News in Brief

Date: 29 January 2018 - 20:48

News ID: ۴۹۴۵۵

BRUSSELS (AFP) -- The European Union said Monday it would react "swiftly and appropriately" if Washington imposed trade curbs, after U.S. President Donald Trump accused the bloc of trading "very unfairly."
"The European Union stands ready to react swiftly and appropriately in case our exports are affected by any restrictive trade measures from the United States," European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters.
Meanwhile, Japan's businesses must realize Britain's membership of the European Union is "over," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday, while touting France as an attractive post-Brexit alternative.
"The message is clear for us: firstly, the presence of Britain in the European Union is over," he said describing his discussions with local business leaders during a four-day trip to Japan.

***

LONDON (AFP) -- Armed robbers have raided the house of a British virtual currency trader, forcing him to transfer Bitcoins after tying up his wife and threatening him with a gun, British media reported Monday.
The robbery happened on Jan. 22 at the couple's home in the village of Moulsford in southeast England, according to the Daily Mail, which said the cryptocurrency crime was the first of its kind.
Four robbers wearing balaclavas broke into the house of Danny Aston, 30, and his wife Amy Jay, 31.
A Thames Valley Police spokesman quoted by the Daily Telegraph said only that police were investigating an "aggravated burglary" in Moulsford last week and that the occupants of the house had been "threatened".

***

BERLIN (Reuters) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) are close to overcoming a major stumbling block in their talks to form a new coalition government, a senior SPD negotiator said Monday.
The parties are trying to thrash out an agreement on the vexed issue of family reunions for asylum seekers allowed to stay in Germany, with some in the center-left SPD pushing for a more lenient approach.
But the conservatives are keen to present a tougher line on immigration issues to avoid losing more votes to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which surged into parliament for the first time after last September's election.
Talks on the family reunion issue broke off overnight Sunday without agreement, but Malu Dreyer, an SPD deputy leader, said the parties were in the "final stages" of clinching an accord.
Dreyer told Deutschlandfunk radio there was a will among the negotiators "that we really reach an agreement today".

***

ATHENS (Dispatches) -- Incumbent Nicos Anastasiades will face leftist-backed candidate Stavros Malas in a presidential runoff on Feb. 4, election results in Cyprus showed Monday, in a race that could define whether peace talks with Turkish Cypriots can resume this year.
With all cast ballots counted, Anastasiades led with 35.5% of votes, against 30.25% for Malas. Centrist Nikolas Papadopoulos was third on 25.75%.
The two candidates will go head-to-head in a second round of voting next Sunday that looks set to be tight.
Anastasiades, who is seeking a second and final five-year term in the European Union’s most easterly member, has pledged to restart talks promptly with the Turkish-backed north after they collapsed last year in acrimony.
Malas, a former health minister who lost out to Anastasiades in 2013, is firmly in favor of a deal to reunite the country and has criticized the president for not going far enough.

***

NAIROBI (AFP) -- Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga is planning to have himself sworn in as an alternative president Tuesday, seen as a final push to challenge Uhuru Kenyatta's election.
Odinga challenged the result of the original August vote winning an unprecedented annulment, but then boycotted the court-ordered re-run in October handing victory to Kenyatta who won 98% of the vote but with a turnout of just 39%.
On Tuesday the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA) which continues to claim fraud and wants another election to be held, intends to stage its own "swearing-in" ceremony in the capital Nairobi, hoping to pressure the government for talks.
The ceremony - if it goes ahead - will put the opposition on a collision course with police and the government, with attorney general Githu Muigai warning in December that any "swearing-in" would be treasonous raising the possibility of Odinga's arrest, a move that would heighten tensions.

***

LEGAZPI, Philippines (AFP) -- The number of Filipinos fleeing from the erupting Mayon volcano to safe zones has swelled to nearly 90,000, officials said Monday, worsening a sanitation crisis in the already stretched relief camps.
President Rodrigo Duterte flew to the central city of Legazpi on Monday to assess the disaster zone, some two weeks after the country's most active volcano began belching spectacular but potentially lethal ash columns, lava and rocks.
Authorities have thrown a nine kilometer no-go zone around the mountain with the vast majority of those living in its shadow now safely outside that radius. But sanitary conditions in the safe-zones are far from ideal.
Al Francis Bichara, the governor of Albay province, said authorities expect the evacuees will need to stay at the camps for at least a month.

***