europe
Three months after the first anti-government protests in Ukraine, the country has experienced its deadliest day of political violence, with nine people dying in clashes between demonstrators and police. The beating heart of the pro-Europe, anti-Russia 'Euromaidan' movement is in Kiev's Independence Square (in Ukrainian, Maidan Nezalezhnosti), and the square is currently in flames after a day of police firing rubber bullets at protesters wielding molotov cocktails and fireworks.
Wales doesn’t get more Welsh than this northern market town. Business and conversations between friends here are conducted not in English but in Welsh, the language spoken by some 80 percent of the local population. For the past 40 years, the town has been a stronghold of Plaid Cymru, the nationalist party whose stated goal is eventual independence.
French president François Hollande's recent two-day state visit to Washington was intended as a "shot in the arm" for the beleaguered French leader as well as an acknowledgment of strengthening ties, says CFR's Europe expert Charles A. Kupchan. Kupchan says that France has emerged as the United States' strongest European security partner, supporting U.S. policy toward Syria and Iran and taking firm military action on its own against militants in Mali.
Today, American and French diplomats are preparing for talks with Iran that build on the agreement that has halted progress on and rolled back key elements of the Iranian nuclear program. French and American officials share information daily to combat terrorism around the world. Our development experts are helping farmers across Africa and on other continents boost their yields and escape poverty.
Social media networks are, well, atwitter about a phone conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt regarding developments and strategy in Ukraine that was intercepted and posted on YouTube.
“There were no YouTube videos, online sites, or DVDs. The culture wasn’t there yet. I could hardly find any video cassettes to learn the dances from,” explains Sargis Andreasyan, better known as Godfather Flash among fellow break-dancers in Yerevan, Armenia.
The Russian blockade began at midnight on Jan. 29. At factories and warehouses across neighboring Ukraine, truckers had picked up their regular haul of cargo that afternoon and made their way to the eastern border. If their radios were tuned to the news as they drove along the icy highways, they would have heard some alarming bulletins.
Earlier this January, President Obama gave his first-ever one-on-one interview on German television. The background of this rare interview was news reports originating last year that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored communications of European citizens – and thereby had seemingly even listened in on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private phone calls. In the wake of these reports, many Germans reacted with much anger towards the spy revelations.