Category: Євросоюз

Greek Civil Protection Minister Nikos Toskas resigned on Friday in the wake of a wildfire last month that killed 88 people and led to widespread criticism of the government for its handling of the disaster. Toskas had previously offered to quit after the July 23 blaze in the small seaside town of Mati east of Athens, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras refused to accept his resignation. The minister reiterated his desire to step aside again on Friday during a meeting with Tsipras, in a move that the main political opposition said came too late to appease the public. “This natural …

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Preparations are being made to send thousands of Ebola vaccines next week to North Kivu, the site of the latest outbreak of this deadly disease. The World Health Organization says it foresees huge difficulties ahead in efforts to combat the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. North Kivu province, the site of the new outbreak, has been riven with ethnic and political clashes for at least two decades. WHO’s emergency response chief, Peter Salama, said the operation getting under way in North Kivu will be much more difficult and complex than past Ebola response efforts. Salama was …

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U.S. firm Best Western Hotels & Resorts, the last Western hotel chain still in Crimea, has pulled out because of sanctions imposed after Russia annexed the region from Ukraine, two hotel employees said. “The Best Western Sevastopol Hotel,” a Soviet-era building on the quayside in the port of Sevastopol was one of the few visible signs of an international business presence left since the 2014 annexation. Other major brands, among them McDonald’s Corp and Radisson Hotels have already quit Crimea. The hotel is still running but branding identifying it as a Best Western hotel has been removed from the building …

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Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Friday Britain faces an “uncomfortably high” risk of leaving the European Union with no deal, comments that drove sterling to an 11-day low against the dollar. 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. “I think the possibility of a no deal is uncomfortably high at this point,” Carney said in an interview with BBC radio. “People will have things to worry about …

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with his Turkish counterpart Friday in an effort to obtain the release of Andrew Brunson, a detained U.S. pastor who Turkey accuses of backing terrorism. The Trump administration has placed sanctions on Turkish officials because of Brunson’s detention. Turkey says the sanctions are unacceptable. Pompeo and Mevlut Cavusoglu met on the sidelines of a meeting of regional ministers in Singapore. Pompeo told reporters traveling with him before the meeting that the U.S. has warned Turkey “that the clock had run out and it was time for Pastor Brunson to be returned.” The top …

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Russia is allowing thousands of fresh North Korean laborers into the country and granting new work permits in potential violation of U.N. sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. More than 10,000 new North Korean workers have registered in Russia since September, the paper said, citing records from the Russian Interior Ministry. Russia’s action potentially violates U.N. sanctions to reduce cash flows to North Korea and put pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, the Journal reported, citing U.S. officials. Labor Ministry records obtained by the Journal showed that a minimum of 700 new work permits have been …

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Kosovo’s president reiterated Thursday his idea of “a correction” of the border with Serbia, which is widely seen as essentially a territorial swap as part of a strategy to stabilize relations between both EU-aspirant nations. “Kosovo’s border with Serbia needs to be redefined, or corrected,” President Hashim Thaci told VOA’s Albanian Service on Thursday, largely repeating comments he made online Wednesday. Thaci was responding to an idea floated by some Serbian government officials that Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority but also a Serb minority, should be divided as a possible solution to settle a long-running dispute that is …

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Ankara is vowing to hit back against Washington’s sanctions on the Turkish justice and interior ministers in connection with the detention of American protestant pastor Andrew Brunson. Turkey Vice President Fuat Oktay threatened retaliation in a tweet Thursday, “We will not hesitate for a split second to do what great nations must do under the leadership of our president.”  However, in a written statement, Berat Albayrak, the powerful economics minister, indicated a less confrontational approach. “Our priority is to ensure that this process is settled through diplomacy and constructive efforts that would be consistent with the relations between the two …

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Britain’s opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is under increasing pressure to expel far-left allies from his party in a worsening quarrel over anti-Semitism that’s shaking up British politics and damaging the Labour Party’s electoral prospects. One of his party allies has accused Jewish critics, including some Labour lawmakers, of being “Trump fanatics.” A senior Labour lawmaker, John McDonnell, acknowledged this week that the long-running and bruising argument, with repeated clashes spanning several months between Jewish Labour lawmakers and Corbyn and his hard-core supporters, has “shaken us to the core.” McDonnell was speaking after Corbyn apologized for a 2010 event he hosted, …

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Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that there were no signs of torture on the bodies of three Russian journalists killed in the Central African Republic this week. The journalists were ambushed and killed outside the town of Sibut late Monday. CAR officials said they were kidnapped by about 10 men wearing Turbans and speaking Arabic. The trio had been working on an investigative story about a Russian private military contractor company as well as Russia’s interests in the local gold, diamond and uranium mining industry. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the reporters’ bodies had gunshot wounds, but no …

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Much of the Iberian Peninsula is experiencing the year’s first heatwave, with the mercury expected to soar before peaking at 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 Fahrenheit) in some areas of southern Portugal this weekend. Authorities say temperatures are being driven higher Thursday by a hot air mass moving northward from Africa. Forecasts are for a high of 44 degrees (111 Fahrenheit) in the Portuguese city of Evora, 130 kilometers east of Lisbon, and the Spanish province of Badajoz across the border. Portuguese authorities have issued a nationwide health warning, while warnings have also been issued for 40 of Spain’s 50 provinces. …

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The Vatican said Thursday Pope Francis has asked the church to change its teachings to reflect his view that the death penalty should be inadmissible. The new language in the Catechism of the Catholic Church says the death penalty was long considered an appropriate response to certain crimes in order to protect the public, but that now there is “an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.” The text says there are more effective detention systems that “do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.” …

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President Donald Trump has authorized sanctions for two top Turkish officials in connection with Ankara’s refusal to release an American pastor detained in Turkey. Turkish authorities have arrested the evangelical pastor on allegations of espionage and connections to a terrorist group. The U.S. move Wednesday threatens to imperil already tense relations between the two NATO allies. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more. …

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Imagine this – a fully autonomous 3D-printed mobile house that can survive any weather and is completely self-powered. This is not a technological dream – it’s the ambitious project of a Ukrainian company called PassivDom. It’s working on the prototype of a printed home in Reno, Nevada. VOA’s Iuliia Iarmolenko gives us a look inside the 3D-printed walls of the futuristic house. …

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More British businesses should be made to report the difference in how much they pay male and female staff, lawmakers said Thursday, citing “obscene” gender pay gaps in some companies. Businesses and charities with more than 250 workers must publish figures on their gender pay gap each year under a law introduced last year, but they account for less than half Britain’s workforce. On Thursday a parliamentary committee said smaller firms tended to be more unequal, urging the government to extend the reporting requirement to all businesses with more than 50 employees. ​Shine a light wider “Companies are failing to …

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Three Russian journalists were investigating Russian military contractors and mining industries in Central African Republic when they were killed there, their editor said Wednesday. The reporters were ambushed and killed outside the town of Sibut late Monday, according to local and Russian officials. CAR officials said the three were kidnapped by about 10 men wearing turbans and speaking Arabic, but have yet to give further details. Exiled Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky said on Facebook Wednesday that the journalists were collaborating with his investigative media project on a story entitled “Russian Mercenaries.” Andrei Konyakhin, the chief editor of Khodorkovsky’s Investigations …

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European Union imports of U.S. soybeans were already rising substantially before a top EU official told President Donald Trump last week that the bloc would buy more. EU Commission figures released Wednesday show that 37 percent of the bloc’s soybean imports last month were coming from the U.S., compared with 9 percent in July 2017. Amid a looming trade war over tariffs, Trump and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed on July 25 to start talks intended to achieve “zero tariffs” and “zero subsidies” on non-automotive industrial goods. The EU also agreed to buy more U.S. soybeans and build more terminals …

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It is now legal to smoke marijuana in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, but there’s a caveat. At 4:20 p.m. local time on Monday, July 30, the Georgian Constitutional Court legalized marijuana consumption while retaining laws against growing, storing and selling the drug. In the historic ruling that subverted decades of harshly restrictive drug policies, Georgia’s increasingly liberal constitutional court declared smoking cannabis an act “guaranteed by the right of free self-development,” making it the first former Soviet republic to legalize recreational usage. For years, the southern Caucasus nation of roughly 3.7 million was home to what many civil …

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Georgia’s president denounced Russia on Wednesday for illegally occupying part of the country as it began two weeks of military exercises with the United States and several other NATO members. About 1,300 soldiers from Georgia, 1,170 from the United States and several hundred from eight other NATO member states joined in maneuvers falling just a few days before the 10th anniversary of Georgia’s war with Russia. Washington dispatched a mechanized company, including 12 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, five M1A2 Abrams tanks and nine Blackhawk and Apache helicopters. Non-NATO Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan also sent soldiers. President Giorgi Margvelashvili, at an …

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Brexit is looming and so is Armageddon, if you believe the headlines in Britain. Newspapers have been flooded with stories about food shortages, stockpiled medicines, grounded flights and troops on the streets of Britain if the country leaves the European Union early next year without an agreement on the future relationship between the two sides.   Those forecasts came as the positions of both sides appeared to harden and British officials made statements about preparations for a no-deal Brexit that could disrupt trade. Prime Minister Theresa May said the government was preparing for every eventuality.   All the talk of …

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