Category: Євросоюз

Italian President Sergio Mattarella agreed to a new round of consultations with party leaders Tuesday to resolve Italy’s political crisis. Speaking to reporters in Rome Thursday, two days after the collapse of the country’s populist government, the president said if no coalition wins a parliamentary approval, he could form a caretaker government or hold early elections. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Italian political leaders have started negotiations in an effort to avert a snap vote.   …

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The first Official Comic Book Convention or Comic Con for short, happened in New York in 1964. Since then, the world of comic books has moved to TV, the movies, and video games, and these conventions have become huge events. We visited one to get a feel for how they work. VOA’s Dhania Iman reports.   …

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China “will not sit idly by” if the U.S. proceeds with a sale of advanced F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan, a Chinese general said, while warning of other potential countermeasures in addition to punishing foreign firms involved in the deal. Beijing considered the sale a violation of previous U.S. commitments to China regarding the island it considers its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary, Maj. Gen. Chen Rongdi, chief of the Institute of War Studies at the Academy of Military Sciences, said. He did not elaborate on what additional measures China might take. “China will not sit …

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Japan’s prime minister said Friday that South Korea’s decision to end a military intelligence sharing deal with Tokyo damages mutual trust. Shinzo Abe, speaking a day after Seoul announced its decision, said Tokyo “will continue to closely coordinate with the U.S. to ensure regional peace and prosperity, as well as Japan’s security.” In an escalation of its bitter dispute with Japan, South Korea decided Thursday to scrap its military intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo, opening a new divide in trilateral security cooperation among the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. South Korea’s presidential Blue House said Thursday it is not in …

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TASIILAQ, GREENLAND — From a helicopter, Greenland’s brilliant white ice and dark mountains make the desolation seem to go on forever. And the few people who live here — its whole population wouldn’t fill a football stadium — are poor, with a high rate of substance abuse and suicide. One scientist called it the “end of the planet.” When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland, it was met with derision, seen as an awkward and inappropriate approach of an erstwhile ally. Greenland Aladdin’s Cave of resources? But it might also be an Aladdin’s Cave of oil, …

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Experts are warning that a focus on alleged Islamist militant ties is hindering efforts to respond to insurgencies in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   Local insurgent groups have claimed ties to Islamic State to increase their clout, but the groups operate autonomously, experts who study the regions say.   On April 18, a strike on an army base near the Congo’s border with Uganda left several Congolese soldiers dead and others injured.   It was the first attack credited to Wilayat Central Africa, previously known as the Allied Democratic Forces, a group that has pledged allegiance …

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Indonesia has arrested 34 people and cut internet access in its easternmost region of Papua to rein in violence after protesters torched buildings, a market and a prison over mistreatment of students and perceived ethnic discrimination. Police have flown in 1,200 more officers to quell sometimes violent protests since Monday in towns such as Manokwari, Sorong, Fakfak and Timika, near the giant Grasberg copper mine operated by Freeport McMoran’s Indonesian unit. The communication ministry has blocked the internet and telecoms data to prevent Papuans from accessing social media since Wednesday, although telephone calls and text messages are unaffected, said ministry …

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Iranian state media said the government showcased a domestically built long-range, mobile surface-to-air missile system on Thursday. The system’s unveiling came on Iran’s National Defense Industry Day and at a time of rising tension between Iran and the United States. Iran developed a large domestic arms industry in the face of international sanctions and embargoes barring it from importing many weapons. Concerns over Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program contributed to the United States last year leaving the pact that Iran sealed with world powers in 2015 to rein in its nuclear ambitions in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions. …

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A fresh push to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar fall flat on Thursday, with no one turning up to hop on five buses and 10 trucks laid on by Bangladesh. Members of the Muslim minority, 740,000 of whom fled a military offensive in 2017, are refusing to return without guarantees for their safety and a promise that they will at last be given citizenship by Myanmar. “The Myanmar government raped us, and killed us. So we need security. Without security we will never go back,” Rohingya leader Nosima said in a statement. “We need a real guarantee of citizenship, security …

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Kosovo lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament Friday, paving the way for a parliamentary election after Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj resigned last month. A total of 89 deputies voted to dissolve the 120-seat parliament. An election should take place within 45 days. Haradinaj resigned after being summoned for questioning by the country’s war crimes prosecutor over his role in the 1998-99 insurgency against Serbian forces, when he was a commander of the guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army. He denies any wrongdoing and said he is ready to face any accusations. Polls show that no party will gain enough support to form a …

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Zimbabwe rights activists are calling for Western sanctions against the country to remain in place, despite calls this week by the Southern African Development Community for them to be lifted.  Government supporters say the sanctions are hurting ordinary people.  But critics say it is the government’s policies, not sanctions, that are to blame for the poor economy, and that lifting sanctions would send the wrong message about the country’s human rights record.  Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare. …

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Liberian President George Weah has proposed reducing term lengths for members of the executive and legislative branches of government. Under his plan, the president and representatives would serve five years instead of six, while senators would sit for seven years rather than nine. The idea, says Presidential Press Secretary Smith Toby, is to push officials to begin serving the people from the day they assume office, rather than putting off work until the close of their terms. As he put it, “if you start [work] immediately on election day “[knowing] that you’ve got five years, you will not play around. …

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The US Treasury took action Wednesday to crack down on Chinese traffickers of deadly fentanyl, sanctioning producer-exporters and warning banks on financial schemes used to distribute the synthetic opioid behind thousands of US overdose deaths. The Treasury identified Zheng Fujing, 36, and a company he controls, Qinsheng Pharmaceutical Technology, and a partner, Zheng Guanghua, as a major, Shanghai-based production fentanyl production and trafficking organization. The Zheng drug trafficking organization, the Treasury said, produced and shipped hundreds of controlled substances, including fentanyl analogues such as carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl. “Zheng created and maintained numerous websites to …

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The presidents of Rwanda and Uganda on Wednesday signed an agreement in Angola to end months of tensions after the two leaders exchanged accusations of spying, political assassinations and meddling. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni were once close allies but their relations have turned deeply hostile in a dispute that damaged trade between the east African neighbors. The signing in the Angolan capital Luanda, was witnessed by the presidents of Angola Joao Lourenco, Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi and Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso. After the signing, Kagame said he did not anticipate any problems in …

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Sudan on Tuesday completed the formation of an 11-member sovereign council that will run the country for a three-year transitional period until elections, a spokesman for the ruling military council told a news conference. The sovereign council will be led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who is the head of the transitional military council (TMC), which has ruled Sudan since April, when the military deposed veteran leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Members of the sovereign council and the prime minister will be sworn in Wednesday. Last week, Sudan’s main opposition alliance nominated economist Abdalla Hamdok to serve as prime minister …

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Brazil said on Tuesday it had extradited to Chile a leftist guerrilla convicted of the murder of a Chilean politician allied with former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Mauricio Hernandez Norambuena, a member of leftist group Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), was convicted in Chile of the 1991 murder of Chilean Senator Jaime Guzman. Hernandez eventually fled to Cuba and to Brazil, where he was jailed 10 years later for kidnapping advertising executive Washington Olivetto in Sao Paulo. Brazil’s conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, said on social media that his government’s decision to extradite Hernandez for the decades-old crime was proof the two …

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Ex-combatants with Colombia’s once largest guerrilla group turned over names and information Tuesday on several hundred people who went missing during the nation’s long civil conflict in a first step toward helping more families find closure. The list was provided to a special unit tasked with finding the missing and contains details on 276 individuals, a small number compared to the more than 60,000 people believed to be disappeared during more than five decades of conflict. Nonetheless, Luz Marina Monzon, the search group’s director, described it as an important “first step of many” that former combatants are making in compliance …

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A group of activists is trying to persuade an international conservation conference to ban trophy hunting, which outrages some animal lovers but has long been tolerated by some environmentalists as a way of protecting wildlife. More than 50 members of the European Parliament and 50 environmental groups, led by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, signed a petition to the triannual CITES conference taking place this week in Geneva. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international treaty granting degrees of protection to over 35,000 species. Agreements passed at the conference …

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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was considering scaling back an effort that could have cut billions of dollars in foreign aid and would decide on the proposal – which faces strong opposition in Congress – within days. Trump administration officials have said they are reviewing State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spending with an eye to using a budget process known as “rescission” to slash up to $4.3 billion in spending that had already been approved by the Senate and House of Representatives. “We’re looking at it and we’re looking at it in different ways, …

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