Новости за 13.01.2017

Washington is continuing to pursue a diplomatic showdown with Moscow over Russia's alleged interference in last year's US presidential elections, according to Sputnik Japan columnist Andrey Ilyashenko.

US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan marked his vehement disagreement with President-elect Donald Trump regarding Russia at a town hall-style interview with CNN Thursday night, claiming that "the Russians are up to no good" and calling Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin a "global menace."

US Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whose speech aired on the C-SPAN broadcaster was interrupted by the RT broadcaster, said that the incident was "strange and odd."

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian upper house of parliament said that Russian delegation is not planning to seek accreditation with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Serbia will insist on the extradition by France of Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo guerrilla commander and prime minister, as there are dozens of new witnesses in his case, the country’s Justice Minister Nela Kuburovic said Friday.

President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades stated that there are some signs of progress in the Geneva talks on Cyprus reunification with the participation of the leaders of the island's Greek and Turkish communities.

Russia may suspend imports of live poultry, products from it, and hatching eggs from the European Union because of spreading avian influenza.

Germany is backtracking on its five year suspension of the EU's Dublin rules and will start returning all newly arriving asylum seekers to Greece.

An arts and crafts teacher at one of the Iranian primary schools teaches girls to sew dolls from scrap materials. Some of the schoolgirls like their handcrafted toys so much that they ditch their "Barbies."

Different hacking groups, including security services of foreign countries, conduct an average of 20 attacks against the computers of Germany's government every day, according to media reports.

According to press release EU border agency Frontex said Friday it had detected almost 11,000 illegal border crossings into the European Union in December.

As many as 27 groups of the armed Syrian opposition and the so-called interim government of Syria signed a final document at the opposition meeting in Ankara, according to the document seen by Sputnik.

The recent deal to freeze oil output agreed by OPEC and other major oil-producing countries has resulted in a 16 percent increase in the oil price since late November; that increase may have been even more if it weren't for Iran's massive rise in production, Vladimir Sazhin told Sputnik Persian.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that amendments to the Turkish Constitution, introducing a full presidential system, may be put to the referendum by the end of the week.

12,354 people have been displaced in the past week alone from their homes in Mosul, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The capital of France may soon obtain a new type of public transportation – 'flying' river taxis.

On Thursday, the US network C-SPAN's video broadcast of a US Congress session was interrupted by RT feed for about 10 minutes.

Spain's King Felipe VI will head to Saudi Arabia for a three-day official visit at the invitation of Saudi Arabia's King Salman. It's believed to be part of a controversial US$2.1 billion arms deal, which could help Spain sell warships to the Saudis.

Washington's top diplomat said he was confident Donald Trump's administration would support developing trade ties with Vietnam.

The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said if found no violations on the part of MasterCard and Visa and therefore will not commence a suit.

On Monday, outgoing CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was "the reason why there was the tremendous slide into violence and bloodshed in that part of the world." Russian political analysts spoke to RIA Novosti about the possible reasons for such an admission just before the change of administrations.

A plan by the Maltese Government to reach a deal with Libya, similar to the controversial plan negotiated with Turkey to return migrants from EU states, has been rejected as no "blueprint" by the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

European Commission spokeswoman said that Anti-Russia sanctions had a minimal impact on the European Union economy itself.

Pakistan rejects US allegations of the existence of save havens in northwestern Pakistan that allowed terrorists to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan, a spokesperson of the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Although it has been 16 years since Norway ordered a batch of NH90 helicopters for billions of kroner to assist the Coast Guard, the helicopters are still not operational. To add insult to injury, it was recently found that the prized helicopters cannot stand on deck in bad weather.