Britain is facing weeks of high-stakes political drama, as Prime Minister Theresa May attempts to get parliamentary backing for the divorce deal agreed to last week with the European Union. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …
France wants to boost the number of foreign students at its universities by more than half over the next decade and will offer more courses taught in English to attract them. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, announcing the plan on Monday, said increasing the number of foreigners studying in the country would help build French influence overseas. Home to centuries-old universities such as the Sorbonne in Paris and some leading business schools, France is the world’s top non-English speaking student destination, but it ranks behind the United States, Britain and Australia. The number of foreign students at French universities fell by …
The U.S. and Western powers on Monday clashed with Russia and others over whether the global chemical weapons watchdog could start apportioning blame for poison gas and nerve agent attacks. At a heated session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ annual conference, both sides bitterly fought over a June decision for the group to set up a new investigative team which could name the perpetrators of chemical attacks — a major change in the group’s rules. Russia and China said the widely-backed June decision to allow the organization to identify those responsible should be reviewed to ensure …
It is biting cold near the border of Bosnia and Croatia, and nothing really keeps the migrants camping there stay warm. After a mild autumn, the weather in the Balkans gave way to gray skies, plunging temperatures and cutting wind. The approach of another winter announced tougher times for migrants stuck in the region while trying to reach western Europe. Hundreds of migrants are staying in make-shift camps with no heating or facilities. Some are fleeing wars in their home countries in the Middle East Africa or Asia. Others have been driven away by poverty, lack of freedom or hope …
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will visit Iran for the first time on Monday for talks with the Iranian government on issues including the future of the 2015 nuclear deal, his office said in a statement. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal, negotiated with five other world powers during Democratic president Barack Obama’s administration, and earlier this month the United States restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transportation sectors. Hunt’s office said he would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and would stress that the UK is committed to the nuclear deal as long as …
Romanian prosecutors are investigating whether a painting by Pablo Picasso that was snatched from a museum in the Netherlands six years ago has turned up in Romania. Four Romanians were convicted of stealing Picasso’s “Tete d’Arlequin” and six other valuable paintings from the Kunsthal gallery in Rotterdam. One of them, Olga Dogaru, told investigators she burned the paintings in her stove to protect her son, the alleged leader of the 2012 heist. She later retracted the statement. Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism said Sunday it was examining the circumstances of a painting a fiction writer …
Finland’s president says that he briefed U.S. President Donald Trump amid the California wildfires on how the Nordic country effectively monitors its substantial forest resources with a well-working surveillance system. President Sauli Niinisto said in an interview published Sunday in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper that he told Trump during their brief meeting in Paris on Nov. 11 that “Finland is a country covered by forests but we also have a good surveillance system and network” in case of wildfires. Trump said Saturday in northern California that wildfires weren’t a problem in Finland because the Finns “spend a lot of time on …
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych won’t be able to appear before a Kyiv court on Monday because of injuries sustained on a Moscow tennis court, his lawyer said. Yanukovych “cannot appear in court seeing as he has been hospitalized” and is unable to move due to spinal and knee injuries, lawyer Aleksandr Goroshinsky told Russian news agencies Sunday. Yanukovych fled Ukraine in 2014 as tensions in the capital flared up following a brutal and deadly police crackdown on protesters calling for the president to follow through with an association agreement signed with the European Union. Shortly after disappearing from Kyiv, …
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both limping in the polls, are looking for common approaches to U.S. President Donald Trump and fixing the flaws in the euro currency. The two need a little mutual support right now given their respective political shakiness at home as Macron visits Sunday to take part in Germany’s annual remembrance day for victims of war and dictatorship. Macron has seen his poll ratings sag at home and Merkel has been a lame duck since saying she wouldn’t seek another term. Her conservative party has lost support in recent regional elections. …
“Injustice is the perverse root of poverty,” Pope Francis said Sunday at a Mass marking the Roman Catholic Church’s Day of the Poor. Francis invited thousands of poor people to Saint Peter’s Basilica for the Mass and he is scheduled to have lunch with them later. “The cry of the poor daily becomes stronger, but heard less, drowned out by the din of the rich few, who grow ever fewer and more rich,” Francis said. He also made a reference to migrants when he called on people to pay attention to “all those forced to flee their homes and native …
British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it’s for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. …
Germany needs a package of tax cuts and other measures to shore up economic growth in the long term, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said in an interview published Sunday, days after the country posted its first economic contraction since 2015. Altmaier, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing conservatives, said he was focused on cutting high German corporate taxes following tax cuts in the United States, Britain and soon France. “The corporate tax in Germany is now higher than in other industrial countries,” Altmaier told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “That is a disadvantage and puts jobs at risk. That …
British Prime Minister Theresa May fought back against critics of her Brexit deal Saturday, telling opponents from within her party their alternative plans for Britain’s departure from the European Union wouldn’t work. May is battling to win over rebels in her Conservative Party and and to preserve her position as prime minister after a grueling week in which party members plotted to oust her and two Cabinet ministers quit within hours of her government striking the long-sought divorce agreement with the EU. In a public relations offensive, May revealed in a Daily Mail interview how her husband supported her during …
Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Norwegian cities on Saturday against restricting women’s access to abortion, the subject of talks between the ruling minority coalition and a small party seeking to join the government. In Norway’s capital Oslo, the demonstrators, some pushing children in strollers, marched through the city center carrying banners with slogans such as “My body my right” and “Defend abortion.” “The new law that’s proposed is limiting women’s rights,” said Ine Lund, a 22-year-old criminology student. “I feel it should be up to the woman to choose.” When the Christian Democrats opened talks on teaming up with the …
The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that U.S.-led coalition airstrikes killed more than 40 people in the village of Abu Husn in the region of Deir el-Zor, near the Iraqi border. Arab media announced the deaths of several dozen people, most of whom appeared to have been Islamic State group fighters, during bitter fighting in the Deir el-Zor region of eastern Syria, not far from the Iraqi border. Rami Abdel Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that about three dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in the airstrikes on the village …
Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously. A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country. Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest. About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves …
U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he has not been briefed on a Central Intelligence Agency report that concludes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of a Saudi journalist, but that he would be briefed later in the day. “We will be talking with the CIA later and lots of others. I’ll be doing that while I’m on the plane,” Trump told reporters at the White House before departing on a flight to California. “I’ll also be speaking with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.” The assessment by the CIA, first reported by The Washington Post Friday, contradicts …
Drivers in France are planning to block roads across the country to protest rising fuel taxes, in a new challenge to embattled President Emmanuel Macron. Protesters pledge to target tollbooths, roundabouts and the bypass that rings Paris on Saturday. The government is preparing to send police to remove protesters and threatening fines. The taxes are part of Macron’s strategy of weaning France off fossil fuels. Many drivers see them as emblematic of a presidency seen as disconnected from day-to-day economic difficulties. The protesters have dubbed themselves the “yellow jackets” because they wear fluorescent vests that all French …
British lawmakers are calling for hand car washes to be regulated and licensed to combat the modern-day slavery that is being carried out “in plain sight.” The Environmental Audit Committee said in a report that authorities are not doing enough to prevent the “flagrant rule-breaking” and exploitation of workers at the tens of thousands of hand car washes around the country. Many of them operate on shopping center parking lots and other disused spaces. More than a quarter of the reports of alleged labor abuses referred to the Modern Slavery Helpline last year were about hand car washes. “Hand car …
U.S. Sen. John McCain was posthumously given the 2018 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award in a ceremony in London on Thursday night. The award recognizes those who have fought for human rights in Russia and is named after a lawyer who was killed in a Moscow jail in 2009. John McCain’s daughter Meghan accepted the award on behalf of her late father. In a speech she contrasted his legacy with what she called the “bloody-handed dictator of Russia.” “John McCain defended and vindicated the memory of ordinary men and women with integrity, like Sergei Magnitsky. Vladimir Putin has them murdered. …