Articles written by Raf Casert


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  • Hard right is set to surge in this week's European Union elections. Center set to tilt to right, too

    RAF CASERT|Jun 5, 2024

    BRUSSELS (AP) — It seemed like a throwaway line by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, yet it encapsulated what is at stake for many in this week's European Union parliamentary elections — What to do with the hard right? And should it be trusted? The top EU leader basically had said that far-right Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, whose party is steeped in post-fascism, could be ready for prime time as a potential coalition partner once the four-day elections across the 27-nation EU end Sunday. During an election debate, vo...

  • Top UN court orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza but stops short of ordering cease-fire

    MIKE CORDER and RAF CASERT|Jan 26, 2024

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations' top court on Friday ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering Jerusalem to end the military offensive that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave. In a ruling that will keep Israel under the legal lens for years to come, the court offered little other comfort to Israeli leaders in a genocide case brought by South Africa that goes to the core of one of the world's most intractable conflicts. The c...

  • Israel defends itself at the UN's top court against allegations of genocide against Palestinians

    MIKE CORDER and RAF CASERT|Jan 12, 2024

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Accused of committing genocide against Palestinians, Israel insisted at the United Nations' highest court Friday that its war in Gaza was a legitimate defense of its people and said that it was Hamas militants who were guilty of genocide. Israel described the allegations leveled by South Africa as hypocritical and said that one of the biggest cases ever to come before an international court reflected a world turned upside down. Israeli leaders defend their air and ground offensive in Gaza as a legitimate r...

  • G-7, Europe reach deal for price cap on Russian diesel

    RAF CASERT and DAVID McHUGH|Feb 3, 2023

    BRUSSELS (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that industrialized countries in the Group of Seven are imposing a price cap on refined Russian oil products such as diesel and kerosene, as part of a coalition that includes Australia and a tentative agreement from the European Union. The cap follows similar price limits put on Russian oil exports, with the goal of reducing the financial resources Russian President Vladimir Putin has to wage the nearly year-long war in Ukraine. "Today's agreement builds on the price cap on R...

  • EU edges closer to $60-per-barrel Russian oil price cap

    RAF CASERT and FATIMA HUSSEIN|Dec 2, 2022

    BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union was edging closer to setting a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil — a highly anticipated and complex political and economic maneuver designed to keep Russia's supplies flowing into global markets while clamping down on President Vladimir Putin's ability to fund his war in Ukraine. EU nations sought to push the cap across the finish line after Poland held out to get as low a figure as possible, diplomats said Thursday. "Still waiting for white smoke from Warsaw," said an EU diplomat, who spoke on condition...

  • G-7 joins EU on $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil

    RAF CASERT and FATIMA HUSSEIN|Dec 2, 2022

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Group of Seven nations and Australia joined the European Union on Friday in adopting a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, a key step as Western sanctions aim to reorder the global oil market to prevent price spikes and starve President Vladimir Putin of funding for his war in Ukraine. Europe needed to set the discounted price that other nations will pay by Monday, when an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea and a ban on insurance for those supplies take effect. The price cap, which was led by the G-7 wealthy d...

  • NATO nations sign accession protocols for Sweden, Finland

    RAF CASERT|Jul 3, 2022

    BRUSSELS (AP) — The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals — and possible political trouble in Turkey. The move further increases Russia's strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since. "This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO," said alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The 30 ambassadors and...

  • West unleashes SWIFT bans, more crushing penalties on Russia

    ZEKE MILLER and RAF CASERT|Feb 27, 2022

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and European nations agreed Saturday to impose the most potentially crippling financial penalties yet on Russia over its unrelenting invasion of Ukraine, going after the central bank reserves that underpin the Russian economy and severing some Russian banks from a vital global financial network. The decision, announced as Ukrainian forces battled Saturday to hold Russian forces back from Ukraine's capital and residents sheltered in subway tunnels, basements and underground garages, has potential to spread t...

  • Russia-Ukraine: What to know as world awaits next moves

    RAF CASERT|Feb 23, 2022

    BRUSSELS (AP) — World leaders on Wednesday waited to see if Russian President Vladimir Putin would cast the die and order troops deeper into Ukraine. At the same time, they worked to maintain a united stance and vowed to impose tougher sanctions in the event of a full-fledged invasion. Fears of an imminent offensive were further heightened late Wednesday when the Kremlin said rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine have asked Russia for military assistance to help fend off Ukrainian "aggression." With Russian lawmakers having authorized Putin to use m...

  • World races to contain new COVID threat, the omicron variant

    RAF CASERT and CALVIN WOODWARD|Nov 26, 2021

    BRUSSELS (AP) — Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world raced Friday to contain a new coronavirus variant potentially more dangerous than the one that has fueled relentless waves of infection on nearly every continent. A World Health Organization panel named the variant "omicron" and classified it as a highly transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the predominant delta variant, which is still a scourge driving higher cases of sickness and death in Europe and parts of the United States. "It seems to spread...

  • The AP Interview: Facebook whistleblower fears the metaverse

    RAF CASERT and KELVIN CHAN|Nov 10, 2021

    BRUSSELS (AP) — Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen warned Tuesday that the "metaverse," the all-encompassing virtual reality world at the heart of the social media giant's growth strategy, will be addictive and rob people of yet more personal information while giving the embattled company another monopoly online. In an interview with The Associated Press, Haugen said her former employer rushed to trumpet the metaverse recently because of the intense pressure it is facing after she revealed deep-seated problems at the company, in d...

  • Biden raises concerns with Putin about Ukraine confrontation

    MATTHEW LEE and RAF CASERT|Apr 14, 2021

    BRUSSELS (AP) — President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to "de-escalate tensions" following a Russian military buildup on Ukraine's border in their second tense call of Biden's young presidency. Biden also told Putin the U.S. would "act firmly in defense of its national interests" regarding Russian cyber intrusions and election interference, according to the White House. Biden proposed a summit in a third country "in the coming months" to discuss the full range of U.S.-Russia issues, the White House said. The B...

  • Pandemic holds few lessons for European chefs, mostly misery

    RAF CASERT and VIRGINIA MAYO|Nov 15, 2020

    ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) — Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. If that were the case for the high-end restaurant industry, the coronavirus pandemic should have offered ample opportunities for creativity and renewal. Instead, it is turning into a bitter struggle for survival. Many a three-star Michelin meal has been put into a takeout box and sent out on Deliveroo scooters, as renowned chefs in Belgium and elsewhere try to scrape through a second pandemic lockdown that is likely to threaten even the lucrative Christmas season. Serg...

  • Bunnies to the rescue as virus hits Belgian chocolatiers

    Raf Casert|Apr 10, 2020

    SINT-PIETERS BRUGGE, Belgium (AP) — Master chocolatier Dominique Persoone stood forlorn on his huge workfloor, a faint smell of cocoa lingering amid the idle machinery — in a mere memory of better times. Easter Sunday is normally the most important date on the chocolate makers' calendar. But the coronavirus pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing, has struck a hard blow to the 5-billion-euro ($5.5-billion) industry that's one of Belgium's most emblematic. "It's going to be a disaster," Persoone told The Associated Press through a m...

  • Britain leaves the European Union, leaps into the unknown

    JILL LAWLESS and RAF CASERT|Jan 31, 2020

    LONDON (AP) — So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu. With little fanfare, Britain left the European Union on Friday after 47 years of membership, taking a leap into the unknown in a historic blow to the bloc. The U.K.'s departure became official at 11 p.m. (2300GMT), midnight in Brussels, where the EU is headquartered. Thousands of enthusiastic Brexit supporters gathered outside Britain's Parliament to welcome the moment they'd longed for since Britain's 52%-48% vote in June 2016 to walk away from the club it had joined in 1973. The f...

  • EU leaders fail to agree on 2050 climate goal

    SAMUEL PETREQUIN and RAF CASERT|Jun 21, 2019

    BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders have failed to back a plan to make the bloc's economy carbon neutral by 2050 in spite of promises to fight harder against climate change. Ahead of a U.N. meeting in the fall, the proposal was relegated to a non-binding footnote in the final statement of Thursday's summit of EU leaders in Brussels. "For a large majority of Member States, climate neutrality must be achieved by 2050," the footnote read. However, for the change in approach to become an official target, all 28 EU countries need to back the c...

  • D-Day at 75: Nations honor aging veterans, fallen comrades

    RAF CASERT and JOHN LEICESTER|Jun 7, 2019

    OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — Standing on the windswept beaches and bluffs of Normandy, a dwindling number of aging veterans of history's greatest air and sea invasion received the thanks and praise of a world transformed by their sacrifice. The mission now, they said, was to honor the dead and keep their memory alive, 75 years after the D-Day operation that portended the end of World War II. "We know we don't have much time left, so I tell my story so people know it was because of that generation, because of those guys in this cemetery," said 9...

  • May's relationship with EU was often rocky

    RaF Casert|May 24, 2019

    BRUSSELS (AP) — As British Prime Minister Theresa May announced her departure with a Brexit plan nowhere near success, European Union leaders offered kind words. But it was quite another matter during the years of negotiations with the bloc that often produced exasperation, miscommunication and even some ridicule of her. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whose office led the Brexit negotiations, on Friday called May "a woman of courage for whom he has great respect," saying he watched her resignation speech "without personal joy." An...

  • Some 70,000 Brussels protesters demand action on climate

    RaF Casert|Jan 27, 2019

    BRUSSELS (AP) — At least 70,000 people braved cold and rain in Brussels on Sunday to demand the Belgian government and the European Union increase their efforts to fight climate change, the Belgian capital's fourth climate rally in two months to attract at least 10,000 participants. The event was described as Belgium's biggest climate march ever, with police estimating slightly bigger crowds than a similar demonstration last month. Trains from across the nation were so clogged that thousands of people didn't make the march in time. Some 3...

  • Leaders laud fallen soldiers on eve of armistice centennial

    RaF Casert|Nov 11, 2018

    PARIS (AP) — Traveling from across the world to monuments honoring soldiers who fell 100 years ago, victors and vanquished alike marked those sacrifices Saturday ahead of Armistice Day and assessed alliances that have been redrawn dramatically since the dark days of World War I. The leaders of former enemies France and Germany, in an intimate gesture that underscored their countries' current roles as guarantors of peace in Europe, held their heads together at the site north of Paris where the defeated Germans and the Allies signed the a...

  • In the final hours of World War I, a terrible toll

    RaF Casert|Nov 9, 2018

    VRIGNE-MEUSE, France (AP) — Augustin Trebuchon is buried beneath a white lie. His tiny plot is almost on the front line where the guns finally fell silent at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, after a four-year war that had already killed millions. A simple white cross says: "Died for France on Nov. 10, 1918." Not so. Like hundreds of others along the Western Front, Trebuchon was killed in combat on the morning of Nov. 11 — after the pre-dawn agreement between the Allies and Germany but before the armistice took effect six hou...

  • A century after fighting for Paris, leaders mark armistice

    RaF Casert|Nov 9, 2018

    PARIS (AP) — Paris, the City of Light, always was the grandest prize of World War I, either to conquer or defend. So it is only fitting that when victors and vanquished meet to mark the centennial of the armistice this weekend, the biggest ceremony should be on the famed Champs-Elysees at the Arc de Triomphe. On Friday, some leaders began remembrance events in a wide crescent of cemeteries and trench-rutted battlefields north of the capital. British Prime Minister Theresa May laid wreaths for the first and last British soldier killed in the f...

  • EU top court rules new breeding techniques count as GMOs

    RaF Casert|Jul 26, 2018

    BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's top court ruled Wednesday that food produced by a series of new biotechnology breeding techniques should be considered genetically modified organisms, thus falling under the EU's strict regulations of the products. The ruling, which will see the foods face special safety checks and labeling restrictions, was seen as a major victory for environmentalists at the expense of the biotech industry. Biotech companies have been working on a new generation of technologies to change genetic material in plants or a...

  • EU, US relations sinking further after divisive Trump tour

    RaF Casert|Jul 18, 2018

    BRUSSELS (AP) — After a week of the worst barrage of insults yet from U.S. President Donald Trump, the European Union is looking westward toward the White House less and less. Making it worse, Trump spent Monday cozying up to EU adversary Vladimir Putin in an extraordinary chummy summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki. Never mind. In an age when Trump has made political optics all-important, on Tuesday the EU struck back. Key EU leaders were in the far east in Japan and China looking for the trust, friendship and cooperation they could n...

  • 18 acquitted in massive Brussels Airport 2013 diamond heist

    RAF CASERT|May 18, 2018

    BRUSSELS (AP) — Five years after a brazen multimillion-dollar diamond heist on the tarmac of Brussels Airport, a Belgian court on Thursday cited a lack of evidence as it acquitted 18 suspects in the case. The massive 2013 theft, in which tens of millions worth of gems were stolen from the hold of a departing Swiss-bound plane, had all the hallmarks of an "Ocean's Eleven" operation. And it still might still get a Hollywood ending. One other person, suspected of being the mastermind, will hear his case in court later. "It is a great result," s...

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