The Refugee Food Festival is taking place in 13 European cities, marking World Refugee Day on June 20. For two weeks, restaurants are being taken over by refugee chefs from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and others. Marthe van der Wolf reports for VOA from Brussels. …
This year’s Paris Air Show, the largest and longest-running of its kind, opened for business Monday with none of the exhibitors bringing new, exciting planes. Instead, manufacturers are boasting with small-step improvements aimed to make aircraft safer and more efficient. VOA’s George Putic has more. …
The United Nations Refugee Day (June 20) seeks to bring attention to the unprecedented number of refugees worldwide. More than 65 million people have been displaced from their homes, mostly by war and violence, and more than 22 million of them are refugees. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports that refugees are supported largely by donations, and those are growing short. …
Talks begin this week on Britain’s exit from the European Union, which will leave the bloc with only one heavyweight military power – France. As Henry Ridgwell reports, EU moves towards a common defense policy have raised fears in Britain that it could be frozen out of future security arrangements. …
The attack on Muslim worshippers in north London’s Finsbury Park Mosque and talk about more police at British mosques are raising questions about Britain and its rapidly growing Muslim minority. …
How national leaders respond to a crisis, man-made or natural, can make or break their time in office, and even curtail it, if they get it awfully wrong. Aside from showing determination to correct what went wrong or repairing the damage, did they connect and channel a nation’s grief acting as an inspiring mourner-in-chief? That question is being asked now of British Prime Minister Theresa May as she faces public fury over her response to a devastating fire last week in London that engulfed an apartment tower, leaving at least 59 dead, dozens missing and hundreds of people homeless. …
Russia is hosting the FIFA Confederations Cup tournament through July 2 as a test for how it handles the 2018 World Cup. But preparations have not been without controversy as upgrades on the Saint Petersburg Zenit stadium burst several budget projections amid allegations of corruption and North Korean forced laborers. “I’m more than sure that it’s impossible to handle the big construction site … without illegal workers,” says Russian sports commentator Fyodor Pogorelov. “So, I wasn’t surprised when I read the stories.” “As for corruption at this sports venue,” he adds, “I would say that it’s a monument to …
A man was killed after driving a car packed with explosives into a police van in Paris’s popular Champs Elysees shopping district Monday, police said. No one else was injured in the crash. Officials called it a deliberate attack. The 31-year-old man was known to authorities as being potentially linked to extremism, early reports said. A bomb squad is securing the scene, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Police added that a Kalashnikov rifle, handguns, and gas bottles were also found in the car. France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation into the incident. France’s Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the …
A court ruling to not extradite eight Turkish soldiers who fled to Greece following the failed coup attempt last year must be respected, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Monday. His comments came at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Binali Yildirim in Athens. “The Greek justice system has ruled on this issue … and this decision must be fully respected,” Tsipras said in response to a question. Turkey alleges the men were involved in efforts to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last July and has repeatedly demanded they be sent back. The soldiers fled to Greece …
French President Emmanuel Macron is poised to rearrange his Cabinet after his new centrist party engineered a landslide in the country’s parliamentary election, enabling the government to quickly start passing its first big laws. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will resign “in the coming hours” and a new government will be named in the next few days, government spokesman Christophe Castaner said Monday on RTL radio. It’s a largely symbolic move required after a legislative election. Since Macron’s new party, Republic on the Move!, won an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, Castaner said the government reshuffling would …
Police in London say a vehicle, possibly a van, has collided with pedestrians on a busy road in the northern part of the city, injuring several people early Monday. One person has been arrested after the incident near Finsbury Park in north London. Authorities were called to the scene shortly after midnight local time. An investigation is ongoing. …
London mayor Sadiq Khan acknowledged growing public anger surrounding the Grenfell Tower fire in which 58 people are presumed dead, saying the blaze was a result of “mistakes and neglect”. “There is a feeling from the community that they’ve been treated badly because some of them are poor,” Khan said after a visit to a church near the burnt-out social housing block to attend a service which remembered victims of Wednesday’s tragedy. He called the fire a “preventable accident”, acknowledging the anger and frustration of displaced residents of the working-class enclave in one of Britain’s wealthiest districts. The 1974 concrete …
Thousands of people attended a gay pride parade in Ukraine’s capital amid tight security Sunday. A counterdemonstration by a few hundred ultranationalists resulted in scuffles with police in which two officers were injured and six people arrested, Kyiv police chief Andrei Krishchenko said. Much of downtown Kiev was cordoned off and about 5,000 police officers were on duty for the gay pride march, which has traditionally been a focal point for attacks by ultranationalists. Kiev police spokeswoman Oksana Blishchik wrote on Facebook that about 2,500 people attended. The route of the parade was changed at the last …
The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze a detente with Cuba and his verbal attack on the Caribbean island’s leaders. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday that Trump is “returning us to the forgotten rhetoric of the Cold War.” The statement says that “It’s clear the anti-Cuba discourse is still widely needed. This can only induce regret.” Despite Trump’s campaign pledge to improve relations with Moscow, there has been no significant improvement in foreign policy cooperation between the two countries. Last week, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to back new …
British Brexit minister David Davis heads to Brussels Monday to open divorce talks with the EU with a message that there should be “no doubt we are leaving the European Union.” Days after a suggestion from French President Emmanuel Macron that Britain could still choose to remain, Davis said there would be no backtracking from Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to deliver on Brexit, for which Britons voted in a referendum almost a year ago. “As I head to Brussels to open official talks to leave the EU, there should be no doubt we are leaving the European Union, and …
French voters are expected to hand President Emmanuel Macron a landslide majority in parliament Sunday, a second election triumph for him after his presidential victory and one which should allow him to embark on deep social and economic reforms. Polls have opened for the second round of parliamentary elections. Just a month after the 39-year-old ex-banker became the youngest head of state in modern French history, pollsters forecast his centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party will win as many as 75-80 percent of seats in the lower house of parliament. Turnout, though, could touch record lows, in a sign of …
A massive forest fire in central Portugal has killed 25 people, many of them burned to death in their cars. At least 16 people are reported to have been injured. Officials say hundreds of firefighters have been dispatched to battle the blaze in Pedrogao Grande area, about 150 kilometers northeast of Lisbon. Spanish rescue workers also are assisting in efforts to douse the flames, authorities say. “Unfortunately this seems to be the greatest tragedy we have seen in recent years in terms of forest fires,” said Prime Minister Antonio Costa. The number of fatalities could rise, he added. Jorge Gomes, …
Pope Francis has asked Germany to keep fighting for the Paris climate change deal and to “tear down walls” that inhibit international cooperation, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday, offering a stark contrast between her agenda and U.S. policy. U.S. President Donald Trump announced this month that he would withdraw from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, drawing anger from world leaders. “The Pope encouraged me to continue and fight for international agreements, including the Paris agreement,” Merkel told reporters after an unusually long, 40-minute private audience with him. Merkel, who faces elections in September, said the Pope …
Several thousand protesters marched Saturday in Madrid, urging the Spanish government to keep its commitment to accept refugees. Spain has pledged to allow 17,300 refugees from such war-torn countries as Syria, Iraq and Libya to settle in the country, as its part of a Europewide commitment to do more to help alleviate the continent’s migration crisis. Amnesty International reports that Madrid has relocated or resettled only 1,304 people, less than 10 percent of its pledge. Throughout Europe, most countries have similarly small accomplishments, based on the pledges to take in refugees they made to the European Commission in 2015. The …
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was set to name a former Lebanese culture minister as new U.N. envoy to Libya, ending an unusually contentious four-month search that followed U.S. rejection of his first suggestion. Guterres on Friday officially put forward Ghassan Salame, a professor of International Relations and Conflict Resolution at Sciences-Po in Paris, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Saturday. Diplomats said objections were unlikely and the U.N. Security Council will greenlight the appointment on Tuesday. The council must agree by consensus on the appointment of special envoys. Traditionally, the U.N. chief informally discusses candidates with the …