Author: DW

06/29/2024June 29, 2024Several Ukrainians freed from Russian detention, aided by VaticanTen Ukrainians, including a politician and two priests, who were held captive by Russia and Belarus have returned home, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He thanked the Vatican for its mediation in the release of the civilians.  Some of those released have been in prison since 2017, Zelenskyy said, arrested in Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine that at the time were run by Moscow-backed separatists. One of the freed captives was Nariman Dzhelyal, a leader of the Crimean Tatars, who was taken a year before Moscow’s forces invaded. He was detained from where he lived in…

Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, is the first head of the rotating EU Council presidency to have publicly attacked and demeaned the EU’s own institutions. In his speeches and interviews at home, he has repeatedly claimed that the EU threatens Hungarian sovereignty, is destroying its middle class and attacking the country’s agricultural sector. That’s why he said he had to go to Brussels and “shake up the power structures there.” Over the past year, Hungary has used its veto to block the decisions of other member states at the EU level. Still, despite the fundamental skepticism his country has exhibited toward…

A “massive search” for Jay Slater is under way in Tenerife, focusing on revisiting areas rescue teams have already explored.The Civil Guard said they are stepping up their search for the 19-year-old Briton, who has been missing since 17 June, after appealing for volunteers experienced in tough terrain to help. Search efforts began at 9am on Saturday in the village of Masca, near Mr Slater’s last-known location, and Spanish police hope a larger team will search previous parts more thoroughly.Sky News’s communities correspondent Becky Jonhson, who is in Tenerife, said she saw between 30 and 40 officers and volunteers gather…

Neither of the two leaders in Iran’s snap presidential elections are in a position to win outright, making a runoff necessary, the Iranian Interior Ministry has said.  With more than 19 million ballots counted, moderate candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, had garnered some 8.3 million votes, while his hard-line challenger Saeed Jalili had won more than 7.18 million. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf was in third with some 2.67 million votes, while the fourth candidate, cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, received only some 158,000 votes. The Tasnim news agency had already said a runoff election was “very likely” as the country votes for a successor to hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in…

US actor Alec Baldwin is facing trial for involuntary manslaughter over the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film set after a judge rejected a bid to throw the case out.Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sided with prosecutors in denying a request to dismiss the charge on the grounds key evidence was damaged by the FBI during forensic testing. Baldwin’s legal team had argued this prevented their own testing of the gun that fired the bullet which killed Halyna Hutchins during the filming of the Western movie Rust in October 2021. Image: Halyna Hutchins died after the gun went off.…

Neither of the two leaders in Iran’s snap presidential elections seems in a position to win outright, making a runoff a likely outcome, according to early results reported by Iranian state television on Saturday.  With more than 19 million ballots counted, moderate candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, had garnered some 8.3 million votes, while his hard-line challenger Saeed Jalili had won more than 7.18 million. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf was in third with some 2.67 million votes, while the fourth candidate, cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, received only some 158,000 votes. The Tasnim news agency said a runoff election was “very likely” as the country votes for a successor to hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi,…

Like every morning, Hafis A. was on his way to the restaurant where he used to work. The young Syrian man had no idea his life as a refugee in Turkey’s capital Istanbul was about to change. When Turkish security authorities pulled him over and demanded his papers which had expired two days earlier, he was taken straight to a deportation center. A few days later he found himself together with other Syrians at the Bab al Hawa border crossing between Turkey and Syria. “They dropped me off at the border, and suddenly I was back on Syrian soil,” he told…

In a corner of Tenerife, a winding, narrow road takes you towards a small village called Masca. At points on the route, the view of the sea below and the mountains above is breathtaking.This place, with its handful of houses and cafes, nestled among ravines and rockfaces, is about a 40-minute drive from the parts of the island most British tourists know, but it might as well be a world away. There isn’t the bustle of the resort towns in the south, with their clubs and bars. Instead, there are vast expanses of land that are arid and difficult to…

The various campaign promises being made by the far right and far left ahead of France’s snap elections on June 30 and July 7 all have something in common: they will all be very, very expensive to carry out. Whether they call for lowering the retirement age back to 60, raising the minimum wage or granting blanket tax exemptions to everyone under 30, each campaign promise is another potential multi-billion-euro threat to France’s already empty coffers. But where will the money come from? Neither the far right nor the far left has an answer. Friedrich Heinemann, a public finance expert at the German-based Leibniz…

It is fair to say the people of France weren’t expecting to vote in a national election this summer.It is also fair to suggest the result will probably come as a shock – both to the nation and the rest of the world – with the electorate now strongly favouring the hard right. The party of Marine Le Pen, called National Rally, is well ahead in the polls with some 37% of decided voters.A coalition of parties on the left, called New Popular Front, stand on 28% while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together block is well behind on 20%.Just two…