Category: Євросоюз

U.S. military planners are brushing aside Moscow’s claims that its military has an array of new strategic nuclear weapons that can hit any target anywhere in the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted about his military’s newfound capabilities in a speech ahead of the Russian elections. But U.S. military officials are downplaying Putin’s claims. VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin reports from the Pentagon. …

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Temperatures in the Arctic in recent days have surged above the freezing point, raising fears that climate change is affecting the planet’s atmospheric system far faster than predicted. The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard sits high above the Arctic Circle. It is still late winter, and the sun won’t rise above the horizon for another three weeks, and yet the ice is melting. Waves lap the shoreline of fjords that just a few years ago would have been frozen solid. Snowmobiles lie trapped in muddy meltwater. In the past 30 days, temperatures in Svalbard have soared 10 degrees Celsius above average, …

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Forget self-driving cars! Imagine a future filled with flying cars. The latest design comes from the Netherlands, where a company plans to officially unveil the newest combination of a gyrocopter and a sports car. VOA’s George Putic has more. …

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Temperatures in the Arctic in recent days have surged above the freezing point, leading to renewed fears that climate change is affecting the planet’s atmosphere and causing sea ice to melt at a faster rate than predicted. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, scientists say, but at the same time much of Europe is experiencing a severe cold spell. Some scientists believe the two events are linked, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …

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The former leader of Spain’s separatist-minded Catalonia region unexpectedly announced Thursday that he was dropping his bid to return to his job. Carles Puigdemont spoke from somewhere in Brussels, where he fled to avoid arrest in Spain. He said in a video message posted on a website that under current conditions, standing aside and letting someone else lead Catalonia was the way to get a new government. Puigdemont urged the Catalan parliament to choose pro-independence ally Jordi Sanchez as the new regional president. But Sanchez is in jail in Madrid while prosecutors decide whether to formally charge him with sedition …

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The British government has scrapped plans for an inquiry into alleged media law-breaking and relations between journalists and the police.   Britain held a year-long, judge-led inquiry into press “culture and practices” after the 2011 revelation that employees of the now-defunct News of the World tabloid had hacked the mobile-phone voicemails of celebrities, politicians and crime victims.   At the time the government said there would be a second phase, looking at “unlawful or improper conduct” within media organizations and their relations with the police.   But successive Conservative-led governments delayed acting on the promise. Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said …

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In the 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey was a major West African power, boasting a flourishing slave trade with Europe and a feared corps of Amazon women warriors. Commissioned by the royal court, its art — intricate wood and ivory carvings, metalwork and appliqué cloth — stood as a potent symbol of the kingdom’s might. But by 1894, Dahomey was annexed by France after a pair of brutal wars. Its artifacts ended up in French museums and private collections. Now modern-day Benin, the seat of the former Dahomey kingdom, may have the best chance to date of getting them …

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On one level it was the kind of speech an incumbent leader seeking reelection would give, offering material improvements, making economic promises, and pledging to create more jobs and build better houses.   Delivering his annual state of the nation address Thursday, his 14th and the last one he will make before an election on March 18 he’s expected to win easily, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his “top priority is to preserve the people of Russia and improve their welfare,” adding that it was “unacceptable” that 20 million Russians are living below the official poverty line. What grabbed international …

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The Church of Scientology is claiming victory after a Hungarian court declared a government raid last year at its Budapest headquarters was illegal and that materials seized must be returned. “This is also a victory for religious freedom and human rights for our church,” the church said in a statement. The National Investigation Bureau raided the church’s headquarters in October, as part of an investigation into possible exploitation of personal information and other criminal acts. The Central Court of Buda ordered the return of “hundreds of boxes of unlawfully seized documents and IT tools”, after ruling the raid and seizure …

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U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil says it will withdraw from its joint venture with Russia’s state-controlled Rosneft due to U.S. and European sanctions against the country. Exxon Mobil had signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil producer, in 2011 that aimed to drill in difficult terrain, like Russia’s Arctic waters. It combined Exxon’s high level of technology with Rosneft’s access to the area. The deal came under strain, however, after the U.S. sanctioned Russia in 2014 over the invasion of Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. The sanctions did not affect existing deals in the energy sector, but prohibited any …

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A Slovak website has published the unfinished investigative report on alleged government ties to the mafia written by slain journalist Jan Kuciak. Kuciak and his girlfriend, Martina Kusnirova, were found dead Sunday in their home east of Bratislava. It was the first time a journalist’s death in Slovakia was linked to his or her work. Kuciak’s story describes the alleged connection between a suspected member of the Italian ‘Ndrangheta organized crime family in Slovakia and two senior aides to Prime Minister Robert Fico. The two aides — security council secretary Viliam Jasan and chief state adviser Maria Troskova — say …

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Montenegrin Defense Minister Predrag Boskovic says the country is on target to spend 2 percent of annual economic output on defense by 2024, in keeping with a promise to expand military budgets as the United States offers an increase in its own defense spending in Europe. Boskovic met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on Tuesday, his first visit to the Pentagon since Montenegro became the 29th member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in June 2017. “Montenegro, as a new member, will reach that target by 2024,” Boskovic said in an interview with VOA’s Serbian Service, after meeting …

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Facebook Inc has told a British parliamentary committee that further investigations have found no new evidence that Russia used social media to interfere in the June 2016 referendum in which Britain voted to leave the European Union. Facebook UK policy director Simon Milner in a letter Wednesday told the House of Commons Committee on Digital, Culture Media and Sport that the latest investigation the company undertook in mid-January to try to “identify clusters of coordinated Russian activity around the Brexit referendum that were not identified previously” had been unproductive. Using the same methodology that Facebook used to identify U.S. election-related …

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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s plan to change the National Front’s name amounts to political suicide, its founder, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen told Reuters, warning that his daughter was cutting herself off from the party’s roots. Le Pen father and daughter have been at odds since she kicked him out of the party in 2015 in a bid to distance herself from his frequent inflammatory remarks, which put off a large part of the electorate. Now she wants to go a step further and rebrand the 45-year-old party after she lost the presidential election last year to centrist …

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Artificial Intelligence is on the cusp of transforming our world in ways many of us can barely imagine. While there’s much excitement about emerging technologies, a new report by 26 of the world’s leading AI researchers warns of the potential dangers that could emerge over the coming decade, as AI systems begin to surpass levels of human performance. Automated hacking is identified as one of the most imminent applications of AI, especially so-called “phishing” attacks. “That part used to take a lot of human effort – you had to study your target, make a profile of them, craft a particular …

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A top U.S. general is accusing Russia of sowing the seeds of instability in Syria and across the greater Middle East, part of an ongoing attempt to expand its influence at the expense of the United States and the international community. “Diplomatically and militarily, Moscow plays both arsonist and firefighter, fueling tensions among all parties in Syria,” the commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, told lawmakers Tuesday. Votel further accused Russia of then offering to serve as a mediator in an effort to “undermine and weaken each party’s bargaining position.” The criticism, though worded more sharply than in …

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Macedonia is looking at four options to settle a decades-long dispute with Greece over its name, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told Reuters in an interview Tuesday. The small ex-Yugoslav republic and its southern neighbor Greece have agreed to step up negotiations this year to resolve the dispute, which has frustrated Skopje’s ambition to join NATO and the European Union. Athens, which like all members of both organizations has a veto over admissions, objects to the use of the name Macedonia, arguing that it, along with articles in Skopje’s constitution, could imply territorial claims over a northern Greek region of the …

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Snow fell over swaths of Britain on Tuesday as freezing weather dubbed “the Beast from the East” swept in from Siberia, forcing some schools to close and snarling the travel plans of thousands. Parts of eastern Britain have seen up to 10 cm (4 inches) of snow this week and temperatures could fall towards minus 10 Celsius in some rural areas, Britain’s weather service said. “Bitterly cold easterly winds maintain their grip across the U.K. and we will see further snow showers in some places,” said Aidan McGivern, a meteorologist at the Met Office. “It is bitterly cold out there.” …

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Poland’s president visited a Jewish community center Tuesday amid an upsurge of domestic anti-Semitism and international criticism of a new law that makes it a crime to blame Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany. In a conciliatory gesture, President Andrzej Duda visited the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, the southern Polish city that was home to a vibrant Jewish community before it was decimated during World War II. Elderly Holocaust survivors gather at the center, but it also houses a nursery and preschool – a reflection of the re-emergence of a Jewish population in Poland. During his visit, …

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Italian organized crime figures may have been involved in the shooting death of an investigative journalist in Slovakia, a Canadian reporter said Tuesday as the country’s newspapers printed black-and-white front pages to honor the slain journalist.   The bodies of 27-year-old Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were found Sunday evening in their house in the town of Velka Maca, east of the capital, Bratislava.   Kuciak is the first journalist to be killed in Slovakia. The government is offering 1 million euros ($1.23 million) to anyone who helps authorities find the people responsible. Slovakian police say the slayings …

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