Section: Egypt Independent (Egypt)
Black boxes from plane crash site are badly damaged: Russia
Aviation experts on Sunday began examining the black boxes from the FlyDubai flight that crashed amid high winds at an airport in southern Russia but said the cockpit voice and data recorders were badly damaged.FlyDubai’s Boeing 737-800 from Dubai nosedived and exploded in a giant fireball before dawn Saturday after trying to land for a...
Locals eating radioactive food 30 years after Chernobyl: Greenpeace tests
Economic crises convulsing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus mean testing in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been cut or restricted, Greenpeace said, and people continue to eat and drink foods with dangerously high radiation levels.According to scientific tests conducted on behalf of the environmental campaigning group, overall...
Merkel’s Turkish gamble: breakthrough or landmine in migrant crisis?
For the second time since Europe’s migration crisis began last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stunned her European Union partners by staking her political capital on a unilateral initiative and demanding their support.After rolling out the welcome mat in September for Syrian refugees streaming into Europe, to the alarm of many...
Putin says ‘foreign enemies’ seek to disrupt Russian elections
President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that foreign enemies were seeking to disrupt upcoming parliamentary elections and ordered Russia’s security service to be vigilant.In September, the country will hold parliamentary elections but Russian authorities fear foreign agents will be seeking to manipulate the poll to the detriment of the...
Ukraine military reports highest daily death toll since November
Three Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and seven wounded in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday, reporting the highest daily casualty toll since mid-November. A year-old ceasefire deal has failed to stop violence in Ukraine’s separatist eastern territories, and...
Ukraine bans Russian cargo trucks in tit-for-tat move
Ukraine has banned Russian trucks from crossing its territory in response to a similar move by Moscow, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Monday. Diplomatic and trade ties between Russia and Ukraine have broken down over Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and a pro-Russian separatist conflict, a dispute that has now hit road...
After 1,000-year split, pope and Russian patriarch embrace in Cuba
Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed on Friday in a historic meeting, uniting to issue a global appeal for the protection of Christians under assault in the Middle East.Nearly 1,000 years after the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split apart, the meeting at an airport terminal in Cuba was the first...
Ukraine’s Poroshenko sees increased risk of open war with Russia
The risk of open war between Russia and Ukraine is greater than it was a year ago and Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun an “information war” against Germany, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the German newspaper Bild. Poroshenko, who met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Monday, said Russia had implemented...
Merkel presses Putin to ensure Ukraine ceasefire holds
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to use his influence to ensure a ceasefire is upheld in eastern Ukraine and OSCE monitors are granted free access to conflict areas, her spokesman said. “Here, Russia must assert its influence on the separatists,” spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a...
Battle to honor slain Putin critic Nemtsov unfolds beneath Kremlin towers
As the Kremlin clock inched toward midnight and the ice-bound river beneath their feet melted, a group of Russians silently stood on the bridge where Boris Nemtsov, the Putin critic and opposition leader, was killed nearly a year ago. “This is about remembering,” Boris Kazadayev, 73, part of the small crowd, told Reuters. “If...
