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The Russian ruble fell to its lowest level against the dollar in almost two years after the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Moscow Wednesday over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. Russia has denied a role using novichok, and Moscow on Thursday called the measure illegal under international law and announced retaliatory measures of its own. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports that Russians have reacted stoically to the additional sanctions.
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Russia has denounced a new round of U.S. sanctions over its alleged chemical weapons use, and says it runs counter to the “constructive atmosphere” at last month’s summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. U.S. State Department officials say the new sanctions were triggered automatically in response to the poisoning of a former Russian agent and his daughter in Britain. VOA’s diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Montenegro on Thursday issued an international arrest warrant for a former CIA agent for alleged involvement in what the government said was a failed pro-Russia coup designed to prevent the Balkan country’s NATO membership.

Montenegro’s state TV said that prosecutors want the extradition of Joseph Assad, a U.S. citizen born and raised in Egypt, on charges of participating in a criminal enterprise led by two Russian military spy agency officers.

The Russians and 12 others, mostly Serbs, are on trial in Montenegro over the alleged election day plot in October 2016 that included plans to assassinate then-Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, storming parliament and taking over power. The Russians are being tried in absentia.

Montenegro’s prosecutors are investigating whether Assad was hired to help the 14 suspects on an escape plan. He was named during testimony by another former CIA agent at the trial.

Assad has reportedly refused to testify and denied wrongdoing.

Assad and his wife, Michele, both former U.S. counter-terrorism officers, gained international attention when U.S. media said they helped more than 100 Iraqi Christians to escape Islamic State group violence and flee to Europe as refugees in 2015.

Assad’s whereabouts are currently unknown. He is said to be heading an Abu Dhabi-based security agency.

Montenegro joined NATO last year despite strong opposition from its longtime Slavic ally Russia. Moscow has denied accusations that it took part in the plot.
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The value of the Turkish lira hit a record low Thursday amid reports of a deadlock during talks in Washington between Turkey and the United States.

The lira has fallen more than 10 percent since last week, when Washington imposed sanctions against two Turkish ministers who have detained American Pastor Andrew Brunson.

“I would assume the Americans have now understood that they have the upper hand over Turkey,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. “They have got Turkey where it hurts, i.e., the threat of financial sanctions.”

Analysts say international investors were already jittery over Turkey’s debt-fueled growth and rampant inflation, along with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies.

Then on Monday, a sell-off in the lira was touched off by reports that the Trump administration was considering ending Turkey’s duty-free access to the U.S. market. The lira recovered a bit upon news of the diplomatic visit but began to slide again when initial reports of a U.S.-Turkish agreement were contradicted.

“Just a series of errors have killed investors’ confidence. The Brunson case and American sanctions were the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Yesilada said.

Under house arrest

Washington is demanding Brunson’s immediate release. He has been under house arrest while standing trial on terrorism charges. Washington dismissed the allegations as baseless, accusing Ankara of hostage-taking. U.S. diplomats are also reportedly pushing for the release of a number of jailed American citizens, along with three local employees working at U.S. diplomatic missions in Turkey.

“The kind of progress that we want is for Pastor Brunson, our locally employed staff and other Americans to be brought home. That’s the real progress that we’re looking for, and obviously, we’re not there yet,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tuesday.

The Turkish delegation in the U.S., led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal, is pushing for concessions from Washington over Turkish state lender Halkbank. The bank is facing a significant fine after a New York court this year convicted a senior executive, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, of violating U.S. Iranian sanctions. Ankara is also lobbying for the return of Atilla, who is serving a 32-month sentence in a U.S. jail.

Media reports that Ankara reneged last month on a deal for Brunson’s release have severely undermined Turkey’s bargaining position, said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

“The non-release of the priest was a breach of contract in Washington’s eyes, and that’s why the response was furious. All those who were aligned to make things well with Turkey have turned against Turkey,” Ozel said.

‘New economic model’

In a bid to restore calm to the financial markets, Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s minister of finance and treasury, announced that a “new economic model would be unveiled” Friday.

His statement said the program would seek to rein in debt-fueled growth and target inflation — critical demands imposed by international investors. In the wake of the announcement, there was a momentary pause in the lira’s decline before it continued to fall.

Analysts point out that the continuing slide of the Turkish currency indicates that time is not on Ankara’s side.

“It’s do or die. Essentially, we are at the very brink of a currency or balance-of-payments crisis,” Yesilada said. “We are inches away from a major run on the Turkish lira. Foreign investors and domestic consumer confidence are at zero.

“Nothing less than a statement from the White House that the crisis has been resolved and no more sanctions are in the pipeline for Turkey would end the painful collapse of the currency. Statements from Ankara won’t do it. Ankara doesn’t have any credibility.”
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While U.S. lawmakers press Twitter and Facebook to better police their platforms against Russian social media trolls and ponder tougher sanctions against Moscow, American voters remain vulnerable to divisive messaging and misinformation before midterm elections in November, experts told VOA.

“All of us, left and right [politically], are all very susceptible to being fooled by disinformation,” said Claire Wardle, director of First Draft News, a project at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy that provides tools to fight false content on the Internet and social media.

“There are many people who are trying to spread misinformation.We all have to be much more skeptical of the information we are consuming and to be aware, particularly if it’s content that makes us have an emotional reaction,” Wardle added.

Last month, Facebook shut down 32 fake accounts that posted polarizing messages on race, gender, and fascism. In 2016, Russian trolls flooded Facebook, Twitter and other platforms with similar content, reaching millions of Americans.

One Russia-linked Twitter handle, 4MYSQUAD10, now deactivated, posted: “White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time. WTF? #BlackLivesMatter #racism.”

Another, TEN_GOP 2545, posted: “Muslim bus driver throws all passengers out of the bus, so he has space and time to pray.”

“As humans we respond to fear,” Wardle said. “A lot of disinformation is driven by fear — other people you should be fearful of and then wanting to protect yourself, our family and your community.”

Last week, social media researchers told the Senate Intelligence Committee Russian efforts to polarize the American people are as pernicious as ever.

“Russian manipulation did not stop in 2016. After Election Day, the Russian government stepped on the gas,” New York-based Graphika CEO John Kelly said.

“Foreign actors will continue to aim future disinformation campaigns at African-American voters, Muslim-American voters, white supremacist voters,” Oxford University researcher Philip Howard told the panel. “I expect the strategy will remain the same: push disinformation about public issues and prevent particular types of voters from participating on Election Day.”

Political scientist Keneshia Grant may have had a firsthand brush with Russia’s use of social media to inflame racial tensions in the United States before the 2016 election, and believes American voters are still in Moscow’s crosshairs for malign messaging.

“There were minority communities targeted. I believe that targeting is still happening and that it has been getting more sophisticated over time,” said Grant, who teaches at Washington’s Howard University, a predominantly-African American institution.

In 2016, Grant noticed her Twitter account suddenly gained a group of mysterious and silent followers. She believed they were studying her posts to learn to craft messages to effectively target black Americans.

“There were 20-30 accounts of individuals who were trolling to see what I might say and, I suppose, to use that information to seem credible with other black users of Twitter,” she said. “I was one of the people who got an e-mail [from Twitter] saying you have interacted in some way with someone we believe to be fraudulent.”

Weeding out fake accounts

Social media companies have trumpeted their efforts to weed out fake accounts and bad actors. While commendable, Grant said it’s not enough.

“Americans have a responsibility to know that Russians are attempting to interfere in elections, and then to take the additional steps to figure out where information comes from that they are consuming.Not just consume it, but think about it,” she said.

Wardle concurred, but noted that social media trolls exploit a basic human tendency: giving credence to information or messaging that supports one’s outlook or ideology.

“People want to believe information that supports their worldview, whether that’s a belief on gun control or immigration or whether you’re more a dog person than a cat person,” she said, adding that counteracting that tendency will require holding people to account when they wittingly or unwittingly spread erroneous content.

“If we want to drive on roads that aren’t covered in garbage, we have to take responsibility for not throwing Coke cans out of the window,” she said.

“I want to see people recognize that when they click share’ [on social media], they have a responsibility for the information they are putting out,” she added. “So when crazy Uncle Bob is sharing false information, rather than saying, ‘well, that’s just crazy Uncle Bob,’ we should call him out and say that it’s not healthy for us to live in a society where we are sharing false information.”

The Harvard researcher noted that other regions of the world, like Eastern Europe, have been grappling with false information campaigns for far longer than the United States.

“After the election of 2016, when Americans all of a sudden woke up to misinformation, I think the rest of the world did a slow hand-clap and said ‘welcome to the party, America.'”

Some American schools have introduced curriculum to teach students to think more critically about the information they receive and to identify propaganda and malign messaging. Such classes should become standard, according to a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“We are asymmetrically vulnerable [to disinformation campaigns] because of the First Amendment and democracy, our whole system is based on information,” Maine independent Senator Angus King said.

“Our kids are growing up with these [high-tech] devices,” he added, “but not necessarily taught how they can be manipulated by their devices. I think there ought to be standardized courses in high school called digital literacy’ and increasing the public’s awareness that they are being conned.”
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The United States has announced new sanctions on Russia in connection with its alleged attempt to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. The State Department Wednesday said Russia is being sanctioned because it used a chemical weapon in violation of international law. Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, in Britain in March. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the sanctions are to go in effect in about two weeks.
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A record number of people were charged with modern slavery offenses in Britain this year, prosecutors revealed Thursday, but activists said the number of convictions had not increased significantly since a tough new law was introduced in 2015.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said 239 suspects had been charged with modern slavery offenses over the past year, up 27 percent from the year before.

Yet the number of convictions did not increase significantly: 185 people were found guilty over the same period, four more than last year, but down from 192 in 2016.

“We have yet to see any significant increase in the rate of convictions of those who traffic and enslave people,” said Kate Roberts, head of the Human Trafficking Foundation. “This underlines the importance of empowering and supporting victims to speak out and come forward to the authorities.”

​World leader against trafficking

Britain has been regarded as a world leader in the fight against trafficking since passing the 2015 Modern Slavery Act to fight a crime estimated to affect 40 million people worldwide.

The legislation introduced life sentences for traffickers, measures to protect people at risk of being enslaved, and made large companies inspect their supply chains for forced labor.

But activists say it has not yet made a serious dent in the trade in Britain. The government last month ordered a review of the law as it released data showing that modern slavery costs the country up to 4.3 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) annually.

The CPS said slavery cases were often complex, with investigators facing hurdles from language barriers to victims not recognizing they are slaves, or being scared to speak out. The average time to complete a slavery prosecution has doubled to almost three years since 2015, according to the CPS.

“These cases are growing in size and complexity, that’s why we have given our prosecutors extensive extra training,” said the director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders in a statement.

Cuts in resources

Government cuts to resources for police and prosecutors have also hampered the pursuit of justice, said Klara Skrivankova, U.K. and Europe program manager for Anti-Slavery International.

“The government needs to reverse these cuts and increase investment into tackling modern slavery to see any significant increase in traffickers being sent to jail and their victims being free for good,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Britain is home to about 136,000 modern slaves, Australian human rights group Walk Free said last month, a figure about 10 times higher than a 2013 government estimate.
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German drugmaker Fresenius Kabi is suing to halt a planned execution in Nebraska, claiming the U.S. state illegally obtained the company’s drugs to use for the lethal injection procedure.

Fresenius Kabi filed the lawsuit Tuesday evening, saying the state was planning to use two of its drugs on August 14 to put to death convicted killer Carey Dean Moore.

Moore is sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of two taxi drivers. He is not contesting his execution order, but it could nevertheless be delayed by the lawsuit. 

If carried out, the execution would be Nebraska’s first in 21 years and its first-ever lethal injection.

The state plans to use four drugs — the sedative Diazepam, the powerful narcotic painkiller fentanyl citrate, the muscle relaxer cisatracurium and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Fresenius Kabi believes it is the source of the latter two drugs and is asking a federal judge to issue an order either temporarily or permanently blocking the state from using the injectable medications.

“While Fresenius Kabi takes no position on capital punishment, Fresenius Kabi opposes the use of its products for this purpose and therefore does not sell certain drugs to correctional facilities,” the company said in its civil complaint.

“These drugs, if manufactured by Fresenius Kabi, could only have been obtained by defendants in contradiction and contravention of the distribution contracts the company has in place and therefore through improper or illegal means.”

The drugmaker claims that with state executions regarded negatively among the majority of the European public, it could suffer “great reputational injury,” if its drugs are used for capital punishment.

The state of Nebraska has released limited information about the drugs and has not disclosed their source — reflecting a general dilemma for U.S. states that continue to carry out the death penalty via lethal injection.

Injectable drugs have become harder to acquire amid public opposition and a reluctance — or outright hostility — among drug manufacturers to sell their products to prisons for use in executions.

“Nebraska’s lethal injection drugs were purchased lawfully and pursuant to the State of Nebraska’s duty to carry out lawful capital sentences,” the state attorney general’s office said in a statement.

Last month, a similar lawsuit by drugmaker Alvogen at least temporarily halted an execution in Nevada.
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Reports out of Turkey say a diplomatic delegation has already left and is set to visit Washington this week for discussions about the ongoing detention of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson. The U.S. State Department could not confirm that such a meeting is planned. The conflicting reports come at a time of escalating U.S.-Turkish tensions, which are threatening to trigger a financial crisis in Turkey. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Britain will always be a “tier one” military power, British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson told the Atlantic Council think tank Tuesday in Washington, contradicting recent comments by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

In June, the prime minister asked Williamson to justify Britain’s role as a tier one military power at a Downing Street meeting, challenging Defense Ministry plans to modernize the armed forces just weeks before a NATO summit, according to the Financial Times.

Underlying her statement, the report said, was a realization that Britain can no longer economically compete with top global powers. The following day, when asked to respond to the report at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, May criticized the report as inaccurate but declined requests to verbally commit to maintaining Britain’s tier one military status, saying only that she wanted Britain to be a “leading defense nation.”

Downing Street later said May had challenged Williamson’s plans but rejected claims she was pushing to reduce the nation’s military stature.

During his Atlantic Council speech, Williamson forcefully asserted Britain’s role as “major global actor.”

“We have always been a tier one military power, and we always will be a tier one military power,” he said, before rejecting concerns that the pending Brexit would compromise Britain’s global military standing.

“While Britain is leaving the EU, we are clear about our role and place in the world,” he said. “Brexit is Britain’s moment to look up, be more ambitious, and redefine our place in the world. In some ways, the EU has limited our vision, discouraged us from looking to the horizon. Now, we are being freed to reach further and aim higher. Please, never underestimate my nation. The U.K. remains a great power.”

Williamson, 42, who joined May’s cabinet in late 2017, made the comments ahead of Pentagon meetings with his American counterpart, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Asked about President Donald Trump’s criticism of NATO, Williamson expressed his conviction that U.S. investments in the alliance prove this administration is “incredibly committed to NATO,” and that Britain and the U.S. would remain “reliable partners for the long term.”

Although there are no technical criteria that define tier one military power, Britain’s defense ministers have suggested the term involves a range of military capabilities, from nuclear deterrents to naval, ground and air force branches that can deploy in any corner of the globe.

​Fighter jet

While addressing the Atlantic Council event, Williamson discussed a new concept of a fighter jet being developed in Britain, nicknamed the Tempest, which he hopes U.S. defense officials will consider for purchase.

Williamson unveiled a full-sized model of the jet at a British air show in July, which, according to Bloomberg, was part of a “bid to show that the nation plans to remain a leading military power after Brexit.”

With Europe’s largest military budget and a substantial aerospace research and development sector, Britain has historically attracted substantial investments from major U.S. defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Britain’s aerospace and defense sectors — both massive contributors to the British economy in terms of jobs, technology and exports — are among those negotiating agreements with the government’s business and strategy department to brace for financial and trade repercussions upon leaving the European Union.

This story originated in VOA’s Serbian service. Some information is from Reuters.
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A Turkish diplomatic delegation is visiting Washington Wednesday in a bid to to ease tensions between the two countires.

Reports of the visit helped to stem a sharp drop in the value of Turkish currency. Analysts warn rising U.S.-Turkish tensions are threatening to trigger a financial crisis in Turkey.

On Monday, the Turkish lira suffered its most significant drop in a decade. The sell-off triggered by reports that the Trump administration is considering ending Turkey’s duty-free access to the U.S. market.

The lira recovered some of its heavy losses on news of the diplomatic visit. But the currency began to slide again Tuesday as subsequent reporting contradicted initial reports that a preliminary agreement had been reached between Ankara and Washington.

The Turkish deputy foreign minister, Sedat Onal, is set to lead the delegation, according to a Foreign Ministry source. Earlier reports suggested a far more powerful delegation would be sent to Washington, including foreign, interior, defense, and finance ministers.

Andrew Brunson

At the top of the agenda is expected to be discussions about the ongoing detention of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson. Brunson is currently under house arrest while standing trial on terrorism charges. The White House dismisses the charges as baseless, accusing Ankara of hostage taking.

U.S.-Turkish tensions escalated last week, with U.S. President Donald Trump targeting two Turkish ministers with sanctions over Brunson’s detention. Turkey hit back with reciprocal measures.

“He [Brunson] now has acquired symbolic importance more than the worth of the issue. And with him will be tied all the Americans detained, and the State Department employees in Adana, Istanbul and Ankara,” said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

Three locally employed consular and embassy officials are being held on terrorism charges.

“Things have piled out over the course of several years, which all needs to be solved,” Ozel said. “For that to happen, things really have to calm down — the hysteria on both sides of public opinions.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have already prepared the ground for a compromise. He has carefully avoided personally attacking Trump.

“He opened a good room for maneuver by disassociating Trump from this wrongdoing, basically saying he was misled,” Ozel said. “If this thing is allowed to subside, good diplomats can actually find a way out.”

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey, too, sought to calm relations, tweeting Tuesday, the “U.S. continues to be a solid ally and friend of Turkey despite tensions. The two countries have an active economic relationship.”

The embassy also emphatically denied widespread Turkish media reports quoting an unnamed U.S. official predicting further heavy declines in the Turkish currency.

Analysts suggest both sides have considerable experience resolving differences.

“Turkey’s relations have always been troubled,” noted international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “Even in the 1970s the relationship was described as the troubled partnership. The question today is, are the problems solvable?”

Russia, Iran

There is a myriad of outstanding disputes between the two NATO allies. Relations are strained over Ankara’s deepening ties with Moscow, in particular, and the planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system. Washington said the missiles threaten to compromise NATO systems.

Additionally, Ankara is refusing to enforce reintroduced U.S.-Iranian sanctions while differences over Syria remain and Turkish demands to extradite U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the 2016 failed coup in Turkey.

International investors are expected to watch Thursday’s visit closely. Success would likely dial back fears that Washington could impose painful financial sanctions that would hit Turkey’s fragile economy hard, adding further pressure on the currency. Failure would probably trigger another sell-off.

Turkish banks and corporations owe hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, many of which are due within a year. With the lira already falling by around 30 percent since the start of the year, concerns are growing over the ability to repay the debt.

Investors are also alarmed over the economic policies pursued by Erdogan, in particular his aversion to raising interest rates to rein in rampant inflation.

Given the precarious state of Turkish financial and economic markets, Ankara presumably has little room to maneuver with Washington. However, success will likely offer at best, limited respite since international investors’ concerns center on Turkey’s financial imbalances and the failure of Erdogan to address them.

“The current level of real policy rate is insufficient to compensate for the heightened geopolitical risk premium after U.S. sanctions, which will keep the lira vulnerable to a further escalation of geopolitical tensions,” said Inan Demir, the London-based economist at Nomura Securities, in a note to clients.
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An activist from Russian punk collective Pussy Riot has led a protest outside the headquarters of the state penitentiary agency to protest torture and slave labor in Russian prisons.

Pussy Riot member Maria Alekhina and activist Dmitry Tsorionov put banners and photos of inmates who were reportedly beaten by prison personnel on the Federal Penitentiary Service building in Moscow.

Tuesday’s protest comes amid public outrage stoked by a recently released video of an inmate being beaten by men in guards’ uniforms while lying handcuffed on a table. Several guards have been put in custody while the 2017 beating is being investigated.

Alekhina and Pussy Riot bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova spent nearly two years in prison for an anti-Putin protest inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 2012.

 
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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will pay a state visit to Germany on Sept. 28-29, a spokeswoman for German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday, amid efforts by the allies to improves ties strained by a number of disputes.

The two fellow members of the NATO military alliance have differed over Turkey’s crackdown on suspected opponents of Erdogan after a failed coup in 2016 and over its detention of German citizens.

The spokeswoman did not say if Erdogan would also hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel’s office declined to comment.

Germany’s mass-selling Bild newspaper reported last month that Erdogan would visit Germany around late September.

A state visit would include a reception by Steinmeier with military honors and a formal state banquet. The German and Turkish foreign ministers vowed earlier this year to do everything to improve relations.

Their resolve led to the release in February of a German-Turkish journalist who had been held in Turkey for a year for alleged security offenses. His release fulfilled a key demand by Germany, which still takes issue with what it calls Turkey’s deteriorating record on human rights.

Another German national was arrested in southeastern Turkey last month accused of spreading propaganda for Turkish militants, Turkish state media said.

The Turkish government has purged more than 150,000 civil servants and charged 77,000 people since the failed coup.

It has also launched cross-border operations into Syria against what it says are terrorist threats by the Kurdish YPG militia, which it deems a terrorist organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have criticized the crackdown, saying Erdogan has used the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent. The government says the measures are necessary.
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Greece’s prime minister vowed on Tuesday that experts will investigate all aspects of the country’s deadliest forest fire in decades and that the seaside resort areas devastated by the blaze will be rebuilt to higher standards.

Alexis Tsipras led a meeting about the fire on Tuesday with ministers and regional officials in Lavrion, a seaside town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the areas burned. At least 91 people died in the July 23 fire.

“My promise, from the first day of this tragedy, was that the how' and thewhy’ will be investigated in depth and in all its dimensions,” Tsipras said. “Nothing will be covered up in the name of any vested interests.”

The prime minister reiterated that illegal buildings and fencing erected in forests, on coastlines and in creeks will be demolished. Government officials have blamed unauthorized construction for contributing to the death toll.

Experts have pointed to the lack of town planning in the worst affected area of the seaside resort of Mati as a contributing factor, with narrow streets, numerous dead ends and no clear way to get to the sea.

“Uncontrolled building which threatens human lives can no longer be tolerated. Anything that destroys forests and coastlines, anything that is a danger to human life, will be torn down,” Tsipras said. “It is our duty toward our dead, but most of all it is our duty toward the future generations.”

Tsipras’ government has come under intense criticism for its handling of the blaze, particularly after it denied any mishandling of the response effort. The public order minister, Nikos Toskas, had argued that despite much soul-searching he had been unable to detect any major mistakes. But following intense criticism from opposition parties, Toskas resigned last Friday, and senior officials under his supervision followed suit over the weekend.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order Monday to introduce sanctions against Iran threatens to put Washington and Ankara on a collision course. 

Ankara insists Trump’s unilateral actions do not bind it. The looming dispute threatens to exacerbate existing tensions between the two NATO allies.

“We are going to aggressively enforce our sanctions, and that puts a very important test to those companies, to those banks and to those governments — who do they want to do business with?” said a senior official Monday. “We are very serious to enforce those sanctions, and that’s what the president has directed us to do.”

The first wave of Iranian sanctions goes into effect Tuesday and targets mainly financial transactions and commercial airline sales with Iran. In November, measures to stop the sale of Iranian energy are set to go into effect.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has ruled out complying with U.S. measures, insisting Turkey is bound only by international agreements. Ankara identifies Tehran as a key trading partner to help boost its flagging economy.

Iranian oil and gas are critical to energy-poor Turkey. In the first six months of this year, Turkey imported an average of 176,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil, accounting for 49 percent of Turkish imports.

“It’s pretty damn serious, obviously, with the Turkish economy facing difficult times. To give up on trade with Iran and not being able to buy gas and oil would really hurt the Turkish economy,” said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. “So, there is a big problem, and there is very little time to solve it, and at a time when both sides don’t trust one another.”

Strained relations

Turkish-U.S. relations are already profoundly strained over myriad differences. Last week, Washington took the unprecedented step of sanctioning two Turkish ministers over the ongoing detention of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson. Brunson, facing terrorism charges, is under house arrest. Ankara retaliated in kind, sanctioning two unnamed U.S. officials.

With Turkey a significant importer of Iranian oil, analysts say it will be a priority of Washington to persuade Ankara to comply with its sanctions. Last month, senior U.S. officials — led by Marshall Billingslea, assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing — visited Ankara to meet with government ministers and business leaders to press the case for sanctions.

Billingslea described the talks as positive, but a source privy to the meeting described the meetings as difficult.

A Turkish business source claims Washington’s suggestion to use Saudi Arabian oil instead of Iran’s fails to take into account the costly and timely readjustment of Turkish refineries to accommodate the lower quality of Saudi oil.

Ankara also has strategic concerns about relying on Saudi Arabia.

“Turkey is being told to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, while it has a pipeline with neighboring Iran and can get crude at a lower price,” wrote Ilnur Cevik, a senior presidential adviser in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper. “Besides, who can guarantee that Turkey will be provided a steady flow of oil at reasonable prices when Saudi Arabia at times is displaying an antagonistic policy toward Ankara?”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama granted Ankara some exemptions when imposing sanctions against Iran. However, critics point out, Ankara severely undermined U.S. sanctions by using gold to circumvent restrictions on the use of dollars to trade with Iran.

Turkey at one time was one of the world’s biggest gold importers and exporters. Washington has now closed the door to using gold in trade with Tehran.

Halkbank case

Earlier this year, a New York court convicted a senior official of Turkish state-controlled Halkbank for a violation of U.S. Iranian sanctions. The U.S. Treasury is considering a hefty fine against the bank, which analysts warn could be several billion dollars.

Analysts see the Halkbank experience as a warning to Ankara and the Turkish financial system of the risks violating future U.S. sanctions.

“It will actually force Ankara to choose between Iran and the United States,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Washington. “Not complying with Iran sanctions is not an option. There will be increased pressure from the U.S. bringing a vicious circle in bilateral relations.”

The deepening U.S.-Turkish tensions are taking a heavy toll on Turkey’s financial markets. The Turkish lira suffered heavy drops last week over Washington sanctioning two Turkish ministers. On Monday, the currency hit another record low on news of new U.S. economic tariffs against Turkey. 

U.S. Iranian sanctions are set to be the latest in an ever-growing list of disputes between Ankara and Washington. 

“You could actually find ways out of all this,” Ozel said. “But trust in these relations has been totally decimated. And to rebuild trust in relations is the main, hard task.”
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A tanker truck carrying flammable material exploded, causing a huge fireball after hitting a stopped truck on a highway outside the northern Italian city of Bologna on Monday.

At least two people were killed and more than 60 injured, some with severe burns, during the midday accident.

A police video showed the tanker failing to slow down and plowing into the back of a truck that was stopped in traffic. Upon impact, the truck exploded in flames.

Another truck appeared to hit the tanker from behind. After an unspecified time lapse, during which the highway was cleared of most other vehicles, the truck erupted in a second explosion that spanned eight lanes of the highway and beyond.

The blast engulfed the area with flames and black smoke, and caused a bridge to partially collapse, the Italian fire service tweeted.

Firefighters have since extinguished the blaze, a spokesman said, adding that efforts were under way to determine the cause of the explosion and the exact number of victims.

A video published on Twitter by the fire service showed a huge column of black smoke billowing from the wreckage of the truck.

Authorities said the accident closed down a major interchange connecting highways linking northern Italy with the Adriatic coast, a popular destination as Italy heads into next week’s peak summer holiday travel period. 
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The British government has launched a probe into claims officials are failing to scrutinize visa applications from foreign men whose British-born Muslim wives have been forced by their families to marry them overseas.

Campaigners say even when women, many of them teenagers, have objected to their spouses being issued visas to join them in Britain, officials all too often ignore their opposition.

An investigation by The Times newspaper outlining cases in which British officials appear to have compounded the victimization and abuse of women forced into marriages has prompted the country’s interior minister Sajid Javid to launch an inquiry, saying forced marriage is a “despicable, inhumane, uncivilized practice that has no place whatsoever in Britain.”

He added in a tweet, “We will be doing more to combat it and support victims.”

Figures released to The Times under Freedom of Information laws showed that last year, Britain’s Home Office received 175 inquiries from spouses or third parties trying to block visas being issued. Eighty-eight developed into full cases. They included direct appeals from women or objections from others who feared the marriages had been forced.

Visas were issued in 42 of the cases, while another 10 are pending a final decision.

Many unreported cases

But charities say those cases are the tip of the iceberg, and thousands of women, mainly from South Asian backgrounds, are being coerced into marriages that often become highly abusive, involving rape and domestic violence. The government’s Forced Marriage Unit, part of the Foreign Office, received reports of nearly 2,000 possible cases of women being forced into marriages overseas last year.

Laws were introduced in England and Wales in 2014 criminalizing forced marriage. But campaigners say some immigration officials are “turning a blind eye,” concerned they may be criticized for being culturally or religiously insensitive for mistaking an arranged marriage for a forced one.

Labor lawmaker Naz Shah from the Yorkshire town of Bradford said the laws need to be changed to help ease the plight of British Asian women trying to block abusive spouses from gaining visas and joining them in Britain. Bradford has the third largest British Asian population in the country.

She expressed frustration to a British broadcaster, saying, “There is nothing racist about highlighting the fact that a girl is being forced into a marriage or protecting that victim. Abuse is abuse, regardless of any cultures, and that needs to be understood loudly and clearly.”

Shah and the charities say among the legal changes needed is to do away with a requirement for officials to inform a foreign spouse, if his wife doesn’t endorse his visa application. That information can lead to further abuse by the families of women who try to block the issuance of a visa, including exposing them to honor-based violence.

Aneeta Prem, founder of Freedom, a charity opposing forced marriage, told Reuters, “It is a very typical case that girls are forced into marriage, and then when they come back to the U.K., they are forced to put in a spousal application for their abuser.” Campaigners say most of the forced marriages are taking place in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Some progress made

Gerry Campbell, a former Scotland Yard detective and a director of the Sharan Project, a charity that helps vulnerable women, particularly of South Asian origin, said in a tweet the government has done some “excellent work on tackling forced marriage over the years. It must, however, be relentless as is the case with other forms of violence against Women and Girls.”

Last month, a court in Yorkshire sentenced a couple from Leeds to eight years in prison for forcing their teenage daughter to marry. In 2016, the 18 year old was told she had to marry an older cousin in Pakistan. When she refused, she was assaulted, and her father threatened to kill her.

She was helped to escape by armed police after British diplomats were tipped off about her plight. After her parents were sentenced, the girl said, “I know I will always have to remain cautious, but knowing those monsters are going to be in prison, I feel the uttermost freedom in my heart.”

The conviction is the second in Britain for forced marriage. In May, a woman was jailed in the British town of Birmingham for trying to force her 17-year-old daughter to marry a relative twice her age in Pakistan.

 
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The heads of Greece’s emergency services have been removed from office in the wake of the deadly wildfires near Athens that . killed 91 people, government officials said Sunday.

The chiefs of the police and fire brigades have been replaced by their deputies.

The changes came a day after Greece’s public order minister, Nikos Toskas, also resigned.

The death toll from the July 23 fire rose to at least 91. Nearly 40 people remain hospitalized, including six in critical condition.

The Athens government has been criticized for its response to the deadly blazes.

Authorities blamed arsonists for starting the fire, as well as illegal construction, which blocked escape routes from the coastal resort town of Mati. 
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President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Kremlin-connected lawyer and his son was to collect information about his political opponent, casting new light on a moment central to the special counsel’s Russia probe.

Trump, amid a series of searing tweets sent from his New Jersey golf club, tore into two of his favorite targets, the news media and Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible links between the president’s campaign and Russia. Trump unleashed particularly fury at reports that he was anxious about the Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr. and other senior campaign officials.

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” Trump wrote. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

But 13 months ago, Trump gave a far different explanation for the meeting. A July 2017 statement dictated by the president read: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.”

But since then, the story about the meeting has changed several times, eventually forced by the discovery of emails between the president’s eldest son and an intermediary from the Russian government offering damaging information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Betraying no surprise or misgivings about the offer from a hostile foreign power, Trump Jr. replied: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Sunday’s tweet was Trump’s clearest statement yet on the purpose of the meeting, which has become a focal point of Mueller’s investigation even as the president and his lawyers try to downplay its significance and pummel the Mueller probe with attacks. On Sunday, Trump again suggested without evidence that Mueller was biased against him, declaring, “This is the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country.”

And as Trump and his allies have tried to discredit the probe, a new talking point has emerged: that even if that meeting was held to collect damaging information, none was provided and “collusion” — Trump’s go-to description of what Mueller is investigating — never occurred.

“The question is what law, statute or rule or regulation has been violated, and nobody has pointed to one,” said Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, on ABC’s “This Week.”

But legal experts have pointed out several possible criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States and aiding and abetting a conspiracy. And despite Trump’s public Twitter denial, the president has expressed worry that his son may face legal exposure even as he believes he did nothing wrong, according to three people close to the White House familiar with the president’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

Sekulow acknowledged that the public explanation for the meeting has changed but insisted that the White House has been very clear with the special counsel’s office. He said he was not aware of Trump Jr. facing any legal exposure.

“I don’t represent Don Jr.,” Sekulow said, “but I will tell you I have no knowledge at all of Don Jr. being told that he’s a target of any investigation, and I have no knowledge of him being interviewed by the special counsel.”

Trump’s days of private anger spilled out into public with the Twitter outburst, which comes at a perilous time for the president.

A decision about whether he sits for an interview with Mueller may also occur in the coming weeks, according to another one of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani. Trump has seethed against what he feels are trumped-up charges against his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, whose trial began last week and provided a visible reminder of Mueller’s work.

And he raged against the media’s obsession with his links to Russia and the status of Michael Cohen, his former fixer, who is under federal investigation in New York. Cohen has indicated that he would tell prosecutors that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting ahead of time.

Despite a show of force from his national security team this week as a warning against future Russian election meddling, Trump again deemed the matter a “hoax” this week. And at a trio of rallies, he escalated his already vitriolic rhetoric toward the media, savaging the press for unflattering coverage and, he feels, bias.

“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!”

The fusillade of tweets came from Bedminster, Trump’s golf course, where he is ensconced in a property that bears his name at every turn and is less checked in by staffers. It was at the New Jersey golf club where a brooding Trump has unleashed other inflammatory attacks and where, in spring 2017, he made the final decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the move that triggered the Russia probe.

Trump was joined for his Saturday rally in Ohio by former White House communications director Hope Hicks, who departed the administration earlier this year. Her unannounced presence raised some eyebrows as Hicks has been interviewed by Mueller and was part of the team of staffers that helped draft the original statement on the Trump Tower meeting.

Multiple White House officials have been interviewed while still working at the White House and have remained in contact with the president.
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An old-time propeller plane crashed near-vertically at high speed into a Swiss mountain, killing all 20 people on board, police said Sunday.

The Junkers Ju-52 plane, operated by the Swiss company Ju-Air, went down Saturday on the Piz Segnas mountain above the Alpine resort of Flims, striking the mountain’s western flank about 2,540 meters (8,330 feet) above sea level. The mountainous area in southeastern Switzerland is popular with hikers and skiers and includes a glacier.

Police said Sunday they have now determined that all 20 people on board the plane, including its three crew members, died.

Eleven men and nine women between the ages of 42 and 84 were killed. Most of the victims were Swiss but they also included a couple and their son from Austria.

Photos released by Graubuenden canton (state) police showed the crumpled wreckage of the plane lying on the mountain, with only the upside-down tail more or less intact.

Police said they are not aware of any distress call from the aircraft before it crashed.

Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board said the plane appears to have hit the ground near-vertically and at high speed.

Speaking Sunday at a news conference in Flims, he said the vintage plane presumably didn’t have the crash-resistant cockpit voice and data recorders that more modern aircraft have.

Officials can essentially rule out a collision with another aircraft or hitting an obstacle such as a wire, and there’s no indication of foul play or that the aircraft lost parts or broke up before the crash, he added.

He said that officials expect the investigation of the cause to be “relatively complex.”

The plane was flying the passengers back from a two-day trip to Locarno in southern Switzerland to its base at Duebendorf, near Zurich. Authorities were informed of the crash at 5 p.m. Saturday, 50 minutes after the aircraft had taken off from Locarno’s Magadino airfield.

Nearly 5,000 Ju-52 planes, a product of Germany’s Junkers, were manufactured between 1932 and 1952.

Ju-Air’s Ju-52 planes are former Swiss military aircraft, built in 1939, that were retired by the air force in 1981.

Ju-Air started operating flights with the old-timers in 1983, and the plane that crashed – with the registration HB-HOT – had been in service with the company since 1985.

The aircraft have three engines, one on the nose and one on each wing.

The company, which operates two other Ju-52s, suspended flights until further notice after the crash.
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Croatia is celebrating a victorious 1995 military offensive in which it retook lands held by rebel Serbs, but which Serbia’s president has compared to the policies of Nazi Germany during World War II.

The starkly conflicting views by the two main Balkan rivals of the August 1995 military blitz that resulted in an exodus of more than 200,000 minority Serbs from Croatia illustrates the persisting divisions in the region stemming from the 1990s’ war.

While Croatia on Sunday hailed the offensive as a flawless military victory that reunited the country’s territory and ended the war, neighboring Serbia mourned the hundreds of victims killed during the attack.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told a gathering late Saturday that “Hitler wanted a world without Jews; Croatia and its policy wanted a Croatia without Serbs.”

 
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The bodies of three Russian journalists who were killed in Central African Republic have been brought back to Moscow, where they are to undergo a forensic examination.

Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said Sunday the bodies had been turned over to committee experts and would be examined “with the goal of establishing the cause of the Russians’ death.”

The journalists were ambushed and killed Monday outside the town of Sibut. They were investigating a Russian private security company that was operating in CAR as well as Russian ties to the local mining industry. The project was funded by exiled opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a longtime foe of President Vladimir Putin.

Officials in CAR say the journalists were kidnapped by men wearing turbans and speaking Arabic. Their bodies had gunshot wounds.

 
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Lisbon has broken a 37-year-old record to notch its highest temperature ever as an unrelenting wave of heat bakes Portugal and neighboring Spain.

Portugal’s weather service said the capital reached 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 degrees Fahrenheit) Saturday, surpassing the city’s previous record of 43 C (109.4 F) set in 1981.

The day’s highest temperature of 46.8 C (116.2 F) was recorded at Alvega in the center of Portugal. The country’s highest temperature on record is 47.4 C (117.3 F) from 2003.

The hot, dusty conditions across the Iberian Peninsula are the result of a mass of hot air from Africa.

Sunday’s forecast calls for temperatures to dip slightly while remaining extremely high.
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Israel’s navy Saturday seized a Swedish-flagged sailboat carrying activist passengers that was trying to breach the long-standing blockade of the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said the vessel, named “Freedom for Gaza,” was “intercepted in accordance with international law.”

The 12 passengers, from Sweden, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Spain, are in custody and will be flown home, an Israeli Immigration Authority spokeswoman said.

The organizer of the trip, the Swedish group Ship to Gaza, said the boat was carrying mainly medical supplies and maintained it was wrongly intercepted in international waters.  

“The demands of the Ship to Gaza are that the ship with its crew and cargo … be allowed to go in peace through international and Palestinian waters in accordance with international law,” it said in a statement. “This is a demand that the 11 years-long illegal and destructive blockade on Gaza will be lifted at last.”

Israel’s military said the boat violated the “legal naval blockade” and that “any humanitarian merchandise can be transferred to Gaza through the Port of Ashdod.”

The vessel Freedom for Gaza was the second vessel of the “Freedom Flotilla” to be seized as it tried to “break the blockade” on Gaza, organizers said.

Earlier this week the Israeli navy intercepted a Norwegian-flagged activist boat, one of four that left Scandinavia in mid-May.

Israel contends the the blockade is necessary to keep Palestinian militants from getting weapons or other materials that could be used for military purposes.

Israel and Palestinian militants have fought three wars since 2008 in Gaza, an economically disadvantaged 365 square kilometer territory where more than two million Palestinians reside.

United Nations officials have called for the lifting of the blockade, citing worsening humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian enclave.
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Despite a sharp deterioration in relations over the detention of an American pastor, the United States and Turkey remain valued partners, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday, in an apparent bid to ease tensions that have rocked ties between the NATO allies.

Pompeo told reporters on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in Singapore that the two countries would continue to work with each other in the framework of the alliance and on other matters.

“Turkey is a NATO partner with whom the United States has every intention of continuing to work cooperatively,” Pompeo said.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration took the rare, if not unprecedented, step of hitting two senior Turkish officials with sanctions over the case of Pastor Andrew Brunson, who remains in detention despite repeated demands from President Donald Trump for his release. Pompeo met on Friday with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to discuss the matter behind closed doors and said those talks had been “constructive.”

“I made clear that it is well past time that Pastor Brunson be freed and be permitted to return to the United States,” he said, adding that several detained local State Department employees should also be released. “I am hopeful that in the coming days we will see that occur,” Pompeo said.

He acknowledged “lots of challenges” with Turkey, but said Washington and Ankara had been able to work closely and well together. They have been at odds over numerous matters, including military activity in northern Syria and Turkey’s plans to purchase an advanced air defense system from Russia.

Speaking to Turkish journalists after his meeting with Pompeo, Cavusoglu also described their discussion as “extremely constructive” and said the two would continue to work toward resolving disputes. But he said threats would not work. “We repeated to them that nothing can be achieved through threatening language and sanctions and we believe that this was well understood,” he said.

Brunson, 50, is being tried on espionage and terror-related charges, which he and the U.S. government vehemently deny. He was arrested in December 2016 following a failed coup on charges of “committing crimes on behalf of terror groups without being a member” and espionage. Although he was released to home detention, he faces a prison sentence of up to 35 years if he is convicted on both counts at the end of his ongoing trial. The evangelical pastor, who is originally from Black Mountain, North Carolina, has lived in Turkey for 23 years and led the Izmir Resurrection Church.

Last week, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence threatened to impose sanctions on Turkey if Brunson was not immediately released. They said his recent transfer from prison to house arrest was not enough and on Wednesday, the Treasury Department hit Turkey’s Justice Minister, Abdulhamit Gul, and Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, with sanctions that block any assets they may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with them..

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected the U.S. demands, saying his government won’t back down and is willing to “go its own way” if the U.S. acted. The Turks have also vowed to retaliate for the sanctions “without delay.”

The Turkish leader has previously connected Brunson’s return to the U.S. to the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. Ankara blames Gulen for the coup attempt, while the cleric denies involvement.

 
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A Russian helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff in Siberia on Saturday, killing all 18 people aboard.

The Interstate Aviation Committee, which oversees civil aviation in much of the former Soviet Union, said the Mi-8 helicopter collided with the load being carried by another helicopter that had taken off from the same pad in Vankor, above the Arctic Circle about 2,600 kilometers (1600 miles) northeast of Moscow. The second helicopter was undamaged and landed safely, the committee said.

Helicopters frequently carry loads in slings that hang below the craft.

There were 15 passengers and three crew aboard the crashed helicopter, said a statement from the operator, UTair airlines.

Russian news reports said all the passengers were believed to have been working for a subsidiary of the state oil company Rosneft.

UTair, one of Russia’s largest airlines, operates an extensive fleet of helicopters serving Siberian oil fields as well as fixed-wing flights within Russia and to international destinations, mostly in former Soviet republics.

The helicopter that crashed was manufactured in 2010 and the pilot had nearly 6,000 hours of experience, including 2,300 as a captain, the UTair statement said.

Russian air safety has improved since the 1990s, when poor aircraft maintenance, pilot training and official oversight in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a high crash incidence.

In February, a Saratov Airlines An-148 regional jet crashed about six minutes after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, killing all 71 people aboard. Investigators said the crew had failed to turn on a heating unit, resulting in flawed airspeed readings. A UTair ATR 72 crashed in Siberia in 2012, killing 33 of the 43 people aboard, after failing to be de-iced before takeoff.

 
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Greek Civil Protection Minister Nikos Toskas resigned on Friday in the wake of a wildfire last month that killed 88 people and led to widespread criticism of the government for its handling of the disaster.

Toskas had previously offered to quit after the July 23 blaze in the small seaside town of Mati east of Athens, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras refused to accept his resignation.

The minister reiterated his desire to step aside again on Friday during a meeting with Tsipras, in a move that the main political opposition said came too late to appease the public.

“This natural disaster, and the loss of so many people in Mati, overwhelms my desire to continue. This is something I had stated publicly from the first moment,” Toskas, a retired army general, said in a statement.

Pressure has been growing on the government, which is trailing the conservative opposition in opinion polls, at a time when it had hoped to extricate Greece from years of bailouts prompted by its debt crisis and reap the political benefits.

There have been recriminations over what went wrong and led to the deaths of dozens in Mati, where hundreds of people were trapped by towering walls of flames when they tried to flee.

Many jumped into the sea to survive but others died, either in their cars or when they were cornered on the edge of steep cliffs by the rapidly advancing inferno.

Last Friday Tsipras said he took political responsibility for the deadly wildfire amid accusations that his government had failed to protect lives and to apologize for the disaster.

Seeking to deflect public anger, he told his ministers he was conflicted over whether the authorities had done everything right in response to the disaster.

“Responsibilities have a name: Alexis Tsipras. He and his government do not have the courage to assume them 11 days after the tragedy,” the conservative New Democracy party said after the minister’s resignation.

Tsipras’s office quickly responded, accusing the conservative party of trying to score political gains from a national tragedy.

The death toll rose to 88 on Friday when a 35-year-old woman died from her injuries. Her six-month old baby, the youngest victim, had died in her arms from smoke inhalation as they tried to escape the flames.

Greek authorities say they suspect the fire was set deliberately. Arson is thought to be a frequent cause of forest fires in Greece, a crude method to clear the way for potential development.

Toskas’s duties have been assigned to Panos Skourletis, the country’s interior minister.
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Preparations are being made to send thousands of Ebola vaccines next week to North Kivu, the site of the latest outbreak of this deadly disease.

The World Health Organization says it foresees huge difficulties ahead in efforts to combat the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

North Kivu province, the site of the new outbreak, has been riven with ethnic and political clashes for at least two decades.

WHO’s emergency response chief, Peter Salama, said the operation getting under way in North Kivu will be much more difficult and complex than past Ebola response efforts.

Salama was at the forefront of efforts to combat an Ebola outbreak this April in the DRC’s Equateur Province.

“On the scale of degree of difficulty, trying to extinguish an outbreak of a deadly high-threat pathogen in a war zone reaches the top of any of our scales,” he cautioned.

WHO reports four of six suspected cases of Ebola have been confirmed in and around Mangina, a town of about 60,000 people in North Kivu. Around 20 deaths have been reported. Salama, however, said the deaths have not yet been confirmed as Ebola cases.

He said laboratory tests indicate that this particular strain is Ebola Zaire, the same one as in Equateur Province. He added that more information will be forthcoming Tuesday when genetic sequencing results are known.

If confirmed, he said it will be possible to use the same vaccine that was used in Equateur. He told VOA that preparations are under way to deploy vaccines to the affected area next week.

The bad news, he cautioned, is that the Zaire strain carries the highest case fatality rate of any of the strains of Ebola — 50 percent or higher.

“The good news is that we do have, although it is still an investigational product, a safe and effective vaccine that we were able to deploy last time around,” he said. “But, remember last time around — and this is a critical point — we had really large-scale access despite all the logistical constraints to be able to do the contact tracing.”

Salama said security constraints will make moving around in North Kivu far more difficult. He said 3,000 doses of the vaccine that are in the capital, Kinshasa, can be deployed immediately and 300,000 additional doses can be mobilized at very short notice.

Ebola is a constant threat in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the virus thrives in heavily forested areas. The newest outbreak is the 10th since the first one was discovered in 1976.
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