Category: Євросоюз

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 …

READ MORE

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. …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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, …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

The Alternative for Germany party has pledged to use its platform in parliament to “reclaim the country and its people.” The AfD won nearly 14 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, giving them 94 seats. Many believed the turmoil of the 20th century had immunized Germany from a return of far-right politics, but Sunday’s result proved them wrong. For the group’s opponents who gathered to protest the result in Berlin, the Alternative for Germany’s anti-migrant agenda has parallels with the Nazis’ rise to power. “It is the first time since after the war that a racist and neo-Nazi party …

READ MORE

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party has pledged to use its platform in parliament to “reclaim the country and its people.” The AfD won close to 14 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, giving them 94 seats — the first significant far-right presence in Germany’s parliament since World War II. Henry Ridgwell reports from Berlin. …

READ MORE

A referendum on whether Catalonia should secede from Spain is putting intense pressure on the region’s police officers, who feel caught between their oath to the nation’s constitution and loyalty to local leaders who have vowed to create a new European state.   Francesc Vidal, a 16-year veteran of the force known as the Mossos d’Esquadra, described the referendum planned for October 1 as a “train collision” between Spanish authorities desperate to stop what they consider an illegal vote and Catalan separatists who insist that the balloting go forward.   “We only ask that they don’t put us in the …

READ MORE

In the hours after the mutilated body of a 9-year-old girl was found in a forest near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, rumors spread quickly that a local Roma man had been arrested — and violent retribution followed. A meeting of local leaders the same day in August last year denounced nearby Roma as criminals and demanded evictions, while a mob circled homes, pelting buildings with rocks and trashing a community where many Roma had lived for a decade, said rights groups. By early September, all two dozen Roma targeted, including 17 children, had fled. A year on, they …

READ MORE

Swiss voters rejected raising women’s retirement age to 65 in a referendum on Sunday on shoring up the wealthy nation’s pension system as a wave of Baby Boomers stops working. Authorities pushing the first serious reform of the pension system in two decades had warned that old-age benefits were increasingly at risk as life expectancy rises and interest rates remain exceptionally low, cutting investment yields. But it fell by a margin of 53-47 percent, sending the government back to the drawing board on the thorny social issue. The package turned down under the Swiss system of direct democracy included making …

READ MORE

Sunday’s national election in Germany will sound the starting gun for a renewed debate on fixing flaws in Europe’s shared currency to prevent future crises.   France’s new president Emmanuel Macron has made it clear he is willing to push for change to strengthen the euro and is expected to make proposals in a major speech Tuesday. He is pushing for, among other things, a finance minister for the eurozone to oversee a central fiscal pot of money that could even out recessions in individual members.   Even pro-euro policymakers concede their 19-nation currency union contains weaknesses that fed its …

READ MORE

The Russian Defense Ministry has announced one of its generals was killed while fighting Islamic State in Syria. “Division general Valeri Assapov was killed when a shell exploded during shelling by IS fighters,” the ministry was quoted as saying by local media. He was serving as an advisor to Syrian government troops “in the operation for the liberation of the city of Deir el-Zour,” it said. Deir el-Zour province, on Syria’s eastern border with Iraq, is rich with oil and gas fields that served as a key revenue stream for IS at the peak of its power. Meanwhile, Syrian media …

READ MORE

The Vatican on Sunday denounced its ousted auditor general for revealing that he resigned under threat of arrest for what he says were trumped-up charges. In a statement, the Vatican admitted that Libero Milone resigned in June after Vatican investigators determined his office had “illegally hired an outside company to conduct investigations into the private lives of Holy See personnel.” Milone told reporters Saturday that he was told on June 19 that Pope Francis had lost confidence in him. He said he was subsequently subject to an “aggressive” interrogation by Vatican police who seized material from his office and told …

READ MORE

The grassroots groups driving Catalonia’s separatist movement defied Spanish authorities on Sunday by distributing one million ballots for an Oct. 1 independence vote that the central government in Madrid has called illegal and vowed to halt. Jordi Cuixart, president of the separatist group Omnium Cultural, announced the ballots were being distributed during a rally in Barcelona.   “Here are the packs of ballots that we ask you to hand out across Catalonia,” Cuixart said.   Spanish police have confiscated millions of ballots in recent days as part of a crackdown to stop the Oct. 1 vote, which has been suspended …

READ MORE

Germany’s national election Sunday is widely expected to give Chancellor Angela Merkel a historic fourth mandate and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seats in parliament for the first time in 60 years. …

READ MORE

Germans headed to the polls Sunday in federal elections that will decide in effect whether Angela Merkel should serve a historic fourth term as Chancellor. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, along with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, appear to be heading to a handsome victory, according to eve-of-poll surveys. The two parties are expected jointly to win between 36 to 39 percent of the vote. Germany’s second largest party, the center-left Social Democrats, who were junior partners in Merkel’s outgoing government, is likely to scrape just a 23 percent share, which if accurate would be the party’s …

READ MORE