World
Europe’s week: EU accession talks begin & Brussels defends sanctions
In North Macedonia and Albania this week, champagne corks popped – politically talking.
Each Western Balkan international locations bought nearer to their long-term objective of turning into members of the European Union, because the official negotiation course of lastly began. The 2 candidates have been ready for many years.
The explanation for the accession talks to start out now’s that some essential authorized obstacles could possibly be eliminated quickly and, as European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen pressured, each international locations put in loads of work to adjust to EU requirements.
“You’ve got demonstrated resilience. You maintained religion within the accession course of. You strengthened the rule of regulation. You fought in opposition to corruption. You’ve got free media. You’ve got a vibrant civil society. You’ve got completed numerous reforms. And you have modernised your financial system,” von der Leyen stated on Tuesday in Brussels.
However there’s additionally one more reason. When the EU gave candidate standing to Ukraine a number of weeks in the past, it upended a long time of its personal enlargement diplomacy, a lot so, that stress was rising to not depart the Balkan international locations behind, Albania and North Macedonia.
In different phrases, the conflict in Ukraine has, immediately and not directly, solid a stronger democratic id in Europe and the sensation that these like-minded international locations want to shut ranks in opposition to an aggressive Russia.
Brussels hits again on sanctions
Not surprisingly, Brussels reiterated its ongoing help for Ukraine this week whereas additionally taking a look at new Russian sanctions.
On the similar time, it strongly rejected the notion that it’s the EU sanctions which have brought about power costs to undergo the roof and create distress for households and companies, because the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, defined.
“The value of oil began rising one month earlier than the conflict. It was attributable to the conflict. It has peaked because the starting of the conflict. And since we adopted sanctions, and since we have banned oil exports from Russia, as you may see, the value of oil has decreased,” Borrell informed reporters this week, demonstrating his level with a graph of lowering oil costs.
He additionally pressured that the sanctions are certainly working and that Russia’s financial system has been tanking.
However is that basically the case? In any case, there’s a controversial debate amongst specialists on the effectiveness of the sanctions.
Stefan Lehne, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and a former prime EU official informed Euronews that the measures are having a big affect on Moscow.
“Those that say that the EU is struggling extra from sanctions than Russia are simply plain fallacious,” Lehne stated. “Russian GDP is anticipated to drop by 11.4% in 2022, and the EU continues to be imagined to develop by 2.7%.
“Additionally, inflation may be very excessive within the EU at about 8%, but it surely’s twice as excessive in Russia. So, I feel there will be little question that the sanctions are having a big effect and that they’re driving the price of the conflict up severely.”
World
US military constructs hulking metal pier amid Biden's $320 million gamble to get aid into Gaza
The U.S. military has completed the construction of a hulking metal pier that is expected to be jabbed into a beach in northern Gaza in the coming days, officials said.
Completing the massive makeshift structure — approximately 1,500-ft long or the length of five U.S. football fields — is the first step in the Biden administration’s two-month-long, $320 million gamble to open a sea route to get humanitarian aid through the eastern Mediterranean and into Gaza, where Israel continues to wage war with the Hamas terror group.
The construction of the new floating pier and causeway is risky for President Biden and the Pentagon as aid delivery teams face unknown dangers and uncertainties as they attempt to work around the challenges of getting aid into Gaza through the Rafah border.
“In the coming days, you can expect to see this effort underway. And we are confident that we will be able to, working with our NGO partners, ensure that aid can be delivered,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Tuesday, noting humanitarian groups were ready for the first shipments through the new U.S. maritime route.
REPUBLICAN SAYS BIDEN HAS ‘STRENGTHENED’ HAMAS BY WITHHOLDING AID FROM ISRAEL: ‘COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT’
The administration’s effort to open the additional sea route comes as the intensifying war between Israel and Hamas has neared the land crossings in Rafah.
Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization, described the sea route as “a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist” because land crossings could bring in all the needed aid, he said.
Paul suggested the amount of aid that is allowed to be delivered into Gaza is dependent on Israeli officials allowing it. Some officials have expressed concerns the aid could fall into the hands of Hamas, the very terrorists that Israel is seeking to eliminate from the Palestinian territory.
UN REVISES GAZA DEATH TOLL, ALMOST 50% LESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN KILLED THAN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED
“Like all of the land crossings, it comes down to the consent of the government of Israel,” Paul said. “If Israel is comfortable with allowing the maritime corridor to function … then it will work in a limited way. And if they don’t, it won’t. Which is why it’s a very, very expensive alternative.”
Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Tuesday that the country had enabled the entrance of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza and would continue to do so.
Falk accused Hamas of disrupting aid distribution by hijacking and attacking convoys.
The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that it will keep acting in line with international law to distribute aid to Gaza. It also has previously said there are no limits on aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to Biden to allow in more aid and safeguard those workers.
Anastasia Moran, an associate director for the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian group, said truckloads of aid entering Gaza increased by 13% last month.
The Israel-Hamas war has been particularly lethal to Palestinian civilians residing in Gaza with Palestinian health officials estimating more than 35,000 have been killed. Israeli officials estimate the number of deceased civilians is approximately 16,000 civilians. A U.N report from May 8 found the number of women and children killed so far in the war to be just under 13,000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Canadian Nobel-winning author Alice Munro dies aged 92
Munro was renowned for her short stories, which focussed on the frailties of the human condition.
Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author known for her mastery of the short story, has died at the age of 92.
Munro died at her home in Port Hope, Ontario, publisher Kristin Cochrane, chief executive officer of McClelland & Stewart, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Alice’s writing inspired countless writers … and her work leaves an indelible mark on our literary landscape,” Cochrane said.
Munro published more than a dozen collections of short stories, which she focused on the frailties of the human condition and set in the rural Ontario countryside where she grew up.
Awarded the International Booker Prize for her body of work in 2009, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, Munro was diagnosed with dementia about a decade ago and was living in a care home.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the world had “lost one of its greatest storytellers”.
“A true literary genius … her short stories about life, friendship, and human connection left an indelible mark on readers,” he said.
Munro was born on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario. Her father raised foxes and poultry, while her mother was a smalltown teacher.
Munro decided she wanted to be a writer when she was 11, and never wavered in her career choice.
“I think, maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn’t have any other talents,” she once explained in an interview.
“I’m not really an intellectual,” Munro said. “There was never anything else that I was really drawn to doing, so nothing interfered in the way life interferes for so many people.”
“It always does seem like magic to me.”
Munro’s first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow, was published in 1950, while she was studying at the University of Western Ontario.
Munro was three times awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction, the first for Dance of the Happy Shades, a collection of stories published in 1968. Who Do You Think You Are (1978) and The Progress of Love (1986) also won Canada’s highest literary honour.
Her short stories were often published in the pages of prestigious magazines, such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Her last collection of work, Dear Life, appeared in 2012.
The characters in Munro’s stories were often girls and women who led seemingly unexceptional lives but struggled with issues ranging from sexual abuse and stifling marriages to repressed love and the ravages of age.
She was often likened to Anton Chekhov, the 19th-century Russian known for his brilliant short stories – a comparison made by the Swedish Academy when it awarded her the Nobel Prize.
Calling Munro a “master of the contemporary short story”, the Academy also said: “Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning.”
World
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