Category: Євросоюз

Former Polish president and anti-communist leader Lech Walesa met Monday with disabled people and their parents who have been staging a sit-in in the parliament for over a month, offering them his solidarity and strongly denouncing the country’s populist government. Several young adults in wheelchairs and their parents, their full-time caretakers, want more state aid, a demand the government has not fully met. While the numbers of protesters are small, their occupation of a corridor in parliament has received heavy coverage in the Polish media, becoming a headache for the conservative ruling party. The parliament speaker has reacted by restricting …

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Pope Francis’ reported comments to a gay man that “God made you like this” have been embraced by the LGBT community as another sign of Francis’ desire to make gay people feel welcomed and loved in the Catholic Church. Juan Carlos Cruz, the main whistleblower in Chile’s clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal, said Monday he spoke to Francis about his homosexuality during their recent meetings at the Vatican. The pope invited Cruz and other victims of a Chilean predator priest to discuss their cases last month. Cruz said he told Francis how Chile’s bishops used his sexual orientation as …

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Decades of rust are covering its hull, the furniture is broken in its once luxurious salons, its powerful engines are permanently idle. But against all odds, the iconic yacht that once belonged to the late Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito has been given a new lease on life. The once-imposing ship that hosted Hollywood celebrities, some 70 world leaders and took Tito up the River Thames for a historic meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill will be turned into a floating museum. The ship, called Galeb, or Seagull, is moored at the northern Croatian Adriatic port of Rijeka. After …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a swipe at European countries that refused to let him campaign on their territory on Sunday as he called at a rally in Bosnia for expatriate Turks to vote for him and his ruling AK Party in elections next month. The presidential and parliamentary polls on June 24 will see Turkey switch to a powerful, executive presidential system that was narrowly approved in a referendum last year. “As European Turks you have always supported us by a wide margin. Now we need your support again in the elections on June 24,” Erdogan told a …

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Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Sunday that Europe’s political support to save the 2015 international nuclear accord after the U.S. withdrawal was not sufficient if too many European companies end their investments in Iran. “The cascade of decisions by EU companies to end their activities in Iran makes things much more complicated,” Zarif said after meeting with European Union energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete. Iranian state broadcaster IRIB quoted Zarif as saying, “With the exit of the United States from the nuclear deal, the expectations of the Iranian public towards the European Union have increased… and the EU’s political …

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Facebook and European Union officials were locked in high-stakes negotiations Sunday over whether founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear Tuesday before EU lawmakers to discuss the site’s impact on the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Europeans, as well as Facebook’s impact on elections on both sides of the Atlantic and the spreading of fake news. Being debated is whether the meeting would be held after EU Parliament President Antonio Tajanibe agreed to have it live-streamed on the internet and not held behind closed-doors, as previously agreed. The leaders of all eight political blocs in the parliament have insisted the format …

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Meghan Markle picked a sleek sculpted dress by the British designer of couture house Givenchy for her wedding to Prince Harry on Saturday, worn with a five-meter long veil and a sparkling diamond tiara lent by Queen Elizabeth. The pure white long-sleeved gown with a boat neck had been eagerly anticipated by royal fans around the world, with speculation over which designer would be chosen starting soon after the couple announced their engagement in November. As the bride stepped out of her classic Rolls-Royce, Kensington Palace announced that Clare Waight Keller, who became the first female artistic director at famed …

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Diplomats from Europe, China and Russia are discussing a new accord to offer Iran financial aid to curb its ballistic missile development and meddling in the region, in the hope of salvaging its 2015 nuclear deal, a German newspaper reported Sunday. The officials will meet in Vienna in the coming week under the leadership of senior European Union diplomat Helga Schmid to discuss next steps after the May 8 decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull out of a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper said, citing senior EU sources. No US participation Germany, France, …

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Greece and representatives from its European and International Monetary Fund creditors have reached an initial agreement on the country’s reform progress under its final bailout review, the finance minister said Saturday. “The staff-level agreement closed. We have an agreement on all issues,” Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters, adding it would be ratified at an upcoming meeting of euro zone finance ministers. Greece is keen for a quick closure of the review as it looks to the end of its third bailout in August. It is being assessed on more than 80 demanded reforms, including on energy issues, pension and labor issues. …

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He is a former refugee, a Muslim, and now the first Somali-British mayor, the youngest ever Lord Mayor for Sheffield city in the United Kingdom. The 28-year-old Magid Magid has also become the first Green Party mayor. He was sworn in Friday. “This really was a victory for the Somalis and other Muslim communities in Sheffield,” Kaltum Osman, a young Somali woman who also won a seat at Sheffield’s City Council, told VOA Somali. “This was a victory for the young men and women of Sheffield. It was a clear message for every person that’s been told they have limits …

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From the windswept Falkland Islands, battered by the South Atlantic and home to colonies of penguins, to the heat of Kenya, India and Australia, people around the world celebrated Britain’s glittering royal wedding Saturday. The scenes of pageantry and romance in Windsor, where Prince Harry married his American bride Meghan Markle, were beamed to locations across continents where people dressed up, raised their glasses and enjoyed the fun of a uniquely British event. “We are very fond of our royal family and it’s lovely to celebrate an event like this,” said Falkland Islander Leona Roberts, a member of the local …

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The big day finally arrived for Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as the couple married Saturday in the town of Windsor, outside London. Prince Charles, Prince Harry’s father, walked the bride down the aisle. The American former actress confirmed earlier that her father would not attend the ceremony, owing to ill health, after days of speculation over whether he would make the journey across the Atlantic. Throngs of people descended on the historic town as well-wishers tried to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. Thousands of police officers mounted one of the biggest security operations in recent years, …

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Human rights experts from the United Nations called on Spain Friday to halt extraditions of Chinese and Taiwanese nationals to China because of concerns they would be exposed to the risk of torture, ill treatment or the death penalty. They cited the December 2016 arrest of 269 suspects, including 219 Taiwanese, over their alleged involvement in telecom scams to defraud Chinese citizens in a police swoop dubbed Operation Wall. Two Taiwanese individuals were reported to have been extradited to China on Thursday and the U.N. experts said they feared others would also be deported soon. “We are dismayed by the …

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Conservationists around the world are making great strides in rescuing animal species from the brink of extinction. Despite the recent death of the last male white rhinoceros, there is hope that science can bring the species back. In Europe, scientists are raising bison almost a century after they vanished from the wild, and California’s population of sea otters has rebounded from only 50 specimens in the 1930s. VOA’s George Putic has more. …

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Turkey is furious over the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and Israel’s use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, and it has recalled its ambassadors from the United States and Israel. Tensions between Ankara and Washington were already simmering over the fate of an American pastor imprisoned in Turkey and the sentencing of a Turkish banker in the United States. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department. …

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With the round-the-clock British media coverage of the royal family in the days leading up to the big day for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, it would be hard not to conclude that this year’s wedding of weddings is a source of delight for every Briton. But not everyone in Britain remains as excited as the thousands already crowding into Windsor to claim a spot that will allow them to grab a glimpse of the wedding couple and the pomp and circumstance. Social media was littered with all kinds of memes deriding the wedding ceremony. ​   Oscar-winning British actress Emma Thompson chimed …

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President Vladimir Putin says the Russian military will start receiving new nuclear weapons in the coming years. Speaking at a meeting Friday in Sochi, Putin said delivery of the new Avangard hypersonic vehicle will begin next year while the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile will enter duty in 2020. The Avangard and the Sarmat were among an array of new nuclear weapons Putin presented in March, saying that they can’t be intercepted. They also included a nuclear-powered global range cruise missile and an underwater drone designed to strike coastal facilities with a heavy nuclear weapon. Putin said two other new …

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Turkey has called on Muslim nations to stand with Palestinians and to work to stop countries joining the United States in relocating their Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The call came at the end of a week that has seen Turkey take a leading role internationally to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza after Israeli forces killed dozens of people in Gaza. A diplomatic spat ensued with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trading barbs on Twitter and both countries expelling senior diplomats. As part of its condemnation of events in Gaza earlier this …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that he would stand up to any attempts by U.S. President Donald Trump to block a Russian-German gas pipeline project. Berlin and Moscow have been at loggerheads since Russia’s annexation of Crimea four years ago, but they share a common interest in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which will allow Russia to export more natural gas to northern Europe. A U.S. government official this week said Washington had concerns about the project, and that companies involved in Russian pipeline projects faced a higher risk …

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A court in Kosovo jailed eight men Friday for plotting to attack the Israeli national soccer team in Albania in a World Cup qualifying match in 2016. The court in the capital handed the defendants, who are all from Kosovo, jail terms ranging from 18 months to 10 years, totaling more than 35 years. A ninth defendant was ordered to pay a fine of 2,500 euros. The prosecution said the group had planned to attack the Israeli team with explosives and automatic rifles. The plan was thwarted when Kosovo police got wind of the plot and tipped off Albanian authorities …

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