Category: Євросоюз

Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Hungary for the second time this year on Monday, attending the World Judo Championships in Budapest and discussing mutual energy interests with his Hungarian counterpart.  Putin, who made an official trip to Hungary in February, sat in a VIP box at the Laszlo Papp Budapest Sports Arena with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and other officials. Discussions between the two leaders centered on energy issues, including Russia’s construction of new reactors for Hungary’s Soviet-built nuclear power plant and Hungarian imports of natural gas from Russia. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the expansion of …

READ MORE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is urging U.S. President Donald Trump to stop his attacks on the press, saying they “degrade” the essential role of the media in a democracy. The OSCE’s media freedom representative, Harlem Desir, Monday said Trump’s comments about the media are “deeply problematic,” adding that such statements, especially those identifying the media as “the enemy of the people,” could make journalists more vulnerable to being targeted with violence. “I urge the United States administration to refrain from delivering such attacks on the media,” said Desir in a letter addressed to Secretary of State …

READ MORE

More than 1,000 people have participated in protests in Romania’s capital and other cities to show opposition to against proposed changes to the judicial system. Demonstrators gathered outside government offices in Bucharest on Sunday called the ruling Social Democratic Party “the red plague” and yelled “A government of thieves and Mafioso!”   People took to the streets in half a dozen cities around the country to protest the proposals submitted by Justice Minister Tudorel Toader.   Toader recommended having the president no longer appoint the general prosecutor and the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, a main function of Romania’s presidency.   He …

READ MORE

Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has named a restructured Cabinet with a goal of increasing the country’s economic growth from 3.8 to 5 percent in four years. Rama on Sunday told his Socialist Party leadership that his Cabinet would be reduced from 20 to 14 ministerial posts, making it “a smaller but more cooperative one.” The new structure merges the finance ministry with the economy ministry, and the energy ministry with the transport and infrastructure ministry. A new ministerial post has been created to oversee the Albanian diaspora and to coordinate with businesses. Most of the appointees are holdovers from …

READ MORE

A Jordanian official said Sunday that Jordan is negotiating with Germany over the legal status of German troops to be stationed in the kingdom, amid reports that disagreements delayed deployment. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Germany seeks immunity in Jordan for 250 soldiers who are part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State group extremists. The report says Jordan balked at the demand.   The Jordanian official said talks with Germany are “subject to international diplomatic rules” and “equal mutual treatment.” He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters on the issue.   Germany’s Defense …

READ MORE

A 51-year-old German woman died Sunday from injuries suffered in the Aug. 17 vehicle attack in Barcelona, raising the overall death toll in Spain’s recent attacks to 16, health officials in Catalonia said.   The woman died in the intensive care unit of Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, according to the regional health department.   The latest death raises the toll to 14 in the van attack in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard. Another man was stabbed to death in a carjacking that night as the van driver made his getaway, and another woman died in an Aug. 18 vehicle-and-knife attack …

READ MORE

The Islamic State news agency Aamaq has claimed the Brussels attacker who assaulted three soldiers with a knife as an Islamic State group soldier. In a statement Sunday, it said he carried out the Friday evening attack in response to calls to target countries of the coalition that is fighting IS. Belgian prosecutors have opened an attempted terrorist murder probe after attacker assaulted the soldiers while shouting “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great.” He was shot dead by troops. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said the man was known to police for assault charges but had no previous terror-related …

READ MORE

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is announcing a policy shift which opens the possibility of the country remaining in the European Union’s single market and customs union for several years as part of a “soft” Brexit, a spokesman said on Saturday. The party would propose the same “basic terms” as Britain’s current relationship with the EU during a transition period following Brexit in 2019, and after that for all options to be open, a spokesman for Labour said. His comments came in response to a report in Britain’s Guardian and sister newspaper Observer in which shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer …

READ MORE

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is also a former governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, has accused the authorities of Georgia and Ukraine of planning to accuse of planning a coup in Georgia. Saakashvili wrote on Facebook on Saturday that the Georgian authorities “in complete coordination with officials in Ukraine” were planning to make the accusation soon. “They promised [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko that they would file the charges before September 10,” he wrote. Saakashvili said the charges would give Ukrainian authorities “a legal basis” for detaining him if he entered Ukraine. He added that the charges were risible and …

READ MORE

Several people have reportedly been detained in Moscow at a sanctioned demonstration in support of internet freedom. One demonstrator was detained on Saturday while wearing a T-shirt reading, “Putin is worse than Hitler,” referring to President Vladimir Putin. Several other demonstrators were detained while wearing symbols supporting equal rights for the LGBT community. Some at the rally, which had been approved by local officials, shouted, “Russia will be free,” and “Russia without censorship.” According to Moscow officials, about 1,000 people attended the rally. Similar demonstrations were held in several other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk and others. …

READ MORE

. …

READ MORE

Hundreds of thousands of peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona on Saturday shouting “I’m not afraid” — a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks that killed 15 people, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade. Emergency workers, taxis drivers, police and ordinary citizens who helped immediately after the attack on August 17 in the city’s famed Las Ramblas boulevard led the march. They carried a streetwide banner with black capital letters reading “No Tinc Por,” which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language. The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a …

READ MORE

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday the alliance would closely watch Russian military exercises in western Russia and Belarus next month, urging Moscow to be transparent about the drills. The maneuvers, the largest in years, with tanks, naval and air units operating in and around the Baltic and North Sea, have raised NATO’s concern that the official number of troops participating might be understated. ‘Watching very closely’ “We are going to be watching very closely the course of these exercises,” Stoltenberg told reporters after meeting Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo on a visit to check on the deployment …

READ MORE

A man armed with a knife was detained Friday evening outside London’s Buckingham Palace, and two police officers were injured while arresting him, police said. The Metropolitan Police force says two officers suffered minor injuries while detaining the suspect, who is being held on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and assaulting police. Police said the officers did not require hospital treatment. No other injuries were reported. A large number of police vehicles could be seen in the Mall, the wide road outside the palace. Police said it was too early to say whether the incident was terrorism-related. Buckingham Palace is …

READ MORE

The suspected mastermind of an international drug-smuggling operation has been arrested in London and faces extradition to the United States on charges that carry at least 30 years in prison upon conviction, prosecutors in New York said Friday. Muhammad Asif Hafeez, 58, a Pakistani national known as “The Sultan,” was charged with trafficking several tons of heroin and methamphetamine, U.S. prosecutors said. He faces three counts in federal court in Manhattan, each with a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years. Lawyers for Hafeez could not immediately be identified. Prosecutors said that from 2013 until his arrest, Hafeez conspired to …

READ MORE

Belgian soldiers shot dead a man in the center of Brussels on Friday evening after he came at them with a knife shouting Allahu Akbar (“God is great”), in a case authorities are treating as a terrorist attack. The man, a 30-year-old Belgian of Somali origin, died after being rushed to the hospital. The soldiers were not seriously hurt in the attack; one had a facial wound and the other’s hand was wounded. Prosecutors said the man, who was not known for terrorist activities, had twice shouted Allahu Akbar during the attack, which occurred at around 8:15 p.m. local time …

READ MORE

A court in Azerbaijan on Friday jailed the head of an independent news agency pending an investigation on tax evasion charges, a move that the opposition denounced as an attack on the freedom of speech in the ex-Soviet nation.   The court in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, put Turan news agency director Mehman Aliyev in prison for three months. He was arrested on Thursday night.   Tax authorities have accused Aliyev of failing to pay the equivalent of nearly $22,000 in taxes in 2014-2016.   Turan has denied the charges. It said in a statement that its bank accounts have been …

READ MORE

A bus carrying construction workers drove off a pier in southern Russia on Friday, killing at least 16 people, officials said. The bus was carrying workers who were building a pier for an oil company on the Black Sea coast not far from Crimea, the Investigative Committee said. Several oil companies are drilling for oil off the Russian Black Sea coast. Official accounts of how many workers were on the bus that plunged into the sea changed several times Friday morning. By noon, the Emergency Situations Ministry said 41 people had been on the bus — the 16 people killed …

READ MORE

Norway and China have resumed talks on a bilateral free trade deal, Norway’s Industry Ministry said Thursday, in another sign that their relationship was thawing after a row over the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo. Beijing suspended discussions immediately after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Liu in 2010. The dissident was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms. Liu died on July 13 from liver cancer. China and Norway agreed to resume …

READ MORE

A new U.S. study has found an “extreme level” of wealth inequality in Russia that has increased much more significantly than it has in former Eastern European communist countries and in China since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The study, conduced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found inequality in Russia has been driven by the transition from communism, during which wealthy Russians accumulated offshore wealth about three times larger than the net value of the country’s foreign reserves. This offshore wealth is comparable to all the financial assets held by households throughout Russia. …

READ MORE