Новини

Ukrainian separatists in Donetsk on Friday celebrated the fourth anniversary of the city’s self-proclaimed independence from Ukraine with a parade. 

Local residents who support the pro-Russian separatists came to the parade in the city center with black, red and blue rebel flags along with Russian flags.

Ukrainian forces have battled the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk since 2014. A peace deal in 2015 has been little honored by either side. Ukraine accuses Russia of providing military support for separatists, a charge the Kremlin denies.

Residents at Friday’s parade said they wanted the region to be closer to Russia.

“I went to vote for the independence, for joining Russia. We want to be on the right track. Our course is toward Russia only,” said Svetlana, a Donetsk resident.

Donetsk also held a parade Wednesday to commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany. That parade featured tanks and other heavy weapons despite a ban on that type of celebration by Ukraine’s government.

While large, Soviet-style military parades have been revived under President Vladimir Putin in Russia, they have been banned in Ukraine since the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions broke out in 2014.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted weeks after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and has left more than 10,000 dead. 
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The Czech centrist ANO party on Friday approved a coalition agreement for a new government with the center-left Social Democrats, subject to a poll of Social Democrat party members.

The minority government would aim to boost spending on defense, wages and benefits as well as infrastructure, according to a policy agenda agreed by leaders of the two parties, which Reuters saw.

It would maintain a pro-Western policy course but keep the country outside the eurozone and resist any EU pressure to accept asylum-seekers transferred from other EU states.

“This is a solid base for the creation of a stable government,” Social Democrat chief Jan Hamacek said after a party leadership meeting.

But the deal still needs the approval of rank-and-file Social Democrats; the outcome of their poll, likely to be announced June 15, is far from certain.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ ANO party was the clear winner of an election in October but lacks a majority. The coalition will still be in a minority, with 93 of 200 lower house seats, and require ad hoc backing from the small Communist party.

Most parties, and also some prominent Social Democrats, have rejected joining a cabinet led by the billionaire businessman because he has been charged with fraudulently tapping a European Union subsidy a decade ago. He calls the investigation a plot.

As a condition of forming a coalition, the Social Democrats secured an agreement that Babis will step down if a court finds him guilty in the fraud case.

ANO’s other concessions to the Social Democrats include raising sick pay and child allowances and increasing salaries across the education sector by 50 percent by 2021.

Communist backing

“I think Social Democrat members will respond positively … we made an awful lot of compromises,” Babis said.

If the deal falls through, he said an early election could be held next spring.

The pro-Russia and anti-NATO Communist party has said it would lend the government its 15 votes in the formal confidence vote, which would mark its first involvement in national government since the end of Communist rule in 1989.

The Communists oppose some of the potential coalition’s foreign policy plans, such as more involvement in NATO military missions, but their voice will be limited.

On defense, the new government would plan to boost spending to 1.4 percent of GDP from 1.05 percent last year, still far below the NATO guideline of 2 percent.

It would also look to stabilize debt, which has dropped thanks to strong economic growth in the past three years to 34.6 percent of GDP in 2017.

Taxes should dip with a reduction in personal income tax and in value-added tax on some services, tap water and draft beer. The budget should remain broadly balanced.

ANO’s current one-party cabinet lost a vote of confidence in January and has since served in a caretaker capacity.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in a phone call Friday that talks were needed to discuss how U.S sanctions on Iran would affect foreign companies operating in the country.

Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Iranian nuclear deal and revive U.S. economic sanctions has alarmed the leaders of Britain, France and Germany who remain committed to the deal and who have significant trade ties with Tehran.

“The prime minister raised the potential impact of U.S. sanctions on those firms which are currently conducting business in Iran,” her spokeswoman said. “They agreed for talks to take place between our teams.”

The spokeswoman said May had told Trump that Britain and its European partners remained “firmly committed” to ensuring the deal was upheld as the best way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

The two leaders also condemned Iranian rocket attacks against Israeli forces earlier this week and strongly supported Israel’s right to defend itself.

“They agreed on the need for calm on all sides and on the importance of tackling Iran’s destabilizing activity in the region,” the spokeswoman said.
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Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Thursday proposed member of parliament Quim Torra as candidate for head of the Catalan government as the region attempts to put an end to a seven-month impasse and form an administration.

Catalan lawmakers must pick a leader to form a government by May 22 to avert more elections, following a standoff during which separatist politicians put forward candidates who were blocked by the courts for being either abroad or in jail.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called regional elections in December after sacking the previous administration for illegally declaring independence from Spain. However, pro-independence parties again won a majority of seats.

Torra is a lawyer and journalist who has been active in pro-independence lobbies in the wealthy region. He has published several books about the history of Catalonia, according to the Catalan parliament website.

Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after being sacked as regional leader, is currently in Berlin waiting for German courts to rule on a Spanish request to extradite him on a charge of misuse of public funds.

Puigdemont proposed Torra as candidate in an address released on his YouTube video channel. Torra will need to be confirmed in a vote of confidence in the Catalan parliament.

“Our group proposes member of parliament Quim Torra to be president of the Catalan government so he can take on this responsibility in the next few days and so that a government can be formed immediately,” Puigdemont said.

Spain’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday accepted an appeal from the government that effectively blocked pro-independence politicians in Catalonia from voting in Puigdemont while he remains absent.
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A 104-year-old Australian scientist who had campaigned for the legalization of assisted dying in his home country has ended his life at a clinic in Switzerland.

David Goodall died Thursday at the Lifecircle clinic in Basel after administering a lethal drug under the guidance of doctors.

With his grandson Daniel and a longtime nurse at his side, the renowned botanist and ecologist from Perth, Australia, began the final stage of the process by receiving a fatal dose of barbiturates.

The lethal cocktail is normally ingested, but since Goodall couldn’t swallow, the substance was injected intravenously.

He died shortly after 12:30 p.m. local time while listening to Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, according to the clinic.

Philip Nitschke, director of Exit International, said Goodall’s last words before losing consciousness were “this is taking an awfully long time.”

Goodall said his last public farewell Wednesday at a news conference designed to publicize his decision and to help others who might also seek that path.

“At my age, and even at rather less than my age, one wants to be free to choose the death and when the death is the appropriate time,” he told reporters. “All the publicity that this has been receiving can only, I think, help the cause of euthanasia for the elderly, which I want.”

Assisted suicide is illegal in most countries around the world and was banned in Australia until the state of Victoria became the first to legalize the practice last year.

But that legislation, which takes effect in June 2019, only applies to terminally ill patients of sound mind and a life expectancy of less than six months, which would have excluded Goodall.

Goodall did not have a terminal illness but said his quality of life had deteriorated significantly in recent years.

“My abilities have been in decline over the past year or two, my eyesight over the past six years. I no longer want to continue life. I’m happy to have the chance tomorrow to end it,” said the centenarian Wednesday wearing a pullover emblazoned with the words “Aging Disgracefully.”

Goodall told reporters he had no last-minute doubts about his decision. But, he was not without regrets.

“There are many things I would like to do, but it’s too late,” he said. “I’m content to leave them undone.”
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Chilean bishops are arriving in Rome ahead of an expected brow-beating next week from Pope Francis, who says he was misled about a bishop at the center of the Chilean church’s sex abuse scandal.

One top-ranked churchman is apparently not coming: Cardinal Javier Errazuriz, retired archbishop of Santiago, who sits on Francis’ kitchen cabinet. Abuse survivors have laid much of the blame for the scandal on Errazuriz, whom they accuse of discrediting victims and covering up abuse rather than punishing pedophiles.

Errazuriz was quoted by Chile’s La Tercera paper as saying he wasn’t coming for personal reasons. 

The executive committee of the Chilean bishops conference said Thursday that the 30-plus bishops were coming with “humility and hope.” They praised Francis’ recent meetings with victims of the Reverend Fernando Karadima of Chile, saying his example “showed us the path that the Chilean church is called to follow.”

Francis had invited Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Jose Andres Murillo to the Vatican so he could personally apologize for having discredited them during his January trip to Chile. Francis had said their accusations against a Karadima protege, Bishop Juan Barros, were “calumny” and demanded they present proof of his wrongdoing.

The men, who had frequented Karadima’s posh Santiago community when they were teens, say that Barros witnessed and ignored their abuse. He has denied their accusations, but twice offered to resign. 

Francis twice rejected his resignation, after apparently being counseled that Barros was innocent. Francis hasn’t said who counseled him, but Errazuriz has admitted he didn’t initially believe accusations against Karadima, and in more recent emails he called Cruz a liar and a “serpent.”

Francis summoned the bishops to the Vatican last month, warning that he wanted to discuss short-, medium- and long-term reforms to the church. In the letter, he admitted he had made “grave errors in judgment” about the Barros case, but blamed a “lack of truthful and balanced information” for his missteps.

Francis did his about-face after receiving a 2,300-page report compiled by top Vatican investigators who traveled to Chile and interviewed 64 people — victims, priests and lay Catholics — about the scandal.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an act that Jewish groups praise as helpful in their efforts to reclaim lost property in Poland, but which the Polish government says is discriminatory.

The White House said on Wednesday that Trump signed the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today — or JUST — Act. It requires the State Department to report to Congress on what steps dozens of countries in Europe have taken to compensate Holocaust survivors or their heirs for assets seized under Nazi German and Communist rule.

The law does not give the U.S. any powers to act against any country and does not single out Poland. But Poland is the only country in Europe that has not passed legislation to compensate former owners for assets seized in the upheavals of 20th-century European history, and Warsaw sees itself as the key target of the law.

The Nazis’ seizure of Jewish-owned property in Poland during World War II, and the murder of most of Poland’s Jewish population, was followed after the war by the Communist state’s seizure of large amounts of property that was nationalized. Most of the original owners of that property were not Jewish.

Since the fall of communism, some claimants have regained lost property on a case-by-case basis through courts, but so far Poland has not passed comprehensive legislation regulating the process, creating a situation that has been riddled by fraud and led to a sense of injustice.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz says he believes that the U.S. pressure through the JUST Act unfairly sets Jewish claimants above non-Jewish ones, creating tensions within Polish society.

He argued that Polish law treats all Polish citizens equally, whether they are from the Polish majority or from ethnic minorities that made up significant segments of prewar society _ including Jews and Ukrainians.

“This position of the [U.S.] Congress is not good because it wants some privileges for the Jews, for the Jewish community, but not for the Poles. I think that the Poles who live in the U.S. may feel hurt by that,” Czaputowicz said in an interview with The Associated Press last week.

He recalled that there were non-Jewish Poles who fought against Nazi Germany and then settled in the United States, leaving behind property that was seized by the Communist regime.

“Their property here remains without any settlement, and nobody speaks on their behalf, only on the behalf of the Jews. That is not good because that divides our society,” Czaputowicz added.

Polish organizations have also lobbied Congress members in past months asking them to oppose the act, efforts that included a mass letter-writing campaign.

The World Jewish Restitution Organization said Thursday that it was grateful to Congress for passing the act unanimously, and to Trump for signing it. “This is a powerful statement of America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Holocaust survivors in their quest for justice,” said Gideon Taylor, WJRO Chair of Operations.

 
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A new survey by the organization seeking restitution for victims of Nazi persecution found Americans lack knowledge about the Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The survey found more than 90 percent believe children should learn about it at school. Recently, a museum exhibit on how the U.S. reacted to the genocide, which took place more than 70 years ago, opened in Washington. Anush Avetisyan has more.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says Iran is likely to engage in new negotiations on its nuclear program. Trump told reporters Wednesday the United States will impose some of the strongest sanctions on Iran ever and that the United States will work toward a deal with Tehran that will ensure the world’s safety. Iran has rejected suggestions to renegotiate any part of the 2015 agreement. Britain, France and Germany say they will continue to uphold the agreement with Iran. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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A transatlantic diplomatic tussle appears to be looming after European leaders pledged to defend their countries’ commercial interests in Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. Fellow signatories Russia and China also said they would stick with the accord. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Attraction park Legoland has unveiled a miniature model of this month’s royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor castle, built by a team of 11 model-makers who used almost 60,000 pieces of Lego bricks.

The replica includes a 60-brick Markle in her wedding dress and veil, with Harry by her side.

The couple are riding in a brick-built carriage being drawn by horses along Windsor Great Park’s Long Walk toward the castle, surrounded by 500 spectators, recreating the real-life procession that is planned for the big day on May 19.

The scene is completed by miniature models of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh along with best man Prince William, his wife, Kate, and their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, and Meghan Markle’s parents.

Lego said the wedding scene replica, which took 752 hours to build, will be on permanent display at its theme park, just three miles (5 km) from the real Windsor castle to the west of London.
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The double-Oscar winning filmmaker who opened the Cannes Film Festival has made a last-minute plea to Iran to let a fellow Iranian director – who is officially banned from working and traveling – come to the premiere of his own film.

Seated alongside Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, the stars of his new movie, Asghar Farhadi said Iran should allow acclaimed director Jafar Panahi to attend the festival where they both have movies competing for the Palme d’Or.

“I think there’s still time,” he said of getting Panahi to the Saturday premiere of his film “3 Faces.”

“I would like to send this message: I hope the decision will be taken to allow him to come,” Farhadi said at the end of a news conference on his own movie “Everybody Knows” on Wednesday.

Farhadi, who won foreign language Oscars for films made in Iran: “A Separation” and “The Salesman”, is free to come and go from his home country as he makes films there and in Europe.

But Panahi, who won the Camera d’Or in Cannes in 1995 for his debut “The White Balloon” was arrested after the 2009 protests against the re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was banned from making films.

Depite that, he has continued working under the radar, starting with “This Is Not a Film,” shot in his Tehran apartment on a mobile phone, and more recently “Taxi” in which he plays himself as a film director now working as a taxi driver – winning the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin film festival in 2015.

“It’s wonderful that he has continued his work in such adversity,” Farhadi told reporters. “It’s a very strange feeling for me to be able to be here but not him. It’s something I have difficulty living with.”

The gala screening of “Everybody Knows” on Tuesday evening coincided with U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was pulling of the 2015 nuclear deal – delivering a bitter-sweet moment for Iranians.

“It was a very strange moment, to have come out of the film and have all the emotions about how good or bad the film was and also the real, real worries that we have about the future of our country,” said Arash Azizi, a New-York based Iranian movie critic for website IranWire.

“Unfortunately, the reality of the world is that our fate is not being decided not by the Farhadis or other artists but by Trump or (Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei – men in power who represent a very different face of Iranians.”

The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 8 to May 19.

 
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Unidentified assailants on Tuesday shot and wounded a Montenegrin journalist who has written about crime and corruption in the small Balkan country.

Olivera Lakic, a journalist for the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, was wounded in the right leg outside her home in the capital, Podgorica. Lakic was taken to a hospital and was reported out of danger.

Police said the attack happened around 9 p.m. A search for the attackers was underway, including stepped up controls throughout the city and a review of surveillance cameras in the area, police said.

Vijesti’s chief editor, Mihailo Jovovic, said Lakic told him a man approached her and shot her in the leg, while two other men ran away.

Lakic, 49, was beaten six years ago after she wrote a series of articles about alleged murky dealings over a tobacco factory. That attacker was jailed for several months and Lakic had police protection for a while.

“I am speechless. For how much longer will this be happening?” Jovovic said in comments published on the Vijesti website. “A lot of stories she wrote have not been investigated (by the authorities). For how much longer must we live in fear of such cowards?”

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic condemned the attack and urged a “swift and efficient investigation” to discover the motive as well as who might have ordered it.

The U.S. Embassy in Podgorica tweeted that it was “following with concern the attack tonight on journalist Olivera Lakic.” It said journalists “are the guardians of democracy and must be protected so they can do their jobs in safety.”

Aivo Orav, head of the European Union delegation in Montenegro, called the attack “very worrying.” In the tweet, Orav said that “journalists must be protected.”

Montenegro is a former Yugoslav republic that joined NATO last year and is now also seeking EU membership. The long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists has faced accusations of widespread crime and corruption.
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Dolls, a memory jar, a magnifying glass, a used condom — each is a memento of heartbreak contributed by an anonymous contributor to the Museum of Broken Relationships, an eccentric display in Kosovo.

The traveling exhibition — tied to a permanent tourist attraction in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, dedicated to treasuring and sharing heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions — opened a monthlong stint in Kosovo last week as part of Europe Week. 

“Its mission is to connect people in public spaces through the stories of love and loss,” a statement from the EU office in Kosovo said.

Curator Kushtrim Fetahu said organizers launched an open call for stories on Facebook and Instagram, and managed to collect 30 objects for the Kosovo exhibition.

They all aim at “storytelling, story sharing, to explain all the relationships, what happened not only between lovers but also between friends and families,” he said.

One contributor from the western Kosovo city of Prizren writes of a memory jar: “This jar holds the beautiful days and nights of our relationship and that doesn’t deserve to be thrown away and not to be remembered.”

The collection in Pristina includes items from the museum’s permanent collection in Zagreb, such as a positive pregnancy test from Leipzig, Germany, as well as the wedding dress of a Turkish woman who lost her husband-to-be the day they would have gotten married — in June 28, 2016, when a terrorist attack killed him at the Istanbul airport.

The museum won the EMYA Kenneth Hudson Award in 2010 for the most innovative and daring museum project in Europe.

The EU statement said that the Museum “encourages discussion and reflection not only on the fragility of human relationships but also on the social, cultural and political circumstances surrounding the stories being told.”

When the project wraps up in Kosovo, some of the stories will be sent to the permanent museum in Zagreb.

“In this way, stories from Kosovo will be a permanent part of an international museum,” the EU statement said.
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