Category: Євросоюз

Ireland’s minority government looked set to collapse within days on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britain’s plans to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that if the motion was not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas, a prospect EU officials say would complicate a key EU summit on Dec. 14-15 on Brexit. “What that would mean is me throwing a good woman under the bus to save myself and my own government, …

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The British daily The Guardian has reported that authorities in Iran have set a date for the trial of British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, citing the woman’s husband. Richard Ratcliffe told the newspaper that his wife will appear in court Dec. 10 to face charges of spreading propaganda.  Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in Tehran in April 2016, is serving a five-year prison term for a conviction on national-security charges. The new charges against Zaghari-Ratcliffe apparently stem from a statement made by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who told a parliamentary committee on Nov. 1 that she had been “training journalists” in Iran.  Johnson later …

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The Irish government was on the verge of collapse Thursday after the party whose votes Prime Minister Leo Varadkar depends on to pass legislation said it would seek to remove the deputy prime minister in a breach of their cooperation agreement. The crisis comes three weeks ahead of a European Union summit in which the Irish government has an effective veto on whether Britain’s talks on leaving the bloc progress as it determines if EU concerns about the future of the Irish border have been met. In a row that escalated rapidly, the opposition Fianna Fail party said it would …

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The leaders of the European Union and the six Eastern Partnership countries will meet in Brussels on Friday in an effort to deepen ties between the EU and the former Soviet republics. The summit’s main event will likely be the signing of an enhanced EU partnership deal with Armenia. That pact, however, omits free trade and is less ambitious than the association agreements secured by Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Like those three countries, Armenia previously negotiated an EU Association Agreement. But Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian walked away from the deal in 2013 under pressure from Russia. Armenia later joined the …

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Pope Francis on Thursday evening led a special prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Earlier this year, he said he was studying the possibility of going to South Sudan, which has been beset by famine and civil war. But he told the faithful during the service that that wasn’t possible. Francis said that “with prayer we want to sow seeds of peace” in South Sudan and Congo. He called for courageous peace efforts through dialogue and negotiations. Peace talks are aimed at finding a resolution to South Sudan’s …

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A separatist leader in Ukraine’s east on Thursday accused a former official of trying to unseat him as a showdown between the two entered its third day. Breaking almost a week of silence, Igor Plotnitsky, leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, claimed that former Interior Minister Igor Kornet “tried to seize power by force.” “It seems that a small man harbored big ambitions,” Plotnitsky said on the separatist television station, adding that he intended to “resolve the conflict with the help of the law.” More than 10,000 people have been killed and a million displaced in a long-simmering conflict …

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An Istanbul court ruled Wednesday that Amnesty International’s Turkey director should remain in jail. The anti-terror case includes 10 other human rights defenders and is drawing increasing international condemnation. The decision by the Istanbul court to continue detaining Taner Kilic pending trial on charges of seeking to overthrow the government has drawn swift condemnation by human rights defenders. The case has become an international focal point of growing concern over the prosecution of human rights activists in Turkey. Andrew Gardner, a Turkey researcher for Amnesty International, criticized the court’s decision. “Really this flies in the face of all reason. There …

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A startup is making fuel from waste coffee grounds to power some of London’s buses. VOA’s Steve Baragona reports. …

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France is seeking an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the alleged sale of African migrants as slaves. President Emmanuel Macron called the video footage aired last week by U.S. news network CNN “scandalous” and “unacceptable.” “It is a crime against humanity,” Macron said after meeting with African Union chief Alpha Conde. “I hope we can go much further in the fight against traffickers who commit such crimes, and cooperate with all the countries in the network to dismantle these networks.” CNN aired footage of an apparent auction where black men were presented to buyers as potential …

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Facebook Inc. said Wednesday that it would build a web page to allow users to see which Russian propaganda accounts they have liked or followed, after U.S. lawmakers demanded that the social network be more open about the reach of the accounts. U.S. lawmakers called the announcement a positive step. The web page, though, would fall short of their demands that Facebook individually notify users about Russian propaganda posts or ads they were exposed to. Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Twitter Inc. are facing a backlash after saying Russians used their services to anonymously spread divisive messages among Americans in …

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Ratko Mladic, the former general in charge of Bosnian Serb forces during the Balkans war in the early 1990s, has been found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity. He is sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Although the verdict was welcomed by many Bosnians, Mladic is still seen as a hero by some ethnic Serbs – and justice may do little to reconcile the region’s still divided populations. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …

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Winter could bring death to asylum seekers stranded on crowded Greek islands with only summer tents for shelter, aid groups said on Wednesday, urging a mass relocation to the mainland. More than 10,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing years of war, have massed on the Greek islands that lie closest to Turkey, since the European Union agreed a deal with Ankara in March 2016 to shut down the route through Greece. Authorities say the terms of the agreement prevent them from traveling to the Greek mainland until their asylum applications are processed. Those who do not qualify are deported. …

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The remains of a blazing meteorite that lit up the dark skies of the Arctic last week are believed scattered near a lake in northern Finland, amateur Finnish astronomers said Wednesday. The Ursa astronomical association says their calculations show the parts would have crashed in a remote area near the Norwegian and Russian borders. The meteorite – which Norwegian scientists said gave “the glow of 100 full moons” – was seen in northern Norway and Russia’s Kola peninsula on Thursday for about five seconds. Marko Pekkola, a scientist with Ursa, said it likely landed in the wilderness almost 1,000 kilometers …

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The United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal ruled Wednesday former Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic is guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. The court convicted Mladic on 10 of the 11 charges he faced, including persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, terror and unlawful attacks on civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison. “The crimes committed rank among the most heinous to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” judge Alphons Orie said in reading the verdict. Genocide The court said Mladic …

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Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. – Bickering after Tito dies – Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Following the death of its autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the Yugoslav federation found itself in crisis, with bickering between ethnic groups and surging nationalist sentiments. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia were …

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The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is set to hand down a verdict in the case against former General Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb wartime commander charged with crimes in the 1990s ethnic conflict in Bosnia. Hero for many Serbs and a criminal known as “the Butcher of Bosnia” for many others, Mladic will hear his verdict on Wednesday after five years in jail and almost 16 years on the run. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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United Nations judges in The Hague will decide within hours on a verdict in the trial of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, who is accused of war crimes stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Mladic, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” is the last former military leader to face war crimes charges in the court, which was set up to deal with the aftermath of the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 through 1995. Mladic, who has been on trial since 2012, has been charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and …

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U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday to support the U.N. effort to “peacefully resolve” the nearly seven-year-long Syrian civil war. The White House said the two leaders talked for more than an hour and stressed the importance of ending the humanitarian crisis in which millions of Syrians have been displaced from their homes. Trump and Putin said the displaced Syrians should be allowed to return and “the stability of a unified Syria free of malign intervention and terrorist safe havens” should be ensured. Trump talked by phone with Putin a day after the Russian leader …

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On November 5, more than 50,000 runners and two million spectators turned out for the New York Marathon. The event took place just a few days after a lone attacker drove a van into cyclists and pedestrians beside a busy Manhattan highway, killing eight people. Security was beefed up for the marathon: sand-filled sanitation trucks were deployed at key intersections to block vehicles, while hundreds of extra police backed by sniffer dogs and snipers were positioned along the 21-kilometer route. The precautions underline the changing nature of the terror threat, 16 years after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks on the same …

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The Vatican and China will exchange paintings, vases and sculptures in a bid to mend often strained ties through “the diplomacy of art”, officials said on Tuesday. Forty works from the Vatican will go on show in Beijing’s Forbidden City and 40 from China in the Vatican Museums in unprecedented simultaneous exhibitions in March, art chiefs from both countries told a news conference. “It will be an event that overcomes borders and time and that unites different cultures and civilizations,” Zhu Jiancheng, the head of the government-backed China Culture Investment Fund, said. “It will strengthen the friendship between China and …

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