Category: Євросоюз

Norway summoned the Iranian ambassador Thursday over a suspected assassination plot against an Iranian Arab opposition figure in Denmark involving a Norwegian citizen of Iranian background.  Denmark said Tuesday that it suspected the Iranian government intelligence service had tried to carry out an assassination on its soil. It is now calling for fresh European Union sanctions against the Islamic Republic.  A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden Oct. 21 in connection with the plot and extradited to Denmark, Swedish security police have said.  “During the meeting we underlined that the activity that has come to light through the investigation in Denmark is unacceptable,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said …

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Morocco, struggling with an influx of African migrants seeking passage to nearby Europe, on Thursday imposed a new rule requiring such travelers to fill out an online travel form for approval at least 96 hours before leaving home. The procedure on a website carrying the Moroccan Foreign Ministry logo applies to a range of African countries whose citizens currently can enter Morocco without visas, except for Algeria and Tunisia. The North African country has been grappling with a surge in migrants, arriving mainly on flights into Casablanca. Many intend to get into Europe and claim asylum by taking boats across …

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Scientists are putting a robotic Mars rover to the test in Spain’s rocky Tabernas Desert. The European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency plan to land a rover on the Red Planet in 2021, to search for microscopic signs of life. Faith Lapidus reports. …

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Of all the countries that fought in the Great War, none was perhaps more affected than Russia. Dissatisfaction at home over Russian losses in World War I led to Tsar Nikolai II’s abdication of the Romanov throne and, several months later, the Bolshevik Revolution, sealed with the execution of the royal family by the new Soviet authorities in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg. But as Charles Maynes reports, Russian attempts to bring closure to the Romanov story remain elusive even today. …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has struck a deal with the European Union that would give UK financial services companies continued access to European markets after Brexit, the Times reported on Thursday. British and European negotiators have reached tentative agreement on all aspects of a future partnership on services, as well as the exchange of data, the British newspaper reported, citing government sources.  The British pound jumped as much as 0.5 percent against the dollar following the report. The services deal would give UK companies access to European markets as long as British financial regulation remained broadly aligned with the …

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NATO and Russia envoys on Wednesday discussed their respective large-scale military exercises and a Cold War-era missile treaty that Washington vows to quit over accusations of Russian non-compliance, the Western alliance said. The talks, the first between the former Cold War foes since May, came against a backdrop of renewed tensions between the West and Russia, most notably over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine. A NATO statement said the sides had an “open exchange” of views on Ukraine, Russia’s Vostok military exercises and NATO’s ongoing Trident Juncture drills, as well as on Afghanistan and hybrid …

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Britain’s Brexit secretary has told lawmakers that he expects a long-elusive divorce deal with the European Union to be finalized before November 21, though there is still little sign of a breakthrough on the vexed issue of the Irish border. Dominic Raab told Parliament’s Exiting the EU Committee in a letter that he would give evidence to the panel “when a deal is finalized, and currently expect 21 November to be suitable.” The committee released the October 24 letter Wednesday. Raab’s Department for Exiting the European Union said later “there is no set date for the negotiations to conclude” and …

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Austria said Wednesday it will join the United States and Hungary in not signing a global agreement meant to minimize the factors that push migrants to leave their home country, while boosting safety, access to services and inclusion for those who are compelled to go. Nations are due to gather in early December in Morocco to adopt the non-binding Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which was negotiated through a U.N.-led process during the past two years. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said his government fears the agreement would pose a threat to its national sovereignty and that it …

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The U.N.’s political chief cautioned Tuesday that planned local elections in two separatist areas of eastern Ukraine next month could contradict international agreements.  “The U.N. urges all parties to avoid any unilateral steps that could deepen the divide or depart from the spirit and letter of the Minsk agreements,” Rosemary DiCarlo told a Security Council meeting on the issue.  In 2015, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists signed the Minsk agreement in the Belarus capital. It seeks to halt the fighting through a cease-fire and the withdrawal of foreign troops and heavy weapons, and open the way to a …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged on Tuesday a new development fund to tackle unemployment in Africa, a problem spurring the mass migration that has shaped her long premiership as it nears its end. Merkel hosted a summit of African leaders a day after her announcement that she would retire from politics by 2021, which sent shockwaves across Europe and started a race to succeed her. She needs the Compact with Africa summit to show that progress has been made in addressing the aftermath of one of the defining moments of her 13 years in power: her 2015 decision to open …

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Major companies on Tuesday ruled out involvement in a new rescue of Alitalia, complicating a plan led by Rome in which state-controlled railway Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) will bid for the airline this week and bring in partners. Alitalia was put under special administration last year, leaving the government once again looking to find a buyer to save the carrier. It will be the airline’s third rescue in a decade. FS is due to present an offer for the whole of Alitalia on Wednesday subject to a series of conditions. FS’s offer would only be a “transitional phase,” a source …

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Denmark recalled its ambassador to Iran Tuesday after accusing Iran of planning to kill three of its citizens who were living in Denmark. “Denmark can in no way accept that people with ties to Iran’s intelligence service plot attacks against people in Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen told reporters in Copenhagen. Danish intelligence agency PET accused Tehran of plotting the attack in Denmark on three Iranians who were suspected of being members of the separatist group Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, said Danish security service chief Finn Borch Andersen. Andersen said the plot was planned in …

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The death toll from flooding and gale-force winds battering Italy rose to 11, authorities said Tuesday as storms raged across Europe. Roads were reported blocked and thousands were left without power in southern and central Europe, where fierce winds and rain felled trees. Venice flooded to a level seen few times before in the lagoon city’s history, with tourists and residents holding bags above their heads as water sloshed above their knees. Debris from pulverized yachts filled the harbor of Rapallo near Genoa after a dam broke under the pressure of flood waters. Heavy snow trapped many in their cars and …

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Recent allegations that an oligarch with close personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind several attacks and at least one killing has compelled some journalists and free speech advocates to take a stand against intimidation tactics in Russia. An October 22 Novaya Gazeta article by reporter Denis Korotkov, who just days prior to publication received a funeral wreath bearing an anonymous threat at his private residence and a severed goat’s head in a basket outside his newsroom, says billionaire businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has directed clandestine hits on multiple continents. Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s Chef” for catering …

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Russia’s only aircraft carrier was damaged while undergoing repairs in the north of the country after the floating dock holding it sank in the early hours of Tuesday and a crane crashed onto its deck, tearing a gash up to 5 meters wide. The Admiral Kuznetsov has seen action in Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad with its planes carrying out airstrikes against rebel forces. It was being overhauled on one of the world’s biggest floating docks in the icy waters of the Kola Bay near Murmansk close to where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based …

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The head of Europe’s largest airport is urging the British government to quickly implement plans allowing more overseas passengers, including Americans, to use the shorter e-passport gates. Under the plan outlined by Treasury chief Philip Hammond in his budget Monday, air passengers from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan will be allowed to use the gates starting this summer.   Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said Tuesday the government should think about making it happen sooner, perhaps before March, when Britain is set to leave the European Union. He says doing so would “demonstrate that Britain is open …

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British Jews held vigils Monday to honor the 11 people killed last week in the mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. As they gathered in London, Liverpool, Brighton and Oxford to mourn those killed in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, many said the massacre has added greater urgency to the question, “Where’s safe?” “For many of us America has been seen as a sanctuary, the safest place for Jews.  That is until Saturday,” says Julia Kaufman, a 34-year-old mother of two, who attended a vigil in northwest London. “Pittsburgh is a bleak reminder, nowhere’s really …

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The leader of Sweden’s Social Democrats, Stefan Lofven, on Monday abandoned efforts to form a government, extending a political deadlock that has gripped the country since an inconclusive national election seven weeks ago. The failed attempt brought the prospect of a snap election closer, though the speaker of parliament said he would try to avoid that at all costs. The Sept. 9 vote gave the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats hold the balance of power, but neither Lofven’s center-left bloc nor the center-right group of parties has been willing to give them a say in policy due to their white supremacist roots. …

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Belarusians gathered in Minsk on Monday to commemorate more than 100 people, including 22 writers and poets, who were executed by the NKVD secret service on Oct. 29, 1937, during Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge. The 100 victims, many of them from the Belarusian intelligentsia, were among between 600,000 and 1.5 million people in then-Soviet Belarus who were swept up in Stalin’s mass repression of dissent that came to a head in 1937. At one memorial event Monday, about 20 people lit candles next to the Minsk headquarters of the KGB security service, the present-day successor to the NKVD. …

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Russia has sent a high-level official delegation to Venezuela, including a deputy finance minister, to help advise the cash-strapped country on economic reform at a time of crisis, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Finance said Monday. Almost 2 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, driven out by food and medicine shortages and violent crime with inflation running at 200,000 percent and the OPEC nation’s oil production hitting a 28-year low in 2017. Russian oil major Rosneft said in August Venezuela owed it $3.6 billion, while Moscow and Caracas last year signed a debt restructuring deal that …

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