President Joe Biden told G-7 leaders on Friday that Washington supports joint allied training programs for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighters, senior U.S. officials said. The Group of Seven rich nations announced support Saturday for gas investments, calling it a “temporary” step as they divest from Russian energy. The plan has dismayed climate activists, who say it may hurt climate objectives. The member states of the …

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The World Health Organization on Saturday launched a global network to help swiftly detect the threat from infectious diseases, like COVID-19, and share the information to prevent their spread. The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) will provide a platform for connecting countries and regions, improving systems for collecting and analyzing samples, the agency said. The network aims to help ensure infectious disease threats are swiftly identified and tracked and the information shared and acted on to prevent catastrophes like the COVID pandemic. The network will rely on pathogen genomics to analyze the genetic code of viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing …

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Italy received offers of international aid on Friday for floods, described as its worst for a century, which killed 14 people and left thousands stranded in waterlogged homes or in evacuation centers. As some areas began the clean-up following downpours earlier this week, others were newly evacuated on Thursday and authorities extended a red weather alert in parts of the Emilia Romagna region, where nearly two dozen rivers have broken their banks. A mammoth rescue effort is underway after six months’ rain fell in 36 hours, with emergency services and the armed forces searching for people stuck in their homes …

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Russian air strikes hit several locations in Ukraine overnight, including the capital, Kyiv, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Japan for a summit of the Group of Seven (G7) leading global economies. In a post on Twitter shortly after his arrival in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Zelensky wrote that the summit means “security and enhanced cooperation for our victory.” “Peace will become closer today,” he added. Meanwhile, Ukrainian military authorities said 18 drones had been shot down over the capital during the night. “Overnight, the aggressor again carried out a massive drone strike,” wrote Serhiy Popko, the head …

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