Category: Євросоюз

A quake with a magnitude of 7.1 jolted much of California, cracked buildings, set fires, broke roads and caused several injuries while seismologists warned that large aftershocks were expected to continue. The quake, preceded by Thursday’s 6.4-magnitude temblor in the Mojave Desert, was the largest Southern California quake in at least 20 years and was followed by a series of large and small aftershocks, including a handful above magnitude 5.0. There is about a 1-in-10 chance that another 7.0 quake could hit within the next week, said Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former …

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Officials are gathering in Niger’s capital this weekend for an African Union summit that begins the “operational phase” of a long-sought continental free trade zone. Some 50 heads of state were to arrive in Niamey on Friday, a day behind their foreign ministers, for Sunday’s summit on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). By integrating economies and reducing trade barriers such as tariffs, the pact aims to increase employment prospects, living standards and opportunities for the continent’s 1.2 billion people and to make Africans more competitive regionally and globally. FILE – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is sworn in for …

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Student unions from two Hong Kong universities said Friday that they have turned down invitations from city leader Carrie Lam for talks about recent unrest over her proposal to allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China. The invitations followed a pledge by Lam to do a better job of listening to the voices of young people. Student leaders said at a news conference that they do not think Lam is being sincere. Her office invited them to closed-door meetings, but the students said any meeting should be public and include a wider representation than just them. “A closed-door meeting …

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A U.N. report accuses the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of extra-judicial killings and of repressive measures aimed at neutralizing political opponents. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet presented the report Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report presents a grim picture of a society where people are killed, arbitrarily arrested, tortured and deprived of the basic commodities needed for survival. It reports a shockingly high number of alleged extrajudicial killings by Venezuela’s security forces against so-called criminals purportedly resisting arrest. Michele Bachelet, the U.N. human rights chief, says perceived political opponents and human rights …

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Friday proposed to invest heavily in infrastructure, digital economy and job creation to lift a slugging economy that’s burdened with a 45-year-high unemployment rate of 6.1 percent. Unveiling the budget after a major victory in national elections, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Sitharaman proposed a bigger role for foreign direct investment in aviation, media and insurance sectors. The government set a target of a $5 trillion Indian economy by 2025 from the present $2.7 trillion. Sitharaman said the size of the economy would reach $3 trillion by March next year. She told Parliament that …

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A top Venezuelan diplomat has blasted the “biased vision” of a report by the U.N. human rights chief chronicling torture, sexual abuse and extrajudicial killings in the country, and demanded it be “corrected.” Deputy Foreign Minister William Castillo insisted the report from High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet “does not reflect the reality in our country.” He said Venezuela would heed “constructive” recommendations. Through a translator, Castillo told the U.N-backed Human Rights Council: “We demand that its contents be corrected, and we urge you to act in a balanced and respectful way.” He spoke Friday after Bachelet presented the …

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Days after gunmen, led by a top general, killed five government officials, including a regional president and the army’s chief of staff, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed planted olive seedlings at the National Palace in the capital, Addis Ababa, in their memory. Images of the symbolic tribute, distributed by the prime minister’s office and aired on state television, showed a gentle and plaintive Abiy tending to the fragile young trees, a metaphor for the role he has cast for himself in Ethiopia’s tumultuous transition to democracy. Speaking to lawmakers Monday, the 42-year-old leader, now in his sixteenth month on the …

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MAD, the long-running satirical magazine that influenced everyone from “Weird Al” Yankovic to the writers of The Simpsons, will be leaving newsstands after its August issue. Really.    The illustrated humor magazine — instantly recognizable by the gap-toothed smiling face of mascot Alfred E. Neuman — will still be available in comic shops and through mail to subscribers. But after its fall issue it will just reprint previously published material.    The only new material will come in special editions at the end of the year.    DC, the division of Warner Brothers that publishes the magazine, said MAD will pull …

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The U.S. government has imposed a travel ban on a special adviser to Malawi’s president because of corruption charges.  Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested Uladi Mussa in 2017, alongside a senior immigration official, on charges they fraudulently issued citizenship and passports to people from Burundi and Rwanda. Court documents show Mussa committed the offense in 2013 when he was minister of home affairs during the administration of former President Joyce Banda. Mussa has denied the charges; however, in a statement Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said it has credible information connecting Mussa to corruption. “We have laws on that, under Section …

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The U.N. human rights chief says in a new report that Venezuela’s government registered nearly 5,300 killings during security operations last year, saying the deaths stemmed from “resistance to authority.” Another 1,569 such killings were recorded in the first four to five months of 2019. The office of Michelle Bachelet decried a “shockingly high” number of extrajudicial killings during the operations.   Bachelet’s report focusing on the last 18 months follows her trip to the South American country in June, and draws on accounts from rights defenders, victims, witnesses of violations and other sources.   Bachelet also called for the …

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An earthquake rattled a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on Thursday morning, making hanging lamps sway and photo frames on wall shake. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The 6.4 magnitude quake measured struck near in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, California. The United State Geological Survey initially said it measured at a 6.6 magnitude. People from Las Vegas to the Pacific Coast reported feeling a rolling motion and took to social media to report it. Local emergency agencies also took …

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Firefighters had to dodge exploding rockets to douse a spectacular fire that destroyed containers of fireworks stored for sale on the Fourth of July.   The blaze provided for an impressive, though sparsely attended show early Thursday as shells and rockets burst through the metal containers, sending colorful showers into the air above the Davey Jones Fireworks and the House of Fireworks stores in Fort Mill.   The York County Sheriff’s Office tweeted the fire appeared to spark in a storage unit in the parking lot between the stores, which are on Highway 21 near Interstate 77 and Carowinds.   …

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The Trump administration is sending migrant girls who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to a new Florida facility run by a nonprofit organization under a government grant. The teenage girls arriving in Lake Worth, Fla., will receive classroom education and mental health and legal services until they are reunited with relatives in the U.S., said Annette Scheckler, spokeswoman for the organization, the Virginia-based U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.   Facility near Mar-a-Lago resort Up to 141 girls can be housed in a building in apartment-style units with two or four beds each, Sheckler said. About 50 teens now in …

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A U.S. judge on Wednesday rejected Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s bid for a new trial, finding that misconduct by jurors during the Mexican crime lord’s drug trafficking case was not a reason to overturn their guilty verdict. Guzman sought a new trial in March after Vice News published an interview of one of the jurors, who said that multiple jurors ignored U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan’s instructions not to read or talk about the case during the 11-week trial in Brooklyn federal court. Jury misconduct According to the Feb. 20 Vice article, the jurors’ misconduct included reading and discussing articles …

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Cranes hoist cargo onto the deck, power tools scream out and workers bustle through the maze of passageways inside the German icebreaker RV Polarstern, preparations for a yearlong voyage that organizers say is unprecedented in scale and ambition. In a couple of months, the hulking ship will set out for the Arctic packed with supplies and scientific equipment for a mission to explore the planet’s frigid far north. The icebreaker will be the base for scientists from 17 nations studying the impact of climate change on the Arctic and how it could affect the rest of the world. Markus Rex, …

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Eastern European states ended up empty-handed in the EU top jobs bonanza after they expended all their political capital in successfully blocking Dutch Socialist Frans Timmermans from becoming president of the executive European Commission. As a vice president of the outgoing Commission, Timmermans annoyed the nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary for spearheading EU criticism of their record on the rule of law and democratic freedoms. He is now likely to stay on as a vice president in the next Commission, which takes over Nov. 1. But no candidate from the ex-communist east will now head up any key EU …

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Walking across the streets of London on a sunny morning, Aziz Isa Elkun is holding his little daughter’s hand and talking to her about what it is like to be a bird. At first, it may seem like an ordinary scene of a father chatting with his daughter as he takes her to school, but the conversation soon alters to show how it feels for thousands of Uighurs who are unable to “fly freely” and return to their homeland of Xinjiang in northwestern China. “Look, my daughter, look at the birds,” the filmmaker tells his daughter in “An Unanswered Telephone Call,” a …

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Baik Sung-won of VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report. President Donald Trump may have jumpstarted a new round of working-level talks with Pyongyang at his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but experts say their handshake is meaningless unless negotiators make a headway in bridging the countries’ divergent approaches toward denuclearization. “It was great being with Chairman Kim Jong Un of North Korea this weekend,” Trump tweeted on Monday, the day after the two leaders met. “We had a great meeting…I look forward to seeing him again soon…In the meantime, our team will be meeting to work …

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Kacey Musgraves’ career has been moving and changing fast over the last couple of years, leaving little time for reflection until she saw her life chronicled behind museum glass.   Musgraves is the subject of a new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum that opens Tuesday and runs through June 2020. The exhibit follows the critically acclaimed “Golden Hour” in 2018 that earned Musgraves four Grammys this year including country album of the year and album of the year, beating fellow nominees Drake, Cardi B and Brandi Carlile.   “I think a lot of people that …

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Cuba’s Communist government said on Tuesday it was studying the potential use of cryptocurrency as part of a series of measures to boost its economy amid a deepening crisis exacerbated by U.S. sanctions. Cryptocurrency, which allows financial operations to be carried out anonymously, has been used in the past to get around capital controls. Cuba’s top ally Venezuela introduced a cryptocurrency last year aiming to avoid U.S. sanctions and weather hyperinflation, although it never properly got off the ground. Cuba’s inefficient state-run economy is facing a crisis due to a sharp decline in Venezuelan aid, lower exports and the tightening …

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