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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The European Union on Friday imposed sanctions on three more Russians —  including Deputy Energy Minister Andrei Cherezov — and  have also been blacklisted over the delivery of Siemens’ turbines to Moscow-annexed Crimea.

A department head at the Russian ministry, Evgeny Grabchak, is also now barred from traveling to the EU and any assets he may have in the bloc will be frozen.

The EU said the blacklisted companies also include Siemens’ two contracting companies that moved the gas turbines to the Crimea in violation of EU sanctions, which bar business being conducted in the Black Sea peninsula since its annexation from Ukraine in 2014.
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Italian outreach workers say there has been a significant shift in the migration pattern from Africa with many more young Nigerian women coming. And they add that many, if not most, of the young Nigerians arriving on Italian shores know they will be expected to engage in sex work.

But the women have little idea how harsh their living conditions will be and how long it will take for them to pay off the debts they owe the traffickers who recruited them and got them to Italy.

Few of them break free from the work, according to Appiah, a 37-year-old Ghanaian migrant. “I know of four women in the last few years,” he says forlornly. “Two of them had been working for years and managed to pay back what they owed the traffickers; the other two were young and fled to Germany.”

For the last few years Appiah has been working for an Italian charity in Castel Volturno, a decaying seaside town north of Naples that’s become home to thousands of his fellow countrymen and migrant women from Nigeria. Another charity in the area says that since 2010 about one hundred Nigerian women have sought its help to break free from sex work.

Italian and European authorities estimate as many as 16,000 Nigerian women, some as young as 16 or 17-years-old, have been trafficked into Italy in the past two years by Nigerian racketeers and crime gangs, the most notorious a syndicate known as Black Axe.

The number of unaccompanied Nigerian women sailing to Italy from Libya has risen each year from 1,454 in 2014 to more than 11,000 last year and the International Organization for Migration estimates as many as 80 percent of them work once they arrive as street prostitutes for traffickers often in brutal conditions and for little pay.

Like the Italian authorities, IOM argues the Nigerian women are forced unwillingly into prostitution, tricked by traffickers, who charge the women as much as 35,000 euros for the trip to Europe. The traffickers terrify the women into submission, using violence, voodoo religious rites and threats to harm the women’s families back in Nigeria, say authorities.

Threat of violence

 
But the picture is more complicated, according to charity workers and migrants themselves, who suspect most of the Nigerian women who’ve arrived in the past two years — and the ones setting out now to complete a highly dangerous journey through strife-torn Niger and Libya — were not tricked by unscrupulous recruiters but knew they’d be engaged in sex work in Italy.

They say the women, most in their teens or early twenties, don’t understand how harsh their conditions will be and how vulnerable they will be, prey to violence and manipulation in a culture they struggle to understand. Breaking free isn’t easy — the voodoo blood oaths traffickers make them take back in Nigeria weigh heavily on many of the women, the threat of violence is ever present and some fear their families will be harmed.

“The reality is that some of them, I would say most of them, know they will be involved in prostitution,” says Pescara-based Fabio Sorgoni, an official with the Italian charity On the Road, which helps prostitutes get out of sex work. “Some of them think they’ll be working in factories or cleaning. But a large proportion of them know they’re coming to do sex work,” he adds.

Anti-migrant rage

With anti-migrant rage mounting in Italy and populist parties demanding tough action to halt the record influx of asylum-seekers, charity and outreach workers fear speaking too openly about the motives and backgrounds of the Nigerian women arriving in Italy. They don’t want to erode what’s left of public compassion for asylum-seekers.

“The pattern has changed a lot,” says Maureen, a Nigerian migrant who arrived in Italy 20 years ago, starting life here as a housemaid. Working her way through school, she’s now a case officer for the charity Associazione Jerry Masslo.

“A few years ago, yes, the women were duped by the traffickers’ and expected ordinary jobs. But those days are over…the position has changed.” Partly so, she says, because of the effectiveness of outreach programs in Nigeria warning women of the dangers.

She says many of the recently arrived Nigerian women were sex workers before in Nigeria. “Some families, often mothers, sisters and aunts urge them to make the trip, arguing it’ll just be for a few months and then they’ll be rich,” she explains.

Motivated by poverty

Poverty and the lack of job opportunities in Nigeria led them into sex work in the first place, she argues. “And they don’t understand how bad it will be for them in Italy,” she says.

Says Sorgoni: “The women don’t understand 35,000 euros is lot of money. When they get here they have to stay on the streets for 14 hours a day and they get something like five or 10 euros for sex. They then realize they’ll have to be on the streets for years — forced to go with everyone, forced to have sex without a condom because many clients here demand that.”

He adds: “Many are very young, they come from rural areas and are unschooled. They don’t understand their own bodies or the infections they can get and they think all they have to do is pray, or ward off sickness with voodoo rites.”

In Castel Volturno, local doctors say nearly a quarter of the Nigerian women they treat have sexually transmitted diseases. “They fear they’ll be arrested when they arrive at the hospital,” says Dr. Beniamino Schiavone, director of Clinica Pineta Grande, a cutting-edge private hospital the government subsidizes to provide care for migrants in the area. “So they wait until their problem is terribly serious.”
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Polish authorities have questioned Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, as a witness in an investigation into the 2010 jet crash in Russia the killed Poland’s then-president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others.

Tusk, who was the Polish prime minister at the time, told reporters after the more-than-eight-hour interrogation that he would not be intimated by the proceedings, which his lawyer described as politically motivated.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country’s ruling party leader and the brother of the former president, said Tusk “should be afraid.”

But Tusk said, “I do not have anything to fear. And Mr. Kaczynski will not scare me, no matter how badly he wants to get me.”

Kaczynski has long insisted that the crash was no accident and that Tusk was morally responsible for the death of his twin brother.

Polish and Russian investigators determined at the time that pilot error, bad weather and poor air-traffic control were to blame for the crash.

Prosecutors have said they are trying to determine why Polish authorities of the time did not take part in the autopsies, which were performed by Russians and later shown to be sloppy. Exhumations have revealed that some body parts got mixed up and were buried in the wrong graves.

Tusk’s Polish supporters see the questioning as part of a bitter feud going back years that pits him against Kaczynski, the man who directs most government decisions now.

One of the EU’s top leaders since 2014, Tusk is considered one of the most charismatic and effective politicians that Poland has had in many years, and the only one able to unite a weak and divided political opposition. Should he ever return to Polish politics, he would represent a major threat to Kaczynski.
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Three firefighters have been hurt as they battled a large brush fire south of the Greek capital, Athens.

Authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of homes in two communities in Lagonissi, a coastal area 30 kilometers from Athens, after several homes and cars were destroyed in the fire.

Dozens of firefighters and fire engines are taking part in the operation.

Winds up to 60 kilometers per hour were hampering the firefighting effort, while temperatures in the area reached 35 degrees Celsius.

Summer wildfires are common in Greece.

Wildfires are also taking a toll on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica and in Albania.
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Upmarket fashion magazine Vogue has featured an unexpected new model in its latest edition — London’s first female police chief.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has posed in her uniform for the glossy magazine as part of a feature that celebrates women at the top of their game.

Dick, 56, is the first female commissioner in the London police force’s 188-year history and began leading the organization of 43,000 officers and staff in April this year.

Dick, an experienced counterterrorism officer, had a turbulent start to her new role with London’s emergency services, having to cope with a devastating fire which engulfed the Grenfell tower block in central London, killing about 80 people.

“There is something about putting the uniform on. You’ve got a role to play, to be calm, to lead other people, to go forward when everyone else is running away. It gives you a sense of, not of courage but, ‘It’s my job,'” Dick told Vogue.

Dick joined the London force, known as Scotland Yard, in 1983 as a constable and made her way up the ranks to become Britain’s most senior counterterrorism officer and national director for security during the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In the Queen’s 2015 New Year Honour’s List, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Dick said the Grenfell fire and recent fatal attacks in Westminster and by London Bridge had meant long working hours, but the police force’s morale has stayed high.

“It’s brought the public supporting the police, even more than before. You can’t walk down the road without people coming up to you and shaking your hand and saying thank you for what you’re doing. All the staff say the same,” she said.
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The German government has condemned Vietnam’s “unprecedented and blatant violation” of German and international law by kidnapping a Vietnamese citizen seeking asylum in Berlin and returning him to Hanoi to face criminal charges.

The German foreign ministry expelled a Vietnamese intelligence officer and summoned Vietnam’s ambassador to hear a complaint that the incident “has the potential to have a massive negative impact on relations between Germany and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

A statement issued in Berlin Wednesday said senior German officials have “no reasonable doubt” that Vietnamese security services and embassy staff carried out the kidnapping last week of Trinh Xuan Thanh, 51, an executive of the state-owned energy company PetroVietnam, which has been the target of recent corruption investigations that have ensnared government and business leaders. Thanh is accused of responsibility for nearly $150 million in losses by a division of PetroVietnam at a time when he headed that group.

Seized by armed men

A Vietnamese-language newspaper and German media reported that armed men accosted and seized Thanh in Berlin’s Tiergarten, a large forested park in the German capital, July 23, the day before he was to appear for a hearing on his request for political asylum in Germany.

Thanh, a former high-ranking member Vietnam’s Communist Party, turned up in Hanoi this past Monday. Police in the Vietnamese capital claimed he decided to turn himself in, 10 months after an international warrant was issued seeking his arrest.

The Hanoi police did not explain how Thanh made his way from Berlin or why he returned home. No pictures of him have been published and family members were said to have been unaware that he was back in Vietnam.

The German foreign ministry said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government was demanding that Thanh be allowed to travel back to Germany immediately, so authorities there could examine both his asylum application and Vietnam’s request for his extradition. In addition, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, Martin Schaefer, told reporters: “We reserve the right to draw further consequences, if necessary, at a political, economic and development policy level.”

In Hanoi, no comment

VOA asked the Vietnamese foreign ministry to comment on the case but received no response. Media reports in Germany said the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin was not responding to any inquiries.

Vietnam’s current anti-corruption drive marks a period of change and maneuvering within the country’s Communist Party.

“Massive corruption has been like rust eating away at the authority of the legitimacy of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” Professor Carl Thayer told VOA from Australia.

Thayer, an emeritus professor of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy, explained: “This has been openly acknowledged by top party officials for well over a decade. Each major corruption case is judged not only on the financial loss to the state, but also on its impact on political stability.

“I liken anti-corruption campaigns to campaigns to end prostitution,” Thayer continued. “They are never-ending, because human greed is involved and officials will take risks.”

Quick promotions for Thanh

Thanh, a Hanoi native, graduated from the Hanoi University of Architecture in 1990 and then worked until 1995 in Germany, which currently is Vietnam’s largest trading partner in the European Union.

After returning to Vietnam, he advanced rapidly through a series of executive positions of increasing responsibility, at a state-owned technology and economic development company, a state-owned civil and industrial construction company and, in 2007, PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was chairman from 2009-2013, and was awarded a Laborers’ Hero in the Renovation Era medal in 2011.

Thanh moved into the government realm in September 2013 as deputy chief of office and head of the representative office of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the central province of Da Nang.

In early June last year, Thanh landed in the spotlight after a photograph of him driving a privately owned car bearing government number plates was posted online.

Tripped up by privilege

An uproar ensued as people questioned why Thanh, then a deputy chairman of the southern province of Hau Giang, was assigned a government plate. After review by authorized agencies, the province’s leaders admitted they had made a mistake.

However, the outcry caught the attention of the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, who on June 9, 2016, called for an investigation of Thanh’s activities. That scrutiny uncovered losses of $147 million at PetroVietnam during Thanh’s tenure.

In July 2016, Thanh requested annual leave. The following month, he requested sick leave for medical treatment overseas, and then disappeared.

By mid-September, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security had charged Thanh, along with four others, with mismanagement at a subsidiary of the national oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, had removed him as a member of the Communist Party, and had issued an international warrant for his arrest.

The resulting worldwide manhunt for Thanh appeared to be fruitless until the recent events in Berlin.

One report this week indicated the two governments involved had discussed the Thanh case before he was abducted in Berlin.

The Associated Press said Germany’s foreign ministry spokesman, Martin Schaefer, confirmed that German and Vietnamese officials discussed Hanoi’s request for Thanh’s extradition during a meeting in Hamburg July 7-8, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit.

This report originated on VOA Vietnamese.
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Centers like Pontourney in Beaumont-En-Veron were to be opened in France as reintegration centers, and were to be set up in every region of France. But that will not happen now: At the end of July, officials said Pontourney is closing.
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A Georgian court on Wednesday rejected a request to postpone former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s hearing on embezzlement charges.

Saakashvili’s lawyers asked Tbilisi City Court to delay the hearing because the former president has been stateless since July 26, when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship.

Calling the request unsubstantiated, Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili ruled that the hearing would be held at the court’s discretion.

Saakashvili, 49, once a lauded pro-Western reformist, served two terms as Georgia’s president, from January 2004 to November 2013. His popularity declined toward the end of his second term, in part because of a five-day war with Russia during which Moscow’s forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country, and his long-ruling party was voted out of power in a 2012 parliamentary election.

In 2015, Saakashvili forfeited his Georgian citizenship by accepting an offer from his old college friend, Poroshenko, to become governor of Ukraine’s southwestern Odessa Oblast province — a post that required Ukrainian citizenship.

Saakashvili, whom many suspect of harboring Ukrainian political ambitions, resigned as governor of Odessa in November 2016, complaining of official obstruction and corruption. He accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and said his central government had sabotaged democratic reforms required for membership to the European Union and NATO.

‘Very Soviet behavior’

Saakashvili recently told VOA that Poroshenko stripped his Ukrainian citizenship in order to eliminate his main domestic political opponent and undermine democracy in the Russian-occupied Eastern European nation.

“It’s a very Soviet behavior, very much reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s actions,” he told VOA. “First, deprive somebody of citizenship and then declare them crazy, criminal. It’s very much a déjà vu.”

Poroshenko, who announced the decision while Saakashvili was visiting the United States, said he nullified Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship upon learning that the former Georgian leader had lied on his citizenship application.

Ukrainian law requires applicants for citizenship to disclose whether they are subjects of any ongoing criminal investigations inside or outside the country.

Georgia has been seeking the former president’s extradition to face charges connected to embezzlement of public funds, the violent dispersal of protests and a raid on a private television station. Saakashvili said the charges were politically motivated.

He insisted he “indicated everything rightfully” on the 2015 document, and that Poroshenko operatives had since doctored it.

“The documents that I filed were not shown,” Saakashvili said. “We are demanding them to be shown because we need to see that everything was done legally. The fact that they are showing this [falsified application for citizenship reveals a] blatant desire to do something very illegal. We are talking about the forgery here.”

No copy of original

Asked whether he had a copy of the original application, Saakashvili said he did not.

“I happen to trust people,” he told VOA. “I have filed so many documents in my life that I don’t keep copies. I trust the state institutions; I trust people that they would do their jobs fairly.”

Kyiv officials declined to respond to Saakashvili’s assertions or comply with a request to share a copy of the disputed application.

Although Saakashvili has vowed to return to Ukraine and fight to reclaim his citizenship, it is not known whether he has taken any official steps to initiate that legal process.

On Wednesday, Kyiv officials in Washington said he had made no efforts to reach them.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, said he would be forced to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia should he return to Ukraine — but only if the Georgians filed a new request.

Georgian authorities unsuccessfully requested Saakashvili’s extradition twice prior to Poroshenko’s official visit to Tbilisi last month.

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian service.
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Europe is experiencing extreme weather conditions, including heat waves and flooding. The heat has caused outbreaks of wildfires in southern countries such as Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, Portugal and southern France, and drought has led to shortages of water in many areas.
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The Sistine Chapel choir is preparing for its first visit to the United States in 30 years. The world’s oldest choir, it began performing for the head of the Roman Catholic Church about 500 years ago.
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Sirens wailed across Poland’s capital on Tuesday as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a doomed revolt against the occupying Germans during World War II.

Sirens sounded for about two minutes starting at 5 p.m., the hour the 1944 uprising began, bringing traffic mostly to a standstill while people stopped to pay respect to the Poles who fought and died.

President Andrzej Duda, veterans, scouts and others took part in ceremonies, as did several thousand far-right extremists who marched through Warsaw.

The German Embassy in Warsaw flew its flags — a German and a European Union flag — at half-staff to honor the victims.

The Warsaw Uprising broke out August 1, 1944, with the Polish underground taking up arms against the powerful Nazi forces, hoping to liberate the city before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. They held out for 63 days before the Germans crushed the revolt.

It was the largest act of resistance in any nation under German occupation during the war. The heroism of insurgents who fought for national liberation remains a defining element in Polish national identity.

The Germans suppressed the rebellion brutally, destroying most of Warsaw and killing around 200,000 people, most of them civilians.

Soviet troops who had arrived on the outskirts of Warsaw in their westward push against Adolf Hitler’s forces remained on the city’s outskirts without helping the Poles who were supposed to be their allies. The Red Army’s inaction was viewed as a deep betrayal.

U.S. President Donald Trump paid homage to the “desperate struggle to overthrow oppression” during a July 6 visit to Warsaw.

Trump recalled that the Soviets “watched as the Nazis ruthlessly destroyed the city, viciously murdering men, women and children.”

The 1944 uprising by the Polish resistance came more than a year after Jews confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and about to be sent to death camps took up arms against the Nazis. That revolt also ended in tragedy for the Jews.
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On the latest leg of his first official tour of Eastern Europe, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence assured regional allies the United States will stand by their side.

Facing a crowd of Georgian and international journalists at government offices in Tbilisi, Pence, standing alongside his host, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, said America first does not mean America alone.

“President Trump has sent me with the simple message to you and to the people of Georgia, we are with you, we stand with you …  America stands with Georgia,” said Pence.

The vice president came to Georgia, the only non-NATO member country on his itinerary, from Estonia, a model of a successful EU-leaning transformation, before heading to Montenegro, NATO’s newest member.

Pence is the highest-ranking American official of the current administration to visit Georgia and the larger Caucasus region.

“Thanks to your help, Georgia is no longer a Soviet or a post-Soviet country,” said Kvirikashvili at Tuesday’s joint press conference.  “Today we are a democracy closely associated with the European Union.”

Kvirikashvili’s comments, in which he touted Georgia’s role as “a key strategic partner of America,” come amid an ongoing partial Russian occupation.

About 60 kilometers from the news conference, Russian tank units maintain control over 20 percent of Georgian terrain, a holdover from the August 2008 five-day war.

Pence reiterated the U.S. non-recognition policy regarding the Russian-occupied zone, condemning Moscow’s presence on Georgian soil, what many observers describe as an evolving, “creeping” occupation.

“President Trump has called on Russia to cease its destabilizing activities,” Pence said, adding that President Donald Trump will soon sign sanctions against Russia.

“Our country prefers a constructive relations with Russia, based on cooperation and common interest.  But the president and our Congress are unified in our message to Russia: a better relationship, lifting of sanctions, will require Russia to reverse actions that caused sanctions to be imposed in the first place.”

‘Reset’ jitters

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Georgia about a year after the 2008 war.  Biden’s visit came shortly after the Obama administration’s “reset” policy with Russia, which caused concern among many Europeans that the United States would give Moscow a pass for its invasion of Georgia.

Years later, Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Eastern Ukraine, which led the West to unilaterally impose sanctions on Russia.

Both Georgia and Ukraine are aspiring NATO members.  Some observers argue Georgia’s 2008 war and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea could have been avoided if those countries hadn’t been denied Membership Action Plan status at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April, 2008.

“President Trump and I stand by the 2008 NATO Bucharest statement, which made it clear that Georgia, one day, will become a member of NATO,” said Pence.

According to recent nationwide polls carried by National Democratic Institute, 66 percent of Georgia’s population approves of the government’s stated goal to join NATO.  Sixty-two percent of Georgians say the country should join the European Union.  Both organizations are largely seen as security instruments that would protect Georgia independence and development.

2017 represents the 25th anniversary of U.S.-Georgian diplomatic relations.

George W. Bush is the only U.S. president who has visited Georgia, which he called “a beacon of democracy.”

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service. 
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An attempted escape from a Moscow courthouse has left three gang members dead, authorities said Tuesday.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the ill-fated incident occurred at the Moscow Regional Court as the defendants were being escorted under guard in an elevator. Officials say a suspect attacked one of the guards and tried to strangle him before the defendants seized the weapons from the guards.

A shootout with court guards erupted once the elevator doors opened, leaving three of the suspects dead and two wounded. At least two guards also were injured, authorities said.

The trouble happened prior to a hearing for the defendants, who are accused of killing 17 motorists over the course of a few months in 2014.

Prosecutors said the men would lay spike strips across roads as cars were driving by, popping the tires and forcing the drivers to exit their vehicles.

When the drivers left their cars, the gang, totaling nine members, would shoot them dead, investigators said.
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Spain’s National Court has recommended the extradition to the United States of a Russian computer programmer accused by U.S. prosecutors of developing malicious software that stole information from financial institutions and caused losses of $855,000.

Stanislav Lisov, 31, was arrested January 13 in the Barcelona Airport while on honeymoon in Europe. Prosecutors accuse him of developing the NeverQuest software that targeted banking clients in the United States between June 2012 and January 2015.

The Spanish court said Tuesday that Lisov could face up to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to commit electronic and computer fraud. The extradition hearing took place July 20.

The court said its ruling can be appealed by Lisov.

The extradition, if finally decided upon, must be approved by the government.
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Russian authorities are now barring American diplomats and their families from a U.S. recreational residence on the outskirts of Moscow, part of sweeping retaliatory measures announced by Kremlin leader Vladmir Putin.

The Russian president ordered the U.S. on Sunday to cut its overall staff of more than 1,200 in Russia by 755 people, in response to new U.S. sanctions imposed against Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. It is believed to be the single largest cut ever imposed on the U.S. embassy in Moscow and consulates elsewhere in Russia, although many of those to be dismissed are likely Russians working in support positions.

Putin said the cuts would leave both Russia and the U.S. with the same number of staff and diplomats in Washington and Moscow, respectively — 455.

President Donald Trump has been silent on the issue since Putin announced his retaliatory action.

Asked about this Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “Right now we are reviewing our options, and when we have something to say on it we will let you know.”

No response yet to Putin

The White House has said Trump intends to sign into law the new round of sanctions against Russia that Congress passed last week, but he has not yet done so.

The U.S. State Department said the order to reduce the number of American diplomats in Russia was “a regrettable and uncalled for act.” A spokesman said U.S. officials are assessing how to respond to Putin.

A Russian analyst, Nikolai Petrov of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said the move reflects the Kremlin’s disillusionment with Trump: “These measures are tough, and it is linked to a deep disappointment that came after the euphoria linked to the arrival of Donald Trump [to power], and to the idea that today we will start our relations anew.”

Another Russian analyst, Gleb Pavlovsky, said a return to Cold War-era hostilities with the U.S. will only boost Putin’s popularity at home ahead of another likely bid for the Russian presidency next year.

Pavlovsky, a former political consultant for the Kremlin who now is president of the Foundation for Effective Politics in Moscow, explained how U.S. efforts to “punish” Putin may have the opposite effect: “American sanctions naturally are causing a definite mass reaction [in Russia] — an anti-American, pro-Putin reaction.” If Putin wished, Pavlovsky added, he could make the American sanctions the centerpiece of his re-election campaign next year.

Russians also will feel cutback

Other experts say the vital work of the U.S. embassy in Moscow will continue despite the massive cuts.

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. diplomat now with the Brookings Institution, told VOA that Russians also may discover some unintended consequences of their president’s crackdown on U.S. diplomacy.

“My assumption is hundreds of Russians are going to lose their jobs now,” Pifer said. “And when you’re looking at priority functions of the embassy, you know, visa functions are important but they’re not as important as other functions. So my guess is that those Russians [who] want to travel to the United States are going to find that visa processing is going to take longer than usual because of reduced staff in the consular section.”

Pifer was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1986, at a time when there were several back-and-forth expulsions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He later served on the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, and was ambassador to Ukraine from 1998-2000.

During his time in the Russian capital, Pifer said, American staff were called upon for “all-purpose duty” at times when Russian support staff were unavailable for political reasons.

“So, five or six days out of every seven, I would work on my normal portfolio, which is arms control,” Pifer recalled. “And then one day, I’d drive a truck. And the embassy got by. There was actually this incredible spirit in the embassy that we were going to show the Soviets that this kind of action was not going to cramp the embassy.”

Pifer said he expects the same determined spirit from U.S. embassy personnel now.

Congress approved the new sanctions against Russia last Thursday, as part of a package that also included new measures against Iran and North Korea. Russia’s foreign ministry denounced the U.S. for “extreme aggression” in international affairs and signaled the coming counter-measures the next day, two days before Putin personally announced the cutbacks in diplomatic staff.

In addition to sharply trimming the size of the U.S. mission, Russia reclaimed two U.S. facilities, a recreational retreat near Moscow and a storage facility in the city.
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Five aid groups that operate migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean refused to sign up to the Italian government’s code of conduct on Monday, the Interior Ministry said, but three others backed the new rules.

Charity boats have become increasingly important in rescue operations, picking up more than a third of all migrants brought ashore so far this year against less than one percent in 2014, according to the Italian coast guard.

Italy fears the groups are facilitating people smuggling from North Africa and encouraging migrants to make the perilous passage to Europe, and it proposed a code containing around a dozen points for the charities.

Those who refused to sign the document had put themselves “outside the organized system of sea rescues, with all the concrete consequences that can have”, the ministry said.

Italy had previously threatened to shut its ports to NGOs that did not sign up, but an Interior Ministry source said in reality those groups would face more checks from Italian authorities.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has taken part in many of the rescues of some 95,000 migrants brought to Italy this year, attended a meeting at the Interior Ministry but refused to sign the code.

MSF objected most strongly to a requirement that aid boats must take migrants to a safe port themselves, rather than transferring people to other vessels, which allows smaller boats to stay in the area for further rescues.

“Our vessels are often overwhelmed by the high number of [migrant] boats … and life and death at sea is a question of minutes,” MSF Italy’s director Gabriele Eminente wrote in a letter to Interior Minister Marco Minniti.

“The code of conduct puts at risk this fragile equation of collaboration between different boats,” Eminente continued, adding that MSF still wanted to work with the ministry to improve sea rescues.

But Save The Children gave its backing, saying it already complied with most of the rules and would monitor constantly to be sure that applying them did not obstruct their work.

“We would not have signed if even one single point would have compromised our effectiveness. This is not the case, not one single point of the code will hinder our activities,” Save The Children Italy director Valerio Neri said after the meeting.

The Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) and Spanish group Proactiva Open Arms agreed to the conditions, but Germany’s Sea-Watch, Sea-Eye and Jugend Rettet, and France’s SOS Mediterranee abstained.

MSF, SOS Mediterranee and Jugend Rettet also called for clarity on the rules and took issue with a clause in the code which would oblige groups to accept police officers on board.

“For us the most controversial point … was the commitment to help the Italian police with their investigations and possibly take armed police officers on board,” Jugend Rettet coordinator Titus Molkenbur said. “That is antithetical to the humanitarian principles of neutrality that we adhere to, and we cannot be seen as being part of the conflict.”
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When Luxembourg’s new law governing space mining comes into force on Tuesday, the country will already be working to make the science-fiction-sounding mission a reality, the deputy prime minister said.

The legislation will make Luxembourg the first country in Europe to offer a legal framework to ensure that private operators can be confident about their rights over resources they extract in space.

The law is based on the premise that space resources are capable of being owned by individuals and private companies and establishes the procedures for authorizing and supervising space exploration missions.

“When I launched the initiative a year ago, people thought I was mad,” Etienne Schneider told Reuters.

“But for us, we see it as a business that has return on investment in the short-term, the medium-term, and the long-term,” said Schneider, who is also Luxembourg’s economy minister.

Luxembourg in June 2016 set aside 200 million euros ($229 million) to fund initiatives aimed at bringing back rare minerals from space.

While that goal is at least 15 years off, new technologies are already creating markets that space mining could supply, said Schneider.

He said firms could soon make carrying materials to refuel or repair satellites economically feasible or supply raw materials to the 3-D printers now being tested on the International Space Station.

Lifting each kilogram of mass from Earth to orbit costs between 10,000 and 15,000 euros ($11,000 to $18,000), according to Schneider, but firms could cut these costs by recycling the debris of old satellites and rocket parts floating in space.

The small European country, best known for its fund management and private banking sector, will on Tuesday begin the work of making such deals, with the security of a legal framework in place, said Schneider.

Luxembourg has already managed to attract significant interest from pioneers in the field such as U.S. operators Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, and aims to attract research and development projects to set up there.

A similar package of laws was introduced in the United States in 2015 but only applies to companies majority owned by Americans, while Luxembourg’s laws will only require the company to have an office in the country.

“I am already in discussions with fund owners for more than 1 billion euros which they want to dedicate to space exploration over here in Luxembourg,” Schneider said. “In 10 years, I’m quite sure that the official language in space will be Luxembourgish.”
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is in Estonia for talks on military support with the three Baltic members of NATO, to assure them the United States supports its allies who are concerned about Russian expansionism.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all have asked for tangible demonstrations of U.S. military support. Concerns about Russian expansionism have increased sharply in the Baltic region with Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Pence was upbeat on his arrival in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, on Sunday: “President (Donald) Trump sent me to Eastern Europe with a very simple message, and that is that America first doesn’t mean America alone.”

Pence will meet with all three Baltic presidents on Monday, then travel on to Georgia, where troops from the U.S. and other NATO partners began military exercises Sunday, and later to Montenegro, NATO’s newest member.

“Our message to the Baltic States, my message when we visit Georgia and Montenegro will be the same,” Pence said in Tallinn. “To our allies here in Eastern Europe: We are with you, we stand with you on behalf of freedom and it’s a great honor for me to be here.”

The NATO military exercise that began Sunday at Georgia’s Vaziani military base, Tbilisi, marks the first time that U.S. and German heavy military machinery was deployed in the former Soviet republic, which borders Russia.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili attended the opening ceremony at the exercise, dubbed Noble Partner 2017. A total of 2,800 soldiers from five NATO members — the U.S., Britain, Germany, Turkey and Slovenia — joined troops from NATO partner countries Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia.

Pence said the U.S. is making it very clear “that Russia’s destabilizing activities, its support for rogue regimes, its activities in Ukraine are unacceptable.”

 
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Thousands of people rallied in Turkey’s largest city on Sunday against security measures Israel has imposed at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, shortly after Israel removed other measures that led to two weeks of violent Palestinian protests.

The rally in Istanbul, called “The Big Jerusalem Meeting” and organized by Turkey’s Saadet Party, drew some five thousand people to the Yenikapi parade ground on the southern edge of Istanbul.

Protesters were brought in by buses and ferries from across the city, waved Turkish and Palestinian flags, and held up posters in front of a giant stage where the chairman of the Saadet party and representatives from NGOs addressed the crowd.

“The Al-Aqsa mosque is our honor,” read a poster.

“You should know that not only Gaza, but Tel Aviv also has their eyes on this parade ground. Netanyahu does as well, and he is scared”, said Saadet Party Chairman Temel Karamollaoglu, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Turkey has opposed the security measures installed at the entry points of the mosque compound, with President Tayyip Erdogan warning Israel that it would suffer most from the dispute.

Erdogan accused Israel of inflicting damage on Jerusalem’s “Islamic character”, in comments that Israel’s foreign ministry called “absurd”.

The dispute over security at the mosque compound – where Israel installed metal detectors at entry points after two police guards were shot dead this month – has touched off the bloodiest clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

On Friday however, the main prayer session at the Al-Aqsa mosque ended relatively calmly after Israel removed the tougher security measures, though it barred entrance to men under age 50.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the holy compound, in the 1967 Middle East war. It annexed the area in a move that has never been recognized internationally.

Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, sits in the heart of the Old City. It is also the holiest place in Judaism – the venue of two ancient temples, the last destroyed by the Romans. Jews pray under heavy security at the Western Wall at the foot of the elevated plaza.
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Security officials said on Sunday that the Egyptian man who stabbed to death three tourists and wounded three others earlier this month in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada was tasked by the Islamic State group to carry out an attack against foreigners.

The officials said that investigations revealed 29-year old Abdel-Rahman Shaaban had communicated with two IS leaders on social media after they recruited him online.

One of them gave Shaaban daily lessons for a month after which he got in touch with the other, who asked him carry out an attack against tourists in either the resort city of Sharm al-Sheikh or Hurghada, to prove his allegiance to the group, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Shaaban rode a bus from the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh to Hurghada on July 14 and headed to a beach hotel where he killed two German women and wounded two Armenians, a Ukrainian and a Czech woman, using a knife that he bought earlier from a store, the officials added. Shaaban was arrested shortly after he was chased by hotel workers and security guards who handed him over to the police.

The Czech woman, who was hospitalized with back and leg injuries after the attack, died last week.

Shaaban is a resident of Kafr el-Sheikh where he attended the business school of the local branch of Al-Azhar University – the world’s foremost seat of learning of Sunni Islam and the target of mounting criticism in recent months over its alleged radical teachings and doctrinal rigidity.

The resort attack took place just hours after five policemen were killed in a shooting near some of Egypt’s most famous pyramids in the greater Cairo area. The Interior Ministry said last week that its forces killed four suspects and arrested two others who were behind the killing of the policemen.

Egypt’s government has been struggling to contain an insurgency by Islamic militants led by an Islamic State affiliate that is centered in the northern region of the Sinai peninsula, though attacks on the mainland have recently increased.

The extremist group has been mainly targeting security personnel and Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
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A gunman who killed one person and injured three others in a nightclub in southern Germany on Sunday was an Iraqi citizen who had lived in the country for a long time and was not an asylum seeker, police said, ruling out terrorism as a motive.

Konstanz police spokesman Fritz Bezikofer told the n-tv broadcaster that after an initial investigation into the events surrounding the shooting at the nightclub in Konstanz on the border with Switzerland investigators ruled out terrorism.

“The motives of the man who acted alone are unclear,” he said. “We are still investigating but the circumstances surrounding the events at the disco in the evening before the shooting are a bit clearer and this led us to rule out a terrorism background.”

The 34-year-old man was fatally wounded in a gunfight with police officers outside the music venue after they rushed to the scene shortly after the incident began around 0230 GMT. He died later in hospital. One police officer was also injured in the exchange of fire.

On Friday, a failed asylum seeker killed one person and injured six others in the northern city of Hamburg. Officials said he was an Islamist known to security forces and he was psychologically unstable.

 
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A spectacular fire at a music festival in Spain has forced the evacuation of more than 20,000 concertgoers in Barcelona, the regional government says.

Images show towering flames consuming a large outdoor stage Saturday night at the Tomorrowland electronic music festival at Barcelona’s Parc de Can Zam.

Barcelona firefighters say there were no serious injuries during the concert evacuation. The event’s private security told authorities they treated 20 people for minor injuries or anxiety during the evacuation.

Firefighters are investigating the cause of the fire. The Tomorrowland website published a statement saying the “stage caught fire due to a technical malfunction.”

The festival in Barcelona was one of several offshoot events of a main Tomorrowland festival in Belgium. Organizers say the Barcelona event has been canceled following the fire.
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Seven Turkish journalists were freed Saturday after spending nine months in prison, but they expressed sorrow that four of their colleagues were still being detained on charges of having aided terror groups.

The staff members from Cumhuriyet, a Turkish opposition newspaper, were released from Silivri jail on the outskirts of Istanbul. They must still stand trial, with the next hearing scheduled for September 11. If convicted, they face terms of up to 43 years in prison.

The journalists are charged with using their news coverage to support three groups Turkey considers terrorist organizations: the Kurkistan Workers’ Party, or PKK; the leftist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party; and the followers of a U.S.-based spiritual leader, Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of backing last year’s coup attempt.

“To be honest, I thought I would be very happy the moment I was released,” said cartoonist Musa Kart in a statement. “But I cannot say that I am very happy today. Unfortunately, four of our friends are still incarcerated in Silivri Prison. I do not think that the image of journalists in prison is one that becomes this country.”

An Istanbul court ruled Friday that the seven journalists should be freed, but it kept the most prominent of the Cumhuriyet journalists behind bars: commentator Kadri Gursel, investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu and chief executive Akin Atalay.

Sik, who was jailed in 2011-12 over a book he’d authored, was jailed again in December over the content of his Twitter feed. Prosecutors said they planned to charge him additionally for a statement in court Wednesday that was fiercely critical of Turkey’s ruling party.

Indictment called ‘trash’

In what was expected to be a defense statement, Sik lashed out with a tirade about press freedom. He called the indictment against him and his colleagues “trash” and referred to the judiciary as a “lynch mob.” He said the purpose of the charges against him and his colleagues was to scare and silence people who would speak out against the government.

Following last year’s coup attempt, Turkey instituted a crackdown on journalists that resulted in the closure of more than 100 media outlets.

The independent watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, which tracks press freedom issues, says Turkey jails more journalists than any other country, due to broadly worded laws on supporting terrorism and “insulting Turkishness.” As of December 2016, at least 81 journalists were being held in Turkish jails, all of them facing charges that they were working against the state, CPJ said.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday pardoned two women who were sentenced to prison terms for sending text messages to Georgian acquaintances about the movement of Russian military equipment on the eve of a war in 2008.

Two orders published by the Kremlin said Annik Kesyan and Marina Dzhandzhgava would not have to complete the rest of their sentences. It cited humanitarian principles for the decision.

Kesyan and Dzhandzhgava were found guilty of treason for sending text messages about the movement of Russian military hardware near the border with Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia not long before a war broke out in 2008.

Kesyan was sentenced to eight years in prison, while Dzhandzhgava was given a prison term of 12 years, according to Team 29, an association of lawyers based in St. Petersburg.

Putin in March pardoned a third woman, Oksana Sevastidi, who was also convicted of treason for sending a text message to a Georgian acquaintance about a train carrying Russian military equipment.

Rights groups had criticized the sentences given to the women.

Team 29 said in an article on its website that in April 2008 Kesyan had sent a text message to a friend saying “Yes, they are moving”, in response to a question about whether Russian tanks were moving in Sochi.

Dzhandzhgava was accused of treason for sending a text message to a Georgian acquaintance about the movement of a train carrying Russian troops, Team 29 said.
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The European Union has launched an infringement procedure against Poland over reforms the country made to its judiciary, which the EU fears will affect the impartiality of Poland’s courts.

EU commissioners decided to start the legal action Wednesday, prior to the publication of the new Polish law, with the main concern that the justice minister now can extend the mandates of judges, and dismiss and appoint court presidents.

“The new rules allow the minister of justice to exert influence on individual ordinary judges through, in particular, the vague criteria for the prolongation of their mandates thereby undermining the principle of irremovability of judges,” the European Commission said in a statement on Saturday.

Also of concern to commissioners is that female judges are required to retire five years earlier than their male counterparts.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party wants to push forward with the court reforms because it says the courts are too slow and bogged down with communist-era thinking.

According to the EU statement, the Polish ruling party has a month to respond to the notice, which informed the country it is infringing on EU laws.

The Polish government has called the court reforms an internal matter. Poland’s deputy foreign minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymanski, told the PAP news agency that the EU decision was “unfounded,” and he said the new law met legal requirements.
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Regional government authorities in southeastern Spain say a wildfire has forced the evacuation of 300 people and burned 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of pine forest.

Francisco Martinez, the regional head of agriculture, environment and rural development for Castilla-La Mancha, says residents from 10 small towns and visitors at a campsite have been relocated.

More than 150 firefighters supported by air units were fighting the fire Saturday. The blaze started Friday and spread into the National Park of Los Calares del Rio Mundo.

Spain and neighboring Portugal are prone to forest fires during the typically dry and hot summer months.
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Spain’s high court has rejected an extradition request from Brazil for a lawyer accused of involvement in corruption involving oil company Petrobras.

Brazilian prosecutors have accused Rodrigo Tacla Duran of helping to launder money for homebuilders in a scheme between building firms and executives at Brazil’s Petrobas, a police statement in November said.

The case against Duran, a dual Brazilian-Spanish citizen, will be processed in Spain, the high court said in a statement.

Duran is being investigated for belonging to an organized crime network, bribery and money laundering, the court added.

The office of Brazil’s general prosecutor said in a statement it would evaluate whether to send the case to Spanish authorities in the hope they would prosecute Duran. They did not say when a decision would be made.

It was not immediately possible to contact Duran’s lawyers.
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A Turkish court ruled on Friday that four prominent members of an opposition newspaper must remain in detention but freed seven others for the duration of the trial, in a case seen by critics of President Tayyip Erdogan as an attack on free speech.

Since the first hearing in the case on Monday, hundreds of people have protested outside the central Istanbul court against the prosecution of 17 writers, executives and lawyers of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper.

The court remanded in custody the chairman of Cumhuriyet’s executive committee Akin Atalay, its chief editor Murat Sabuncu, and reporters Kadri Gursel and Ahmet Sik until the next hearing on Sept. 11, citing the gravity of the charges they face.

‘Judicial probation’

Chief judge Abdurrahman Orkun Dag freed seven others until the next hearing on “judicial probation” — meaning they cannot leave the country and must report regularly to a police station.

Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to 43 years in jail for the newspaper staff, who stand accused of targeting Erdogan through “asymmetric war methods.”

The 324-page indictment alleges Cumhuriyet was effectively taken over by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for a failed coup last July, and used to “veil the actions of terrorist groups.”

Cumhuriyet says the charges are “imaginary accusations and slander.”

‘They’re telling us to kneel’

Gursel, along with Sabuncu and other senior staff, has been in pre-trial detention for more than 260 days.

“They’re telling us to kneel. Members of this rotten entity, with its gunmen and tyrants who lack honour, should know very well that until today I’ve only kneeled before my mother and father, and will never ever kneel before anybody else,” Sik told the crowded courtroom.

The court ordered an investigation into Sik, who once wrote a book critical of Gulen’s movement, for comments he made during his defense.

Social media posts comprised the bulk of evidence in the indictment, along with allegations that staff had been in contact with users of Bylock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers.

Following Friday’s ruling, lawyers marched outside the courthouse, chanting “right, law, justice,” as armored police vehicles and officers stood with tear gas and automatic weapons.

Former chief editor Can Dundar, who is living in Germany, is being tried in absentia, and the court said an arrest warrant for him remained in force.

Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have complained of deteriorating human rights under Erdogan. In the crackdown since last July’s failed coup, 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 detained or dismissed from their jobs.

Observers call for release of 17 defendants

In a joint statement, several international observers, including Reporters without Borders, called for the release of all 17 defendants, saying the case amounted to a “politically motivated effort to criminalize journalism.”

During Turkey’s crackdown, some 150 media outlets have been shut and around 160 journalists jailed, the Turkish Journalists’ Association says.

Authorities say the crackdown is justified by the gravity of the coup attempt, in which rogue soldiers tried to overthrow the government, killing 250 people, mostly civilians.

 
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