The mayor of London has approved a protester’s request to fly a blimp depicting Donald Trump as an angry, orange diaper-wearing baby during the U.S. president’s visit to the British capital next week. 

The 6-meter tall inflatable will fly over Parliament between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. local time on July 13 during a scheduled protest. 

“The Mayor supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms,” Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office said Thursday. 

Leo Murray, the activist behind the blimp dubbed Trump Baby said the mayor’s office originally did not approve of the blimp but “following a huge groundswell of public support for our plan, it looks like City Hall has rediscovered its sense of humor.”

Murray used an online crowdfunding site to raise more than $20,000 asking donors to “make our six-meter high orange, inflatable baby with a malevolent face and tiny hands fly over central London during Trump’s U.K. visit.”

During the three-day visit, Trump will meet with the Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Theresa May. 
…

The parties in Germany’s ruling coalition on Thursday reached agreement on a package of measures to deal with asylum-seekers who have already registered in other European Union states, and vowed to push ahead with an

immigration law before year’s end.

The two-page agreement, reached after a short meeting at the historic Reichstag building, ends a dispute that had threatened to bring down Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “grand coalition” just months after it took power, and left the four-term leader politically weakened.

But the debate has left lingering resentments in what was already a fragile coalition brokered by Merkel after she failed to forge an alliance with two smaller parties.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), had triggered the crisis when he threatened to defy Merkel and turn back at the German border the small number of asylum-seekers — a maximum of five people a day — who turn up after registering in other EU states.

Speedier returns

The parties agreed to speed up the process of returning migrants who have applied for asylum in other EU states to those countries, as mandated by current EU law, but only if agreements were in place with the country where they first registered.

Full implementation would require signing deals with Italy and other countries that have been unwilling to take back migrants.

Social Democrats hailed the agreement as a win for their party, and criticized conservatives for what Finance Minister Olaf Scholz called the “summer theater” of the last weeks.

While the agreement averts the collapse of Merkel’s government and keeps her conservative bloc from splintering apart, the episode highlighted the fragility of the German government and raised the prospect of further disputes.

Seehofer told reporters he was “extremely satisfied” with the deal despite having to back off his call for border zone transit centers.

The agreement calls for asylum-seekers registered in other countries to be processed within 48 hours in police facilities, not separate transit centers, if they cannot be transported to the Munich airport to be returned to the country where they first applied for asylum.

​No transit centers

Andrea Nahles, leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), stressed the agreement would not involve creation of any transit centers or unilateral action by Germany. The SPD had warned such centers could be seen as internment camps.

Nahles told broadcaster ZDF the deal would not require any legal changes, and said it was up to Seehofer’s ministry, which oversees the border police, to accelerate the asylum process.

“I want to be very clear that we did not agree to some kind of a compromise. Instead we drafted a new proposal that includes reasonable solutions, and the CDU/CSU has performed a piece of theater in the last three weeks that was unworthy of this country, our country,” Nahles said.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), said the deal laid the groundwork for a more unified approach on migration.

“With this, the entire coalition has committed to the goal to order, control and limit migration,” she said. “This agreement makes it possible that our migration policy is effective, that it remains humane and that it will succeed.”

As the agreement was reached, a new poll conducted for broadcaster ARD showed broad public frustration over the issue.

Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said Seehofer had weakened German conservatives through his brinkmanship, and 78 percent said they were unhappy with the coalition’s work.

Fifty-six percent of Germans felt too much focus was being put on migration, to the detriment of other issues.

Far fewer arrivals

Annual migrant arrivals have dropped sharply after peaking in 2015 at over 1 million people, many of them fleeing Syria’s war and therefore entitled to asylum.

In 2017, 15,414 people applied for asylum at German borders, with 1,740 of those applications made at the German-Austrian border, or around 4.7 per day, according to data from Seehofer’s ministry provided to Left party lawmakers.

Some in the SPD have accused Seehofer of sparking the coalition crisis to corral right-wing voters ahead of the Bavarian state election in October, after hemorrhaging a million voters to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany in the national election last September.

Seehofer and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz met in Vienna on Thursday and said they would discuss with Italy how to shut the migration route into Europe across the Mediterranean.
…

Moscow’s most famous landmarks — Red Square, the Kremlin, and the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral — are swarmed with World Cup fans doing a bit of sightseeing in between matches. Just upriver, more adventurous tourists will find an anonymous-looking apartment block whose history sheds light on the Soviet Union’s darkest days.

The House of the Embankment embodies the history of revolution and dictatorship in miniature. It lies just upstream from the Kremlin and was completed in 1931 to house the Soviet Union’s governing elite.

“These people living here were the so-called ‘old Bolsheviks’ [revolutionaries]. And they were people close to each other — in their spirit and ideology — as well as their fate,” said Olga Trifonova, who runs the House of the Embankment museum, inside one of the block’s roughly 500 apartments.

The museum displays some of the luxurious fittings and furniture the first residents enjoyed. The block offered in-house theaters and cafeterias, libraries and sports halls.

Soon, however, the ostentatious lifestyles of the residents began to look at odds with the ideals of the revolution.

In the mid-1930s, Soviet leader Josef Stalin began the “Great Purge” to rid the country of those deemed enemies of the working class. A million people were imprisoned and 700,000 executed. The residents of the House of the Embankment — once the elite of the revolution — were among the first in line. Arrests and disappearances created a crushing paranoia.

“The residents of the house stopped paying visits to each other. One stopped having confidence in other people,” Trifonova said.

During the 1930s, 800 of the residents were arrested. Close to half of them were executed.

Olga Trifonova’s late husband, Yuri, grew up in the House of the Embankment. His father was arrested during the purges in June 1937 and never seen again. His mother was sent to a Gulag prison in Kazakhstan. In 1976, Yuri Trifonov wrote a best-selling book about his memories, which gave the apartment block its name. He died in 1981.

“This is a story about the nature of fear. How fear mutilates a human for his entire life,” Trifonova said.

Memories of that fear appear to be fading. An opinion poll last year crowned Stalin as Russia’s most outstanding historical figure.

But the grim history of the House of the Embankment is not forgotten, according to Dmitry Taganov of real estate firm INCOM, which is selling some of the apartments on the block.

“Many buyers are scared off by the gloomy background of this House. Many people undoubtedly know about that, even the ones belonging to the younger generation.”

A younger generation that is forming its own historical image of Stalin and the legacy of Communism.
…

Moscow’s famous landmarks – Red Square and the Kremlin, the domes of St Basil’s Cathedral – are swarmed with World Cup fans doing a bit of sightseeing in between matches. But just upriver, more adventurous tourists will find an anonymous-looking apartment block whose history sheds light on the Soviet Union’s darkest days. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Moscow, that history is once again the subject of fierce debate in modern Russia.
…

Long before Viktor Vekselberg was tied to a scandal over the president and a porn star, the Russian oligarch had been positioning himself to extend his influence in the United States.

Working closely with an American cousin who heads the New York investment management firm Columbus Nova, Vekselberg backed a $1.6 million lobbying campaign to aid Russian interests in Washington. His cousin Andrew Intrater served as CEO of a Vekselberg company on that project, and the two men have collaborated on numerous other investments involving Vekselberg’s extensive holdings.

Now, Intrater’s investment firm is wrestling with the fallout from financial sanctions the U.S. Treasury Department lodged in April against Vekselberg, one of a group of oligarchs tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Columbus Nova has insisted it only managed Vekselberg’s vast assets. But an Associated Press review of legal and securities filings shows that the cousins sometimes collaborated in a more deeply entwined business relationship than was previously known.

Spokesmen for Columbus Nova have told the AP that the firm’s business relationship with Vekselberg has been indefinitely halted by the sanctions, which targeted Russian oligarchs accused by Treasury of playing “a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.”

All Vekselberg assets in the U.S. are frozen and U.S. companies forbidden from doing business with him and his entities. The deadline to sever those relationships was June 4, but talks between Columbus Nova and the government are continuing, the firm’s spokesmen said. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to comment.

The Columbus Nova spokesmen said the firm is also seeking permission from Treasury to retrieve any assets entwined with Vekselberg’s Renova Group, which the U.S. firm has called “its biggest client.”

Extricating Columbus Nova’s holdings from Vekselberg’s is not so simple. The sanctions apply to all assets in which Vekselberg has more than a 50 percent stake — including some investment funds managed by Columbus Nova in which the firm has an ownership interest, the spokesmen said. They discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions.

A Russian citizen who has had a U.S. green card and homes in New York and Connecticut, Vekselberg once told an American diplomat he felt “half-American.” Vekselberg heads the Renova Group, a global conglomerate encompassing metals, mining, tech and other assets that is based in Moscow.

He wields an estimated $13 billion fortune that supports Silicon Valley startups, programs at a California state park, a Western-themed resort amid the Joshua trees near Scottsdale, Arizona — and a loan to a Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia.

“I think all along Vekselberg thought a big chunk of his life was going to be anchored here in the United States and he, like other Russia businessmen, has made strategic investments in his philanthropic work to be in better standing here,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Vekselberg also has cemented tech deals using a Kremlin-funded foundation — raising national security concerns years before special counsel Robert Mueller began probing contacts between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian intermediaries. His opaque corporate structure, which includes an array of hard-to-trace shell companies, has fallen under Mueller’s scrutiny, according to several media reports.

Vekselberg hired Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen as a consultant in January 2017, just months after Cohen paid off the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who has alleged she had an affair with Trump.

But some experts familiar with Vekselberg’s financial holdings wonder if the government is adequately tracking his U.S. assets, let alone the companies or foundations managing his money under other names.

“Given how hidden these companies are in a network of shell companies, it is entirely possible that Vekselberg has a majority stake in businesses that are still functioning in the United States that the government doesn’t even know about,” said Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert and former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department.

Vekselberg’s spokesman, Andrey Shtorkh, did not detail how the billionaire was addressing the sanctions. Shtorkh stressed that the oligarch did not create or control Columbus Nova and gave up his green card more than a decade ago.

“It quickly became obvious that he had little time for more than brief visits to the United States,” Shtorkh said.

Making Western inroads

Vekselberg was born in what is the modern-day Ukraine, and built his fortune investing in aluminum and oil, taking advantage of the privatization of state companies after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

The 61-year-old billionaire burnished his reputation in the West in 2010 when he was appointed president of the Skolkovo Foundation, a nonprofit initiative funded by the Russian government and private investors to build a high-technology research hub aimed at luring digital entrepreneurs to Russia.

While Putin and Vekselberg have not always been strongly allied, the project now appears to have the Russian president’s backing. In January, Putin highlighted a Skolkovo effort as the type of “forward-looking projects” that would receive government support. In a June 2017 meeting at the Kremlin, Putin praised Skolkovo’s work.

In June 2010, Vekselberg traveled to Silicon Valley with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to try to gain a foothold for the Skolkovo Foundation. He signed a deal with Cisco CEO John Chambers for Cisco to invest $1 billion over 10 years in Skolkovo projects and met with Russian expatriates who urged him to set up a Skolkovo office nearby.

Skolkovo appeared to be a family concern. When members of the same expatriate association gathered in Manhattan to promote U.S. venture capital investment in Russia, the featured speakers included Intrater. And in a presentation dated June 2013 on Skolkovo’s website, Columbus Nova was described as one of several corporate venture funds financing Skolkovo participants. The foundation declined to comment, deferring to Shtorkh, who said that Vekselberg did not have control over the foundation’s decisions.

In 2011, an office near Stanford University was established for the Skolkovo Foundation and two sister funds, amid President Barack Obama’s call for a “reset” in Russia relations.

Vekselberg also spawned another foundation to benefit Fort Ross, a California state park that was once a Russian settlement. The foundation and affiliates donated at least $3.2 million to the park’s programs and activities between 2010 and 2017, according to the foundation’s website.

As Obama’s effort to reboot diplomatic relations sputtered, federal officials began raising alarms about the Skolkovo Foundation’s ties to Putin.

The FBI’s Boston division gave tech startups a frank warning in an April 2014 column published in a trade journal.

“The foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies,” wrote Lucia Ziobro, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office.

Spotlight grows 

Media attention zeroed in on Vekselberg and Intrater in May when Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, released a memo claiming the cousins routed about $500,000 through Columbus Nova to a shell company set up by Trump attorney Cohen.

Avenatti claimed that just before the 2016 presidential election, Cohen used the same shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, to pay the adult film star $130,000 to keep silent about her allegation of a one-night stand with Trump a decade earlier.

Eleven days before Trump’s inauguration, Vekselberg and Intrater jointly met with Cohen, one of several meetings between Trump intimates and high-level Russians during the 2016 campaign and transition. During the meeting in Cohen’s office in Trump Tower, Vekselberg and Cohen discussed U.S.-Russia affairs, said a person familiar with the meeting who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the session.

According to financial records reviewed by the AP, the meeting occurred the same month that Intrater’s firm began making payments to Cohen’s LLC that totaled $500,000, delivered in eight installments ending in August 2017.

In a statement on its website, Columbus Nova denied that Vekselberg played any role in its payments to Cohen.

Intrater’s firm, which described itself in a company website entry as “a multi-strategy investment firm managing over $15 billion of assets,” has handled Vekselberg’s financial holdings for nearly two decades, company spokesmen say.

But as far back as 2000 — during Columbus Nova’s start up — Intrater also worked for Vekselberg as CEO of a subsidiary of the Russian’s Renova Group conglomerate. Between 2000 and 2004, the New York-based subsidiary, Renova Inc., commissioned a Washington lobbying firm to work for both Vekselberg and Russian interests.

Shtorkh acknowledged Renova Inc. is owned by the billionaire. According to a lobbying contract reviewed by AP and validated by spokesmen for Columbus Nova, Intrater served as Renova Inc.’s CEO for at least three years even as he built up his own investment firm.

The Columbus Nova spokesmen described Renova Inc. as a “rep firm,” a marketing company that represented Vekselberg’s conglomerate in the U.S. They added that Intrater took on his Renova Inc. role as a client service to Vekselberg as part of his asset management role for the Russian.

In April 2001, Intrater signed a contract with Washington lobbying firm Carmen Group Inc., representing the Vekselberg company. The lobbying firm said in congressional filings that it had been hired to “encourage trade and cultural exchanges between the United States and Russia.”

The contract also said the Carmen Group was hired to “organize congressional and other high-level U.S. government delegations to meet with foreign government and business leaders abroad and in the U.S.” Columbus Nova spokesmen said no U.S. delegations were brought to Russia.

Carmen Group was paid $1.58 million; a spokeswoman for the lobbying firm declined to detail its work.

While the Columbus Nova spokesmen acknowledged Intrater has served on advisory boards of several companies where Vekselberg owed majority stakes, they said Intrater took those positions because of his role managing assets for Columbus Nova.

Intrater joined the board of one such firm in the mid-2000s, becoming a director — and briefly, chairman — of an American cable company that transformed into a Moscow-based firm after a Vekselberg-financed takeover. Between 2004 and 2007, the cousins teamed up in the acquisition of Moscow CableCom Corp., a U.S.-based cable company once known as the Andersen Group that now serves several Russian cities.

Intrater joined the board after Columbus Nova routed $51 million from the New York firm’s investors to Moscow Cablecom the cable firm in 2004. That same year, Vekselberg’s Renova Group took a stake. By July 2007, Vekselberg’s company had financed the cable firm’s acquisition in an estimated $152 million deal.

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission list both Vekselberg and Intrater as key figures in the cable firm acquisition. But Columbus Nova representatives said that some filings made by the now-defunct Moscow CableCom Corp contained errors, including overstating the role of a Columbus Nova corporate entity in one round of investments.

Winding down assets

Vekselberg’s unfettered access to the U.S. withered when his assets in America were frozen under sanctions April 6, causing him nearly $1 billion in losses, Forbes estimated.

The Treasury Department included a Russia-based corporate entity owned or controlled by Vekselberg in its sanctions, but warned that the list shouldn’t be viewed as a complete inventory of companies linked to the oligarch.

Two of Vekselberg’s largest companies — Renova Management AG and the engineering firm Sulzer, both based in Switzerland — swiftly and publicly corrected course to lessen his control or financial interests.

Some entities associated with the oligarch in the United States have been less forthcoming.

Shtorkh said Vekselberg is an investor in a venture fund called Maxfield Capital, which lists a San Francisco office on its website. A Maxfield Capital representative in Russia said the fund was taking steps to fully comply with sanctions requirements, but offered no specifics.

“Vekselberg’s money directly or indirectly represents quite a hefty chunk of all assets under management,” said Michael Minkevich, who managed deals for the fund in Silicon Valley until January. “They definitely need to find some way to cut any ties.”

Shtorkh said Vekselberg had a limited partnership interest in the Cayman Islands-based fund and did not have control over Maxfield Capital.

As for Vekselberg’s park foundation, its director did not respond to emails or voicemails.

Sarah Sweedler, president of another nonprofit that received funding from Vekselberg’s foundation to run programming at Fort Ross, said her group has no outstanding business with the foundation and has not communicated with its staff since the sanctions hit.

Vekselberg also has ties to two other foundations operating in the U.S. The Link of Times Foundation USA Inc. did not respond to voicemails or emails seeking comment, and the administrator of the Mariinsky Foundation of America Inc. said Vekselberg was removed from the board of directors last year.

The Skolkovo Foundation’s activities have not been disrupted by U.S. sanctions, Shtorkh added.

Sean Kane, a former senior official with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said it was unusual but not unprecedented for a sanctioned person to have such extensive personal and business relationships inside the United States.

OFAC regulations require companies to do their own checking to ensure they aren’t doing business with sanctioned entities. But Kane said that problems sometimes surface years later because it is so difficult to unravel complex corporate structures.

Kane, who now is in private practice in Washington, said that “nobody has the time or resources to be tracking how these people are moving their money 24/7. Any entanglements that U.S. foundations and companies have with sanctioned individuals such as Vekselberg will need to be looked at very carefully.”
…

A rescue ship carrying 60 migrants picked up from rubber boats in the Mediterranean Sea arrived in a Spanish port Wednesday, after being refused entry by Italy and Malta. Tens of thousands of migrants have reached European shores this year so far, and southern European countries are refusing entry to the latest arrivals unless their burden is shared. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
…

Emboldened by its success in the June 24 elections, Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish HDP Party is looking to broaden its support beyond its traditional ethnic base — a move that could redraw the country’s entrenched political borders. 

Narrowly passing the 10 percent electoral threshold to enter parliament, the HDP’s success was tinged by some political fallout: Many of its officials were jailed, including nine parliamentary deputies, on terrorism charges alone. HDP also claims there was a media blackout on its campaign and it was a victim of voter suppression by the government. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AKP Party claim the HDP is a terrorist organization affiliated to the Kurdish insurgent group the PKK — a charge the party denies.

While the HDP’s support remained largely unchanged in its traditional electoral stronghold in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, its votes increased in large cities in the West inhabited mainly by Turks. 

The HDP’s increase in votes is attributed in part to tactical voting by Turkish voters opposed to Erdogan’s ruling AKP. If the HDP had failed to enter parliament, its more than 60 seats would have been transferred to the AKP, which is its chief electoral rival.

HDP Honorary President Ertugrul Kurkcu, speaking in an exclusive interview with VOA, suggests the party’s success in broadening its support could become permanent. 

“I believe this section of voters are going to stay with HDP if we can develop a more coherent line of opposition by bringing together both aspirations of the Kurdish people, as well as the democratic and left forces as it was in the origins of the Kurdish movement. I am very confident in saying that with the new elements coming we are going to find a new way of thinking,” Kurkcu said.  

Some analysts remain skeptical over the HDP achieving a broader support among Turkish voters, pointing out many remain deeply suspicious over its relationship to the PKK. The decades-long insurgency by the PKK for greater Kurdish rights has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

“The expectations are they [HDP] reject the relations with PKK and condemn the PKK as a terrorist organization,” International Relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University said.

“If we were to say that we were against everything the PKK is doing this would not be convincing,” countered HDP’s Kurkcu, “the brother of the former chair of our party is up in the mountains (fighting with the PKK). Everything is closely interrelated, it would not be convincing. Kurdish people don’t believe these people are terrorists. Who would believe their martyred son is a terrorist and would they appreciate a party that says he is,” added Kurkcu.

Nearly all of Turkey’s mainstream media regularly refer to the HDP as “terrorist supporters,” echoing President Erdogan’s line. Despite such a relentless campaign, Kurkcu believes the June election result suggests some people are ready to look to the future.

“New voters who voted for HDP did so knowing very well the HDP’s position, HDP’s discourse, but also knowing HDP’s potential,” he said.

Efforts to broaden the HDP’s political appeal comes at a time when some Kurds are calling for a harder line in response to ongoing government crackdown on the Kurdish movement.

“Many people in Kurdistan would love it if the HDP ran a fierce campaign for independence, but this is only 10 percent of our support, which is a reaction to the draconian policies of the government,” Kurkcu said.  “I would not say there are many contradictions in the party over our new approach, but rather among some of our Kurdish audience, we will hear such voices, and we have to address them.”

The political environment facing HDP also remains a challenge. Erdogan has indicated he will ease up on the legal crackdown of the party. 

The interior minister Suleyman Soylu this week declared there is no “HDP,” only the PKK. 

 “There is a political space for HDP’s initiative,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said. “Whether the regime will allow this sort of opposition to itself, it needs to be seen. There are too many unknown elements.”

 
…

United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars.

The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin.

Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said.

The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs on cars could amount to $294 billion.

The EU report, submitted to the U.S. Commerce Department, maintained the tariffs would disrupt cross-border supply chains in the automotive industry. The report said the tariffs could possibly trigger higher U.S. industrial costs, raise consumer prices, hurt exports and cost jobs.  

The World Trade Organization said Wednesday trade barriers being set by world economic powers could jeopardize the global economic recovery.

“This continued escalation poses a serious threat to growth and recovery in all countries, and we are beginning to see this reflected in some forward-looking indicators,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevendo said.

Azevendo did not expound on his remarks, but the WTO’s quarter trade outlook indicator in May suggested trade growth in the second quarter would decelerate.

 
…

The French government called for calm Wednesday after the killing of a 22-year-old man by police sparked riots in the western city of Nantes, highlighting the simmering tensions between youths and security forces in deprived urban areas.

Rioters set fire to cars and a medical center in the city on Tuesday night after news spread that an officer had shot dead the 22-year-old, named by local newspaper Ouest France as Bubakar, after stopping his car over an infraction.

Youths clashed with police in the northwestern neighborhood of Breil where the killing took place, lobbing molotov cocktails, before the unrest spread to two other poorer districts with a history of gang violence.

Burned-out cars littered the streets on Wednesday morning.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb condemned the violence, adding that “all the necessary resources are being mobilized” to “calm the situation and prevent any further incidents”.

Local police chief Jean-Christophe Bertrand said the youth had hit a policeman with his car, lightly injuring him, after a squad stopped the vehicle at around 8.30 pm for an alleged infraction and tried to take him to the police station for identification.

“One of his colleagues then fired, hitting the young man who unfortunately died,” Bertrand told reporters.

He was hit in the carotid artery and declared dead on arrival at hospital, police sources said.

Judicial police and a national watchdog which investigates claims of police wrongdoing are investigating to clarify “the facts and determine in what circumstances the policeman used his weapon,” said Pierre Sennes, public prosecutor for Nantes.

He said on Wednesday that the young man had been wanted by police in Creteil, near Paris, for robbery and other offenses.

‘I saw everything burning’

French police have a long history of strained relations with youths in poor, immigrant-heavy suburbs — not least since the death of two teenagers, electrocuted while hiding from officers, sparked nationwide riots in 2005.

The assault of a young black man by police — which led to officers being charged, including for rape after a truncheon was shoved up the youth’s anus — sparked fresh unrest last year.

In January, the government vowed a crackdown on urban violence after shocking video footage emerged of a policewoman being beaten by a crowd of youths in the Paris suburbs on New Year’s Eve.

Breil, the Nantes neighborhood where the young man was shot dead Tuesday, is a socially mixed district home to a large housing estate with a history of gang violence.

Police had boosted their presence in the area after a series of violent incidents on June 28.

Malakoff and Dervallieres, the other neighborhoods hit by riots on Tuesday, have been plagued by drugs and poverty for years.

They fall into a category of problem neighborhoods which are set to receive extra police help from next September under reforms by President Emmanuel Macron.

Steven, 24, who lives in Breil, told an AFP journalist that he had “heard explosions” and headed to investigate.

“I saw everything burning. There were fires in the bins, the cars. They were breaking everything. It lasted ages,” he said.

Neighborhood residents were in shock on Wednesday morning at the young man’s death.

“That guy, he always had a smile on his face,” a young man who gave his name as Chris told Ouest France.

“He was a sweet guy. We have lost a friend, a brother.”

He added: “I knew him well. He was from Paris but he’d lived here for a while, he had family here. For us, he was a kid from the neighborhood.”

Nationally, French police have complained of coming under increasing strain in recent years, with a parliamentary report released Tuesday detailing high suicide rates within the force.
…

British police declared a “major incident” Wednesday after two people were left in critical condition from exposure to an unknown substance a few miles from where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent.

The Wiltshire Police force said a man and a woman in their 40s were hospitalized after being found unconscious at a residential building in Amesbury, eight miles (13 kilometers) from Salisbury, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned on March 4.

Police cordoned off the building and other places the two people visited before falling ill, but health officials said there was not believed to be a wider risk to the public.

The man and woman were hospitalized Saturday at Salisbury District Hospital, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal spent weeks in critical condition after being poisoned in March.

Police said they initially believed the latest victims might have taken a contaminated batch of heroin or crack cocaine.

“However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,” police said. “At this stage, it is not yet clear if a crime has been committed.”

A major incident is a designation allowing British authorities to mobilize more than one emergency agency.

Residents in the area, a quiet neighborhood of newly built houses and apartments, said they had received little information from authorities.

“Amesbury’s a lovely place – it’s very quiet, uneventful,” said Rosemary Northing, who lives a couple of hundred yards (meters) away from the cordoned-off building. “So for this to happen, and the media response and the uncertainty, it’s unsettling.”

Neighbors said police cars and fire engines descended on the home late Saturday. Student Chloe Edwards said she saw people in “green suits” – like those worn by forensics officers – and her family was told to stay in their home for several hours.

“We wanted to know what happened and with the Russian attack happening not long ago, and we just assumed the worst,” said Edwards.

Britain accuses Russia of poisoning the Skripals with a nerve agent known as Novichok, a group of chemical weapons developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Moscow denies the allegation. The poisoning sparked a Cold War-style diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West, including the expulsion of hundreds of diplomats from both sides.

Counter-terrorism teams from London’s Metropolitan Police were called in to help local forces in Wiltshire at the time of the Skripal poisoning. On Wednesday, however, Scotland Yard referred media calls to Wiltshire police.

The statement from Wiltshire Police came only a month after police from 40 departments in England and Wales returned home after months of working on the Skripals’ poisoning. Wiltshire Police spent about 7.5 million pounds ($10 million) dealing with the aftermath of the Skripals’ poisoning and believe that his front door was contaminated with the nerve agent.

Sergei Skripal, 66, is a former Russian intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Britain before coming to the U.K. as part of a 2010 prisoner swap. He had been living quietly in Salisbury, a cathedral city 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of London, when he was struck down along with his 33-year-old daughter Yulia.

After being found unconscious in the street, the two spent weeks in critical condition at the hospital. Doctors who treated them say they have made a remarkable recovery but they still don’t know what the Skirpals’ long-term prognosis is.

The Skripals have been taken to an undisclosed location for their protection.

 
…

A rescue ship carrying 60 migrants arrived Wednesday in a Spanish port after being refused entry by Italy and Malta, the second time in a month that a humanitarian group has been forced to travel for days to unload people rescued in the central Mediterranean.

The Italian government is blocking private rescue boats that it blames for encouraging human traffickers to launch unseaworthy boats loaded with migrants toward Europe.

But the aid groups deny having any link to smugglers in Libya or elsewhere, and say they are being forced to leave unattended the busy migrant sea transit route where deaths are mounting.

The Open Arms rescue ship completed a four-day journey to Barcelona, in northeastern Spain, after it saved 60 people Saturday from a rubber boat floating in waters north of Libya.

The migrants come from 14 different countries and include five women, a 9-year-old boy and four older teenagers, some of them unaccompanied. The Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms said they were generally in good health but some may have fuel burns.

The migrants were going through health checks and identification procedures. Authorities granted them a 30-day permit to apply for residence or asylum in the European Union. Many have relatives in Germany, Belgium and France.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 500 people have died trying to cross from Libya since the Aquarius, another charity rescue ship, was blocked from ports in Italy and Malta in early June. The 630 migrants were finally taken in by Spain and France.

Doctors Without Borders blamed the deaths on the European Union’s inaction.

“The EU is abdicating their responsibilities to save lives, blocking search and rescue and condemning people to be trapped in Libya,” the group said in a tweet Wednesday. “Any deaths caused by this are now at their hands.”

In all, IOM says 1,405 people have died in the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing this year.

The Open Arms docking in Barcelona was followed closely by the Astral, a sister boat run by the same organization where four European Parliament lawmakers witnessed the rescue operation.

Lawmaker Javier Lopez of Spain said the rescue boat’s arrival was a reason “to celebrate life” but deplored the mounting death toll in the Mediterranean.

Lopez said Europe should be able to manage the number of migrants arriving by sea this year — around 50,000 so far into Spain, Italy and Greece.

“Aren’t we, 500 million Europeans, able to manage the arrival of 50,000 people?” he said.
…

China is putting pressure on the European Union to issue a strong joint statement against President Donald Trump’s trade policies at a summit

this month, but it’s facing resistance, European officials said.

In meetings in Brussels, Berlin and Beijing, senior Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, have proposed an alliance between the two economic powers and offered to open more of the Chinese market in a gesture of goodwill.

One proposal has been for China and the European Union to launch joint action against the United States at the World Trade Organization.

But the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, has rejected the idea of allying with Beijing against Washington, five EU officials and diplomats told Reuters, ahead of the Sino-European summit in Beijing on July 16-17.

Instead, the summit is expected to produce a modest communique that affirms the commitment of both sides to the multilateral trading system and promises to set up a working group on modernizing the WTO, EU officials said.

Liu has said privately that China is ready to set out for the first time what sectors it can open to European investment at the annual summit, expected to be attended by President Xi Jinping, China’s Premier Li Keqiang and top EU officials.

Chinese state media have promoted the message that the EU is on China’s side, officials said, putting the bloc in a delicate position. The past two summits, in 2016 and 2017, ended without a statement because of disagreements about the South China Sea and trade.

“China wants the European Union to stand with Beijing against Washington, to take sides,” said one European diplomat. “We won’t do it and we have told them that.”

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Beijing’s summit aims.

In a commentary on Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua news agency said China and Europe “should resist trade protectionism hand in hand.”

“China and European countries are natural partners,” it said. “They firmly believe that free trade is a powerful engine for global economic growth.”

China’s moment?

Despite Trump’s tariffs on European metals exports and threats to hit the EU’s automobile industry, Brussels shares Washington’s concern about China’s closed markets and what Western governments say is Beijing’s manipulation of trade to dominate global markets.

“We agree with almost all the complaints the U.S. has against China. It’s just we don’t agree with how the United States is handling it,” another diplomat said.

Still, China’s stance is striking, given Washington’s deep economic and security ties with European nations. It shows the depth of Chinese concern about a trade war with Washington, as Trump is set to impose tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports on Friday.

It also underscores China’s new boldness in trying to seize leadership amid divisions between the United States and its European, Canadian and Japanese allies over issues including free trade, climate change and foreign policy.

“Trump has split the West, and China is seeking to capitalize on that. It was never comfortable with the West being one bloc,” said a European official involved in EU-China diplomacy.

“China now feels it can try to split off the European Union in so many areas — on trade, on human rights,” the official said.

Another official described the dispute between Trump and Western allies at the Group of Seven summit last month as a gift to Beijing because it showed European leaders losing a longtime ally, at least in trade policy.

European envoys say they already sensed a greater urgency from China in 2017 to find like-minded countries willing to stand up against Trump’s “America First” policies.

No ‘systemic change’

An April report by New York-based Rhodium Group, a research consultancy, showed that Chinese restrictions on foreign investment were higher in every single sector save real estate, compared with the European Union, while many of the big Chinese takeovers in the bloc would not have been possible for EU companies in China.

China has promised to open up. But EU officials expect any moves to be more symbolic than substantive.

They say China’s decision in May to lower tariffs on imported cars will make little difference because imports make up such a small part of the market.

China’s plans to move rapidly to electric vehicles mean that any new benefits it offers traditional European carmakers will be fleeting.

“Whenever the train has left the station, we are allowed to enter the platform,” a Beijing-based European executive said.

However, China’s offer at the upcoming summit to open up reflects Beijing’s concern that it is set to face tighter EU controls, and regulators are also blocking Chinese takeover attempts in the United States.

The European Union is seeking to pass legislation to allow greater scrutiny of foreign investments.

“We don’t know if this offer to open up is genuine yet,” a third EU diplomat said. “It’s unlikely to mark a systemic change.”
…

Anti-government protests broke out late Tuesday in Warsaw and several other Polish cities in defense of the country’s constitution, judicial independence and the rule of law.

The protests came as a lower retirement age was taking effect for Poland’s Supreme Court justices. The law introduced by the ruling right-wing party is forcing the chief justice and as many as one-third of the court’s sitting judges to step down.

 Thousands of people gathered in front of the Supreme Court building in Warsaw, where they held candles, sang the national anthem and shouted “Free courts!” and “Down with dictatorship!”

There were also protests in Krakow, Lodz, Katowice, Wroclaw and other cities. In Gdansk, the cradle of the anti-communist Solidarity movement of the 1980s, legendary democracy leader Lech Walesa denounced Poland’s current government, saying it is even more “perfidious” than the communists he helped topple. 

The protests come as Supreme Court First President Malgorzata Gersdorf is being forced to resign under the legislation that lowers the mandatory retirement age for justices from 70 to 65, a change that could force one in the court’s every three judges out. 

Gersdorf, 65, vowed to remain on the court, in line with the constitution, and said she planned to show up for work as usual Wednesday. 

“My term as the Supreme Court head is being brutally cut, even though it is written into the constitution,” Gersdorf told law students during a lecture. “We can speak of a crisis of the rule of law in Poland, of a lack of respect for the constitution.”

Pawel Mucha, an aide to Polish President Andrzej Duda who co-authored the new law, said Gersdorf has no choice but to retire even though she says her term runs until 2020 under the country’s constitution.

In a surprise move, Mucha announced that the temporary acting head of the court will be another of its judges, Jozef Iwulski, who is 66.

The Supreme Court shake-up represents the culmination of a comprehensive overhaul of Poland’s justice system that gives the ruling party new powers over the courts. 

The changes began after the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015 and have expanded gradually. The Constitutional Tribunal, the court that determines if legislation passes legal muster, was the first put under the party’s control.

The Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal for criminal and civil cases in Poland. Its justices also rule on the validity of elections. 

European Union officials and international human rights groups have expressed alarm, alleging the moves represent an erosion of judicial independence that violates Western standards and a reversal for democracy in Poland.

At the protests, people expressed fears that Law and Justice would use its control of the Supreme Court to falsify elections.

Malgorzata Szuleka, a lawyer with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw, said forcing Gersdorf to retire before the end of her term is a “clear violation of the constitution.”

The European Commission, which polices compliance with EU laws, opened an “infringement procedure” Monday over the Supreme Court law. The action is the commission’s second against Poland over rule of law and could lead to further legal action and fines.

The government insists it is improving Poland’s justice system, saying it was inefficient and controlled by an untouchable “caste” of judges. It argues that putting judges under the control of the legislative and executive branches will makes the courts answerable to the voters, and thus more democratic. 

The lowering of the mandatory retirement age is affecting 27 of the court’s 73 judges. Some of them have asked Duda for extensions of their service. Gersdorf did not, however, arguing that the constitution guaranteed her continued tenure.
…

Peace in Berlin — but for how long? 

A last-minute migrant deal secured Monday by beleaguered German Chancellor Angela Merkel with the junior partners in her shaky coalition has averted the collapse of her government for now, say analysts.

But the deal, which will see transit zones established along Germany’s southern border to allow for accelerated deportations of migrants not entitled to seek asylum, also has finally brought to a close Merkel’s open-door refugee policy and revealed the brittleness of her coalition government.

The more restrictive border policy agreed between Merkel and Horst Seehofer, her rebellious interior minister and leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, still has to be approved by her other partners, the Social Democrats, in her three-way coalition government. 

They have rejected the proposal before, dubbing the zones as “prison camps,” but appear ready now to accept the broad-outlines of a deal, according to party insiders, if for no other reason than that early elections would likely see the Social Democrats lose even more ground than they did in last year’s polls.  So, there’s peace for now. But few political observers believe the deal has done much more than place a lid on divergent views within the coalition government over migrants. Nor has it done anything to ease the mutual dislike Seehofer and Merkel hold for each other, and they don’t bother to disguise.  

The deal struck Monday after weeks of wrangling followed a dramatic escalation with Seehofer telling a party gathering in Munich that he planned to resign as interior minister, if Merkel blocked him from turning back any migrants at the border who’d been processed already in other European Countries and use Europe’s open borders to head to Germany.

While allowing Merkel to claim the deal has not breached any EU rules nor undermined the search for an EU-wide solution to the migrant crisis roiling the continent and fueling the rise of euro-skeptic nationalist populist parties, it has clearly altered Germany’s migrant policy. It also has shifted the country to adopt  much harsher border policies than Merkel would have liked. 

It means a country that in the past championed more open migrant policies is now shifting to a far more hostile position toward asylum-seekers, say rights groups, adding to a harsher environment for migrants across the continent.

Merkel has put a brave face on Monday’s deal, highlighting the fact it means Germany will not be adopting the complete go-it-alone approach Seehofer favors.

The deal, she says, “preserves the spirit of partnership in the EU while marking a decisive step towards ordering and controlling secondary migration.”

Merkel’s fear was that by slamming the door firmly shut on migrants, other EU countries would do the same, triggering domino-effect border closures and effectively dismantling the bloc’s Schengen system of open borders.

But analysts say it isn’t clear as yet whether the deal will work on a practical level or that it will help to advance a more collective sand unified EU approach. 

Under the plan, migrants who already have been processed elsewhere in Europe in the first EU country they arrived in or were registered in can be swiftly sent back to that country without a prolonged administrative procedure. But they can only be returned to a country Germany has an agreed bilateral return arrangement with. And Merkel’s efforts to draw up such return agreements with more than a dozen EU countries has met with several rebuffs.

Both Italy, the first arrival country in the EU for many of the migrants turning up in Germany, and Austria, a main transit country, have declined entering into return agreements. 

Austrian politicians have greeted the Merkel-Seehofer deal with skepticism and anger.

“We can’t accept this,” said former Austrian defense minister Hans Peter Doskozil.

Austria’s government warned Tuesday it may introduce “measures to protect.” In a statement, the Austrian government said if the Merkel-Seehofer agreement is approved by the German government as a whole, “we will be obliged to take measures to avoid disadvantages for Austria and its people.”

Among the measures, Austrian officials said, would be closing the country’s borders with Italy and Slovenia, blocking migrants from entering Austria with the goal of reaching Germany. Austrian officials say they fear the Merkel-Seehofer deal will end up with Austria being forced to house the migrants that Germany has rejected.

“We are now waiting for a rapid clarification of the German position at a federal level,” said the statement, signed by Austria’s conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his allies of the far-right Freedom party, Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.

Disputes over the deal now threaten to upend the highly fragile migrant deal European leaders claimed they struck last week after a marathon session in Brussels. 

Under that deal migrants rescued at sea would be sent to “control centers” across the bloc — at locations still to be decided — to be rapidly processed with economic migrants being deported speedily.  

The leaders also agreed to tighten the EU’s external border; to give more money to countries such as Turkey and Morocco to help prevent migrants setting off for Europe; and to set up processing centers in countries across North Africa to deter migrants, and to sort out war refugees from economic migrants. But no African country has so agreed to house EU-run processing centers.
…

A U.N. agency tapped to run new migrant centers around the Mediterranean says the plan won’t solve the European Union’s immigration challenge.

Irregular migration across the sea has been dramatically reduced; only about 45,000 people have made it to Europe that way this year. But the hot-button issue is driving the EU’s political agenda.

Last week, EU states agreed to tighten their external borders and spend more in the Middle East and North Africa to bring down the number of arrivals.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, trying to save her coalition, on Monday agreed to set up migrant camps on the German border, highlighting how the EU is unable to agree on joint migration policies and how governments increasingly go it alone.

One thing EU leaders have agreed is to look at setting up “disembarkation platforms” to handle those rescued from the dangerous crossing. Most are brought ashore in Italy, but more than 1,300 people perished this year.

‘Responsibility to govern’

“The Mediterranean is a shared space, north-south. We have a joint responsibility to govern what happens in that space, including avoiding that people drown,” Eugenio Ambrosi, the head of the International Organization for Migration’s EU mission, told Reuters.

The IOM and its sister U.N. agency for refugees, the UNHCR, would run the new sites.

Ambrosi said 10 existing migrant centers in Greece and Italy could first be beefed up and new ones could then be added in Malta. But opening others on the southern rim of the Mediterranean, as some EU states want, would take time.

“Before going outside of Europe, asking other countries to help, we have to make sure that enough European countries help each other,” Ambrosi said in an interview.

Eventually, depending on where in the Mediterranean they were rescued, people would be taken to EU or African centers. 

The much-publicized idea of Mediterranean camps would work only if more legal ways to get to Europe from non-EU countries are opened up, Ambrosi said.

Some deny admission

EU states would have to share legitimate asylum-seekers from the centers, an idea that has divided them bitterly since 2015. As more than a million people entered the EU in 2015, overwhelming Italy, Greece and Germany, eastern nations led by Poland and Hungary refused to help by taking in a share.

With this internal dispute still festering, the EU will turn to Tunisia and Morocco to host new sites. The African countries have a good opportunity to bargain hard.

Ambrosi said he opposed locating migrant centers in strife-torn Libya and said populists in the EU had failed to recognize how far the number of arrivals had dropped since 2015.

“It’s not a migration issue, it’s a political and functioning-of-the-EU issue,” he said. “There is no quick fix — there has never been.”
…

Poland braced for protests on Tuesday against the conservative government’s makeover of the judiciary that takes effect at midnight despite strong opposition at home and legal action against the changes by the European Union.

Through legislation and personnel changes, the Law and Justice (PiS) party has taken de facto control of the entire judicial system, including the constitutional tribunal and prosecutors, who now report to the justice minister.

Its most divisive measure will force more than a third of Supreme Court judges to retire on Wednesday unless they are granted an extension by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally.

Duda announced on Tuesday that Supreme Court president Malgorzata Gersdorf, a staunch critic of the reforms, had not asked for an extension and therefore would retire in line with rules introduced by PiS.

Underscoring tensions, the Supreme Court’s spokesman said, however, that Gersdorf would come to work anyway on July 4.

“Plans have not changed here, Mrs Gersdorf intends to come to work tomorrow. What happens next … I don’t know,” spokesman Michal Laskowski said.

The European Commission opened a fresh legal case against Poland over the Supreme Court changes on Monday, saying that they undermine judicial independence in the largest formerly communist member of the EU.

The Warsaw government says the reforms are necessary to improve the accountability of a system that dates back to communist times.

The euroskeptic PiS’s standing in polls has held steady at around 40 percent throughout the dispute, well above any single rival party.

Opposition protests

Poland’s three biggest opposition parties were to hold a protest in front of the Supreme Court building in Warsaw from 1900 GMT on Tuesday, they said in a joint statement.

Demonstrations “in defense of the Supreme Court” were expected in other cities, according to organizers Komitet Obrony Demokracji (KOD).

“Today we will be in many Polish towns to show that there is no agreement for a takeover of another independent institution,” said Borys Budka, a Civic Platform lawmaker, said in the statement. More protests are expected on Wednesday.

“There will be a purge conducted in the Supreme Court tomorrow under the pretext of the retrospective change in retirement age,” Gersdorf told students in Warsaw at a lecture, according to state-run news agency PAP.

Gersdorf asked Duda during a last-minute meeting on Tuesday to appoint another judge on the panel to serve as a deputy chief in case of her absence, Laskowski said.

Among those who said they would protest was Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former president who is credited with bringing down communism as Solidarity trade union chief.

“If in any way the current ruling team attack the Supreme Court, then … I’m going to Warsaw. It’s enough to destroy Poland,” Walesa said on his Facebook account.

He also said he was ready to “lead a physical removal of the main perpetrator of all misfortune”, referring to PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Gersdorf, who had condemned the PiS’s alleged campaign to politicize the judiciary and media, said that under Poland’s constitution she should remain in her post until 2020.
…

Irish rock star Bono warned Monday that the United Nations and other international institutions including the European Union and NATO are under threat – and nations must work together to ensure their continued existence.

The Dublin-born U2 singer and activist gave a sobering speech to several hundred U.N. diplomats and staff at an event launching Ireland’s candidacy for a seat on the powerful Security Council in 2021-22 saying “you can count on Ireland to do its part in that work.”

While Bono didn’t name any countries responsible for threatening global institutions during these “troubled times,” his words appeared clearly aimed at U.S. President Donald Trump, who has criticized the EU and NATO. The American leader has also pulled out of the Paris climate agreement which the singer cited, and taken aim at the World Trade Organization with new U.S. tariffs, an institution Bono said is also under threat.

Speaking of the United Nations, Bono said, “I love that it exists, and I’ll tell you, I don’t take for granted that it exists, or that it will continue to exist because let’s be honest, we live in a time when institutions as vital to human progress as the United Nations are under attack.”

He then said the EU, NATO and the Group of Seven major industrialized nations have also been threatened.

“And not just these institutions but what they stand for – an international order based on shared values and shared rules, an international order that is facing the greatest test in its 70-year history,” Bono said. “Not just these institutions but what they’ve achieved is at risk.”

On Sunday night, the Irish government invited ambassadors from the 192 other U.N. member nations to Bono’s concert at Madison Square Garden as part of its launch for a council seat. 

Bono, who is also a human rights and humanitarian activist and philanthropist, joked Monday evening that it was “unusual having a load of ambassadors jumping up and down at a rock and roll show.” He told the diplomats: “at least you weren’t shouting at each other, so that was good.”

But his speech was both his sobering assessment of the state of the world and an appeal to the diplomats to back Ireland for a council seat.

Ireland is expected to be in a three-way race against Canada and Norway for two seats reserved for Western nations on the Security Council. Elections to fill the seats for a two-year term will be held in June 2020.

Bono said Ireland’s experience of colonialism, conflict, famine, mass migration “give us kind of a hard-earned expertise in these problems, and empathy and I hope humility.” 

“If you look at the agenda of what the Security Council will be addressing in the coming years, doesn’t it look a lot like us?,” he asked.

Bono said he just came back from Canada and praised Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “a remarkable leader who’s put together the most diverse Cabinet on the planet.”

“That Canada is nice is the worst thing I can say about them,” he said.

As for Norway, he said, “who could ask for a better neighbor or committed peacemaker?”

“Here’s the worst thing I can say about them, they’re tall. They’re too tall,” he said. 

Bono, who is not tall, joked, “we bear no nation – even tall ones any ill will.”

But he said the world needs Ireland’s storytelling talents and its ability to compromise “because that’s how you achieve peace.”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar formally launched Ireland’s campaign for a council seat at the reception on the U.N.’s lawn that included Irish dancing and music – but no singing from Bono.

“We see ourselves as an island at the center of the world,” Varadkar said. “And we’re deeply aware that in an interdependent world, the great challenges of our time do not know international boundaries.”

Varadkar said Ireland’s independence in 1921 out of war and violence, and its U.N. membership since 1955 have led the country to be a promoter of freedom and defender of human rights.

“The United Nations is the conscience of our humanity,” he said. “In these troubled and uncertain times, as a global island we want to play our part in defending, supporting and promoting its values.” 
…

The immigrant from Mali, dubbed “Spider-Man” after he scaled a Paris apartment building to save a young boy dangling from a balcony, has begun working for the city’s fire department.

Mamoudou Gassama, 22, captured international attention when he scaled four stories of a building’s exterior to save a 4-year-old boy who had managed to climb over a balcony and was dangling above a street.

At the time, VOA’s Bambara service interviewed Gassama, who described what happened. He said he and his girlfriend had just ordered food when he saw a crowd gathering outside.

​”Before we start eating, I saw the crowd outside. Some people were screaming, drivers were honking. I went outside and I saw the kid hanging on the fourth floor,” he told VOA. “Thank God I was able to run up there to save him. … When I started going up, I got more courage to go save him.”

After he reached the child, and police pulled them both into a room, “I [started] shaking and couldn’t stand on my feet. I was so shaken for what I did,” Gassama said.

Soon after a video of Gassama’s heroic deed went viral on social media, he was invited to meet with President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

Macron offered the undocumented immigrant French citizenship, awarded him a gold medal for courage and suggested he become a firefighter.

Gassama told VOA that he asked the French leader for help.

“I told him I left Mali through Burkina Faso, Niger and went through Sahara. Then I arrived in Libya, where I spent some time trying to find my way to Italy,” he said. “The first time I tried to take a boat, I was caught by authorities and was put in jail and then deported back to Niger. I tried a second time. Thank God, I made it to Italy.”

“I pray [to] God to help other migrants the same way He helped me. Whoever is migrant, I pray for him to be successful. Those who are in the Sahara desert, may God help them go through. Those who are at sea, may God help them arrive safely,” Gassama told VOA.

Macron, who has supported a bill to tighten France’s immigration law, has said there is no disparity between rewarding Gassama for his act of bravery and holding firm on immigration.
…

Panagiotis Pagonis stands on the deck of his fishing boat off Asprovalta in northern Greece, grimacing at another empty catch. “It’s all gone to hell,” the 72-year-old mutters as the early glimmer of dawn lights up the waters.

Ten days later, he looks on as the mechanical arm of a bulldozer rips through his vessel, the Katerina, crushing a lifetime of memories. He has been at sea since he was a child.

But the scrap yard takes just minutes.

Hundreds of fishermen like him are turning in their boats and their licences, partly because catches are down, partly because the EU and the Greek government are offering them cash to leave the trade, under a scheme to protect fish stocks. 

Europe’s environment agency says those stocks have reached a critical level in the Mediterranean, with serious implications for the people living on its shores who have found their food there for centuries.

Pagonis says the catch has fallen by 50 percent in recent years, a repercussion he believes of over-fishing, lack of regulation and pollution. That, together with higher running costs for his boat, forced his hand.

“I have been doing this job for 67 years. I have travelled to practically all of Greece, and now, I have reached my limitations,” he says. “I feel sad, I didn’t want it to end this way.”

Squeezed by an economic crisis which has sapped salaries and pensions and left a fifth of adult Greeks jobless, many fishermen have found the compensation too tempting to ignore.

Payments range from 6,000 to 260,000 euros ($7,000 to $302,500), depending on the size of the boat.

People can simply turn in their licenses and find something else to do with their vessel. But to get the full payment, they have to take their boat to the scrap yard.

“This is the option chosen mainly by the fishermen. While there is an option to switch its use, from a fishing vessel to a tourist or passenger vessel, there is a reduced subsidy,” an agriculture ministry official says.

It has had a knock-on effect on traditional shipbuilders.

“They want to stop (over) fishing to protect the sea. But destroying boats will destroy us as well. So I think they are not doing something right,” says shipbuilder Yannis Prasinos.

It is a painful process for Stelios Didonis, another fisherman giving up his boat at the scrap yard.

“The sea is my entire life,” the 48-year-old says. He is looking forward to resting for a month, tired from getting up at 4.00 a.m. for 30 years. But he is not sure what he will do after that. “I will think about it and see, I will do something, but whatever it is, it will be something that has to do with the sea, I cannot stay away from the sea.”
…

The European Union has warned the United States that placing tariffs on automobiles would end up hurting the U.S. economy and would probably result in retaliatory measures from its trading partners.

In a letter sent to U.S. Commerce Department Friday, the European Union said tariffs on European cars and car parts were unjustifiable.

U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed imposing a 20 percent duty on EU car imports, citing security concerns. It was not immediately clear what those concerns are.

The EU letter said, “In 2017, U.S.-based EU companies, produced close to 2.9 million automobiles, which accounted for 26 percent of total U.S. production.” The submission said European car companies are “well established” in the United States.

The European car industry in the United States supports some 120,000 jobs in its factories that are mainly in the southern region of the country. A tariffs war could adversely affect those jobs in a region known for its support of the U.S. president.

 
…

A U.S. congressional delegation is meeting with senior Russian officials in St. Petersburg amid preparations for a summit between the nations’ presidents.

U.S.-Russian ties have hit the lowest point in decades due to sanctions over Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election and disagreement over Syria, Ukraine and other topics.

St. Petersburg governor Georgy Poltavchenko told U.S. congressmen on Monday that he hopes for a warming of ties. “We look into the future with optimism and are ready for cooperation on all fronts,” he said.

Richard Shelby, a Republican senator from Alabama who heads the delegation, also called for dialogue, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, would not say whether the congressmen would later meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 
…

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday hailed the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Marking the date, Guterres in a statement said, “The NPT is an essential pillar of international peace and security, and the heart of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Its unique status is based on its near universal membership, legally-binding obligations on disarmament, verifiable non-proliferation safeguards regime, and commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

What is the NPT?

The objective of the international treaty is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons-making technology, allow its signatories to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and phase out the nuclear arsenal of the five original nuclear powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

When did the NPT take effect?

The treaty was signed July 1, 1968. It came into force in 1970 and it was extended indefinitely in May of 1995.

Who are the treaty’s signatories?

Most of the world, as 191 countries have signed the NPT. The holdouts are India, Pakistan, Israel and South Sudan. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003. North Korea, India and Pakistan have publicly disclosed their weapons program and Israel has long maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

How does it work?

The treaty establishes a safeguards system that is overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agency uses inspections as a means to verify compliance of the treaty by member states.

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that the European Union’s new plan to regulate immigration and agreements she reached with key countries address the issues that have caused a rift in her coalition government.

But Merkel could not say for sure whether the agreements would be enough to resolve the conservative schism that could bring down the government. Her Christian Democratic Party and its governing partner, the Christian Social Union, had separate meetings scheduled to discuss where they stand.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who heads the Bavarian-only CSU, wants Germany to turn away some asylum-seekers at the country’s borders, but the chancellor has insisted on Europe-wide solutions.

“The sum total of everything we have agreed upon has the same effect” as what Seehofer has demanded, Merkel said in an interview with ZDF television. “That is my personal opinion. The CSU must naturally decide that for itself.”

Germany’s dpa news agency, citing unidentified people present at the CSU meeting, reported that Seehofer told the forum he thinks the measures do not adequately accomplish what he is seeking.

Seehofer, whose party faces a state election in the fall, has threatened to turn away at the borders migrants whose asylum requests Germany already rejected or who already sought asylum elsewhere in Europe.

Merkel has rejected that approach, saying Germany needs to address migration more broadly to preserve EU unity. If Seehofer goes ahead with his policies, the dispute could end the decades-old conservative alliance between the CSU and Merkel’s CDU.

Merkel and Seehofer met Saturday night for two hours. The German leader would not comment Sunday on the outcome of the talks. She also would not speculate on whether she might fire him or if the issue could lead to a government confidence vote in parliament.

She said she would wait and see what the leadership of the two parties decides “and then we will see what comes next, step for step.”

Merkel reiterated her position that if countries start turning migrants away at national borders unilaterally, it would cause neighboring countries to close their borders and jeopardize the border-free movement the Europe’s so-called Schengen-zone.

She said the decision by leaders of European Union countries Friday to strengthen the 28-nation bloc’s exterior borders and her proposal for “anchor centers” to process migrants at Germany’s borders would work better.

“I want Europe to remain together,” she said. “That is why the unified action of Europe is so important to me.”

Merkel also secured agreement from Greece and Spain to take back from Germany migrants who previously registered in those countries. She said 14 other nations had given verbal assent to work toward similar deals.

 
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Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, one of France’s most revered politicians, is getting the rare honor of being buried at the Pantheon, where French heroes are interred, one year after her death.

Veil was being inhumed Sunday at the Paris monument with her husband Antoine, who died in 2013, in a symbolic ceremony with her family and dozens of dignitaries, including French President Emmanuel Macron and former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande.

Veil repeatedly broke barriers for women in French politics. She was a firm believer in European unification and well known in France for spearheading the legalization of abortion.

Republican Guard pallbearers carried the caskets Sunday to the Pantheon over a blue carpet symbolizing the color of peace, the United Nations and of Europe, as a crowd of thousands applauded.

They paused several times to mark the big steps of Veil’s life with the soundtrack of her voice and music, including Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” — the European Union’s anthem — and the “Song of the Deported.”

“France loves Simone Veil,” Macron said in a speech. “She lived through the worst of the 20th century and yet fought for make it better.”

Confident that “humanity wins over barbarity,” Veil became a fighter for women’s rights, peace and Europe, he noted.

The Marseillaise national anthem was then sung by the American soprano Barbara Hendricks and the Choir of the French Army, followed by a minute of silence.

The caskets were carried inside the Pantheon, where they will be buried into the crypt.

Veil is the fourth woman to be honored at the Pantheon, which also holds 72 men. The other women are two who fought with the French Resistance during World War II — Germaine Tillion and Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz — and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Marie Curie.

Veil was 16 when she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in March 1944. She lost her parents and her brother in Nazi camps and spoke frequently about the need to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.

In 1974, as France’s health minister, she led the battle to get parliament to legalize abortion. The law is still known as the “Loi Veil.”

Veil also became the first elected president of the European parliament from 1979 to 1982. She died at age 89.

 
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A rescue boat saved 59 migrants at sea off Libya on Saturday and Italy immediately said it would not welcome them, setting up a fresh standoff with Malta and adding to tensions among European governments over immigration.

The migrants on board Open Arms, a boat run by the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms charity, include five women and four children, said Riccardo Gatti, head of the organization’s Italian mission.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League Party, said there would be no exception to his policy of refusing to let humanitarian boats dock in Italy and added that Malta was the nearest port of call.

“They can forget about arriving in an Italian port,” he tweeted.

Maltese Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia, shot back on Twitter that the rescue had taken place closer to the Italian island of Lampedusa than to Malta. He told Salvini to “stop giving false information and involving Malta without any reason.”

Gatti told Italian radio broadcaster Radio Radicale that the migrants on board included Palestinians, Syrians and Guineans and were all in good condition.

He later told Reuters that Open Arms had received no authorization from any country to dock and did not know where it would take the migrants.

German ship docked

On Wednesday, Malta let the German charity ship Lifeline dock in Valletta with 230 migrants on board, after it was stuck at sea for almost a week following Italy’s decision to close its ports to rescue vessels run by nongovernmental organizations.

However, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the gesture was a one-time solution, and the following day Malta announced it would not allow any more charity boats to dock.

European Union leaders on Friday came to a hard-fought agreement on migration that Salvini and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said was positive for Italy.

However, the agreement does not oblige other EU states to share the burden of sea rescues.

More than 650,000 migrants have come ashore in Italy since 2014, mostly after being rescued at sea off the Libyan coast by private and public groups. Italy is sheltering about 170,000, but the number of arrivals has plummeted this year.

Despite the decline in arrivals, there are still daily stories of disasters as migrants make the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe. The Libyan coast guard said around 100 were thought to have drowned off Tripoli on Friday.

That tragedy raised the political temperature in Italy, where the government dismissed opposition accusations that it was responsible because of its crackdown on NGOs and said the best way to save lives was by preventing departures from Libya.

“The fewer people set sail, the fewer die,” Salvini said.
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Fourteen European Union countries have said they are prepared to sign deals with Germany to take back asylum seekers who had previously registered elsewhere, part of an effort to placate Chancellor Angela Merkel’s restive Bavarian allies.

In a document sent to leaders of her coalition partners, seen by Reuters, Merkel listed 14 countries, including some of those most outspoken in their opposition to her open-door refugee policy, which had agreed to take back migrants.

Under the EU’s Dublin convention, largely honored in the breach since Merkel’s 2015 decision to open Germany’s borders, asylum seekers must lodge their requests in the first EU country they set foot in.

Merkel needs breathing space in her standoff with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, whose leader, interior minister Horst Seehofer threatened ahead of this week’s Brussels summit to defy Merkel by closing Germany’s borders to some refugees and migrants, a move that would likely bring down her government.

EU leaders agreed at the summit to share out refugees on a voluntary basis and create “controlled centers” inside the European Union to process asylum requests.

According to the document seen by Reuters, the bilateral agreements will make the deportation process for refugees who have earlier registered elsewhere far more effective.

“At the moment, Dublin repatriations from Germany succeed in only 15 percent of cases,” the document says. “We will sign administrative agreements with various member states… to speed the repatriation process and remove obstacles.”

Among the countries that have said they are open to signing such agreements are Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, countries which have opposed any scheme to share out asylum seekers across the continent.

The other countries named are Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Austria, where new Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is an immigration hard-liner who governs in coalition with the far right, is absent from the list.
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The U.S. ambassador to Estonia says he has resigned over frustrations with President Donald Trump’s comments about the European Union and the treatment of Washington’s European allies.

In a private Facebook message posted Friday, James D. Melville wrote: “For the President to say EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go.”

Melville is a senior U.S. career diplomat who has served as the American ambassador in the Baltic nation and NATO member of Estonia since 2015. He has served the State Department for 33 years.

The U.S. Embassy in Tallinn did not immediately comment.
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June 30 marks Asteroid Day, a U.N.-sanctioned campaign to promote awareness around the world of what’s up in the sky. In Milan, scientists are assembling a new telescope that uses “insect vision” to spot risky celestial objects. Faith Lapidus explains.
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There is momentum for improving Turkey’s frayed relations with the West even as it warms up to Russia, a senior Turkish government adviser told VOA on condition of anonymity, days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected.

Erdogan’s adviser said that in February, during a visit by then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both sides committed to the creation of a road map to address many differences that had sent relations between Washington and Ankara plunging to a crisis point. The adviser noted that bilateral relations were “better than six months ago, thanks to steps agreed on during Tillerson’s visit.”

He said the process led to the recent withdrawal of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from the Syrian city of Manbij.

Ankara accuses the YPG of being linked to Kurdish insurgents fighting in Turkey. Washington, however, has backed the militia in the war against Islamic State. The YPG’s presence in Manbij with U.S. forces had become a focal point in Turkey’s tense relationship with the United States, a NATO ally.

Ankara trumpeted the Kurdish militia withdrawal as a triumph and a template for a further rollback of YPG-controlled areas across northern Syria. “We expect this process to continue,” said the adviser.

Regarding areas of contention, he said, “There is a process to compartmentalize issues of disagreement.”

“Each issue is being addressed separately by working groups,” he added, so as to prevent differences on one issue from affecting others.

The adviser, however, acknowledged that no progress had been made on the key issue of a Turkish request for the extradition of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Ankara alleges Gulen initiated a failed 2016 coup that claimed 250 lives. The cleric, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, denies the accusations. The U.S. says extradition is a matter for the courts.

Adding to the souring of ties is the imprisonment in Turkey of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson. He has been jailed for nearly two years and is currently on trial on charges of supporting Gulen.

U.S. President Donald Trump has strongly criticized the case, with some members of Congress accusing Ankara of hostage-taking. Erdogan has linked the Brunson case to calls for Gulen to be extradited.

The Brunson case has become a lightning rod for wider U.S. concerns about Turkey. The worsening of bilateral relations is countered by Ankara’s warming ties with Moscow.

Missile system purchase

Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Friday reaffirmed Turkey’s controversial purchase of a Russian S-400 missile system. Washington strongly opposes the deal, warning the missiles could compromise NATO systems.

The S-400 controversy comes as Ankara and Moscow increasingly cooperate over Syria. While Turkey strongly backs Syrian rebels, it is working with Russia and Iran, which support the Damascus government, to end the civil war under a peace effort named the Astana Process.

The Erdogan adviser sought to allay concerns by Turkey’s NATO allies about its intentions toward Moscow.

“Turkey is not moving away from the West,” he said. “Our relationship with Russia is specific to working on Syria, based on a necessity of cooperation. Our relationship with the West is a strategic relationship.”

“The situation is a failure of the West to intervene in the Syrian conflict. It left a vacuum, which Russia filled. That has created a situation where we have to work with Russia,” added the adviser.

Fears of a potential pivot toward Moscow are fueled by criticism of the decline in human rights in Turkey and Erdogan’s authoritarianism. Critics increasingly draw parallels between Erdogan’s rule and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Following Turkey’s June 24 elections, Erdogan is likely to use his renewed electoral mandate to answer critics regarding his democratic credentials. International monitors have criticized the fairness of the election, which he won by a wide margin, but the actual voting and counting were broadly accepted by the rival candidates.

The Turkish president also reportedly is set to lift the much-criticized emergency rule introduced after the failed coup. This past week also saw an Istanbul court release from jail Mehmet Altan, a high-profile Erdogan critic; however, police raids on those who oppose the president, including some news media, continue.

Analysts suggest such moves will be welcomed by Turkey’s Western allies, in particular the European Union. Human rights concerns are major obstacles to relations, but Brussels needs Turkey to continue a migrant deal that has markedly reduced the number of people seeking sanctuary in Europe.

With Turkey currently hosting more than 3 million refugees, mainly from Syria, Erdogan is also looking to build on that cooperation.

“There is a need for a strategic cooperation on refugees. The problem is going to continue with instability in the region. Turkey cannot take any more [refugees],” said the adviser.
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U.N. agencies are cautiously welcoming an agreement the European Union reached Friday after a marathon summit on problems posed by migrants who reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

The European Union states in principle have agreed to set up so-called secure centers to process asylum claims. Under the proposed deal, these centers are to be established in EU states on a voluntary basis. The aim is to relieve front-line states, such as Italy, Spain and Greece, of having the sole responsibility of accepting and processing migrants rescued at sea.

A welcomed consensus

A spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, Leonard Doyle, said he was pleased with the solidarity and consensus that emerged from the summit in Brussels.

“Any solution that comes from the migration issue needs to be a European solution,” Doyle said, but it should come “with the absolutely indispensable engagement of the African Union at every step of the way.” 

U.N. agencies report about 40,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea this year, a small fraction of the number over the same period in 2016. Despite the reduced numbers, positions against maritime refugees and migrants have hardened. Recently, Italy and Malta refused to disembark hundreds of migrants rescued at sea.

U.N. waiting for details

Charley Yaxley, a U.N. refugee agency spokesman, said the EU agreement was a promising first step. But he told VOA that the proof of the effectiveness of this proposal would be in its implementation. He said the details were yet to be developed.

“Ultimately, if this is a coming together of European states and states in the region to develop a more harmonized approach to asylum that relieves some of the disproportionate responsibility that is currently being placed on a small handful of states, then that is something that will be welcomed,” Yaxley said.  

Yaxley said he wanted to see a unified approach that moves away from states unilaterally adopting actions that strengthen borders and restrict access by those seeking asylum from war and persecution.  
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