Month: August 2018

As relations between the United States and Turkey have soured in recent months, Ankara has stepped up its pursuit of better relations and increased trade with Europe and Russia. …

In Turkey, a group known as the “Saturday Mothers” marked the 700th week of gathering in Istanbul to protest the forced disappearances and political murders in Turkey during the military coup-era of 1980s and the Kurdish-Turkish conflict of the 1990s. But as Dorian Jones reports, Turkish authorities broke up the vigil Saturday. …

Western powers are calling on Russia to rein in its ally Syria and prevent another potential “humanitarian crisis” from breaking out in the latest arena of the country’s seven-year civil war. …

Ethiopia has ousted state-run Metals and Engineering Corporation (METEC) from a $4 billion dam project on the River Nile due to numerous delays in completing the project. The Grand Renaissance Dam is the centerpiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said at the weekend that the government had …

Read more “Ethiopia Ousts State Firm From Nile Dam Project”

The trial of more than two dozen people, including a former intelligence agency informant, suspected in the killings of two U.N. sanctions monitors last year in central Congo resumed on Monday after a 10-month suspension, defense lawyers said. Zaida Catalan, a Swede, and Michael Sharp, an American, were killed in March 2017 while investigating an …

Read more “Congo Trial Over Killings of UN Experts Resumes After Long Suspension”

A Russian court has sentenced a member of an outlawed Russian nationalist opposition movement to 3 1/2 years in prison for allegedly plotting mass disturbances, his wife says. …

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said preserving European Union unity was more important than forging a close relationship with post-Brexit Britain, and hit out at what he called U.S. President Donald Trump’s “aggressive” isolationism. Macron, who met Prime Minister Theresa May for talks on Britain’s departure from the EU during the summer holiday, said he …

Read more “Macron says Brexit Cannot Divide EU, Criticizes Trump’s Isolationism”

United Nations investigators have called for six top military figures in Burma to be prosecuted in an international court for genocide and war crimes against the country’s Rohingya minority. …

Two years after Islam Karimov’s death, his former presidential palace has reopened as a museum filled with fawning portraits of the autocratic leader who ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist for a quarter of a century. …

The Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States accused senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but was made a cardinal regardless. The letter, an extraordinary allegation from a one-time Holy See diplomat, also accuses Pope Francis of …

Read more “Letter: Vatican Knew About Disgraced Archbishop’s Behavior”

The Jacksonville Florida Sheriff’s Office says there has been a mass shooting at the Jacksonville Landing on the St. John’s River. Preliminary news reports say 11 people have been shot and witnesses say there are four dead. The local reports say police say it is still an active shooting scene. The shooting took place during …

Read more “Mass Shooting Reported at Video Game Tournament in Florida”

Russian opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov has been hospitalized again as he continued a nearly two-week hunger strike in prison. …

Thousands of people rallied on August 26 in Moldova’s capital to protest against the government. The event was the latest in a series of protests against the ruling Democratic Party, which is headed by controversial billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc. …

Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91. Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia in New York, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director …

Read more “Neil Simon, Broadway’s Master of Comedy, Dies at 91”

Dozens of expatriate Moldovans have protested in Brussels against Moldovan government policies. The August 26 rally outside the headquarters of the European Commission slammed Moldova’s recent changes in its electoral system and the annulment of the mayoral election in the country’s capital, Chisinau. The protesters signed a joint statement that they are planning to send …

Read more “Moldovan Expats Protest Against Government In Chisinau”

Arizona Senator John McCain, an American war hero has died. He was 81. The Senator’s office says he died Saturday after a long battle with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. …

U.S. Senator John McCain, a six-term Republican senator from Arizona and former prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict, has died of brain cancer at age 81. …

Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81. His daughter, …

Read more “US Senator, War Hero John McCain Has Died”