Category: Євросоюз

Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox in the battle for Sky after offering 30.6 billion pounds ($40 billion) for the British broadcaster, in a dramatic auction to decide the fate of the pay-television group. U.S. cable giant Comcast bid 17.28 pounds a share for control of London-listed Sky, bettering a 15.67 offer by Fox, the Takeover Panel said in a  statement shortly after final bids were made Saturday. Comcast’s final offer was significantly higher than its bid going into the auction of 14.75 pounds, and compares with Sky’s closing share price of 15.85 pounds on Friday. Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive of Comcast, coveted Sky to …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May’s aides have begun contingency planning for a snap election in November to save both Brexit and her job, the Sunday Times reported. The newspaper said that two senior members of May’s Downing Street political team began “war-gaming” an autumn vote to win public backing for a new plan, after her Brexit proposals were criticized at a summit in Salzburg last week. Downing Street was not immediately available to comment on the report. Meanwhile, opposition Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said Saturday that his party would challenge May on any Brexit deal she could strike with Brussels, and he said there should be …

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Pope Francis on Saturday urged Lithuanians to use their experience enduring decades of Soviet and Nazi occupation to be a model of tolerance in an intolerant world as he began a three-nation tour of the Baltic region amid renewed alarm over Russia’s intentions there. Francis was greeted by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite at the airport and immediately launched into a hectic schedule of political meetings, encounters with Lutheran and Russian Orthodox leaders, and the ordinary Catholic faithful who are a majority in Lithuania but minorities in Latvia and Estonia. Speaking outside the presidential palace in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, Francis …

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Russia cautiously celebrated a move by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to reinstate its own laboratory for testing athletes for performance enhancing drugs, a decision that has divided the sports world by clearing a path for Russian athletes to return to international competition following a three-year suspension over allegations of state-sponsored doping. The decision by WADA marks the latest chapter in the long-running saga that has divided Russia and the West in recent years, including the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, meddling in the 2016 elections in the U.S., and intervention in Syria’s civil war. In Russia, the move was …

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Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev says he expects his countrymen will vote for a deal that will rename the country to “North Macedonia” in exchange for Greece’s ending its objections to Macedonia’s eventual membership in NATO and the European Union. In a VOA interview, he said, “There is no other alternative. I am an optimist primarily because I know my people. They have a history of making smart decisions and this one will be no different.” Zaev said he wants Macedonia to soon become the 30th member of NATO in order to secure peace, economic prosperity and security for his …

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The leader of Romania’s ruling Social Democrats Liviu Dragnea retained control of the party Friday, defeating dissenters who said his criminal record had made him a liability, but his victory seems likely to heighten political infighting. A past conviction in a vote-rigging case earned him a suspended jail term, which prevented him from being prime minister. And he is due next month to launch an appeal against a three-and-a-half year prison sentence passed in a separate abuse of office case. He is also under investigation in a third case on suspicion of forming a criminal group to siphon off cash …

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Ankara is signaling its readiness to use force against radical groups in the Syrian Idlib enclave as part of a deal struck with Moscow, which has been pressuring the Turkish government to comply with terms of an accord made between the Russian and Turkish presidents. Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, agreed to create a demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the rebel-controlled Idlib enclave. The deal, heralded as a diplomatic triumph by Ankara, averted a Syrian regime offensive backed by Russian forces against the last rebel bastion. With 3 million people trapped in …

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Marc van Bloemen has lived in the old town of Dubrovnik, a Croatian citadel widely praised as the jewel of the Adriatic, for decades, since he was a child. He says it used to be a privilege. Now it’s a nightmare. Crowds of tourists clog the entrances to the ancient walled city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as huge cruise ships unload thousands more daily. People bump into each other on the famous limestone-paved Stradun, the pedestrian street lined with medieval churches and palaces, as fans of the popular TV series “Game of Thrones” search for the locations where it …

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Nations that struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, except for the United States, meet on Monday in what many diplomats fear may prove a quixotic effort to keep the agreement alive after U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports resume in November. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran will gather in New York at 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday) to grapple with U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8 decision to withdraw from the deal and restore the full force of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Their delicate, and perhaps unrealistic, task is to build a case …

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More than 7,000 refugee and migrant children are living under horrible, unsanitary conditions on the Greek islands, the U.N. children’s fund reports. It says more than 850 children, on average, make the dangerous sea journey to Greece every month only to end up in facilities that are congested and lacking all basic necessities. UNICEF’s country coordinator in Greece, Lucio Melandri, says he was appalled by what he saw on a recent visit to centers on the islands of Lesbos and Samos, where he met refugee children from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  “The vast majority of …

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Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko is suing British broadcaster BBC for libel over an article that said Kyiv paid $400,000 to secure a meeting with US leader Donald Trump last year. Poroshenko issued the libel claim, seen by AFP, over an article published in May this year that said Kyiv paid Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen a “secret payment of at least $400,000” to “fix talks” between Poroshenko and Trump in the White House in June 2017. The claim, filed through a British law firm, says the news story damaged Poroshenko’s “political and business” reputation and caused him “substantial distress and …

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The Vatican’s most senior official after the pope has strongly defended an upcoming landmark deal between the Holy See and China from criticism by those who say it will be a sell-out to the communist government. The Vatican and China have been in advanced talks this year to forge what would be an historic breakthrough and a possible precursor to a resumption in diplomatic relations after 70 years, with Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin among the chief architects. Parolin told reporters he hoped the accord can be signed “in the not too distant future.” The accord, which Vatican sources …

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The Trump administration on Thursday thanked Turkey for its reduced sentence for an imprisoned U.S. scientist but continued to demand his immediate release. The State Department said there was no “credible evidence” in Turkey’s case against NASA scientist Serkan Golge. Turkey sentenced Golge to 7½ years in prison in February on charges of belonging to an outlawed group that Turkey blames for attempting a coup that failed in 2016. The verdict was appealed. A court in Adana threw out the conviction, ruled instead that Golge had aided the group, and reduced the sentence to five years. Golge’s lawyers said they would appeal …

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An ambitious plan for a European Union Border and Coast Guard force was unveiled at a special meeting of the European Council in Austria this week. European Commission officials have told VOA that they want the project approved before European elections next May, in which immigration is expected to be a central issue. The project is being pushed by the EU’s current rotating president, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who used the summit to criticize southern European countries for failing to fully register immigrants entering through their borders. He said that EU officials who didn’t work directly for any state might …

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French far-right politician Marine Le Pen has been ordered to undergo psychiatric testing after tweeting graphic images of Islamic State executions, the leader of France’s National Rally party revealed Thursday. “I thought I had experienced everything, but no! For having denounced the horrors of Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terror organization), the court has ordered me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation,” Le Pen wrote on Twitter. The court order, which Le Pen also tweeted, was dated to Sept. 11. The images that led to to the order were originally posted in December 2015, weeks after coordinated terrorist attacks killed …

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A Russian-Turkish agreement to create a demilitarized buffer zone between the Syrian army and rebels inside Syria’s northern Idlib province has averted a war for now, according to a senior United Nations official. Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreed to set aside a large area along the border between Turkey and Idlib to potentially protect some 3 million civilians from attack. Turkey already shelters more than 3 million Syrian refugees and fears a massive exodus into its territory if Idlib were under attack. Jan Egeland, a senior adviser of the U.N. …

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Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak heads to Berlin Friday to meet with his German counterpart, Olaf Scholz, as Ankara struggles against an emerging financial crisis.  Turkey’s currency fell 40 percent this year and discussions on potential financial support from Berlin are expected to be on the agenda. Albayrak, speaking in Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace Thursday, unveiled his much-vaunted medium-term economic plan. He promised to curb debt-fueled growth, enforce financial austerity and undergo a reshaping into the “value-added” economy investors have been clamoring for for years. The Turkish lira surged before Albayrak’s speech, fueled by rising expectations. However, once delivered, the currency fell …

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European Union leaders have gathered in Salzburg, Austria, for an informal discussion of key issues, including the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the bloc. Britain’s conservative government has lost a majority and with it the mandate for a so-called “hard Brexit,” in which Britain would leave the EU’s single market and customs union. It is now seeking a compromise. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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The world is making progress in its efforts to lift people out of extreme poverty, but the global aspiration of eliminating such poverty by 2030 is unattainable, a new report found. A World Bank report released Wednesday says the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day fell to a record low of 736 million, or 10 percent of the world’s population, in 2015, the latest year for which data is available. The figure was less than the 11 percent recorded in 2013, showing slow but steady progress. “Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted Israel’s offer to share detailed information on the Israeli airstrike in Syria that triggered fire by Syrian forces which downed a Russian reconnaissance plane, the Kremlin said Wednesday. Syrian forces mistook the Russian Il-20 for Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people aboard Monday night. Russia’s Defense Ministry blamed the plane’s loss on Israel, but Putin sought to defuse tensions, pointing at “a chain of tragic accidental circumstances. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Putin on Tuesday to express sorrow over the death of the plane’s crew and blamed Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad sent …

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