Category: Євросоюз

Sigmund Jaehn, who became the first German in space at the height of the Cold War during the 1970s and was promoted as a hero by communist authorities in East Germany, has died. He was 82. The German Aerospace Center said Sunday on its website that Jaehn died Saturday. The center did not give the cause of death. German news agency dpa said he died at his home in Strausberg, outside of Berlin. Astrophysicist Pascale Ehrenfreund, who chairs the German Aerospace Center’s executive board, said the center was deeply saddened by Jaehn’s death and that German aerospace had lost a …

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Iran’s president says his country should lead regional security in the strategic Persian Gulf. Hassan Rouhani said Sunday Iran extends its “hand of friendship and brotherhood” toward cooperating with regional nations. Rouhani also said the presence of foreign forces in the Gulf could cause problems for the world’s “energy security.” The U.S. is sending more troops to the Gulf and leading a maritime coalition, which includes the U.K., Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations, to secure the area’s waterways and vital oil trade routes. The U.S. has alleged Iran is behind a series of attacks on the region’s energy …

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Tanzania has declined to provide detailed information on suspected Ebola cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, posing a challenge in efforts to fight the outbreak. Despite several requests “to date, clinical data, results of the investigations, possible contacts and potential laboratory tests performed … have not been communicated to WHO,” the U.N. health agency said in a statement seen by Reuters Sunday. “The limited available official information from Tanzanian authorities represents a challenge.” Authorities in east and central Africa have been on high alert for possible spill-overs of Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo where a year-long outbreak …

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Five brothers came to the US from Ukraine almost two decades ago in search of the American Dream — that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in the United States. During those 20 years, they’ve had all kinds of jobs, from washing floors, to delivering mail to working at construction sites. But they had even bigger dreams, Khrystyna Shevchenko met with this unique family. Anna Rice narrates her story.   …

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In 20 months, an anti-smoking group in Lebanon collected 240,000 cigarette butts from around a university campus. It did not take long to put those butts to good use, creating something unique to help clean up Beirut’s beaches. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi gets to the bottom of this story. …

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Modern technology is becoming more and more common in artificial limbs. But advanced treatment like that is still a distant dream for majority of the amputees in Pakistan. VOA’s Saman Khan has more. …

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The head of Ukraine’s state-owned oil company says Kyiv will remain able to supply Europe with natural gas from its subterranean storage units even if European Union-mediated talks don’t pan out. “We are fully confident that Ukraine can maintain gas supply … at least during the first quarter of 2020,” Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev said Friday at a public event in Brussels. On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine held their third round of ministerial-level talks in Brussels about the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe, where all parties hoped to negotiate a new long-term agreement on gas flows before the …

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Protesters burned a Chinese flag and police fired pepper spray during a march Saturday in an outlying district of Hong Kong in renewed clashes over anti-government grievances.   Police accused protesters of spraying water at officers during the march by several thousand people in Tuen Mun in Hong Kong’s northwest. Reporters saw at least one person arrested.   The event was relatively small compared with previous demonstrations that have taken place every weekend since June. The protests started with opposition to a proposed extradition law and have expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.   …

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Dozens of demonstrators were arrested at yellow vest protests in Paris on Saturday as more than 7,000 police were deployed to quell any violence by the movement and its radical, anarchist “black blocs.” There were also fears that the demonstrators could try to infiltrate a march against climate change in the French capital. The yellow vest movement erupted 10 months ago and blindsided President Emmanuel Macron, whom protesters accused of being out of touch with the needs of ordinary French people. FILE – Yellow vest protesters wait near the Seine River for other members to join them, Sept. 7, 2019. …

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Rare small protests were staged overnight in Cairo and other Egyptian cities calling for the removal of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, but authorities quickly dispersed them and arrested dozens, a security source said. Hundreds of citizens took to the streets late Friday to protest, chanting slogans including “Leave, Sissi!” and holding up placards. At least 74 were arrested overnight, a security source told AFP, with plain clothed police patrolling sidestreets of downtown Cairo. The country effectively banned protests under a 2013 law and a state of emergency is still in full effect. Police fired tear gas and deployed forces in …

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Young people afraid for their futures protested around the globe Friday to implore leaders to tackle climate change, turning out by the hundreds of thousands to insist that the warming world can’t wait any longer. Marches, rallies and demonstrations were held from Canberra to Kabul and Cape Town to New York. More than 100,000 turned out in Berlin.   Days before a U.N. climate summit of world leaders, the “Global Climate Strike” events were as small as two dozen activists in Seoul using LED flashlights to send Morse code messages and as large as mass demonstrations in Australia that organizers …

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President Donald Trump irritably defended himself Friday against an intelligence whistleblower’s complaint, including an allegation of wrongdoing in a reported private conversation Trump had with a foreign leader.    The complaint, which the administration has refused to let Congress see, is “serious” and “urgent,” the government’s intelligence watchdog said. But Trump dismissed the matter, insisting he did nothing wrong.    He declared Friday that the complaint was made by a “partisan whistleblower,” though he later said he did not know the identity of the person. He chided reporters for asking about it and said it was “just another political hack …

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Two reporters for the U.S.-based Bloomberg news agency have appeared in court accused of trying to undermine Turkey’s economic stability with a story they wrote on last year’s currency crisis. The trial against Kerim Karakaya and Fercan Yalinkilic opened in Istanbul on Friday. Thirty-six others have also been charged for their social media comments on the story written in August 2018, increasing concerns over media freedoms in Turkey. The trial is part of a fierce crackdown on journalists and media outlets. The Turkish Journalists Syndicate says at least 126 journalists or media workers are currently in prison. Karakaya and Yalinkilic …

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Sixty years ago, children accounted for more than one-third — 36% — of the U.S. population. Today, that number is 22% and shrinking faster than anticipated. The U.S. Census Bureau had not expected the kid population to drop that low until 2030, but the reality hit more than a decade ahead of projection. Last year, the U.S. birth rate dropped to its lowest number in 32 years.  The births of 3,788,235 babies in 2018 is a 2% drop from 2017. That’s the lowest number of babies born in the U.S. since 1986. The birth rates declined among all racial groups …

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Police in Zimbabwe say the leader of a doctors’ strike, who allegedly was abducted by government agents, is receiving care at a Harare hospital and is not under arrest. Dr. Peter Magombeyi reappeared in the village of Nyabira late Thursday, five days after he went missing. In his absence, doctors and nurses held protests in Harare, demanding the government find him and ensure his safe return. Speaking Friday to VOA’s Zimbabwe service, national police spokesperson Paul Nyathi said Magombeyi is under observation at a hospital.   “He has been examined by his own medical team and a government team,” Nyathi …

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Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, along with their infant son, Archie, are making their first official tour as a family, starting Monday in a troubled South Africa whose president says women and children are “under siege” by shocking violence. South Africa is still shaken by the rape and murder of a university student, carried out in a post office that sparked protests by thousands of women tired of abuse and impunity in a country where more than 100 rapes are reported every day. This is “one of the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman,” President …

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With world leaders about to gather in New York for a U.N. Climate Action Summit next week, millions of young people from Australia to Iceland will take off from school or work on Friday to demand urgent measures to stop environmental catastrophe.  Protests, inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 16, are planned in 150 countries. The aim is for students and others from around the world to speak in one voice about the impending effects of climate change on the planet.  “Soon the sun will rise on Friday the 20th of September 2019. Good luck Australia, The Philippines, Japan and all the Pacific Islands. You go first!” Thunberg posted Thursday …

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Christy Lee contributed to this report, which originated with VOA’s Korean Service. WASHINGTON — Increased international cooperation is essential for curtailing the ship-to-ship transfers that Pyongyang continues to use to evade sanctions, said a former United Nations panel expert on North Korean sanctions enforcement. “Every member state (of the United Nations) has one or two pieces of the puzzle,” said Neil Watts, a maritime expert who served as a member of the United Nations panel that monitors North Korea sanctions compliance from 2013 to 2018. “And if they all cooperate, they can put together the full picture.” North Korea seemingly …

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Despite repeated warnings from law enforcement officials and the U.S. Air Force, people have begun descending upon two small desert towns in the western U.S. state of Nevada. Local media reports said people in campers and trucks have begun to set up camp near Rachel and Hiko, Nevada, with a combined population of little more than 150. They are there to heed the call of  “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All Of Us,” an internet joke that has gone viral. The Facebook event set up by college student Matty Roberts invited people to attempt to run into the mysterious site at …

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The United States has expelled two members of the Cuban mission to the U.N., accusing them of trying to “conduct influence operations” against the U.S. The State Department did not identity the two Cubans or give any information on what they are accused of doing. Spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said they “abused their privileges of residence.” She said the remaining members of the Cuban mission will be restricted to New York’s Manhattan island, where the mission and U.N. headquarters are located. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called the expulsions “unjustified,” adding on Twitter that “the imputation that they might have carried …

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