German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has appealed to Jews and Arabs in the Middle East to keep the window open for peace. Steinmeier is on his first foreign trip outside Europe since he was elected president in February. His visit coincides with the election of a new Hamas leader who is based in Gaza, unlike his predecessors. Zlatica Hoke reports. …
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Wednesday in Washington to discuss Syria, Ukraine and other issues. “On Syria, the secretary intends to discuss efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict,” the State Department said in a statement Monday. The announcement comes as U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the U.S. will closely examine Russia’s plan to establish “de-escalation” zones in Syria. “The devil is always in the details,” Mattis said Monday when asked about the …
Reactions continue to pour in as newly-elected president Emmanuel Macron whose business-friendly vision of European integration defeated Marine Le Pen, the far-right French nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union. Mariama Diallo reports. …
Reactions continue to pour in for newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, whose business friendly vision of European integration defeated Marine Le Pen, the far-right French nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union. In Germany, newspaper headlines read “It’s a boy”… “The winner is Europe.” Some commuters reacted with relief while others were less overjoyed that Macron was the only alternative. “I think it’s sad that it had to be decided like this because Macron wasn’t who everyone wanted to vote for. It was basically a choice between pest and cholera. But for Europe it’s a …
Facebook must remove postings deemed as hate speech, an Austrian court has ruled, in a legal victory for campaigners who want to force social media companies to combat online “trolling.” The case — brought by Austria’s Green party over insults to its leader — has international ramifications as the court ruled the postings must be deleted across the platform and not just in Austria, a point that had been left open in an initial ruling. The case comes as legislators around Europe are considering ways of forcing Facebook, Google, Twitter and others to rapidly remove hate speech or incitement to …
The Vatican is celebrating the big-bang theory. That’s not as out of this world as it sounds. The Vatican Observatory has invited leading scientists and cosmologists to talk black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. The Tuesday-Friday conference honoring Monsignor George Lemaitre is being held at the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help correct the notion that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to science. The perception has persisted in …
A beach that was swept away more than 30 years ago from a remote island off the west coast of Ireland has reappeared after thousands of tons of sand were deposited on top of the rocky coastline. The 300 meter beach near the tiny village of Dooagh on Achill Island vanished in 1984 when storms stripped it of its sand, leaving nothing more than a series of rock pools. But after high spring tides last month, locals found that the Atlantic Ocean had returned the sand. “It’s enormously significant,” Sean Molloy of Achill’s tourism office told the Irish Times newspaper, …
Russia is for the first time rolling out President Vladimir Putin’s Yunarmiya, or “Youth Army,” for the annual World War II Victory Day parade in Red Square. Putin created the military’s “patriotic” youth organization in 2015, but its national TV debut as a force of more than 30,000 members comes just weeks after nation-wide anti-corruption protests that drew many young people. As VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Moscow, Yunarmiya is seen as the Kremlin’s latest effort to encourage support from Russia’s next generation. …
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” …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …