Category: Євросоюз

THE WHITE HOUSE   Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release                           July 16, 2018     REMARKS BY PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PRESIDENT PUTIN OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE   Presidential Palace Helsinki, Finland     5:10 P.M. EEST        PRESIDENT PUTIN:  (As interpreted.)  Distinguished Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: Negotiations with the President of the United States Donald Trump took place in a frank and businesslike atmosphere.  I think we can call it a success and a very fruitful round of negotiations.     We carefully analyzed the current status — the present and …

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Donald Trump, standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, has declared he cannot see any reason to believe Moscow meddled in the election that led to him becoming U.S. president in 2016. Every major U.S. intelligence agency has concluded there was such interference by Russia during the election and the matter is the focus of a major federal investigation that has targeted not only Russians, but members of Trump’s election campaign staff. “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said of his query to Putin on Monday about the issue. “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I …

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Hundreds of migrants aboard two border patrol ships were allowed to disembark in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo early Monday after a half dozen European countries promised to take in some of them, rather than have Italy process their asylum claims alone. After two days at sea and a very long night, the 450 migrants aboard the Italian ship Monte Sperone and the British naval vessel Protector finally disembarked at dawn. They had been picked up from an overcrowded boat that left Libya on Friday. Among them were 128 unaccompanied minors. The ships, one operated by EU border agency Frontex …

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In an outburst of national pride and joy, Croatia rolled out a red carpet and staged a euphoric heroes’ welcome for the national team on Monday despite its loss to France in the World Cup final. Tens of thousands of people wearing national red-and-white checkered colors and waving Croatian flags poured into the streets in the capital Zagreb to greet the players, many coming to the city from other parts of the country. The joyful, singing crowd crammed the central squares or lined up along the route where the players passed in an open bus, greeting the fans along the …

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The United States has reportedly rejected requests from European allies that are seeking exemptions from U.S. sanctions imposed on countries doing business in Iran.  According to diplomats and other officials, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote a letter to Britain, France and Germany saying the U.S. would not provide widespread protection from sanctions to countries doing business in Iran.  Pompeo and Mnuchin said in their letter, first reported by NBC News, that they are seeking “to provide unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime.”  The U.S. did add, however, that it would grant limited …

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The outcome of the first summit between the unpredictable first-term American president and Russia’s steely-eyed longtime leader is anybody’s guess. With no set agenda, the summit could veer between spectacle and substance. As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin head into Monday’s meeting in Helsinki, here’s a look at what each president may be hoping to achieve: What Trump wants What Trump wants from Russia has long been one of the great mysteries of his presidency. The president will go into the summit followed by whispers about his ties to Moscow, questions that have grown only more urgent since the Justice …

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Five EU countries have agreed to accept some of the nearly 450 migrants being transported aboard two military ships stuck off the coast of Sicily, Italian Prime Minister Giueseppe Conte said Sunday. Germany, Spain and Portugal each agreed Sunday to accept 50 of the migrants after France and Malta agreed to do the same on Saturday. But the Czech Republic rebuffed the appeal, calling the distribution plan a “road to hell.”   The two ships, one belonging to the European Union border agency Frontex and another to the Italian border police, have been stranded in Italian waters after hardline Italian …

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The sponsors of the Russian “troll factory” that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign have launched a new American website ahead of the U.S. midterm election in November. A Russian oligarch has links to Maryland’s election services. Russian bots and trolls are deploying increasingly sophisticated, targeted tools. And a new indictment suggests the Kremlin itself was behind previous hacking efforts in support of Donald Trump. As the U.S. leader prepares to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, many Americans are wondering: Is the Kremlin trying yet again to derail a U.S. election? While U.S. intelligence officials …

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Intrigue has soared to new height ahead of Monday’s summit in Helsinki between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports. …

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U.S. President Donald Trump advised British Prime Minister Theresa May to sue the European Union instead of negotiating with the bloc, as part of her Brexit strategy.   “He told me I should sue the EU,” May told BBC television. “Sue the EU. Not go into negotiations — sue them.” Her revelation about how Trump advised her ended several days of speculation about what advice the U.S. leader had offered the prime minister. Trump said last week in an interview with The Sun newspaper that he had given May advice, but she did not follow it. The president told the newspaper …

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As the 2018 World Cup reached its climax Sunday, no one could draw more satisfaction from the tournament than Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The mega sporting event, which Putin personally lobbied to secure for Russia, has allowed the Kremlin to burnish the country’s image abroad, say analysts and even Putin’s domestic critics. And Monday the Russian leader will once again be center stage with a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, ending in some ways the international ostracism the Russian leader has faced since his forcible annexation of Crimea in 2014. Monday’s meeting in Helsinki for the first face-to-face summit …

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As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares for his first one-on-one summit with President Donald Trump in Helsinki this week, Russian political observers said Kremlin expectations are low but for one key issue: Russia’s symbolic return from international isolation to global powerbroker. Ahead of the summit, President Trump — after a contentious week of meetings with traditional U.S. allies in Brussels and London — has suggested his talks with the Russian leader “may be the easiest of them all.” Yet, Russian analysts warn that Trump will be faced with a shrewd negotiator whose arguments have been well-honed during his 18-year reign …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May warned her divided party Sunday that there may be “no Brexit at all” if they wrecked her plan to forge a close relationship with the European Union after leaving the world’s biggest trading bloc. “My message to the country this weekend is simple: We need to keep our eyes on the prize,” May wrote on Facebook. “If we don’t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.” Linking the fate of Brexit to her own survival in such an explicit way indicates just how precarious May’s position remains after her government was thrust into …

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Fat dogs may have more in common with obese humans than we think. Hungarian researchers have discovered that overweight dogs were interested only in top quality food and would not settle for second best. The study suggests that dogs could be used as models into the causes and psychological impact of human obesity. VOA’s Deborah Block has a report. …

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Norway renewed its financial commitment to NATO after U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met Saturday with Norwegian officials in Oslo. Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said “Norway is committed to the two percent goal in NATO,” and added without offering specifics, “We will continue to increase defense spending substantially in the coming years.” Currently the oil-rich country spends about 1.6-percent of its GDP on defense. NATO agreed in 2014 that each member nation would raise military spending to 2-percent of their gross domestic product by 2024. But diplomats say only two-thirds of the 29-nation alliance, excluding the U.S., have a …

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The U.S. intelligence chief warned on Friday that the threat was growing for a devastating cyber assault on critical U.S. infrastructure, saying the “warning lights are blinking red again” nearly two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are launching daily cyber strikes on the computer networks of federal, state and local government agencies, U.S. corporations, and academic institutions, said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Of the four, “Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor, no question,” he said. Coats spoke at the Hudson Institute think tank shortly after the Department of …

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Finland is a natural choice for the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The Nordic country, which shares a long border with Russia, has a history of neutrality between Moscow and Washington. Finland has also hosted several sensitive U.S.-Soviet summits, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Helsinki. …

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France is marked Bastille Day Saturday with its traditional display of military might — a veritable assault of troops, helicopters, fighter planes taking over the skies and the famous Champs Elysees avenue of Paris. France’s defense budget is getting a sizeable boost that will meet NATO’s two percent spending commitment by 2025— and reverse a decade of budget cuts. But it may not be enough for Washington.  Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump was at the Bastille Day parade here in a visit that forged a personal bond with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. This year, President Macron attended the …

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President Donald Trump on Saturday tried to blame the Obama administration for not responding aggressively enough to Russian hacking of Democratic targets in the 2016 U.S. election — cyberattacks underpinning the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers. Trump’s first response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s initial charges against Russian government officials for interfering in American politics came in tweets the president posted while at his golf resort in Scotland, two days before a high-stakes summit in Finland with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the …

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British detectives investigating the poisoning of two people with a military grade nerve agent said Friday that a small bottle found in the home of one of the victims tested positive for Novichok, a lethal substance produced in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, were sickened on June 30 in a southwestern England town not far from Salisbury, where British authorities say a Russian ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok in March.  Sturgess died in a hospital on Sunday. Rowley was in critical condition for more than a week, but …

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