Category: Євросоюз

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in France, his latest stop in a multination tour, where he will meet Friday with President Emmanuel Macron, following up on U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with allies in the region to boost transatlantic relations. “During this trip to engage with the United States’ oldest ally, Secretary Blinken will emphasize the importance of maintaining transatlantic cooperation, addressing our joint response to the ongoing health crisis, tackling the climate crisis, and highlighting the strength of our long-standing bilateral partnership,” the State Department said Thursday in a statement. France’s President Emmanuel Macron addresses the media as he arrives on the …

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A fatal attack by a gunman on a provincial office of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party is stoking fears of growing political violence against opposition parties. For VOA, Dorian Jones report from Istanbul.Produced by: Rod James    …

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European Union leaders meeting in Brussels Thursday are considering a proposal by France and Germany to holding a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a proposal that is receiving a cool response from member nations bordering Russia.   France and Germany proposed the summit in the wake of Putin’s summit with U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this month. As he arrived in Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that a summit is necessary for the stability of Europe, and such a meeting could be done without surrendering any values or interests.   German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was …

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Authorities in Spain say that a judge has ordered an autopsy on the remains of John McAfee, the gun-loving antivirus pioneer, cryptocurrency promoter and occasional politician who died in a cell pending extradition to the United States for allegedly evading millions in unpaid taxes. A court spokeswoman for the Catalonia region said Thursday that a forensic team would need to perform toxicology tests on McAfee’s body to determine the cause of death and that results could take “days or weeks.” Authorities have said that everything at the scene indicated that the 75-year-old tycoon killed himself.   The judicial investigation is …

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The United States and Germany are partnering to counter Holocaust denial and antisemitism, an effort U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said will “ensure that current and future generations learn about the Holocaust and also learn from it.”Speaking Thursday at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Blinken said Holocaust denial and antisemitism go hand in hand with homophobia, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination, and have become “a rallying cry for those who seek to tear down our democracies.”“That’s why we have to find innovative ways to bring the history of the Holocaust to life, not only to understand the past, but also to guide …

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John McAfee, creator of the McAfee antivirus software, has been found dead in his cell in a jail near Barcelona, a government official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.   Hours earlier, a Spanish court issued a preliminary ruling in favor of the 75-year-old tycoon’s extradition to the United States to face tax-related criminal charges.   Security personnel at the Brians 2 penitentiary near the northeastern Spanish city tried to revive him, but the jail’s medical team finally certified his death, a statement from the regional Catalan government said.   The statement didn’t identify McAfee by name, but said he …

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Russian forces said they fired warning shots Wednesday at a British Royal Navy destroyer taking part in a U.S.-led naval exercise in the Black Sea near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.Russia’s Defense Ministry said the action was taken because the HMS Defender entered 3 kilometers into Russia’s territorial waters. Britain says no shots were fired toward the vessel.According to a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson, a Russian patrol boat fired the shots at the destroyer and a Su-24M warplane dropped four high-explosive fragmentation bombs near the ship. The action came just hours after Russian officials condemned the …

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday slammed an anti-LGBT measure passed by Hungary’s Parliament as “a shame” that goes against the fundamental values of the European Union. FILE – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks in Ankara, Turkey, April 6, 2021.The bill, approved last week by Hungary’s right-wing ruling coalition in Parliament, would ban any educational programs, advertisements, books, movies or television programs depicting homosexuality or other gender minorities in a positive light. All except one right-wing opposition party boycotted the vote. The ruling party defends the legislation, saying it is designed to prevent pedophilia. But human …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Berlin for talks Tuesday with German leaders and to take part in a conference on Libya’s political future. Germany and the United Nations are hosting Wednesday’s Berlin conference, seeking to build on earlier efforts to bring about a lasting halt in fighting in Libya and support a stable government.  Wheels up for my visit as Secretary to Germany, France, and Italy. First stop, Berlin, where I’ll be engaging with our partners to further peace and stability through the Berlin II dialogue. Looking forward to a productive trip! U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives at the Berlin …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Berlin for talks Wednesday with German leaders and to take part in a conference on Libya’s political future. Germany and the United Nations are hosting the Berlin conference, seeking to build on earlier efforts to bring about a lasting halt in fighting in Libya and support a stable government.  ”We have an opportunity that we have not had in recent years to really help Libya move forward as a safe, secure, sovereign country,” Blinken said after a morning meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.Speaking to reporters alongside Maas, Blinken said there was consensus on what steps to take to best help Libya, mainly ensuring …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading back to Europe, this time to Germany, France and Italy, to discuss a range of bilateral issues and attend meetings on Libya and combating the Islamic State terrorist group. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington. Produced by: Marcus Harton    …

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Belarus perceives planned Western sanctions against the eastern European country as a near declaration of economic war, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.   The ministry issued the statement one day after the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada said they would place sanctions on several top Belarusian officials in response to Belarus’s forced landing of a passenger plane last month to arrest a dissident journalist.   The EU also said it was planning to impose economic sanctions targeting key Belarusian export commodities, such as potash and petroleum products.   “[The EU] continues purposeful destructive actions …

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“On Saturday, the day before the war, we met with friends in the park,” Red Army engineer Col. Il’ya Grigoryevich Starinov noted years later. “Orchestras and brass bands played, people danced, and we were happy. It was lovely and pleasant,” he wrote in his memoir Over the Abyss. It was 21 June 1941 and Starinov was in the town of Brest — a strategic town earmarked to be captured on the first day of Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Within hours, Brest would be rocked by infantry gunfire and artillery bombardments. Eighty years ago Tuesday more than three million German soldiers advanced …

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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government on Tuesday would pardon nine jailed leaders of the Catalonia region’s 2017 move for independence.   Sanchez told a group of civil society leaders in Barcelona that his Cabinet would approve the pardons.   Opposition parties have said they would challenge the pardons in court. Opinion polls showed a slim majority of the public opposed the pardons.   Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan leaders to jail in 2019 for sedition and other offenses, with the sentences ranging from nine to 13 years.   The government in Madrid had banned Catalonia from …

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The United States will seek to extradite a Turkish businessman from Austria so he can appear before a U.S. judge in Utah, where he is facing charges of conspiring to commit money laundering and wire fraud, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.   Sezgin Baran Korkmaz laundered more than $133 million in fraud proceeds through bank accounts that he controlled in Turkey and Luxembourg, the Justice Department said in a statement. Korkmaz, it said, was arrested in Austria on Saturday at the department’s request, following the unsealing of a superseding indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of an official proceeding. Reuters was not immediately able to identify Korkmaz’s …

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The United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada joined forces Monday to impose sanctions on several senior officials in Belarus over the forced diversion to Minsk of a passenger plane traveling between two EU countries last month. Asset freezes and travel bans were also imposed on a number of officials linked to the security crackdown that continues to rock the country some 10 months after President Alexander Lukashenko was returned to power in elections branded by the EU and others as “fraudulent.” “We are united in our deep concern regarding the Lukashenko regime’s continuing attacks on human rights, fundamental freedoms, and …

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Europe’s surging far-right has suffered setbacks recently — in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony, where Chancellor Angela Merckel’s ruling conservatives prevailed, and in France, where the National Rally party did not do as well as expected in the first round of regional elections Sunday.Far-right leader Marine Le Pen hoped to be celebrating this week. Polls gave her National Rally a shot at controlling at least one of France’s 13 regions for the first time — with budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and oversight of schools, transport and local economic development. Some considered this election a preview …

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U.N. human rights chief Michele Bachelet has issued a stark warning that rising poverty, inequality, injustice and the erosion of democratic values were gravely setting back the cause of human rights around the world. Bachelet addressed delegates at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s three-week session.In her opening remarks, Bachelet called for action to stop what she called the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetime.The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights backed up her assertion by zipping through the human rights records of dozens of countries around the world.No region escaped her …

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Monday he will pardon nine imprisoned Catalan separatists charged with sedition over their roles in a 2017 referendum on Catalan independence.The announcement came during a speech in Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, about the future of the region.Sánchez said his Cabinet would approve the pardons Tuesday.  Twelve separatists were convicted and given long prison sentences for their roles in holding the banned secession referendum in 2017. They then declared independence a few days after the results. Unionists boycotted the referendum, which was held amid a large police presence intent on stopping it.One of the separatists, Oriol …

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European Union foreign ministers announced Monday a fresh raft of sanctions against the Belarusian government, this time targeting 86 officials and state-owned entities. The United States and Britain are likely to follow with further sanctions of their own in the next few days, according to EU officials.  The new sanctions earmark officials suspected of involvement in the forced landing of a Ryanair plane last month as well as participation in the crackdown on opposition protests in Belarus mounted since last year August, when Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in an election widely seen as rigged. Lukashenko has been in power …

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