Category: Євросоюз

The U.S. ambassador to Russia on Sunday attacked Moscow’s move toward forcing nine United States government-funded news operations to register as “foreign agents” as “a reach beyond” what the U.S. government did in requiring the Kremlin-funded RT television network to register as such in the United States. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said the Russian reaction is not “reciprocal at all” and Moscow’s move toward regulation of the news agencies, if it is implemented, would make “it virtually impossible for them to operate” in Russia. WATCH: Ambassador Jon Huntsman He said the eight-decade-old Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) under which RT has …

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Turkey’s Foreign Minister Melvin Cavusolgu is hosting his Russian and Iranian counterparts at the Mediterranean Sea resort of Antalya to prepare the ground for Wednesday’s summit in Russia to discuss Syria. Despite Ankara backing opposing sides to Tehran and Moscow in the Syrian civil war, they have been increasingly cooperating to resolve the conflict. The three countries armed forces are deployed in creating a “de-escalation zone” in the Syrian enclave of Idlib, one of last strongholds of rebels fighting the Damascus regime. Despite growing cooperation, the countries competing agendas are increasingly coming to the fore with the imminent defeat of …

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The Turkish capital Ankara has banned the public showing of films and exhibitions related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, the governor’s office said on Sunday, citing risks to public safety. The move is likely to deepen concern among rights activists and Turkey’s Western allies about its record on civil liberties under President Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party. “Starting from Nov. 18, 2017, concerning our community’s public sensitivity, any events such as LGBT… cinema, theatre, panels, interviews, exhibitions are banned until further notice in our province to provide peace and security,” the governor’s office said in a statement. …

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Britain will submit its proposals on how to settle its financial obligations to the European Union before an EU Council meeting next month, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday. British Prime Minister Theresa May was told on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock Brexit talks, as the European Union repeated an early December deadline for her to move on the divorce bill. “We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the council,” Hammond told the BBC. Last week, May met fellow leaders on the sidelines of an EU summit in …

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Celebrating Mass with poor people, Pope Francis is denouncing “indifference” as a great sin. St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday was filled with poor people as well as prelates as the Catholic church marked its first “World Day for the Poor.” Francis decried those who contend that poverty’s “not my business, it’s society’s fault.” He told faithful that a lifetime of “doing nothing wrong isn’t enough” and called helping the world’s poor the “passport for Paradise.” He said people will enter Heaven “not for what you have, but for what you give” to the needy. Francis has invited 1,200 poor people …

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Gerry Adams, the divisive politician known around the world as the face of the Irish republican movement as it shifted from violence to peace, announced Saturday that he was stepping down as leader of Sinn Fein next year after heading the party for over 30 years. The 69-year-old veteran politician — who has been president of Northern Ireland’s second-largest party since 1983 — told the party’s annual conference in Dublin he would not run in the next Irish parliamentary elections. “Leadership means knowing when it is time for change and that time is now,” he said, adding the move was …

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Fotis Kafatos, a Greek molecular biologist who had a distinguished academic career in both the United States and Europe and became the founding president of the European Research Council, has died. He was 77. His family announced his death in Heraklion, Crete, on Saturday “after a long illness.” Born in Crete in 1940, Kafatos was known for his research on malaria and for sequencing the genome of the mosquito that transmits the disease. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1969 to 1994, where he also served as chairman of the Cellular and Developmental Biology Department, and at Imperial …

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Turkish prosecutors launched an investigation Saturday of two U.S. prosecutors involved in putting a Turkish-Iranian businessman on trial for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, according to Turkey’s official news agency. The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said it was investigating Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Bharara’s successor, acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim. A statement from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the sources of the documents and wiretaps being used as evidence in the U.S. case against gold trader Reza Zarrab were unknown and violated international and domestic laws. Turkey’s official Anadolu …

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Ukraine officials have arrested a man who is considered a suspect in the 2004 shooting death of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. Ukraine’s state Security Service said in a statement Saturday that it had detained a suspect, a Russian man, who was also wanted in other slayings. The man was arrested in Kyiv. “According to Interpol, the foreigner participated in a series of sponsored murders, in particular that of Forbes’ editor-in-chief, the U.S. citizen Paul Khlebnikov,” as well as a Chechen government official, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) statement said. It did not …

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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc and two smaller parties pushed Saturday to find agreement on climate change and immigration, with an eye on producing compromises by weekend’s end so they can move ahead with talks on building a ruling coalition. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and sister Bavarian-only Christian Social Union parties met throughout the day with the pro-business Free Democrats and the traditionally left-leaning Greens. The four parties are trying to establish the framework for a coalition never before tried at the national level. They had hoped to agree Thursday whether to start formal coalition negotiations, but said they now …

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Russia has again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended an international probe into chemical weapons use in Syria, one day after it rejected a similar resolution. Japan had put forward a resolution that would have extended the investigation to identify who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria by 30 days to allow time for negotiations on a wider compromise. On Thursday, the United States sponsored a similar resolution with a yearlong extension that was also vetoed by Russia. Russian proposal fails A separate Russian draft resolution Thursday that called for changes to the international investigation …

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The U.S. State Department approved a possible $10.5 billion sale of Raytheon Co’s Patriot missile defense system to Poland, the Pentagon said on Friday. NATO member Poland has sped up efforts to overhaul its military following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and in response to Moscow’s renewed military and political assertiveness in the region. Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said in March that Poland expected to sign a deal with Raytheon to buy the Patriot missile defense system by the end of the year. Patriot missile defense interceptors are designed to detect, track and engage unmanned aerial vehicles …

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Greek police clashed with hooded youths in Athens on Friday after thousands marched to mark a bloody 1973 student uprising that helped topple the military junta which then ruled the country. More than 10,000 people marched peacefully to the embassy of the United States, which some Greeks accuse of having supported the seven-year military dictatorship. About 5,000 police were deployed in the streets of central Athens. At the tail-end of the demonstration, hooded youths hurled stones and petrol bombs at police in the Exarchia district in central Athens, often the setting for such clashes. Police used teargas to disperse them. …

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Lebanon’s Saad Hariri is expected to arrive in Paris early Saturday, in the latest twist to a bizarre crisis that leaves the onus — or credit — on France and its young leader, Emmanuel Macron, to help resolve it. Hariri, whose resignation on Saudi TV earlier this month as Lebanon’s prime minister sparked turmoil and skepticism, meets Macron Saturday afternoon at the Elysee presidential palace. His family then joins the two men for a lunch, the French presidency said in a statement. It’s unclear if the two leaders will make any remarks to the media. Hariri will be welcomed “as …

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Here’s a roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue headlines of the week. None of these stories are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked these out; here are the real facts: NOT REAL: Second Roy Moore Accuser Works For Michelle Obama Right NOW THE FACTS: The woman named as an accuser of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore in a story by Last Line of Defense doesn’t work for Michelle Obama. In fact, it’s unclear that she’s a real person. The article claims a woman named Fiona Dourif told …

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Rescue crews were searching Friday for six people missing from deadly flash floods that killed at least 16 near Athens, as new storms hit the Greek capital.   The fire department, which had been searching since Thursday for four missing people, said two more people were reported missing Friday in the district of Mandra, on the western outskirts of Athens.    Wednesday’s flash floods, which came after an overnight storm, turned roads into raging torrents of mud that flung cars against buildings, inundated homes and businesses and submerged part of a major highway.   The flooding is one of the …

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Ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and four members of his cabinet are expected to appear before a Belgian court Friday for a hearing in connection with a European arrest warrant issued by Spain. The court will hear arguments behind closed doors from prosecutors and lawyers for the Catalan ex-officials, before it considers whether to extradite them to Spain, where they would face charges of rebellion and sedition for their roles in region’s independence drive. Madrid issued the warrant for Puigdemont and the four ex-ministers after they fled to Brussels last month and ignored a summons to appear before a Spanish …

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Mafia “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina has died in the hospital while serving multiple life sentences as the mastermind of a bloody strategy to assassinate Italian prosecutors and law enforcement trying to bring down the Cosa Nostra, Italian media reported Friday. He was 87.   Riina died hours after the Justice Minister had allowed his family members bedside visits Thursday, which was his birthday, after he had been placed in a medically induced coma. Italian media said his health had deteriorated following two recent surgeries.   26 life sentences Riina, one of Sicily’s most notorious Mafia bosses, was serving …

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Ukrainian investigators fear corruption probes could get buried because the national anti-corruption bureau will soon be flooded by thousands of old cases and recently passed legislation could further hobble their work. Their comments spotlight Kyiv’s patchy record on fighting corruption, which has delayed billions in aid from international donors who have supported Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan protests brought pro-Western forces to power. They come after the NABU anti-corruption bureau launched an investigation this week into an allied crime-fighting agency over extortion allegations. Beginning Monday, 3,500 cases that were registered before December 2015 will be transferred from the prosecutor’s office …

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A photo tweeted by Russia’s Ministry of Defense earlier this week as “irrefutable evidence” that the United States was helping Islamic State militants in Syria was actually a screen grab from a video game. The tweet on Tuesday alleged that the American military had prevented Russian airstrikes against Islamic State fighters by providing aerial cover as the militants fled the city of Abu Kamal on November 9. The image was tweeted by the Russian Ministry of Defense as proof. But the image was from a video game called “AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.” The Pentagon has “flatly refuted” the …

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