Category: Євросоюз

Berliners on Sunday celebrated the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets lifted their blockade strangling West Berlin in the post-World War II years with a big party at the former Tempelhof airport in the German capital. Among the invited guests of honor was 98-year-old U.S. pilot Gail Halvorsen, who dropped hundreds of boxes of candy on tiny parachutes into West Berlin during the blockade.   Halvorsen came to Berlin from Utah with his two daughters on Friday, the German news agency dpa reported.   On Saturday, a baseball field at Tempelhof airport was named after him — the “Gail S. …

READ MORE

One strong indicator of a nation’s infrastructure is the way in which it disposes of garbage. That lack of infrastructure and its devastating impacts on the environment are on display in the Drina River in Bosnia. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

READ MORE

A journalist critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and its nationalist allies was hospitalized after being attacked outside his home, his newspaper said Saturday.    The Yenicag newspaper said columnist Yavuz Selim Demirag was beaten up by about five or six people with baseball bats after appearing on a TV show Friday. The assailants escaped the scene in a vehicle. The reason for the attack was not known, but it came amid tensions over the top electoral authority’s decision to cancel the results of the March 31 mayoral race for Istanbul, which was won by the opposition. It ordered a revote June 23. …

READ MORE

The leader of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) and heir presumptive to Angela Merkel said she had no ambition to succeed her as chancellor until 2021 ahead of a major test of popularity at this month’s European election. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who last December won a party leadership contest as Merkel, Europe’s longest-serving leader, sets the stage for her gradual exit from politics, said she had no desire to accelerate the process. “The chancellor and the government are elected for a full term and citizens are right to expect that they take this mandate seriously,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told the Welt am Sonntag …

READ MORE

The battle among leading Conservatives to replace Theresa May as prime minister threatens to derail talks with the opposition Labour Party and the bid to find a Brexit compromise, Labour’s John McDonnell said. May, who has offered to quit if lawmakers accept her Brexit deal, opened cross-party talks with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party more than a month ago after parliament rejected her European Union withdrawal deal three times. The talks with Labour are a last resort for May, whose party’s deep divisions over Brexit have so far kept her from winning approval for an exit agreement and left the world’s …

READ MORE

Three hostages freed by French commandos from militants in Burkina Faso arrived in Paris on Saturday, expressing sorrow at the deaths of two French  soldiers in the rescue operation.  President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the hostages as they stepped off the French government jet less than 48 hours after French special forces stormed their captors’ hideout in a daring nighttime raid.  Two Frenchmen kidnapped while on safari in Benin more than a week earlier, as well as an American woman and a South Korean woman who were being held with them, were liberated in the high-risk mission authorized by Macron. The American, who has not been identified, was being repatriated separately.  “All our …

READ MORE

The final preparatory meeting for next year’s review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended Friday with deep divisions, and U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said reaching agreement at the 2020 conference “will be an incredibly difficult task.” But he told the closing session of the two-week preparatory conference that “it is a task we cannot abandon.” The NPT is the world’s single most important pact on nuclear arms, credited with preventing their spread to dozens of nations since entering into force in 1970. It has succeeded in doing this via a grand global bargain: Nations without nuclear weapons committed not to …

READ MORE

The shake-of-the-hands in front of the media on a blustery, wet spring morning in central London outside the official residence of British Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt was friendly. America’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Hunt joked about the weather. Pompeo, on his first official visit to London as U.S. Secretary of State, had come to reaffirm the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S., he said. “The special relationship does not simply endure, it is thriving,” Pompeo announced at a news conference midweek following meetings with British counterpart Hunt and British Prime Minister Theresa May. But for all the bonhomie, …

READ MORE

French special forces have rescued four foreign hostages from Burkina Faso but lost two of their elite soldiers in the mission. France’s military said the special forces carried out the raid during a predawn operation Friday, supported by U.S. intelligence. President Emmanuel Macron’s office said all four hostages were safe. Two of the hostages are French, one is American and one is South Korean. French Defense Minister Florence Parly told a news conference Friday that no one involved in the operation knew about the presence of the American and South Korean hostages, only the French ones. A spokeswoman for the …

READ MORE

France welcomed Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Friday with a threat of sweeping new regulation. With Facebook under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg is in Paris to show that his social media giant is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online. But a group of French regulators and experts who spent weeks inside Facebook facilities in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona say the company isn’t working hard enough. Just before Zuckerberg met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, the 10 officials released a report calling for laws allowing the government to investigate and fine social networks that don’t …

READ MORE

Leading Western industrial powers will for the first time jointly simulate a major cross-border cybersecurity attack on the financial sector next month, French officials said on Friday. The exercise, organized by the French central bank under France’s presidency of the Group of Seven nations (G7), will be based on the scenario of a technical component widely used in the financial sector becoming infected with malware, said Nathalie Aufauvre, the Bank of France’s director general for financial stability. Institutions such as the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have already conducted such tests, but the June exercise will be …

READ MORE

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will head to Russia to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin amid disputes over Venezuela’s political turmoil and other issues. Pompeo will arrive in Moscow on Monday and then travel to Sochi on Tuesday to see Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The State Department says they’ll discuss “the full range of bilateral and multilateral challenges.” Pompeo met with Lavrov at an Arctic Council meeting in Finland this week. Pompeo publicly expressed concern about Russia’s intentions in the Arctic, where it’s seeking massive military expansion. Pompeo and Lavrov have accused each other’s countries of …

READ MORE

Narrator: His is a life story that reads like the script of a Hollywood blockbuster.  Vladimir Kuts, World War Two Veteran (translated from Russian): “You know, I cannot believe it all happened to me”.   Narrator: In 1942 – when he was only 14 years old – the Nazis took Kuts from his home village and sent him to Germany to do forced labor. Three years later, when the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division was liberating concentration camps and villages in the area, Kuts warned the Americans of danger.  Vladimir Kuts, World War Two Veteran (translated from Russian): “The Nazis were setting up their artillery, …

READ MORE

As many as 70 migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya drowned Friday when their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, and at least 16 others on the boat were rescued, according to U.N. migration officials and Tunisia’s state news agency.   The International Organization for Migration called it the deadliest migrant boat sinking since January, and it comes as overall migrant arrivals to Europe are decreasing.    The smuggling boat was coming from Libya when it sent a distress signal in international waters early Friday off the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax, according to an IOM official in Tunisia. …

READ MORE

Britain’s young royals, brothers Prince William and Prince Harry and their wives Kate and Meghan, launched a new phone messaging service Friday to help people suffering a mental health crisis. The two princes have been widely praised for speaking out about their own struggles with mental health in the wake of the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in a 1997 car crash and have made the issue one of their main charitable causes. Shout The new text messaging service, called “Shout,” aims to provide 24/7 support for people suffering from crises such as suicidal thoughts, abuse, relationship problems and …

READ MORE

The European Union’s 28 countries consume the Earth’s resources faster than they can be renewed and none of them has sustainable consumption policies, a report released Thursday said, as EU leaders met to discuss priorities for the next five years. “All EU countries are living beyond the means of our planet. The EU and its citizens are currently using twice more than the EU ecosystems can renew,”  the report  by the World Wide Fund (WWF) and Global Footprint Network said. It was issued as leaders met in the Romanian city of Sibiu to set the course for the bloc after …

READ MORE

Russia on May 9 marked one of its most important holidays, Victory Day over Nazi Germany in World War II. The Soviet Union – which included Russia – suffered the biggest losses with 26 million Soviet citizens killed in the conflict. At V-Day commemorations, victims are honored and the military presents a display meant show enemies its strength. Many also recall the time Russia and the United States fought on the same side against a common enemy. In Moscow, VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka caught up with one Soviet World War II veteran who recalls that time very well. …

READ MORE

A judge in Montenegro on Thursday sentenced 13 people, including two Russian intelligence officers, for a failed 2016 plot to assassinate the prime minister and put in a pro-Russian government.    Judge Suzana Mugosa said the coup plotters wanted to “violently overthrow” the government and “prevent Montenegro from joining NATO.”    The two intelligence Russian agents, Eduard Shishmakov and Vladimir Popov, were sentenced in absentia and given 12- and 15-year prison terms.    Interpol has an arrest warrant out for Popov.    Two pro-Russian Montenegrin opposition leaders, Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic, were each given five years behind bars for their part in the failed coup.    Mandic called the verdict a “complete farce” and …

READ MORE

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and four B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East in response to concerns Iran may be planning an attack against American targets.    The carrier strike group completed its transit Thursday through the Suez Canal, U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. William Urban told VOA. He said two B-52 bombers arrived in the region Thursday, while two others arrived Wednesday.    The bombers are now at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a defense official confirmed on condition of anonymity.    The request for more military assets in the Middle East was “in direct response to …

READ MORE

Turkey’s surprise move to allow Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), to meet with his lawyers after an eight-year hiatus is spurring speculation of a shift in Ankara’s hard-line policy following the 2015 collapse in peace talks with the rebel group. A nationwide hunger strike calling for an end to Ocalan’s isolation spurred Turkish authorities to allow his lawyers a visit at Imrali Island prison where the 70-year-old Kurdish leader is being held. “The lawyers were informed they could meet Ocalan on the day of the announcement of a death fast [hunger strike leading …

READ MORE