Category: Євросоюз

Greece’s prime minister vowed on Tuesday that experts will investigate all aspects of the country’s deadliest forest fire in decades and that the seaside resort areas devastated by the blaze will be rebuilt to higher standards. Alexis Tsipras led a meeting about the fire on Tuesday with ministers and regional officials in Lavrion, a seaside town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the areas burned. At least 91 people died in the July 23 fire. “My promise, from the first day of this tragedy, was that the `how’ and the `why’ will be investigated in depth and in all …

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Georgia on Tuesday condemned Russia’s continued “occupation” of its territory, a decade after the two countries went to war over the Kremlin-backed separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “This is a war against Georgia, an aggression, an occupation, and a blatant violation of international law,” Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili told a round table meeting attended by Georgian government officials and visiting foreign ministers of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine’s vice premier. “The aggressor’s appetite has only increased after the invasion,” he said. Georgia and its Soviet-era master Russia have long been at loggerheads over Tbilisi’s bid to join the …

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The chairman of Britain’s governing Conservative Party told former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to say sorry Tuesday for a newspaper column in which he wrote that burqa-wearing women looked like “letter boxes” and bank robbers. Johnson, who quit the government last month in a dispute over Brexit, made the remarks in a Daily Telegraph article published Monday. Johnson said he opposed banning burqas and other face-covering garments, but wrote that it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.” His article drew criticism from Muslim groups and fellow politicians — including some Conservatives. Mohamed …

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order Monday to introduce sanctions against Iran threatens to put Washington and Ankara on a collision course.  Ankara insists Trump’s unilateral actions do not bind it. The looming dispute threatens to exacerbate existing tensions between the two NATO allies. “We are going to aggressively enforce our sanctions, and that puts a very important test to those companies, to those banks and to those governments — who do they want to do business with?” said a senior official Monday. “We are very serious to enforce those sanctions, and that’s what the president has directed us to do.” The …

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A tanker truck carrying flammable material exploded, causing a huge fireball after hitting a stopped truck on a highway outside the northern Italian city of Bologna on Monday. At least two people were killed and more than 60 injured, some with severe burns, during the midday accident. A police video showed the tanker failing to slow down and plowing into the back of a truck that was stopped in traffic. Upon impact, the truck exploded in flames. Another truck appeared to hit the tanker from behind. After an unspecified time lapse, during which the highway was cleared of most other …

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The British government has launched a probe into claims officials are failing to scrutinize visa applications from foreign men whose British-born Muslim wives have been forced by their families to marry them overseas. Campaigners say even when women, many of them teenagers, have objected to their spouses being issued visas to join them in Britain, officials all too often ignore their opposition. An investigation by The Times newspaper outlining cases in which British officials appear to have compounded the victimization and abuse of women forced into marriages has prompted the country’s interior minister Sajid Javid to launch an inquiry, saying …

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A United States senator who met with Russian lawmakers in Moscow said he invited them to visit Washington and they accepted Monday. Sen. Rand Paul said during a trip to Russia that American and Russian legislators need closer contact, noting that “our biggest problem right now is no dialogue.”   The Kentucky Republican said after meeting with members of the foreign affairs committee for Russia’s upper house of parliament that he invited them to come to the U.S. capital. Paul added that lawmakers from the two countries could also meet in a neutral third nation.   “Those who believe in …

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The leader of a hacker group that has targeted prominent Russian officials has been released from prison. Vladimir Anikeyev, who headed Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty-Dumpty) hacker group, was sentenced to two years in prison a year ago. His lawyer said Monday that Anikeyev was set free in line with a new law equating one days spent in pre-trial detention to one and a half days in prison.   Anikyev’s group had hacked the accounts of several government officials, including a spokeswoman for Russia’s prime minister.   Anikyev was arrested in November 2016, but his arrest only became known after Russian news outlets …

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The heads of Greece’s emergency services have been removed from office in the wake of the deadly wildfires near Athens that . killed 91 people, government officials said Sunday. The chiefs of the police and fire brigades have been replaced by their deputies. The changes came a day after Greece’s public order minister, Nikos Toskas, also resigned. The death toll from the July 23 fire rose to at least 91. Nearly 40 people remain hospitalized, including six in critical condition. The Athens government has been criticized for its response to the deadly blazes. Authorities blamed arsonists for starting the fire, …

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President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Kremlin-connected lawyer and his son was to collect information about his political opponent, casting new light on a moment central to the special counsel’s Russia probe. Trump, amid a series of searing tweets sent from his New Jersey golf club, tore into two of his favorite targets, the news media and Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible links between the president’s campaign and Russia. Trump unleashed particularly fury at reports that he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr. and other …

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An old-time propeller plane crashed near-vertically at high speed into a Swiss mountain, killing all 20 people on board, police said Sunday. The Junkers Ju-52 plane, operated by the Swiss company Ju-Air, went down Saturday on the Piz Segnas mountain above the Alpine resort of Flims, striking the mountain’s western flank about 2,540 meters (8,330 feet) above sea level. The mountainous area in southeastern Switzerland is popular with hikers and skiers and includes a glacier.   Police said Sunday they have now determined that all 20 people on board the plane, including its three crew members, died. Eleven men and …

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Croatia on Sunday celebrated a victorious 1995 military offensive in which it retook lands held by rebel Serbs, while Serbia’s president compared the operation to the policies of Nazi Germany.   The comments by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic have whipped up tensions between two main Balkan rivals whose conflicting views illustrate persistent divisions stemming from the 1991-95 war.   The war in Croatia erupted when the country declared independence from the former Yugoslavia. Minority Serbs in Croatia, backed by Serbia, took up arms and formed their own self-declared state, rejecting the split from the Serb-led Yugoslav federation and expelling hundreds …

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Croatia is celebrating a victorious 1995 military offensive in which it retook lands held by rebel Serbs, but which Serbia’s president has compared to the policies of Nazi Germany during World War II. The starkly conflicting views by the two main Balkan rivals of the August 1995 military blitz that resulted in an exodus of more than 200,000 minority Serbs from Croatia illustrates the persisting divisions in the region stemming from the 1990s’ war.   While Croatia on Sunday hailed the offensive as a flawless military victory that reunited the country’s territory and ended the war, neighboring Serbia mourned the …

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The bodies of three Russian journalists who were killed in Central African Republic have been brought back to Moscow, where they are to undergo a forensic examination. Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said Sunday the bodies had been turned over to committee experts and would be examined “with the goal of establishing the cause of the Russians’ death.”   The journalists were ambushed and killed Monday outside the town of Sibut. They were investigating a Russian private security company that was operating in CAR as well as Russian ties to the local mining industry. The project was …

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Lisbon has broken a 37-year-old record to notch its highest temperature ever as an unrelenting wave of heat bakes Portugal and neighboring Spain. Portugal’s weather service said the capital reached 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 degrees Fahrenheit) Saturday, surpassing the city’s previous record of 43 C (109.4 F) set in 1981.   The day’s highest temperature of 46.8 C (116.2 F) was recorded at Alvega in the center of Portugal. The country’s highest temperature on record is 47.4 C (117.3 F) from 2003. The hot, dusty conditions across the Iberian Peninsula are the result of a mass of hot air from …

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Charting marine mammal behavior is no easy feat, but that’s exactly what a group of international citizen scientists is doing off the coast of Italy. As Faith Lapidus reports, they are spending a week on the high seas with researchers from the Milan-based Tethys Research Institute studying whales, dolphins and a host of other marine mammals that live in the Mediterranean Sea. …

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British Trade Minister Liam Fox said “intransigence” from the European Union was pushing Britain toward a no-deal Brexit, in an interview published on Saturday by the Sunday Times. With less than eight months until Britain quits the EU, the government has yet to agree a divorce deal with Brussels and has stepped up planning for the possibility of leaving the bloc without any formal agreement. Fox, a promiment Brexit supporter in Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet, put the odds of Britain leaving the European Union without agreeing upon a deal over their future relationship at 60-40. “I think the intransigence of …

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Israel’s navy Saturday seized a Swedish-flagged sailboat carrying activist passengers that was trying to breach the long-standing blockade of the Palestinian Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said the vessel, named “Freedom for Gaza,” was “intercepted in accordance with international law.” The 12 passengers, from Sweden, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Spain, are in custody and will be flown home, an Israeli Immigration Authority spokeswoman said. The organizer of the trip, the Swedish group Ship to Gaza, said the boat was carrying mainly medical supplies and maintained it was wrongly intercepted in international waters.   “The demands of the Ship to …

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Despite a sharp deterioration in relations over the detention of an American pastor, the United States and Turkey remain valued partners, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday, in an apparent bid to ease tensions that have rocked ties between the NATO allies. Pompeo told reporters on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in Singapore that the two countries would continue to work with each other in the framework of the alliance and on other matters. “Turkey is a NATO partner with whom the United States has every intention of continuing to work cooperatively,” Pompeo said. Earlier this …

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A Russian helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff in Siberia on Saturday, killing all 18 people aboard. The Interstate Aviation Committee, which oversees civil aviation in much of the former Soviet Union, said the Mi-8 helicopter collided with the load being carried by another helicopter that had taken off from the same pad in Vankor, above the Arctic Circle about 2,600 kilometers (1600 miles) northeast of Moscow. The second helicopter was undamaged and landed safely, the committee said. Helicopters frequently carry loads in slings that hang below the craft. There were 15 passengers and three crew aboard the crashed helicopter, said …

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