After widespread allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the first evidence is emerging of possible attempts by Moscow to influence Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union. Researchers have identified tens of thousands of social media accounts that promoted anti-EU messages or sought to whip up political and racial tensions. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …
Thousands of traumatized children in foster care in Britain go missing, with some returning to traffickers who feed them “a web of lies”, charities said on Thursday, urging better protection. UK children’s charity Barnado’s said on Thursday that 16 percent of children referred to its fostering network had been sexually exploited or abused, and 17 percent were trafficked. “It is well known that there is a greater risk of trafficked children going missing from care but too often processes are not put in place to protect children,” its chief executive Javed Khan said in an email to the Thomson Reuters …
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir has again insisted Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is “not being detained against his will” in Saudi Arabia, while accusing Iran and its Hezbollah proxy militia of trying to dominate Lebanon and meddling in Yemen and Bahrain. Visiting French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told reporters that he would meet the Lebanese prime minister and that Hariri was invited to travel to Paris. Paris invitation The odd saga of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s unusually long visit to Saudi Arabia coupled with his unexpected resignation last week took another unusual turn, after France made it …
U.S. authorities told Turkey that Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, arrested in the United States, was moved to a different location and is in good medical condition, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. Cavusoglu said U.S. authorities had not replied to a first diplomatic note from Turkey, but responded to a second note sent on Wednesday inquiring about Zarrab’s condition after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons website showed that Zarrab had been released last week and his lawyers said they had not heard from their client in five days. Zarrab is being held in the United States …
At least 3,000 people formed a chain of light in Vienna on Wednesday to protest against the formation of a government that includes the far-right Freedom Party. Demonstrators holding flickering candles, torches and bicycle lamps encircled the capital’s government district. “Our republic’s most powerful political offices should be exclusively reserved for trustworthy people who are not in the slightest connected to right-wing extremists,” said Alexander Pollak, spokesman for SOS Mitmensch, one of several human rights groups which organized the demonstration. It was the biggest protest in Austria since coalition talks between the conservative People’s Party (OVP) and the Freedom Party …
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Europe to fill a funding void left by Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Macron was among world leaders speaking at a climate meeting in Germany that has left Washington isolated. Macron said European governments and the private sector must ensure funding for the main U.N. scientific body, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also called on nations to accelerate their energy transition, and said France would close all its coal plants before 2022. Rich nations have imposed their universe on the world, Macron said of greenhouse …
Poland’s government hit back Wednesday after the European Parliament launched action over concerns that the right-wing government in Warsaw has compromised the independence of the judiciary and risks breaching fundamental European values. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo described the events in the Parliament — where a bitter debate preceded the vote — as “scandalous.” The Foreign Ministry called the resolution a “political instrument of pressure on Poland,” describing the document as “one-sided” and saying it was based on political considerations and not on legal analysis. In a resolution adopted by 438 to 152, with 71 abstentions, the European lawmakers triggered the …
Flash floods caused by heavy rain in Greece killed at least 15 people in three rural towns west of the capital Athens on Wednesday. The towns of Mandra, Nea Peramos and Megara are home to many factories and warehouses on the rural outskirts of the city. Officials have compared the flooding overnight to a waterfall, coming down the mountains of the western Attica region. “The situation is very difficult; the Niagara Falls came down and could not be stopped,” the deputy regional governor, Yiannis Vassileiou, told state-run TV network ERT. The floods have been described by area mayors as the …
The Bureau of International Expositions, based in Paris, picked Buenos Aires over rivals Bloomington, Minnesota, and Lodz, Poland, to host a specialized World Expo in 2022-23. It will be the first expo in Latin America under the auspices of the BIE, which began operations in 1931. Minnesota was seeking to host the first world’s fair on U.S. soil in almost 40 years. The Trump administration has sought to boost American interest in world’s fairs, events that introduced the world to the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris wheel and Seattle’s Space Needle. Full-scale World Expos that last six months are now held …
Germany on Tuesday pledged $125 million to boost the work of an international insurance partnership that aims to cover 400 million more poor and vulnerable people against disaster risks by 2020. That goal was first set in 2015 by the G7 group of wealthy nations, but the effort has now been expanded to bring in other partners, including the World Bank and an alliance of about 50 countries vulnerable to climate threats, including small island states like Fiji, which is presiding over the talks in Bonn. In July, Britain contributed 30 million pounds ($39.4 million) to establish a Center for …
President Emmanuel Macron says the French government itself fueled homegrown Islamic extremism by abandoning its poorest neighborhoods — and he’s promising tough and “sometimes authoritarian” new measures to combat radicalization. Macron unveiled a multibillion-euro plan Tuesday to help France’s troubled banlieues — suburban regions where crime flourishes and job opportunities are scant, especially for minorities with origins in former French colonies. More than 5 million people live in France’s poorest neighborhoods, where unemployment is 25 percent — well above the nearly 10 percent national average. For those under 30, the prospects are even worse — more than a third are …
When exactly will Britain leave the European Union? Parliament started hours of debate Tuesday by arguing over when the two-year negotiating period for Brexit should end and whether there should be a fixed time at all. It was just the first day of what promises to be a lengthy set of debates in Parliament on Prime Minister Theresa May’s blueprint for leaving the EU — debates that will challenge her diminished authority and could force changes to her Brexit plan. Her absence Tuesday on another engagement suggested she was not unduly worried by the initial discussion. But the debate’s ill-tempered …
The European Union has called very publicly for Malta to bring to justice the killers of a journalist who accused the Mediterranean island’s leaders of profiting from global corruption. But it has for years been much less vocal — and had little success — in ensuring Malta act to prevent money laundering, according to sources familiar with the work of the Maltese authorities and a Reuters review of EU and Maltese data. The data show the smallest EU state has been slow to apply international guidelines on naming firms that do not take action against dubious practices, and the number …
Bosnia meets the military conditions needed to take the next step toward its eventual goal of NATO membership but it remains unclear whether it can satisfy the political requirements, the head of the alliance’s military committee said Tuesday. Bosnia wants to activate its Membership Action Plan (MAP), a formal step toward joining NATO, but must first complete full registration of all military assets in its two constituent, ethnically-based regions, the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic. Complicating Bosnia’s membership drive is the stance of the Serb Republic, which remains wary of a military alliance that bombed Serbs in Bosnia and …
France’s domestic intelligence chief says nearly 18,000 people are on French watch lists for radicalism, a growing figure. Laurent Nunez, head of the DGSI agency, is also warning that the Islamic State group’s retreat in the Middle East “doesn’t weaken the level of threat” or diminish the extremists’ ability to inspire violent attacks in the West via propaganda. Speaking on RTL radio Tuesday, he said “the wish of the Islamic State group and al-Qaida to launch an attack is intact,” though the current risk to France comes from homegrown extremists instead of those who come from foreign war zones. Nunez …
Twenty-three member states of the European Union have signed a historic deal to cooperate more closely on defense. The deal – known as Permanent Structured Cooperation or PESCO – legally binds its signatories into joint defense projects and increased spending. Britain, one of the bloc’s biggest military powers, has long resisted such moves, but its departure from the bloc has persuaded other members to press ahead. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …
Madrid believes Russian-based groups used online social media to heavily promote Catalonia’s independence referendum last month in an attempt to destabilize Spain, Spanish ministers said Monday. Spain’s defense and foreign ministers said they had evidence that state and private-sector Russian groups, as well as groups in Venezuela, used Twitter, Facebook and other Internet sites to massively publicize the separatist cause and swing public opinion behind it in the run-up to the Oct. 1 referendum. Catalonia’s separatist leaders have denied that Russian interference helped them in the vote. “What we know today is that much of this came from Russian territory,” …
The United States said Monday it would fund rural media outlets in Hungary to help train and equip journalists in defense of an independent media it sees subject to growing pressure and intimidation. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has increased media control by legal changes, regulatory steps and takeovers of outlets by business sector associates. The moves have alarmed Western partners with the approach of elections, due in April 2018, which he is widely expected to win comfortably. The trend was especially strong in rural Hungary, where government-controlled public media and a handful of outlets friendly to the ruling Fidesz …
European and African ministers agreed on Monday to try to improve conditions for migrants in Libya and seek paths such as scholarships for Africans to reach Europe legally, to cut the death toll from smuggling across the Sahara and Mediterranean. The deadly trek across the desert from sub-Saharan Africa through Libya and over sea to Italy is now the main route used by refugees and other vulnerable migrants heading to Europe, after Turkey closed the other main route via Greece that brought in nearly a million people in 2015. Almost 115,000 migrants have landed on Italian shores so far this …
The next World Economic Forum of world leaders and CEOs in Davos will be chaired by women including International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and IBM’s chief executive Ginni Rometty. The seven co-chairs for the four-day event in January were announced in the face of criticism that the conference has in the past lacked female representation. “Co-chairs… were chosen to reflect global stakeholders,” said a spokeswoman for WEF, adding the co-chairs were all leaders in their fields. The co-chairs shape the program and lead discussions and panels. The theme of the 48th conference is to …