Category: Євросоюз

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) argued on Sunday over whether they should return to a more conservative agenda once she steps down as party chair as contenders to succeed her gear up for the leadership race. Support for their Social Democrats (SPD) coalition partner meanwhile hit a record low, according to a poll published hours before senior members of both the CDU and the SPD were due to discuss the parties’ future courses in closed-door meetings. Merkel announced last week that she would step down as CDU party leader in December, ending an era of nearly two decades …

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Italy’s president has recalled World War I’s roots in “aggressive nationalism” and urged young people to remember the conflict’s lessons while striving for peaceful co-existence.   Italian head of state Sergio Mattarella attended several ceremonies in Italy on Sunday, part of a week of observances marking the 100th anniversary of the war’s end.   One was in Trieste, an Adriatic port not far from some of the final, deadliest battles between Italian soldiers and troops of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.   Mattarella said the war demonstrated the “incapacity of the European ruling class” to pursue “national aspirations and interests in a …

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Adventurer Ross Edgley became the first man to swim around the coast of mainland Britain as he completed a 1,780 mile-trip to make a triumphant return to dry land in Margate on Sunday. The 33-year-old, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, had left the Kent town on June 1, swimming in a clockwise direction. He had not set foot on land once and slept in a support boat. Edgley, who swam up to 12 hours a day, battled through strong tides, hundreds of jellyfish stings and had to cope with a disintegrating tongue caused by salt water during his Great British Swim. He …

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France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party jumped ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM for the first time in a poll of voting intentions for May 2019 European Parliament elections. An Ifop poll published Sunday showed the centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) with 19 percent of voting intentions compared with 20 percent at the end of August, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s RN, formerly the National Front, rose to 21 percent from 17 percent previously. Together with the 7 percent score of sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and 1 percent each for “Frexit” parties led by former Le Pen associate Florian …

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Aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food industry and now accounts for more than 50 percent of the total global seafood supply, according to the World Economic Forum. But farming fish requires food for those fish, and currently, it relies on a lot of ingredients that could be feeding people, including soybean, corn, rice and wheat. Faith Lapidus reports on some new sustainable ideas about feeding farmed fish, from Norway. …

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Heavy rain and gales devastating parts of Italy have killed two more people, pushing the overall death toll to at least 17, and laid waste to vast swaths of forest.  A German tourist died Friday when hit by lightning on the island of Sardinia, while another person struck by lightning several days ago died in a hospital, Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said Saturday.  A spokeswoman said 17 deaths related to the severe weather had been reported to the agency so far.  Many of the victims have been killed by falling trees. Coldiretti, the association of Italian agricultural companies, said in a statement that gales had destroyed about 14 million trees, many …

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Turkey’s president says Donald Trump has promised to review possible U.S. measures against a Turkish bank for evading sanctions on Iran.  Speaking Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave details about a phone conversation he had with Trump on Thursday as strained relations between the two countries ease following Turkey’s release of a jailed American pastor.  Erdogan said he raised the issue of the state-owned Halkbank, which had an executive charged in New York for taking part in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Turkey maintains Halkbank did not violate the sanctions.  Erdogan said Trump “said he would immediately instruct his ministers …

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Brexit is undermining Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace by creating tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Saturday, even as hopes rose for a solution to the Irish border problem that has deadlocked negotiations.  “Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement” — the 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland — “and it is fraying relationships between Britain and Ireland,” Varadkar said.  “Anything that pulls the two communities apart in Northern Ireland undermines the Good Friday Agreement, and anything that pulls Britain and Ireland apart undermines that relationship,” he told Ireland’s RTE radio.  Negotiations …

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With just days to go until the U.S. midterm elections, there are growing fears that Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy extend far beyond the polls on Nov. 6 or the presidential election in 2020. Defense and security officials worry that as part of Moscow’s plan to sow division and discord, it is trying to conquer the U.S. military — not with bullets or missiles but with tweets and memes. The tactic is an outgrowth of Russia’s overarching strategy to find seams within U.S. society where distrust or anger exist and widen those divisions with targeted messaging. In the case of the …

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Britain and Ireland will seek to hold regular summits between leaders and ministers after Brexit to maintain ties strained by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, senior ministers from both governments said on Friday. Relations between the two have improved markedly since Ireland gained independence from Britain following a bloody struggle almost a century ago. But ties have been tested over the last two years with Ireland a key player on the opposite side of the Brexit negotiating table to Britain. Arguments over how to manage the the border between EU-member state Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland have threatened the …

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President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russia’s GRU military intelligence on its centenary Friday, hailing the agency that has been accused by the West of election meddling, nerve agent poisonings and hacking attacks against chemical weapons probes and anti-doping sports bodies. “I’m confident of your professionalism, courage and determination,” the Russian leader said in a speech to GRU officers in Moscow. Putin said he highly appreciates the intelligence information and the analytics produced by the GRU and also praised the agency for its actions in Syria, saying it strongly contributed to the success of Russia’s campaign there. The United States and its …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the order to kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi came from the “highest levels” of the Saudi government. In an op-ed piece published Friday by The Washington Post, Erdogan said he did “not believe for a second” that Saudi King Salman had ordered the killing of Khashoggi. He also did not directly accuse Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Khashoggi, a Post columnist who had written critically of the Saudi crown prince, was killed after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month to get a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Erdogan wrote that …

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A Turkish presidential adviser and friend of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi says his body was cut up and dissolved in acid for easier disposal, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported Friday. “According to the latest information we have, the reason they dismembered his body is to dissolve it easier” before it was disposed of, Yasin Aktay told the newspaper. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who who had written critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month to get a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. After initially …

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The Italian government has decided it needs to offer incentives to combat the country’s declining birthrate and proposed a new plan it is calling “Land-for-Children.” The agriculture minister says providing free farmland for families who have a third child could create new business ventures for Italian families.   Italy now has the lowest birthrate in Europe, and the populist government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is taking measures because it wants to reverse the trend. In its draft budget it announced a plan to award land to married couples who have a third child. The idea is not only to …

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The leaders of Russia and Cuba have vowed to expand what they called their “strategic” ties and urged the United States to lift its blockade of Cuba. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel pledged Friday to develop political, economic and military cooperation between their nations. Diaz-Canel, who replaced Raul Castro in April in a historic changing of the guard in Cuba, hailed the “brotherly” ties between Russia and Cuba. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union poured billions of dollars in supplies and subsidies to Cuba, its staunchest Latin American ally. But ties withered after the …

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The prime ministers of France and Vietnam have witnessed the signing of two business deals worth over $10 billion and dozens of other cooperation agreements covering energy, education, health, technology and the environment. The agreements overseen by Edouard Philippe and Nguyen Xuan Phuc come as the two countries seek ways to further boost trade and investment cooperation. They include the purchase by Vietjet Air, Vietnam’s leading private airline, of 50 Airbus A321neo planes worth $6.5 billion and CFM Leap engines worth $5.3 billion. Earlier Friday, Philippe met with President Nguyen Phu Trong and National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. …

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The fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi said the Trump administration’s response to Khashoggi’s death has been “devoid of moral foundation.” “Of all nations, the United States should be leading the way in bringing the perpetrators to justice,” Hatice Cengiz wrote in an op-ed piece appearing Friday in The Washington Post. Instead, Cengiz said, “Some in Washington are hoping this matter will be forgotten with simple delaying tactics. But we will continue to push the Trump administration to help find justice for Jamal.  There will be no coverup.” The New York Times, quoting two people familiar with the matter, reported …

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U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will visit Ukraine, Poland and other eastern European countries next week as the Trump administration seeks to offer them alternatives to buying coal and gas from Russia. Perry will also visit Hungary and the Czech Republic on the trip. He will meet with government officials on topics from nuclear energy to cyber security and coal and liquefied natural gas exports, the Department of Energy said in a release on Thursday. The Trump administration is seeking foreign markets for coal as domestic consumption has dropped to the lowest level since 1983 due to closures of coal-fired …

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The United States is urging Saudi Arabia to locate the body of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and return it to his family as soon as possible. Khashoggi was killed when he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month, according to a Turkish prosecutor. His body has not been found, although Turkish police last month searched a forest on Istanbul’s outskirts and near Yalova, a city near the Sea of Marmara, for Khashoggi’s remains. Khashoggi’s friends and family say they want just a piece of his body so they can carry out his wish to be buried in the …

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Armenia’s president on Thursday dissolved parliament and called an early election, a political maneuver intended to unseat the current parliament majority. President Armen Sarkisian’s move is in sync with acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to unseat his foes in parliament. Sarkisian set the early election for Dec. 9. Pashinian took office in May after spearheading weeks of protests that forced the resignation of his predecessor, but his political opponents retained a majority in parliament. Last month, Pashinian announced his resignation, saying that an early vote is needed “to return the power to the people.” Armenian law says a snap …

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