Category: Євросоюз

Russia will help Cuba repair state-run airline Cubana’s mostly grounded fleet, likely by year’s end, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov was quoted as saying by Cuban news agency Prensa Latina on Friday. Cubana had to cancel most domestic flights last year due to a lack of flightworthy planes and lease aircraft from other companies. The carrier uses mainly Russian and Ukrainian-made Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Antonovs partly because U.S. sanctions prevent it from buying planes with a certain share of U.S. components. Cuba’s cash crunch restricts it from paying for expensive repairs and spare parts. After a high-level Russian-Cuban intergovernmental …

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Rescue crews in Spain appeared to be centimeters of rock away late Friday from the space where a 2-year-old boy is believed to be trapped underground after falling into a borehole 12 days ago.    Julen Rosello fell down the narrow 110-meter-deep borehole (360 feet) on Jan. 13 while his family was preparing a countryside Sunday lunch. His parents had another young son who died in 2017, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.    The tragic accident in Malaga province gripped Spaniards from day one and the country has followed closely every turn of an extremely complex and frequently hampered search-and-rescue mission.    …

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Greek lawmakers have ratified a deal with Macedonia, ending a nearly three-decade-long dispute between the neighbors in which the Balkan country will be renamed North Macedonia. Greece’s parliament narrowly passed the agreement, 153-146, on Friday. The deal normalizes relations between the two countries and paves the way for Macedonia to join NATO and the European Union. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed the ratification and praised the Greek government for its “vision, courage and persistence” in pushing ahead with the historic agreement. Top EU officials also hailed the deal. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the vote took “political …

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The European Commission has added Saudi Arabia to an EU draft list of countries that pose a threat to the bloc because of lax controls against terrorism financing and money laundering, two sources told Reuters on Friday. The move comes amid heightened international pressure on Saudi Arabia after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2. The EU’s list currently consists of 16 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and North Korea, and is mostly based on criteria used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body composed by wealthy …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is telling his embattled Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, to “stand tall” in the face of national and international calls to step down amid a political crisis. Maduro’s opponents accuse him of undermining democracy. He has presided over skyrocketing inflation, a collapsing economy and widespread shortages of basic goods. Erdogan said Thursday he was shocked at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president. In response to the announcement, Maduro said Wednesday he was ending diplomatic relations with the United States and ordered U.S. diplomats to leave within …

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Italy pressured the Netherlands on Friday to accept 47 migrants who have spent seven days at sea aboard a humanitarian rescue ship that has been allowed to enter Italian territorial waters due to bad weather conditions. The German aid group Sea-Watch said Friday on Twitter that it has received no response to multiple requests for the Dutch-flagged Sea Watch-3 vessel carrying people rescued off Libya on Saturday to access a port. The boat was permitted to enter Italian waters Friday due to deteriorating weather conditions, and the Italian coast guard said it was about one to two miles off Syracuse, …

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NATO and Russia failed on Friday to resolve a dispute over a new Russian missile that Western allies say is a threat to Europe, bringing closer Washington’s withdrawal from a landmark arms control treaty. At a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, envoys from NATO’s 29 members renewed their call on Moscow’s top diplomat to the alliance to destroy a nuclear-capable cruise missile system before a Feb. 2 deadline. Without a breakthrough, the United States is set to start the six-month process of pulling out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), having notified it would do so …

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Impatient with the lack of World Trade Organization rules to cover the explosive growth of e-commerce, 76 countries and regions agreed on Friday to start negotiating this year on a set of open and predictable regulations. The WTO’s 164 members were unable to consolidate some 25 separate e-commerce proposals at the body’s biennial conference at Buenos Aires in December, including a call to set up a central e-commerce negotiating forum. In a gathering on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, ministers from a smaller group of countries including the United States, the European Union and Japan, agreed …

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A Muslim party said it would launch a legal bid to change the name of Bosnia’s Serb region, enraging all Serbian parties in the volatile country and  prompting calls for calm from the European Union.  The largest Bosnian Muslim party, SDA, said Wednesday that the name Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) discriminated against  Bosniaks and Croats there, and that it would challenge it in the  constitutional court. Under the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country is split into two highly autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the federation dominated by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, linked via a weak central government. SDA leader Bakir Izetbegovic said the legal challenge was …

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The search for a two-year-old Spanish boy who fell into a narrow well Jan. 13 entered its riskiest phase Thursday as miners went down a new 60-meter (197-foot) parallel shaft to start digging across to the well. There have been no signs of life since the boy, Julen, fell into the borehole as his family walked through a private estate in Totalan in southern Spain. Rescuers found the well was blocked with earth, raising fears soil had collapsed onto the child. “Members of the Mines Rescue Brigade sent from Asturias [region] have just accessed the vertical well to start excavation …

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Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it faces a bill of up to $1 billion if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal, comprising World Trade Organization tariffs and the impact of a weaker pound. The impact of Brexit on Ford, based on internal calculations, would be in the range of $500 million to $1 billion depending on a variety of factors, Ford said in a statement. Sky News earlier on Thursday reported the hit could be $800 million. Car makers and other manufacturers, including Airbus earlier on Thursday, have warned about the toll a no-deal Brexit could impose, …

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Greek police fired tear gas to disperse crowds gathered outside parliament on Thursday to protest a deal over the name of neighboring Macedonia, as an at-times angry parliamentary debate spilled into a third day. Several thousand people massed outside the Greek legislature, some of them chanting “traitors” as lawmakers debated ratification of an agreement reached with the neighboring ex-Yugoslav state last year. The Greek parliament delayed the expected approval of the U.N.-brokered deal by a day due to an increased number of lawmakers who wanted to have a say. The so-called Prespes Agreement between Athens and Skopje changes the tiny …

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Russia, China, Iran, Syria and Cuba have come down on one side. The United States, Canada, and countries in Western Europe are on the other. As the crisis in Venezuela reaches a new boiling point — with embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro facing a challenge from opposition leader Juan Guaido — the geopolitical fault lines look familiar. President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued statements Wednesday proclaiming U.S. recognition of Guaido, saying the U.S. would take all diplomatic and economic measures necessary to support a transition to a new government. Canada said it …

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has inched up slightly in the eyes of women’s groups who said on Wednesday he has delivered on some promises to make the global organization a feminist institution but faces a major backlash and resistance. The Feminist U.N. Campaign, a coalition of women’s rights groups, advocates and U.N. staff, gave him a grade of B-, up from the C+ it gave him a year ago. The coalition launched its report card after the secretary-general said he would be a feminist leader when he took office two years ago. Global movement In that time, the #MeToo campaign …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in his latest effort to build support for a Turkish-controlled military security zone in Syria. “The U.S. has already expressed a positive stance. Neither do we have problems [concerning the safe zone] with Russia,” said Erdogan at a joint press conference in Moscow. Erdogan is proposing a 250-kilometer-long and 32-kilometer-deep zone in northeast Syria to protect the Turkish border from the Syrian YPG Kurdish militia. Ankara accuses the YPG of links to Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. ​However, the Turkish president envisages the zone not only providing …

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A new study by a defense analysis company indicates there was a 33 percent drop in global terror attacks in 2018, and terrorism fatalities fell to a 10-year low. Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center released its annual Global Attack Index on Wednesday, saying one of the central reasons for the decrease in incidents and fatalities was the decrease in violence in Syria, where the government has gained control of territory previously occupied by Islamic State militants. Attacks by IS in 2018 declined by nearly 75 percent compared to 2017.  The study said in addition to Syria, IS was also affected …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Wednesday to coordinate their moves in Syria as their governments bargain over zones of influence in the war-torn country. The leaders share strong opposition to the U.S. military presence in Syria, seeing it as an obstacle to their clout in the country. The Kremlin meeting marked their first encounter since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the pullout of American troops in a Dec. 19 tweet. “If such plans are implemented, it will mark a positive move that would help stabilize the situation,” Putin said about the planned U.S. …

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World leaders in favor of international cooperation and free trade struck back Wednesday against the wave of populist nationalism that has featured more prominently than usual at the gathering of elites in Davos, Switzerland. As heads of state took turns to address the political and business tycoons, the question of global cooperation emerged as a dividing line. The leaders of Japan and Germany – countries that have flourished on trade since their devastation under nationalist leaders in World War II – focused on the need for cooperation. It was a not-so-subtle dig at earlier speeches by the populist president of …

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The Russian military on Wednesday rolled out a new missile and released its specifications, seeking to dispel the U.S. claim that the weapon violates a key nuclear arms pact. The military insisted that the 9M729 land-based cruise missile conforms to the limits of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, firmly rejecting the U.S. claim that it has broken the pact by testing and deploying it.   The U.S. has announced its intention to abandon the INF, charging that the new Russian missile violates provisions of the pact that ban production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with …

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A senior British Cabinet minister says businesses need to prepare for the possibility the U.K. will leave the European Union in March without an exit deal, as a growing number of British firms say they are stockpiling goods or shifting operations overseas. Last week British lawmakers threw out Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU divorce deal, and attempts to find a replacement are gridlocked. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said Wednesday that “no deal is a possibility.”   Many business groups say a “no-deal” Brexit will cause economic chaos by imposing tariffs, customs checks and other barriers between the U.K. and …

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