Category: Євросоюз

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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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. …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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