Category: Євросоюз

The British government is fighting back against criticism that it is divided and unprepared for Brexit, announcing it will publish a set of detailed proposals on customs arrangements, the status of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border and other issues. The Department for Exiting the European Union said Sunday that it would release the first set of position papers this week, more than a year after Britons voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. The government says it hopes to persuade the 27 other EU nations to start negotiating a “deep and special” future relationship that would include a free …

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Child beggars have long been part of the social fabric in Ashgabat, where some families acknowledge that they depend on such income for survival. However, Ashgabat police have begun clearing the streets of those children as the Turkmen capital gears up for the Asian Indoor And Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) in September, according to residents and parents interviewed by RFE/RL. Police officers, raiding the city in vans, order such children home and warn them not to return to the streets, said Ashgabat resident Amanmyrat Bugaev.  An Ashgabat police officer within the juvenile-affairs department, who requested anonymity because he was not …

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Residents of St. Petersburg on Saturday paid homage to sailors from the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea exactly 17 years earlier. Relatives and friends of crew members gathered for a memorial service and a commemorative meeting at St. Petersburg’s Serafimovskoye Cemetery. All 118 crew members aboard the nuclear-powered Kursk submarine died on August 12, 2000, after an explosion occurred as the crew was preparing to fire a practice torpedo. The Russian Navy’s final official report concluded that the explosion was caused by the failure of a torpedo. The Kursk was raised from the bottom of the …

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Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Saturday it was suspending its migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because it felt threatened by the Libyan coastguard and the Italian government’s policies have made its job harder. The aid group’s decision is the latest development in mounting tensions between Rome and NGOs as migration dominates Italy’s political agenda ahead of elections early next year. “We are suspending our activities because now we feel that the threatening behaviour by the Libyan coastguard is very serious … we cannot put our colleagues in danger,” the president of MSF’s Italian arm Loris De Filippi told Reuters. …

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is appealing to the government of Ukraine in Kyiv and Russian-backed authorities in eastern Ukraine to provide basic services and pension benefits to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people struggling to survive in the rebel-held parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.   With the conflict in Ukraine in its fourth year, more than 10,000 people have been killed as sporadic fighting continues between Russian-backed rebels and government forces in eastern Ukraine, and the death toll continues to mount. Among the living, those who are suffering the most include nearly 1.6 million …

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Sixteen months after deadly clashes erupted in Azerbaijan’s autonomous breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, international mediators are saying it’s time for all parties to undertake confidence-building measures to jump-start the political settlement process. Russia led mediation to settle the four days of shelling and rocket strikes between Azerbaijan’s military and Armenian-backed separatists over Nagorno-Karabakh. The clashes were the deadliest incidents since a 1994 cease-fire established the current territorial division. The brief but intense fighting of April 2016 claimed dozens of lives. Since then, the United States, Russia and France, which co-chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group …

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The next presidential election in Slovenia will be held on October 22 and the incumbent is expected to run for a second term.   Parliamentary speaker Milan Brglez on Friday formally set the date for the vote which must be held in the autumn. Recent opinion polls predict that President Borut Pahor will likely be re-elected if he chooses to run.   The 53-year-old Pahor is a former fashion model who has become known for his use of social media while in office.   The Alpine nation of 2 million people is the homeland of U.S. first lady Melania Trump. …

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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is warning people against returning prematurely to war-torn Syria as the number of displaced going back to their homes reaches a record high. An IOM report found more than 600,000 displaced Syrians have returned home in the first seven months of this year, nearly as many as the total number of returnees for all of 2016. IOM spokeswoman Olivia Haedon said most of the returns are spontaneous, but not necessarily voluntary, safe or sustainable. “As the security situation changes in different parts of the country, displacement can occur again,” she said. “As you noted, …

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Opponents of Britain’s departure from the European Union are floating the idea of setting up a new anti-Brexit political party. James Chapman, a former aide to Brexit Secretary David Davis, has become an outspoken critic of Britain’s looming departure from the 28-nation bloc. He is calling for a new centrist political party because both the governing Conservatives and main opposition Labour parties say they will go through with the decision to leave. Chapman said Friday “there is an enormous gap in the center now of British politics” that could be filled by an anti-Brexit force. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair …

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A year on from when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck the mountainous heartland of Italy, killing 300 people and leaving thousands homeless, local mayors of a string of hilltop towns and villages that were left in ruins remain frustrated by the sluggish pace of reconstruction. Three-quarters of the once postcard-perfect towns of Amatrice and Accumoli remain in ruins. Pescara del Tronto, another medieval hilltop settlement, is a pile of rubble. The recent opening in Amatrice, which gave its name to the pasta sauce, all’amatriciana, of a food village, an innovative facility built of low-cost timber, has been touted by its …

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering arming Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons that Kyiv could use against Russia-backed separatists. Opponents argue arming Ukraine risks escalating the conflict while supporters say better weapons would act as a deterrence to Russian aggression and give a psychological and political boost to Kyiv. The debate comes as Trump’s new envoy on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, is to visit Russia soon. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Washington. …

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Arctic fjords that hid Soviet nuclear-powered submarines during the Cold War are now being used as a weapon in the sanctions war with Europe – to rear fish that Russia can no longer import. Three years ago, Russia banned food imports from the West in response to a series of Western sanctions that aimed to punish Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis, including its annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Trout and salmon, grown specially for Russia’s vast market at farms in Norway next door, were among the first victims of the sanctions war. Moscow’s ban on the largest …

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Climate change is affecting the timing of river floods across Europe, and societies may have to adapt to avoid future economic and environmental harm, scientists said Thursday. River floods are among the costliest natural disasters worldwide, causing annual damage of more than $100 billion. They affect millions of people each year because many towns and cities are built along rivers. Examining flood data across 50 years, researchers found significant shifts in timing along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe from 1960 to 2010. According to a paper published in the journal Science, half of the measurement stations from England to …

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Croatia revoked on Thursday its decision to raise import fees on some farm products by 220 percent, avoiding a trade war with its Balkan neighbors who had threatened to hit back with counter-measures. European Union-member Croatia last month raised its fees for phytosanitary controls — agricultural checks for pests and viruses on fruits and vegetables — at its borders to 2,000 kuna ($317.52) from 90 kuna, citing compliance with EU standards and protection of its consumers. EU candidates Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as fellow EU aspirant Bosnia, have called on Croatia to withdraw its decision, saying otherwise each …

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A former investigative reporter for Russia’s independent RBC media group was found guilty and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on Thursday on charges of organizing an extremist group and attempting to overthrow the government. Authorities said Alexander Sokolov, 29, was the mastermind behind the group “For Responsible Government,” or FRG, a Moscow-based organization alleged to be a cover for banned extremist group “People’s Will Army,” which was created by Sokolov associate Yuri Mukhin. Moscow judge Alexey Krivoruchko sentenced Mukhin, a newspaper editor, to a four-year suspended term, while two other activists – Valery Parfenov and Kirill Barabash – both …

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Turkish authorities on Thursday issued detention warrants for 35 journalists and media workers as part of the country’s ongoing crackdown on people suspected of ties to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, the state-run news agency reported. Turkey accuses Gulen of masterminding last year’s failed military coup. Gulen denies involvement. Police carried out raids in Istanbul to detain the suspects who allegedly used an encrypted messaging app that authorities say was favored by Gulen’s followers to communicate with each other. Anadolu Agency said they are suspected of “membership in a terror organization.”   Nine people have been detained so far, including …

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Turkish authorities have detained a suspected Islamic State militant of Russian origin after he allegedly planned to use a drone to bring down a U.S. plane at the Incirlik air base, Dogan News Agency said on Thursday. Dogan, citing security officials, said Russian national Renat Bakiev was detained after police surveillance showed him scouting the southern city of Adana, where the base is located, with the aim of carrying out his attack. Bakiev told authorities that he was a member of Islamic State and planned to use a drone to bring down a U.S. plane and carry out an attack …

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  British emergency services say two people were trapped and several injured when a double-decker bus plowed into a store on a busy south London street.   Transit officials say the bus was heading for the city’s Waterloo station when it careened through the plate glass window of a kitchen shop in Lavender Hill in the Battersea area on Thursday morning.   Firefighters freed two people trapped on the upper deck. The ambulance service says paramedics have treated 10 casualties, three of whom, including the bus driver, were taken to hospitals. Passenger Amy Mullineux said the driver told her he …

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The European Union recorded the largest increase in slavery of any world region in 2017, with the arrival of more than 100,000 migrants, many of them extremely vulnerable to exploitation, analysts said Thursday. The risk of slave labor in farming, construction and other sectors rose across the region, with 20 of the EU’s 28 member states scoring worse than in 2016 in an annual global slavery index by British analytics company Verisk Maplecroft. “The migrant crisis has increased the risk of slavery incidents appearing in company supply chains across Europe,” said Sam Haynes, senior human rights analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. …

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Bosnia’s religious leaders say politicians are standing in the way of peaceful coexistence between Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities trying to forgive and forget after the atrocities of a devastating 1990s war. Hundreds of churches, mosques and synagogues bear witness to more than five centuries of Bosnia’s multi-faith past, and the capital Sarajevo is known locally as a “small Jerusalem” with its main ethnic groups – Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks – all worshiping within meters of each other. But Mufti Husein Kavazovic, head of the Islamic community in Bosnia, says people of faith cannot achieve peace alone. …

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