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France Finds Potential Terror Accomplice in Handcuffs in Bulgaria(caption under photo on page: French citizen Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, sits inside the courtroom before his trial in the town of Haskovo, Bulgaria, Jan. 12, 2015. ) Fritz-Joly Joachim, 29, was nabbed by Bulgarian authorities in the early morning on New Year's Day on a European arrest warrant for allegedly kidnapping his three-year-old son and trying to take him eventually into Syria, according to Darina Slavova, a prosecutor in the southern Bulgarian city of Haskovo. But Slavova told ABC News today that Bulgarian authorities received another European arrest warrant Monday alleging...

Bulgaria plans to extradite a Frenchman suspected of knowing or having been in touch with one of the two Islamist militants who shot dead 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week, prosecutors said on Monday. Using a European arrest warrant alleging that he had abducted his 3-year-old son and was likely to take him to Syria, Bulgarian police arrested Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, on January 1st at a border checkpoint when he tried to cross into Turkey.

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Barely two weeks after President Vladimir V. Putin annexed Crimea on one side of the Black Sea, he won a different prize on the other side. In Bulgaria’s Parliament, lawmakers gave initial passage to a bill clearing the way for a mammoth gas pipeline from Russia. The pipeline, known as South Stream, was Mr. Putin’s most important European project, a tool of economic and geopolitical power critical to twin goals: keeping Europe hooked on Russian gas, and further entrenching Russian influence in fragile former Soviet satellite states as part of a broader effort to undermine European unity....

The Russians called the EU’s bluff by pulling out of the project instead of accepting the EU’s conditions and are cutting deals with China and Turkey instead.By Alexander Mercouris ~ Russia Insider The reaction to the cancellation of the Sound Stream project has been a wonder to behold and needs to be explained very carefully. In order to understand what has happened it is first necessary to go back to the way Russian-European relations were developing in the 1990s. Briefly, at that period, the assumption was that Russia would become the great supplier of energy and raw materials to Europe....

Putin has become shockingly effective at influencing European politics through a host of far-right parties. The following chart from the Center for Eurasian Strategic Intelligence (CESI) shows Russia's growing influence within six different European Union countries. The parties, located in the UK, France, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, and Hungary, are increasingly popular—and staunchly against giving more power to the EU. Each of the parties has also fostered a closer relationship with Russia, and has protested against sanctions on Moscow following its annexation of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is so easy to dislike because he really is a bad guy and there are few things more pleasurable than contemplating his fall from power. It is reasonably clear that might just happen. Even though he continues to be widely popular in his own country, there are several reasons why he could be brought down. The principle ones are the fall in oil prices and the financial crisis brought on by the sanctions imposed by the West. There are many others: a 40 percent decline in the value of Russian currency; an impending recession; the cost...

...its lowest levels against the dollar for almost a year, amid investor nervousness about emerging markets. By evening trade in Istanbul the currency had fallen beyond TL2.30 to the US dollar, more than 1 per cent down on the day and the weakest level since January, when the Turkish central bank moved to increase interest rates -- a dramatic shift in policy that at the time halted a precipitous drop in its value. ...Turkey is far from alone in being affected by strong US economic data that has heightened expectations of a US Federal Reserve interest rate rise and so...

Every 10 or 20 years a series of watershed events come together that change the face of the international energy picture. The Saudi-led war on crude oil prices is one of these pivotal situations. And while others fret about what the OPEC production move means, I'm actually meeting with the guys who made the decision. I can tell you that what's unfolding here in the desert will have a decisive impact on producers, end users, and government/corporate policymakers worldwide. Of course, I've been involved in a fair share of all of this for over 40 years, from both the public...

Stand on the sea wall next to the port in Varna and you can see the bits and pieces of South Stream piled up in front of you. Hundreds of long black sections of piping - some on the dockside, and others still stacked on cargo ships. They were supposed to have been laid beneath the gloomy waters of the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine and bringing Russian gas directly to south-eastern Europe. But - suddenly and unilaterally - Vladimir Putin has declared the project dead. Gas, he said, will be sent to Turkey instead. "It's really not clear what's going...

President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that he would scrap Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline, a grandiose project that was once intended to establish the country’s dominance in southeastern Europe but instead fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West. It was a rare diplomatic defeat for Mr. Putin, who said Russia would redirect the pipeline to Turkey. He painted the failure to build the pipeline as a loss for Europe and blamed Brussels for its intransigence. The decision also seemed to be a rare victory for the European Union and the Obama administration, which have appeared largely...

Representatives of Eurosceptic and far-right groups from Italy to Bulgaria gathered at the National Front party conference in Lyon at the weekend to warn France and Europe of a “neo-Ottoman” onslaught of Islam-preaching, benefit-stealing migrants. Digging through the history books, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), warned that “Arab armies plundered Lyon in 725 and are now busy doing the same in Iraq and Syria”. Strache went on to blast Europe’s mainstream parties for, among other things, stoking “mass immigration, ideological terror, gay marriage and gender theory”. The Austrian far-right leader was one of seven foreign...

Putin's Western Allies: Why Europe's Far Right Is on the Kremlin's Side Gabor Vona, president of the Hungarian radical right-wing party "Jobbik," delivers a speech at a rally in Budapest, March 15, 2014.(Bernadett Szabo / Courtesy Reuters) Given that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated reasons for invading Crimea was to prevent “Nazis” from coming to power in Ukraine, it is perhaps surprising that his regime is growing closer by the month to extreme right-wing parties across Europe. But, in both cases, Putin’s motives are not primarily ideological. In Ukraine, he simply wants to grab territory that he believes...

Archeologists in Bulgaria haved uncovered a 13th century staked "vampire" at Perperikon, an ancient Thracian site in the south of the country, Archaeology reports. The remains once belonged to a man who was likely in his 40s. An iron rod had been hammered through his chest "to keep the corpse from rising from the dead and disturbing the living," Archaeology continues, and his left leg had also been removed and placed beside the corpse. Clearly, this man's neighbors did not trust his remains to stay put. As Nikolai Ovcharov, the archeologist in charge of the dig, told the Telegraph: "We...

For the second time in the space of one week, officials in Sofia and Moscow exchanged harsh words, after Russia’s foreign ministry said that an interview by Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev with a German newspaper was “regrettable”. Speaking to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview published on October 4, Plevneliev said that Russia was a “nationalistic and aggressive state” and Russian president Vladimir Putin viewed Europe as an opponent rather than a partner. In his weekly media briefing on October 9, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich said that Plevneliev’s interview was cause for concern, because it “once again repeated...

At least three people were injured in a powerful blast at an explosives factory in Gorni Lom in Bulgaria’s Vidin region on October 1. Unconfirmed media reports said that about 15 people were on shift at the time of the explosion and it was feared that they were dead. Two of the injured were admitted to hospital in Montana for treatment for fractures while another victim was in hospital in Vidin. None was in critical condition, reports said. The scene of the blast was inaccessible because of secondary explosions. It also emerged that the Midzhur plant had a bad track...

Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania have agreed to set up joint military unit of several thousand soldiers. Defence ministers from the three countries signed the deal on Friday. Poland's defence ministry said the brigade would be based in the eastern Polish city of Lublin but the soldiers would remain in their home countries. Poland and Lithuania are eager to bolster defences following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula earlier this year.

Turkey's energy minister has declared a gas pipeline a "peace corridor" linking the Caucasus with the Balkans. "We open the project as a peace corridor that is the result of 15 years hard work by Turkey and Azerbaijan. Through the South Caucasus pipeline and its backbone, the Trans-Anatolia pipeline, we connect the Caucasus with the Balkans. I wish every country could understand the true value of these projects and contribute with us," Taner Yıldız said while speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of the South Caucasus pipeline in Baku on Sept. 20. The minister said energy security "ranks as one of...

The Russians -well known for their great sense of humor (especially when you're making fun of them)- have loudly complained to the Bulgarian government for not-the-first-time re. the ongoing vandalism offensive against (offensive) USSR-era monuments glorifying the Soviet Red Army, the Bulgarian Red Army, and/or socialism in general that still dot the bleak post- communist landscape of the EU's poorest country. One gets the feeling they might have done a bit better by now economically if not for the damage wrought by 40 years of communist stagnation- they seem to think that too, as evidenced by the Bulgarians' disgust...

Russia is demanding that Bulgaria try harder to prevent vandalism of Soviet monuments, after yet another monument to Soviet troops in Sofia was spray-painted, ITAR-Tass reported. The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria has issued a note demanding that its former Soviet-era ally clean up the monument in Sofia's Lozenets district, identify and punish those responsible, and take "exhaustive measures" to prevent similar attacks in the future, the news agency reported Monday.

Now that all eyes are on Ukraine and the potential of a bigger war looms, there’s never been a more important time to understand what is at stake. As WhoWhatWhy readers know, the real reasons surrounding a conflict are often buried under the headlines and rhetoric. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that, behind the scenes, oil and natural gas are driving a big piece of the U.S. response to Russian involvement in Ukraine. If you want to understand where the rubber meets the geopolitical road in the Ukraine war, you need to learn about the 1,480-mile South Stream...