На Алеї героїв запалили вогонь у символічній діжці, схожій на ту, які допомагали зігрітися учасникам столичного Майдану взимку 2013-14 років
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Акція біля стін Офісу президента пройшла спокійно, інцидентів не було, заявляє Національна поліція
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Це другий за останні дні напад у Старому місті Єрусалиму. 17 листопада 16-річний палестинець напав із ножем на ізраїльських поліцейських і був застрелений.
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Голова болгарської громади Криму Іван Абажер висловив упевненість, що у випадку, якщо Радев вирішить відвідати півострів, «його чекає теплий та привітний прийом»
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Атака, ймовірно, охоплюватиме авіаудари, артилерійські та бронетанкові атаки – Кирило Буданов
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Seven Turkish citizens who were being held in eastern Libya have been brought back safely to Turkey, the country’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The seven people were mostly restaurant employees and had been held in Libya’s east for two years, according to state-owned Anadolu news agency.
Qatari intelligence cooperated with Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MIT) in their efforts to secure the safe release of the seven Turks, Anadolu said.
“We thank the Libyan and Qatari governments, especially the related institutions that contributed to the process of the release of our citizens,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Turkey deployed troops to Libya under a 2019 accord on military cooperation signed with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), helping it repel an assault by General Khalifa Haftar’s forces based in eastern Libya.
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Угода багато в чому повертає статус-кво, який існував до спроби військового перевороту, що відбувся у жовтні
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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday called the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border, the EU’s eastern frontier, the “greatest attempt to destabilize Europe” since the Cold War.
The premier issued his strong remarks as he prepared to meet with EU leaders at a time when Warsaw is facing not only a border crisis but heightened tensions with Brussels over allegations it is breaching its commitment to the bloc’s democratic principles.
The West accuses Belarus of artificially creating the crisis by bringing in would-be migrants — mostly from the Middle East — and taking them to the border with promises of an easy crossing into the European Union.
Belarus has denied the claim, instead criticizing the EU for not taking in the migrants.
Caught in the middle, migrants often report being forced to cross the border by Belarusian officials, then being pushed back into Belarusian territory by Polish authorities.
Belarusian President Alexander “Lukashenko launched a hybrid war against the EU. This is [the] greatest attempt to destabilize Europe in 30 years,” Morawiecki said on Twitter.
“Poland will not yield to blackmail and will do everything to defend the EU’s borders.”
He linked to a video statement in which he cautioned that “today the target is Poland, but tomorrow it will be Germany, Belgium, France or Spain.”
He also claimed that Lukashenko had the “back-room support of Vladimir Putin,” the Russian president and an ally of the Belarusian regime.
Lukashenko told the BBC earlier that it was “absolutely possible” his forces had helped people cross into the EU but denied orchestrating the operation.
Divert attention
Brussels and NATO have previously also described the migrant crisis as a “hybrid tactic.”
Morawiecki is visiting the Baltic states — two of which also share a border with Belarus — on Sunday to discuss the conflict and has announced he will visit other EU capitals this week.
Some observers believe Poland is using its rhetoric on the border issue to try to distract from controversial reforms that the EU believes limit the independence of the judiciary.
The European Commission wrote to Poland on Friday to launch a process that could lead to it being deprived of funds over threats to the EU legal order.
“While the problem on Poland’s border is serious and requires Western solidarity — for example by sanctioning Belarus — Morawiecki blows it out of proportion to divert attention from Poland’s violation of the rule of law,” political expert Marcin Zaborowski told AFP.
The policy director at the Globsec think tank argued that the Belarus action “pales in comparison with the war in Ukraine, cyber attack in Estonia in 2007 and Russian support for far-right extremism in Europe.”
On Sunday, Poland’s border guards reported new attempted crossings, including by a “very aggressive group of around 100” migrants.
Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Saturday that Belarus has now changed tactics by directing smaller groups of migrants to multiple points along the border.
He added that he expected the border showdown to last months.
Migrant deaths
The migrants have spent thousands of dollars to fly into Belarus on tourist visas, determined to reach the European Union.
Many are desperately fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Once at the border, they are faced with squalid, freezing conditions.
Polish media say at least 11 migrants have died since the crisis began over the summer.
A Yemeni migrant who died in Poland in September will be laid to rest on Sunday in the eastern village of Bohoniki, with his brother in attendance.
Yemen’s foreign ministry said he “died on the border between Poland and Belarus as a result of the severe drop in temperatures.”
On Saturday, the Belarusian Health Ministry said that a World Health Organization (WHO) mission had arrived in Belarus to help organize medical support for the migrants.
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У Пекіні заявляють, що відкриття у Вільнюсі тайванського представництва порушує принцип одного Китаю і є втручанням у внутрішні справи КНР
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Police arrested seven rioters in The Hague on Saturday night after youths set fires in the streets and threw fireworks at officers. The unrest came a day after police opened fire on protesters in Rotterdam amid what the port city’s mayor called “an orgy of violence” that broke out at a protest against coronavirus restrictions.
Elsewhere in the Netherlands, two soccer matches in the top professional league had to be briefly halted after fans — banned from matches under a partial lockdown in force in the Netherlands for a week — broke into stadiums in the towns of Alkmaar and Almelo.
Police said via Twitter that seven people were arrested in The Hague and five officers were injured. One needed treatment in a hospital.
Local media outlet Regio 15 reported that rioters threw bicycles, wooden pallets and motorized scooters on one of the fires.
The rioting in The Hague was on a smaller scale than the pitched battles on the streets of Rotterdam on Friday night, when police said three rioters were hit by bullets and investigations were underway to establish if they were shot by police. Earlier police said two people were hit. The condition of the injured rioters was not disclosed.
Officers in Rotterdam arrested 51 people, about half of them minors, police said Saturday afternoon. One police officer was hospitalized with a leg injury suffered in the rioting, another was treated by ambulance staff and countless others suffered minor injuries.
Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb told reporters in the early hours of Saturday that “on a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves” as rioters rampaged through the port city’s central shopping district, setting fires and throwing rocks and fireworks at officers.
“They shot at protesters, people were injured,” Aboutaleb said. He did not have details on the injuries. Police also fired warning shots.
Police combing through video footage from security cameras expect to make more arrests.
Photos from the scene showed at least one police car in flames and another with a bicycle slammed through its windshield.
Riot police and a water cannon restored calm after midnight.
It was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the Netherlands since coronavirus restrictions were first imposed last year. In January, rioters also attacked police and set fires on the streets of Rotterdam after a curfew came into force.
Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus condemned the events.
“The riots and extreme violence against police officers, riot police and firefighters last night in Rotterdam are disgusting to see,” he said in a statement.
“Protesting is a great right in our society, but what we saw last night is simply criminal behavior. It has nothing to do with demonstrating,” he added.
Police units from around the country raced to Rotterdam to help bring Friday night’s situation under control. Aboutaleb said that gangs of soccer hooligans were involved in the rioting.
An independent investigation into the shootings by police was opened, as is the case whenever Dutch police use their weapons.
The government has said it wants to introduce a law that would allow businesses to restrict the country’s coronavirus pass system to only people who are fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 — that would exclude people who test negative.
Earlier Saturday, two protests against COVID-19 measures went off peacefully in Amsterdam and the southern city of Breda.
Thousands gathered on Amsterdam’s central Dam Square, despite organizers calling off the protest. They walked peacefully through the streets, closely monitored by police. A few hundred people also marched through the southern Dutch city of Breda. One organizer, Joost Eras, told broadcaster NOS he didn’t expect violence after consulting with police.
“We certainly don’t support what happened in Rotterdam. We were shocked by it,” he said.
The country has seen record numbers of infections in recent days and a new partial lockdown came into force a week ago.
Local political party Leefbaar Rotterdam condemned the violence in a tweet.
“The center of our beautiful city has this evening transformed into a war zone,” it said. “Rotterdam is a city where you can disagree with things that happen but violence is never, never, the solution.”
your ad hereThey are shivering in barracks without heat, going hungry and have no money. They say their passports have been taken by their Chinese employer and that they are now stuck in Serbia with no help from local authorities.
These are the Vietnamese workers who are helping build the first Chinese car tire factory in Europe. The Associated Press visited the construction site in northern Serbia where about 500 of the workers are living in harsh conditions as China’s Shandong Linglong Tire Co. sets up the huge facility.
The project, which Serbian and Chinese officials tout as a display of the “strategic partnership” between the two countries, has faced scrutiny from environmentalists over potentially dangerous pollution from tire production.
Now, it has caught the attention of human rights groups in Serbia, which have warned that the workers could be victims of human trafficking or even slavery.
“We are witnessing a breach of human rights because the Vietnamese [workers] are working in terrible conditions,” Serbian activist Miso Zivanov of the Zrenjaninska Akcija [Zrenjanin Action] nongovernmental organization told The Associated Press at the drab one-story warehouses where the workers are living.
“Their passports and identification documents have been taken by their Chinese employers,” he said. “They have been here since May, and they received only one salary [payment]. They are trying to get back to Vietnam but first need to get back their documents.”
Workers sleep on bunk beds without mattresses in barracks with no heating or warm water. They told the AP that they have received no medical care even when they developed COVID-19-like symptoms, being told by their managers simply to remain in their rooms.
Nguyen Van Tri, one of the workers, said nothing has been fulfilled from the job contract he signed in Vietnam before embarking on the long journey to Serbia.
“Since we arrived here, nothing is good,” he said. “Everything is different from documents we signed in Vietnam. Life is bad, food, medicine, water … everything is bad.”
Wearing sandals and shivering in the cold, he said about 100 of his fellow workers who live in the same barracks have gone on strike to protest their plight and that some of them have been fired because of that.
Linglong did not respond to an AP call seeking comment but denied to Serbian media that the company is responsible for the workers, blaming their situation on subcontractors and job agencies in Vietnam. It said the company did not employ the Vietnamese workers in the first place. It promised to return the documents it said were taken to stamp work and residency permits.
The company denied that the Vietnamese workers are living in poor conditions and said their monthly salaries were paid in accordance with the number of working hours.
Populist-run Serbia is a key spot for China’s expansion and investment policies in Europe, and Chinese companies have kept a tight lid on their projects amid reports they run afoul of the Balkan nation’s anti-pollution laws and labor regulations.
Chinese banks have granted billions of dollars in loans to Serbia to finance Chinese companies that build highways, railways and factories and employ their own construction workers. This is not the first time rights groups have pointed out possible breaches of workers’ rights, including those of Chinese miners at a copper mine in eastern Serbia.
After days of silence, Serbian officials spoke against “inhumane” conditions at the construction site but were quick to downplay Chinese responsibility for the workers’ plight.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said she “would not rule out that the attack against the Linglong factory” is organized “by those against Chinese investments” in Serbia — referring to frequent criticism from the West that Chinese projects there are not transparent, are ecologically questionable and are designed by Beijing to spread its political influence in Europe.
“At the beginning, it was the environment. Now they forgot that and they focused on workers there. After tomorrow there will be something else,” she said.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Friday that a Serbian labor inspector has been sent to the Linglong construction site but was blunt on the expected outcome of the eventual findings.
“What do they want? Do they want us to destroy a $900 million investment?” Vucic asked.
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«Віялові відключення – це складна державна процедура, якою управляє оператор систем розподілу»
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«Своїми необачними висловами він наніс удар дружнім українсько-болгарським відносинам, підставив Болгарію під критику ЄС і підіграв російській пропаганді»
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Tens of thousands of people, many of them far-right supporters, protested Saturday in Vienna against coronavirus restrictions a day after Austria’s government announced a new lockdown and said vaccines would be made compulsory next year.
Whistling, blowing horns and banging drums, crowds streamed into Heroes’ Square in front of the Hofburg, the former imperial palace in central Vienna, in the early afternoon, one of several protest locations.
Many demonstrators waved Austrian flags and carried signs with slogans such as “no to vaccination,” “enough is enough” or “down with the fascist dictatorship.”
The crowds had swelled to roughly 35,000 people by mid-afternoon, according to the police, and the protesters were marching down Vienna’s inner ring road before heading back toward the Hofburg. A police spokesman said there had been fewer than 10 arrests, for breaches of coronavirus restrictions and the ban on Nazi symbols.
Roughly 66% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are skeptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.
With daily infections still setting records even after a lockdown was imposed on the unvaccinated this week, the government said on Friday it would reintroduce a lockdown Monday and make it compulsory to get vaccinated as of February 1.
The Freedom Party (FPO) and other vaccine-critical groups already had been planning a show of force Saturday in Vienna before Friday’s announcement, which prompted FPO leader Herbert Kickl to respond that “As of today, Austria is a dictatorship.” Kickl could not attend because he has caught COVID-19.
“We are not in favor of our government’s measures,” said one protester, who was part of a group wearing tin foil on their heads and brandishing toilet brushes. Like most protesters who spoke to the media, they declined to give their names, though the mood was festive.
your ad herePolice opened fire on protesters in rioting that erupted in downtown Rotterdam around a demonstration against COVID-19 restrictions late Friday night. The Dutch city’s mayor called it “an orgy of violence.”
Police said that two rioters were hospitalized after being hit by bullets, and investigations were underway to establish if they were shot by police. The condition of the injured rioters was not disclosed.
Officers arrested 51 people, about half of them minors, police said Saturday afternoon. One police officer was hospitalized with a leg injury sustained in the rioting, another was treated by ambulance staff and “countless” others suffered minor injuries.
Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb told reporters in the early hours of Saturday morning that “on a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves” as rioters ran rampage through the port city’s central shopping district, setting fires and throwing rocks and fireworks at officers.
“They shot at protesters, people were injured,” Aboutaleb said. He did not have details about the injuries. Police also fired warning shots.
Police combing through video footage from security cameras expect to make more arrests.
Photos from the scene showed at least one police car in flames and another with a bicycle slammed through its windshield.
Riot police and a water cannon restored calm after midnight.
It was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the Netherlands since coronavirus restrictions were first imposed last year. In January, rioters also attacked police and set fires on the streets of Rotterdam after a curfew came into force.
Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus condemned the events.
“The riots and extreme violence against police officers, riot police and firefighters last night in Rotterdam are disgusting to see,” he said in a statement.
“Protesting is a great right in our society, but what we saw last night is simply criminal behavior. It has nothing to do with demonstrating,” he added.
Police units from around the country raced to Rotterdam to help bring Friday night’s situation under control. Local media reported that gangs of soccer hooligans were involved in the rioting.
Video from social media shown on Dutch broadcaster NOS appeared to show one person being shot in Rotterdam, but there was no immediate word on what happened.
Police said in a tweet it was “still unclear how and by whom” that person was apparently shot.
An independent investigation into the shootings by police was opened, as is the case whenever Dutch police use their weapons.
The government has said it wants to introduce a law that would allow businesses to restrict the country’s coronavirus pass system to only people who are fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 — that would exclude people who test negative.
The country has seen record numbers of infections in recent days, and a new partial lockdown came into force a week ago.
Local political party Leefbaar Rotterdam condemned the violence in a tweet.
“The center of our beautiful city has this evening transformed into a war zone,” it said. “Rotterdam is a city where you can disagree with things that happen, but violence is never, never, the solution.”
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