Section: The Jakarta Post (Indonesia)
NATO units set for Baltics, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria
NATO said Friday it will deploy small units in six eastern European nations to help coordinate a spearhead force set up in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the units in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania will be the first of their kind there. Defense ministers from...
EU to extend existing Russia sanctions over Ukraine
The European Union extended by six months an existing set of sanctions against Russian and pro-Russia separatist officials because of the continued fighting in eastern Ukraine and was planning further action, officials said Thursday.”We have shown that the EU is ready to take further measures,” EU foreign affairs chief Federica...
Rights abuses fuelled rise of Islamic militants: HRW
Governments increasingly view human rights as “a luxury” they can ill afford, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, warning that abuses fuel crises in world trouble spots like Syria and Ukraine. Western powers, including the United States, are far from blameless and in some cases their wrongdoing has fed the very climate in which serial...
UNICEF seeks $3.1 bln aid for ‘new generation of crises’
The UN children’s agency Thursday launched its biggest ever appeal for US$3.1 billion to help 62 million children at risk from a “new generation of humanitarian crises”. The threats ranged from the brutal conflict in Syria that shows no sign of ending after nearly four years to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa and the Ukraine...
Freedom House sees disturbing global decline in democracy
Global freedom has suffered a disturbing decline with 60 percent of the world’s population, or 2.6 billion people, living in countries that are not completely free, according to a report released Wednesday.Freedom House’s annual study which evaluated the state of freedom in 195 countries and 15 territories determined that 61 countries...
Obama, Merkel discuss increased violence in Ukraine
The White House says President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have spoken about their concern over the “significant increase in violence” in eastern Ukraine.The leaders spoke by phone Tuesday as Obama traveled back to the U.S. from a trip to India and Saudi Arabia. Air Force One stopped briefly at a U.S. base in...
Leaders mark Auschwitz liberation 70 years on without Putin
When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz exactly 70 years ago, finding piles of corpses and prisoners close to death, a Russian soldier took a small and hungry 11-year-old girl into his arms and rocked her tenderly, tears coming to his eyes.That girl, today the 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, doesn’t know who that soldier was but still feels...
UN: deadly attack on Ukraine city could be war crime
Deadly rocket attacks on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol this weekend that “knowingly targeted civilians” violated international humanitarian law and could amount to war crimes, the U.N. political chief said Monday.Jeffrey Feltman told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that monitors from the Organization for...
Columbia, Indonesia book wins at pageant
Colombia’s Paulina Vega was crowned Miss Universe on Sunday, Monday in Jakarta, beating out contenders from the US, Ukraine, Jamaica and The Netherlands at the world’s top beauty pageant in Florida.The 22-year-old business student, the granddaughter of legendary tenor Gaston Vega and 1953 Miss Atlantico Elvira Castillo, triumphed over...
Ukraine rushes to evacuate children as new clashes hit war zone
Ukrainian authorities rushed to evacuate children from parts of the war zone Monday in the wake of a deadly rocket attack on the port city of Mariupol and as fresh clashes hit the country’s east. Another nine people were reported killed, including seven soldiers, as Kiev accused pro-Russian rebels of firing more than 100 times over the past...
