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Gibraltar is preparing for a post-Brexit setup in which its firms will have no longer access to the European Union market but will maintain a preferential relationship with Britain, a top Gibraltar financial official said on Tuesday. The tiny British enclave on Spain’s southern tip, with a population of 30,000, is home to around 15,000 companies and is a major provider of insurance and gambling services. “We are currently planning for a hard Brexit,” James Tipping, director at Gibraltar’s government body for financial promotion, told EU lawmakers in a hearing in Brussels. He said Gibraltar did not expect to obtain …

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Italy will open new detention centers across the country in the next few months as part of its push to speed up deportations of illegal migrants, despite critics saying that the centers are not only inhumane but also do not produce the desired result. Violent protests and difficulty identifying migrants has led to the closure of similar centers over the past few years, but on Tuesday the Interior Ministry asked regional governments to provide a total of 1,600 beds in such centers. Interior Minister Marco Minniti says migrants must be detained to stop them from slipping away before they can …

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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. …

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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 …

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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. …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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, …

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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. …

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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” …

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