Snow and ice continued to obstruct travel in the western Balkans, as roads on the interior of Montenegro were largely closed on Monday while hundreds of villages in central Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) remain cut off under a heavy blanket of snow, according to local media reports. Low temperatures and unrelenting snowfall that measure over [...]
BP returned to profit with a bang last year, posting net earnings of $23.9 billion on Tuesday as the British energy giant prepares for a criminal trial linked to the US Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. BP announced adjusted profit after tax equivalent to 18.2 billion euros for 2011, as higher oil prices offset a drop in production, [...]
A swollen river in Greece bursts its banks, flooding homes and forcing authorities to declare a state of emergency Tuesday, officials said. In Poland, meanwhile, the big freeze that is holding the rest of Europe in its icy grip killed another six people in the last 24 hours, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Ministry spokeswoman Malgorzata Wozniak said Tuesday that [...]
Italy’s unemployment rate reached 8.9 percent in December 2011, a record-high level since 2004, the national statistics agency Istat said on Tuesday. According to the Istat, 2.24 million Italians did not have a job at the end of last year. The problem was most severe for youngsters, with 31 percent of those aged 15 to [...]
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov pledged here Tuesday to improve the country’s business climate in 2012 as the government steps up efforts to reduce administrative barriers and fees to start-up. “The authorities must do their best to make the business environment in Ukraine more comfortable. We definitely can do it, because there is political will [...]
An Irish court has sentenced a defrocked Roman Catholic priest who served time for molesting children in California to three years in prison for possessing child pornography. Oliver O’Grady was arrested in Dublin in December 2010 after leaving a computer containing pornographic images of children on a flight from Amsterdam. O’Grady worked in northern California from 1971 until 1993, when he was arrested [...]
Police and prison authorities say a Lithuanian man charged with bludgeoning aBritish couple to death has been found dead in prison. Rimvydas Liorancas was charged with killing 62-year-old Avtar Kolar and his 58-year-old wife Carole, whose bodies were found by their policeman son in a quiet neighborhood of Birmingham, central England, on Jan. 11. Post-mortem examinations showed that the couple died from [...]
Thirty people, most of them homeless, have died of hypothermia in recent days in Ukraine, part of a surge of deaths across eastern Europe as the region grapples with an unusually severe cold spell. In all, at least 54 people have died from the cold in Europe over the last week. Of the victims in Ukraine, 21 were found [...]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said here late on Monday that European Union leaders would further discuss debt problems in Greece in the next few days, while it was not sure whether an extra eurozone summit would be necessary yet. “We have high hopes that there will be an agreement in the coming days,” Sarkozy told [...]
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Monday he was satisfied with the results of a half-day summit of the European Union (EU) leaders held here as the majority of EU members agreed to sign a new fiscal treaty. Monti said the meeting had been “fruitful,” marking the end of an important phase for the stability [...]
