Category: Євросоюз

Catalan police have arrested a fourth man in connection with two terrorist attacks in the Barcelona region Thursday that left at least 14 people dead and dozens more injured.   Police announced the arrest on Twitter Friday, but gave no further details. Police said they are still searching for the brother of one of the men already in police custody, but they do not know whether he was the driver of the van. “We are looking for Moussa Oukabir, but for the moment we don’t know whether he was the driver of the van,” police announced. The man’s brother, Driss …

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The United States has condemned what it calls a “terror attack” in Barcelona Thursday and is offering assistance to Spain. At least 13 people have died and about 100 others were left injured after a van ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas area. Two people have been arrested in the case but the driver has fled. Terrorist group Islamic State has claimed the attack was performed by one of its “soldiers”, without offering any proof. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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Parts of Portugal, beset by its deadliest summer of wildfires in living memory, were declared in a state of public calamity on Thursday as the government put emergency services on alert for further outbreaks. It has borne the brunt of a heatwave that has settled over much of southern Europe, and more than three times as much forest has burned down in the country this summer as in an average year. Since a single blaze killed 64 people in June, the government has been under pressure to come up with a strategic plan to limit the damage. It said on …

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Following are some of the deadly attacks in Western Europe in recent years: Aug. 17, 2017 — A van ploughs into crowds in the heart of Barcelona, killing at least 13 people, a regional official says, in what police say they are treating as a terrorist attack. June 3, 2017 — Three attackers ram a van into pedestrians on London Bridge then stab revellers in nearby bars, killing eight people and injuring at least 48. Islamic State says its militants are responsible. May 22, 2017 — A suicide bomber kills 22 children and adults and wounds 59 at a packed …

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Britain said on Thursday it was “confident” talks with the European Union would move toward discussing their future relationship by October, in contrast to warnings from the top EU negotiator that the target is receding. Prime Minister Theresa May’s government wants to push the discussion beyond the divorce settlement soon, to offer companies some assurance of what to expect after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. But the bloc has repeated that until there is “sufficient progress” in the first stage of talks on the rights of expatriates, Britain’s border with EU member Ireland and a financial settlement, officials …

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An international watchdog has condemned the beating of a Kosovo journalist known for his reports on corruption, calling it “an attack against freedom of media.” Parim Olluri, whose news website Insajderi has become one of the leading online media outlets reporting allegations of corruption among Kosovo’s top officials, was beaten by unknown assailants late Wednesday as he was going home with his fiancée. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose Kosovo mission monitors peace and democracy in the country, said: “Journalists should be free to state a different opinion without fear of violence or physical injury.” Kosovo’s journalists’ …

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The memorial site of Auschwitz-Birkenau is weighing in on the anti-Semitic and racially charged violence that has erupted in the United States, noting that hatred comes from people who promote it. The state museum, which preserves the site of the former Nazi German death camp, wrote Thursday on Twitter: “One of the hardest lessons for us today. Perpetrators were people. They accepted an ideology that rationalized and promoted hatred & evil.” With the words is a photo of Auschwitz officers and guards smiling and having fun. The message was posted in several languages after U.S. President Donald Trump made comments …

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Ukrainian officials and analysts were quick to deny allegations that the Soviet-era Yuzhmash arms factory was a likely source of engine technology used in North Korea’s missiles and to redirect suspicions to Russia.   “It is a complex and bulky piece of equipment. It is simply not possible to supply it by bypassing export procedures,” said Mykola Sunhurovskyi, director of military programs at the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv think tank, to VOA’s Ukrainian Service. “What is possible, is for North Korea to obtain engines left behind after rocket dismantling in Russia. That could be possible. Meaning Russia could have kept …

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The British government has vowed repeatedly to end the free movement of people from the European Union when the U.K. leaves the bloc in 2019. But on Wednesday it acknowledged that, in one area of the country, it won’t. Britain said there must be no border posts or electronic checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic after Brexit, and it committed itself to maintaining the longstanding, border-free Common Travel Area covering the U.K. and Ireland. “There should be no physical border infrastructure of any kind on either side of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland,” Conservative British Prime …

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British Parliament officials said Wednesday they will review plans to silence Big Ben during four years of repairs after senior politicians criticized the lengthy muting of the beloved bell. When the repairs were announced last year, officials said the massive bell in Parliament’s clock tower would be silenced for several months. But this week they said the ringing pause would last until 2021. Prime Minister Theresa May said “it can’t be right for Big Ben to be silent for four years.” The 13.5 British ton (15.1 U.S. ton, 13.7 metric ton) bell has sounded the time almost uninterrupted since 1859, …

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Serbia offered a 10-year-old migrant from Afghanistan, who has been nicknamed “Little Picasso” because of his talent for painting, and his family citizenship on Wednesday, after they spent eight months in a refugee camp while seeking to reach Switzerland. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic made the offer to Farhad Nouri, which also included a job for his father, upon meeting the five-member family in his office. Nouri’s drawings and photographs were put on display last week in what was also a charity event to raise money for a Serbian boy recovering from brain tumor surgery. Nouri and his family left their …

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Ireland’s finance minister rejected the European Commission’s demand that it retroactively collect 13 billion euros in taxes from Apple, saying this was not Dublin’s job in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper. In the interview, extracts from which the FAZ published on Wednesday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said the tax rules from which Apple benefited had been available to all and not tailored for the U.S. technology giant. They did not violate European or Irish law, he added. “We are not the global tax collector for everybody else,” the paper quoted him as saying. The European Commission last …

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Ukrainian officials quickly issued strong denials of an allegation that a Ukrainian arms factory may have supplied engine technology used in North Korean missiles. VOA’s Ukrainian Service interviewed the analyst who made the allegation, Michael Elleman, who qualified his remarks first published in a New York Times article to emphasize that Russia, too, could have been the source. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Washington. …

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There should be no border posts between Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland after Brexit, Britain said in an early attempt to resolve one of the most complex aspects of its European Union exit. Some 30,000 people cross the 500-kilometer border every day without customs or immigration checks, testing negotiators who have to work out how to tighten controls without inflaming tensions in a region where around 3,600 people were killed before a peace agreement in 1998. The British government said in a paper due to be published on Wednesday that it wanted a seamless and frictionless frontier …

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Firefighters battled wildfires raging northeast of Athens for a third day on Tuesday as Greece asked for help from its European partners to prevent them from spreading. The fire started in Kalamos, a coastal holiday spot some 45 km (30 miles) northeast of the capital, and has spread to three more towns, damaging dozens of homes and burning thousands of hectares of pine forest. A state of emergency has been declared in the area. “The blaze is advancing with great speed. Because of the scale and intensity of the wildfires, the country submitted a request for aerial means,” fire brigade …

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Italy’s interior minister said on Tuesday he saw light at the end of the tunnel for curbing migrant flows from Libya after a slowdown in arrivals across the Mediterranean in recent months. But a United Nations investigator said that Italy’s recent effort to draw up a code regulating the operations of humanitarian ships rescuing migrants at sea would cause more deaths. The subject of immigration is dominating Italy’s political agenda ahead of general elections due before May next year, with public opinion increasingly hostile to migrants. Almost 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years. “We are …

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In a rare visit, the head of Iran’s armed forces is in Turkey. The two neighbors have found themselves increasing rivals in Iraq and Syria, but both sides are trying to find common ground. The chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Major General Mohammad-Hossein Baqeri, arrived in Ankara, leading a high-ranking military and political delegation, for three days of talks. It is the first visit by Iran’s chief of staff since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Regional rivalries Former Turkish ambassador to Iraq Unal Cevikoz now heads the Ankara Policy Forum. He says conflicts in Iraq and Syria have …

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President Emmanuel Macron has filed a legal complaint against a photographer alleging harassment and invasion of privacy while on vacation in the southern French city of Marseille, a source in the president’s entourage said. Macron and his wife Brigitte are staying in the private residence of the prefect of Marseille, French media have reported, which overlooks the Mediterranean and is shielded from the public eye by a high wall dotted with security cameras. “A photographer followed him on several occasions… and there was an intrusion on the property, which led to the complaint for harassment and invasion of privacy being …

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New U.S. sanctions on Moscow have forced Russian business chiefs to accept that Donald Trump’s rise to power is not about to produce a “Trump Bump” in foreign investment. After Trump became U.S. president, some investors said they would be prepared to contemplate new deals with Russian firms if they saw signs that U.S.-Russian ties were improving and U.S. restrictions on business with Russia were being relaxed. But the new sanctions, signed onto law by Trump on August 2, add new measures and codify six orders signed by President Barack Obama, making them harder for Trump to revoke. For the …

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London’s Holborn underground station closed briefly Tuesday after overheating equipment on a train filled a platform with smoke. The fire service said it had sent two fire engines and 10 firefighters to the station. “It was an overheated compressor on a train not a fire,” London Fire Brigade said a statement. A witness on a train at the station said smoke filled one of the carriages. “There was a fire alert on a westbound Central line train,” a spokesman for London’s transport operator said. “We are investigating the cause.” The fire service said it dealt with the incident in less …

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