Category: Євросоюз

Officials in far east Russia say a soldier who opened fire at other servicemen during drills has been tracked down and killed. The military says the soldier, who killed three and wounded two other soldiers, offered resistance to arrest and was shot dead early Saturday following a massive manhunt. During Friday’s incident, the soldier fired his Kalashnikov rifle at his comrades waiting to have target practice at a base outside the town of Belogorsk near the border with China and then fled. The city administration in Belogorsk says the soldier came from the province of Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus. …

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Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, says U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has pledged that the United States will be directly involved in reaching a final agreement to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.  Thaci told VOA’s Albanian service after meeting with Pence on Friday at the White House that “Pence will be focused and maximally involved” in reaching a deal between the two countries.  “I believe that this willingness of the U.S. administration and personally of Vice President Pence is a guarantee for the success of this process,” Thaci said.  He said he is confident the process will “lead Kosovo into …

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Russian police released opposition leader and would-be presidential candidate Alexei Navalny on Friday after several hours in detention. Police charged Navalny with repeatedly organizing unauthorized rallies, an administrative offense punishable with a fine of up to a 300,000 rubles ($5,200) and compulsory work for up to 200 hours. “We were finally presented with a charge and released, and the trial will be on October 2 at the Simonovsky Court of Moscow at 15:00 Moscow time,” Navalny’s lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, told Interfax. Police had stopped Navalny early Friday as he was headed to a campaign rally in the city of Nizhny …

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Catalonia’s secessionists, who are trying to organize an independence vote from Spain on Sunday, may be getting aid from Russia as part of the Kremlin’s ongoing strategy to destabilize the European Union, according to European Union analysts. Spain’s central government has deployed thousands of police to contain expected disorder. They have threatened local officials who support the referendum with stiff fines and jail. Spain’s constitutional court has declared the pending vote illegal. Despite what some see as a heavy-handed response by Madrid, the United States and most EU governments have backed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in his efforts to keep …

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Twenty-seven European Union nations, not including Britain, will be coming up with clear options on a more tightly knit future for themselves even before they will allow divorce negotiations with the U.K. to move toward brokering a new relationship. EU Council President Donald Tusk said Friday he would be presenting “a political agenda in two weeks’ time,” after EU vision statements in recent weeks from French President Emmanuel Macron, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and others on how to the reform the bloc. That will be just days before the next EU summit is expected to reject for now British …

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A Serbian minister has denied media reports in the Balkan nation that the government is muzzling the free press through intimidation, threats and financial pressure. Vladan Vukosavljevic, Serbia’s culture and information minister, told The Associated Press on Friday that his agency “strongly objects” to any form of pressure on journalists and believes in media freedom.   Vukosavljevic spoke a day after dozens of Serbian media outlets and other organizations darkened their web pages and published black ribbons on newspapers to warn citizens about the government pressure on media. The initiative was prompted by the recent closure of an independent newspaper …

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The Spanish government says there will be no Catalonia independence vote Sunday, even as the regional government continues preparations for the referendum. Spanish Culture Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo said Friday the independence vote violates Spanish law and the government will not accept the results of the referendum. “We are open to dialogue within the framework of the law. As you would understand nobody can ask us … to engage in dialogue outside the framework of the law. It’s impossible,” he said. “No European political leader can even consider dealing with an issue that is not in [Spanish] government hands.” …

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Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has a message for the world’s central bankers: Don’t be Luddites. Addressing a conference in London on Friday, Lagarde said virtual currencies, which are created and exchanged without the involvement of banks or government, could in time be embraced by countries with unstable currencies or weak domestic institutions. “In many ways, virtual currencies might just give existing currencies and monetary policy a run for their money,” she said. “The best response by central bankers is to continue running effective monetary policy, while being open to fresh ideas and new demands, as …

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In Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, cameras are being installed inside taxis in a move city authorities claim will provide security for both drivers and passengers. But with the ongoing crackdown over last year’s failed coup locking up more than 60,000 people and purging nearly 200,000 from their jobs, fears are growing that the measure is the latest effort to extend surveillance and control over the people. An advertisement touts the benefits of Istanbul’s Itaxi. New taxis will be fitted with GPS tracking to allow drivers to find the quickest and cheapest route, as well as equipment to pay by credit …

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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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