Category: Євросоюз

Morocco’s navy opened fire on a boat carrying migrants off its Mediterranean coast Tuesday, wounding four. Moroccan officials say the boat’s Spanish captain ignored orders to stop. The wounded migrants were taken to a hospital while authorities seized the boat and opened an investigation. It gave no other information. Meanwhile, France, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Spain reached a deal Tuesday to take in a boatload of 58 migrants stranded at sea. The Aquarius will dock in Malta, where the 58 migrants will disembark and head for their new homes. A dog named Bella is also aboard the ship. Her final …

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The stone steps leading into the medieval church where Serbian Orthodox worshipers enter are worn. In the half-light of the interior, some pilgrims reverentially lean on or drape themselves across the tomb of King Stefan Dečanski, considered by Serbs a “holy monarch.” Others light candles. One young woman has dozens of tapers in her hand, lighting each one slowly and methodically after a brushing kiss and a silent prayer. Many of the pilgrims have driven six hours from Belgrade to pray this Sunday in one of the most revered Serbian Orthodox churches, the 14th century Visoki Dečani. For many Serbs, …

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Pope Francis has acknowledged that the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse is driving people away from the Church. He made the comments during his visit to Estonia Tuesday, just hours before the official release of a devastating report into decades of abuse by Catholic priests in Germany. Henry Ridgwell reports on the latest revelations that have threatened to engulf the papacy. …

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Pope Francis on Tuesday acknowledged that the cover-up of sexual abuse is driving people away from the Catholic Church — just hours before the release of a devastating report that detailed decades of sexual abuse by priests in Germany. The report by the German Bishops’ Conference looks at abuse by Roman Catholic priests over seven decades until 2014. The stories of 3,677 victims are documented, and close to 1,700 clergy are identified who carried out the sexual abuse. Many records were destroyed. The report said the true number of victims and perpetrators is likely to be much higher.  “For too long, we …

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Swedish lawmakers have ousted Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in a mandatory confidence vote. Tuesday’s vote comes in the aftermath of the September 9 parliamentary elections, when the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats won 62 seats, with the ruling center-left Social Democrats winning 144 seats and the center-right Alliance coalition 143 seats, creating a hung parliament. The Social Democrats and the Alliance have both ruled out joining forces with the Swedish Democrats to form a ruling coalition. Lofven will remain prime minister in a caretaker role until a new government is formed. Sweden, like most of Europe, has been hit by an influx …

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The five remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal have agreed to establish a special payment system to allow companies to continue doing business with the regime, bypassing new sanctions imposed by the United States. Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran issued a statement late Monday from the United Nations announcing the creation of a “Special Purpose Vehicle” that will be established in the European Union. The parties said the new mechanism was created to facilitate payments related to Iranian exports, including oil.  Federica Mogherini, EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters after the deal was announced that …

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Greece are using drones to buzz over boats running day trips on the Aegean at the start of a new effort aimed at cracking down on rampant tax evasion at holiday hotspots. With the black economy by some accounts representing about a quarter of national output in a country which depends hugely on tourism, Greek authorities are turning to high-tech to stamp out undeclared earnings. Finance ministry tax inspectors and the coast guard launched the drones project on Santorini, an island highly popular with tourists, to check on whether operators offering short day trips were issuing legal receipts to all …

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U.S. billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) said on Monday it would challenge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg Hungarian laws that make it a crime to help asylum-seekers. But Budapest, which accuses Soros and the liberal groups and causes he backs of trying to destroy Europe’s Christian culture by promoting mass migration, said it would not repeal the laws, whatever the outcome of the court appeal. Under legislation named “Stop Soros,” anybody who helps migrants not entitled to protection to apply for asylum, or helps illegal migrants gain status to stay in Hungary, can be …

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Italy’s populist government on Monday escalated its clampdown on irregular immigration with a decree aimed at slashing the number of people awarded asylum and doubling the time irregular migrants can be detained. The legislation promoted by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, comes as boat arrivals plummet and the minister refuses to allow charity ships carrying rescued migrants to dock in Italy’s ports. “This is a step towards making Italy safer,” Salvini tweeted. The League, which took power in June in coalition with the 5-Star Movement, has promised to deport hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants. …

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he expected to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in New York as Washington expressed concern at Moscow’s plans to supply the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria. “I’m sure Sergei and I will have our time together,” Pompeo said of plans to meet Lavrov on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. “We are trying to find every place we can where there is common ground, where we can work with the Russians,” adding that there were many areas where Moscow was working …

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Charities operating the Mediterranean rescue ship Aquarius on Monday urged European governments to help the vessel find a new flag to sail under after Panama revoked its registration, and they asked France to let its passengers disembark in Marseille. Panama’s move to cancel the registration of the Aquarius, now sailing towards the southern French port with 58 migrants on board, means there will be no charity rescue ships operating off the Libyan coast in the near future. “This a call to European countries,” Francis Vallat, head of the SOS Mediterranee charity, told reporters in Paris. “The tragedy we’re facing is …

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The European Union sued Poland on Monday in the EU’s highest court over the ruling party’s changes to the judiciary, which the bloc believes violate the independence of the courts. “The European Commission maintains that the Polish law on the Supreme Court is incompatible with EU law as it undermines the principle of judicial independence, including the irremovability of judges,” the EU’s executive Commission said. The new Polish law lowers the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 70 to 65 years, putting 27 out of 72 sitting judges at risk of being forced to retire. The mandate of the …

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A 51-year-old Russian national has been arrested in Norway on suspicion of spying after he attended a conference on strengthening cooperation between Europe’s parliamentary administrations, his lawyer said Monday. Lawyer Hege Aakre told the Norwegian news agency NTB that her client, who was not identified, was being questioned by Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, PST.   The man was arrested Friday during the event by the European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation, held at Norway’s Parliament, and placed on pre-trial detention for two weeks the following day. No further details were available. Aakre said her client denies any wrongdoing.   …

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Russia will supply Syria with a more modern S-300 missile defense system in the coming weeks, Moscow said Monday. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu said President Vladimir Putin ordered the upgrade after a Syrian Soviet-era S-200 shot down a Russian plane last Tuesday, killing all 15 people on board. Russia has blamed Israel, whose military was conducting airstrikes on Syria at the time, for the incident. “[Russia will] transfer the modern S-300 air defense system to the Syrian armed forces within two weeks.” Russia has said the S-200 system is not advanced enough for the Syrian military to distinguish Russian …

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The United Nations, the World Bank and the International Committee of the Red Cross are partnering with technology powerhouses to launch a global initiative aimed at preventing famines. “The fact that millions of people — many of them children — still suffer from severe malnutrition and famine  in the 21st century is a global tragedy,” World Bank President Jim Young Kim said announcing the initiative. The global organization will work with Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services to develop the Famine Action Mechanism (FAM), a system capable of identifying food crisis area that are most likely to turn into a …

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Spain’s maritime rescue service said Sunday it rescued more than 400 people from 15 small boats, most of them off the country’s southern coast, while humanitarian groups lamented that the sole private rescue boat operating near the deadly central Mediterranean human trafficking route risked being put out of action by Italy’s anti-migrant leaders. While the Spaniards pulled 447 people to safety on Saturday in the western part of the sea, two humanitarian groups which operate the last private rescue vessel in the central Mediterranean, considered the deadliest route for trafficked migrants, said Panama had yanked the ship’s registration following Italian …

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Macedonia’s president says he won’t vote in a Sept. 30 referendum on whether to change the Balkan country’s name to “North Macedonia.” Macedonians will vote next weekend on a proposal to change the country’s name, ending a long-running dispute with neighboring Greece, which sees the use of the term “Macedonia ” as a claim on its own province of the same name. President Gjorge Ivanov was speaking to members of the Macedonian diaspora in Detroit on Saturday. He reiterated his position that the deal with Greece is “harmful and defeating” for Macedonia, according to a statement released by his office …

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The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday again blamed Israel for the downing of a Russian plane by Syrian government forces and said Israel appeared “ungrateful” for Moscow’s efforts to rein in Iran-backed fighters in Syria. Syrian government forces mistook the Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane for an Israeli jet and shot it down Monday, killing all 15 people aboard. While the Russian military initially blamed the plane’s loss on Israel, President Vladimir Putin later attributed it to “a chain of tragic, fatal circumstances.” The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday presented its latest findings on the Il-20’s downing, laying the blame squarely …

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Pope Francis warned Sunday against any rebirth of the “pernicious” anti-Semitic attitudes that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania’s centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly wiped out during World War II. Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.   During Mass in Santakos Park under a brilliant autumn sun, Francis honored both Jewish victims of the Nazis and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured, killed and oppressed …

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The U.S. State Department said Saturday that Washington would not wait to impose sanctions on any shippers helping to get fuel to North Korea, in an apparent warning to Russia days after the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Moscow of cheating on the measures. North Korea continues to employ tactics to evade U.N. sanctions, Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement, adding that U.N. member states are required to prohibit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum fuel to the country. “The United States will not hesitate to impose sanctions on any individual, entity or vessel supporting North Korea’s illicit activities, regardless of nationality,” Nauert said. The …

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