Category: Євросоюз

Facebook says it has deleted tens of thousands of accounts in Britain ahead of the June 8 general election in a drive to battle fake news.   The tech giant also took out newspaper advertisements in Britain’s media offering advice on how to spot such stories. The ads suggest that readers should be “skeptical of headlines,” and “look closely at the URL.” The company says it has made improvements to help it detect fake news accounts more effectively.   Simon Milner, the tech firm’s U.K. director of policy, says the platform wants to get to the “root of the problem” …

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Germany’s president said Sunday that despite recent disagreement the foundation of his country’s relations with Israel remains solid – a reference to a recent diplomatic spat over an Israeli anti-occupation group. Frank-Walter Steinmeier is in Israel on his first foreign trip outside Europe since he was elected president earlier this year. It comes two weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled talks with the German foreign minister because the visitor chose to meet Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers-turned-whistleblowers who oppose Israel’s rule over the Palestinians.   The dispute has cast a shadow over what …

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More than 50,000 residents of the northern German city of Hannover have been asked to leave their homes, as authorities prepare to mount a large-scale operation to defuse World War II-era bombs. City officials say two bombs were found at a construction site and three more nearby. The city prepared a series of events for the evacuees, including free museum visits and discounted film screenings. More than 70 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs are regularly found buried on German land, legacies of the intense bombing campaigns by Allied forces against Nazi Germany. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle …

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A U.S. Senate panel is taking a new look Monday into the extent of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election, even as President Donald Trump continues to dismiss Moscow’s interference. The Senate Intelligence Committee is hearing testimony from Sally Yates, who was briefly acting attorney general, the country’s top law enforcement official, in the early days of the Trump administration before the new president fired her. She had been a key Justice Department official under former president Barack Obama and is expected to answer questions about warnings she gave the incoming administration about discussions that Michael Flynn, the retired …

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Former Israeli combat soldiers who were thrust into the center of a recent diplomatic row between Israel and Germany, say the sudden international spotlight has given them a bigger stage to speak out against Israel’s 50-year rule over millions of Palestinians. Breaking the Silence is a group of ex-soldiers-turned-whistleblowers who view Israel’s open-ended occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state as an existential threat to their country. Since 2004, the group has collected testimony from more than 1,100 fellow soldiers who describe the dark side of that rule, including seemingly routine mistreatment of Palestinian civilians stripped of basic rights. …

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In a race dominated by the issues of jobs, immigration and security, the choice before voters in this second and final round Sunday is stark, with centrist, pro-EU former economy minister, Emmanuel Macron facing nationalist, anti-immigration crusader Marine Le Pen. …

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Polls have opened in France, culminating a presidential election campaign that many French say is the country’s most acrimonious and contentious in its modern history, one that could decide whether it stays the course of globalization or adopts a new, separate path outside of the European Union. In a race dominated by the issues of jobs, immigration and security, the choice before voters in this second and final round Sunday is stark, with centrist, pro-EU former economy minister Emmanuel Macron facing nationalist, anti-immigration crusader Marine Le Pen. Surveys going into Sunday suggested Macron has a substantial lead with 63 percent …

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Thousands of Russian opposition activists held a rally in Moscow on May 6 to mark five years since the 2012 Bolotnaya Square antigovernment protest in Moscow. Moscow authorities approved the rally on a section of Sakharov Avenue in the city center. But city authorities refused to allow an opposition march toward Bolotnaya Square itself. Alec Luhn, a correspondent for The Guardian, tweeted that at least seven protesters were detained at Bolotnaya Square on May 6 after they held up placards with photographs of people who were jailed for taking part in the 2012 protest. The latest May 6 protest in Moscow …

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Top U.S. and Russian military officials say they have agreed to revive a previous agreement intended to prevent midair incidents by warplanes from the two countries flying over Syria. Statements in Washington and Moscow on Saturday said General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had spoken by telephone with his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, and that they had agreed to fully restore the agreement on using Syrian airspace that had been in force from late 2015 through most of last year. The two senior generals also discussed the recent Astana agreement, in which Russia, Turkey …

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Several hundred people rallied Saturday outside an office of Hungary’s governing Fidesz party after a journalist said she had been assaulted at a party meeting by a government official. Julia Halasz, a reporter with the 444.hu news site, said a meeting organizer took away her cellphone and dragged her down several flights of steps and out of a school by the arm while she was covering a Fidesz public forum. Economy Minister Mihaly Varga and Defense Minister Istvan Simicsko spoke at Thursday’s forum promoting the government’s “Let’s Stop Brussels” campaign, which claims the European Union wants Hungary to raise taxes …

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Voters in France prepared to go to the polls Sunday, ending what observers describe as the country’s most contentious and divisive presidential campaign since the founding of the Fifth Republic. Sunday also could mark the start of a new path for France and its relationship with the rest of Europe, regardless of who wins. …

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The retirement of Britain’s Prince Philip from public life led world headlines Thursday, but his most devout and remote followers have only just heard the news. A tribe in Vanuatu was shocked and dismayed to discover Saturday that the man they pray to as the son of an ancestral local mountain god will likely never return to their Pacific Island home. The British royal, who said he would no longer take part in public engagements, alone or alongside his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, is part of the fabric of life in the village of Younanen on Tanna Island. Daily prayers …

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In Rome, residents concerned about air quality may soon be able to use a smog tracker to monitor pollution levels as they travel around the city. A device is being tested that indicates which parts of the city have good or bad air quality. VOA’s Deborah Block has more. …

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Opposition parties in Kosovo have filed a motion of no confidence in the government, potentially deepening an 18-month political crisis over legislation to draw a border with Montenegro that is needed to ease travel to the EU. More than 40 deputies, including 12 from parties that are part of the ruling coalition and some independent MPs, signed the motion, which accuses the government of failing to meet its campaign pledges and creating public distrust. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa, whose conservative LDK is the second-largest party in the 120-seat parliament, has enough votes to survive the no-confidence motion provided all or …

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Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka abruptly changed tack in his battle to remove Finance Minister Andrej Babis on Friday, taking back a pledge to resign and instead seeking only the dismissal of his main political rival. The country is in political crisis over Babis, a billionaire who faces questions over past business practices but is also the most popular party leader before an election due in October. The battle pits Sobotka’s center-left Social Democrats not only against Babis’s ANO party but also President Milos Zeman who took Babis’s side, something Sobotka said could be overstepping the constitutional powers of the …

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Turkey dismissed 107 judges and prosecutors over alleged links to a failed coup in July last year, Turkish television reported Friday, in the third major purge since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was granted sweeping new powers. Turkey has now fired about 145,000 civil servants, security personnel and academics, local media reported. The number of ousted judges and prosecutors has reached 4,238. Ankara has blamed the network of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen for a coup attempt last July in which he has denied all involvement. Detention warrants were issued for the dismissed judges and prosecutors, Turkish TV said. More than …

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Relatives and lawyers of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez want the Red Cross to verify his health and are seeking to bring President Nicolas Maduro’s government before a Spanish court for alleged terrorism crimes. Spain’s laws allow judges to take on cases for crimes committed outside of the country as long as the victims are Spanish, although very few have succeeded.   The family’s lawyers said Friday that at least two opposition leaders with Spanish passports are being held in Venezuelan prisons in circumstances similar to Lopez’s. Lopez ‘unrecognizable’ in video Lopez’s father and sister also said they doubt …

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For the first time in recent history, French voters on Sunday will cast ballots in a presidential election with no candidates from traditional establishment parties. Their choice: Emmanuel Macron, a centrist from the left who is pro-business and pro-Europe and Marine Le Pen, a nationalist who wants France out of the European Union and an end to most immigration, especially from Muslim countries. VOA Europe Correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Paris. …

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A Turkish court on Friday rejected an appeal filed by Wikipedia after Turkey banned access to the website last week. Turkish authorities said the website was “acting with groups conducting a smear campaign against Turkey” after Wikipedia refused to remove a page accusing the country of collaborating with jihadists in Syria. Free speech advocates in Turkey blasted the ban and said Turkey is forbidding access to websites and social media at an increasing rate. They question the move to ban the entire Wikipedia website, in all languages, when Turkey’s objections only pertains to two pages on the English-language version. The …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Russia’s human rights ombudsman he will speak with law enforcement officials about the reported torture of gay men in Chechnya.   Tatyana Moskalkova asked Putin on Friday to support her request to form a group in Moscow to investigate the treatment of gays in the southern Russian region.   Putin agreed to her proposal for investigating what he called “the well-known information, or rumors” about what is happening to people “with a non-traditional sexual orientation.”   The abuse was first reported in April by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which said about 100 suspected …

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