Category: Євросоюз

Russian State Duma lawmakers on Tuesday passed new legislation that would expand the federal government’s ability to ban foreign nongovernmental organizations accused of meddling in Russian elections.  The legislation builds on a series of Russian laws that in 2012 began targeting “undesirable” activities, mainly by foreign advocacy groups, nonprofit organizations and news media outlets. The “undesirable” designation bans them from operating inside Russia, with any violation punishable by fines and jail time.  In 2017, Russia warned nine U.S. government-funded news operations — including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and seven separate regional outlets — that they would probably be …

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The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to ban single-use plastic products such as straws, eating utensils and coffee sticks across the European Union. The measure passed 571 to 53, with 34 abstentions. If approved by the European Commission — the EU executive — and individual states, the ban would become law in 2021. Supporters say plastics are a major source of pollution that chokes oceans, litters cities, and can take decades to disintegrate. Some U.S. cities have moved to ban plastic straws in restaurants after a heartbreaking video of a wildlife rescuer pulling a straw out of a turtle’s bloody …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning of a new arms race if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to pull out of a key arms control agreement.  After talks in Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Putin said Russia would respond “in kind” if the U.S. deployed intermediate-range missiles in Europe.  “If they will deliver them to Europe, naturally our response will have to mirror this,” Putin said, adding that the Russian response would be “very quick and effective.”  He also cautioned that European countries agreeing to host U.S. missiles would put themselves at risk of a …

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Campaigners in a bohemian district of Berlin celebrated Wednesday after Internet giant Google abandoned strongly-opposed plans to open a large campus there. The US firm had planned to set up an incubator for start-up companies in Kreuzberg, one of the older districts in the west of the capital. But the company’s German spokesman Ralf Bremer announced Wednesday that the 3,000 square-metre (3,590 square-yard) space — planned to host offices, cafes and communal work areas, would instead go to two local humanitarian associations. Bremer did not say if local resistance to the plans over the past two years had played a …

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Italian news agency ANSA says new excavations in the ancient buried city of Pompeii have yielded the undisturbed skeletons of people who took refuge from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D.79. The director of the Pompeii archaeological site, Massimo Osanna, told ANSA on Wednesday the skeletons were still intact, having been left undisturbed despite looting at the site centuries ago. Osanna called it “a shocking find, but also very important for history.” The bones — believed to be those of two women and three children — were discovered inside a house holding a charcoal inscription that historians say dates …

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Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police Wednesday while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union. Shouting “Open borders!” the migrants surged through one Bosnian police cordon before being stopped by another outside a border crossing in northwestern Bosnia. Several people appeared to have been hurt amid the skirmishes as the migrants refused to leave and blocked traffic. “We are refugees,” one man from Iran said. “We want to leave this country.” Croatian police said they put up a fence on their side of the border to block the migrants from entering. They said two …

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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that allies blame Russia for violating an important Cold War-era missile treaty but he does not expect them to deploy more nuclear warheads in Europe in response. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, saying Russia is violating it. The European Union says the pact is a cornerstone of European security and is urging Russia and the United States to uphold it, but Stoltenberg did not encourage the U.S., the biggest and most influential member of NATO, to stay in the treaty. “I don’t foresee that …

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The figures tell one story; gay activists fear another. But nobody disputes that Paris has suffered a string of homophobic attacks in recent months, with gay men set upon in a chic inner-city neighborhood and a trans prostitute shot dead in a popular cruising spot in the French capital. Yet police say their data show a strong drop in homophobic attacks, so the mood among activists has turned angry, fear of the what-next jostling with frustration at perceived inaction by authorities in a city with a reputation for tolerance. Sitting in the lounge of Paris’s LGBT Centre, 68-year-old activist Arnaud Rault …

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European leaders have urged the United States not to abandon a landmark Cold War-era agreement prohibiting the U.S. and Russia from possessing ground-launched tactical nuclear missiles; but, they have tempered their reaction to President Donald Trump’s threat to do so by supporting his call for the Kremlin to be more transparent about its new missiles. The U.S. leader’s announcement of his plan to withdraw from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 has prompted a flurry of disapproval in Europe with predictions that quitting the pact will trigger an arms race and return Europe to the danger of …

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A prominent nuclear weapons expert says White House threats to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty are diplomatically shortsighted, potentially dangerous and politically risky for President Donald Trump ahead of midterm elections. Calling the landmark 1987 missile treaty a key part of European and international security for over 30 years, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said while there have been concerns about Russia’s compliance with the agreement, U.S. withdrawal would shift blame for the collapse of the treaty from Moscow, “where it belongs,” to Washington. His comments came shortly after U.S. National Security …

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The Trump administration appears determined to pull out of a key 1987 arms control agreement with Russia, in the wake of talks Tuesday between national security adviser John Bolton and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by deploying missiles in Europe. Bolton called Russian violations “long and deep.” “The threat is is not America’s INF withdrawal from the treaty. The threat is Russian missiles already deployed,” Bolton said. “The American position is that Russia is in violation. Russia’s position is that they are not in violation. So, …

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At least 20 people were injured when an escalator in the Rome metropolitan system collapsed Tuesday night.  A video shown on Sky TG24 showed the escalator accelerating suddenly, and the people riding down on it collapsing onto one another. The dramatic footage showed people on the parallel escalator trying to pull others to safety. The cause was not immediately known. The metropolitan station at Piazza Repubblica near the main Termine train station was closed by investigators.  “The scene that we found was people piled up at the bottom of the escalator,” said Rome provincial fire chief Giampietro Boscaino. “People one …

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that the United States had “identified at least some” of the Saudi officials involved in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and was revoking their visas. “These penalties will not be the last word on this matter from the United States. We will continue to explore additional measures to hold those accountable,” Pompeo said. “We’re making very clear that the United States does not tolerate this kind of ruthless action to silence Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, through violence.” The visa revocations were the first punitive actions the U.S. has taken against Saudi Arabia …

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The European Union set up a high-stakes battle with Italy, one of the bloc’s biggest economies, over who has final control over a member state’s budget after the executive Commission took the unprecedented step of ordering the country to revise its public spending plans. In a move that escalates a monthlong standoff, the EU said the populist government’s budget for next year is out of line and breaks earlier promises to lower public debt.  Italy’s debt load is the second-highest in Europe, after Greece, and there are worries that losing control of spending could rekindle financial turmoil in Europe. The …

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U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has hinted that a key arms control pact with Russia may have run its course. Bolton meets in Moscow Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin to explain why President Donald Trump wants to pull the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Trump has accused Russia of violating the agreement. “We don’t think that withdrawal from the treaty is what causes the problem. We think it’s what Russia has been doing in violation of the treaty that’s the problem,” Bolton told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. “You can’t bring someone in compliance who does not …

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U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says he told Russian officials that its meddling in the 2016 election did not affect the outcome but instead created distrust. “The important thing is that the desire for interfering in our affairs itself arouses distrust in Russian people, in Russia. And I think it should not be tolerated. It should not be acceptable,” Bolton said Monday on Ekho Moskvy radio. Bolton is in Moscow for talks with Russian leaders on President Donald Trump’s intention to pull the United States out of a 1987 arms control agreement. Before joining the White House, Bolton called …

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A Russian woman accused by the U.S. of helping oversee a social media effort to influence the 2018 U.S. midterm elections mocked the accusations Monday, saying that they made her feel proud. Justice Department prosecutors alleged Friday that Elena Khusyaynova helped manage the finances of the same social media troll farm that was indicted earlier this year by special counsel Robert Mueller. The troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, is one of a web of companies allegedly controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with reported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Khusyaynova responded Monday in a video on the internet …

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U.S. media reports say CIA director Gina Haspel is traveling to Istanbul to meet with Turkish officials who are investigating the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Sources told news outlets that Haspel departed Monday for Turkey to work on the investigation into Khashoggi’s death. U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he has “top intelligence people in Turkey,” but did not give further details. Trump said he is still not satisfied with the explanation he has heard about Khashoggi’s death, but said “we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”  The president said he had spoken with Saudi …

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Russia signaled Monday it is willing to consider mutual complaints the United States and it have about their continued implementation of the 1987 nuclear weapons treaty between the two world powers. Russian Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev expressed Moscow’s “readiness for joint work” on the pact as he met in the Russian capital with his U.S. counterpart, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton. For his part, Bolton said that the U.S. had not made any decision to deploy missiles in Europe targeting Russia if the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is scrapped. Their talks came two days after U.S. President Donald …

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The outgoing deputy head of the monitoring mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says newly compiled statistics prove that lack of political will is the only thing allowing near-daily outbreaks of violence to continue claiming lives in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Alexander Hug, whose 10-year OSCE appointment expires this month, also said the very people empowered to halt the conflict — those who signed the Minsk agreement — could make it happen within a matter of hours. “Fourteen times now, both sides have agreed to recommit to the cease-fire, and every time this happens, daily …

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