The Lithuanian people along with democracy leaders from Belarus, Cuba and Myanmar have been awarded this year’s John McCain Freedom Award. The award ceremony was held in Washington, D.C., on October 19, as Alexey Gorbachev reports in this story narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergii Dogotar, Elena Matusovsky …
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth returned to work Friday following her first overnight stay at a hospital in years for what Buckingham Palace called “preliminary investigations.” According to the palace, the 95-year-old monarch spent Wednesday night in the private King Edward VII’s Hospital, undergoing tests after canceling an official trip to Northern Ireland to mark the 100th anniversary of its creation. The palace has said Queen Elizabeth accepted medical advice to rest for a few days. She returned to Windsor Castle by lunchtime Thursday. The matter was unrelated to COVID-19, and she remains in “good spirits,” stated the palace late Thursday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, sending …
A visit by a group of French senators to Taiwan earlier this month is just the latest sign that European countries are willing to engage with the East Asian democracy even at the risk of angering China, according to regional experts. The lawmakers from the Taiwan Friendship Group, led by Senator Alain Richard, arrived in Taiwan on October 6 for a five-day trip. They met the following day with President Tsai Ing-wen, who awarded Richard with a national medal during a brief reception. Richard is a former French defense minister. Richard, who previously visited in 2015 and 2018, praised the …
Presidential ill health, police raids and corruption allegations, some involving caretaker Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, have thrown the Czech Republic into a surreal political crisis. The jarring turn of events could not have come at a worse time — the unnerved country is already in the grip of an acute energy crunch, like its European neighbors, and it is facing an alarming uptick in coronavirus infections. The Czech Republic has been in post-election limbo since Tuesday, when a Senate committee stripped President Miloš Zeman of his powers. The decision came after doctors at a military hospital in Prague, the Czech …
Queen Elizabeth II spent a night in the hospital for tests after being forced to cancel a visit to Northern Ireland this week, Buckingham Palace said Thursday. “Following medical advice to rest for a few days, The Queen attended hospital on Wednesday afternoon for some preliminary investigations, returning to Windsor Castle at lunchtime today, and remains in good spirits,” a palace statement said. Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency said the trip to the hospital was unannounced as it was expected to be a short stay, and also to protect the 95-year-old monarch’s privacy. The overnight stay was for “practical reasons,” …
Deep divisions over the European Union’s legal order and energy took an EU summit into late Thursday, with eastern member states Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic standing in defiance against Brussels. The rule of law issue was especially thorny, with the potential to shake the very foundations of the 27-nation bloc. The east-west divide was set to continue Friday, when leaders would return to discuss migration, a topic that turned Europeans bitterly against each other when Germany opened its doors to asylum-seekers fleeing war in 2015. Poland again defended an October 7 ruling by its Constitutional Court that said …
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is resisting calls by some public health officials to implement new COVID-19 restrictions, despite a surge of new infections hitting the nation. The Health Ministry reported 52,000 new infections on Thursday, with a daily average the past week of more than 44,000 — a 16% increase from the previous week. The World Health Organization reported this week that Britain has among the highest number of daily new infections in the European region, the only part of the world that saw an increase in new cases last week. Speaking to reporters, Johnson said the government is going to stick to a plan it laid out earlier this year which called for a series of steps to allow the country to reopen and lift the restrictions. Johnson said officials are carefully watching the COVID-19 numbers and said while the figures are high, they are within the parameters that government …
A group of mixed-race women who were abducted as children by state officials in what was then Belgian Congo is suing the Belgian state for crimes against humanity. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the case comes as Belgium struggles to reconcile with its brutal colonial past. …
British authorities said Thursday that a British man has been charged in the fatal stabbing of lawmaker David Amess last week while he was meeting with constituents at a church. Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old of Somali heritage, has been charged under the Terrorism Act. The death of the longtime lawmaker has stunned Britain and particularly its politicians, who have a tradition of being accessible to constituents. His murder has sparked high level conversations about how Britain protects its leaders and confronts domestic extremism. The 69-year-old Amess was a social conservative who opposed abortion and supported Britain’s exit from the European Union. His killing came five years after Labour Party legislator Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist, the first British lawmaker to be killed since a peace agreement ended violence in Northern Ireland nearly three decades before. Some information for this …
As the European Parliament wrapped up a mission to Slovenia last Friday, Dutch MP Sophia in ‘t Veld cited concerns that public debate in the country is often hostile. Her comments came after Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa criticized the European Parliament and made what some said were anti-Semitic remarks. The European delegation were in Slovenia to assess democracy, rule of law, and fundamental rights including press freedom in the country, which currently has the rotating presidency of the European Union. While public institutions work well, the mission cited areas of concern including harassment and pressure on public broadcasters and …
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers Thursday and Friday to talk about security issues in Afghanistan, tensions with Russia and technology policy. “I’m here to help advance NATO’s military adaptation, and ensure the alliance is prepared for the challenges of the future,” Austin tweeted after arriving Wednesday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the defense ministers would discuss preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists, and making sure Afghans evacuated during a massive airlift operation are able to resettle in NATO member states and not remain at transit centers. …
German authorities on Wednesday detained two former soldiers who are alleged to have tried to form a mercenary group that would have intervened in the military conflict in Yemen. Federal prosecutors said the men, identified only as Arend-Adolf G. and Achim A. in keeping with Germany privacy laws, were detained in southern Germany. Both are German citizens and former members of the Bundeswehr. The men are accused of being ringleaders in the formation of a terror organization, prosecutors said in a statement. Together, they allegedly decided in early 2021 to create their own mercenary group of between 100 and 150 …
Czech police are investigating allegations that a senior aide to President Milos Zeman committed a crime by concealing the 77-year-old’s worsening health. Earlier this week, the speaker of the Senate, Milos Vystrcil, received a doctors report that Zeman was unable to perform his duties and unlikely to be able to do so soon. Zeman was hospitalized Oct. 10, the day after opposition candidates ousted Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s party and won most of the seats in the lower house of the Czech Parliament. As president, Zeman must choose who forms the next government. Lawmakers accuse Zeman’s chief of staff, Vratislav Mynar, of knowing Zeman’s condition and …
Spanish government geologists on Wednesday said the Cumbre Vieja on the Spanish island of La Palma is continuing to violently erupt with no signs of stopping or even slowing down. The geologist took video of huge pyroclastic blocks floating along a river of lava flowing from the volcano’s northern zone. Meanwhile, video filmed by the Volcanology Institute of the Canaries (INVOLCAN) showed the lava flows moving into the town of La Laguna approaching a gas station. Officials say the station had been emptied of fuel and water in recent days in advance of the approaching flow. Streams of red-hot lava have engulfed almost 800 hectares of land, destroying about 2,000 buildings and many banana plantations. The volcano on one of …
An international Russia-hosted meeting Wednesday pressed the Taliban to form a “truly inclusive” government in Afghanistan and called for the United Nations to convene a donor conference as soon as possible to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe facing the war-torn country. The huddle, known as the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan, was held with the participation of leaders of the interim Taliban government and senior officials from Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, India, as well as five formerly Soviet Central Asian states. “Participating countries call on the current Afghan leadership to take further steps to improve governance and to form a …
In Belarus, just across the border from Ukraine, many children have been living with chronic radiation sickness since a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986. They have returned to school after being unable to escape contamination for yet another summer due to COVID-19 pandemic border restrictions. For VOA, Ricardo Marquina has more from the Gomel region of southern Belarus in this report narrated by Miguel Amaya. …
The European Parliament has awarded the European Union’s highest human rights prize to imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny for challenging President Vladimir Putin’s rule over the country. Lawmakers Wednesday announced on Twitter that Navalny is the recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The award is named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. In the announcement, legislators openly criticized Putin and called for Navalny to be freed from prison. “Mr. Putin, free Alexey Navalny. Europe calls for — his and all other political prisoners’ — freedom,” the tweet said. Navalny, 45, is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Authorities …
The European Union’s national heads of government are readying for a fiery summit meeting Thursday which will be dominated by a clash among them over a recent ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that declared Poland’s constitution has primacy over the bloc’s laws. A preview of the fundamental legal and political issues that will be at stake Thursday — and the anger involved — was seen Tuesday when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confronted each other in the European Parliament. Von der Leyen threatened Poland with suspension of EU voting rights …
FBI agents raided homes Thursday in Washington and New York City linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin and to Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The agents carried boxes out of a mansion in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods, with yellow “CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER” tape across the front yard, and towed away a vehicle. A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the agency was conducting a court-authorized law enforcement activity at the home, which The Washington Post has previously reported was linked to …
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says no third country has a veto on Ukraine’s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance. “Ukraine…has a right to decide its own future foreign policy, and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference,” Austin said during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, when asked about Russian objections to Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Tensions have risen between Russia and the U.S.-led alliance, with Moscow announcing on Monday it is suspending its permanent mission to NATO in response to the alliance’s expulsion of eight Russians diplomats earlier this month. …