Category: Євросоюз

Cannes, France — Filmmakers Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir spent so much time following an all-girl theatre troupe in a remote Egyptian village that at one point someone tried to sell them a house. “He thought we were always there so we might as well live there,” Riyadh told AFP after the premiere of their documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. “The Brink of Dreams” follows a group of teenage girls in rural southern Egypt over four years, between rehearsals, as they navigate the tough decisions that will determine their adulthood. Majda dreams of studying theatre in Cairo, Monika wants …

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Cairo — Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen on tourists in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province, the group said on its Telegram channel. Three Spanish tourists were killed and at least one Spaniard was injured in the attack, Spain’s foreign ministry said on Friday. Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qaniee four people had been arrested over the attack in which gunmen opened fire. In addition to the three foreign tourists, one Afghan citizen had been killed in the attack. Four foreigners and three Afghans were also injured, he added. Mountainous Bamiyan is home to a UNESCO …

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London — The final report of the U.K.’s infected blood inquiry will be published Monday, nearly six years after it began looking into how tens of thousands of people contracted HIV or hepatitis from transfusions of tainted blood and blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest to afflict Britain’s state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948, with around 3,000 people believed to have died as a result of being infected with HIV and hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver. The report is expected to criticize pharmaceutical firms and medical practitioners, civil …

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Paris — Armed robbers who used a motorbike as a battering ram made off with “several million euros’” [dollars’] worth of valuables in a heist of the luxury Paris boutique of self-declared “Jeweler to the Stars” Harry Winston, the French prosecutor’s office overseeing the police probe said.  Having refused Saturday to confirm that Harry Winston was the target, the Paris prosecutor’s office did so Sunday, saying the dazzling, by-appointment store on the tony Avenue Montaigne was robbed by a gang of at least three people.  They “forced entry to the jewelry store using a two-wheeler. They stole jewelry from several windows, …

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VIENNA — A court in the Russian city of St. Petersburg has ordered the seizing of assets of Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country, the Russia state news agency Tass says. The order is in response to a lawsuit over the planned construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea. The banks were among the guarantors in the contract for building a gas processing plant by a multinational construction firm, Renaissance Heavy Industries, and German company Linde. But the project was cancelled after Western sanctions, with the banks withdrawing their guarantees. The cancellation came at the …

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Bratislava — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday. A lone gunman, who appeared in court Saturday, shot Fico four times and he was at one stage said to be fighting for his life. “He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Kalinak, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters. The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour …

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London — The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the “millionth” press briefing on his court case. Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange’s legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the U.K. as soon as Monday.  Assange faces a hearing in London’s High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition. The outcome will depend …

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Even before kicking off a three-day visit to Madrid on Friday, Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei stirred controversy, accusing the socialist government of bringing “poverty and death” to Spain and weighing in on corruption allegations against the prime minister’s wife. In such circumstances, a typical visiting head of state may strive to mend fences with diplomacy. Not Milei. The brash economist has no plans to meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during his three days in the Spanish capital — nor the Spanish king, nor any other government official. Instead, he’ll attend a far-right summit Sunday hosted …

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RIETI, Italy — Ella Anthony knew it was time to leave her native Nigeria when she escaped an abusive, forced marriage only to face angry relatives who threatened to turn her in to police because she was gay.   Since Nigeria criminalizes same-sex relationships, Anthony fled a possible prison term and headed with her partner to Libya in 2014 and then Italy, where they both won asylum. Their claim? That they had a well-founded fear of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution back home. While many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrive in Italy from Africa and the Mideast are escaping war, …

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BERLIN — Six climate activists broke through a security fence at the Munich airport Saturday and glued themselves to access routes leading to runways, temporarily halting flights.  The activists from the group Last Generation were protesting flying as the most polluting form of transportation, said the German news agency dpa. Police detained the six.  Some 60 flights were canceled during the disruption that lasted a couple of hours, and passengers were rebooked on alternative flights, airport spokesperson Robert Wilhelm told dpa. Fourteen flights that were due to land in Munich were diverted to other airports, according to police.  Last Generation accused …

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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban government said Saturday that the death toll from an overnight gun attack on Western tourists in central Afghanistan had risen to at least six, including three Spaniards. Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul Mateen Qani said in a video statement that the Friday evening shooting in Bamiyan city by unknown assailants left three Afghans dead. He said that four foreigners and three Afghans were among those wounded. Qani said that Taliban security forces had apprehended seven suspects in connection with the attack, reiterating his government’s resolve to bring the perpetrators to justice. Spain’s government confirmed the fatalities of its …

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PEZINOK, Slovakia — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s condition was stable but serious Saturday as the man accused of trying to assassinate him faced his first court appearance. Two hours of surgery Friday to remove dead tissue from Fico’s multiple gunshot wounds “contributed to a positive prognosis,” Health Minister Zuzana Dolinkova said outside F. D. Roosevelt University Hospital in Banska Bystrica, where Fico was taken by helicopter after the shooting. Fico, 59, was attacked as he greeted supporters following a government meeting Wednesday in the former coal mining town of Handlova. The suspect was tackled to the ground and arrested. Fico’s …

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VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Friday overhauled its process for evaluating alleged visions of the Virgin Mary, weeping statues and other seemingly supernatural phenomena that have marked church history, putting the brakes on making definitive declarations unless the event is obviously fabricated. The Vatican’s doctrine office revised norms first issued in 1978, arguing that they were no longer useful or viable in the internet age. Nowadays, word about apparitions or weeping Madonnas travels quickly and can harm the faithful if hoaxers are trying to make money off people’s beliefs or manipulate them, the Vatican said. The new norms make clear …

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Diyarbakir, Turkey / Washington — A Turkish court gave several lengthy prison sentences to pro-Kurdish politicians for instigating protests in southeastern Turkey in 2014 when the Islamic State group attacked the Syrian border town of Kobani. Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, the former co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), on Thursday received the longest sentences among the 108 defendants, 18 of whom had been in pretrial detention. Demirtas was sentenced to 42 years for a total of 47 crimes, including “disrupting the unity and the integrity of the state,” while Yuksekdag received just over 30 years in prison for …

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washington — Hundreds of Syrian mercenaries have been sent by Turkey to Niger in recent months to protect Ankara’s economic and military interests in the West African nation, a rights group and experts said.  The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has researchers throughout Syria, reports that recruitment of Syrian fighters for deployment to Niger has been going on for several months.  “We have confirmed that about 1,100 Syrian fighters have already been deployed to Niger since September of last year,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory.  Syrian nationals are being recruited from areas under the control of …

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Washington — Two figures dressed in black and with their faces covered are caught on security camera vandalizing the Media Development Foundation office in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.   The video, taken in the early hours of May 9, shows the individuals putting up posters that falsely claim the nongovernmental organization’s executive director, Tamar Kintsurashvili, is a foreign agent.   Kintsurashvili told VOA the attack didn’t come as a big surprise. The goal is “to present us as enemies of this country,” she said.  The vandalism came amid large-scale protests in Georgia over a “foreign agent” law that passed its third and final reading …

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LONDON — Paul McCartney is a billionaire Beatle. According to figures released Friday, the former member of the Fab Four is the first British musician to be worth 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion). The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated that the wealth of the 81-year-old musician and his wife, Nancy Shevell, had grown by 50 million pounds since last year thanks to McCartney’s 2023 Got Back tour, the rising value of his back catalogue and Beyonce’s cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” on her “Cowboy Carter” album. A “final” Beatles song, “Now and Then,” was also released in November and topped music …

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PARIS — French police on Friday shot dead an armed man who was trying to set fire to a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen. “National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Police responded at 6:45 am (0445 GMT) to reports of “fire near the synagogue,” a police source said. A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died.” …

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