Category: Євросоюз

U.S. officials and lawmakers may have been outraged when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards attacked and beat peaceful protesters in Washington as their leader watched. Back in Turkey, however, that hard-line approach is welcomed by many of the president’s nationalist supporters. The clash Tuesday began when Erdogan’s motorcade pulled up in front of the Turkish ambassador’s residence, returning from a visit to the White House and a meeting with President Donald Trump.  Erdogan, emerging from his limousine, stood and watched as his guards and supporters began punching and kicking their way through a group of mostly Kurdish protesters across …

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The Greek Parliament approved another round of tough economic cuts and austerity measures Thursday to assure itself another installment payment of European bailout funds. Greece may have again faced bankruptcy in July without the payment. More cuts for pensioners All 153 lawmakers in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist coalition voted for the cuts; all 128 opposition members voted no. More than 10,000 Greeks weary of the nation’s economic problems, including elderly pensioners facing more cuts, marched outside Parliament against the measures. Several dozen young marchers wearing masks broke away from the crowd to throw gasoline bombs at police, who responded …

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NATO’s chief says members are discussing whether to join the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group but insists the alliance will not deploy combat troops. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that “no decision has been taken. The discussion is going on.”   He told reporters in Brussels that it “is absolutely out of the question for NATO to go into combat operations.”   U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to pressure NATO to do more to fight extremists in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan when he meets his allied counterparts in Brussels on May 25.   NATO supports the coalition …

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Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters. The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Trump advisers, …

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Support for French President Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist party is growing before legislative elections next month, a poll found Thursday, raising the chances that he will be able to win parliamentary backing for his reform plans. A Harris Interactive poll found Macron’s Republic on the Move party, together with allies, set to win the largest share of the vote in the first round of the National Assembly elections June 11. Thirty-two percent of 4,600 registered voters questioned planned to vote for Macron’s party, it said. That was up three points from a similar poll May 11 and up six points …

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Some Dutch passengers on KLM flights might have recognized the co-pilot’s voice when he introduced himself on the airline’s Cityhopper services.   It was not just their co-pilot telling them weather conditions and estimated time of arrival. It was their king. Regular guest pilot  King Willem-Alexander told national newspaper De Telegraaf in an interview published Wednesday that he has ended his role as a regular guest pilot after 21 years on KLM’s fleet of Fokker 70 planes and before that on Dutch carrier Martinair. He will now retrain to fly Boeing 737s as the Fokkers are being phased out of …

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The United States has expressed concern about Tuesday night’s violence outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington. At least two people were arrested and 11 people were injured in the altercations involving protesters and Turkish security personnel. The incident took place while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Donald Trump at the White House. Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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The Philippine government has told the European Union it will no longer accept development aid from the bloc, putting at risk programs to assist poor and conflict-hit regions in the country’s south, Europe’s ambassador said on Wednesday. Ambassador Franz Jessen said the decision to cut aid from the EU, a strong critic of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drugs war, would mean the loss of about 250 million Euros ($278.73 million) worth of grants mostly allocated to Muslim communities. Manila’s move comes days after Duterte won billions of dollars in pledges from China after attending the Belt and Road summit in Beijing. …

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U.S. and European Union officials will meet next week in Washington, D.C., to further discuss risks to air travel and solutions for protecting passengers, the European Commission said on Wednesday after the two sides met in Brussels. “At the meeting, both sides exchanged information on the serious evolving threats to aviation security and approaches to confronting such threats,” the EU executive and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement. …

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The German Air Force this month sent the U.S. military a written request for classified data on the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jet as it gears up to replace its current fleet of fighter jets from 2025 to 2035. The letter, sent by the Air Force’s planning command and seen by Reuters, makes clear that the German government has not yet authorized a procurement program and is not committed to any particular aircraft to replace its current warplanes. It said the Defense Ministry would carry out “an in-depth evaluation of market available solutions, including the F-35, later this year,” …

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Many countries are pinning their hopes on China and India to lead efforts to slow climate change amid a growing sense of resignation that U.S. President Donald Trump will either withdraw from a global pact or stay and play a minimal role. Delegates at the May 8-18 negotiations in Bonn on a detailed “rule book” for the 2015 Paris Agreement, the first U.N. talks since Trump took office, say there is less foreboding than when Washington last broke with global climate efforts in 2001. Trump doubts global warming has a human cause and says he will decide on a campaign …

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House was left reeling Wednesday following the stunning allegation that he sought to derail a criminal investigation into links his former national security adviser had with Russian officials on top of reports that Trump disclosed highly classified intelligence to two Moscow diplomats last week. “Nobody knows where this really goes from here,” one White House official told Politico, a Washington political news site. “What is next?” A small but growing number of Trump’s Republican colleagues in Congress, along with Democrats, called for a special prosecutor or commission to examine ties between Trump and his aides …

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Supporters and protesters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demonstrated in Lafayette Park outside the White House as U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Erdogan, in Washington on Tuesday. …

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After breaking the story about the systemic torture and extrajudicial killings of gay men by Chechen security officials in an unofficial prison outside Grozny, Elena Milashina of the Russian-language Novaya Gazeta newspaper has been forced into hiding. Faced with a fatwa by Chechen clerics who have vowed to kill the reporter along with any journalists associated with her publication, Milashina recently agreed to speak with VOA from an undisclosed location via Skype. Like her late colleague Anna Politkovskaya, the Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter who was gunned down in the doorway of her Moscow apartment building in 2006, Milashina has reported …

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How does a leading neo-Nazi website that has railed against Hispanic immigrants expand its audience beyond a loyal base of U.S. white supremacists? By publishing a Spanish-language edition, of course.   The Daily Stormer — infamous for orchestrating internet harassment campaigns by its “Troll Army” of readers — recently launched El Daily Stormer as a “news portal” tailoring its racist, anti-Semitic content for readers in Spain and Latin America.   Andrew Auernheimer, a notorious computer hacker and internet troll who writes for the English-language site, says the Spanish edition fits their mission to spread Hitlerism across the world.   “We want our …

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After meetings at the White House Tuesday, President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, praised the strength of the two countries’ relations, while at the same sidestepping their differences over strategies for confronting Islamic State extremists in northern Syria. Both Trump and Erdogan described bilateral ties as strong. “We’ve had a great relationship,” the U.S. president said, “and we will make it even better.” Neither leader mentioned Trump’s decision last week to supply heavy weapons to Syrian Kurdish rebel militias, the YPG, who make up a key part of a U.S.-backed alliance preparing to march on the …

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Ukraine ordered the blocking of access to a number of Russian websites Tuesday in the latest round of sanctions since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. President Petro Poroshenko’s office announced the decree, which he signed a day earlier, banning operations of popular Russian websites, such as search engine Yandex, for three years. The listed websites were still functioning in Ukraine Tuesday, and it is unclear how and when the government plans to block them. The Ukrainian government cited security concerns, saying the ban was imposed partly to protect against companies “whose activities threaten the information and cyber security of Ukraine,” …

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French President Emmanuel Macron spent his first full day in office traveling to Germany, telling Chancellor Angela Merkel he wants to work closely with her to create “deep reforms” to the European Union. Macron said in Berlin Monday there must be a “less bureaucratic” Europe and that he is ready to change EU treaties if needed. He also said France will push for economic reforms in the country to bring down unemployment and implement a reform agenda “not because Europe requests it, but because France needs it.” Macron said he does not favor European countries taking joint responsibility for old …

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On May 15, 1988, the Soviet Union began withdrawing from Afghanistan after eight years of military intervention that cost an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet soldiers their lives and killed or displaced millions of Afghans. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described the Afghan intervention, which began in  late 1979, as a costly drain on the Soviet economy with no clear victory in sight. Soviet troops entered Afghanistan en masse in December 1979, following infighting involving communist factions that had culminated with the ouster of the country’s president, Nur Mohammad Taraki, by supporters of a more radical rival, Hafizullah Amin. The invading …

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The Trump administration has tapped the wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, days before President Donald Trump embarks on his first foreign trip.   Trump will nominate Callista Gingrich for the post, two people with direct knowledge of the discussions said Monday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly before an official announcement.   Trump’s foreign trip this month includes a stop at the Vatican.   Callista Gingrich is president of Gingrich Productions and has produced a number of documentaries, including one …

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