Category: Євросоюз

Eight people were arrested in Brussels after counter-terror raids as part of an investigation into an alleged attack plot, a source close to the probe said. All eight were arrested Sunday in Molenbeek, an immigrant district linked to the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, following the raids, the source told AFP. The eight were taken for questioning before a judge investigating an alleged terror plot, the source said, confirming a report in the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure. The source said investigators suspected an attack was in preparation, but gave no other details. The judge will decide late Monday whether …

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France’s foreign minister arrived in Tehran on Monday for meetings with the country’s president and his Iranian counterpart, Iran’s state TV reported, with talks likely to focus on Syria’s years-long war and French criticism of Iran’s ballistic missile program.   Jean-Yves Le Drian’s one-day trip highlights the balancing act Paris finds itself in after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.   While French leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron, have criticized Iran’s missile program, French companies like oil giant Total SA have bullishly entered the Iranian market after the atomic accord, complicating any possible sanctions.   Ahead of Le Drian’s …

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With no outright winner and the Italian parliament appearing to be hung based on early seat projections Monday, the already fractious country will be thrown into weeks of tortuous backroom deal-making and behind-the-scenes horse trading as coalition negotiations drag on, prolonging political instability in one of Europe’s biggest economies. On the face of it, Italy underwent a political revolution with voters ditching the center and riding a populist wave. Nearly half of all Italians who voted Sunday supported populist candidates, many of them once considered extremists or catalogued as fringe. The biggest beneficiaries appear to have been the upstart Movimento …

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The International Criminal Court’s March calendar illustrates why the Hague-based tribunal remains a deeply polarizing institution, two decades after its conception. Three appeals judgements next week deal with atrocities in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and attacks against cultural treasures in Timbuktu, Mali. Later this month, trial hearings continue against Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier and senior commander of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebel movement. For years, the ICC has weathered accusations of being excessively and unfairly focused on Africa, and a painfully slow, inefficient and expensive institution. Some of the world’s biggest heavyweights, including the United …

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Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, has died. He was 88. Bannister’s family said that he died on Saturday in Oxford, the English city where the runner cracked the feat many had thought humanly impossible. On a windy late afternoon in Oxford on May 6, 1954, Bannister ran four laps on a cinder track in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. When timekeeper Norris McWhirter tried to announce the time of “Three…”, the rest of his words were drowned out by cheers. Only when he read the newspapers the following day, did Bannister fully appreciate …

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Thousands of Spaniards for unity marched Sunday in Barcelona in support of a grassroots group that mocks Catalonia’s separatist movement. The group, “Platform for Tabarnia,” facetiously calls for the secession of the cities of Barcelona and Tarragona from Catalonia – allowing them to remain in Spain as the rest of Catalonia calls for secession. Under the slogan “the joke is over — long live Tabarnia,” as many as 15,000 pro-unity Spaniards waving flags of Spain and the fictitious Tabarnia took to Barcelona streets. The group also employs the slogan, “Barcelona is not Catalonia,” a twist on the state’s secessionist slogan, “Catalonia …

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More than 47 million Italians are eligible to vote in Sunday’s general election, and polling booths will remain open until late with exit polls expected immediately after closing.  Opinion polls were banned in the past two weeks of the campaign, but surveys before suggested no party would win the needed majority to govern the country. This election is expected to determine the makeup of the new 945-member Italian parliament and the next government. It is Italy’s 18th general election since 1948. But much uncertainty surrounds the outcome of the vote with the main contenders having predicted victory. Three time former …

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In advance of International Women’s Week (March 5), a report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union finds little progress is being made in increasing the number of women parliamentarians around the world. Before 2016, the Inter-Parliamentary Union reports the number of women being elected to Parliaments around the world was increasing annually on average by six percent. But it says this encouraging upward trend seems to have come to an end. Over the past two years, the IPU finds the number of women in national parliaments globally has increased only by about one percent. It says women represent fewer than one-quarter of …

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The EU will soon unveil a plan for taxing major internet companies like Amazon and Facebook by imposing a levy of two to six percent on revenues in every country where they operate, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Sunday. “The range will be from two to six percent; but closer to two than to six,” Le Maire told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. The European Commission has said it will present by end March an overhaul of its tax rules, which currently allow US digital economy giants to report their income from across the bloc in any member …

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Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) voted to form a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) Sunday, ending months of political uncertainty in the country. Two-thirds of the SPD voted to form a Grand Coalition, continuing the government that has ruled Europe’s largest economy since 2013. The relatively wide margin means Angela Merkel, who has served as the acting chancellor of Germany since an inconclusive vote in September, could be sworn in for her fourth term as early as the middle of the month. Using her party’s Twitter account Sunday, Merkel said “I look forward to working with the …

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Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, made a surprise appearance at a chapel in Naples Saturday, one day before Italians vote in a general election to select a new parliament. Politicians were forbidden to campaign Saturday, but Berlusconi’s visit to the Sansevero chapel drew crowds of journalists and fans. The 81-year-old Berlusconi told reporters that he and his 30-year-old girlfriend were visiting the chapel as tourists. He said the chapel was part of the country’s heritage, to which “no other country in the world can remotely compete against.” Berlusconi, who served four terms as prime minister, cannot run in Sunday’s …

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A Polish campaign group is suing an Argentine newspaper it says breached a new law that makes it a criminal offence to suggest Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. In what appeared to be the first legal action under the so-called Holocaust law, just hours after it took effect, the Polish League Against Defamation said it filed a complaint against Argentina’s Pagina 12 daily. The paper said it had not received formal notice of the lawsuit. A minister from Poland’s conservative government applauded the move to invoke the law which Warsaw says will protect it from slander, but which the …

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An avalanche in the French Pyrenees swept away five Spanish skiers on Saturday, killing two, local authorities said. The avalanche hit near the Aragnouet-Bielsa tunnel linking France to Spain. Three of the skiers managed to extract themselves from the snow and were unharmed. One skier was killed at the scene and the other died after being evacuated to hospital in the city of Toulouse. On Friday, an avalanche in the French Alps killed four people. Their guide escaped unharmed and was questioned by police on Friday evening. He was released on Saturday.  …

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A first-of-its-kind photo exhibition has opened in Jerusalem featuring images of the Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II. As VOA’s Michael Lipin explains, organizers of the Yad Vashem exhibition say one of their goals is to explain the manipulation of Holocaust images for malign purposes. Warning: Some images in this report may be considered disturbing or offensive. …

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The United States and European powers are vowing a “firm response” to those responsible for recent alleged toxic gas attacks in Syria’s eastern Ghouta, where hundreds of civilians have died in recent weeks. Their warning came as the United Nations’ human rights chief said Friday that the slaughter of civilians in Ghouta and elsewhere were “likely war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity.” In a telephone conversation Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “must be held accountable,” a German chancellery statement said. “This applies both to the Assad …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is confident that a deal can be done on leaving the European Union but warned that ‘no one will get everything they want’ out of Britain’s EU exit. In a key speech Friday, May urged both sides to move faster. The UK is to leave the EU at the end of March next year, but wants a two-year transition period. As Henry Ridgwell reports, there are growing doubts that a comprehensive deal can be reached within that time. …

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“Absolutely unacceptable” were the words Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used to describe U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that he plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum products. Trudeau made the comment Friday, adding that he is prepared to “defend Canadian industry.” Canada is the United States’ biggest foreign source of both materials. He warned that the tariffs would also hurt U.S. consumers and businesses by driving up prices. The European Union was also stung by Trump’s plan, as evidenced by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning that the EU could respond …

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The Turkish military says eight Turkish soldiers and 13 others were wounded in fighting in northern Syria’s Afrin enclave in one of the deadliest days for the Turkish military since it launched “Operation Olive Branch” against the Syrian Kurdish militia, YPG, in January. “May God grant peace to our martyred soldiers in Afrin. All my condolences to their loved ones,” tweeted Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin. In a sign of the continuing cross-party support for the operation, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, tweeted “We trust our army, we have no doubt that they will …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is confident that a deal on leaving the European Union can be reached, but warned, “No one will get everything they want” out of Britain’s pending departure, known as Brexit. Britain is due to leave the bloc in March of next year, but wants a two-year transition period to help businesses adapt.   Under pressure from members of her Conservative party, the political opposition and the EU to deliver details on Britain’s negotiating position, May’s comments Friday were billed as a major step on the road to Brexit.   “We all need …

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Russia is rejecting U.S. accusations it has broken any of its nuclear treaty obligations, arguing it wants only to maintain global peace and stability. “This should absolutely not be considered a beginning of an arms race,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. “These arms are not a threat to anyone who is not planning to attack our country,” he added. Peskov’s comments come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted in his annual state of the nation address about his country’s upgraded nuclear weapons arsenal. Putin said that arsenal included “invincible” nuclear missiles that have unlimited range and which …

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