Category: Євросоюз

Kosovo’s president said on Friday he would resign and force a parliamentary election if lawmakers do not approve changes that would effectively create a national army under a plan opposed by the country’s ethnic Serb minority and its NATO and U.S. allies. The Kosovo government ordered the creation of a national army three years ago, but Serbian deputies said they would block the required changes to the constitution. On Wednesday, parliament indicated it would bypass that opposition by preparing amendments to an existing law that would allow the Kosovo Security Forces (KSF) to buy heavy weapons and recruit more soldiers, …

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A helicopter crashed on a highway in the outskirts of Istanbul on Friday, after apparently hitting a television tower in dense fog, reports said. At least five people were killed, the governor said.    The helicopter, belonging to the Eczacibasi group of companies, was carrying seven people on board: the company’s four Russian guests, a Turkish official and two pilots.    Gov. Vasip Sahin said the helicopter crashed in Istanbul’s Buyukcekmece district after taking off from Itsanbul’s Ataturk Airport, adding that the cause of the crash is under investigation.   Eyewitness Fikret Karatekin, a taxi driver, told CNN-Turk television by …

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Donald Trump’s surprising victory in last year’s U.S. presidential election signaled a turn to the right. Now Europe is facing three critical elections of its own: next week in the Netherlands; next month in France; and later this summer in Germany. Just as anti-establishment fervor in Europe proved to be a harbinger of the U.S. election, will there now be a “Trump effect” in Europe that puts populist candidates into power? VOA’s Jane Bojadzievski has more. …

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Air pollution takes the lives of more than half a million young children every year, according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in London has come up pollution-busting face masks to protect kids from toxic air. …

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Israel’s prime minister was in Moscow Thursday to talk with Russia’s president about the Syrian crisis, the latest sign of Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East as well as Israel’s concerns over Moscow’s regional allies. Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin made no joint statement following the talks, but Netanyahu later issued a statement indicating he had “made it clear” to Putin that Israel wants to prevent any Syrian settlement from leaving “Iran and its proxies with a military presence” in Syria. Russia has come to assume a larger role in Israel’s foreign policy calculations since the Kremlin’s intervention in …

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Pope Francis says the Roman Catholic Church should start considering whether to let married men serve as priests in order to address a shortage of clergy, especially in remote areas. In an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit magazine, Francis said: “We must think about whether viri probati [married men of proven religious faith] are a possibility. Then we have to decide what tasks they can take on — for example, in remote communities.” Francis said allowing would-be priests to decide whether they wanted to remain celibate was not something he favored, but he suggested that was an issue for further …

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of “devastating incompetence” Thursday after his organization was able to obtain and publish documents related to CIA hacking programs. “This is a historic act of devastating incompetence, to have created such an arsenal and then stored it all in one place and not secured it,” Assange said during a live-streamed press conference. Earlier this week, WikiLeaks published thousands of pages of what it says are classified CIA documents that expose “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.” The documents allege that the CIA has the tools to hack into smart …

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Chancellor Angela Merkel told Turkey to stop invoking Berlin’s Nazi past in criticizing cancellations of Turkish ministers’ rallies in Germany, and said she would do everything possible to prevent Turkish domestic conflicts spilling onto German soil. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who survived an army attempt to topple him in July, is working to enlist the votes of Turks abroad to clinch sweeping new powers in an April referendum. But unease is spreading in Europe over the dispatch of ministers to communities themselves sometimes deeply divided. “To the many people with Turkish roots who are German citizens or have lived here …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks expected to focus on the situation in Syria. Greeting Netanyahu at the start of their talks, Putin emphasized a high level of trust between them.   Netanyahu hailed Russia’s role in fighting the Islamic State group and other radical militants in Syria. At the same time, he warned of the danger posed by radical Shiite groups, an apparent reference to the Hezbollah movement.   Russia has sided with Iran and Hezbollah in helping support Syrian President Bashar Assad, but at the same time it has maintained warm …

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The Kremlin on Thursday rejected U.S. claims of Russian violations of a landmark nuclear arms treaty, saying it has respected the pact and will continue to do so.   The controversy over the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty adds another thorn in the side for U.S. President Donald Trump’s declared goal of improving ties with Moscow, coming at a time when his administration is facing questions over alleged contacts with Russia during the U.S. election campaign.   Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday accused Russia of deploying a land-based cruise missile in …

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European Union leaders on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Donald Tusk president of the bloc. Tusk’s home country of Poland was the only one of the 28 member states to vote against his reappointment. Following the vote, Beata Mazurek, a spokeswoman for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party, questioned the unity of the EU in light of Tusk’s re-election. Poland had earlier threatened to derail the EU summit if the vote went through as planned, though that didn’t happen. Following his re-election, Tusk said on Twitter he hoped to “make the EU better,” despite Poland’s opposition. “Grateful for trust & …

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Presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron thinks he has the magic tool for liberating France’s blighted suburbs from poverty, violence and discrimination: turn jobless youth and drug dealers into legitimate entrepreneurs. The hurdles are high. Disillusioned residents of housing projects in towns like Les Mureaux, west of Paris, are deeply skeptical of campaign promises and the political elite. French presidents have tried for decades to fix the suburbs, and repeatedly failed. But that’s not deterring Macron, increasingly labeled by polls as the front-runner in France’s two-round April 23-May 7 election. He played with schoolchildren and huddled with community activists this week in …

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A leader of an ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia said the political crisis in the country could drag on for years and could be used by some politicians to ignite an ethnic conflict. The president has refused to back a coalition of the Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties after an election in December, arguing its pledge to allow wider official use of the Albanian language amounted to foreign interference in Macedonia’s affairs. Their coalition agreement triggered street protests in several cities in which nationalists marched and waved Macedonian flags. Ethnic Albanians make a third of the population in the …

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Hungary’s parliament has passed a law allowing the detention of all asylum seekers in border camps and the summary return of any illegal migrants back to the country from which they entered. The United Nations’ refugee agency, along with several human rights groups, say the policy breaks international and European Union laws, The new policy will be enforced by special personnel. A graduation ceremony was held Tuesday for 3,000 new recruits, which the government calls ‘border hunters.’ Armed with pistols and pepper spray, they will patrol Hungary’s frontiers alongside the police and army. Prime Minister Viktor Orban attended the ceremony, …

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A rock structure in the form of an arch which had featured in countless Malta tourism brochures collapsed into the sea on Wednesday in what Prime Minister Joseph Muscat described as a “heartbreaking event”. Geologists had long warned that the structure, on the north-western coast of the small island of Gozo, was eroding fast and the authorities had banned visitors from walking on top of it. The structure, known as the Azure Window because it arched over blue seas popular with divers, collapsed as Malta was hit by rough seas and stormy weather. (Click the image to view before and …

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More than a quarter-century after Georgia gained its independence from the Soviet Union, civil-society advocates there are still fighting for the kind of press freedoms enjoyed by residents of the EU and NATO nations.  On Tuesday, they claimed a small victory when Europe’s top human-rights court confirmed its suspension of an effort by authorities in Tbilisi to place Rustavi2, Georgia’s largest independent television station, under control of the station’s former co-owner, businessman Kibar Khalvashi, who is seen as a close ally of the government. The European Court of Human Rights first stepped into the case last week, blocking a ruling …

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin says U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has assured him that Washington will continue to support Kyiv in its standoff with Russia. Klimkin spoke to reporters after meeting at the State Department Tuesday with Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO who now serves as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat. Their meeting came amid ongoing concerns in Ukraine, and among its supporters in the West, that Trump could soften the U.S. line on Russia, given his stated desire to repair relations with Moscow. Trump’s new administration, however, has so far publicly supported the continuation of sanctions imposed …

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Swiss firms from food and beverage giant Nestle to banking groups UBS and Credit Suisse pledged new goals on Tuesday for supporting and promoting women. While Switzerland has Europe’s second-highest proportion of women in the workforce, it trails global standards on gender diversity in boardrooms and in management positions. Consultancies EY, Deloitte and PwC and staffing agency Adecco all committed to increase female leadership in their Swiss businesses to between 20 and 35 percent by 2020. This follows a recent survey by EY that found Swiss firms with at least 20 percent women in top management rated their financial situation …

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Macedonia’s president appealed Tuesday to international leaders to condemn demands by minority ethnic Albanians for enhanced constitutional rights that he says threaten his country’s existence. President Gjorge Ivanov argued that a common platform signed in Albania in January by three of his country’s ethnic Albanian parties endangers Macedonia’s sovereignty and independence. The platform “implies changes to the constitution of the Republic of Macedonia that would jeopardize the unitary character of the state,” he said in a letter to the European Council, NATO and the U.S. and Turkish presidents. Macedonia is in a deepening political crisis, sparked by a massive wiretap …

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A former British spy who compiled an explosive and unproven dossier on President Donald Trump’s purported activities in Russia has returned to work. Christopher Steele said Tuesday he is “really pleased” to be back in his London office after a prolonged period out of public view. He went into hiding in January after his name was published in connection with the dossier. The 52-year-old runs London-based Orbis Business Intelligence, a private security firm. He made a statement outside the firm’s central London office. “I’m now going to be focusing my efforts on supporting the broader interests of our company here,” …

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