A total of the 34 parties and other political organizations in Germany are running in the European elections in June.
The Federal Election Committee approved a total of 35 parties and associations at its public meeting in Berlin on Friday.
Since the conservative CSU is only available for election in Bavaria and its sister party, the CDU, is running in all other federal states, there will be only 34 parties and associations on ballot papers.
The newly founded populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the climate organization Last Generation are taking part in an election for the first time.
In addition to the established parties, smaller groups with special interests were also admitted, for example the Party of Reason, the Human world – For the well-being and happiness of all, or the Party for Biomedical Rejuvenation Research.
According to Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand, 59 proposals for participation by parties or groups were submitted on time.
The Federal Election Committee checked whether the parties and political associations had submitted all the necessary documents.
Anyone who is not represented in the European Parliament, Germany’s federal parliament or a state parliament must, for example, be able to present a certain number of signatures of supporters and present a statute and a political program.
The people of Germany can elect 96 European lawmakers on June 9th. After the voting age has been lowered, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds will be able to vote for the first time.
A general view of the Federal Electoral Committee meeting to decide on the admission of parties and political associations to the European elections on June 9. Fabian Sommer/dpa
A Russian-backed “propaganda” network has been broken up for spreading anti-Ukraine stories and paying unnamed European politicians, according to authorities in several countries.
Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.
The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European elections.
Voice of Europe did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Czech media, citing the countries intelligence agency BIS, reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary were paid by Voice of Europe in order to influence upcoming elections for the European Parliament.
The German newspaper, Der Spiegel, said the money was either handed over in cash in covert meetings in Prague or through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk is alleged by the Czech Republic to be behind the network.
Mr Medvedchuk was arrested in Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion, but later transferred to Russia with about 50 prisoners of war in exchange for 215 Ukrainians.
Czech authorities also named Artyom Marchevsky, alleging he managed the day-to-day business of the website. Both men were sanctioned by Czech authorities.
Poland’s intelligence agency said it had conducted searches in the Warsaw and Tychy regions and seized €48,500 (£41,500) and $36,000 (£28,500).
“Money from Moscow has been used to pay some political actors who spread Russian propaganda,” BIS said in a statement.
It added that the sums amounted to “millions” of Czech crowns (tens of thousands of pounds).
The alleged propaganda network “aimed to carry out activities against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” BIS said.
BIS did not name the politicians allegedly involved. However, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo alleged they included members of the European Parliament.
“It came for example to light that Russia has approached MEPs, but also paid [them], to promote Russian propaganda here,” Mr De Croo told Belgian MPs.
The Voice of Europe website was offline on Thursday. An archived version of its homepage showed several articles highlighting internal divisions within European countries and expressing scepticism about support for Ukraine.
These included: “Protest in Prague: people’s voice against corruption, military support for Ukraine, and government”, and “Ukraine’s army faces a mounting troop shortage amid ongoing challenges”.
Voice of Europe had more than 180,000 followers on Twitter/X. The publication did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Several central and Eastern European countries began marking on Thursday the 20th anniversary of the largest expansion of the NATO military alliance when formerly socialist countries became members of the bloc.
Military aircraft roared over the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. At the main airbase hosting Spanish and Portuguese fighter jets tasked with NATO air policing missions in the Baltic region, officials gathered to commemorate the event.
“Russia’s new bloody terror in Europe is contributing to the growth of instability and threats around the world. However, we in Lithuania are calm because we know that we will never be alone again,” said President Gitanas Nauseda, standing near the runway where the first NATO jets landed back in 2004. “We will always have a strong, supportive Alliance family by our side, and we will face any challenges together.”
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO on March 29 in 2004, bringing the total membership of the Alliance to 26. The seven nations started accession negotiations soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and eventually were invited to join at the Prague Summit in November 2002. Another group of former Soviet satellites including Poland and the Czech Republic had been admitted several years earlier.
Since joining the alliance, these countries often warned about the threat of Russia, using their national trauma of Soviet occupation as proof of credibility. While Western nations often dismissed their sometimes hawkish attitude, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is seen as a vindication of those fears. They have given some of the most robust responses, helping Ukraine with equipment and money, and pushing for even greater sanctions on Russia.
Most of the former Soviet Republics that joined NATO at the turn of the millennium spend more than the required 2% of gross domestic product on defense. When Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis announced his bid earlier this month to become the next leader of the alliance, he emphasized the threat from Russia and said the alliance needs a “renewal of perspectives” that Eastern Europe could provide.
“Russia is proving to be a serious and long-term threat to our continent, to our Euro-Atlantic security,” the 65-year-old said when he announced his bid. “NATO’s borders become of paramount importance, and the strengthening of the eastern flank … will remain a long-term priority.”
The seven countries are marking the anniversary with solemn events and shows of force, but also some levity, with open-air concerts and exhibitions.
“Twenty years ago the Bulgarian people made the right choice for our country to join NATO,” the country’s defense chief Adm. Emil Eftimov said. “Given today’s security situation, this is the most appropriate decision we have made in our recent history.”
NATO was established in the aftermath of World War II.
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Associated Press writers Stephen McGrath in Sighisoara, Romania, and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria contributed to this report.
The tech behind a flying car, originally developed and successfully test-flown in Europe, has been bought by a Chinese firm.
Powered by a BMW engine and normal fuel, the AirCar flew for 35 minutes between two Slovakian airports in 2021, using runways for take-off and landing.
It took just over two minutes to transform from a car into an aircraft.
Now vehicles made based on its design will be used within a “specific geographical region” of China.
Hebei Jianxin Flying Car Technology Company, headquartered in Cangzhou, has purchased exclusive rights to manufacture and use AirCar aircraft inside an undisclosed area.
The firm has built its own airport and flight school after a previous acquisition from another Slovak aircraft manufacturer, said Anton Zajac, cofounder of KleinVision, the company which created AirCar.
Having led the way in the development of the EV revolution, China is now actively developing flying transport solutions.
Last month a firm called Autoflight carried out a test flight of a passenger-carrying drone between the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The journey, which takes three hours by car, was completed in 20 minutes, it said – although the aircraft contained no passengers.
And in 2023 the Chinese firm eHang was awarded a safety certificate by Chinese officials for its electric flying taxi. Here, the UK government has said flying taxis could become a regular feature of the skies by 2028.
But unlike these drone-like passenger aircrafts, AirCar does not take off and land vertically, and requires a runway.
KleinVision declined to say how much it had sold the technology for. AirCar was issued with a certificate of airworthiness by the Slovak Transport Authority in 2022 and featured in a video published by YouTuber Mr Beast earlier this year.
There are still considerable hurdles for this form of transport in terms of infrastructure, regulation and public acceptance of the technology.
“This brave new world of personal transport is acting as a great leveller,” said aviation consultant Steve Wright.
Global attempts to regulate the sector left “everyone scrambling to come up with a whole new set of questions that need to be asked”.
“In this respect the West’s history can sometimes slow things down, as there is a bit of a temptation to try and squeeze these new machines into the old categories,” Mr Wright added. “China could well see this as an opportunity to get ahead.”
Similar concerns once applied to electric cars – in which China which has become a global market leader.
The sale of the Slovakian AirCar could raise questions about whether China might be poised to do the same with flying cars.
Mr Wright said while prototypes like the AirCar were “great fun”, the reality was likely to end up being more mundane “with queues and baggage checks and whatnot”.
The European Commission announced on Monday it is spending €600 million ($650 million) from the EU budget to buy 12 planes to fight fires across the European Union.
During the summer when “lives, homes and livelihoods are increasingly under threat to large scale forest fires” these airplanes will provide vital assistance, the commission said in a statement.
The 12 planes are to be distributed across Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, France and Croatia, six EU member states all hard-hit by extreme heat and wildfires during the summer.
De Havilland manufactured the aircraft. EU Crisis Commissioner Janez Lenarčič said the purchases are an important move to advance the bloc’s firefighting capabilities.
The European Commission upgraded the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and created rescEU to further protect citizens from disasters and manage emerging risks.
The 12 aircraft join an EU fleet of firefighting planes, medical evacuation planes, and helicopters kept on reserve to support EU countries facing public emergencies.
In 2023, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, wildfires burned around 500,000 hectares. This includes the largest wildfire recorded in the EU in Alexandroupolis, Greece, with over 96,000 hectares destroyed.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday told a European Parliament Green Party delegation that she looks forward to closer bilateral cooperation in the areas of false information prevention, supply chain security, and business and trade.
The pan-European Green Party delegation, led by Reinhard Bütikofer from Germany, who also heads the European Parliament’s group for relations with China, started a four-day visit to Taiwan on Monday.
Tsai told visiting European delegates that, in the face of the expansion of authoritarianism and the threat of disinformation, Taiwan has strengthened cooperation with other democratic countries to jointly protect regional democracy, freedom and stable development. She said the visit will help boost exchanges on issues of common concern, according to a statement from her office
Bütikofer said the European Union’s cooperation with Taiwan is based on shared alues of human rights, democracy and “the value of the rule of law. And on that basis, we build our solidarity.”
Heidi Hautala, a Finnish Green Party member and vice president of the European Parliament as well as three other German Green party lawmakers, along with Bütikofer, met with Tsai.
Bütikofer said the visit also aims to enhance opportunities for substantive cooperation with Taiwan and strengthen the Taiwan-EU partnership.
The delegation will also meet with Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, other lawmakers and government officials.
Monday’s visit follows last week’s visit to the European Parliament from Taiwan’s vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim – the first time a Taiwanese vice president-elect was invited to the parliament before taking office.
Hsiao’s visit to Europe demonstrated that Taiwan and the EU are like-minded partners share the same values and understand the need to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, the foreign ministry said.
Now that last month’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.
July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.
The United States is now at a record 15 different weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday. It’s the most mega-disasters through the first seven months of the year since the agency tracked such things starting in 1980, with the agency adjusting figures for inflation.
“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
The previous single-day heat record was set in 2016 and tied in 2022. From July 3, each day has exceeded that record. It’s been so warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.
“We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. “It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
The global average temperature last month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.
Last month was so hot, it was .7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020, Copernicus said. The world’s oceans were half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous 30 years and the North Atlantic was 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average. Antarctica set record lows for sea ice, 15% below average for this time of year.
Copernicus, a division of the European Union’s space program, has records going back to 1940. July’s temperature would be hotter than any month the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded and their records go back to 1850. But scientists say it’s actually the hottest in a far longer time period.
“It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in 10,000 years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He wasn’t part of the Copernicus team.
Rahmstorf cited studies that use tree rings and other proxies that show present times are the warmest since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, about 10,000 years ago. And before the Holocene started there was an ice age, so it would be logical to even say this is the warmest record for 120,000 years, he said.
While much of the world broiled in July, the United States only had its 11th hottest July in its 129-year record, according to NOAA. But Arizona, Florida, Maine and New Mexico had their warmest Julys on record.
Arizona broke its record by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) and Phoenix averaged 102.8 degrees for the entire month making it the hottest month for any city int he United States, according to NOAA. Death Valley reported its hottest midnight temperature on record with 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees Celsius) on July 17.
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Johannesburg, South Africa — A U.S. has suspended security cooperation with military forces in Niger and Americans have begun escaping the country, but U.S. officials have stopped short of describing the detention of the African country’s elected president by his own elite guard as a coup.
Under U.S. law, using that designation could require a complete halt to American security and economic assistance to the land-locked state, which has become a key democratic ally in northern Africa’s tumultuous Sahel region, where the U.S. has significant counterterrorism-focused military operations.
Americans escape on European evacuation flight
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters this week that the Biden administration was monitoring the situation “literally by the hour” after what he called an “attempted power grab,” but he said there was no indication of a direct threat to U.S. citizens in Niger and no evacuation operation was being carried out by the U.S. government.
That didn’t stop a group of Americans from boarding an evacuation flight to Italy, however, as that country and other European nations raced to get their citizens out of Niger.
An image taken from video shows civilians, including 36 Italians, 21 Americans and one Briton, coming off a military plane that landed in Rome, Italy, early on August 2, 2023, as part of European evacuations from Niger following a coup in the African nation.
Reuters
The first of three French planes sent to evacuate European nationals arrived back in Paris Tuesday night carrying more than 250 people, and an Italian plane, carrying Europeans along with 21 U.S. citizens, mainly from a Texas Christian group, landed in Rome early Wednesday morning.
The evacuations quickly ramped up after demonstrators attacked the French embassy in Niger on Sunday.
Neighbors warn coup leader, U.S. backs detained president
Senior defense officials from the western African economic bloc ECOWAS, which includes Niger, were set to meet Wednesday in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss what most of the world is referring to as the coup in Niger.
The bloc has warned the military commander behind the putsch, who declared himself Niger’s new ruler on Friday, that he has until August 6 to reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum to power. If Bazoum, who’s effectively been under house arrest for a week, is not allowed to resume his work as the country’s leader, ECOWAS will consider the use of force, the bloc said.
Pro-coup demonstrators in Niger attack French Embassy, wave Russian flags
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On Sunday, ECOWAS announced tough sanctions against the coup leaders, as well as on all trade and financial transfers between Niger and its 14 other member states.
The military junta now ruling Niger has said it will defend against any “acts of aggression” by ECOWAS, and the regional bloc’s position was not completely unified. The rebellions generals are supported by the military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso, both also ECOWAS members which have said they’d treat an attack on Niger as a declaration of war on them, too.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Bazoum by phone on Tuesday and conveyed the U.S. government’s “unwavering support” for the Nigerien president and his country’s democracy and its people, according to the State Department.
Sources have told CBS News that neither the U.S. nor the French militaries have plans to evacuate their soldiers at this time. U.S. troops number close to 1,000 in the country, while former colonial power France has about 1,500 deployed. The U.S. operates out of two jointly-run military bases in Niger.
A look at Camp Lemonnier Djibouti, the only U.S. military base in Africa
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djOne U.S. official told CBS News the challenge to Niger’s elected leader came unexpectedly, and that it was worrying development in a region plagued by extremism that some fear could become a global security threat.
An African region plagued by coups and extremism
The July 26 toppling of Niger’s government was only the most recent coup in a volatile, insurgency-plagued region. There have been nine coups over the last three years in West and Central Africa, most recently the ones that brought the current regimes to power in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Niger alone has had four coups since it gained independence from France in 1960.
Bazoum has been the nation’s president since a peaceful transition of power in 2021 following his election.
Despite his detention on July 26, Bazoum has been on the phone with foreign leaders and he was recently photographed with Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, the leader of Chad who traveled to Niger’s capital Niamey at the behest of ECOWAS.
Abdourahmane Tchiani, 62, the head of the presidential guard, declared himself Niger’s new leader in a national television address on Friday, giving himself the title “President of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland.”
Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, second from the right, and other army commanders are seen in Niger’s capital, Niamey, July 28, 2023, after claiming control over the country.
Balima Boureima/Anadolu Agency/Getty
He claimed the takeover was necessary to “avoid the demise of the country,” and then he suspended the Niger’s constitution.
Several Russian flags were seen at pro-junta demonstrations on Sunday, prompting speculation that Russia or its Wagner Group private mercenary army might have had a hand in the coup, but Kirby told journalists the U.S. saw “no indication that Russia was behind this in anyway.”
It’s believed that Wagner has close to 1,000 mercenaries operating in Mali, which borders Niger.
