Category: Світ

Police and organizers say more than 100,000 people took part in an open-air party celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.   Despite the cold and damp, crowds flocked to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate late Saturday for music and fireworks.   The boulevard leading up to the Brandenburg Gate was covered with …

Queen Elizabeth II joined Britons in remembering their war dead, as the country’s political leaders paused campaigning for the Dec. 12 election to take part in a somber Remembrance Sunday service in London.The queen, dressed in black, watched from a balcony as her son and heir Prince Charles laid a wreath of scarlet poppies on …

Pope Francis urged the faithful on Sunday to pray for unity in South Sudan and said he hoped to visit the country in 2020. He also urged prayers for a nation close to his own, Bolivia, which has been rocked by weeks of political unrest following disputed elections.Pope Francis has long been concerned about the …

Voters in Spain are casting their ballots Sunday in the country’s fourth election in four years. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party is expected to be the big winner, as it was the last time.  In the previous election, however, the Spanish leader’s party failed to win enough votes to form a stable government. The campaigning leading …

Funeral directors in Moscow say a growing number of people are ignoring traditions and crafting unique and flashy celebrations of life.  Some are also leaving a digital legacy on their headstones.  VOA’s Jim Randle narrates a look at changing times.  …

Are the West’s secrets safe in the hands of Britain’s politicians?It is a question Britain’s intelligence officers are asking themselves — so, too, their counterparts in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing relationship that includes the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It’s a tie-up that’s been called the most successful espionage alliance in history.Not since the …

Waving separatist flags and chanting, “Freedom for political prisoners!” thousands of supporters of Catalan independence gathered in Barcelona for concerts and rallies on Saturday, while some protesters faced off with police, a day before Spain heads to the polls for a general election. Mostly organized by secretive Catalan protest group Democratic Tsunami, the demonstrations aim to force Spaniards to reflect on the prison …

Chancellor Angela Merkel led a series of commemorations Saturday in the German capital to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city during the Cold War until it was breached and torn down on November 9, 1989.    Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany, said, “The …

Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse — where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains — before …

There’s a new statue of Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, on a terrace of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, a stone’s throw from the iconic Brandenburg Gate.It is a long time coming, for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and other supporters of the project. They had been pressing Berlin city officials for years to …

President Donald Trump prepares to welcome Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House Nov. 13, just weeks after Turkey launched an assault in Syria on Kurdish fighters — longtime allies of the United States in the fight against Islamic State terrorists. U.S. lawmakers from both  parties have slammed the president for his announcement …

There’s a new statue of Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, on a terrace of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, a stone’s throw from the iconic Brandenburg Gate.It is a long time coming, for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and other supporters of the project. They had been pressing Berlin city officials for years to …

Crammed with Chinese restaurants, Turkish carryouts and Tunisian bakeries, Avenue de Flandre in northern Paris is, in many ways, the face of today’s France. Sub-Saharan African and East Asian workers staff the markets lining the grimy artery, a haphazard match of needs and chance.But for some sectors, that may soon change.Earlier this week, French authorities …

President Donald Trump says he’s weighing an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow.Trump tells reporters he appreciates the invitation from Putin, but the parade falls “right in the middle of political season,” so he’s not sure he can make it.He adds: “I would love to …

The United Nations’ highest court ruled Friday that it has jurisdiction in a case brought by Ukraine that alleges Russia breached treaties on terrorist financing and racial discrimination following its annexation of Crimea by arming rebels in eastern Ukraine and reining in the rights of ethnic Tatars and other minorities.    The decision by the …

Ten teenagers were among the 39 Vietnamese found dead in a truck container in southeast England last month, local police said Friday while relaying for the first time details of those who died.The scope of the tragedy became clear as police released the names and ages of those who died in one of Britain’s worst …

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States said Washington and its allies are still confronting formidable communist adversaries and the free world needs to continue to defend against threats from Russia and China.In a speech near Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Russia …

Almost whatever happens Dec. 12, after Britons have voted for the third time in almost four years in a general election, the country is likely to emerge even more disunited than before, analysts and commentators worry.The vote may well mark an important stage in the unpacking of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says NATO remains one of the most important strategic partnerships in recorded history. Speaking Thursday in Germany at an event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pompeo said the alliance has a critical role amid dangers posed by communist governments around the world. Pompeo’s …

An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor in Italy has been placed under police protection after receiving hundreds of threats on social media.Liliana Segre, who was sent to the Auschwitz death camp at age 13, has been receiving as many as 200 threats daily, many against her life. In response to the attacks, Segre, who is senator for life, …

The United States and Germany are reaffirming the strategic partnership and alliance under NATO, rejecting French President Emmanuel Macron’s view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is experiencing “brain death.”    “I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically, one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” U.S. Secretary of State …

Organizers of a major horse jumping exhibition in Helsinki, Finland, are re-defining the term horsepower.  They are taking more than 100 tons of waste from hundreds of horses and converting it to electricity. The renewable energy project has grown at the annual event over the years and now meets all the exhibition’s power needs, with …

UK police say they have formally identified the 39 people found dead in a container truck in southeastern England and notified their families in the apparent people-smuggling tragedy.The authorities said Thursday they’ve been working with Vietnamese police and the coroner to identify the bodies that were found Oct. 23 in the back of a truck …

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that a lack of U.S. leadership is causing the “brain death” of the NATO military alliance, insisting in an interview published Thursday that the European Union must step up and start acting as a strategic world power.“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told The …

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova is clear. There is nothing the Kremlin can do about Russian military contractors operating in Africa.During one of her weekly press briefings shortly after news broke that more than two dozen Russians had been killed in Libya, I pressed her about whether the Kremlin endorsed their presence.And if it …

An 89-year-old Auschwitz survivor who is a senator-for-life in Italy unwittingly provoked one of the country’s most intense confrontations with anti-Semitism since the end of its Fascist dictatorship during World War II.In response to revelations that she is subject to 200 social media attacks each day, Liliana Segre called for the creation of a parliamentary …