Kosovo has arrested two people, including a Belgian national, suspected of planning attacks on NATO troops and the public in Kosovo, Belgium and France, the state prosecutor said on Friday.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that on June 2 the pair, a man and a woman, spoke by telephone of preparing “terrorist attacks and commit suicide attacks with explosives with a car against KFOR (NATO-led Kosovo Force) soldiers in Kosovo and to attack places frequented by citizens.”

They were taken into custody on Wednesday.

The man, identified only as a 26-year-old Belgian national, was living with the woman, identified as a 25-year-old residing near the capital Pristina. According to the prosecution the man was also preparing suicide attacks in public places in Belgium and France.

“My client is suspected of preparing to commit terrorism acts … but I don’t agree with the prosecution because they have not offered any evidence to detain him,” said attorney Arber Rexha, who is representing the man.

A senior police officer told Reuters that the probe had been expanded and more suspects were being investigated.

The official said police were able to record telephone conversations between the suspects in which they were planning attacks.

The NATO mission told Reuters this was an issue for the Kosovo police.

NATO has some 4,500 soldiers in Kosovo helping to keep a fragile peace. The European Union and the United Nations also have security and diplomatic missions there.

Some 300 Kosovo nationals went Syria to fight for Islamic State and more than 50 have been killed there. This has raised concerns that some could return and pose security threats, Kosovo authorities said.

In May Kosovo court jailed eight men for plotting to attack the Israeli national soccer team in Albania in a World Cup qualifying match in 2016.
…

As summer draws near in the Northern Hemisphere, millions of people will slather on sunscreen to protect themselves from the sun’s harmful rays. But most sunscreens contain chemicals harmful to the oceans. Now researchers in London have developed a compound found in seaweed that could be the basis for a new generation of environmentally friendly sunscreens. As VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, they may not only protect us from damaging rays from the sun but also act as an anti-oxidant.
…

Ukraine’s parliament has voted to establish an anti-corruption court in an effort to meet the criteria to receive $17.5 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Before the IMF releases the funds needed to shore up Ukraine’s struggling economy, it will have make sure the court’s laws are IMF compliant. The West has repeatedly called on Ukraine to reform it political system and establish an independent body to fight corruption.

“What we’ll be looking to see is that it ensures the establishment of an independent and trustworthy anti-corruption court that meets the expectation of the Ukrainian people,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said at a briefing Thursday.

President Petrol Poroshenko said the court was in line with Western recommendations and Ukrainian law.  

Last year Poroshenko rejected the need for an anti-corruption court, saying such institutions are needed in “Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia and Croatia” but not in Western Europe or the United States.

While the approval of the court was seen as a positive, Ukraine also likely dismayed the West by firing Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, a respected reform advocate.

Danylyuk’s ouster came after he took on Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, accusing him of stalling reforms of the state tax service that are needed to combat corruption.

Before the parliament voted on his ouster, Danylyuk addressed the lawmakers, telling them he had been accused of “defending the interests of international organizations.”

But, “I am defending the interests of Ukrainians,” he said.
…

When Daniel Essa fled Syria in 2014, he faced an uncertain future as a refugee in France, where he knew few people and less French. Now he is selling his own brand of luxury sneakers to the wealthy of Paris and Hollywood.

The 30-year-old studied fashion in Damascus but abandoned hopes of a career in his homeland and fled the war to settle in Lille, near the Belgian border.

His simple but chic leather sneakers with a strip of stretchy fabric rather than laces sell for an average price of 330 euros ($390).

Actress Whoopi Goldberg placed an order after spotting a prototype pair on a friend’s feet at a fashion show in the United States and asked who the designer was, Essa told Reuters from a boutique that stocks 28 style of his shoes.

Grandmother’s influence

His first shop opens in the next two weeks. The shoes are on sale in Beverly Hills, Paris and Ajaccio, Corsica.

Taught to sew by his grandmother, Essa had to persuade his parents that fashion was not just something for girls.

“The rest of my family was against it because it wasn’t a man’s job, it was a woman’s job. So it was our little secret between my grandmother and me, doing it behind my family’s back,” he said.

It was a tough decision to leave Damascus, which, unlike his home town of Homs, had escaped the worst of the fighting, especially because Essa had set up a workshop and shop in the capital.

Decision to flee

“We saw that the war had started to reach Damascus. There were attacks almost every day and I saw my friends and many families starting to leave one after the other — of course, the lucky ones, those who could afford to go.” He has not seen his family since he fled.

Each pair of Daniel Essa shoes is etched with a word under the tongue: “Freedom,” “Kisses,” or “Peace.”

“Everybody talks about world peace, but I really hope that one day we will have peace in our world,” Essa said.
…

NATO defense ministers on Thursday unveiled plans for expanded military reinforcements by having the ability to deploy 30 troop battalions, 30 squadrons of aircraft and 30 warships within 30 days to any conflict on the European mainland.

Details of the U.S.-drafted plan remain unclear, though ministers said they aim to have it logistically operational no later than 2020.

The ministers also announced plans to strengthen its new command structure by more than 1,200 personnel spread across a new Atlantic command center based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a mainland Europe conflict logistics headquarters in Ulm, Germany. 

Briefly putting aside what NATO’s chief said were “serious differences” within the 29-member alliance, ministers agreed to a plan to protect the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, move troops more quickly across Europe and have more combat-ready battalions, ships and planes.

Notably absent from Thursday’s ministerial debates: a recent White House decision to target Europe on trade, which may further raise tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The European Union, along with Canada and Mexico, have expressed irritation over new U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which the administration of President Donald Trump has levied on national security grounds.

“There are differences related to issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and climate change,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

“We have disagreements between NATO allies but we stand together in NATO when it comes to the core task of NATO … to protect each other.”

July summit agenda

Another challenge facing the alliance are efforts to expand membership in Eastern Europe, where Russia has long opposed NATO’s presence.

Increasing from 12 to 29 member nations through seven rounds of enlargement since 1949, NATO recently updated its website to include four countries that have declared their intent to join the alliance ahead of the July 11 summit. Those nations include Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, and Macedonia

In a May visit to the White House, Secretary Stoltenberg said expansion will help strengthen the alliance. 

“We live in a more unpredictable world, we need a strong NATO, and we need to invest more in our security,” he said in an interview with VOA.

Former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, said the United States is working to help applicant nations meet the requirements for membership.

“We are there to give them the standards, to help them get there, and that’s what the open door policy is,” she said.

Former NATO deputy secretary general Alexander Vershbow, however, said countering malign Russian influence in the Balkans will remain a vital part of securing membership, citing recent evidence of Russian meddling in Macedonia’s domestic politics.

“Russians are perhaps more persistent and little bit more unscrupulous in their methods, but they have been long trying to discourage Western Balkan countries from joining NATO,” he told VOA. “Macedonia, I think, is the prime target right now, because the possibility of breakthrough between Macedonia and Greece on the name issue opens the way to possible negotiations on membership even this year.”

Greece opposes Macedonia’s name, saying it amounts to a territorial claim on a synonymous northern Greek region. Western involvement in the name dispute could ease Macedonia’s entry into NATO, but only if the country can meet the alliance’s strict requirements.

Matthew Nimetz, UN moderator on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute, told VOA that recent talks on the issue were productive.

“These were very workmanlike talks,” he said of recent meetings in New York. “The issues are well defined. The issues have been narrowed. We still don’t have a final resolution of the issues, but both sides are determined to do enough to try to reach an agreement and are working very hard to do that.”

Another key requirement for membership: a pledge to spend at least 2 percent of a country’s gross domestic product on defense.

Only five member nations — the Greece, Britain, Estonia, Poland, and the United States — currently meet that requirement.

Upon arriving in office, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO member countries for not contributing their fair share to the alliance. In a 2017 speech to NATO members, he failed to reiterate the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 pledge of mutual defense, rattling NATO allies.

The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump will travel to Brussels to attend a NATO summit scheduled for July 11-12, followed by a July 13 visit to Britain.

This story originated in VOA’s Macedonian Service. 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual televised call-in show with Russians on Thursday in a semi-choreographed event that highlighted the Russian president’s efforts to raise living standards at home while defending Russian interests abroad. 

Amid Putin’s 18-year rule, the so-called “Direct Line” has emerged as a key symbol of Russia’s top-down system of government, in which Putin often sits as the sole arbiter of problems befalling citizens of the world’s largest country.

State media claimed that Russians submitted over 2.5 million questions to the Russian leader on topics ranging from health care to gas prices, pension payments, mortgage rates and much, much more. 

Despite a grueling live answering session before cameras, the limits of that format were also on display: Putin fielded under a hundred questions in just under 4.5 hours. 

Good (economics) vibrations

As anticipated, domestic issues dominated the session. 

Indeed, Putiin claimed improving Russians’ lives was his priority after a landslide re-election last March that was marred by accusations of vote tampering but secured Putin’s rule through 2024. 

Addressing the economy early on, Putin argued that Russia’s finances were “on the right path” and re-emphasized campaign calls that — despite western sanctions — Russia was poised for “breakthroughs” in its development. 

“Overall, we are heading in the right direction,” said Putin. “We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is modest, small, but it is also not falling backward.”

The Russian leader again touched on a campaign pledge to halve Russia’s poverty rate in his next, and — in theory — final six-year term. 

Asked by the event’s moderator whether the current government — whose leadership has gone largely unchanged from his previous term  — was capable of reaching that goal, Putin assured the “government team was optimal.” 

Foreign policy classics 

The event also contained Putin’s well-worn barbs against the West — with the United States, in particular, a long favorite target.  

Putin said that U.S. allies in Europe — currently engaged in a tariff showdown with the Trump administration — were slowly warming to the message he’d been delivering for years: U.S. foreign and economic policy was aimed at extending American power at the expense of the rest of the world. 

“It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions,” said Putin. “But now we are seeing that this is happening.”

Putin also accused the U.S. of fueling a Cold War-style arms race by abandoning key nuclear arms treaties, while expressing hope that the threat of mutual annihilation would continue to play a deterrent role. 

“The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us,” said the Russian leader.

In a related exchange, Putin assured that a new generation of Russian super weapons — unveiled by Putin in a high-profile speech before Russia’s Federal Council last March — were largely now operational and ready to defend Russia, despite doubts from outside experts.

 Hot wars

Russia’s very real conflicts also figured prominently.  

In Ukraine, where Russia has been engaged in a simmering proxy war since 2014, Putin suggested the government in Kyiv would pay a heavy price if rumors of a planned summer offensive against Russian-backed rebels in the country’s east proved true.  

“If this happens, I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general,” said Putin. 

When asked about Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Syria, Putin argued Russia’s military had gained valuable experience from participating in the Syrian conflict but seemed to walk back earlier repeated calls for a large-scale withdrawal of Russian forces. 

“Our soldiers are there in order to secure Russia’s interests in this critically important part of the world, which is so near to us. And they will stay there, for as long as it is in Russia’s interest for them to do so.”

Same old same old

Given this was the 16th Direct Line over the course of Putin’s rule, the event had an air of predictability that even the Russian president seemed to acknowledge. On several occasions, Putin noted several topics had been raised in past call-in programs.  

When asked whether he had chosen a possible successor, the Russian leader again demurred, noting it was a “traditional question.”

Yet the event was not without at least some surprises. For the first time, a live studio audience was jettisoned in favor of video and phone appeals fielded by young pro-Kremlin “volunteers.” 

Key governors and ministers were also a new part of the show, remaining on a direct video feed to address problems in real time — and occasionally faced admonishment from the president — when policies clashed with realities on the ground.

Informed theater

Debate has long simmered over just how choreographed the Direct Line truly is.  Obvious propaganda-style cutaways to highlight the government’s achievements mix with genuine complaints to create an atmosphere of what some called “informed theater.” 

Adding to that blur were screens in the background that posed apparently unfiltered — and occasionally uncomfortable — questions to the Russian leader.

“Why is there money for tanks, bombs, planes and machine guns, but no money for the people?” went one text message that appeared briefly on screen.

If Putin saw the prompt, it went unacknowledged.  

Regardless, the Russian leader looked far more comfortable than he was during a recent interview with Austria’s national ORF channel in which Putin repeatedly grew testy over the journalist’s line of inquiry and repeated follow-up questions. 

Direct Line offered none of that, and Putin seemed to enjoy the comfortable questions from Russian state media hosts.   

“Vladimir Putin, you received a record level of support during the last elections. Do you feel lonely at the top of political Olympus? Lonely without any competitors or competition?”  

“No, I’m not lonely,” he replied, adding, “I have my team.”  

With that, the Russian leader stared at the screen. 
…

A 500-year-old copy of a letter in which Christopher Columbus describes his voyage to the Americas has been returned to Spain after U.S. authorities tracked down the document, which had been stolen and replaced with a forgery years ago.

The letter, copied centuries ago from the one Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain after his first Atlantic crossing, was given to Spain’s Ambassador Pedro Morenes in Washington, law enforcement authorities said on Thursday.

The repatriation of the letter follows seven years of sleuthing by U.S. law enforcement agencies after the discovery that it had been replaced by a forgery at the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona.

“We are truly honored to return this historically important document back to Spain — its rightful owner,” U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss said in a statement.

Columbus, born in Genoa in modern-day Italy, had written the letter in Spanish after his return to Europe in 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella, who sponsored his voyage, sent the document to Rome to be translated into Latin and manually copied, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie McCall said.

“A number of these copies were made and then delivered to various kings and queens in Europe to spread the news of Columbus’s discoveries,” McCall said by telephone.

A Latin copy of the letter, in which Columbus describes the mountains, fertile fields, gold and indigenous people he encountered in the Caribbean, is the one that was illegally swapped for a forgery at the Barcelona library, McCall said.

Authorities said they discovered the theft after a tip in 2011 to an assistant U.S. attorney in Delaware who had become experienced in the subject.

Because the library had digitized its collection before the theft, U.S. investigators said they and Spanish authorities were able to determine in 2012 that the letter it had was a forgery.

The real letter, they said, had been sold in November 2005 by two Italian book dealers for 600,000 euros.

After learning in March 2013 that it had been sold again in 2011 for 900,000 euros, authorities said they made contact with the person who had the letter. They said that person was unaware that it had been stolen.

They said they later concluded “beyond all doubt” that it was the letter taken from the Barcelona library and got it back.

The case is still under investigation, McCall said.
…

Leaders of the world’s top industrialized democracies will meet in Quebec, Canada, this weekend at a time of growing tensions over trade and other issues While the G-7 Summit is likely to be overshadowed by another historic meeting next week in Singapore, analysts say the G-7 summit is likely to be no less consequential to the future of the global economy or the continued international leadership of the United States. Mil Arcega has more.
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Vladimir Putin, on a living standards drive at the start of a new presidential term, is expected to try to fix Russians’ everyday problems on live TV later Thursday, handing out real-time orders to regional governors and government ministers.

Putin, who won a landslide re-election victory in March, has taken part in the annual phone-in since 2001, using it to cast himself as a decisive troubleshooter on the home front and as a staunch defender of Russia’s interests on the world stage.

Political theater

Critics say the event, which is being held days before Russia hosts the soccer World Cup, is a stage-managed piece of theater designed to let Russians let off steam and fleetingly feel like they can influence a bureaucratic top-down system.

Putin and his aides say it is an indispensable tool to gauge public sentiment and learn what people’s real problems are.

The 65-year-old politician used the event last year to pledge to eradicate spiraling poverty, fielding almost 70 questions in just less than four hours in an event that Kremlin watchers often liken to a tsar listening to his petitioners.

This year, the Interfax news agency reported Putin would forgo his usual studio audience, field text and video questions on a series of TV monitors, and hand out real time orders to regional governors and government ministers who have been told to be at their desks when the event starts at 0900 GMT.

1.4 million questions

Members of the public have submitted more than 1.4 million questions, Russian news agencies reported, many of them visible on a special website set up for the event.

Questions posted ahead of the event included asking Putin whether he planned to meet U.S. President Donald Trump this year, whether relations with the West would improve anytime soon, how he planned to reduce poverty, and why petrol prices were rising so fast.

Putin, who is at the start of a new six-year term in office, always fields a smattering of foreign policy questions, which he typically uses to lash out at the West with whom Moscow’s relations are at a post Cold War low.

This year, he is expected to focus more heavily on domestic issues because he has said the main priority of his fourth term is raising living standards by sharply increasing social and infrastructure spending.
…

Ukrainian journalists have been left puzzled and feeling uneasy since the Ukrainian security service (SBU) staged the assassination of Russian reporter Arkady Babchenko, a U.S. media watchdog says.

Ukrainian authorities have said the elaborate operation was designed to foil a Russian plot to assassinate Babchenko and other members of the Ukrainian media. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that Ukrainian media staffers were upset by SBU’s revelation that it had discovered a “hit list” of 47 journalists, bloggers and activists who may allegedly be targeted by assassins. But veteran journalists told CPJ that while they were perturbed by the news of the list, they were used to being under threat.

Many questioned why the SBU would go through all the trouble to protect Babchenko when it has yet to solve the daylight car bombing that killed Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016.

“I feel the same as I felt before the Babchenko case,” TV reporter Nastya Stanko told CPJ. “I didn’t feel safe then, and I don’t feel safe now.”

Stanko said the Babchenko case had, in fact, made things worse for journalists.

“When some journalists spoke their mind and said journalists shouldn’t work with security services, Babchenko himself said that he wished for these ‘betrayers’ to have a killer knocking on their door,” she said. “I think we are now at a greater risk of that than before.”
…

A year ago in Sicily at the G-7 summit of leading industrial nations, U.S. President Donald Trump was at loggerheads with his fellow summiteers primarily over climate change. At this year’s annual meeting starting in Canada Friday, the dispute will be over tariffs.

European and Canadian participants remain fuming over Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on their steel and aluminum imports — an issue which will dominate a summit planners were already struggling to agree on an agenda for ahead of the U.S. president’s decision to include close allies in the new metals tariff regime.

The U.S. President will find himself without an ally when it comes to tariffs, say European and Canadian diplomats.

“There will be disagreements on important issues and tariffs will certainly be one of them,” a Canadian official told reporters midweek.

Even Britain’s Theresa May, who has declined to keep in step with her fellow Europeans and threaten retaliation, fearing apparently to do so could sink Britain’s chance of a post-Brexit deal with the U.S., has made her disapproval clear. She told Trump in a 30-minute phone call that the tariffs on EU metals are “unjustified and deeply disappointing” and urged him to exempt the Europeans.

But behind the united front of disapproval there are deep disagreements among U.S. allies — especially among the Europeans — about how to respond and whether to take retaliatory action. And if so, what counter-measures to introduce. The disagreements partly stem from different interpretations about what’s driving the U.S. President.

Is Trump being opportunistic and mercurial and playing to a domestic American audience seeking to secure short-gains or is there are an overall longer-term strategy, one at odds with the global free-trade system Washington largely shaped and has backed since the end of World War II?

Is he wanting to change or ‘re-balance’ the terms of global free-trade by using U.S. leverage to reshape rules or is he out to wreck a rules-based system entirely, thereby creating a free-for-all which allows the largest, most powerful countries to exploit their power to the full, secure better deals and lift trade barriers impeding them?

Despite Trump’s rapport with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, Paris has been among the hardest pushing for retaliation, along with top EU officials, viewing the U.S. President’s decision to cite national security as the grounds for the tariffs on steel and aluminum as a direct challenge to the rules-based global trade system overseen by the World Trade Organization.

CNN reported last week that Macron and Trump clashed during a phone call in a conversation described as “terrible” by an unidentified White House source. In a statement issued by the Elysée Palace before the call, Macron said the U.S. tariff imposition was “a mistake on many points. It is a mistake because it responds to a worldwide unbalance that exists in the worst ways through fragmentations and economic nationalism.”

Germany, which runs a large trade surplus with the U.S. and has more to lose than most European nations from a full-blown transatlantic trade, has been more reticent with German businesses — especially in its auto sector — urging Berlin to proceed cautiously. German car-makers’ biggest fear is that EU retaliation — Brussels has already published a list of U.S. products that could be targeted — will result in the U.S. imposing tariffs on German cars.

Trump has lambasted in the past the 10 percent EU tariff on car imports. On May 23 the Trump administration announced an investigation into whether car imports are a threat to U.S. national security, too. A German magazine reported last week that Trump told Macron in April he wanted German carmakers out of the United States altogether. The report was based on unnamed sources and hasn’t been confirmed by either the White House or Elysée Palace.

German car-makers are banking on President Trump’s not raising U.S. duties to 25 percent on all imports of automobiles and auto parts, arguing that to do so will hurt American workers as much as German ones.

An analysis by the Peterson Institute, a Washington think tank, has suggested the fallout for the U.S. auto industry from such tariffs would be harsh as well with a possible 195,000 American workers losing their jobs over a three-year period. But projected chain-supply job consequences in the U.S. from the metals tariffs imposed on June 1 did not deter the Trump administration and EU retaliation could well prompt, German officials fear, Washington to respond with tariffs on auto imports.

According to some analysts and European officials, it doesn’t really matter whether Trump has a longer term-strategy to end rules-based trading or is determined to tug the global system in a direction that favors the U.S. more, making the rules anyway less predictable. Up to a point, the consequences are the same, they say.

“In a world where there are no internationally predictable rules, most countries faced with protectionist actions, crudely, have two options – retaliate or concede. If they choose to retaliate, the optimal strategy is to cause enough pain to the political leadership of the protectionist country that they will back down,” argued Matthew Oxenford, an analyst at Britain’s Chatham House.

He added: “However, this can only be effective for large economies that the U.S. exports to significantly. For smaller countries without significant leverage, the alternative is to concede and try to negotiate a favorable settlement, which will still be asymmetrical.”

That is the policy South Korea has followed, agreeing to quotas on their steel exports to the U.S. in exchange for a permanent exemption.

For all of the rage and fury in Europe about the metal tariffs, amid disunity about how to respond, that may well end up as the result with the EU, too, but probably not in Canada this week. U.S. officials say they expect a long rocky road ahead and they doubt there will even be an agreed joint statement at the end of the summit, emphasizing how the G-7 is becoming increasingly, in the eyes of observers, a G-6 plus 1.
…

Britain, France and Germany have joined forces to urge the United States to exempt European companies from any sanctions the U.S. will slap on Iran after pulling out of an international nuclear agreement.

In a letter dated Monday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ministers from the three European countries said they “strongly regret” President Donald Trump’s decision last month to withdraw from the Iran deal. Trump has said sanctions will be imposed on any company doing business with Tehran.

The three European countries were also signatories of the 2015 deal, which was meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

In their letter, made public on Wednesday, the ministers said that “as close allies we expect that the extraterritorial effects of U.S. secondary sanctions will not be enforced on EU entities and individuals, and the United States will thus respect our political decision and the good faith of economic operators within EU legal territory.”

The ministers, which included British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz, said they want the U.S. to “grant exemptions” for EU companies that have been doing business with Iran since the deal came into force in 2016. They also said Iran should not be cut out of the SWIFT system for international money transfers.

Many companies from Europe and the U.S. have been steadily building up their investments in Iran in the past few years in the wake of the nuclear deal, particularly in the fields of pharmaceuticals, banking and oil.

France’s Le Maire tweeted Wednesday that EU “businesses must be able to pursue their activities.”

 
…

Tunisia’s interior minister has fired 10 security officials amid an investigation into the sinking of a boat carrying migrants trying to reach Europe that left an estimated 112 dead or missing.

It was the deadliest shipwreck this year on the dangerous route from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Braham announced late Tuesday the dismissal of 10 people including local police and security chiefs in the coastal city of Sfax and the Krekennah island, based on preliminary investigations into Sunday’s sinking.

The Tunisian government has been widely criticized for not grasping the extent of the tragedy. The prime minister visited the island Tuesday to oversee the search operations.

The International Organization for Migration has counted 60 confirmed deaths, 52 people still missing and 68 survivors.
…

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia says its military advisers will withdraw from the northern Syrian city of Manbij, after the United States and Turkey agreed on a road map to resolve the future of the city, an issue that is a major source of tension between the NATO allies.

The agreement to ensure security and stability in Manbij came during a meeting Monday in Washington between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

The U.S. State Department did not provide further details about the agreement, but a senior official said Tuesday, “We will continue to be there. We hope Turkey can help patrol,” while declining to specify how many troops would remain.

The official added: “We want locally rooted forces to continue to support stability.”

Monday, Cavusoglu told Turkish journalists in Washington that U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters will withdraw from Manbij under a plan that could be implemented within six months.He said U.S. and Turkish officials would temporarily ensure security in Manbij.

“The aim of this road map is the clearing of Manbij of all terror organizations and the permanent instatement (establishment) of safety and stability,” Cavusoglu said.

Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in the war against the Islamic State group has angered Turkey. Ankara calls the YPG terrorists, accusing the militia of being linked to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Ahead of Cavusoglu’s visit to Washington, the Turkish foreign minister said, “[The United States] has preferred to collaborate with a terrorist organization in Syria.That was a grave mistake, and we are trying to change their position.”

The Syrian town of Manbij was seized from Islamic State by mainly YPG forces.Ankara has claimed Washington reneged on an agreement the militia would withdraw after taking Manbij.

Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey told VOA’s Turkish Service that although there are problems between the United States and Turkey, the ties between the countries would not break down.

“Because the U.S. and Turkey share basic interests — we are status quo powers, we are both major beneficiaries of the global order, and we see in similar terms a threat to that order in the region around Turkey, from Russia, from Iran and from extremist elements — the relationship will remain extremely important and will not break down.”

He acknowledged, “The relationship will also be fraught with problems because it is very complicated.”

Jeffrey said the most difficult problem between two countries is Turkey’s agreement to buy the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system from Russia, a non-NATO country.

Turkey’s move to buy the surface-to-air missile system, which is incompatible with NATO systems, has unnerved NATO member countries.In response, a U.S. Senate committee has threatened to prevent Turkey from purchasing U.S. Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
…

The U.N. human rights office (UNHCR) is criticizing the United States’ new zero tolerance policy aimed at deterring migrants and refugees from coming to the country. Under this policy, people caught entering the U.S. irregularly are subject to criminal prosecution, and their children, some very young, are taken away.

The UNHCR calls this separation of family arbitrary and a serious violation of a child’s rights. The United States is the only country that has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nevertheless, the agency said this does not absolve the U.S. from its responsibilities to adhere to and protect these rights.

Human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles. She said children should never be detained because of their or their parents’ immigration status.

She told VOA there is no justification for detaining children.

“Detention is never in the best interest of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation,” she noted. “Entering a country without the relevant papers should not be a criminal offense. At most, it should be an administrative offense. So, these people should not be detained. Detention is never in the best interest of the child, and these children are effectively detained. They are separated and detained.”

The U.N. refugee agency also condemned the Trump administration’s immigration policy. It said preserving family unity is a fundamental tenet of refugee protection.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the unity of the family is sacrosanct and should be preserved in the best interest of children and society as a whole. He said detention should be a measure of last resort.

“Most of the people attempting to enter the United States across the southern border are coming from three Central American countries: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which are experiencing high levels of violence and persecution, often targeting children and young people and forcing families to flee to protect their lives,” he said.

Spindler added that people fleeing countries of violence should be given international protection. He said the right to claim asylum is a fundamental human right.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the “zero tolerance” policy several weeks ago. Sessions said Congress has failed to pass legislation to fix the problem. The issue has sparked a political debate in the U.S. ahead of midterm congressional elections later this year.
…

The EU’s top court, in a landmark ruling for gay rights in Europe, said on Tuesday that Romania must grant residence to the American husband of a local man even though Romania does not itself permit same-sex marriage.

In a case which has highlighted social differences between western Europe and a more conservative, ex-communist east, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Romania must accept the validity of the mens’ 2010 Belgian marriage and treat American Clai Hamilton as Adrian Coman’s spouse under EU law.

The case did not touch on the freedom of member states to set their own matrimony laws, although campaigners have called on Brussels to push states to legalize same-sex marriage as a fundamental human right. Rather it upheld rights of EU citizens to move freely across the bloc along with their families.

“Although the member states have the freedom whether or not to authorize marriage between persons of the same sex,” the judges said, “They may not obstruct the freedom of residence of an EU citizen by refusing to grant his same-sex spouse, a

national of a country that is not an EU member state, a derived right of residence in their territory.”

The case arose because Hamilton’s right as a non-EU citizen to live in Romania permanently was dependent on his status as Coman’s spouse. Coman challenged a Romanian decision to limit Hamilton’s residence to a three-month visa and a Romanian court referred the matter to the ECJ in Luxembourg.

Coman welcomed the ruling: “We can now look in the eyes of any public official in Romania and across the EU with certainty that our relationship is equally valuable and equally relevant for the purpose of free movement within the EU,” he said.

The deputy leader of the liberal bloc in the European Parliament, Sophie in ‘t Veld, said: “This is fantastic news and a landmark opinion for rainbow families.

“Freedom of movement is a right of all EU citizens. It cannot be restricted because of whom they love.”

The European Commission insisted that the ruling was not part of a push from Brussels to force social change in the bloc.

“Member states are in charge — but this is a useful clarification in terms of avoiding discrimination,” spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters when asked about opposition to same-sex marriage in parts of eastern Europe, where governments have also clashed with the EU executive over other civil rights.
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Denmark’s government has announced that it will build a 68-kilometer fence along the country’s southern border to protect prime Danish pigs from swine fever.

The government says the fence will help keep out German wild boar that could be infected with a deadly African swine fever.

Officials say an outbreak of swine fever in Denmark would force the country to temporarily stop all pork exports. Denmark Minister for Environment and Food Esben Lunde Larsen says the country’s exports of pork outside the European Union are worth $1.8 billion annually.

African swine fever is harmless to humans but fatal to farm pigs.

Other countries in the region are also considering how to counter the spread of swine fever, with Germany allowing hunters to hunt wild boar year around.

Denmark’s government says the fence will be 1.5 meters tall and will be 50 centimeters deep to prevent boars from burrowing underneath. Officials say roads between Denmark and Germany will not be affected by the fence.

Critics say the fence will do little to keep wild boar out of Denmark and will harm other species of animals, such as foxes and deer. Advocates say the fence is a necessary precaution to protect Denmark’s billion-dollar pig industry from the catastrophic effects of an outbreak.
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French President Emmanuel Macron called on international donors to quickly make financing available for the Sahel regional counterterror force.

In a news conference in Paris with visiting Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou, Macron said money “now needs to be disbursed” to allow the five-nation regional force, known as the G5 Sahel, to keep functioning.

He said the European Union started financing the force last week and will provide equipment in coming weeks. He called on other donors like Saudi Arabia to meet their financial commitments. Issoufou expressed his concerns over the financial sustainability of the force.

Earlier this year, international donors pledged 414 million euros ($510 million) to help Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger set up a counterterror force to combat the deadly jihadist threat in the Sahel region.

In an interview to French television France 24, Issoufou said negotiations are ongoing for the release of two humanitarian workers who were kidnapped in Niger. He said Jeffery Woodke, an American abducted in 2016 and Jorg Lang, a German abducted in April this year, are alive.

Issoufou said “we have some news, we know they are alive. We keep working on creating conditions for their release.”

He said he couldn’t confirm their precise location but one probable hypothesis is that they are being detained in northern Mali.
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The United States and Turkey have agreed on a roadmap to resolve the future of the northern Syrian city of Manbij, an issue that has become a major source of tension between the NATO allies.

The agreement came during a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Washington on Monday.

In a joint statement, Pompeo and Cavusoglu said their countries would take steps “to ensure the security and stability in Manbij.”

“They endorsed a roadmap to this end and underlined their mutual commitment to its implementation, reflecting agreement to closely follow developments on the ground,” the statement said, adding that the two sides agreed to hold further meetings to resolve outstanding issues.

​’Clearing of Manbij’

The U.S. State Department did not provide further details about the agreement. However, Cavusoglu told Turkish journalists in Washington Monday that U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters will withdraw from Manbij under a plan that could be implemented within six months. He said U.S. and Turkish officials would temporarily ensure security in Manbij.

“The aim of this roadmap is the clearing of Manbij of all terror organizations and the permanent instatement of safety and stability,” Cavusoglu said.

Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in the war against the Islamic State group has angered Turkey. Ankara calls the YPG terrorists, accusing the militia of being linked to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Ahead of Cavusoglu’s visit to Washington, the Turkish foreign minister said, “[The United States] has preferred to collaborate with a terrorist organization in Syria. That was a grave mistake, and we are trying to change their position.”

Center of US-Turkish tension

The Syrian town of Manbij, which was seized from Islamic State by mainly YPG forces, has become the epicenter of Turkish-U.S. tensions. Ankara claims Washington reneged on an agreement that the militia would withdraw after taking Manbij.

Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey told VOA’s Turkish service that although there are problems between the United States and Turkey, the ties between the countries would not break down.

“Because the U.S. and Turkey share basic interests — we are status quo powers, we are both major beneficiaries of the global order, and we see in similar terms a threat to that order in the region around Turkey, from Russia, from Iran and from extremist elements — the relationship will remain extremely important and will not break down.”

However, he acknowledged there will be difficulties between the countries going forward. 

“The relationship will also be fraught with problems because it is very complicated,” he said.

Jeffrey said the most difficult problem between two countries is Turkey’s agreement to buy the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system from Russia, a non-NATO country.

Turkey’s move to buy the surface-to-air missile system, which is incompatible with NATO systems, has unnerved NATO member countries. In response, a U.S. Senate committee has threatened to prevent Turkey from purchasing U.S. Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.

 Dorian Jones, Nike Ching, Serhan Akyildiz and Erhan Polat contributed to this report.

 
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Tunisia’s Defense Ministry says at least 46 migrants have died after their boat sank off the country’s southern coast and 67 others were rescued by the coast guard on Sunday.

The rescue operation was ongoing, the ministry said in a statement. The migrants were of Tunisian and other nationalities.

In a separate incident, nine people, including six children, died Sunday after a speedboat carrying 15 refugees sank off the coast of Turkey’s southern province of Antalya, the Turkish coast guard said in a statement.

Reducing the flow of migrants into Italy is one of the aims of the anti-immigrant League party in Italy and its leader Matteo Salvini, who was sworn in as the country’s new interior minister on Friday.

Salvini and his party have promised to block the arrival of boat migrants from Africa and to deport up to 100,000 illegal immigrants per year.

“Italy and Sicily cannot be Europe’s refugee camp,” he told a crowd of supporters in the port town of Pozzallo, a migration hotspot.

“Nobody will take away my certainty that illegal immigration is a business… and seeing people make money on children who go on to die makes me furious.”

Meanwhile, Spain’s maritime rescue service said it rescued 240 people, with one person apparently drowning, while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa.

The service said it rescued the migrants from 11 small boats attempting the perilous crossing from African shores to Spain between Saturday and Sunday.

The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. agency for migration, reported last week that 30,300 migrants and refugees entered Europe via sea in the first 147 days of 2018.

The arrivals are at this point in 2018 less than half those seen last year and less than 15 percent of those seen in 2016 at the same point. IOM had reported 69,219 refugees had arrived from January through May in 2017 and 198,346 during the same period in 2016.

IOM said 655 people have lost their lives at sea since the beginning of 2018, at least 1,000 fewer than the recorded deaths in the same period last year.

 
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German police shot at a “rampaging” man wielding a knife in a cathedral in Berlin on Sunday, according to city officers.

“Shortly after 4 pm (1400 GMT) police shot at a rampaging man at Berlin Cathedral,” police said in a tweet.

“He was wounded in the leg,” police said, later adding that an officer had been wounded, without providing further details.

Officers rushed to the Berliner Dom, a major tourist attraction on the historic Museum Island in the German capital, after an employee called emergency services to report the incident.

Police have said the suspect is a 53-year-old man, and that there is no reason to believe the attack was related to terrorism.

 
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The U.S. ambassador to Russia says any meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “would be a ways off.”

Jon Huntsman suggested Sunday on “Fox & Friends” that if a summit were to occur, “the president, at the right time, will say what needs to be said.”

Huntsman’s statement comes after a report that White House officials were working toward setting up a meeting.

Trump has said he was open to having a summit with Putin, who U.S. intelligence officials have said directed Russian meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

The president has repeatedly said he wants to improve relationships with Moscow.

Huntsman says Trump would not sit down with Putin unless he had issues to discuss “that were aligned with our national interests.”

 
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On Sunday, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, will visit Rwanda to meet his counterpart, Louise Mushikiwabo, and President Paul Kagame. They plan to discuss economic development and fighting terrorism, Russia’s foreign ministry said, along with Russia’s involvement with the Africa Union, which Kagame chairs until the end of the year.

Lavrov’s Rwanda trip follows a five-nation Africa tour in March and highlights Russia’s interest in deepening its involvement across the continent.

After that trip, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia decided to cancel more than $20 billion in debt contracted by African nations to help the continent overcome poverty.

Russia “is looking at Africa as a potential trading partner. It’s looking at Africa as a partner in this desire of Russia to create a multipolar world,” Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told VOA by phone.

​Beyond arms deals

Those partnerships have historically centered on arms sales, with documented deals between Russia and at least 30 African nations, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

“They have three refurbishment plants at the moment already in the continent, including in South Africa,” said Alex Vines, a former U.N. sanctions inspector who’s now with the London-based think tank Chatham House. “That’s worked quite well for them, and Russian military equipment is pretty robust, fairly low maintenance. And that has made the Russians attractive.”

Increasingly, Russia has sought deals beyond weapons, including agreements to extract minerals, provide nuclear power, and boost its political and cultural influence in Africa.

Those efforts could translate into favorable votes at the U.N., where three African countries now serve on the Security Council.

The consequences of Russia’s re-emergence in Africa aren’t yet clear, experts say. But the implications could be profound, especially with new opportunities to partner with China and a U.S.-Africa strategy that remains largely undefined.

Soviet-era ties

Before its collapse, the Soviet Union enjoyed an extensive military presence in Africa — historic ties that bolster Russia’s efforts to reinvigorate its presence on the continent.

In the Cold War era, the Soviet Union established naval bases across Africa, including facilities in Egypt, Ethiopia, Angola, Libya and Tunisia.

Those bases were decommissioned when the Soviet Union fell, but military deals continued.

Between 1990 and 2017, Russia and Egypt, for example, engaged in nearly 30 arms deals, mainly for surface-to-air missiles and related technologies, according to SIPRI.

One example is Angola, which benefited from Soviet support when it gained independence from Portugal in 1975. Now, Russia is involved in diamond mining in the country and, according to Vines, may build a new telecommunications center in Angola at their own cost.

Now Russia is seeking partnerships that broaden its interests. Vines told VOA that Russia’s aims are expanding from security to trade and resources.

“There will be some new relationships which are more mercantile (focuses) and based probably around extractives,” Vines said. “I think we will see more trips of the foreign minister of Russia, Lavrov, and some of his colleagues into Africa in the future for that very reason.”

​Securing votes

Russia also has political reasons to court African leaders.

Having long faced sanctions against itself and its trading partners, as well as an extended economic downturn, Russia needs African votes at the United Nations, Vines said, to accomplish its broader goals.

Russia has tried to sidestep U.N. sanctions and U.S. trade embargoes against countries it seeks arms deals with, Stronski said.

Allies in Africa could make that a lot easier. The continent’s 54 nations have considerable sway in the General Assembly, and Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia hold temporary seats on the powerful Security Council.

​‘No questions asked’

For African countries with emerging economies and authoritative governments, Russia, like China, represents an appealing partner: willing to engage, with few rules or requirements.

“Russia comes with, right now, sort of ‘no questions asked’ diplomacy,” Stronski said.

That’s good for African leaders, who benefit from added incentives and loose restrictions on the deals they make. But it also fuels corruption, according to Stronski, and that prevents citizens from benefiting from partnerships as much as they could.

“There is a lot of discussion about how Russian arms help fuel instability and fuel conflict on the African continent,” Stronski said. But African governments also risk a backlash, especially in countries with robust media playing a watchdog role, he added.

That’s a narrative Russia has sought to flip.

Russia “presents this vision of the West as sort of being an instability fueler and talk about how the bombing of Libya helped create sort of a power vacuum that has sort of led to the spread of weapons throughout the Middle East and North Africa,” Stronski said.

A multipolar world, rather than one dominated by the U.S., is one of Russia’s key strategic objectives, he added.

Setbacks

Russia’s efforts in Africa haven’t produced results at every turn. One failed venture appears to be in Djibouti, which Vines likened to “an aircraft carrier for Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.”

Five countries have established military bases in the tiny East African country, most recently China. Russia sought to subcontract space from China, Vines said. But Djibouti, facing pressure from the U.S. and its Western allies, blocked the deal.

Without access to China’s facility, Russia’s options are limited, Stronski said. 

“I don’t see Russia really having the funds, the resources to put anything beyond a very limited port call or landing and refilling rights,” he said.

Playing catch-up

Whether Russia can translate its renewed investments in Africa into major economic or political benefits isn’t clear, both Stronski and Vines said.

That’s in part because others, including Europe, the U.S., Gulf countries and China, are far ahead, according to Stronski.

“They closed down many of their embassies, and they really focused more closer to home. And now, in the last five years, they’ve realized that they were needing to play catch-up in Africa,” Stronski said.

Russia also faces financial constraints, particularly relative to China.

“The Russian Federation is by no means a Soviet Union, and it doesn’t have the deep pockets (or) the capacity to extend itself globally in the way that the Soviet Union was able to,” Vines said.

Despite these limitations, Russia’s rising profile has clear implications for the U.S., according to Stronski.

“The United States should look at this as a warning sign and should develop a more coherent and clear policy of what it sees as U.S. interests in the African continent. And I don’t see a very coherent message coming out of either the State Department or the White House right now on that issue,” he said.
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Finance leaders of the closest U.S. allies vented anger over the Trump administration’s metal import tariffs but ended a three-day meeting in Canada on Saturday with no solutions, setting the stage for a heated fight at a G7 summit next week in Quebec.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to soothe the frustrations of his Group of Seven counterparts over the 25 percent steel and 10 percent aluminum tariffs that Washington imposed on Mexico, Canada and the European Union this week.

The other six G7 member countries asked Mnuchin to bring to President Donald Trump “a message of regret and disappointment” over the tariffs, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said at a press conference after the end of a three-day meeting in the Canadian mountain resort town of Whistler, British Columbia.

“We’re concerned that these actions are actually not conducive to helping our economy, they actually are destructive, and that is consistently held across the six countries that expressed their point of view to Secretary Mnuchin,” he added.

In a statement issued by Canada, the G7 finance officials agreed that “decisive action is needed” on the tariff issue at a summit of G7 leaders next week in Charlevoix, Quebec.

‘G6 plus one’

Speaking separately after the meeting, frequently referred to as the “G6 plus one,” Mnuchin told reporters he was not part of the summary statement and said Trump was focused on “rebalancing our trade relationships.”

Mnuchin rejected comments from some G7 officials that the United States was circumventing international trade rules with the tariffs or ceding global economic leadership.

“I don’t think in any way the U.S. is abandoning its leadership in the global economy, quite the contrary. I think that we’ve had a massive effort on tax reform in the United States which has had a incredible impact on the U.S. economy,” Mnuchin said.

The U.S. Treasury chief said he has relayed some of the G7 comments to Trump and added that the U.S. president would address trade issues with other G7 leaders, but declined to speculate on any outcomes.

Washington’s move

Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to complain about the higher tariffs charged by some U.S. trading partners under World Trade Organization agreements.

All six of the other G7 countries are paying the tariffs, which are largely aimed at curbing excess production in China.

Exemptions expired for Canada, Mexico and EU countries on Friday, while Japanese metals producers have been paying the levies since March 23.

Canada and Mexico, which are embroiled in talks with the United States to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, responded to the U.S. move by announcing levies of their own on a variety of American exports.

The EU is set to retaliate with tariffs on a range of U.S. goods from Harley-Davidson motorcycles to blue jeans and bourbon whiskey.

​Days before trade war

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the United States has only a few days to avoid sparking a trade war with its allies and it is up to Washington to make a move to de-escalate tensions over tariffs.

Speaking after the meeting, Le Maire said the EU was poised to take counter-measures against the new U.S. tariffs.

Some officials at the meeting said the tariffs made it harder for the group to work together to confront China over its trade practices. Mnuchin disagreed, saying there was support for dealing with China’s joint venture requirements, technology transfer efforts and other policies.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said G7 countries also told Mnuchin about their opposition to new U.S. sanctions on Iran, which will affect European companies. Trump announced last month that he was pulling the United States out of an international nuclear agreement with Tehran.

“There were several issues discussed at the G7 over which there was no agreement,” Scholz told reporters. “That’s really quite unusual in the history of the G7.”

The meeting of top economic policymakers was seen as a prelude to the trade disputes that will dominate the two-day G7 summit that begins on Friday in Quebec.
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Slovenia’s parliamentary election on Sunday is likely to hand the most seats to an opposition anti-immigrant center-right party, the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), but it may not find the coalition partners to form a government.

The country is holding a slightly early election after the outgoing center-left Prime Minister Miro Cerar resigned in March over a legal obstacle to the government’s top railway investment project. The election would have been held later in June had Cerar not resigned.

About 1.7 million eligible voters will choose among candidates from 25 parties, with the latest opinion polls indicating that the SDS will win, with up to 24.5 percent of the vote.

“It seems clear that the SDS will win, but everything else about this election is unclear because the question is whether the SDS will be able to form a government coalition,” Meta Roglic, a political analyst of the daily Dnevnik, told Reuters.

According to polls the SDS will need to form a coalition with at least two other parties to gain a majority in the 90-seat parliament. But so far, most other parties that are likely to enter parliament said they would not go into government with the SDS, which has the open support of Hungary’s

nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

According to a Mediana poll published by daily newspaper Delo on Friday, the center-left List of Marjan Sarec, which has never before run for parliament, may emerge as the second-largest party with about 8.2 percent, followed by the Cerar’s Party of Modern Center.

‘Volatility’

“Given the volatility of party ratings in recent months, the election is an open race and the real winner will be the party that can form a coalition with a majority of seats in a likely highly fragmented parliament,” said Otilia Dhand of political risk advisory firm Teneo Intelligence.

Analysts believe that it will take at least two months before the new government is formed — and that another early election cannot be ruled out.

Slovenia, which narrowly avoided an international bailout for its banks in 2013, returned to growth in 2014. The government expects the economy to expand by 5.1 percent this year versus 5 percent in 2017, boosted by exports, investments and household spending.

The new government will have to focus on privatization of the country’s largest bank, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, as the previous government has agreed to the sale of the state bank in exchange for the European Commission’s approval of state aid to the bank in 2013.

The next cabinet will also have to reform the inefficient state health sector and the pension system.
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Italians are marking the anniversary of the founding of their republic with a pomp-filled military parade and the first official outing of its populist government, installed after a three-month political crisis.

Italy’s famed aeronautic acrobatic squad has flown low and loud over downtown Rome trailing smoke in the red, white and green of the Italian flag as President Sergio Mattarella placed a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

The institutional and national pride on display Saturday is a feature of every Republic Day, but it assumed more significance this year after Italy ended three months of political, institutional and financial turmoil and installed a government of the 5-Star Movement and League whose populist and euroskeptic leanings have alarmed Europe.

Premier Giuseppe Conte said Saturday’s celebrations transcend recent tensions.

 
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Opposition Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez was sworn in Saturday as Spain’s new prime minister, taking over the premiership after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy lost a parliamentary confidence vote Friday.

Spain’s King Felipe VI administered the oath of office in a ceremony at the Zarzuela Palace near Madrid.

Sanchez won the no-confidence motion with 180 votes in favor, 169 against and 1 abstention in the 350-seat lower house. It was the first ouster of a serving Spanish leader by parliament in four decades of democracy.

Rajoy lost the vote after six years in office, following corruption convictions last week involving former members of his center-right Popular Party.

Sanchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, becomes Spain’s seventh Prime Minister since its return to democracy in the late 1970s, following the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

Sanchez still must name his Cabinet, and it is only when their names are published in an official government journal that he will fully assume his duties.
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Birds and airplanes share the sky, so inevitably collisions occur. But airport authorities try to limit those encounters because bird strikes cause costly damage to jet engines and can lead to crashes. Some airports employ trained dogs, others use loud noises to frighten birds away. A company in the Netherlands says its robotic predator Robird is much more efficient. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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The World Health Organization has expanded its Ebola vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo to include high risk people in three areas. Latest WHO figures show 37 confirmed cases and 13 probable ones.

Since the start of the Ebola vaccination campaign in May, the World Health Organization said 682 people have been vaccinated, among them nearly 500 in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people.

The campaign recently was expanded to include Bikoro, where Ebola was first discovered on May 8 and the Iboko health zone, which is the most remote of the three areas. Those immunized include health workers, responders and other people at high risk of falling ill from the fatal disease.

WHO officials say the vaccine, which has not been formally approved, appears to be providing protection and giving rise to hope that it can help stop the spread of the Ebola virus.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was president of Liberia during the unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa, shares that hope. Ebola broke out in West Africa in late 2013. By the time it was brought under control in 2016, the disease had killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia lost 4,800 people during that outbreak.

While on a visit to Geneva earlier this week, she told VOA there has been an improvement in health care delivery systems, including infection control since the experience with Ebola.

“So the capacity to be able to address any outbreak is now improved in the affected countries, as well as in other places,” she added. “I think there is an important new dimension in the fight for Ebola and that is vaccines.

Sirleaf said vaccine trials in Guinea and now in the DRC have shown good results.

“We are hoping that DRC like others will have a capacity to deal with it, to stop the spread,” she said. “… We are hoping that DRC will come out of this without the major effect, the major results that we saw in the three countries that were not prepared for this.”

The vaccine developer, Merck, has contributed 7,500 doses of the Ebola vaccine to the DRC. The company says as many as 300,000 more doses are available in case of a serious outbreak.
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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is announcing a name-change for her National Front party, founded by her father nearly a half-century ago. It is expected to become the National Rally in a bid to more broadly embrace French voters ahead of next year’s European elections.

The profile of Le Pen, a nationalist once at the center of the political limelight, has dimmed since she was trounced by pro-globalist Emmanuel Macron in presidential elections a year ago. She announced a refounding of the National Front at its March congress.

Members were asked to vote by mail on the proposed new name with results announced Friday at a meeting of the party leadership.

Le Pen hopes Italy’s populist government, sworn in Friday, will boost her anti-immigration party’s fortunes.
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