Month: August 2022

Greece’s main opposition leader has called on the country’s prime minister to resign after he admitted that the nation’s spy chief bugged the phone of a senior political leader. The scandal is being dubbed Greece’s Watergate.   Speaking before Greece’s Parliament, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took the stage, defending what he called “a mistake.” The minute …

Serbia and Kosovo have settled an ethnic dispute over the movement of citizens across their border, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Saturday. “We have a deal,” Borrell said in a tweet. “Kosovo Serbs, as well as all other citizens, will be able to travel freely between Kosovo & Serbia using their ID …

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced the decision to cancel the September 12-18 EuroPride celebration during a news conference where he also proposed extending the term of Serbia’s prime minister, who identifies as a lesbian. Members of the European Pride Organizers Association chose Serbia’s capital three years ago to host the annual event. Vucic said a …

Citing unparalleled attacks on health care facilities, the World Health Organization said this week it is working to reconstruct Ukraine’s health system. The system has suffered extensive damage since Russia invaded the country six months ago. Over the past six months, the U.N. health agency says it has verified 173 attacks on medical facilities, which …

Authorities transferred some 400 asylum-seekers away from a makeshift camp outside an overcrowded migrant reception center in the northeastern Netherlands after a damning report called the site where hundreds of people were sleeping rough a health hazard. Leon Veldt, a spokesperson for the government’s asylum-seeker accommodation organization, said Saturday that the migrants were moved overnight …

As Friday’s end to a four-week conference to review the landmark U.N. treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons neared, delegates scrambled to reach agreement on a final document with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear power a key obstacle. Argentine Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference reviewing …

The Ocean Viking, a humanitarian ship of SOS Mediterranee, has rescued 268 people since Thursday during five rescues of migrants mostly found in overcrowded wooden boats between Libya and Malta, the NGO announced Friday. “Many have high levels of exhaustion and dehydration” and “severe sunburn,” said the NGO, whose headquarters are in Marseille. Several minors, …

Officials from Turkey, Finland and Sweden agreed on Friday to keep meeting in the coming months to discuss security concerns that Turkey raised as a precondition for allowing the two Nordic countries to join the NATO military alliance.  Officials from the three countries held their first such meeting on Friday in the southern Finnish city …

The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant resumed electricity supplies to Ukraine on Friday after one of its six reactors was reconnected to the Ukrainian grid, state nuclear company Energoatom said. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which is located in southern Ukraine, was disconnected from the Ukrainian grid for the first time in its history on …

A U.S. charity based in Jersey City, New Jersey, is collecting donations and raising funds not only to support Ukraine’s armed forces but also to help build a special bomb shelter at a boarding school for deaf and hearing-impaired children in Lviv, Ukraine. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Aleksandr Barash. …

While the world has taken notice that the war in Ukraine has passed its six months mark, it’s been more than 90 days since the Mariupol and Azovstal defenders have entered into Russian and pro-Russian forces’ captivity, their loved ones point out. On May 20, Denys Prokopenko, commander of Azov Regiment since 2017, posted his …

Inside the Azovstal steel plant, before Ukraine surrendered it to Russian forces …

Dutch aid agencies tended Thursday to hundreds of migrants camped in sweltering heat outside an overcrowded center for asylum-seekers as Dutch authorities investigated the death of a baby in the center a day earlier. The Dutch arm of Doctors Without Borders deployed medics to the tiny village of Ter Apel in the northeastern Netherlands to …

At the start of a three-day visit to Algeria, President Emmanuel Macron indicated Thursday that France and the North African country should move beyond their “painful” shared history and look to the future. The trauma of French colonial rule in Algeria and the bitter war for independence that ended it in 1962 has haunted relations …