Category: Євросоюз

The Supreme Court in Russia’s Chechnya region Friday rejected an appeal of the extension of the pretrial detention of the chief of a human rights group. That means Oyub Titiyev, the director of Memorial’s Grozny office, will remain in jail until at least June 9. The 60-year-old Titiyev has been in pretrial detention in Chechnya since his arrest January 9 on a charge of marijuana possession, which he and his supporters say was fabricated. He was stopped and detained by police while in his car. Chechen authorities later said drugs had been found in his vehicle. Titiyev and Memorial, the …

READ MORE

Russian police have detained supporters of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, raiding their homes and detaining them on the streets of various Russian cities ahead of Saturday protests against President Vladimir Putin, whose new term starts Monday. “Activist Ilya Gantvarg was detained in St. Petersburg last night,” said an Open Russia Foundation press release reported by Interfax. “Ilya is an active participant in the actions held by Alexei Navalny’s staff.” The Open Russia document also says one of its own members, Viktor Chirikov, was detained in Krasnodar, and that an employee of Navalny’s staff was detained in her own backyard in Krasnoyarsk. …

READ MORE

The United Nations will launch a screening system to prevent former employees guilty of sexual misconduct from finding new jobs with its agencies or other charities, a senior official said Friday, part of an effort to address its #MeToo issue. The tool will be an electronic registry of information to be available across the U.N.’s vast international reach and eventually to other groups, said Jan Beagle, U.N. under-secretary-general for management, following a high-level meeting in London. Prominent U.N. bodies including the World Food Program (WFP) and refugee agency (UNHCR) fired several staff last year amid concerns raised that sexual misconduct …

READ MORE

Turkey’s opposition parties have selected their candidates to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in next month’s snap election. The main opposition CHP picked veteran deputy chairman Muharrem Ince, a fiery critic of Erdogan. Addressing party supporters in Ankara, Ince removed his party badge, replacing it with one of a Turkish flag. “I will be the president of 80 million, of rightists and leftists, of Alevis [an Islamic sect] and Sunnis, of Turks and Kurds,” he said. “I will be an impartial president.” The 54-year-old former physics teacher is seen as a shrewd choice by CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Ince has …

READ MORE

Meghan Markle’s divorced parents will meet with Queen Elizabeth II and other royals before her May 19 wedding to Prince Harry and will have special roles in their daughter’s wedding, a palace spokesman said Friday. At the wedding, the royal couple also plan to honor the memory of the late Princess Diana, Harry’s mother, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997. Officials didn’t predict the weather — springtime in England can be glorious or horrid, sometimes on the same day — but they outlined plans for a celebration designed to spread from the privileged environs of Windsor Castle …

READ MORE

Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious disease specialist and an expert in vaccines. He’s been at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia since 1992. Since then he says not a year has gone by when he has not seen a child die from a vaccine-preventable disease. It’s largely, he says, because the parents chose not to vaccinate their child. Far from Philadelphia, along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, health workers are desperately trying to vaccinate every child against polio so no child will ever again suffer the crippling effects of this disease. If they can complete this task, polio will …

READ MORE

Vaccines can prevent 23 viruses and two types of cancer, and more vaccines are in the works, including one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Yet, despite these advances, many people choose to avoid getting these vaccinations for themselves and for their children. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more. …

READ MORE

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party avoided a wipeout in London local elections and eked out gains in Brexit-supporting regions elsewhere, results Friday showed, denting the opposition Labour Party’s hopes of a big win. The elections are viewed as a gauge of public support for May as she faces a possible revolt in parliament over her strategy for leaving the European Union. With two-thirds of results declared, May had avoided the kind of widespread losses that would have weakened her authority over Conservative lawmakers ahead of key tests of her plans to take Britain out of the EU customs union …

READ MORE

The Nobel Prize in literature will not be awarded this year following sex-abuse allegations and other issues that have damaged the public image of the Swedish Academy that selects the winner.   The academy said Friday the 2018 prize will be given in 2019. The decision was made at a weekly meeting in Stockholm a day earlier, on the grounds that the academy is in no shape to pick a winner after a string of sex abuse allegations and financial crimes scandals.   “We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the Academy before the next …

READ MORE

The ruling party of Armenia indicated it will support the opposition leader’s bid to become prime minister in a parliamentary vote scheduled for May 8. The decision follows weeks of protests that culminated in blockades and strikes this week. The opposition called a halt to the demonstrations Thursday as all sides negotiated a political solution. The protests erupted last month after the former prime minister was accused of manipulating the constitution to cling to power. Henry Ridgwell reports. …

READ MORE

Six German Roman Catholic cardinals have held talks with other top Church officials at the Vatican about the possibility of allowing non-Catholic Christian spouses to receive communion. Any such move is likely to alarm conservative Catholics who believe Pope Francis is already veering too far from the traditional doctrine. German cardinals and other prelates met Thursday to discuss possible access to the Eucharist for non-Catholic spouses. The issue is delicate, as conservative Catholics have grown increasingly displeased with the liberal attitudes and stances of Pope Francis during the past five years. A group of German bishops requested the meeting after …

READ MORE

The International Olympic Committee plans to appeal to Switzerland’s supreme court against rulings which cleared some Russian athletes of doping at the Sochi Games. The Olympic body is “unsatisfied both by the decision and the motivation” of verdicts by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Thursday on the sidelines of an executive board meeting. The Swiss Federal Tribunal — also based in Lausanne — can overturn CAS verdicts if legal process was abused, though appeals rarely succeed. Days before the Pyeongchang Olympics opened in February, two CAS judging panels upheld appeals of 28 Russian athletes …

READ MORE

After weeks of raucous protests, the streets of the Armenian capital suddenly calmed Thursday and the ruling party confirmed it would back an opposition leader to become prime minister next week. The opposition lawmaker who led the protests in Yerevan, Nikol Pashinian, called for them to stop Thursday following the concession by the ruling party. But the deal leaves the ruling Republican Party with a solid majority in parliament, suggesting that real change in the landlocked former Soviet republic that is a key Russian ally could still be far away. Many protesters were still skeptical. “We just let off steam …

READ MORE

Voters in England cast their ballots on Thursday in local government elections expected to show rising support for Prime Minister Theresa May’s opponents in London and add to questions about her ability to follow through on her Brexit plan. The election results, due to start being declared in the early hours of Friday morning, will be viewed as a gauge of public support for May as she faces a possible revolt over her strategy for leaving the European Union. A poor set of results is unlikely to spark internal calls for her resignation, but could weaken her authority over a …

READ MORE

Alain Bouhana surveiled the sea of May Day protesters crossing the Austerlitz Bridge on a blustery afternoon. The banners were back and the mood was upbeat, although moments later, it would be destroyed by black-hooded anarchists. But something was missing for 69-year-old Bouhana, who describes himself as an old Trotskyite. “The issues aren’t the same,” he said of similar marches a half-century ago. “We were more revolutionary then, we wanted real change. Now, we mostly want to earn more and live decently.” Graffiti again covers university buildings. Workers are back on the streets, venting their grievances over reforms being pushed …

READ MORE

The opposition lawmaker who has led weeks of mass demonstrations in Armenia called Wednesday for the protests to take a break after a surprising move by the ruling party appeared to clear the way for him to become prime minister. On a fast-moving day of turmoil that began with crowds blocking roads, railways and the airport in the capital of Yerevan, the head of the ruling Republican Party’s faction in parliament said it would vote May 8 for any prime minister candidate nominated by a third of the body’s 105 members. That effectively promised the job to protest leader Nikol …

READ MORE

With snap elections in Turkey less than two months away, the government has begun investing billions of dollars in financial giveaways in an unprecedented spending spree that has sent the lira to near record lows and prompted concerns about the health of the economy. The currency fell by nearly 2 percent against major currencies Wednesday in response to Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s announcement of a $5.9 billion spending package. Along with tax social security payment amnesties, the bulk of the spending is to be split into two payments of 1,000 lira — the equivalent of $240 — to 13 million …

READ MORE

The head of the Russian Olympic Committee is stepping down from his post, three months after athletes from his country were forced to compete at the Pyeongchang Games as neutral athletes. Alexander Zhukov said he wants to focus on his political career as a deputy speaker of parliament for the ruling United Russia party. Zhukov has led the ROC since 2010 and spent much of that time battling allegations of widespread doping in Russian sport. “In the complex situation which has occurred in international sport in recent times, it is very important that the leader who will take charge of …

READ MORE

As France marks the half-century anniversary of May 1968, a profound period of social upheaval, protesters are back on the streets, venting their anger against reforms being pushed through by the year-old centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron. But from Paris, Lisa Bryant reports the spirit today is very different from that watershed year that left an indelible mark on French politics and society. …

READ MORE

The Russian government is struggling to block messaging app Telegram, and its bid to cut access to the instant messenger platform is causing widespread disruption to an array of websites and online services in Russia that have nothing to do with Telegram. For three weeks, Russian regulators have been floundering in their efforts to block the app after a court imposed a ban on Telegram April 13 for its refusal to hand the security agencies encryption keys enabling them access to users’ private messages. Telegram’s defiant founder, Pavel Durov, a Russian entrepreneur in self-imposed exile, has boasted that the user …

READ MORE