Category: Євросоюз

Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) on Tuesday defended its efforts to combat theft of business secrets after a Swiss man was arrested in Germany on suspicion of working for the spy agency. The 54-year-old man, identified only as Daniel M., was arrested on Friday. His lawyer told a Swiss newspaper he was suspected of trying to find out how German states have obtained CDs containing details of secret Swiss bank accounts set up by Germans to evade tax. The man was detained in Frankfurt, and officers from Germany’s federal criminal police carried out searches at several addresses in the region. …

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Showtime cable network is presenting four hours of director Oliver Stone interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin on four consecutive nights in June. The network announced Monday that “The Putin Interviews” will air first on June 12 at 9 p.m. Eastern, with three additional hour-long installments on the following nights. Showtime said Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over the past two years, most recently in February.   Showtime is comparing the project to conversations held by British TV host David Frost and former U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1977.   Stone had also interviewed Putin for his documentary …

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Protesters in the United States and around the world have marked International Workers Day, May Day, with rallies and demonstrations that, from France to Turkey, turned violent Monday. VOA Europe Correspondent Luis Ramirez reports. …

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It’s nearly party time for Britain’s Princess Charlotte, who celebrates her 2nd birthday on Tuesday. Her parents marked the occasion Monday by distributing a snapshot of Charlotte taken by her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge. Here are five things to know about the family as the landmark nears: Why haven’t we seen more of Princess Charlotte?   Prince William and his wife, Kate, want to protect their daughter’s privacy. It’s not surprising that Kate took the official photo to mark Charlotte’s second birthday on the protected grounds of the family’s country estate. The royal couple has tried to keep Charlotte …

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A look at protests around the world on May 1, International Workers Day – a day when workers and activists march in the streets and gather in city centers to honor laborers. …

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The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concern at mass arrests and renewal of the state of emergency in Turkey.   Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Switzerland Monday, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said terror should not be tackled at the expense of human rights.   “It is highly unlikely that the suspensions and detentions will have met due process standards,” he said after the latest round of suspensions of civil servants and arrests of police in Turkey.   Addressing the detention of Turkish members of the media, Zeid said that “journalism is not a crime in Turkey, it is …

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Whether or not Emmanuel Macron wins the French presidency in next Sunday’s runoff, he has already accomplished the unthinkable.   That’s thanks to an unorthodox, American-style grassroots campaign, which has harvested ideas from the left and the right, tossed them with a dose of startup culture and business school acumen and produced a political phenomenon. Without a party to back him up or any experience stumping for votes, the 39-year-old Macron came out on top of the first round of the French presidential vote, winning over 8 million voters and overturning decades of French political expectations. An inside look by …

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Former premier Matteo Renzi regained the Democratic Party leadership, handily winning a Sunday primary that he hopes will bolster the center-left’s ability to counter growing support for populist politicians in Italy ahead of national elections. “Forward, together,” Renzi tweeted, invigorated by his comeback after a stinging defeat in a December reforms referendum aimed in part at streamlining the legislative process led him to resign as head of Italy’s government and as leader of his squabbling party.   “The alternative to populism isn’t the elite,” Renzi told supports late Sunday after unofficial results indicated he got more than 70 percent of …

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French forces said Sunday they killed more than 20 militants in Mali near the border with Burkina Faso. French military officials and witnesses say the attack came from the air and on the ground in a forest in the Sahel region. More than 3,500 French soldiers are spread out across Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger combating Islamist extremists. Mali has extended a state of emergency for another six months as it tries to stave off an al-Qaida-linked insurgency in the north, and extremists launching attacks from Burkina Faso in the south. …

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Poland’s Foreign Ministry has suspended an honorary consul in the United States who allegedly posted on Facebook an altered picture of European Council President Donald Tusk dressed as a Nazi. Maria Szonert-Binienda headed Poland’s honorary consulate in Akron, Ohio. She denies the charges. Szonert-Binienda told the Associated Press someone hacked her Facebook account. “I did not make a photo of Donald Tusk as an SS man. I am against promoting SS symbols and ideologies. I am against using words like ‘fascism’ in the public political discourse today. I am against comparing our politicians to Hitler,” she said. Tusk is a …

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An English policeman wearing a gorilla costume while crawling the London Marathon has finally finished the race, almost a week after starting.   Metropolitan Police officer Tom Harrison, who goes by the name “Mr. Gorilla,” raised a reported 26,000 pounds ($33,650) for the Gorilla Organization, which is dedicated to conserving gorillas in countries including Rwanda and Uganda.   The 41-year-old Londoner started the 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) route last Sunday and crossed the finish line on Saturday. Harrison slept at friends’ houses in the evenings after completing around 10 to 12 hours and 4.5 miles per day. He has swapped between crawling …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats have opened a seven-point lead over the center-left Social Democrats five months ahead of the Sept. 24 election, according to a poll on Sunday in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. The Emnid institute survey found the Christian Democrats and their Christian Social Union allies winning 36 percent of the vote if the election were held on Sunday, unchanged from a similar Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag taken a week ago. But the Social Democrats (SPD), led by their chancellor candidate Martin Schulz, continued to slide and lost two percentage points in the …

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FIFA Council member Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait is resigning from his soccer roles under pressure from allegations in an American federal court that he bribed Asian officials. Sheikh Ahmad said Sunday in a statement he will withdraw from a May 8 election in Bahrain for the FIFA seat representing Asia, which he currently holds. “I do not want these allegations to create divisions or distract attention from the upcoming AFC [Asian Football Confederation] and FIFA Congresses,” said the Kuwaiti royal, who denies any wrongdoing. “Therefore, after careful consideration, I have decided it is in the best interests of …

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Pope Francis called on Sunday for the respect of human rights and an end to violence in Venezuela, where nearly 30 people were killed in unrest this month. Francis, speaking to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly address, decried a “grave humanitarian, social , political and economic crisis that is exhausting the population”. Venezuela’s opposition is demanding elections, autonomy for the legislature where they have a majority, a humanitarian aid channel from abroad to alleviate an economic crisis, and freedom for more than 100 activists jailed by President Nicolas Maduro’s government. “I make a …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday his country may take further action against Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria and insisted U.S. support for such groups “must come to an end.”   The U.S. moved troops and armored vehicles through several Syrian cities and towns on Friday and Saturday in a show of force apparently intended to dissuade Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces from attacking each other.   Kurdish officials described the U.S. troop movement as a “buffer” between them and Turkey.   The U.S. has provided air cover and other support to Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State …

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Poland’s Foreign Ministry has suspended one of its honorary consuls in the U.S. after the woman allegedly posted a digitally-altered image showing European Council President Donald Tusk dressed as a Nazi German SS officer. The image was posted on the Facebook page of Maria Szonert Binienda, recently named honorary consul in Akron, Ohio. The news agency PAP reported Sunday that she has been suspended from that position and that further decisions will be decided after Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski returns from a visit to Australia. Szonert Binienda told The Associated Press in an email that she never posted the altered …

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Turkey has dismissed nearly 4,000 people from its civil service, military, and gendarmerie, in what appears to be a purge related to last year’s attempted coup. Turkey announced the move on Saturday, saying in the government’s Official Gazette that those let go include 1,127 employees of the justice ministry, made up of prison guards, academics and religious affairs ministry employees. It appears to be one of the largest such purges since the coup attempt last July. Since that time some 120,000 people have been suspended from their jobs in civil service and the private sector, and more than 40,000 people …

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The Russian opposition movement founded by exiled Kremlin critic and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky protested President Vladimir Putin in 32 cities Saturday, despite the fact that authorities have banned the movement and declared it illegal, and police have raided its Moscow offices. The main rally in Moscow had a few hundred protesters gathering in a park before moving to an administrative building nearby, where they submitted a letter urging Putin not to run for a fourth term in 2018. In St. Petersburg, though, police arrested a few dozen protesters after about 200 of them gathered for an unsanctioned demonstration. The demonstrations …

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Pope Francis concluded a 27 hour visit to Egypt Saturday, after delivering mass to a crowd of 25,000 Catholics and visiting a seminary. Preaching a message of “peace,” the pontiff tried to reach out to both Christians and Muslims, denouncing those who preach violence in the name of God. Pope Francis said mass in Latin to a vast throng of worshipers gathered at Egypt’s Air Force Stadium Saturday, amid strict security. Egyptian media reported that 25,000 Catholic Christians from six branches of the church attended the mass, amid a festive atmosphere. A choir of Armenian Catholics took its turn to …

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The European Union has voted unanimously to adopt guidelines to negotiate Britain’s exit from the bloc, the summit chairman said Saturday. “Guidelines adopted unanimously. [The] EU-27’s firm and fair political mandate for the Brexit talks is ready,” said EU president Donald Tusk, who tweeted from the summit where EU leaders met in Brussels without British Prime Minister Theresa May. The 27 leaders voted to approve the guidelines in less than 15 minutes. Talks with Britain will begin shortly after its general elections on June 8. These talks will focus on issues such as the welfare of EU citizens and families …

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