Month: August 2017

A new U.S. study has found an “extreme level” of wealth inequality in Russia that has increased much more significantly than it has in former Eastern European communist countries and in China since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

The study, conduced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found inequality in Russia has been driven by the transition from communism, during which wealthy Russians accumulated offshore wealth about three times larger than the net value of the country’s foreign reserves. This offshore wealth is comparable to all the financial assets held by households throughout Russia.

‘Dramatic failure’

“The dramatic failure of Soviet communism and egalitarian ideology … seems to have led to relatively high tolerance for large inequality and concentration of private property,” the study said.

It predicts inequality in Russia will persist “as long as billionaires and oligarchs appear to be loyal to the Russian state and perceived national interests.”

Russian living standards were between 60 percent to 65 percent of the Western European average in 1990 and 1991 and increased to 70 percent to 75 percent by the mid-2010s, according to the study.

Rent-based resources

The levels of inequality in Russia are in part the result of “a persistent concentration of rent-based resources, which are unlikely to be the best recipes for sustainable development and growth,” researchers said.

The study said official estimates of inequality in Russia greatly underestimate the concentration of income. Researchers said the report includes the “first complete balance sheet series” detailing private, public and national wealth and offshore wealth estimates in post-Soviet Russia.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.
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Net migration to Britain has fallen to a three-year low as a growing number of European Union nationals left the country following last year’s Brexit referendum, according to official figures released Thursday.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics provide evidence that the uncertainty and economic jitters caused by Britain’s vote to quit the EU are having an impact on immigration.

The statistics office said net migration – the difference between arrivals and departures – was 246,000 in the year to March 31, a fall of 81,000 on a year earlier. More than half the change was due to a decline of 51,000 in net migration from the EU.

A total of 122,000 EU citizens left Britain in the year to March, up 31,000 from the year before and the highest outflow in nearly a decade.

There was a particularly sharp rise in departures from citizens of the “EU 8” — eastern European nations that joined the bloc in 2004. Hundreds of thousands of Poles, Lithuanians and other eastern Europeans moved to Britain to work after 2004.

EU citizens have the right to live and work in any member state, and more than 3 million nationals of other EU countries live in Britain.

When Britain formally leaves the EU in March 2019, it will have the power to set restrictions on the movement of people from the EU, leaving many uncertain about their future rights.

Nicola White, head of international migration figures at the statistics office, said the figures “indicate that the EU referendum result may be influencing people’s decision to migrate into and out of the U.K., particularly EU and EU8 citizens.”

“It is too early to tell if this is an indication of a long-term trend,” she said.

A slowdown in the British economy could be making the country less attractive to migrants. The statistics agency confirmed Thursday that the economy grew by a modest 0.3 percent in the second quarter of 2017 from the previous three months, slower than any other Group of Seven economy.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday during a visit to Ukraine that Russia is “seeking to redraw international borders by force” and that U.S. sanctions against Russia will remain in place until the government in Moscow changes its behavior.

Mattis spoke alongside Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko after a meeting with him and other leaders in Kyiv.

The Pentagon chief reiterated U.S. support for Ukraine, and said it does not accept Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

He also said Russia has not lived up to its commitments in the Minsk Agreement to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as other deals the country has endorsed.

“The U.S. and our allies will continue to press Russia to honor its Minsk commitments and our sanctions will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them,” Mattis said.

He added that the U.S. remains committed to finding a diplomatic resolution to the situation in Ukraine.
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Switzerland’s attorney general’s office said Thursday it indicted a 30-year-old woman for trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group.

A statement said the attorney general had evidence that the woman, who is a Swiss citizen, traveled two years ago with her four-year-old son from Egypt to Greece in an attempt to go further to Turkey and into Syria.

The woman was stopped by Greek authorities, and then later arrested in Zurich in January 2016 as she returned to Switzerland.

Her name was not released.

The attorney general’s office said in its statement that it has a strict policy of prosecuting what it called “Jihadi travelers.”
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Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Donald Trump must be shown appropriate respect for holding the office of the U.S. president, even if she may differ with him on policy issues.

Merkel, campaigning for a fourth term in office after a Sept. 24 national election, has refused to bend to pressure from her Social Democrat (SPD) rivals to resist demands by Trump for NATO members to increase their defense spending.

As a committed Atlanticist, she has stressed the strength of German relations with the United States even when flagging differences in opinion on policy.

“If you take the president of the United States, whatever differences of opinion there may be, I know he prevailed in a tough election. It wasn’t reserved for him on a silver platter,” she told business daily Handelsblatt in an interview.

“In the end, he won the election under American electoral law and that means he is democratically elected and that this person should be shown the appropriate respect, regardless of how I assess his views,” she added.

Her SPD challenger, Martin Schulz, has been far more critical of Trump, referring to the U.S. president as “this irresponsible man in the White House.”

Merkel, who enjoyed holidaying in the United States before becoming chancellor in 2005, said she missed the opportunity to vacation there now.

“I can’t go on holiday in San Diego now as chancellor because the time difference is too much, and that is something I miss a bit, but the work itself is so marvelous that I can afford to miss it.”
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France on Wednesday backed a commitment by U.S. President Donald Trump to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan.

“France recognizes the importance of this undertaking and remains resolutely engaged in the struggle against terrorism,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

Trump on Monday rowed back on a campaign pledge to quit Afghanistan, committing instead to an open-ended “fight to win” against Taliban insurgents there.
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A Moscow court placed prominent Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov under house arrest Wednesday on embezzlement charges in a case seen by many as an effort by authorities to squash dissent.

The 47-year-old Serebrennikov was arrested Tuesday on the set of a movie he was shooting in St. Petersburg and driven to a jail in Moscow, where he spent the night.

Serebrennikov is accused of embezzling $1.1 million in government money he received to fund his productions between 2011 and 2014. He denied those allegations in court Wednesday.

A judge in Moscow’s Basmanny Court rejected Serebrennikov’s request to be released on bail, even after his lawyer offered to provide as collateral the $1.1 million Serebrennikov is accused of embezzling. He will be under house arrest until October.

Serebrennikov is known in Russia for his theatrical productions that mock the government. His detention is widely viewed as part of Moscow’s efforts to silence critics.

Many members of Russia’s arts community spoke out on behalf of Serebrennikov following his detention. Irina Prokhorova, a sister of billionaire tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, who owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, called Serebrennikov “the pride of Russia.”

In 2012, Serebrennikov took the helm of an aging Soviet-era theater and turned it into a popular, modern venue known as the Gogol Center. He is considered by many to be a mainstream cultural figure in Russia, although his interpretations of classic works have drawn criticism from conservative Russian politicians.

If convicted on the embezzlement charges, Serebrennikov could face up to 10 years in prison.

 
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As many as 200 migrants clashed near the northern French port city of Calais, using sticks and iron bars in five mass brawls that mainly pitted Afghans against Eritreans, authorities said Tuesday.

A total of 21 migrants and six riot police were injured, none seriously, during the clashes that broke out between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture said.

Up to 150 migrants were involved in the last fight, which started on a road leading out of the Calais city center and moved to a highway, the prefecture said. The regional Voix du Nord newspaper said the violent skirmishes held up traffic.

Four other fights began late Monday and continued until dawn as police dispersed the groups with tear gas.

Police detained seven migrants for questioning and put 20 others in administrative detention, meaning they risk expulsion from France, according to the prefecture.

Authorities cleared some 7,000 migrants from a makeshift camp in Calais last fall, but people hoping to enter Britain by crossing the English Channel in trains or ferries are steadily returning. Authorities estimate about 400 migrants are now in the Calais area, while aid groups put the number at about 600.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said three weeks ago that even though there are far fewer migrants in Calais compared to a year ago, 30,000 attempts to sneak into the Eurotunnel complex or onto ferries had been made since the start of 2017. Many of the people on the French side of the Channel make repeated attempts.

The interior minister announced at the end of July that two special centers to shelter migrants in Calais would be opened. However, the shelters for willing occupants are aimed at speeding up assessments of their situations, including whether they are to be expelled from France.
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Ukrainian cyber security firm ISSP said on Tuesday it may have detected a new computer virus distribution campaign, after security services said Ukraine could face cyber-attacks similar to those which knocked out global systems in June.

The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.

ISPP said that, as with NotPetya, the new malware seemed to originate in accounting software and could be intended to take down networks when Ukraine celebrates its Independence Day on Aug. 24.

“This could be an indicator of a massive cyber-attack preparation before National Holidays in Ukraine,” it said in a statement.

In a statement, the state cyber police said they also had detected new malicious software.

The incident is “in no way connected with global cyber-attacks like those that took place on June 27 of this year and is now fully under control,” it said.

The state cyber police and the Security and Defense Council have said Ukraine could be targeted with a NotPetya-style attack aimed at destabilizing the country as it marks its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

Last Friday, the central bank said it had warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of new malware, spread by opening email attachments of word documents.

Ukraine – regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks – is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s main challenger in next month’s election says he would push for the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from German soil.

The dpa news agency reported Tuesday that Social Democrat Martin Schulz also told supporters in the city of Trier on Tuesday that a government led by him would seek to limit Germany’s own military expenditures.

The news agency quoted Schulz saying: “As chancellor, I will work to ensure that the nuclear weapons stationed in Germany … are removed.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has pressured Germany and other NATO partners to spend more on defense.

But Schulz said: “It can’t be that Germany, without comment and without action, continues to take part in an armament spiral as wanted by Trump.”

Merkel’s bloc currently enjoys a 15 percent lead over Schulz’s party.
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The United States is suspending the processing of nonimmigrant visas at its consulates in Russia after authorities there ordered its staff slashed by more than half in retaliation for U.S. sanctions against Russian in its election hacking. Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow would consider how best to respond to the decision, the latest tit-for-tat move in spiraling diplomatic relations. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Washington.
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Four suspects arrested in connection with last week’s deadly van attack in Barcelona are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday, a day after police shot and killed the man they say was the van’s driver.

Authorities say a 12-man terror cell was behind the attack, and that eight of the suspects have either been killed by police or died in an accidental explosion at their bomb-making facility the day before the attack.

The massive manhunt for the last outstanding suspect, Younes Abouyaaqoub, ended Monday in a rural area known for its vineyards about 45 kilometers west of Barcelona. Authorities say they shot the fugitive after he held up what appeared to be a bomb belt, which they later discovered was fake.

“We confirm that the man shot dead in #subirats is Younes Abouyaaqoub, author of the terrorist attack in #barcelona,” police tweeted Monday.

Catalan Interior Minister Joaquim Forn told Catalunya radio that “everything indicates” Younes Abouyaaqoub was behind the wheel of the van during Thursday’s Barcelona attack that killed 15 people.

Police say a bomb disposal robot was dispatched to approach the man’s body after the shooting to check the apparent suicide belt.

They said officers were alerted to the fugitive by a caller who reported a suspicious person near the local train station and then by another witness who said she was sure she saw Abouyaaqoub in the small town of Subirats fleeing through the vineyards. Authorities later found the man hiding in the vineyards and asked for his identification, leading to the shootout.

​Islamic connections

Many of the suspects had connections to the northeastern town of Ripoll, one of the places where police have focused their investigation.

Authorities say Abouyaaqoub, who was born in Morocco and has Spanish residency, also is suspected of carjacking a man and stabbing him to death as he made his getaway from the Barcelona attack.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack along with another vehicle attack Friday in which a car crashed into people in the resort town of Cambrils, Spain, and the attackers then got out and tried to stab people. One person was killed and several people were wounded. Authorities believe both attacks were carried out by the same terrorist cell.

Authorities believe an imam named Abdelbaki Es Satty may have radicalized some of those who carried out the attack in Barcelona and the later attack in Cambrils. The imam was among those killed in the explosion at the bomb-making facility.

​Arrests may have prevented more attacks

Deakin University professor of global Islamic politics Greg Barton told VOA Spain’s previous arrests of terrorism suspects could explain why it has not dealt with the same number of attacks as other countries in Europe, such as France and Belgium in recent years.

“Spain is not immune from these problems, particularly Catalonia, where there are links with northern Morocco,” Barton said. “But Spain up until now has been able to keep on top of the problem, whereas France and Belgium have been struggling.”

Barton also said there does not seem to be any particular link between the influx of migrants to Europe and these attacks.

“The individuals being recruited have largely grown up in the countries where they’re recruited and they launch attacks in neighborhoods familiar to them,” he said.
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The city of Utrecht in the cycling-mad Netherlands opened on Monday what it said would be the world’s largest parking garage for bikes with room for 12,500 once completed next year.

The move by authorities in the city of 344,000 people aims to prevent a sprawling clutter of bicycles outside its main train station, overwhelming limited parking space.

“This is a side-effect of the success of the bicycle in our cities,” city councilor Lot van Hooijdonk told Reuters. “We are happy so many people use bikes, but it creates huge challenges for the city, especially around the station.”

The Dutch love for cycling is increasingly being tested by a worsening shortage of parking space. An ever-growing number of bikes is forcing municipal authorities to spend millions of euros on state-of-the art parking venues, maintaining cycling lanes, removing wrecks and impounding badly parked bikes.

Utrecht’s 40-million-euro ($47 million) garage is designed to resolve the problem of cyclists leaving their bikes anywhere they want, preferably next to the station entrance.

The three-story garage will be directly linked to the street by bicycle paths and offer access to train platforms via elevators and stairs. Parking will be free for the first 24 hours and 1.25 euro for each following day.

Elsewhere, The Hague plans a garage for 8,500 bikes while Amsterdam – with 835,000 people and around 847,000 bikes – is working on a storage space for thousands under the city’s Amstel river and linked to its central station.

Parking space in Amsterdam is scarce partly because of the many bikes left behind in and around the racks. Last year the Dutch capital removed some 24,000 neglected bikes and 40,000 were seized for parking violations.

($1 = 0.8490 euros)
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The entire staff of the Serbian Embassy in the Macedonian capital has been withdrawn for urgent consultations in Belgrade in a move that has further strained relations between the Balkan neighbors.

The Macedonian Foreign Ministry said it “is not aware of the reasons for this decision.”

Serbian officials have not given a reason for the withdrawal. Serbian state TV said Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic will comment on Monday.

Relations between the two countries have been strained since Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev formed his coalition government this spring, almost six months after a parliamentary election.

Both Serbia and its ally Russia have voiced support for Macedonia’s former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE party. The party placed first in the election, but without winning a governing majority.

 
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Pope Francis is demanding countries to greatly improve their welcome to migrants and stop any collective expulsions, saying migrants’ dignity and right to protection trumps national security concerns.

Francis’ politically pointed message Monday was for the Catholic Church’s 2018 world refugee day, celebrated Jan. 14. It comes amid mounting anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe following waves of migrant arrivals and Islamic extremist attacks.

In the message, Francis demanded governments welcome, protect, promote and integrate migrants, saying Jesus’ message of love is rooted in welcoming the “rejected strangers of every age.”

He demanded an increased and simplified process of granting humanitarian and temporary visas and rejected arbitrary and collective expulsions as “unsuitable.”

He said the principle of ensuring each person’s dignity “obliges us to always prioritize personal safety over national security.”

 
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Police in the French port city Marseille are trying to determine if a van was intentionally driven into a bus shelter Monday, killing a woman.

The 35-year-old male driver from Grenoble, who was not identified by name, was being treating for psychological problems, authorities said.

French media report the vehicle had earlier slammed into a different bus shelter nearby, injuring one man there, before it struck the second shelter.

The vehicle’s driver was arrested at the scene.

The two bus stops in Marseille, France’s second largest city, were about five kilometers apart.

“At the moment we have no information on the motives of this individual,” a police source told Reuters.
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Brexit minister David Davis called on the European Union on Sunday to relax its position that the two sides must first make progress on a divorce settlement before moving on to discussing future relations.

After a slow start to negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain is pressing for talks to move beyond the divorce to offer companies some assurance of what to expect after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

This week, the government will issue five new papers to outline proposals for future ties, including how to resolve any future disputes without “the direct jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ)”, Davis said.

“I firmly believe the early round of the negotiations have already demonstrated that many questions around our withdrawal are inextricably linked to our future relationship,” Davis wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

“Both sides need to move swiftly on to discussing our future partnership, and we want that to happen after the European Council in October,” he wrote, saying the clock was ticking.

EU officials have said there must be “sufficient progress” in the first stage of talks on the rights of expatriates, Britain’s border with EU member Ireland and a financial settlement before they can consider a future relationship.

That has frustrated British officials, who say that until there has been discussion of future ties, including a new customs arrangement and some way of resolving any future

disputes, they cannot solve the Irish border issue or financial settlement, two of the more difficult issues in the talks.

“There are financial obligations on both sides that will not be made void by our exit from the EU,” Davis wrote. “We are working to determine what these are – and interrogating the basis for the EU’s position, line by line, as taxpayers would expect us to do.”

He said the Brexit ministry would “advance our thinking further” with the new papers next week.

On the role of the ECJ, Davis said Britain’s proposals would be based on “precedents” which do not involve the “direct jurisdiction” of the court, which is hated by many pro-Brexit ministers in the governing Conservative Party.

EU officials say the court should guarantee the rights of EU citizens living or working in Britain after Brexit.

“Ultimately, the key question here is how we fairly consider and solve disputes for both sides,” Davis wrote.

 
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The Turkish judge sits in a busy cafe in a big German city. Thirteen months ago, he was a respected public servant in his homeland. Now he is heartbroken and angry over the nightmarish turn of events that brought him here.

The day after a 2016 coup attempt shook Turkey, he was blacklisted along with thousands of other judges and prosecutors. The judge smiles, sadly, as he recounts hiding at a friend’s home, hugging his crying son goodbye and paying smugglers to get him to safety.

“I’m very sad I had to leave my country,” he said, asking for his name and location to be withheld out of fear that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government might track him down. “But at least I’m safe and out of Erdogan’s reach. He cannot hurt me anymore.”

Germany has become the top destination for political refugees from Turkey since the failed July 15, 2016 coup. Some 5,742 Turkish citizens applied for asylum here last year, more than three times as many as the year before, according to the Interior Ministry. Another 3,000 Turks have requested protection in Germany this year.

The figures include people fleeing a long-simmering conflict in the Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey, but the vast majority belong to a new class of political refugees: diplomats, civil servants, military members, academics, artists, journalists and anti-Erdogan activists accused of supporting the coup.

With many of them university-educated and part of the former elite, “their escape has already turned into a brain-drain for Turkey,” said Caner Aver, a researcher at the Center for Turkish Studies and Integration Research in Essen.

Germany is a popular destination because it’s already home to about 3.5 million people with Turkish roots and has been more welcoming of the new diaspora than other Western nations, Aver said.

“Some of the highly qualified people also try getting to the U.S. and Canada because most speak English, not German. But it’s just much harder to get there,” Aver said. “Britain has always been popular, but less so now because of Brexit.”

Comparable figures for post-coup asylum requests from Turks were not available for other countries.

More than 50,000 people have been arrested in Turkey and 110,000 dismissed from their jobs for alleged links to political organizations the government has categorized as terror groups or to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Ankara blames the Muslim cleric, a former Erdogan ally, for the coup attempt. Gulen denies the claim.

The true number of recent Turkish arrivals to Germany exceeds official asylum requests. Many fleeing academics, artists and journalists came on scholarships from German universities or political foundations. Some got in via relatives. Others entered with visas obtained before the failed coup.

The judge, a slim man in his 30s with glasses, arrived illegally by paying thousands of euros to cross from Turkey to Greece on a rubber dinghy and then continuing on to Germany.

Two other Turks in Germany — an artist who asked for anonymity, fearing repercussions for her family back home, and a journalist sentenced to prison in absentia — also spoke of ostracism and flight.

Ismail Eskin, the journalist, left Turkey just before he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. The 29-year-old worked for the Ozgur Gundem newspaper and the Kurdish news agency Dicle Haber Ajansi until the government shut them down shortly after the failed coup.

Eskin tried to write for different online news sites but the Turkish government blocked them too. He reluctantly decided to leave when the situation became unbearably difficult for journalists — about 160 are now in jail.

“I kept changing places to avoid being arrested, and I hid that I was a journalist,” Eskin said, chain-smoking at a Kurdish immigrants’ center. He hasn’t applied for asylum but is studying German — an acknowledgment he might be here to stay.

The judge said he “never supported any kind of coup” and had no connection to the Gulen movement but took hurriedly packed a few belongings and went to a friend’s place after learning he was among more than 2,000 judges and prosecutors being investigated.

A few hours later, police searched his apartment and took his computer.

His wife and children had been out of town during the coup attempt. While he was in hiding, his wife was told she had 15 days to move out. Friends and relatives stopped talking to her. After several months, he chose to leave.

“Since there’s no independent justice in Turkey anymore, I would have been exposed to injustice, maybe be tortured, if I had surrendered,” he said.

He sold his car and paid 8,500 euros ($9,910) to a smuggler for a December boat trip to a Greek island. From there, he flew to Italy and on to Germany. He brought his wife, son and daughter to join him a few weeks later.

The number of Turkish citizens fleeing to Germany has complicated the already tense relations between Ankara and Berlin. Accusing Germany of harboring terrorists, Turkey has demanded the extradition of escaped Turkish military officers and diplomats.

At least 221 diplomats, 280 civil servants and their families have applied for asylum, Germany says. Along with refusing to comply with the extradition requests, Germany has lowered the bar for Turkish asylum-seekers — those given permission to remain increased from 8 percent of applicants last year to more than 23 percent in the first half of 2017.

Some Turkish emigres have started building new lives in exile.

The artist from Istanbul lost her university job in graphic design before the 2016 coup because she was one of more than 1,000 academics who triggered Erdogan’s ire by signing a “declaration for peace” in Turkey.

She went to Berlin on a university scholarship in September, not long after the attempted coup. In February, she discovered she’d been named a terror group supporter and her Turkish passport was invalidated.

“Now I’m forced into exile, but that’s better than to be inside the country,” the woman in her early 30s said.

The artist said she’s doing fine in Berlin. She enrolled at a university and has had her work exhibited at a small gallery. Yet with her family still in Turkey, some days the enormity of the change weighs on her.

“In the winter I was so homesick,” she said. “I really felt like a foreigner, in my veins and in my bones.”

 
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Spain’s hunt for the driver of a van that barreled through a Barcelona crowd last week focused Sunday on the northeastern towns of Ripoll and Manlleu.

Police set up numerous roadblocks hoping to snare Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan man they suspect was behind Thursday’s attack, which killed 13 people and injured more than 100 others.

In a news conference Sunday, Spanish police also reported that they had found 120 gas canisters in a home believed to be the bomb-making factory of the suspects in Thursday’s attacks.  Enough materials were found to carry out “one or more attacks in Barcelona,” regional police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters, revealing that traces of TATP explosive had also been found.

In addition to Abouyaaqoub, two other suspects are being sought, including an imam named Abdelbaki Es Satty. Authorities believe Es Satty may have radicalized some of those who carried out the attacks. 

Police already have four people in custody they believe are connected to the attacks.

Investigators are trying to determine if some of the suspects sought were killed Wednesday night in an explosion that leveled a home in Alcanar.  Human remains were found in the rubble left by the blast, which police believe may have been caused by mishandling butane canisters that were intended to be used in an attack.  DNA testing is underway to determine how many people died in the explosion.

The Associated Press reports that neighbors said the vehicles used in the Cambrils and Barcelona attacks were seen at the Alcanar home prior to the blast.

Police said a seven-year-old boy with dual Australian and British citizenship has been identified as one of the victims, along with an Italian and a Belgian, but did not reveal their names.

On Sunday Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, attended a mass for the victims of the attacks at Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Basilica.

During the service, the archbishop of Barcelona read a telegram of sent by Pope Francis, who called the attacks a “cruel terrorist act” and a “grave offense to God.”

The king and queen visited victims in hospitals on Saturday and placed a wreath and candles at the site of the Barcelona attack.
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A year ago, analysts were expressing confidence during a major conference in London that southern Europe would avoid the kind of large-scale Islamic terror attacks seen in northern European cities like Paris and Brussels.

At a conference at King’s College, London, to explore the jihadist threat to Europe, analysts drawn from across the continent highlighted the fact that neither Spain — nor Italy, for that matter, which has also been on the receiving end of vocal Islamic State threats — had seen many volunteers join IS to fight in Syria or Iraq.

They noted neither southern European country has large populations of second-generation Muslim migrants, the most common recruitment pool for IS and rival al-Qaida. And they expressed confidence in the Spanish intelligence services skills, emphasizing the counterterror expertise honed during years of combating violent Basque separatists.

The midweek attack in Barcelona, the worst act of jihadist terrorism in Spain since 2004, when bombers struck commuter trains in Madrid, killing 192 people, is being seen as a wake-up call for the intelligence services — not only of Spain but also of Italy, the one major European country that has so far not suffered a jihadist act of terror.

Recent terror attacks

Counterterror officials in Madrid and Rome say they are perturbed by the increasing number of recent terror attacks across Europe that feature links to North African jihadists. They say they worry about the sophistication of Thursday’s attack — even though the plotters failed to pull off a much larger planned onslaught.

Fourteen people were killed in the midweek terror attacks in Spain — 13 in Barcelona and one in the resort town of Cambrils, where a car was driven into a crowd of pedestrians before police shot and killed the five suspects after they left the vehicle.

So far, four men have been arrested as countrywide, anti-terror operations remain underway and police hunt for the driver of the van that rammed pedestrians on Barcelona’s historic avenue, Las Ramblas.

Olivier Guitta, managing director of GlobalStrat, a security and geopolitical risk consultancy, said the attack in Spain was different from recent truck attacks in Nice, France, and Berlin, arguing it was “a much more sophisticated plot involving many more people, which is extremely serious and extremely concerning.”

Investigations into the backgrounds of the assailants — all but one are of Moroccan descent — are focusing initially on whether any of those involved were fighters who had returned to Europe from Syria, say Spanish counterterror officials, who asked not to be identified by name.

But beyond that, they and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe see an emerging trend of North African links behind the recent spate of terror attacks.

Manchester bombing

The suicide bombing earlier this year at a Manchester concert was mounted by British-born Salman Abedi, whose parents are Libyan. He traveled frequently to Tripoli to visit relatives and may have had terrorist training there.

Two of the three London Bridge attackers in June were also from North Africa. Rachid Redouane claimed variously to be Libyan or Moroccan, and Youssef Zaghba was born in Morocco.

It was a Tunisian, whose asylum application had been declined, who drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin in December, an act of terrorism that left 12 dead.

Spanish detectives are also following links with North African-origin jihadists in Belgium.

Last April, Spanish counterterror police mounted 12 house searches and arrested four suspects in connection with the jihadist attacks at the airport in Brussels and on a metro station, which left 32 dead in March 2016. Some of the suspects arrived in Belgium six days before those attacks and left shortly afterward.

El Pais newspaper reported that during their stay, they had several telephone conversations with people involved in the attacks. All of them were of Moroccan origin.

“The Belgian judge who is investigating the attack on the Brussels airport found links between those responsible for the attack and Moroccans residing in Catalonia,” according to a Spanish official.

Catalan police chief Josep Lluís Trapero said shortly after the arrests that the suspects who were detained all had criminal records, including links to drug and arms trafficking. A Spanish official told VOA several of the Barcelona suspects also have criminal histories.

On Saturday, Italian authorities announced they had deported three people — two Moroccans and a Syrian — suspected of extremist sympathies, raising to 202 the number of suspected jihadists expelled from Italy since January 2015. One of the deportees, a 38-year-old Moroccan, was radicalized while in jail for minor crimes, Italian officials said.

The other Moroccan, a 31-year-old man, expressed his support for IS openly. He had been receiving compulsory treatment for a mental disorder after being arrested for theft.
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Recruiting for Jihad is a Norwegian expose on the practices extremist Jihadists follow to recruit young men to fight for ISIS. During filming, Adel Khan Farooq, one of the two filmmakers, had unprecedented access to a radicalized network of Islamists in Europe. He met them through Norwegian-born Ubaydullah Hussain, a notorious recruiter, currently serving a nine-year sentence in a Norwegian prison.

“In the beginning, he was very charming,” Farooq told VOA, describing Hussain. “He was easy to talk with, and I never felt like he was a threat directly against me or anybody else for that matter, but when the attacks against Charlie Hebdo in France occurred and he was praising ISIS and then praising the attacks on Copenhagen, I certainly felt like that I did not know him after all.”

Still, Farooq kept filming Hussain.

“I wanted to find out why he became that way, why did he become so extreme, because there are some pieces of him that he used to be a referee in soccer and he was a bright child and did OK in school,” he says. Farooq accompanied Hussain to underground meetings and workshops among radicalized Islamists in a number of places in Europe, trying to learn what was behind the radicalization of people like him.

Farooq learned that most of the radicals are born in Europe but are culturally and psychologically displaced and vulnerable to the idea of close-knit radicalized communities.

“At least in Norway, 99 percent of Muslims, the majority of Muslims, are integrated in society. They work as lawyers, doctors, teachers, police officers, and have a Muslim background. But there are some, the minority, that have these extreme views. It’s not only in Norway, it’s in Sweden, Denmark, UK, France, Belgium, you always find a small minority of people who don’t fit in even as Muslims, they don’t fit in, they are marginalized, might struggle or have some struggles at home, hard time finding work.”

These types of people, Farooq says, are radicalized by leading Islamists such as Anjem Choudary, a British citizen, who supports the existence of an Islamic state.

Before his six-year incarceration for supporting Islamic State, Choudary was holding workshops throughout Europe advocating jihad. During one of those underground meetings, Farooq captured chilling footage of him preaching to a group of men, women and children in a basement room. His lecture, advocating that Islamic values are superior to British values and the British constitution, was also being recorded and distributed to thousands over the internet.

In 2015, Islamic extremists waged a series of attacks in Paris, first against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and months later, at a concert hall and football stadium, killing 130 and injuring 368. Afterward, Farooq says Hussain told him on camera that he did not know the attackers in Paris, but he knew people who knew them.

“These extremist groups,” Farooq said, “are really small, but they are strong because they work together. They either visit each other, have so called sessions, where they have seminars of sort.”

Though their ideas don’t represent the majority of Muslims in Europe, Farooq said, they impact the Muslim communities by fueling hatred against them.

“This radicalization is not a Muslim thing,” he says. “You find radicalization in America, too. Right wing extremists, they are radicalized; criminals, they are radicalized.”

One of Farooq’s last filming sessions of Hussain showed the Islamist recruiting a young Norwegian to fight for ISIS in Syria. The 18-year-old recruit was apprehended at the airport just before he boarded a plane with a fake passport. Hussain was arrested, and Norwegian police forces confiscated footage from Farooq and his co-director, Ulrik Rolfsen as evidence. The filmmakers’ fight for freedom of the press became a story in itself. Farooq and Rolfsen took their case all the way to Norway’s Supreme Court. They won.

“The key issue is that for any democracy, it is very, very vital that journalists and media are separated from authorities,” Rolfsen stressed. “My power is to tell stories and expose things that happen in society to educate the public, and I think it’s important that we don’t step on each other’s toes.”

When asked whether such a documentary can fuel fear and mistrust against Muslims, Rolfsen said that audiences’ reactions overall were positive, but he admitted it is a tough subject to tackle.

“We have a lot of people hating Islam, we have a lot of people pro Islam, the whole refugee situation is in the middle of that. Publishing the film felt like walking through a fire with a big balloon filled with gasoline and you know it’s going to blow up in your face if you don’t hold it high enough and you don’t walk fast enough.”

Farooq, raised as a Muslim, feels the film was close to his heart because he wanted to expose how these cells operate on the fringes of society.

“That was very important to me and Ulrik. Because most Muslims are not like these guys,” he said. “They are normal people.”
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A stabbing attack carried out Friday by an 18-year-old Moroccan migrant in Finland is being investigated by Finnish authorities as “a likely terrorist act,” officials said.

Speaking Saturday with reporters, Pekka Hiltunen, a spokeswoman for the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, told reporters the agency was investigating the suspect’s ties to the Islamic State group, as IS “has previously encouraged this kind of behavior.”

Police have not released the name of the suspect in the stabbing attack. On Friday, the asylum-seeker stabbed nine people in the small city of Turku, leaving two of the victims dead. He apparently was targeting women, in particular.

“We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defense of the women,” Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation superintendent, Christa Granroth, told reporters.

Four other Moroccan men were also detained by police in connection with the stabbing, though it is unclear what their relationship is to the attacker.

The attacker was shot in the leg by police shortly after the attack took place, and he is now in the hospital under police watch.

Security was heightened at Helsinki airport and at train stations in response to the stabbings.

The Security Intelligence Service raised the terrorism threat level in June after becoming aware of terror-related plots in the usually peaceful country.

Turku is located about 140 kilometers west of the capital of Helsinki.

The stabbings occurred as Europe remains on high alert while it grapples with a spate of terrorist attacks, including two this week alone. At least 14 people were killed and 100 others injured Thursday in Spain after drivers mowed down pedestrians in two separate attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in Barcelona.
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With no safe, legal passage to Europe, more than 100,000 migrants and refugees have nevertheless crossed the Mediterranean Sea this year, many setting off from Libya, which has become a trafficking hub. In recent months, the Libyan coast guard has expanded its operations beyond its territorial waters, threatening rescue ships and making it more difficult for humanitarians to assist those fleeing. From the United Nations, VOA’s Margaret Besheer has more.
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Ahmad Alkhald, a Syrian national from Aleppo who played a key role in the Islamic State (IS) terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, has been identified as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States, the U.S. State Department said.

The designation Thursday — which also included an Iraqi national who has provided close protection to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS leader in Iraq and Syria — imposed “strict sanctions” on the individuals and prohibited any dealings with them.

Alkhald is an IS bomb maker and the terror group’s explosives chief who helped carry out the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels, the State Department statement said.

The series of the deadly terrorist attacks on several public places killed 130 people in Paris and 32 in Brussels.

Alkhald reportedly traveled to Europe, where he made the explosive vests used in the Paris attacks.

Island a gateway to Europe

According to French media, he crossed into Europe via the Greek island of Leros in September 2015. The island has been a gateway for some other IS attackers who have reportedly sneaked in among Syrians seeking refuge in Europe in the aftermath of the country’s civil war.

Alkhald returned to Syria shortly before the Paris attacks and continued helping other IS plots in Europe, including the March 2016 attacks in Brussels.

“Alkhald is wanted internationally and a European warrant for his arrest has been issued,” the statement said.

Al-Baghdadi’s protector

Abu Yahya al-Iraqi, also known as Iyad Hamed Mahl al-Jumaily, was the second individual identified as a specially designated global terrorist in Thursday’s statement.

Al-Iraqi is a senior IS figure close to al-Baghdadi, the terror group’s leader. He is reportedly a key IS leader in Iraq and Syria and has played a major role in providing security for al-Baghdadi.

The designation “notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Alkhald and al-Iraqi have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism,” the State Department said.

The statement said the designation and action by the State Department would help expose and isolate the two men, and help law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and around the world in their efforts against them.

A response to 9/11 attacks

Specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) is a designation established by the U.S. government in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Individuals designated as SDGTs are believed to pose a threat to U.S. national security by committing acts of terrorism.

The State Department has placed 272 individuals from different terrorist entities on the designation list, including 20 IS leaders and operatives.

“These designations are part of a larger comprehensive plan to defeat [IS] that, in coordination with the 73-member global coalition, has made significant progress toward this goal,” the State Department said.
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Fitch Ratings has upgraded Greece’s credit rating from CCC to B-, a one-notch improvement that still leaves the bonds issued by the crisis-battered country well below investment grade.

The ratings agency said Friday that the outlook of the Greek economy was positive and that it expected talks with the country’s international creditors to be concluded “without creating instability.”

A Fitch statement added that other European countries using the euro currency were expected to grant Greece substantial debt relief next year. It said that would boost market confidence and help Greece finance itself directly by issuing bonds after its current bailout program ends in a year.

Fitch said Greece’s political situation had become more stable and that there was “limited” risk of a future government reversing bailout-linked austerity and reforms.
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Thousands observed a minute of silence Friday in Barcelona’s main square for the victims of two vehicular attacks that left at least 14 people dead and more than 100 injured.  

Spain’s king and prime minister attended the observance at Barcelona’s Placa de Catalunya. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also declared three days of national mourning.

The mayhem began Thursday when a van ran down people in Barcelona, where the deaths and most of the injuries occurred on Las Ramblas boulevard.

Catalonia’s regional president says that there’s at least one “terrorist still out there” after the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. It wasn’t immediately clear if that person is the driver of the van in the Barcelona attack, who escaped on foot. 

Carles Puigdemont also told Onda Cero radio “we don’t have information regarding the capacity to do more harm.’’

Police arrested two people — a Moroccan and a Spaniard — but it was not immediately clear how they are connected with the attacks. A third person has been arrested in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll, Catalonia Interior Minister Joaquim Forn said.

The second attack took place hours later in Cambrils, a resort south of Barcelona, when an automobile careened into pedestrians and a police vehicle. Police killed the five attackers, who they said also carried explosive belts, which were later found to be fake. Six civilians were injured in the Cambrils attack.

Forn said Friday the Cambrils attack “follows the same trail” as the attack in Barcelona, he added, “There is a connection,” without giving further details.

“They are assassins, criminals who won’t terrorize us.  All of Spain is Barcelona,” Spain’s royal family said in statement.

Police believe the attacks are also connected to an explosion in a house in Catalonia Wednesday that killed one person. Authorities suspect the people in the house were building an explosive device to be used in a terrorist attack.

Van Runs Over People in Barcelona

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the deadly Barcelona rampage.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday 26 French citizens were among those injured in Barcelona. He said 11 are in serious condition. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, however, said in a radio interview that “the number of those who have been seriously injured may perhaps be even higher at around 17.”

Le Drian said in a statement that he will be in Barcelona Friday “to visit the French victims of this cowardly act and affirm France’s support to the Spanish people and authorities.”

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the van attack “jihadist terrorism.”

“Today, the fight against terrorism is the principal priority for free and open societies like ours. It is a global threat and the response has to be global,” Rajoy told reporters.

Barcelona’s Ramblas quietly reopened to the public Friday. Residents and tourists were allowed past police lines and slowly trickled back to their homes and hotels. The city center remained under heavy surveillance.

A demonstration that will include a minute of silence honoring the victims was announced by public officials for Friday noon at the Plaza Catalunya, next to the top of the Ramblas, where the deadly attack began.

World leaders pledge unity, resolve

U.S. President Donald Trump said via Twitter the U.S. “will do whatever is necessary to help” Spain, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned, “Terrorists around the world should know, the United States and our allies are resolved to find you and bring you to justice.”

US Officials Condemn Barcelona Van Attack, Offer Assistance to Spain

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, said “These murderous attacks have once again showed us the total hatred of humanity with which Islamist terrorism acts.”  She said, “We will not allow these murderers to make us depart from our path, from our way of life.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts were with the victims of the attack, and said France remains “united and determined.” In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was dark Thursday night to pay tribute to the victims.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he was “horrified by reports from Barcelona.”

Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen said Europe has “again been attacked by terror.”

“So long as the terrorists underestimate the spirit of the societies they seek to undermine, they will lose,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said about Barcelona.

The yellow and red colors of the Spanish flag lit up Tel Aviv’s City Hall Thursday night while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the civilized world must fight terrorism together and defeat it.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama tweeted that “ Americans will always stand with our Spanish friends.”
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The United States has condemned what it calls a “terror attack” in Barcelona Thursday and is offering assistance to Spain. At least 13 people have died and about 100 others were left injured after a van ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas area. Two people have been arrested in the case but the driver has fled. Terrorist group Islamic State has claimed the attack was performed by one of its “soldiers”, without offering any proof. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Parts of Portugal, beset by its deadliest summer of wildfires in living memory, were declared in a state of public calamity on Thursday as the government put emergency services on alert for further outbreaks.

It has borne the brunt of a heatwave that has settled over much of southern Europe, and more than three times as much forest has burned down in the country this summer as in an average year.

Since a single blaze killed 64 people in June, the government has been under pressure to come up with a strategic plan to limit the damage.

It said on Thursday the state of calamity would trigger “preventative effects” in the central and northern interior and parts of the southern Algarve region, while the meteorological office forecast temperatures would top 40 degrees centigrade in some places by Sunday.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa would also meet with military, police and rescue service commanders “for the maximum mobilization and pre-positioning of personnel in the areas of greatest risk,” the government said in a statement.

Since June’s tragedy, emergency services have made far greater efforts to evacuate villages and shut roads early in affected areas.

Still, nearly 80 people have been hurt in wildfires in the past week alone, according to the civil protection service.

Last Saturday, when a record 268 fires blazed countrywide, the government requested water planes and firemen from other European countries.

On Thursday, over 130 people were evacuated from villages in the Santarem district around 170 km (110 miles) northeast of Lisbon, where over 1,000 firefighters were battling flames.

With just over 2 percent of the EU landmass, Portugal accounts for almost a third of burnt areas in the union this year.

More than 163,000 hectares of forest have been lost there, more than three times higher than the average of the last 10 years, according to EU data.
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