Category: Євросоюз

Reuters contributed to this report. HYANNIS PORT, Mass. —  Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, has died, the family announced Thursday night. The Kennedy family’s statement followed reports of a death at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The statement was issued by Brian Wright O’Connor, a spokesman for Saoirse Hill’s uncle, former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II. Hill was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill, who was one of four falsely convicted in the 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings of two pubs.  “She lit up our lives with her love, …

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Updated on Aug. 2, at 2:32 a.m. SEOUL — Japan has removed South Korea from a list of its preferred trading partners, a major escalation in a trade dispute rooted in historical tensions. The Cabinet of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s conservative prime minister, Friday approved plans to remove South Korea from the list of so-called “white countries” with preferred trade status. Beginning Aug. 28, Japanese companies must now seek case-by-case approval from Japan’s trade ministry before shipping certain products, which could be diverted for military use, to South Korea. South Korean President Moon Jae-in called the move “selfish” and a “grave challenge” …

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Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha on Friday ordered an investigation into several small bombings in Bangkok that took place as Thailand was hosting a high-level meeting attended by U.S.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterparts from China and several Asia-Pacific countries. The explosions took place near two stations of the Thai capital’s elevated train system. A police spokesman said that one of the two injured men was being treated at a hospital and the other was sent home. Two other blasts were reported at a government complex on the outskirts of the city, and near the offices of …

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Britain’s pro-European Union Liberal Democrats have won a parliamentary seat from the governing Conservatives, a blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his first electoral test since taking office. The loss reduces Johnson’s working majority in parliament to one ahead of an expected showdown with lawmakers over his plan to take Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31 without an exit agreement if necessary. Johnson’s government already relies on the support of a small Northern Irish party for its wafer-thin majority, with just a handful of rebels in his own Conservatives needed to lose key votes. ‘No mandate’ …

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Less than 24 hours before Gov. Ricardo Rossello was expected to leave office, Puerto Ricans had no idea who would replace him as political chaos threatened to paralyze the island with a constitutional crisis. Rossello has promised to step down at 5 p.m. Friday in response to huge street protests by Puerto Ricans outraged at corruption, mismanagement and an obscenity-laced chat that was leaked in which the governor and 11 male allies made fun of women, gay people and victims of Hurricane Maria. “It’s frustrating. We’re in limbo,” said Jose Ramos, a taxi driver. “The island doesn’t have a path …

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This spring, as Egypt’s parliament debated handing President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi greater power and allowing him to govern until 2030, speaker Ali Abdelaal declared the proposals were the will of the nation’s legislature. The ideas, he said, were “born in parliament, and the president has nothing to do with them, from near or far.” The reality was different, said five people with knowledge of the matter. Three of Sissi’s close advisers, including his eldest son, Mahmoud, had begun planning the changes to the constitution several months earlier, soon after Sissi was elected to a second and final term in office …

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Rwanda has closed its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo as the country struggles to contain the latest outbreak of the Ebola virus, as a third case has been reported in the border city of Goma. Oliver Nduhungirehe, Rwanda’s state minister for foreign affairs, said Thursday the government has shut down the border at the northeastern town of Gisenyi, which it shares with Goma, home to more than a million people and where tens of thousands cross on foot daily. The decision by Kigali runs counter to a plea made by the World Health Organization for countries not to …

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Mozambique’s president and the leader of the Renamo opposition signed a peace accord on Thursday to end years of hostilities that followed a 15-year civil war.   The former rebel group’s remaining fighters are disarming just weeks before a visit by Pope Francis and a national election that will test the now-political rivals’ new resolve.   The permanent cease-fire is the culmination of years of negotiations to end fighting that has flared several times in the more than 25 years since the end of the civil war in which an estimated 1 million people died.   Pope Francis has said …

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American rapper A$AP Rocky is set to testify Thursday on the second day of a trial in Sweden, where he is accused of assault in an alleged street fight. The trial has created a stir in U.S.-Swedish diplomatic relations after President Donald Trump weighed in on the case in support of the Grammy-nominated recording artist, whose real name is Rakim Mayers. This court sketch created on July 30, 2019 shows US rapper A$AP Rocky (middle row, in green shirt) during his trial at the district court in Stockholm. The 30-year-old artist, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested on …

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Lee Juhyun contributed to this report. North Korea said Thursday its latest weapons test involved a new multiple rocket launch system — not ballistic missiles, as South Korea had reported — raising questions about whether the launch violated U.N. Security Council resolutions. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test firing of a “newly developed large-caliber multiple launch guided rocket system” on Wednesday. “After learning about the result of the test-fire, [Kim] said that it is very great and it would be an inescapable distress to the forces becoming a fat target of the weapon,” …

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Fire broke out at an Exxon Mobil oil refinery in Texas on Wednesday, sending a large plume of smoke into the air, in the latest of a series of petrochemical industry blazes this year in the Houston area. The fire began around 11 a.m. at an Exxon Mobil facility in Baytown, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Houston. The city of Baytown said the fire is in an area that contains polypropylene material and that Exxon Mobil has requested some nearby residents to shelter in place as a precaution. It was not immediately known if there were injuries. Television …

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The Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2008, citing concerns about the global economy and muted U.S. inflation, and signaled a readiness to lower borrowing costs further if needed. Financial markets had widely expected the quarter-percentage-point rate cut, which lowered the U.S. central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate to a target range of 2% to 2.25%. In a statement at the end of its latest two-day policy meeting, the Fed said it had decided to cut rates “in light of the implications of global developments for the economic outlook as well as muted inflation …

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Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 248,000 children — some as young as 12 — were married in the U.S.  Studies show most teens who are forced into marriage face financial strain and divorce. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to two teens who had very different experiences. …

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President Donald Trump has welcomed Mongolia’s president, Khaltmaa Battulga, to the White House for talks focused on trade. Wednesday’s visit is the first by a Mongolian president since June 2011, the last time a leader of the landlocked country between Russia and China came to the White House. Trump administration officials say they want to explore ways to help the East Asian nation diversify its trade flows since about 90 percent of Mongolia’s trade must go through China. Trump and Battulga are also expected to discuss defense and security matters, among other issues.   Battulga is a populist business tycoon …

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One in three Egyptians is living in poverty, the official statistics agency reported Monday, following years of austerity measures aimed at reforming the economy. The report said 32.5% of Egyptians lived below the poverty line in 2018, up from 27.8% in 2015 and 16.7% in 2000. It said 6.2% of Egyptians live in extreme poverty. It set the poverty line at around $1.45 per day and the extreme poverty line at less than a dollar a day. Egypt has been struggling to rebuild its economy following years of unrest since the 2011 uprising. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has repeatedly urged Egyptians …

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Double Olympic champion Caster Semenya will not defend her 800-meters title at the World Championships in September after the Swiss Federal Tribunal reversed a ruling that temporarily lifted the IAAF’s testosterone regulations imposed on her, a spokesman for the athlete said Tuesday. Semenya is appealing the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruling that supported regulations introduced by the sport’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). These say that XY chromosome athletes with differences in sexual development (DSDs) can race in distances from 400 meters to a mile only if they take medication to reach a reduced …

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Canadian police said Tuesday they have pulled out of a remote northern town after an intensive search turned up no sign of two fugitive teenagers suspected of killing three people — a college professor, a North Carolina woman and her Australian boyfriend. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used dogs and drones, helicopters, boats and even a military Hercules aircraft to scour the area around York Landing, Manitoba, but were unable to confirm a possible sighting of the two men reported by members of a neighborhood watch group. The RCMP tweeted Monday that “the heavy police presence in York Landing has …

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A Chinese national in the United States on a student visa was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for smuggling counterfeit Apple products from China into the U.S. Jianhua “Jeff” Li, 44, pleaded guilty in the District of New Jersey to one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and labels and smuggle goods into the United States, and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.  Products coming from China included fake iPhones and iPads, according to court documents.  “From July 2009 through February 2014, Li, working through his company Dream Digitals, …

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The body of notorious 1930s gangster John Dillinger is expected to be exhumed from an Indianapolis cemetery in September more than 85 years after he was killed by FBI agents outside a Chicago theater. The Indiana State Department of Health approved a permit July 3 sought by Dillinger’s nephew, Michael C. Thompson, to have the body exhumed from Crown Hill Cemetery and reinterred there. The permit doesn’t give a reason for the request, and Thompson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.  The Indianapolis-born Dillinger was one of America’s most notorious criminals. He and his gang pulled off a bloody string …

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