Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Saturday it was suspending its migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because it felt threatened by the Libyan coastguard and the Italian government’s policies have made its job harder.

The aid group’s decision is the latest development in mounting tensions between Rome and NGOs as migration dominates Italy’s political agenda ahead of elections early next year.

“We are suspending our activities because now we feel that the threatening behaviour by the Libyan coastguard is very serious … we cannot put our colleagues in danger,” the president of MSF’s Italian arm Loris De Filippi told Reuters.

Almost 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years, the vast majority setting sail from lawless Libya in flimsy vessels operated by people smugglers. More than 13,000 migrants have died trying to make the crossing.

Charity boats have played a growing role in rescues, picking up more than a third of all migrants brought ashore so far this year against less than one percent in 2014.

However, Italy fears the groups are facilitating people smuggling and encouraging migrants to make the passage, and it has proposed a Code of Conduct governing how they operate.

Some groups, including MSF, have refused to sign the code.

They object to a requirement that Italian police officers be on their boats and that the boats must take migrants to a safe port themselves, rather than transferring them to other vessels to allow smaller boats to stay in the area for further rescues.

MSF operates one rescue ship in the Mediterranean, the Prudence, currently docked in the Sicilian port of Catania.

In the last six weeks the number of migrant arrivals in Italy has slowed sharply and Rome has begun collaborating more closely with the Libyan coastguard, which De Filippi said was threatening the NGOs and preventing them from working.

He said the Libyan coastguard had demanded the NGOs should leave an area of up to hundreds of kilometres around its coast, whereas previously they had been allowed to conduct search and rescue operations as close as 11 nautical miles to the mainland.

“Last year the coastguard fired 13 shots on our boat and that was in a situation that was much calmer than the present one,” said De Filippi.

He said MSF would continue its collaboration with another aid group, SOS Mediterranee, which operates a rescue ship in the Mediterranean with MSF doctors on board.

De Filippi said the Rome government’s Code of Conduct for NGOs and its support for the Libyan coastguard showed it was now mixing the humanitarian goal of saving lives with “a political and military intention” of reducing arrivals.

“We refuse to be co-opted into a system that blocks people from seeking safety and protection,” MSF tweeted, adding that the European Union’s immigration policies showed it was “determined to trap people in Libya.”

Oscar Camps, the founder of Proactiva Open Arms, another aid group active in the Mediterranean, also took aim at the EU, tweeting: “the first NGO out, this is just what the EU wants.”

An Italian government spokesman was not immediately available to comment, while Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, said MSF’s move meant there would be “thousands fewer illegal immigrants for Italians to maintain.”

Last week Italy began a naval mission in Libyan waters to train and support its coastguard, despite opposition from factions in eastern Libya that oppose the U.N.-backed government based in Tripoli.

General Khalifa Haftar, a commander aligned with an Eastern-based parliament, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Saturday the presence of Italian military vessels in Libyan waters was unacceptable but he would not attack them.
…

Sixteen months after deadly clashes erupted in Azerbaijan’s autonomous breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, international mediators are saying it’s time for all parties to undertake confidence-building measures to jump-start the political settlement process.

Russia led mediation to settle the four days of shelling and rocket strikes between Azerbaijan’s military and Armenian-backed separatists over Nagorno-Karabakh. The clashes were the deadliest incidents since a 1994 cease-fire established the current territorial division. The brief but intense fighting of April 2016 claimed dozens of lives.

Since then, the United States, Russia and France, which co-chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group for conflict mediation, have continued advocating diplomacy to secure a binding peace resolution.

Steps toward demilitarization are essential to deterring accidental flare-ups of violence between the groups, said Ambassador Richard Hoagland, U.S. co-chairman of the Minsk Group.

“When you have two armed groups facing each other in difficult terrain not very far apart, there is always the chance for some kind of accident to happen that then spirals out of control,” he recently told VOA’s Armenian and Azeri services. “I know that at this point it will be difficult to ask for total demilitarization, although that would be good, so what we have to do is to look for those things that can help to reduce the possibility of some kind of military accident that then gets out of control.”

Removal of snipers along both sides of the Karabakh line of contact, which separates Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, would be a logical first step, Hoagland said.

Allowing the presence of international observers and installing new electronic equipment that traces cease-fire violations, he said, would be a second realistic benchmark to achieve.

“There is an actual document [that maps out the peace process], and it’s a very comprehensive, but there are steps and steps and steps, and stages and stages,” he told VOA. “So I would hope that in the next highest level of negotiations, the two sides will look very seriously and say even if they can’t come to a final conclusion, here are things we can accomplish.”

U.S.-Russian coordination?

Although some observers describe the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a rare point of shared strategic interests between the U.S. and Russia, others are skeptical.

Hoagland, however, struck an optimistic tone, saying the United States was continuing to work with Russia on this issue despite deteriorating relations between the two countries.

“I have seen absolutely no change in how we work together and how we regard each other,” he told VOA. “Just because sometimes the politicians are bumping up against each other, for us, the work continues and we do it arm in arm.

“Maybe at the top the headline news doesn’t look good, but when you get down to specific issues, specific problems to work on together, where we do cooperate, that continues and it continues today on Nagorno-Karabakh,” he added.

Although the conflict has yet to come under the focus of the President Donald Trump’s administration, former Ambassador John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, told VOA that might change in the coming six to 12 months.

While a planned U.N. General Assembly meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev may signal a loosening of tensions between the groups, Herbst said, “I still do not see any grounds for a reasonable settlement of the conflict.”

“Everyone knows that the overwhelming majority of the population of Karabakh are Armenians and they will have substantial autonomy, and this should be the basis of the settlement,” he said.  

Competing interests

The main obstacle to full settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the fact that there are too many interests involved in the problem, said analyst Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy research group.

“If the problem was only about the two countries, it would probably have been settled, but states like Russia want to maintain the conflict,” he said.

Echoing that sentiment, Anna Borshchevskaya of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said Armenian officials have complained that a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement has been hampered by Russian arms sales to both sides.

“Russia wants to play a serious role in this conflict, and if there is no conflict, there will be no such role,” she said.

Although Russian weapons deliveries to Baku remained a contentious issue throughout Armenia’s 2017 parliamentary elections, most political forces steered clear of the topic and the question of whether Armenia is more secure with Russia as an ally.

Russia plays an important role in the region as its former imperial and Soviet-era overlord. It is also the main seller of weapons to both Armenia, a close Moscow ally, and Azerbaijan, which has developed warm relations with ethnically kin Turkey.

The Kremlin has consistently stated that it intends to continue selling arms to both camps while supporting peaceful resolution of the conflict.

On July 17, Armenia’s president called Russian arms sales to Baku “the most painful side of Armenian-Russian relations.”

Baku

Armenian political scientist Suren Sargsyan said Baku officials need to assume a more proactive role in securing the front lines, touching on Hoagland’s calls for demilitarization as an example.

“Such an agreement has been reached between the parties,” she told VOA. “But the Azerbaijani side has not taken any practical steps in that direction for a long time. That is why the negotiation process goes to a deadlock.”

Fighting between ethnic Azeris and Armenians erupted in 1991 and a cease-fire was agreed to in 1994. But Azerbaijan and Armenia regularly accuse each other of carrying out attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Azeri-Armenian border.

On July 5, an Azeri woman and child were killed and another civilian wounded by Armenian forces near the boundary with Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Wednesday.

Sporadic exchanges of fire in the fight for control over the region — inside Azerbaijan but controlled by ethnic Armenians — have stoked fears of a wider conflict breaking out in the South Caucasus, which is crossed by oil and gas pipelines.

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian service. Some information came from Reuters.
…

The next presidential election in Slovenia will be held on October 22 and the incumbent is expected to run for a second term.

Parliamentary speaker Milan Brglez on Friday formally set the date for the vote which must be held in the autumn. Recent opinion polls predict that President Borut Pahor will likely be re-elected if he chooses to run.

The 53-year-old Pahor is a former fashion model who has become known for his use of social media while in office.

The Alpine nation of 2 million people is the homeland of U.S. first lady Melania Trump.
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is warning people against returning prematurely to war-torn Syria as the number of displaced going back to their homes reaches a record high.

An IOM report found more than 600,000 displaced Syrians have returned home in the first seven months of this year, nearly as many as the total number of returnees for all of 2016.

IOM spokeswoman Olivia Haedon said most of the returns are spontaneous, but not necessarily voluntary, safe or sustainable.

“As the security situation changes in different parts of the country, displacement can occur again,” she said. “As you noted, in the number of people who were displaced this year, which is over 800,000, some people are being displaced for the second or third time.”

The report said most of the people returning to their homes, 84 percent, are internally displaced, while 16 percent are returning refugees from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. It said an estimated two-thirds have returned to Aleppo Governorate. Others have gone mainly to Idleb, Hama, Raqqa, and Rural Damascus Governorates.

Haedon said people cite a variety of reasons for their decision to go home.

“They are going back with the hope that they can stay to protect their property and engage in a better, improved economic situation, or, protect themselves if they are leaving because of the area that they were living was less secure than the place that they originated from,” she said. “So, we do see that the people are hoping that they can stay for a longer term.”

Haedon said humanitarian organizations agree organized returns to Syria are not yet an option. Syria is not safe, she added, and the places to which people return are not equipped to provide essential services.

She said the IOM is not encouraging Syrians to go home.
…

Israel has been known as the land of milk and honey since Biblical times – but the land of single malt whiskey? One appropriately named distillery is trying to turn Israel into a whiskey powerhouse.

Smooth, honey-brown whiskey is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of Israel. However, at the Milk and Honey Distillery, rows of casks proudly stamped “Tel Aviv” hold liters of the stuff.

The country’s first whiskey distillery is preparing to release Israel’s first single malt whiskey.

“It’s a young whiskey,” said Eitan Attir, the distillery’s CEO.

Attir says the brew is aged for three years and two months in virgin oak and old bourbon barrels at the company’s renovated former bakery in a rugged industrial area of south Tel Aviv.

“It’s complex for its age,” he said. “The taste feels like more than three years, more like seven or eight and again the story is much more important in this case. This is the first ever single malt whiskey that any distillery has released from Israel.”

Although wine has been produced in the Holy Land for millennia, and modern Israeli wines have gained international renown in recent years, whiskey production is new to the country.

Milk and Honey was founded in 2013 and began distilling small experimental batches of whiskey a year later. One hundred bottles from their first cask of Single Malt are set to be sold at an online auction starting August 11.

Whiskey is universally acceptable for religious Jews to consume, Attir says, and Milk and Honey’s drink is “ultra-kosher.”

“We don’t work on Saturday, we don’t work on Yom Kippur or Passover,” he said. “And we want to symbolize our being Jewish or Israeli and then we called it the Milk and Honey Distillery.”  

Warmer climate more amenable

The single malt was made in Israel from start to finish, according to the company’s website, though the ingredients, barrels and equipment were imported from the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. The warmer climate in Israel allows for a speedier aging process in the barrel than whiskey made in colder climates, according to Ran Latovicz, an Israeli whiskey connoisseur and bar owner.  

“In colder climates like Scotland or Ireland, whiskey usually ages for about seven to 10 to 12 years before it’s even bottled because [it is] just the way, you know, it gets to its full potential,” he said.

The distillery believes it is well positioned to ride a wave of growing international interest in new world whiskeys, like rising stars from Taiwan or India, and hopes this initial offering whets the appetites of aficionados everywhere.

“There’s a huge demand nowadays for whiskey from other places around the world – new world whiskey. There’s more than 70 countries now with a minimum of one distillery and one of them is Israel,” Attir said.

Gal Kalkshtein, Milk and Honey’s founder and owner, said he hopes that once the whiskey starts getting shipped abroad in 2019, it will create a buzz for Israeli whiskies.

“We want to be recognized for our quality, not the gimmick,” he said.
…

The European Commissioner in charge of food safety called Friday for an emergency meeting of ministers to discuss eggs contamination, appealing for an end to finger-pointing among member states over the scandal.

“Blaming and shaming will bring us nowhere and I want to stop this,” EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis from Lithuania said.

Andriukaitis said he hoped to convene a meeting before the end of September of the ministers and representatives of various national food safety agencies.

Millions of eggs recalled

Millions of eggs and egg-based products have been pulled from European supermarket shelves in at least 11 countries, since the scandal went public Aug. 1. So far, no one has reported falling sick from the tainted eggs.

Some national regulators have voiced concern that eggs contaminated with the insecticide Fipronil, which can harm the kidneys, liver and thyroid glands, have entered the food chain, mainly through processed products such as biscuits and cakes.

Meanwhile, police in the Netherlands arrested two people Thursday for allegedly using a banned pesticide as the investigation of contaminated eggs continues.

Belgian and Dutch authorities conducted raids at a number of poultry farms Thursday, but authorities did not provide details about which companies were targeted.

Eggs found across Europe

British food safety authorities believe around 700,000 contaminated eggs have been imported into the country, and the Food Standards Agency has issued a list of products in which the eggs could be found.

Danish authorities said 20 tons of contaminated eggs had been sold in Denmark, but cautioned that the eggs posed no risk to humans.

Smaller numbers of eggs were reported in Luxembourg and Slovakia, but authorities in those countries either destroyed the products containing the eggs or sent them back to their producers.

Authorities in Sweden, Switzerland, Romania and France also reported having found contaminated eggs.

With the contaminated eggs starting to surface in countries across Europe, Dutch and Belgian officials are facing growing questions about how the scandal started and whether the public has been kept fully aware.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering arming Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons that Kyiv could use against Russia-backed separatists. Opponents argue arming Ukraine risks escalating the conflict while supporters say better weapons would act as a deterrence to Russian aggression and give a psychological and political boost to Kyiv. The debate comes as Trump’s new envoy on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, is to visit Russia soon. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Washington.
…

U.S. military experts are lining up on either side of a debate on whether to supply lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, a move that would mark a turning point in U.S. policy on Kyiv’s 3-year-old conflict with Russian-backed separatists.

Supporters of the move, which is under active consideration by President Donald Trump’s administration, argue that it is long overdue. The current policy of supplying only non-lethal military gear has neither deterred Russian aggression nor created an opening for cooperation with Moscow to resolve the conflict, they argue.

“I don’t think Russia has given us a window for more positive cooperation on Ukraine,” said Molly McKew, an independent analyst with consulting firm Fianna Strategies. “Maybe other places. But, I certainly don’t see it.So, I think it’s time to reconsider what our strategy has been and what that means.

“And … Ukraine is not asking for foreign troops to come and stand beside them,” she told VOA’s Ukranian Service. “They’re asking for the ability to fight the war in the way that they know they need to fight.”

Other advocates argue that sending a message of strength would be timely after Russia retaliated against U.S. sanctions by expelling U.S. Embassy staff from diplomatic property in Moscow and demanding their numbers be reduced by 755 people by September 1.

But opponents of the move worry that supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine could escalate the conflict and provoke retaliation from the Kremlin, which has already denounced the possibility.

“I think it would make much more sense to re-think some of the aid and capabilities that are being given … and not plan them for a short-term fight, since major battles in the fronts are now passed,” said Michael Kofman, a researcher at CNA Corporation, a private research organization.

He said the U.S. should “think much more about the medium and long term of the Ukrainian military and the kind of Ukrainian military we would like to help them build.”

Kurt Volker, the Trump administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, rejected the argument that lethal arms sales would provoke Russia during a July 25 interview with Current Time, a Russian-language network jointly operated by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and VOA.

“I hear these arguments that it’s somehow provocative to Russia or that it’s going to embolden Ukraine to attack,” he said. “These are just flat out wrong. First off, Russia is already in Ukraine, they are already heavily armed. There are more Russian tanks in there than in Western Europe combined. It is a large, large military presence. And, there’s an even larger military presence surrounding Ukraine from Russian territory.”

Analysts on both sides agree that Russia’s overwhelming military advantage over Ukraine means the supply of U.S. weapons would provide more of a political and morale boost for Kyiv than a defense one.

Nevertheless, Moscow is likely to raise the issue with Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, when it gets the chance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the special envoy is expected to visit Russia for talks on Ukraine in the near future, although U.S. officials have yet to confirm the trip.

“It will be interesting because Mr. Volker has been in a number of capitals already including Kyiv, Paris, Berlin, London,” Lavrov said. “We would be interested to see what impression the U.S. special envoy has on the current state of affairs.”

During a trip to Ukraine last month, Volker visited front-line areas in the east where Ukrainian troops have been in a stand-off against Russia-backed separatists for the past three years.

He blamed Russian aggression for the violence, which has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014, when Russian forces seized Ukrainian military bases in Crimea, annexed the Black Sea peninsula, and began covert support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
…

A Russian activist freed from prison this week after serving a four-and-a-half-year term said he plans to keep pressuring President Vladimir Putin, and he is encouraging activists to boycott next year’s elections.

Speaking Thursday at a press conference, Leftist Russian opposition figure Sergei Udaltsov said Russian elections are “dishonest” and called for a “consolidated boycott of the elections.”

“The authorities change electoral law like a swindler. They cut off candidates they don’t like from the polls,” he told reporters.

The 40-year-old Udaltsov led a banned leftist organization in street protests in 2011 and 2012 to oppose Putin’s election to a third presidential term. He was convicted in 2014 of fomenting mass riots and served his prison term in full.

Udaltsov said Thursday he would avoid participating in any street-level protests, but he would continue to oppose Putin’s government and press forward in support of various social issues.

“It would be short-sighted of me in my position to come out all guns blazing and call for people to protest,” he said. “You would laugh at me and think I lost my mind — that I spent too much time in jail and now I call for others to protest again.”

While Udaltsov said he would not engage in street protests, he did say he still would be active in the movement and “by fall you will hear about our protests and about our campaign.”

Putin is widely expected to run again in the March presidential contest, with his strongest opposition coming from Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption politician. Navalny has announced his intentions to run, though he may be unable to participate given his arrest record.

Udaltsov said he would not support Navalny in the upcoming election.
…

Dutch police arrested two suspects on Thursday as part of an investigation into the illegal use of a potentially harmful insecticide in the poultry industry, the Dutch prosecution service said.

Millions of chicken eggs have been pulled from European supermarket shelves as a result of the scare over the use of the insecticide fipronil, and hundreds of thousands of hens may be culled in the Netherlands.

Prosecutors said in a statement they had conducted raids at eight locations in the Netherlands and Belgium, confiscating cars and seizing bank accounts and real estate.

The arrested suspects were directors at Dutch company Chickfriend, which is at the center of the scandal. Officials at the company could not be reached for comment.

Raids were conducted at locations linked to Chickfriend, which allegedly used the pesticide, as well as potential suppliers.

The company directors are suspected of threatening public health and possession of a prohibited pesticide, prosecutors said.

The company directors are suspected of threatening public health and possession of a prohibited pesticide, prosecutors said.

 
…

Bosnia’s religious leaders say politicians are standing in the way of peaceful coexistence between Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities trying to forgive and forget after the atrocities of a devastating 1990s war.

Hundreds of churches, mosques and synagogues bear witness to more than five centuries of Bosnia’s multi-faith past, and the capital Sarajevo is known locally as a “small Jerusalem” with its main ethnic groups – Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks – all worshiping within meters of each other.

But Mufti Husein Kavazovic, head of the Islamic community in Bosnia, says people of faith cannot achieve peace alone.

“It is up to political elites to do more. For a start, it would be good that they stop their ideological manipulation of religion for their own political goals. It is up to us, of course, not to allow them to do that,” he said.

Even though nationalists from all three ethnic groups still insist on exclusivity for their own groups, religious leaders are keen to heal rifts after the 1992-1995 war in which about 100,000 civilians were killed and millions displaced.

Friar Zeljko Brkic at Kraljeva Sutjeska – among the oldest Franciscan monasteries in Bosnia and dating from 1385 – said: “Bosnia can only survive as a multi-ethnic state, no matter how much politicians try to convince us that this is not possible.”

His Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim peers agree.

“It is very important that we have here different cultures and religions, and that based on that we can easily build and verify our own identities,” said Nektarije, a deacon at the Orthodox monastery Zitomislici in what is now the Catholic Croat-dominated southern part of the country.

Jakob Finci, the president of the Jewish community in Bosnia, gives Sarajevo as an example of close cooperation, citing Muslims there helping Jews to hide during War World II and Jews providing food for people of all faiths in the three-year siege by Bosnian Serb forces.

“Sarajevo is the best proof that living together is possible and that it represents the only way of life for us,” he said.

This week, about 120 leaders from 27 countries arrived in Sarajevo to take part in a meeting of the youth-led Muslim Jewish Conference, founded by Ilja Sichrovski in Vienna in 2010.

“We feel at home here,” Sichrovski said.
…

A 10-year-old refugee, who has been nicknamed “the little Picasso” for his artistic talent, is holding his first exhibition — and donating all the money raised to a sick Serbian boy.

Farhad Nouri’s drawings and photographs were put on display Wednesday in Belgrade, where he has lived in a crowded migrant camp with his parents and two younger brothers for the past eight months.

The family was forced to flee conflict and poverty in their home country of Afghanistan two years ago, traveling through Greece and Turkey before arriving in Serbia.

The boy’s gift for art was spotted during language and painting workshops in Belgrade that were organized by local aid groups for refugees and migrants.

“We quickly realized how talented he was and sent him to a painting school as well as a three-month photography workshop, so this is a retrospective of what he learned there,” said Edin Sinanovic from the Refugees Foundation, a local NGO.

Among Nouri’s works exhibited in the garden of a Belgrade cafe were his drawings of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Harry Potter. His photographs mostly include scenes from around Belgrade.

In addition to holding his first exhibition, “Farhad wanted to help someone, so he chose to dedicate it to a six-year-old Serbian boy who needs funds for his therapy after brain cancer,” Sinanovic said.

Nouri, who is dreaming of one day moving to Switzerland to become a painter and a photographer, said he wanted to help someone else as well to show how important it is to be good to other people.

“We all need kindness,” he said.
…

Polish President Andrzej Duda has blocked the appointment of new generals, in a fresh sign of tension between the head of state and the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that originally backed him.

Duda cited problems with a proposed new command system under government reform plans as his reason on Tuesday for blocking the appointments. His move came two weeks after he unexpectedly vetoed two controversial bills intended to reform the judicial system.

A source close to Duda’s administration said the nominations concerned around a dozen generals.

Deputy Defense Minister Tomasz Szatkowski said his ministry had invited the National Security Bureau, which advises the president, to help work on the army reform proposals.

“We are always available to the Bureau for additional clarifications or consultations,” Szatkowski told Reuters.

But some security analysts said Duda – who won the presidency in 2015 thanks to the support of PiS – was keen to demonstrate again his independence as both president and as commander in chief of Poland’s armed forces.

“This is probably less about the generals and more about the fact that the president decided it would be appropriate to say loudly and publicly that all options for a dialogue with the Defense Ministry have been exhausted,” said Marek Swierczynski, a security analyst at Polityka Insight, a think-tank.

NATO frontline

The spat comes as Poland plays host to more NATO troops as part of efforts to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank in the face of a more assertive Russia. Moscow has seized Ukraine’s Crimea region and backs armed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The Polish Defense Ministry presented a new defense concept in May that envisages significantly beefing up its armed forces and overhauling their command system. The president and the National Security Bureau have yet to respond to those plans.

Halina Szymanska, Duda’s chief of staff, told the state TVP Info news channel there was no conflict between the president and the Defense Ministry, but added: “First the work on building the new command and control structures needs to be completed and only then personnel decisions will be taken.”

Tomasz Siemoniak, a former defense minister in the Civic Platform government that lost power to PiS in 2015, said Duda’s stance was a challenge to the authority of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the most powerful man in Poland.

“The PiS leader is facing a difficult decision as to which side to support because this confrontation [between the president and Defense Ministry] is disastrous to the ruling camp and will be devastating for the military,” he told Reuters.

About a quarter of the Polish top brass has quit since PiS took power, citing disagreements with Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz over personnel and other decisions.

Swierczynski put the current vacancy rate among generals at nearly 50 percent, and he added that Duda’s decision to make his disagreement with the Defense Ministry public could harm Poland’s image in NATO as a stable, reliable ally.

“If we show that we cannot reach a compromise on such a key issue as national security … what does that say?”
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia Tuesday to express his support for separatists there and in South Ossetia on the ninth anniversary of a deadly five-day war between Moscow and Tbilisi.

The Georgian government protested against the Kremlin leader’s visit to Abkhazia’s Black Sea resort Pitsunda, and the foreign ministry in Tbilisi denounced Putin’s “cynical action.” NATO said Putin’s trip was “detrimental to international efforts to find a peaceful and negotiated settlement” of the war the two countries fought in 2008.

The foreign ministry said Putin’s trip to Abkhazia was a gesture meant only “for legitimization of forceful change of borders of the sovereign state (Georgia) through military aggression, ethnic cleansing and occupation.”

Georgia sees both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as its sovereign territory, and most of the world agrees. Russia is one of only four nations to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru are the only states to side with Russia on the issue.

Minister urges calm

Georgia maintains that Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been illegally integrated into Russia’s military, political, economic and social system.

Despite Putin’s appearance just 400 kilometers from Tbilisi Tuesday, some Georgian officials counseled calm. “We must not be provoked,” said Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, the minister for reconciliation and civil equality. Writing in the journal Foreign Policy, he noted: “We should keep the peace, as it is vitally important for us.”

Georgia and Russia have never restored diplomatic relations since the brief but deadly war nine years ago. A fact-finding mission commissioned by the European found that more than 400 Georgians were killed during five days of clashes, and nearly 1,750 others were wounded; casualties among Russians and residents of Abkhazia were in the same range, and overall, 150,000 Georgians were displaced from their homes.

Just outside Tbilisi, Georgian leaders marked the anniversary Tuesday by laying wreaths at a military cemetery to honor soldiers who died in the conflict.

Addressing the gathering, President Giorgi Margvelashvili vowed that no Georgian would ever tolerate Russian occupation, and he emphasized his government’s commitment to peaceful negotiations with the aim of fully reintegrating the entire country.

Multiple protests, in Georgia and abroad

Less than 400 meters from Russian military garrisons in South Ossetia, several hundred Georgians linked arms to form human chain along a main road leading into the Russian-controlled territory, according to BBC.

At United Nations headquarters in New York, Georgian-American demonstrators called for a coordinated international response to growing Russian military aggression in Eastern Europe.

Based on the bitter memories of subsequent Russian expansionist moves, such as its invasion of Crimea in 2014, Daniel Kochis of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation said the U.S. should have levied sanctions against Russia as far back as 2008, when it intervened in Georgia.

“I think the administration (of former President George W. Bush) was caught very flat-footed in Georgia,” Kochis said. “We didn’t learn a lesson from Russian actions; we didn’t impose any sort of sanctions and I don’t think we were strong enough discussing illegal actions by Russia. Again, we saw this sort of aggression a few years later in Crimea, and by then, of course, Russia had learned many lessons from the war with Georgia.”

Recent U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine suggest that Russia may now anticipate consequences for such actions.

US had few options in 2008

Jeffrey Mankoff of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies said the U.S. administration in 2008 had few military or diplomatic choices.

“The U.S. denounced Russian actions in Georgia in 2008, but did not move in a kinetic way,” Mankoff said. “But I also think the U.S. did not have a lot of options: Russia moved very quickly and the fighting was over in five days.”

The Bush and Obama administrations’ efforts to normalize ties with Russia despite its aggressive move into Georgia, Mankoff said, may have militarily emboldened Moscow.

“It is an issue for debate and I do not fault any of them for going down that path [of seeking normalized relations), but the Russians took a lesson (away from Georgia),” Mankoff added. “They determined they could get away with a similar scenario in Ukraine. In some ways, it has been a miscalculation, and it got Russia bogged-down in a conflict in Ukraine. But, ultimately, it has also changed the contours of (Western relations with Russia) in pretty fundamental ways, in a way that the invasion of Georgia did not.”

Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. In 2008, Russia sent troops into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, claiming that Georgian authorities had abused local residents.

Russia’s forceful intervention gave both regions de-facto independence from Tbilisi, and Moscow has since tightened its control. Despite international condemnation, Russia keeps thousands of troops in the breakaway regions; Georgia considers them an occupation force. The standoff is not static: Georgian authorities have accused Moscow and the separatists of seizing additional territory in recent months.

Pence visit contrasted with Putin’s

On his visit Tuesday, the third since the 2008 war, Putin said he would ease border controls and customs procedures between Russia and Abkhazia, to encourage travel and facilitate trade.

The Kremlin leader’s visit contrasted with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s trip last week to Tbilisi, where he was warmly received. Pence strongly reaffirmed Washington’s support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and denounced Russia’s “aggression” and “occupation” of Georgian territory.

An independent fact-finding mission on the conflict by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights said the brief war killed 171 Georgian servicemen, 14 policemen, and 228 civilians, leaving 1,747 wounded.

“Sixty-seven Russian servicemen were killed, and 283 were wounded, and 365 South Ossetian servicemen and civilians (combined) were killed,” the report said. The conflict also left an estimated 150,000 people internally displaced.

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service.

Some information is from AP and Reuters.

 
…

Deep below London’s bustling streets, a piece of once-vital communications technology will soon be roaring back into life after years of disuse — a train.

The train operates on the “mail rail” line — a 6.4-mile underground train track that once transported letters and parcels 70 feet below ground to and from sorting offices on the east and west sides of the city 22 hours each day.

The line, construction of which began in 1915, ceased operations in 2003. It will be opened to the public next month as a tourist attraction, part of the new Postal Museum in the city’s Clerkenwell district.

“Mail rail originally came about because mail was being delayed in London due to congestion in the streets above us,” Adrian Steel, director of the Postal Museum and mail rail, told Reuters.

Visitors can now ride a section of the old track in specially built trains, and explore an engineering depot turned exhibition space.

“One of the biggest jobs we’ve had is finding a way of taking people through these narrow tunnels that were never meant for people to pass through in a way that’s not completely uncomfortable or dangerous,” Steel said.

Apart from their role in delivering mail, the tunnels played a useful role during World War I and World War II.

Construction of the line was halted when war broke out and the space was instead used to store valuable artifacts, and was relied on heavily to avoid mail disruption during the blitz of World War II.

Aside from its unique history, another aspect of the mail rail line sets it apart from other London underground train lines — an absence of rats.

“It’s a rodent-free terminal and under London which is unusual,” Steel said. “Because there were no people on the trains, there is no food for the rats and mice.”

Rail mail at London’s Postal Museum opens to visitors on Sept. 4.
…

Dozens of glistening pools in a small village on Croatia’s Adriatic coast stand testament to its annual salt harvests from seawater, which use a method largely unchanged for centuries.

The salt works facility in Ston, which says it is the oldest in Europe, consists of 58 pools and covers about 430,000 square meters where the waters of the Adriatic are allowed to seep in and then evaporate, leaving salt behind.

The first of two salt harvests this year kicked off on Tuesday, with around 35 tourists, friends and family of workers raking salt across the pans into gleaming white piles, before transferring to a nearby warehouse by wooden carts.

They expect to harvest some 200 tons of salt in the harvest, with most of it used for industrial purposes while the rest is sold in local markets for use in cooking.
…

Germany has welcomed Turkey’s decision to allow lawmakers to visit German troops stationed at a NATO airbase near the Turkish city of Konya.

Turkey has been blocking German lawmakers’ requests to visit their troops in the country in recent months amid souring relations between Berlin and Ankara.

German news agency dpa quoted the country’s defense minister as saying Tuesday that it was “a good solution” that the seven lawmakers could take part in a visit by NATO officials September 8.

Ursula von der Leyen noted that the nine German troops were part of a NATO air surveillance mission supporting the alliance’s fight against the Islamic State group.

A spat over lawmaker access to German troops at the Incirlik base prompted Germany to move troops from there to Jordan.
…

The Balkans have become embroiled in a trade war over agricultural health checks after Croatia raised import fees on some farm products by around 220 percent, triggering countermeasures by Serbia and threats from others.

Last month European Union-member Croatia raised its fees for phytosanitary controls — agricultural checks for pests and viruses — on fruits and vegetables at its borders to 2,000 kuna ($319) from 90 kuna.

It cited compliance with EU standards and protection of its consumers.

But ministers from EU candidates Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as from fellow EU aspirant Bosnia, said the move violated their respective pre-accession agreements with the bloc under which they were guaranteed equal access to markets.

“These measures are absolutely protectionist in an economic sense. They are populist in political sense and cannot be justified, They are [not] in the spirit of good neighborly relations,” Serbian Economy Minister Rasim Ljajic told reporters after meeting his Balkan counterparts in Sarajevo.

The ministers from the four countries called on Croatia to withdraw its decision and invited the European Commission to get involved to solve an issue they said violated the free trade principles.

They also asked for an urgent meeting with the Croatian agriculture minister. However, until the issue has been resolved, each country will take counter-measures it considered adequate to protect its own economic interests, they said.

Economic War in Sight?

Ljajic said that Serbia has already stepped up phytosanitary controls on all organic produce from Croatia and will increase them further. This means that goods, including meat and dairy products, could be held up at borders from 15-30 days.

“Our goal is not to wage any kind of economic war but to protect our economic interests and the free flow of goods,” he said.

Macedonia and Montenegro said they would file complaints to the World Trade Organization, of which they are members, and seek mechanisms through the body for compensation from Croatia, which raised import fees at a peak of the high season for export of fruits and vegetables from their countries.

Besides discriminating against importers on its own market, Croatia is also making exports to the EU more difficult and expensive because it is vital entry point for imports to the EU from the Balkans, the ministers said.

Commenting on the explanation from Croatia that their move was not aimed against the neighbors but against all non-EU members, Bosnia’s Foreign Trade Minister Mirko Sarovic said: “Croatia does not import raspberries from Trinidad and Tobago but from Serbia and Bosnia.” He said that Bosnia was considering an “adequate response” but declined to elaborate.

Most countries in the region import more than they export to Croatia. Only Serbia operates a trade surplus with its neighbor, with exports in  2016 reaching 116 million euros ($137 million) versus imports worth 79 million euros.

Relations remain strained between the two former Yugoslav countries and bitter foes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, despite improvements in investments, the flow of people and capital.

($1 = 6.2688 kuna)
…

Two members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were briefly detained Monday after rallying for the release of a Ukrainian filmmaker outside his Siberian prison.

During Sunday’s protest in Yakutsk where Oleg Sentsov is serving his sentence, the band members unfurled a banner on a nearby bridge that read “Free Sentsov!”

Longtime Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina tweeted that she and Olga Borisova were taken to a police station following their detention earlier in the day and faced a court hearing over charges of holding an unauthorized rally.

Borisova later said on Facebook that she and Alyokhina were released after a judge found flaws in the case. It was unclear if the police would refile charges.

A Russian military court convicted Sentsov, who comes from the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, of conspiracy to commit terror attacks and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Sentsov, who made two short movies and the 2012 feature film “Gamer,” denied the charges, which he and his supporters denounced as political punishment for his opposition to Crimea’s annexation.

The U.S. and the EU have criticized his conviction and called for his release, and numerous cultural figures in Russia and abroad have urged the Russian government to free him.

Pussy Riot is a loose collective and most of its members perform anonymously. The balaclava-clad women rose to prominence with their daring outdoor performances critical of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ruling elite.

An impromptu “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior that derided the ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin got them into trouble in 2012.

Three band members were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for the stunt. Alyokhina and another member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, spent nearly two years in prison.
…

Turkey is building up military forces on the Syrian border, while Turkish President Recep Erdogan steps up his rhetoric suggesting an imminent military operation into Syria. Ankara is reportedly courting Moscow for its support for a possible operation into Syria’s Afrin enclave, which is now under the control of the Kurdish YPG militia.

Ankara accuses the YPG, which controls large swathes of Syrian territory along its border, of being an offshoot of the PKK, which is fighting the Turkish state.

“We will take important steps to implement the new campaigns in the near future,” Erdogan declared Saturday to cheering supporters in the Turkish city of Malatya. “We would rather pay the price for foiling plans targeting our future and liberty in Syria and Iraq, than on our own soil.”

The prospect of a military operation has been praised across Turkey’s pro-government media. “Our greatest advantage is the leadership of a president who sees this threat exactly … and responds to it courageously, both by discourse and by action,” wrote Mehmet Acer in the staunchly pro-Erdogan Yeni Safak. He welcomed “this new attack-based security approach, which we define as the ‘Erdogan doctrine’.”

Erdogan is courting nationalist voters, with one eye on looming presidential and parliamentary elections which could be held as early as next year.

The rising political rhetoric has been matched by a reported surge in attacks against the YPG in Afrin by elements of the Turkish backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Turkish forces, as part of Operation Euphrates Shield, entered Syria backing elements of the FSA against both Islamic State and the YPG. The FSA is on the border with the Afrin enclave but so far further gains have been stalled.  

“Turkey’s Operation Euphrates shield was stopped by moves by both United States and Russia,” said retired senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who is now an regional analyst. Both Russia and the U.S. deployed military forces as a buffer against further gains by Turkish-backed forces in Syria.

“The problem facing Turkey is Russia and the U.S. are stopping Turkey from intervening,” said Semih Idiz,  political columnist for the Al Monitor website. “They are agreed on an overriding agenda [of] defeating ISIS (Islamic State). Now Turkey has this Kurdish agenda and it does not have support of either Russia or the Untied States … That is the dilemma facing Turkey.”

Moscow has deployed military forces in the YPG-controlled Afrin region, some of them reportedly close to the Turkish border. But, “Turkey sees a window of opportunity,” said analyst Selcen. “Now there is a change on ground between Russia and U.S.”

Selcen said Moscow is infuriated by the growing military cooperation between the YPG and the U.S. to drive the Islamic State from its self-declared capital of Raqqa. The YPG makes up a large proportion of the Syrian Democratic Forces seeking to capture Raqqa,  an operation that excludes the Syrian regime.

Russian frustrations were heightened in June when a U.S. jet shot down a Syrian government fighter-bomber reportedly targeting SDF forces.

Ankara has stepped up its diplomatic courting of Moscow, having announced plans last month to purchase an advanced Russia air defense system. The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusolgu, spoke on Sunday with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Manila.

Turkish, Russian and Iranian officials are scheduled to hold a two day meeting on Syria beginning Tuesday in Tehran.
…

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has called a meeting the three parties in his ruling coalition after a junior partner, the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party, unexpectedly announced it is withdrawing from the pact that brought the parties together.

Fico, who called the move “absurd,” will meet leaders of the other two parties on Tuesday. He says he expects Slovak National Party chairman Andrej Danko to explain the reasons for the step.

It is not immediately clear whether the move threatens the government’s existence. The coalition is made up of Fico’s leftist Smer-Social Democracy party, the Slovak National Party and a party of ethnic Hungarians. It was created after last year’s parliamentary elections.

The Slovak National Party said it wanted to negotiate new rules for the coalition, but didn’t give details.
…

Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte says she is resigning from the U.N.’s independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, decrying Security Council inaction to hold criminals accountable in the war-battered country where “everyone is bad.”

In comments published Sunday by the Swiss magazine Blick, Del Ponte expressed frustration about the commission and criticized President Bashar Assad’s government, the Syrian opposition and the international community overall.

“We have had absolutely no success,” she told Blick on the sidelines of the Locarno film festival Sunday. “For five years we’ve been running up against walls.”

Del Ponte, who gained fame as the prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunals that investigated atrocities in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, has repeatedly decried the Security Council’s refusal to appoint a similar court for Syria’s 6½-year-old civil war. Permanent member Russia, which can veto council actions, is a key backer of Assad’s government.

“I give up. The states in the Security Council don’t want justice,” Del Ponte said, adding that she planned to take part in the last meeting in September. “I can’t any longer be part of this commission which simply doesn’t do anything.”

Appointed in September 2012, Del Ponte was quoted by Blick as saying she now thinks she was put into the role “as an alibi.”

“I’ve written my letter of resignation already and will post it in the coming days,” she said.

She did not immediately respond to a text message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

In her comments to Blick, Del Ponte described Syria as a land without a future.

“Believe me, the terrible crimes committed in Syria I neither saw in Rwanda nor ex-Yugoslavia,” she said. “We thought the international community had learned from Rwanda. But no, it learned nothing.”

At first in Syria, “the opposition (members) were the good ones; the government were the bad ones,” she was quoted as saying.

But after six years, Del Ponte concluded: “In Syria, everyone is bad. The Assad government is committing terrible crimes against humanity and using chemical weapons. And the opposition, that is made up only of extremists and terrorists anymore.”

The commission issued a statement saying it was aware since mid-June of Del Ponte’s plans to leave and insisted that its work “must continue” to help bring perpetrators in Syria to justice.

Del Ponte’s resignation shrinks the commission to two members after Thai professor and former human rights investigator Vitit Muntarbhorn left last year to become the first-ever U.N. independent expert investigating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The commission was set up in August 2011 by the Human Rights Council to investigate crimes in Syria, no matter who committed them. Since then, it has compiled thousands of interviews and keeps a list of suspected war criminals under lock and key at the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

But Del Ponte said that as long as the Security Council didn’t put in place a special tribunal for war crimes in Syria, all commission reports were pointless.

The issue of accountability for war crimes in Syria has largely taken a back seat to diplomatic efforts to end the war in recent months.

The commission’s relevance has also come into question after the U.N. General Assembly, acting in the face of the Security Council inaction, voted in December to set up an investigative body to help document and prepare legal cases to possibly prosecute the most serious violations in Syria’s war that is estimated to have left at least 400,000 dead.

 
…

Russia said Sunday that the U.S. is soon sending its envoy for negotiations over unrest in eastern Ukraine to Moscow for talks about the ongoing violence.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the announcement after an hour-plus meeting in Manila with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It was the first high-level contact between the two countries since U.S. President Donald Trump last week reluctantly signed new sanctions into law to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election to help him win.

Lavrov said U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker would meet with Russia’s envoy for the Ukraine crisis, Vladislav Surkov. Volker last month visited eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv’s forces for more than three years. It is a conflict during which Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and more than 10,000 people have been killed.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction to the meeting, held on the sidelines of regional diplomatic talks. Tillerson ignored reporters’ shouted questions.

Lavrov said that despite the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “We felt that our American counterparts need to keep the dialogue open. There’s no alternative to that.”

The U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly for the sanctions. Trump, faced with the likelihood that Congress would override a veto if he rejected the legislation, approved the sanctions measure even as he called it “significantly flawed” with “clearly unconstitutional provisions.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, weeks before he left office, expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian facilities in the United States after the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the election interference.

Moscow did not retaliate at the time, but with the approval of the new sanctions, Moscow ordered the U.S. to cut 755 diplomats and staff workers, many of them Russians, from its embassy and consulates in Russia. Lavrov said he explained to Tillerson how Moscow would carry out the sharp cuts in the U.S. diplomatic missions, but did not publicly disclose any details.

Trump has been largely dismissive of the investigations in Washington over the Russian election interference, calling them a “witch hunt” and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset victory over his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Numerous congressional probes are underway, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller has opened a grand jury investigation into whether Trump campaign aides illegally colluded with Russian interests on Trump’s behalf in the election and whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey, who was leading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller took over.

In West Virginia last week, Trump told a campaign-style rally of cheering supporters, “We didn’t win because of Russia. We won because of you.”

Trump said his political opponents were “trying to cheat you out of the leadership you want with a fake story that is demeaning to all of us and most importantly, demeaning to our country and demeaning to our constitution.

“The reason why Democrats only talk about the totally made-up Russia story is because they have no message, no agenda, and no vision,” he said. “The Russia story is total fabrication. It’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.”

 
…

Turkish police said they were working with Australian authorities to investigate a foiled plot to bomb an Etihad Airways flight using explosives which Canberra said were flown in from Turkey.

In a statement issued late on Saturday police said they had contacted Australian authorities as soon as they received news of the foiled plot.

The two sides have “started working to clarify unclear and unconfirmed matters regarding the possibility that explosive substances were sent from Turkey three months ago,” said the statement carried by Turkish media.

Australian police said on Friday that an Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport last month to catch an Etihad Airways flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat grinder.

High-grade military explosives used to build the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the militant Islamic State group, police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said.

The plot targeted an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but the bomb never made it past airport security, he said.
…

Britain is prepared to pay up to 40 billion euros ($47 billion) as part of a deal to leave the European Union, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported, citing three unnamed sources familiar with Britain’s negotiating strategy.

The European Union has floated a figure of 60 billion euros and wants significant progress on settling Britain’s liabilities before talks can start on complex issues such as future trading arrangements.

The government department responsible for Brexit talks declined to comment on the Sunday Telegraph article. So far, Britain has given no official indication of how much it would be willing to pay.

The newspaper said British officials were likely to offer to pay 10 billion euros a year for three years after leaving the EU in March 2019, then finalize the total alongside detailed trade talks.

Payments would be made only as part of a deal that included a trade agreement, the newspaper added.

“We know ([the EU’s] position is 60 billion euros, but the actual bottom line is 50 billion euros. Ours is closer to 30 billion euros but the actual landing zone is 40 billion euros, even if the public and politicians are not all there yet,” the newspaper quoted one “senior Whitehall source” as saying.

Whitehall is the London district where British civil servants and ministers are based.

‘Go whistle’

A second Whitehall source said Britain’s bottom line was “30 billion euros to 40 billion euros,” and a third source said Prime Minister Theresa May was willing to pay “north of 30 billion euros,” the Sunday Telegraph reported.

David Davis, the British minister in charge of Brexit talks, said on July 20 that Britain would honor its obligations to the EU but declined to confirm that Brexit would require net payments.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit advocate, said last month that the EU could “go whistle” if it made “extortionate” demands for payment.

Last week, the Bank of England said Brexit uncertainty was weighing on the economy. Finance Minister Philip Hammond wants to avoid unsettling businesses further.

If Britain cannot conclude an exit deal, trade relations would be governed by World Trade Organization rules, which would allow both parties to impose tariffs and customs checks and leave many other issues unsettled.

The EU also wants agreement by October on rights of EU citizens already in Britain, and on border controls between the Irish Republic and the British province of Northern Ireland, before trade and other issues are discussed.
…

The shift this Saturday morning starts early — to catch male weekend vacationers heading to the beach. The first women on the main road running through the decaying Italian seaside resort of Castel Volturno, 30 kilometers north of Naples and home now to an estimated 20,000 African migrants, are older Central Europeans, but younger Nigerians aren’t far behind.

By 9 a.m. there are about 30 sex workers touting for business along the strip — a small fraction of the nighttime contingents.

Castel Volturno is one of Italy’s ground zeros when it comes to a migration crisis roiling Italian politics and trying the patience of Italians. Anti-migrant rage is mounting, with Italians increasingly frustrated by the influx of mainly economic migrants from sub-Saharan countries — an increasing number the last two years from Nigeria. Many of them are women who authorities say are trafficked for prostitution by crime syndicates.

The sex workers on the main drag through Castel Volturno draw catcalls and lewd gestures from passing youngsters. Matronly Italian wives sitting by their husbands look away with the same disdain visible on the faces of supermarket shoppers the previous night, as a Nigerian migrant and his wife proffered a plastic bag full of the smallest coins to the checkout assistant.

The Nigerians are bolder than the Central Europeans, waving down cars occupied by single men. Some women sit on battered plastic chairs, others on discarded bricks in front of abandoned shops or by trash cans overflowing with waste.

No attention from police

On the strip today there are two police cars. But the policemen pay no heed to the bustling sex business, despite the fact that several of the Nigerians seem exceptionally young. The police are focused on checking vehicle registrations and they wield speed cameras — although the biggest risk here are fender-benders caused by curb-crawlers stopping abruptly.

The Nigerian sex workers are reluctant to talk with reporters. To get to interviews involves painstaking negotiations, and even then, the consideration can be very oblique.

On Friday night, a correspondent sat down with young women — Doress and Lovert, sisters from Nigeria’s Benin City, the hometown of the majority of the more than 16,000 Nigerian women who have arrived in Italy the past two years.

The sisters give their ages as 21 and 26. They look younger. According to the charity outreach worker, a Ghanaian who arranged the encounter, both are involved in sex work and have been since they arrived by boat from Libya last year. Their clients are both Italian and African, he says.

Lovert has been trying to break free from prostitution and has been picking tomatoes to earn money. Neither girl is willing to admit openly that she works the streets, and when they talk about the sex trade it is always in terms of their friends.

They say their journey through Niger and Libya was terrifying, and they are adamant that none of their three siblings or friends hazard the trip through the badlands of those two nations.

“It is very risky,” said Doress, who is thin and wearing a gray track suit. “I saw lots of things. Many people were raped, many people were killed, but I know that God guided me,” she added.

They say they came to Italy because “Nigeria is a very bad country” without jobs or opportunities. Their father is a farmer who earns little money. Doress says she had conversations via Facebook with friends already in Italy. “They said it was good, it was fine, and I decided to come. No one told me to come,” she said, denying she or her sister contracted with people-traffickers for the journey.

Quick money

Why do Nigerian girls work the streets?

“They want to find the money quickly,” chimed in Lovert.

“You choose what you want to do,” said Doress curtly, becoming surly when pressed about sex work. During the hourlong interview, both girls are ill at ease when the topic of prostitution is raised.

And with Doress there’s a feeling of sullen anger.

Social workers say many of the Nigerian sex workers they encounter on the streets — or who agree to break free from prostitution to enter overcrowded shelters  — exhibit pent-up rage, which can fuel sudden violent eruptions.

“A lot of the Nigerian girls clearly suffer from trauma and can be very violent and aggressive,” said Pescara-based Fabio Sorgoni, an official with the Italian charity On the Road, which helps prostitutes escape sex work.

“They can get very aggressive when faced with problems. They use their hands a lot. They beat each other,” he said. “They have been beaten lots of time themselves, probably even before they came to Italy, so for them it is normal to lash out.

“This is one of our biggest challenges. We have had fights break out in our shelters and have to call for police assistance.”

Lovert says the girls can earn up to 50 euros a day working the strip and acknowledges that would mean having sex with up to 10 men — as most girls charge clients only five or 10 euros. Most girls earn much less, and a lot of what they do earn will go to the men or women who manage them.

“They do the work because of the madam,” said Lovert. She mentions that some madams beat recalcitrant girls.

Cost of freedom

Doress said a girl can break free “if you have paid the money to the madam she has suffered to carry you from Libya to here.”

“They took a juju oath,” added Doress, explaining that for the Nigerian girls, most of whom come from poor rural areas, blood oaths made in front of a voodoo priest before setting out north are sacred. “If they break the oath, they’ll face the consequences — it will drive them crazy.”

Her sister Lovert starts shaking her head, mimicking someone enduring a fit or going crazy.

The sisters insist none of the Nigerian girls realized they were coming to Italy to work as prostitutes. “The madams say there’s plenty of work in Europe, but when they get here, they are pushed out on to the street,” said Lovert, who’s shorter and heavier than her sister and is wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress and sandals.

Many outreach workers now suspect that most girls, especially the more recent arrivals, knew what the score was before leaving Nigeria. But they didn’t know how grueling their work would be in Italy, how poorly it would pay and how long it would take them to pay off their debts to the traffickers, who charge them about 35,000 euros for the journey.

“The girls knew from the beginning what they were going to be doing; up to a point, they chose their road,” said the Reverend Carlo Ladicicco, a Catholic priest who works with migrants in Castel Volturno. “They are playing a game, but they do want to get out of the business as soon as they can, and it is an intolerable business.”   

Lovert says she worries the Italians will deport her. The sisters have applied for asylum, but it isn’t clear their applications will be accepted at an immigration hearing, which is months away, possibly even years.

Most likely, the laborious Italian immigration system will overlook them and their destiny, say outreach workers, like so many others, probably to be condemned to a twilight, undocumented existence confined to the fringes of Italian society.
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin stripped to his waist to brave the cold waters of a mountain lake as part of a three-day fishing and hunting trip in the Siberian wilderness, the Kremlin said.

Putin, 64, is renowned for his strong-man publicity stunts, which have contributed to his sky-high popularity ratings. The trip comes eight months before Russia’s presidential election next March and, though he has yet to announce his candidacy, Putin is widely expected to run and to win comfortably.

The hunting and fishing expedition took place on Aug. 1-3 in the republic of Tyva in southern Siberia, on the Mongolian border, some 3,700 km (2,300 miles) east of Moscow.

Pictures and video footage released by the Kremlin on Saturday showed Putin — who is also a keen practitioner of martial arts and ice hockey — spear-fishing, swimming and sunbathing alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“The water in the lake doesn’t get warmer than 17 degrees, but this didn’t stop the president from going for a swim,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

“He went hunting underwater with a mask and snorkel … The president chased after one pike for two hours, there was no way he could shoot it, but in the end he got what he wanted.”

 
…

Russia’s former ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak, said on Saturday his conversations with former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn had been transparent and focussed on matters of U.S.-Russia cooperation.

Kislyak ended his tenure in Washington in July but remains a key figure in ongoing U.S. investigations into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became known that he had failed to disclose the content of conversations he had with Kislyak and misled U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence about their meetings.

“We only spoke about the most simple things… but the communication was completely correct, calm, absolutely transparent. In any case, there were no secrets on our side,” Kislyak said during a panel discussion on Russian television.

“There are a number of issues which are important for cooperation between Russia and the United States — most of all, terrorism. And that was one of the things we discussed.”

 
…

A new study shows that deaths that result from extreme weather in Europe could increase 50 times by the end of the century if the effects of global warming are not curbed.

In the study published Saturday by The Lancet Planetary Health journal, scientists say weather-related disasters could kill more than 152,000 people a year by 2100, up from 3,000 per year recently. The researchers say the toll could be especially high in southern Europe.

“Unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency and appropriate adaptation measures are taken, about 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful climate extremes on an annual basis by the end of this century,” the report said.

Study’s assumptions

The study’s predictions are based on an assumption that there is no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and that no improvements take place to curb the effects of climate change.

The team of scientists looked at the most harmful weather-related disasters — heat waves, cold snaps, wildfires, droughts, floods and windstorms — across the European Union, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. They looked at records of weather-related events in those countries for a 30-year stretch and compared them with projections for population growth and future weather disasters.

Heat will be deadliest

Their findings predicted that heat waves would be the most lethal weather disasters, causing 99 percent of all future weather-related deaths in Europe. The researchers said deaths from coastal flooding would also increase sharply, from six deaths per year at the beginning of this century to 233 a year by the end of it.

“Climate change is one of the biggest global threats to human health of the 21st century, and its peril to society will be increasingly connected to weather-driven hazards,” said Giovanni Forzieri of the European Commission Joint Research Center in Italy, who co-led the study.
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The head of German automaker Volkswagen’s engineering and environment office pleaded guilty Friday in a U.S. court to charges connected to an emissions scandal involving the company.

Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges that could land him in prison for up to seven years. He will be forced to pay a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 for his role in a scheme, dubbed Dieselgate, to mislead U.S. environmental regulators.

In March, the company admitted to using software to fool regulators into believing Volkswagen cars complied with U.S. emissions standards. It was ordered to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and another $17.5 billion in civil settlements.

The government said diesel cars that Volkswagen claimed were clean were, in fact, releasing 40 times more nitrogen oxide emissions than is allowed by law.

Schmidt is the second Volkswagen employee to plead guilty to charges related to the scandal. Last year, company engineer James Liang admitted to helping design the devices used to beat emissions tests. The FBI now cites him as a cooperating witness.

Most Volkswagen employees charged in the scheme are in Germany and can’t be prosecuted by U.S. authorities. The company still faces legal issues in countries across the globe and has put aside more than $24 billion to handle costs related to the scandal.
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