Category: Євросоюз

U.S. President Donald Trump has thanked Albania for expelling the Iranian ambassador and another diplomat for allegedly engaging in illegal activities that threaten Albania’s security. Trump’s letter to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, dated Dec. 14, thanked him “for your steadfast efforts to stand up to Iran and to counter its destabilizing activities and efforts to silence dissidents around the globe.” The U.S. Embassy in Tirana published the letter on its Facebook page on Thursday. Albania’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said the two diplomats were expelled for “violating their diplomatic status” following talks with other countries, including Israel. Trump’s letter …

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A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck off Russia’s far east on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said, although Russian news agencies carried no immediate reports of damage from the sparsely populated area. The quake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, which was initially measured at 7.8 before being revised downwards, struck 82 km (55 miles) west of Nikolskoye at a depth of 9 km, it said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said hazardous tsunami waves from the earthquake were possible within 300 kilometers of the epicentre along the coasts of Russia.   …

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U.S. President Donald Trump has urged Serbia and Kosovo to secure a “historic” deal that would bring “long-sought” peace to the Balkan region — a sign that Washington is willing to take a more active role in mediating between the two wartime foes. The office of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday published a letter he received from Trump, in which the U.S. president says, “I encourage you to seize this moment and to exercise the political leadership in making decisions needed to balance the interests of both countries.” “It would be extremely regrettable to miss this unique opportunity for …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for a surprise White House decision to pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, calling their presence there illegitimate and an impediment to peace in the region. Addressing a record 1,700 journalists at his 14th annual end-of-year marathon press conference Thursday, Putin said he agreed with President Donald Trump’s assessment that Islamic State had largely been defeated on the ground in Syria. “Donald is right, I agree with him [about that],” he said, stating that radical militants still holding small parts of northern Syria had suffered at least a “serious blow” over the past …

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A large number of rare and collectable whiskies, sometimes sold for hundreds of thousand of pounds, are likely to be fake, researchers have found. Investigators from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre used carbon-dating to sample 55 bottles of Scotch bought through the secondary market, discovering that 21 were outright fakes or not distilled in the year declared, Rare Whisky 101, which commissioned the study, said. The sale of rare collectors’ whiskies is more and more popular, and this October a 60-year-old The Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 was sold for record 848,750 pounds ($1.08 million) at auction. Researchers look at …

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The charity Doctors Without Borders says the medical and health needs of the Yemeni population are being overshadowed and neglected by the almost single-minded focus on a looming famine in the country. Doctors Without Borders Program Manager Charles Gaudry has just returned from three weeks in Yemen. He said he was particularly struck by the extent of the needs of the population, which is paying the highest cost of more than three years of war. He said they are victims of direct violence with thousands killed and wounded by airstrikes, shootings and shelling. While this has taken a heavy toll …

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The European Commission says it has started to implement plans for a no-deal Brexit — in preparation for Britain crashing out of the European Union without a withdrawal deal — which would dislocate manufacturers’ supply chains, disrupt air-travel, and gridlock busy seaports on both sides of the English Channel. With just 100 days to go before Britain’s scheduled departure on March 29, the Conservative government of Theresa May is also accelerating arrangements for a chaotic “no-deal Brexit,” ordering all ministries to shelve non-essential business and to divert staff to focus on contingency planning. Both the British government and Brussels are …

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The Trump administration is slapping more sanctions on Russian officials and entities for election interference and what the Treasury Department calls other “malign activities.” They include the alleged assassination attempt by poison of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. “The United States will continue to work with international allies and partners to take their collective action to deter and defend against sustained malign activity by Russia, its proxies, and intelligence agencies,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday. Among those sanctioned are 15 military intelligence agents and four government entities, including the Internet Research Agency. A new report …

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More than 750 million people, or 15 percent of the world’s population, would move permanently to other countries if given the opportunity, and the same percentage are not deterred by talk in a number of political circles about curbing immigration. These are the findings of a recent Gallup poll, which looked at the desire by people around the world to migrate. Gallup found that the desire to go to another country permanently climbed between 2015 and 2017. This marked an increase of one percent from the period spanning 2013 to 2016. Gallup conducted interviews with close to half a million …

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The U.N. Secretary-General on Wednesday welcomed the formal adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration at the General Assembly. “The compact is a non-legally binding agreement that reaffirms the foundational principles of our global community, including national sovereignty and universal human rights, while pointing the way toward humane and sensible action to benefit countries of origin, transit and destination as well as migrants themselves,” Antonio Guterres said in a statement. There are 250 million migrants worldwide, many traveling at great peril and at the hands of smugglers or traffickers.  The General Assembly voted 152 in favor, …

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Leaders from Iran and Turkey are scheduled to hold talks Thursday, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was withdrawing American forces from Syria because they defeated Islamic State militants in the country.     Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara could worsen U.S.-Turkish relations, which have been strained recently over Ankara’s threat to attack a Syrian Kurdish militia that is a key U.S. ally in the fight against IS.    How the U.S. will remain engaged in the region following the troop pullout remains unclear, but a White House statement called the withdrawal …

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French “yellow vest” protesters occupied highway toll booths, setting a number on fire and causing transport chaos in parts of the country just days before the Christmas holidays getaway. France’s biggest toll road operator, Vinci Autoroutes, said there were demonstrations at about 40 sites along its network and that some highway intersections had been damaged, notably in tourist towns such as Avignon, Orange, Perpignan and Agde. Protesters set fire overnight to the Bandol toll station, forcing the closure of the A50 highway between Marseille and Toulon, said Vinci, whose network is mainly in southern and western France. The Manosque station …

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U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a letter to Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci urging him to do everything to reach a longstanding deal with Serbia two decades after their war ended, according to Thaci’s official website. Serbia and its former province of Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, committed in 2013 to a European Union-sponsored dialogue meant to resolve all unsolved issues but little progress has been made. “Failure to capitalize on this unique opportunity would be a tragic setback, as another chance for a comprehensive peace is unlikely to occur again soon,” says the text of the letter posted …

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Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel offered to resign on Tuesday after socialists and greens tabled a motion of no confidence in his minority government. Michel relaunched his government a week ago as a minority administration after the Flemish N-VA, the biggest party in his coalition, quit in protest at his support of the U.N. migration pact. Some European politicians say the accord could increase immigration as the bloc has turned increasingly restrictive on accepting refugees and migrants alike. Michel’s slimmed down three-party coalition consisted of his French-speaking liberal MR and two Flemish parties. With parliamentary elections due in May, Michel …

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Greek lawmakers approved the heavily indebted country’s budget for 2019 late Tuesday, the first since Greece exited an eight-year bailout program. The budget lawmakers passed with a 154-143 vote still is heavy on austerity measures to ensure Greece registers a hefty surplus, in compliance with its debt relief deal with international creditors. Earlier Tuesday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said the proposed budget was Greece’s first in 10 years to be drafted “under circumstances of relative financial and political freedom” from bailout creditors. “Today we have the opportunity to vote for a budget that now reflects the priorities of the Greek …

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When a private museum in Benin displayed artifacts from the ancient Dahomey kingdom a decade ago, roughly a quarter-of-a-million Beninese flocked to see the exhibit — a stunning turnout for the tiny West African country.  There was only one hitch: although the pieces were part of its heritage, they didn’t belong to Benin, but rather were on loan from former colonial power France.  The next time Benin exhibits Dahomey art may be under very different circumstances. France has promised to return 26 royal artifacts taken by the French army in 1892—a move that may prove a watershed for other African …

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The size and scope of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was far more extensive and thorough than previously understood, according to two newly released reports. The reports that emerged this week support conclusions by the U.S. intelligence community — and published in an unclassified January 2017 report — that the goal of all of Russia’s meddling in the months leading up to the 2016 elections was to get their preferred candidate elected president of the United States. “What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party and specifically …

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Ukraine has elected the head of a newly unified Orthodox Church, following a split from the Russian Orthodox Church, announced Saturday. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has hailed the move as an important safeguard against future Russian aggression. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has condemned Ukraine’s church split from the Russian Orthodox church in October and calls it uncanonical. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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A few thousand demonstrators gathered in freezing temperatures outside Hungary’s state broadcaster Monday night in a fifth day of protests against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.  Lawmakers from all opposition parties took to a temporary podium to declare they would continue protests until they are allowed to read out their demands on state television.  The protests were sparked by a new labor law that in essence enables the return of a six-day work week, if an employee agrees, with overtime payments potentially unpaid for up to three years. Demands expand But the demands of protesters have expanded …

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The European Union agreed Monday to a goal of cutting carbon emissions from cars by 37.5 percent in a decade, finally settling differences between vehicle-producing countries and environmentally-conscious lawmakers. The 28-nation bloc has been divided for months over how strict to be on CO2 emissions from vehicles as part of its push to reduce greenhouse gases overall by 40 percent by 2030. Germany, with the EU’s biggest auto sector worth some 423 billion euros ($480 billion) in 2017, had warned tough targets and the drive toward more electric cars could harm its industry and cost jobs. Representatives of the European …

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