Month: June 2018

A rescue ship run by a European charity is headed to Spain with more than 600 migrants on board after Italy and Malta refused to accept the vessel. Italy’s new government, which campaigned on halting the flow of migrants into the country, is starting to make good on his promises.

The European Union and the United Nations refugee agency had called for a swift end to a political standoff that left 629 migrants on the rescue ship Aquarius drifting at sea. Spain has now offered to take the ship in after Italy and Malta refused.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez ordered authorities to allow the Aquarius to dock in the eastern port of Valencia. Sanchez’s office issued a statement saying “it is our duty to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and offer a secure port for these people.”

More than 100 unaccompanied minors and a number of pregnant women are on board the Aquarius. Six different rescue operations took place over the weekend off the coast of Libya, coordinated by the Italian coast guard. Medical workers had said food on board the ship was going to run out by Monday night.

Italy’s new deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, had said the country would not allow the ship to dock in any of its ports. Italy asked Malta to provide assistance to Aquarius because it was the nearest available port. But the small island nation’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, refused.

Salvini, who also serves as Italy’s interior minister, has promised to change immigration policies in Italy, saying the new Italian government’s efforts will be aimed at guaranteeing peaceful lives for Africans in Africa and for Italians in their own country.

On a recent visit to the southern port of Pozzallo where many migrants have been arriving, Salvini said Italy is a member of international organizations such as the U.N. and NATO. And so, he asked why is it that in the Mediterranean and in North Africa there is not more concrete intervention to defend security?

More than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by boat from Africa in the past five years. The new Italian government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has made it clear that the EU cannot continue to leave Italy to deal with the migrant crisis on its own.
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Spain says it will allow a rescue ship carrying more than 600 migrants picked up in the Mediterranean to dock in the eastern port of Valencia, after Italy’s new prime minister, who also leads the right-wing League party, ordered Italy’s ports to refuse entry to the rescue ship. The Aquarius rescue ship run by European charity SOS Mediterranee has been drifting in international waters with 629 migrants on board. More from Sabina Castlefranco in Rome.
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The White House is assailing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying he “stabbed us in the back” and undermined U.S. President Donald Trump after Trump left the G-7 economic summit early for Singapore.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News, “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door … that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.”

Navarro added, “To my friends in Canada, that was one of the worst political miscalculations of the Canadian leader in modern Canadian history. All Justin Trudeau had to do was take the win.”

Trump left the Group of Seven summit in Quebec early Saturday to head to Singapore for his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

After Trump left, Trudeau called new U.S. tariffs on aluminum and steel “insulting.”

“We leave and then he pulls this sophomoric political stunt for domestic consideration,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNN. “You just don’t behave that way. It’s a betrayal.”

Kudlow said Trump negotiated the communique in “good faith,” and had called at the summit for “no tariffs, free trade.”

But Kudlow said Trump “gets up in a plane and then … Trudeau stabs him.” He said Trump “is not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around.”

U.S. wouldn’t sign communique

While airborne, Trump ordered U.S. officials to refuse to sign the traditional end-of-summit communique.

“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers, and companies, I have instructed our U.S. reps not to endorse the communique as we look at tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. market!” Trump said on Twitter.

“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, ‘US Tariffs were kind of insulting’ and he ‘will not be pushed around.’ Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!” he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told ARD television that Trump’s withdrawal from the communique through a tweet is “sobering and a bit depressing.”

French President Emmanuel Macron attacked Trump’s stance, saying, “International cooperation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks.” He called Trump’s refusal to sign the communique a display of “incoherence and inconsistency.”  

Trudeau did not respond to the U.S. attacks, instead declaring the summit a success.

“The historic and important agreement we all reached” at the summit “will help make our economies stronger and people more prosperous, protect our democracies, safeguard our environment, and protect women and girls’ rights around the world. That’s what matters,” Trudeau said.

But foreign minister Chrystia Freeland said, “Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.”

Canada refuses to budge

Trudeau closed the annual G-7 summit Saturday in Canada by refusing to budge on positions that place him at odds with Trump, particularly the new steel and aluminum tariffs that have drawn the ire of Canada and the European Union.

He said in closing remarks that Canada will proceed with retaliatory measures on U.S. goods as early as July 1.

“I highlighted directly to the president that Canadians did not take it lightly that the United States has moved forward with significant tariffs,” Trudeau said following the summit. “Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we will also not be pushed around.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May echoed Trudeau, pledging to retaliate for tariffs on EU goods.

“The loss of trade through tariffs undermines competition, reduces productivity, removes the incentive to innovate and ultimately makes everyone poorer,” May said. “And in response, the EU will impose countermeasures.”

U.S. Republican Sen. John McCain, a vocal Trump critic, offered support for the other six world leaders at the Canadian summit.

“To our allies,” McCain tweeted, “bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.”

Trudeau and May also bucked Trump on another high-profile issue: Russia. Trump suggested Russia rejoin the group after being pushed out in 2014 when it annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Trudeau said he is “not remotely interested” in having Russia rejoin the group.

May added, “We have agreed to stand ready to take further restrictive measures against Russia if necessary.”
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A human chain made of 175,000 people stretched 200 kilometers (124 miles) Sunday in a display to demand an independence vote for the Basque region in northern Spain.

The demonstrators linked hands and stretched their chain from the coastal resort of San Sebastian to the Basque capital of Vitoria.

Some used white scarves as part of the chain while others sang and danced in place.

“We want for our people to have the right to choose what it wants to be,” one demonstrator said.

The president of the Basque parliament said the marchers are an “active and lively people” who want to make decisions in a democratic way.

Pro-independence forces hope their chances for a referendum have gone up since the armed Basque separatist group ETA announced last month it is disbanding after 50 years and more than 800 killings.

Basques already enjoy wide autonomy in northern Spain and parts of southern France. However, some say they will not be satisfied by anything less than full independence.
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A private rescue ship carrying 629 migrants remained Sunday evening on a northward course in the Mediterranean Sea after more than a day of not receiving permission to dock in either Italy or the small island nation of Malta.

Aid group SOS Mediterranee said the passengers on its ship, the Aquarius, included 400 people who were picked up by the Italian navy, the country’s coast guard and private cargo ships and transferred. The rescue ship’s crew itself pulled 229 migrants from the water or from traffickers’ unseaworthy boats Saturday night, including 123 unaccompanied minors and seven pregnant women.

The Aquarius and its passengers were caught up in a crackdown swiftly implemented by the right-wing partner in Italy’s new populist government, which has vowed to stop the country from becoming the `’refugee camp of Europe.”

“Starting today, Italy, too, begins to say NO to the trafficking of human beings, NO to the business of clandestine immigration,” Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-migrant League party, tweeted Sunday.

Salvini and Italian Transportation Minister Danilo Toninelli, who is part of the 5-Star Movement faction in the new government, said in a joint statement Sunday that it was Malta’s responsibility to “open its ports for the hundreds of the rescued on the NGO ship Aquarius.”

“The island can’t continue to turn the other way,” the ministers said. “The Mediterranean is the sea of all the countries that face it, and it [Malta] can’t imagine that Italy will continue to face this giant phenomenon in solitude.”

The Maltese government, however, was not moved. It said in a statement that the Aquarius took on the passengers in waters controlled by Libya and where Italian authorities in Rome coordinate search-and-rescue operations.

The Maltese Rescue Coordination Center “is neither the competent nor the coordinating authority,” the statement said.

SOS Mediterranee spokeswoman Mathilde Auvillain told The Associated Press the ship was `’heading north following instructions received after the rescues and transfers” Saturday night. The Rome-based rescue coordination center gave the instructions.

The aid group said in a statement it had taken “good note” of Salvini’s stance, as reported earlier by Italian media. It added that the Aquarius “is still waiting for definitive instructions regarding the port of safety.”

SOS Mediterranee said Maltese search-and-rescue authorities were contacted by their Italian counterparts “to find the best solution for the well-being and safety” of the people on the ship.

Other migrant boats

Farther west in the Mediterranean, Spain’s maritime rescue service saved 334 migrants and recovered four bodies from boats it intercepted trying to reach Europe over the weekend. The rescue service said its patrol craft reached nine different boats carrying migrants that had left from Africa on Saturday and early Sunday.

One boat found Sunday was carrying four bodies along with 49 migrants. The cause of death was yet to be determined.

To the east, Libya’s coast guard intercepted 152 migrants, including women and children, from two boats stopped in the Mediterranean off the coast of the western Zuwara district Saturday. The migrants were taken to a naval base in Tripoli.

Human rights groups oppose returning rescued migrants to Libya, where many are held in inhumane conditions, poorly fed and often forced to do slave labor.

Libya was plunged into chaos following a 2011 uprising. The lawlessness in Libya has made it a popular place for migrants to try to depart for Europe.

Driven by violent conflicts and extreme poverty, hundreds of thousands of migrants have reached southern Europe in recent years by crossing the Mediterranean in smugglers’ boats that often are unseaworthy.

The United Nations says at least 785 migrants have died crossing the sea this year.
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Britain’s biggest companies will from 2020 be legally required to publish the gap between the salaries of their chief executives and what they pay their average U.K. workers, under proposed government rules.

Business Minister Greg Clark said that the government would set out new laws in Parliament on Monday directing that U.K.-listed companies with more than 250 employees would have to reveal their pay gaps and justify their CEOs’ salaries.

“We understand the anger of workers and shareholders when bosses’ pay is out of step with company performance,” Clark said in a statement Sunday.

He said the new laws would improve transparency and boost accountability for both shareholders and workers, as well as helping to “build a fairer economy.”

The new measures, which are subject to parliamentary approval, are part of the government’s “Industrial Strategy” and would come into effect January 1, 2019, meaning companies would start reporting in 2020.

When these rules were first proposed last year, they were criticized by union leaders, who said they fell short of Prime Minister Theresa May’s promise early on in her tenure to tackle soaring executive pay.

‘Unacceptable face’ of capitalism

She came to power after the 2016 Brexit vote vowing to tackle what she called the “unacceptable face” of capitalism, including pay gaps and mismanaged takeovers, which had driven a wedge between British bosses and their workers.

But some campaigners and investors have questioned whether the greater transparency provided by disclosures about boss-to-worker pay ratios would be enough to force companies to curb pay excesses.

Matthew Fell, chief U.K. policy director at the Confederation of British Industry, a British employers group, said that the new legislation would help develop a better dialogue between boards and employees.

“What’s most important is that all businesses make progress towards fair and proportionate pay outcomes,” he said.

While Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Center, a think tank, said the insight into pay ratios would be useful to investors, workers and wider society.

“We hope that it will initiate a more informed debate about what represents fair, proportionate pay for workers at all levels,” he said.

The plan to make public the worker-to-boss pay gap comes after May has already implemented rules to highlight pay discrepancies between genders.

Earlier this year, all U.K. companies with 250 or more employees had to publish details of the salary difference between male and female employees. They will report back annually on that pay gap.
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Police in the Kurdistan region of Iraq said Saturday that a 20-year-old

Iraqi man had admitted killing a 14-year-old girl in Germany, where the case has stoked the immigration debate.

The body of Susanna Feldman, of Mainz, near Frankfurt, was found Wednesday in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, near a refugee center where the alleged attacker had lived, German police said.

An autopsy showed she had been the victim of a violent and sexual attack. Feldman was Jewish, but police said there was no evidence her religion had been a factor in the attack, and the Central Council of Jews in Germany

cautioned against attributing any anti-Semitic motive.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Kurdish security forces had taken the suspect, identified by German authorities as Ali Bashar, into custody Friday.

“Officers in Zakho [in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region] called me and said they had located the suspect and would arrest him as soon as he comes to the city,” Dohuk city police chief Tariq Ahmed told Reuters. “He had been staying at a hotel in Dohuk and after realizing the police were after him left for Zakho to stay at a relative’s house. He was asleep there at night and was arrested in that house at 5:30 [a.m.],” Ahmed said.

Confession

He said the suspect, during interrogation by Kurdish security authorities, had confessed to killing the German teenager. 

“The girl was a friend of his. They went on a trip to the woods and there they consumed a lot of alcohol and drugs, then got into a dispute and the girl tried to call the police,” Ahmed said. “The suspect became afraid because she was under 18 and he knew if the police came it would be a major charge.”

Ahmed added: “He tried to convince her not to call the police but she insisted, so he choked her and buried her beneath the dirt.”

German media reported earlier that Bashar was expected to be extradited to Germany on Saturday. German federal police declined to comment on the details emerging from the suspect’s arrest or on the report on the timing of extradition.

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her dismay at the crime and said it should be a reminder to Germans of the need to do whatever possible for the integration of immigrants.

“The incredible suffering experienced by the family, the victim, affects everyone, including me,” she said on the sidelines of a G-7 summit meeting in Canada.

“The cooperation in this regard between German and Kurdish security authorities worked well here. … It is good that the alleged perpetrator was caught, that he probably also will be returning to Germany,” Merkel said.

She added, “This is a reminder to all of us, first, to take the task of integration very seriously, to make our common values very clear, again and again. But also to punish any crime. We can only live together if we all stick to our laws.”

Merkel’s decision to take in large numbers of asylum seekers during Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis has stirred a political backlash, with many politicians calling for new rules to make it easier to deport immigrants.

Bashar had been living in Germany as a refugee since 2015, German media have reported.

German police set up a special call center for tips from the public and issued releases in Arabic and Turkish. They said on Thursday that Bashar had most likely fled to Irbil in the Kurdistan Regional Government.
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Gena Turgel, a Holocaust survivor who comforted Anne Frank at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before the young diarist’s death and the camp’s liberation a month later, has died. She was 95.

Turgel died Thursday, Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said on Twitter. The news triggered tributes from some of the people the Polish native touched in the decades she shared her World War II experiences, including witnessing the horrors of the Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.

After World War II, Turgel married one of Bergen-Belsen’s British liberators, Norman Turgel, earning the nickname “The Bride of Belsen.” Her wedding dress, made from parachute silk, is part of the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London.

Turgel attended Britain’s annual Holocaust remembrance event two months ago, sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over her knees.

“My story is the story of one survivor, but it is also the story of 6 million who perished,” she said at the event in London’s Hyde Park. “Maybe that’s why I was spared — so my testimony would serve as a memorial, like that candle that I light, for the men, women and children who have no voice.” 

Born in Krakow, Poland, as Gena Goldfinger on Feb. 1, 1923, Turgel and her family were forced to move into a Jewish ghetto with only a sack of potatoes, some flour and a few belongings in late 1941. One brother was shot by SS police and another disappeared after trying to escape, according to the Holocaust Educational Trust in London.

A sister of hers was shot while trying to smuggle food into a labor camp. In January 1945, Turgel and her mother were forced into a death march from Auschwitz, leaving her remaining sister behind.

‘I can still see that face’

It was in a hospital at Bergen-Belsen, where the 22-year-old Turgel arrived in February, that she cared for Anne Frank as the 15-year-old girl was dying from typhus.

“I washed her face, gave her water to drink, and I can still see that face, her hair and how she looked,” Turgel once told the BBC.

Turgel published a memoir, I Light a Candle, in 1987 and kept retelling her story in schools across Britain until the end of her life.

Turgel’s story “was difficult to hear and difficult for her to tell, but no one who heard her speak will ever forget,” said Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he met Turgel at the Hyde Park event in April and was “inspired by her lifelong commitment to educating people about the horrors of the Holocaust.”

“Let us hope for a better future where anti-Semitism and all hatred should be demolished, shouldn’t be tolerated,” Turgel said at the time. “And I do beg you, don’t forget those who are less fortunate than yourselves.”

She is survived by her three children, as well as grandchildren and great grandchildren.
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Prince Harry and his new wife, the former actress Meghan Markle, joined the pageantry of the annual Trooping the Color ceremony Saturday in London to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday.

The duke and duchess, who married three weeks ago, made the short trip from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade in a horse-drawn carriage as royal fans lining the Mall cheered and waved. After the event, the couple joined other members of the royal family on the palace’s front balcony to watch the Royal Air Force fly by.

The 92-year-old queen, who recently had a successful cataract operation, watched the ceremony from a dais and inspected the lines of guardsmen in bearskin hats and scarlet tunics who offered her tributes. Her husband, Prince Philip, has retired from royal duties and did not attend.

The ceremony originated from traditional preparations for battle. Flags, or colors, were “trooped” so soldiers in the ranks would be able to recognize them.

The Queen’s actual birthday is April 21.
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Pope Francis has told the world’s oil executives that a transition to less-polluting energy sources “is a challenge of epochal proportions.”

On the last day of a two-day conference Saturday, the Roman Catholic leader urged the executives to provide electricity to the one billion people who are without it, but said that process must be done in a way that avoids “creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future.”

Reuters reports the unprecedented conference was held behind closed doors at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The news agency says the oil executives, investors and Vatican experts who attended the summit, believe, like the pope does, that science supports the notion that climate change is caused by human activity and that global warming must be curbed.

Pope Francis told the conference, “Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.”

 
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Plastic and chemical pollution has been detected in most samples of snow and seawater taken by researchers in Antarctica, said the nongovernmental environmental group Greenpeace.

Greenpeace scientists gathered water and snow samples from the southernmost continent during a voyage from January to March of this year. Laboratory analysis revealed humanity’s footprint on this most remote corner of the globe.

“It was about one microplastic piece at least per liter. When you think of extrapolating that out to the scale of the Antarctic Ocean, it’s really, really significant. And previously we thought that the Antarctic Ocean might sort of be protected by the currents around it, as a sort of barrier to the plastic pollution that’s a scourge in so much of the world’s oceans. But now evidence is increasingly showing that that may not be the case,” Greenpeace’s Louisa Casson said.

Chemicals

In addition to very small pieces of plastic, the research revealed the presence of chemicals known as per- and polyfluorinated alkylated substances, which are widely used in industrial processes and linked to reproductive and developmental problems for wildlife.

“This just strengthens the rationale for why we need to be taking action on land to stop that flow of plastic into the ocean, but also creating huge ocean sanctuaries at sea to allow wildlife to recover from these pressures,” Casson said.

​Tons of plastics

The United Nations estimates 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year. Its effects were illustrated several days ago in southern Thailand, where a stranded pilot whale died having ingested 80 pieces of plastic rubbish weighing 8 kilograms.

The tide may be slowly turning as global concern grows. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, recently pledged to ban all single-use plastic by 2022. In the shadow of megacity Mumbai, Bollywood movie stars have been joining litter pickup sessions at Versova beach, among them actress Abigail Pande.

“I am having fun [cleaning this place]. But it is also very sad because once I came here, I got to know that the amount of waste is so high that if you dig the ground 4 feet, you will still find plastic inside. And it will take years to properly clean the beach,” Pande told reporters Sunday.

Plastic has now been found in every corner of the world’s oceans, from the depths of the Pacific Mariana Trench to Antarctica.

In October, world governments will decide on a European Union proposal to create an Antarctic Ocean sanctuary. At 1.8 million square kilometers, it would be the largest protected area on Earth.
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Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa have been elected to two-year terms on the U.N. Security Council.

The five will join the 15-nation body responsible for maintaining international peace and security on Jan. 1, 2019.

The vote Friday in the U.N. General Assembly generated little suspense, as all but one regional group ran a clean slate. The only contested seat was in the Asian-Pacific group, where Indonesia overwhelming beat Maldives 144-46.

Member states cast secret ballots and candidates must win a two-thirds majority of votes to succeed, even if they are running uncontested. Candidate countries capped off their campaigns with parties in the lead-up to the election.

Reaction

Lindiwe Sisulu, International Relations Minister of South Africa, welcomed her country’s opportunity to sit on the council for a third time. South Africa has served two previous terms in 2007-’08 and 2011-’12.

She said her government would advocate for closer cooperation between the council and the African Union, and address its efforts toward conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

“We believe that peace cannot be achieved without the participation of women — in peace negotiations, peacekeeping operations, and post-conflict peace-building and governance,” Sisulu told reporters. “During our tenure, we will ensure that a gender perspective is mainstreamed into all Security Council resolutions,” she added.

Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi welcomed her country’s victory over “good friend” the Maldives. She said her government’s priorities would include combating terrorism and radicalism through developing a comprehensive global approach that addresses the root causes of the problem.

Germany has served on the council five times before and would like to see the Security Council’s membership expanded to include a permanent seat for it.

“This is an especially important opportunity for Germany, which has sometimes punched below its weight at the U.N.,” Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a U.N. analyst, told VOA. “In the past, Britain and France have been the decisive European players at the U.N., but Brexit means that Germany will need to step up and speak for Europe more forcefully at the UN,” he added.

Abandoned candidacy

Israel had originally sought a seat on the council, but withdrew its candidacy on May 4, saying it was “postponing” it after consulting with its partners and friends. It was seeking one of two available seats in the “Western Europe and Others Group” and was competing against Belgium and Germany.

Israel has never held a seat on the council and analyst Gowan says it “was always a long shot” which was upended by the current crisis in the Gaza Strip.

“I think that the Israelis will be pretty comfortable that the U.S. has their back in the Security Council,” Gowan added. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has been a vocal defender of Israel against what she says is the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias. She has wielded the U.S. veto twice in the past six months in Israel’s favor in the council.

Council dynamics

Countries joining the council are doing so at a difficult moment.

“Tensions between Russia and the West are starting to paralyze the organization,” Gowan said. “The temporary members are often powerless when the permanent five are divided.” But he notes that some recent elected members, including Sweden and Australia, have won respect for breaking impasses with compromises on issues such as humanitarian aid in Syria.

The five new council members will replace Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Netherlands and Sweden, whose terms end Dec. 31, 2018. They will join the other nonpermanent members — Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland — as well as the permanent five — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
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