Category: Євросоюз

Turnout at “yellow vest” protests across France, a backlash against high living costs that has lasted nearly four months, fell Saturday to its lowest level yet. People wearing the neon high-visibility vests that have come to symbolize the movement were joined in Paris by others donning pink tops, as child-care workers turned out against a reform of their unemployment subsidies. Demonstrators on the Champs-Elysees avenue were pushed back at one point by water cannons, and sporadic clashes with police erupted in other cities including Lyon, Bordeaux and Toulouse, though the protests largely passed peacefully. Some protesters staged a “flash mob” at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, waving French flags …

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Searchers have spotted the bodies of two climbers from Britain and Italy in Pakistan days after the pair disappeared while trying to scale one of the world’s highest peaks, officials said Saturday.    Tom Ballard and Daniele Nardi were caught in bad weather about two weeks ago while trying to climb the 8,125-meter Nanga Parbat, nicknamed “Killer Mountain,” using a route that has never been successfully completed.    The search for Nardi, 42, and Ballard, 30, officially ended when the bodies of the pair were identified “beyond reasonable doubt” through telescope and aerial photos, the Italian ambassador to Pakistan said.   …

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Ukrainian police said 15 officers were injured Saturday in a clash with far-right demonstrators who disrupted a campaign appearance of President Petro Poroshenko.    The clash took place in Cherkasy, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Kyiv, according to a police statement.      Several dozen members of the National Corps party tried to rush onto the stage where Poroshenko was speaking and tried to block his motorcade. Police fired tear gas to disperse them. The statement did not state the severity of police injuries but said five of the officers were treated at the scene.    Poroshenko was in …

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A labor strike in France, prompted by concerns over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, might spread to the flying public. Strikes by customs agents at ports and rail stations earlier in the week could now spread airports. Long lines of trucks at Calais and Dunkirk ports. Two-hour delays for Britain-bound Eurostar rail passengers. That was the scene this week in France for passengers and merchandise headed for the U.K. French customs agents staged slowdowns by strictly observing rules, leading to lengthy security checks, a preview, they claim, of what might happen if Britain leaves the European Union without an …

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The infant son of Shamima Begum, a teenager who left London to join the Islamic State group in Syria, has died, a spokesman for the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Friday. Begum, whose first two children also died, was stripped of her British citizenship last month on security grounds after she was discovered in a detention camp in Syria. The 19-year-old left London to join IS when she was 15. She had sought to return to Europe with her third child, who was born about three weeks ago. SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said the child had died. …

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In Turkey, International Women’s Day saw nationwide protests, with many focusing on the growing scourge of violence against women. According to rights groups, hundreds of women are slain yearly in Turkey. In Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, the heart of the Asian side of the city, hundreds of women gathered, holding placards condemning violence against women. “We are here to demand the police and judiciary take these endless murders of women seriously. I have had enough of these killings,” said Sibel, who wanted to give only her first name.  Police presence Despite a heavy police presence, the Kadikoy demonstration passed without incident. …

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The United Nations says 1.8 billion people in the world are below age 30. Most live in developing countries, with hundreds of millions in areas of conflict. Actor Forest Whitaker, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, says young people too often are viewed in a negative light. He says they are seen as a problem rather than the solution to unresolved conflicts.   Speaking to VOA on Friday on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, Whitaker said his foundation, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, trains young people to become mediators in four systems of conflict resolution and education. He said young …

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The Pentagon is warning of “grave consequences” to military relations between the United States and Turkey should Ankara purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system. “If Turkey takes the S-400, there would be grave consequences in terms of our relationship, military relationship with them,” chief Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers told reporters Friday. Summers said those consequences would encompass losing U.S. military sales to Turkey, including the long-awaited sale of the United States’ new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet. “If they take the S-400s then … they would not get the F-35s and the Patriots,” Summers said, referring to the Patriot surface-to-air …

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Sectarian tensions are rising in Northern Ireland — and not only because of Brexit and the possibility that the island of Ireland will once again be divided by a so-called “hard border.” The province is also on edge about whether former British paratroopers will face trial for the deaths of 14 unarmed protesters, who were shot 47 years ago in a massacre that became known as Bloody Sunday. Prosecutors are expected to make their decision public next week, but the signs are that several of the ex-paratroopers, now in their 70s, are more likely to face murder charges for their …

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Women around the world marked International Women’s Day with celebrations, protests, and demands for equality and an end to gender violence. …

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Pope Francis on Friday branded anti-Semitism part of a wave of “depraved hatred” sweeping some countries and urged everyone to be vigilant against it. In comments to members of the American Jewish Committee during a visit to the Vatican, he also reiterated that it was sinful for Christians to hold anti-Semitic sentiments because they shared a heritage with Jews. “A source of great concern to me is the spread, in many places, of a climate of wickedness and fury, in which an excessive and depraved hatred is taking root,” Francis said. “I think especially of the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks …

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Britain will hand diplomatic protection to British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to underline the government’s belief that Iran has behaved unjustly in its treatment of her, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Thursday. Hunt said while the move, a little-used way for governments to seek protection on behalf of their nationals, was unlikely to be a “magic wand,” it may help Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. Iran’s ambassador in London said on Twitter that Britain’s move “contravenes international law.” Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain …

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President Donald Trump and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis now have another thing in common: They both like the same campaign slogan. Babis said Thursday at the White House that he similarly wants to “Make the Czech Republic great again.” The two leaders already have much in common. Babis, like Trump, is a wealthy businessman who rode into office on a nationalist-style campaign. While Trump is dogged by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Babis is facing charges of misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to relatives, including his son. Trump wants to strengthen the U.S. border …

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Russia’s leading telecoms firm said Thursday it had agreed to pay $850 million to settle a U.S. corruption case over huge bribes paid to the family of Uzbekistan’s former president. The case shed light on massive corruption in Uzbekistan under former president Islam Karimov, who ruled the ex-Soviet republic from 1990 until his death in 2016. MTS, based in Moscow and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said the settlement had been agreed with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The deals “mark the closure of the investigations into the company’s acquisition and …

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The Inter-Parliamentary Union finds more women around the world are winning seats in their national parliaments, with the best gains being made in countries that have well-designed quota systems. The report finds women’s representation in national parliaments rose by nearly 1 percentage point last year to 24.3 percent. This may seem a modest increase, but this figure indicates an ongoing upward trend of women’s participation in politics since the 1995 World Women’s Conference in Beijing. At that time, only 11 percent of women were in parliament. Their share has now more than doubled. IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong says he also is …

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French citizen Mehdi Nemmouche was convicted of “terrorist murder” on Thursday for shooting dead four people in a Jewish museum in Brussels after coming back from Syria in 2014, the federal prosecutor’s spokesman said. Sentencing after the two-month-long, Brussels jury court trial, which underlined the threat posed by European jihadists returning home after fighting in Syria’s war, will be announced at a later date. Nemmouche, 33, remained silent in the dock as former hostages of Islamic State militants as well as victims of the May 2014 museum attack testified against him, though he took the stand briefly on Tuesday to …

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Local officials and human services workers in the southern Italian region of Calabria say the Italian government’s recently adopted security decree, which abolishes two years of humanitarian protection for asylum seekers, will do nothing but create greater insecurity. They say migrants not only helped re-populate empty classrooms but brought new work to locals. Caulonia, Stignano and Riace are just some of the towns in Italy’s southern and depressed region of Calabria that had benefited from the arrival of migrants on Italian shores. But for the many who arrived here after difficult sea crossings, there are new uncertainties. A security decree …

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The lower house of Russia’s parliament has passed two bills that restrict online criticism of the government and authorizes the imposition of jail sentences or fines on those who publish erroneous information about the authorities. The State Duma passed the measures Thursday and they are expected to be approved quickly in the upper chamber, after which they would be presented to President Vladimir Putin to be signed into law. The laws call for people found guilty of publishing “indecent” material that demonstrates “disrespect for society, the state [and] state symbols of the Russian Federation” and government officials to be penalized. …

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British police said a suspicious package destroyed by bomb-disposal experts at the University of Glasgow on Wednesday contained an explosive device and was linked to three letter bombs sent to two London airports and a railway station.      The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command said the item sent to the Scottish university had “similarities in the package, its markings and the type of device” to the three small improvised bombs received by the London transportation hubs on Tuesday.      The mailing envelope sent to London’s Heathrow Airport with one of the bombs inside partly caught fire when someone opened it, but …

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Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic faithful to free themselves from the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness” as he marked the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting before Easter. Francis led a procession and then celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, one of Rome’s most beautiful. In his homily, Francis said the 40-day period of Lent is a “wakeup call for the soul” to rediscover the direction of life. He said: “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, …

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