World

France to Trump: Common Decency Would Have Been Appropriate
2018-11-14 23:04:40 UTC
PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday told Donald Trump that France was the United States’ ally and not a vassal state after the U.S. president attacked him in a series of tweets that demonstrated how much their relationship had soured. Although Macron’s response was restrained, his government spokesman showed Trump’s criticism had struck a chord. When asked earlier about Trump’s tweets, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said they were posted on the day France was mourning the anniversary of militant attacks in Paris. “Yesterday was November 13, we were marking the murder of 130 of our people,” Grive...
Angela Merkel Lays Out Germany's Vision For Europe
2018-11-13 18:45:01 UTC
Strasbourg/ France — The German chancellor has addressed MEPs in Strasbourg, laying out Germany's vision for the future of Europe. Seven months ahead of EU parliamentary elections, she gave her personal assessment of where the bloc stands. As the clock winds down on her final term as chancellor, Angela Merkel began by looking back on the EU's achievements and highlighting Europe's diversity, which was also its strength, she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Merkel warned that Europe's values were under attack and she highlighted the principle of European solidarity: "We are experiencing that it is more and more d...
France, Germany Mark 100 Years Since End of World War I
2018-11-10 18:13:56 UTC
The leaders of Germany and France on Saturday made a pilgrimage to the spot where an armistice was signed a century ago to end World War I. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron took part in a memorial ceremony at the Compiegne forest, 90 kilometers (56 miles) northeast of Paris. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918, an initial agreement to end four years of one of the world's deadliest conflicts was signed by the Allies and Germany in a train carriage in a nearby forest clearing, from where the two leaders on Saturday held a symbolic repeat signing ceremony. Merkel and Macron then watc...
Angela Merkel Ally Urges New Era in German Politics
2018-11-07 19:51:09 UTC
The battle to be the next leader of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats is heating up. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the candidate considered closest to the chancellor personally and politically, has now made her case. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the woman many consider the natural successor to Angela Merkel both in leadership style and political agenda, has set out why she should be the next head of Germany's embattled conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Wednesday's press conference in Berlin was a home game for the CDU general secretary, who staged it in the office representing Saarland, the small southwestern st...
Brexit Pulls UK and Ireland Apart, Undermines Relationship
2018-11-05 04:16:25 UTC
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement which ended thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday. “Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement and is fraying the relationship between Britain and Ireland,” he told Irish state broadcaster RTE. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit has been one of the major sticking points in Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union in March next year. “Anything that pulls the communities apart in Northern Ireland undermines the Good Friday Agreement, and anything that pulls Britain and...
Angela Merkel offering to step down as CDU head
2018-10-30 18:58:10 UTC
BERLIN (AP) — Angela Merkel set off Monday on what could be a three-year countdown to the end of her leadership of Germany, a stint that has made her the European Union’s longest-serving leader and a key figure in facing the continent’s many crises. Merkel announced that she will give up the leadership of her conservative Christian Democratic Union in December and won’t stand for a fifth term as chancellor — signaling the beginning of the end at the helm for the woman many had labeled the “leader of the free world.” That’s a title she herself objected to, saying leadership is never up to one person or country. But she has been a stal...
European lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastics
2018-10-25 19:15:10 UTC
European lawmakers have approved measures to reduce plastics polluting seas and oceans. A proposed ban targets the top 10 single-use plastic products that litter Europe's beaches. The European Parliament on Wednesday approved measures that could lead to a ban on single-use plastic items, including straws, cotton swabs and disposable plastic plates and cutlery, by 2021. The parliament backed the proposals with a 571-53 majority. <blockquote> In May, the European Commission proposed EU-wide rules to target the top 10 single-use plastic items that litter Europe's beaches or are found in its seas, as well as lost and abandoned fishing gea...
Son of murdered Saudi journalist has flown out of Saudi Arabia
2018-10-25 19:11:25 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The eldest son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has flown out of Saudi Arabia, two sources close to the family said on Thursday. Salah Khashoggi, who one source said holds dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship and had thus far been under a travel ban, departed Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The sources provided no further details. Salah Khashoggi’s departure came a day after a meeting at the al Yamama Palace in Riyadh in which he and other family members received condolences from King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Turkish officials and some U.S. lawmakers allege the crown prince ordered...
Migrant caravan: Trump deliberately lying to American people
2018-10-24 01:02:20 UTC
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence misstated federal statistics Tuesday when trying to help President Donald Trump make the case that terrorists are among thousands of migrants moving through Mexico toward the U.S. border. Trump himself acknowledged he’s got no proof terrorists are in the mix. A look at their remarks: PENCE: “In the last fiscal year, we apprehended more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day at our southern border from countries that are referred to in the lexicon as other than Mexico. That means from the Middle East region.” — remarks at a Washington Post event.</p><bl...
Germany to halt all arms exports to Saudi
2018-10-22 21:35:32 UTC
ORTENBERG, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a “monstrosity” and vowed to halt all German arms exports to Riyadh until the case is cleared up. Merkel, in her harshest comments to date, decried what she called “the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey” during a campaign rally in the town of Ortenberg before a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday. “It must be cleared up. As long as it’s not cleared up, there will be no arms exports to Saudi Arabia. I assure you of that very decidedly,” Merkel said...
Brexit: EU to break a deadlock over the Irish border
2018-10-22 17:03:04 UTC
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union negotiators are looking at ways to promise Britain a customs deal that could stretch Brussels’ Brexit red lines but might break a deadlock over the Irish border, EU sources close to the talks have told Reuters. Accounts of how British and EU negotiators came close to a deal on Oct. 13 focus on how Prime Minister Theresa May balked at an EU demand for a “backstop” clause. This could put Northern Ireland in a special relationship with the EU that might distance it from the British mainland to avoid putting up customs posts on Britain’s only EU land border, with Ireland. But as the two sides try to re...
UK can remain in EU single market until end of 2020
2018-10-25 19:02:53 UTC
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Commission has offered to allow Britain to remain in the EU customs union and internal market beyond an agreed transitional arrangement until the end of December 2020, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. “In a goodwill gesture to Britain, the commission has raised the possibility of extending the transitional period,” the newspaper reported, citing a German government document. It did not say what the new date was. <hr><i>Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Alison Williams</i><hr> <h2>European lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastics</h2> European lawmakers have approved measu...
Brexit: The Irish border has become a sticking point
2018-10-15 16:25:14 UTC
LUXEMBOURG (AP) — Britain and the European were still both refusing to blink Monday over the question of the Irish border in Brexit talks — only two days ahead of a summit once seen as the moment when they would have to reach deal on Britain’s divorce from the bloc. A flurry of diplomatic meetings over the weekend had raised hopes for a Brexit agreement, but they were derailed by the issue that has dogged the talks for months — how to ensure that no hard border is created between the EU’s Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland once Brexit happens on March 29. The EU has proposed a “backstop” solution that would keep Northern Ireland ...
Critical Journalist 'killed inside Saudi consulate': Proof
2018-10-12 17:29:39 UTC
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s government has told U.S. officials it has audio and video proof that missing Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Washington Post reported Friday. The newspaper, for which Khashoggi is a columnist, cited anonymous officials as saying the recordings show a Saudi security team detained the writer when he went to the consulate on Oct. 2 to pick up a document for his upcoming wedding. The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm the report, and Turkish officials would not comment. A delegation from Saudi Arabia arrived in Turk...
Russian "black operations" becoming active as East-West confrontation worsens
2018-10-09 19:03:47 UTC
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s military spies are being mocked abroad as bunglers but the army’s influence over Kremlin foreign policy is growing and there is little likelihood it will halt its “black operations”. The GRU military intelligence agency is blamed by the West for several botched attacks this year, including attempting to kill former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury and trying to hack the global chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands. <blockquote><img alt="A_met_police_cctv_still_of_suspects_ruslan_boshirov_and_alexander_petrov_in_salisbury_in_march_(met_police)" src="/system/image...
US: Deported migrant parents can lose custody of their kids
2018-10-09 17:44:47 UTC
Araceli Ramos sheds a tear as she describes her battle to be reunited with her 5-year-old daughter. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) AP — As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: “They want to steal my daughter!” It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again. What followed — one foster family’s initially successful attempt to wi...
Laser Trio Win Nobel Prize In Physics
2018-10-02 18:38:17 UTC
STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining. They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years. Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. <blockquote><img alt="Nobel_prize_for_physics_2018_award_winners_(l-r)_arthur_ashkin_of_the_u.s.__gerard_mourou_of_france_and_donna...
Angela Merkel, Most Respected Global Leader
2018-10-03 00:02:37 UTC
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most respected global leader and the image of the United States has gotten worse since Donald Trump took office, a leading survey showed. The survey of 25 nations by the Pew Research Center also showed that respondents from across the globe have less confidence in Trump’s ability to lead than they do in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has pulled the United States out of international agreements like the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal, cozied up to authoritarian leaders like Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and criticized ...
Brexit: UK politicians remain deeply divided
2018-09-28 18:31:42 UTC
More than two years since the 2016 EU referendum, the United Kingdom, its politicians and its business leaders remain deeply divided over Brexit while Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to clinch a divorce deal with the EU. Opponents of Brexit are exploring ways to stop what they say is Britain’s biggest mistake since World War Two. Miller is leading a campaign to have another referendum, but she said if the government manages to successfully navigate an exit deal then politicians must be allowed to focus on domestic issues without the distractions of a debate about Britain’s relationship with Europe. “Whatever happens at the end ...
Refugee children making a new life in Germany
2018-09-23 22:08:49 UTC
Hailing from Syria, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, they attend the same integration class in their new home. Despite different backgrounds, these high school students all have one thing in common: motivation to succeed. "I have been in Germany for two years. I took off on foot, then someone gave me a ride in their car, after that I continued by bus and train and then finally on foot again. In Austria, a friend and I simply boarded a train to Munich. I couldn't speak any German." The events that Aziz Ahmad Noori is referring to took place two years ago. He was 15 at the time. He fled Afghanistan – fled violence – without his parents. ...
UNHCR: 4 million refugee children can't go to school
2018-09-23 22:16:47 UTC
Four million refugee children around the world are excluded from education, according to a United Nations report. A solution should be to allow refugees to attend regular schools, the UNHCR has demanded. With more and more children forced to leave their homes, the number of refugees out of education has topped four million, according to the UN's Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The figure represents more than half of all school-age refugees around the world, according to the report named "Turn the Tide: Refugee Education in Crisis." <blockquote><h2>Key takeaways from the report</h2><blockquote><I> • There are now 7.4 million school-age refu...
London mayor calls for second referendum on Brexit
2018-09-16 18:23:03 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - London mayor Sadiq Khan has called for another referendum on Britain’s European Union membership, saying the prime minister’s handling of Brexit negotiations had become “mired in confusion and deadlock” and was leading the country down a damaging path. Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29. But with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans still not accepted, some lawmakers, as well as union and business leaders, are arguing for people to have a final say on any deal with Brussels. May has repeatedly ruled out a second referendum. She says members of parliament will get to vote on whether to accept any final ...
German, French and British jets to show European efforts integrating air defenses
2018-09-13 04:11:53 UTC
ON BOARD A BELGIAN AIR FORCE PLANE (Reuters) - British, French and German fighter jets simulated flight interceptions over Western Europe on Wednesday as part of NATO drills to deter Russian planes from entering allied airspace and to showcase European efforts to integrate their air defenses. Fighter pilots carrying air-to-air missiles from 10 NATO nations took turns to simulate the interception of a Belgian air force transport plane en route to Spain, performing visual inspections of the aircraft’s status by hovering off the wings at speeds of 900 km/hour (560 mph). Some 60 NATO jets, mainly from European allies, are on alert to def...
Ireland doesn't give UK a free-ride back-door to EU
2018-09-12 19:06:52 UTC
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union officials are working on re-drafting a sensitive Irish protocol to the draft Brexit treaty with Britain, as part of what EU negotiator Michel Barnier has called efforts to “de-dramatize” the issue and get a deal, EU officials said on Wednesday. Officials and diplomats close to the negotiations told Reuters previously this month that work was under way to find wording that could ease British fears that the “backstop” to avoid a hard land border for Northern Ireland would pull the province away from its constitutional anchor to the United Kingdom. British officials have said their problems with the E...
Florence: US Facing the Challenges of Climate Change
2018-09-12 00:11:05 UTC
Hurricane Florence is moving relentlessly toward the Southeastern U.S. It's a large, powerful cyclone that will likely bring storm surge and high winds to coastal communities. But climate scientists say one of the biggest threats posed by Florence is rain. "Freshwater flooding poses the greatest risk to life," explains James Kossin, an atmospheric scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And Florence could cause extensive freshwater flooding for two reasons. First, Florence is moving slowly and could all but stop when it reaches land. "The storm could be over No...