Europe

European Union officials said a trade agreement must be comprehensive and ambitious to secure support on both sides of the Atlantic.

Adm. James Stavridis, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and chief of U.S. European Command, has been appointed a dean at Tufts University.

Stavridis was named dean of the university’s Fletcher School, a graduate school for international affairs, the university announced Monday.

Stavridis will begin at Tufts after he retires from the Navy this summer.

A bipartisan group of 14 senators told the Obama administration that it should fight a recent decision by the European Commission (EC) to impose an anti-dumping duty on U.S. ethanol exports.

The senators, led by John Thune (R-S.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), wrote a letter to acting U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis and acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank on Tuesday urging them to challenge the EC’s decision at the World Trade Organization.

The Obama administration will likely approve a limited number of politically controversial natural gas export projects despite some fears on Capitol Hill about a massive expansion, according to a Moody's report released Wednesday.

It said the Energy Department (DOE) would likely approve three out of the 20 applications under review for exporting natural gas to nations that lack a free-trade agreement with the United States. One such application already has received the go-ahead from the DOE.

Those projects have alarmed some lawmakers, who are tussling over whether to allow a major expansion of natural gas exports.

The Obama administration says it's “very concerned” with the first conviction under Russia's new law targeting non-governmental organizations that receive foreign funding.

The election monitoring NGO Golos has been fined 300,000 Rubles – a little less than $10,000 – for failing to register as a “foreign agent” under a law passed last November. The law is seen as part of a larger crackdown on pro-democracy groups funded by the United States.

“We're troubled by this and other recent laws that impose restrictions on NGOs in Russia and have been used to justify hundreds of raids on civil society groups and other organizations since early March,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. 

House lawmakers will investigate Islamist extremism in Chechnya in the wake of last week's Boston bombings, which are believed to be the work of two ethnic Chechen suspects.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee's subpanels on Europe and Terrorism will hold a joint hearing at 10:30 a.m. Friday, The Hill has learned.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday addressed the House in Armenian to mark the 98th anniversary of Genocide Memorial Day, a day that marks the victims of Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1923.

"I speak to you from the floor of the House of Representatives in the language of your grandparents and your great grandparents — the language they used to speak of their hopes, their dreams, their lives and their loves in the years before 1915," Schiff said in Armenian.

A Polish newsweekly on Tuesday mistakenly republished a satirical story about former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin calling for an attack against the Czech Republic in the wake of the Boston bombings.

Wprost promptly took down the news item from its website after realizing that its source, The Daily Currant, is a fake news publication. 

The Senate approved the resolution with no debate by unanimous consent, just in time for Thatcher's funeral on Wednesday.

Sens. Menendez and McConnell have stopped working together on a resolution to honor the former British prime minister.