Category: Євросоюз

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday agreed to push for the creation of a “de-escalation” zone in Syria’s key northern province of Idlib to help end the civil war. Erdogan said after talks in Ankara the pair agreed to “pursue more intensely” the implementation of a de-escalation zone in Idlib, which currently is under jihadist control. The agreement is seen as a key step toward ending the civil war and ushering in the start of a peace process. “All conditions are now created to stop the war in the Syria,” Putin declared at …

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Germany and France are in sync on what it will take to strengthen the European Union once its breakup with Britain is completed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday as leaders of the 27 remaining members of the bloc met for a two-day summit.   “As far as the proposals are concerned, there is a high degree of agreement between Germany and France, but of course we still have to talk about the details,” Merkel said ahead of a summit dinner of EU leaders.   French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker set out their visions for …

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Turkey says it would release American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been detained for nearly a year, if the United States extradited Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year’s failed coup attempt. “They say ‘give us the pastor’.  You have a preacher [Gulen] there. Give him to us, and we will try [Brunson] and give him back,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised speech. Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for 23 years, and his wife, Norine, were arrested for alleged immigration violations in October 2016.  She was released, while his charges have been …

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Drones will help deliver toothbrushes, deodorant and smartphones to Swiss homes this fall as part of a pilot project, the first of its kind over a densely populated area. Drone firm Matternet, based in Menlo Park, California, said Thursday it’s partnering on the Zurich project with Mercedes-Benz’s vans division and Swiss e-commerce startup Siroop. It’s been approved by Switzerland’s aviation authority. Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos says the drones will take items from a distribution center and transport them between 8 to 16 kilometers to awaiting delivery vans. The van drivers then bring the packages to homes. Raptopoulos says drones will …

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The influx of over a million asylum-seekers into Germany in 2015 is widely seen as driving the upsurge in support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany or AfD party, which gained 13 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election. The government hopes to stem that rise by integrating the refugees as quickly as possible. Among the wave of asylum seekers entering in 2015 was 24-year-old Dilshad. He fled his hometown of Sinjar in Iraq as Islamic State swept across the region. After struggling to find permanent accommodation, is now living in a shelter for the homeless. He says he’s not …

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Would you buy a car that sprayed soothing odors when you’re stuck in rush-hour traffic? Or how about a robot that smells like a human being? Scientists say that new technology means we will soon be using devices like these in our everyday lives. At this month’s British Science Festival in Brighton, researchers from Britain’s University of Sussex offered a demonstration of the technology that could be just around the corner. The 3D animations of Virtual Reality have become commonplace. Now scientists have created virtual worlds that even smell like the real thing. When users open a virtual door and …

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Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov, sentenced to two years in a penal colony because of his opposition to Russia’s annexation of his homeland, said Wednesday he will appeal his conviction, even if it is a hopeless cause. Speaking to VOA Russian reporter Danila Galperovich just after a court in Simferopol pronounced the sentence, Umerov said he had “no illusions” that there was any chance of overturning the verdict against him. “Everything in this case, from opening a probe into it to ending it with this sentence, is an absolute hoax!” Umerov said during a telephone interview from Crimea. “Even prior to …

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Even as Kurds celebrated the overwhelming approval of an independence referendum, Iraq took actions to punish the would-be breakaway state, vowing to shut down its airspace and join Turkey in holding military exercises. Calling the vote “unconstitutional,” Iraq’s parliament on Wednesday also asked Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send troops to the oil-producing, Kurdish-held region of Kirkuk and take control of its lucrative oilfields. It told the 34 countries that have diplomatic missions in Kurdistan to shut them down, and it urged Abadi to enforce a decision to fire Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim for holding the vote and deploy forces …

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The South American trade bloc Mercosur could seek trade deals with Canada, Australia and New Zealand this year, an Argentine official said Wednesday, as largest members Brazil and Argentina seek to open their economies. Mercosur, which also includes Uruguay and Paraguay, is working with the European Union to finalize the political framework for a trade deal this year, at a time when the United States under President Donald Trump has been shying away from trade. “There is a possibility that Mercosur starts negotiations with Canada, Australia and New Zealand this year,” Argentine Commerce Secretary Miguel Braun said at the Thomson …

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Facebook said on Wednesday its efforts to fight fake news during Germany’s national elections included taking down tens of thousands of fake profiles in the final month of the campaign. Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy for Europe, Middle East Africa, said the Silicon Valley-based company mounted an array of efforts to ensure the social media network was not used as a platform to manipulate public opinion. “These actions did not eliminate misinformation entirely in this election but they did make it harder to spread, and less likely to appear in people’s News Feeds,” the Facebook executive said …

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A British banker convicted last year for the gruesome murders of two Indonesian women is planning to appeal his life sentence. The lawyer for Rurik Jutting says a hearing on his client’s appeal has been scheduled for December 12. A jury found Jutting guilty of the 2014 murders of Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih in his luxury apartment. Jurors were shown graphic video Jutting took on his cellphone of him torturing Sumarti and snorting cocaine. The body of one of the murdered women was discovered stuffed in a suitcase. The court rejected Jutting’s attempt to plead guilty to a lesser …

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Researchers say the likelihood of scorching summer temperatures in southern Europe is increasing because of man-made climate change. Hotter-than-usual temperatures in the Mediterranean region – including an August heatwave in Italy and the Balkans dubbed ‘Lucifer’ – resulted in higher hospital admissions, numerous forest fires and widespread economic losses this summer. The World Weather Attribution team says it combined temperature measurements and computer simulations, concluding that greenhouse gas emissions linked to human activity have increased the chances of such heatwaves four-to-tenfold. They warned Wednesday that summers like this one could become the norm in the Euro-Mediterranean region by 2050 if …

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Western countries increasingly say Russia is making no secret of its efforts to meddle in or influence their affairs and even their elections. Yet they admit attempts to fend off those actions are having trouble gaining traction. VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin has more. …

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U.S. President Donald Trump has come out unequivocally in favor of Spanish unity, just days before voters in the Catalan region are slated to vote on independence from Madrid. At a joint news conference Tuesday with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a sweltering White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would bet most Catalonians want unity. “I’m just for a united Spain,” Trump said. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to.” Trump’s comments appear to go against official U.S. government policy. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said …

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Spain’s government said on Tuesday police would take control of voting booths in Catalonia to help thwart the region’s planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal. The dispute has plunged Spain into one of its biggest political crises since the restoration of democracy in the 1970s after decades of military dictatorship. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the referendum is against the law and the constitutional court has ordered it be halted while its legality is determined. Catalonia’s separatist government, however, remains committed to holding it on Sunday. Rajoy, speaking on Tuesday alongside U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, …

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The activist group Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused the Myanmar military of committing “crimes against humanity” as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Rakhine State. “The Burmese military is brutally expelling the Rohingya from northern Rakhine State,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “The massacres of villagers and mass arson driving people from their homes are all crimes against humanity.” The United Nations says more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution by the Myanmar government. According to the agency, 45,000 people have fled to Bangladesh in …

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Russia has threatened to ban Facebook from operating in the country if it does not comply with a law regarding the storage of user data. The law, passed in 2014, requires telecommunication companies to store the personal data of Russians inside Russia.  It has been criticized as a way for the Russian government to force companies to hand over data on users. The head of Roskomnadzor, the government’s telecoms watchdog, Alexander Zharov, told reporters, “The law is compulsory for all.  We will work on getting Facebook to observe the law.  This will all happen in 2018 definitely.” Should Facebook choose …

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Earlier this year, the U.S.-based Pew Research Center polled people in more than 30 countries about their thoughts on various world leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel topped the poll with more respondents expressing confidence in her than any other leader. With the U.S. turning more isolationist, Britain mired in Brexit wrangling, and France led by an untested young president whose popularity is already plummeting, many see Merkel, who on Sunday secured an historic fourth term — though her Christian Democratic Union party won fewer seats — as the West’s most reliable leader.  American and European newspapers have dubbed her the …

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Russia’s proposal for United Nations peacekeepers to be sent to Ukraine shows that the Kremlin is interested in negotiating a resolution to the three-year-old conflict, said the United States special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker. “I take the point of view that Russia would not have proposed anything if they weren’t prepared to get into a negotiation about it,” said Volker in an interview Monday with VOA’s Ukrainian Service chief Myroslava Gongadze. “They haven’t done anything for three years on this. They haven’t proposed a peacekeeping force before. As recently as a couple weeks ago, they were saying that they …

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Turkey’s state-run news agency says a court in Istanbul has ordered a columnist for Turkey’s main opposition newspaper released from prison pending the conclusion of his trial. Anadolu Agency reported that the court released Cumhuriyet columnist Kadri Gursel from pre-trial detention on Monday.   Anadolu says the court ruled that four other newspaper employees, including editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, would remain in custody.   The trial was adjourned until Oct. 31. Prosecutors have charged 19 Cumhuriyet employees with “sponsoring terror organizations” that include Kurdish militants and the network of the U.S.-based cleric the government blames for …

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