Category: Євросоюз

With hurricanes, floods and other impacts of climate change becoming increasingly destructive, countries urgently need to step up their ambitions to cut emissions if they are to keep global warming within safe limits, experts said ahead of U.N. climate talks starting on Monday. About 163 countries have submitted plans on how they will contribute to meeting the Paris climate agreement goal to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But put together, the plans are likely to lead to a 3 degree temperature rise this century, according to the United Nations. Nicholas Nuttall, spokesman for …

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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross shares significant business interests through a shipping venture in Russia with President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and an oligarch subject to American sanctions, newly leaked documents showed Sunday. Ross, a 79-year-old billionaire industrialist, has an investment in partnerships valued at between $2 million and $10 million in the shipper, Navigator Holdings, according to his government ethics disclosures. The shipping company earns millions of dollars a year transporting natural gas for Sibur, a Russian energy company that is partly owned by Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, and Gennady Timchenko, the oligarch who is …

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Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Moscow Sunday during a demonstration against Russian president Vladimir Putin coinciding with celebrations of Russia’s National Unity Day holiday. According to OVD-Info, which monitors crackdowns on demonstrations, 360 people had been arrested in demonstrations across the country by 5pm on Sunday. Moscow police had put the figure in the capital at 260. Tass news agency said that many protesters in Moscow had knives and brass knuckles. Protesters at the unsanctioned demonstration are believed to be linked to nationalist politician and Kremlin critic Vyacheslav Maltsev and his Artillery Preparation movement — a group declared extremist and …

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The indictment last week of former Donald Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who admitted lying about contacts with Russia during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, is turning the spotlight on London as an important hub of suspected Kremlin meddling in Western politics, say analysts and Western officials. Papadopoulos, who White House spokespeople say was a low-level and unimportant foreign policy adviser in last year’s campaign, was initially introduced to shadowy Russian contacts by a London-based globe-trotting Maltese academic, according to the indictment of Papadopoulos unsealed last week by special counsel Robert Mueller. But the British capital is now featuring …

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Pro-Catalonia independence parties will combine for the most votes in regional election in December though may fall just short of a majority needed to revive the secession campaign, two polls showed on Sunday. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the Dec. 21 election after firing the previous government and imposing direct rule over the autonomous region following a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalan lawmakers on Oct. 27. Catalonia’s statehood push has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis since its return to democracy four decades ago as surging pro-secession sentiment in the region has in turn kindled nationalism across …

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The former leader of Spain’s Catalonia region said Saturday that he would cooperate with Belgian officials following Spanish authorities’ issuance of a European warrant for his arrest. Carles Puigdemont said in a tweet: “We are prepared to fully cooperate with Belgian justice following the European arrest warrant issued by Spain.” A Spanish judge issued the warrant for Puigdemont a day after she jailed nine members of the region’s separatist government pending possible charges over last week’s declaration of independence. One person was later granted bail. Puigdemont, who was thought to be in Belgium, didn’t specify his current location, though he …

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Russia is not currently cooperating with the United States on discussions about North Korea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly told the Russian RIA news agency. “There is no cooperation so far. Only periodic exchanges of views,” Peskov said, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are likely to meet during an Asian economic forum next week. If the two leaders do meet, Peskov said there is a “great probability” they would discuss the situation in North Korea. Trump and Putin will be in the Philippines to attend the East Asia Summit, in addition to the Association …

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A Spanish judge on Friday issued an international arrest warrant for Catalonia’s ousted president, a day after she jailed members of the region’s separatist government pending possible charges over last week’s declaration of independence. The national court judge issued the warrant for Carles Puigdemont in response to a request from state prosecutors. Puigdemont flew to Brussels earlier this week with a handful of his deposed ministers after Spanish authorities removed him and his cabinet from office for pushing ahead with the declaration, despite repeated warnings that it was illegal. Puigdemont’s Belgian attorney said he would fight extradition without seeking political …

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Rescuers pulled 700 boat migrants to safety in the Mediterranean and found 23 bodies during one operation on Friday, an Italian coastguard spokesman said, the second loss of multiple lives recorded in the area so far this week. After around three years of mass arrivals, the number of migrants reaching Italy has fallen sharply since July, when Rome struck a deal with Libya to block what had become a busy route for people smugglers. A Spanish ship deployed in the European Union’s Operation Sophia naval mission recovered the dead, along with 64 survivors, from a sinking rubber boat, the mission …

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In the days of communist Albania’s near-total isolation, Saimir Maloku used his technical know-how to gain illicit glimpses of the outside world. Unluckily for him, as he and his father watched forbidden Italian television, the regime was watching him. Maloku was jailed for nine years in 1976 after the secret police bugged his home. Four decades on, he can visit a unique Tirana museum and see for himself the kind of listening devices that betrayed him. At the Museum of Surveillance, created in the former headquarters of the feared Sigurimi security service, Albanians can now inspect some of the spying …

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The European Union vowed to ensure that Malta finds the “barbarous” assassins of a journalist being buried there on Friday and to resolve “potential structural problems” with the rule of law on the island. Reflecting concern in Europe over possible systemic failings in Maltese democracy, European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans called on the EU’s smallest state to leave “no stone unturned” in hunting the killers of investigative blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, who died in a car bombing last month. “The eyes of Europe are on the Maltese authorities,” wrote Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister who as Jean-Claude …

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Kosovo’s prime minister called on Friday for an international investigation after some of his countrymen were convicted of taking part in a gun battle with Macedonian police. The men were part of a group of ethnic Albanians jailed in neighboring Macedonia on Thursday, some of them for life, on charges of plotting attacks and clashing with the police in a 2015 shootout. Crowds took to the streets of Kosovo’s capital after the sentencing, accusing the Macedonian authorities of staging the attack. Protesters in the eastern Kosovan town of Gjilan burned the Macedonian flag. Kosovan media and officials have regularly said …

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Austria’s conservative People’s Party and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) said Friday that they had agreed on a commitment to the European Union and budget discipline as well as cuts in migrants’ welfare benefits as basic policies for a new coalition government. People’s Party leader Sebastian Kurz started coalition talks with the FPO last week after his party won a parliamentary election with 31.5 percent of the vote. Kurz’s hard line on immigration and his decision to force a collapse of the current coalition with the Social Democrats, who came in second, made the anti-immigration FPO a natural partner. Some …

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Poland plans to bar Ukrainians with “anti-Polish views,” its foreign minister said on Thursday, emphasizing the nationalist credentials of his ruling party that often talks of the “historic wrongs” inflicted on Poles by their neighbors. Witold Waszczykowski said the policy was a reaction to disrespect shown at a Polish cemetery in the western city of Lviv, which was part of Poland before World War II. The foreign ministry said lion sculptures at the cemetery’s entrances that hold shields inscribed with the Polish phrases “Always faithful” and “To you, Poland” had been covered up with boxes. Waszczykowski said Ukrainians who express …

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Pope Francis prayed for an end to all war during a mass at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, just south of the Italian capital, on Catholic All Souls’ Day commemorating the dead. Francis laid flowers on the graves of some of the 7,860 American soldiers buried there as well as another 3,095 missing in action while trying to liberate southern Italy and Rome during World War II. The pope said the thousands of white headstones should stand as a call for peace, saying “no more war, no more of these useless massacres.” The pontiff lamented that humanity has not learned, or …

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A court in Macedonia on Thursday convicted 33 people of planning terrorist attacks as members of an ethnic Albanian militant group. Heavy security, including helicopters flying overhead, protected the court proceedings in Skopje. Armored vehicles and at least 100 police officers deployed around the courthouse to safeguard the participants in the highly anticipated trial. Seven of the accused were given life sentences, 13 got 40-year sentences, and the rest got sentences of 12 to 20 years, all on charges including terrorism and participating in a terrorist organization. Four defendants were acquitted. Attorneys for the defendants said the proceedings were “a …

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Iceland’s president asked the leader of the Left-Green Movement, Katrin Jakobsdottir, on Thursday to form a new government, although it came second in Saturday’s parliamentary election. The mandate deals a blow to Prime Minister Bjarne Benediktsson of the Independence Party who called the snap election in September after less than a year in office as a scandal involving his father prompted a government ally to drop out of his ruling coalition. The Nordic island of 340,000 people, one of the countries hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis, has seen an economic rebound spurred by a tourism boom. But a …

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Romania’s president on Thursday accused the leftist government of mishandling the economy, slamming it for overspending and failing to attract investment. President Klaus Iohannis said that current annual economic growth of more than 5 percent was “not sustainable,” as it was based on spending. He noted foreign and local investment had fallen by 20 percent in the last year.   Iohannis said revenue from taxes had fallen to the equivalent of one fourth of GDP, less than the 35 percent forecast for the year.   “The government is behaving like a person who earns more every month, but borrows more …

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A political sex-harassment scandal in Britain that has claimed one Cabinet minister looked set to spread Thursday, with a senior politician warning that the world of politics must clear out an “Augean stable” of wrongdoing.   Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May was force to replace Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who resigned late Wednesday saying his past behavior “may have fallen below the high standards” expected.   May promoted Gavin Williamson, the Conservatives’ chief whip, to the defense job.   Fallon apologized after a newspaper reported that he had repeatedly touched a journalist’s knee at a function in 2002. Reports suggested …

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Turkey’s military says eight Turkish security force members and five Kurdish militants were killed in a clash near Turkey’s border with northern Iraq.   A military statement said the skirmish erupted early on Thursday near the town of Semdinli, after the security forces spotted a group of rebels who were allegedly preparing to launch an attack.   The military said the dead included two government-paid village guard aiding troops in the fight against the rebels. Two soldiers were also hurt in the clashes.   The clashes were continuing.   The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, have waged …

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