Journalists are familiar with the risks of reporting from war-torn lands, but the recent death or disappearance of three people in Turkey, Bulgaria and Mexico illustrates the growing dangers to reporters targeted for practicing their craft.

Authorities in Turkey are searching for Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post who has been missing since walking into the Saudi Arabian consulate last week in Istanbul. There are concerns that Khashoggi, who has written critically of the Saudi regime, may have been killed there.

Elsewhere, Bulgarian national radio reported an arrest Tuesday in the death of television reporter Viktoria Marinova, host of a show that reported on the alleged misuse of European Union funds by a Bulgarian building company.

And in Mexico this past week, journalist and activist Sergio Martinez Gonzalez was shot and killed by two people on a motorcycle as he ate breakfast with his wife at a cafe.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 43 journalists have been killed in the line of their work so far in 2018. Last year, there were 46 deaths for all of 2017. The numbers aren’t that unusual and, in fact, have been higher: 73 in 2015 and 2013, 74 in 2012, the committee said.

What’s different is the way they are losing their lives. At least 27 journalists have been individually slain so far this year, compared with eight losing their lives in the crossfire of violent conflicts, CPJ said. Of all the journalists killed since 1992, 848 were individually killed and 1,322 were lost in crossfire, CPJ said.

“Conflict deaths are one thing, targeted assassinations another,” said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

Similarly alarming is the spread of slayings into Europe, as opposed to countries like Mexico, where drug violence has made journalism risky for years, said Robert Mahoney, CPJ deputy executive director.

Besides Marinova’s death in Bulgaria, Jan Kuciak was found shot to death in Slovakia after investigating tax fraud among people close to the ruling party. In Malta, investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed after reporting frequently on government corruption for her blog.

“There are crooks everywhere you look now,” she wrote right before her death. “The situation is desperate.”

The killing of five staff members at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, by a gunman in June brought the threat home to the United States. Meanwhile, the United Nations has been involved in seeking the release from prison in Myanmar of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters reporters who had been investigating the killing of 10 Rohinga Muslim men and boys.

“It’s safe to say there is a pervasive worldwide threat directed to journalists and a perceived immunity for attacks,” Shapiro said. “And I think that’s very dangerous.”

The European cases appear to speak to the power of oligarchs involved in shady activities who act across borders without consequences, he said.

While careful not to place blame on President Donald Trump, experts say his attacks on the press as the “enemy of the people” have a corrosive effect that is noticed around the world. Journalists who may not have felt physical danger often find themselves the targets of threats and harassment online.

“We are conditioned to expect the United States to speak up for press freedom around the world and to defend it, not to belittle the press,” Mahoney said.

Journalism organizations have recognized the threat and have taken steps to protect reporters, the experts said.

“If there is an upside to this, I think that people who stand for democratic values are beginning to understand that scapegoating journalists and scapegoating the media is a step toward authoritarianism,” Shapiro said. 
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Ireland’s finance minister boosted budget day spending for the second year in a row as the government warned of economic “carnage” if neighboring Britain crashes out of the European Union without a divorce deal.

Having already pre-committed 2.6 billion euros ($2.99 billion) on increased public sector and planned infrastructure spending for next year, Paschal Donohoe, in Tuesday’s annual budget speech, almost doubled the remaining pot to 1.5 billion euros to dish out on further tax cuts and spending increases.

The state’s fiscal watchdog warned ahead of the budget that the booming economy did not need such additional stimulus.

But with an election potentially looming and the fast-growing economy exacerbating deficits in areas such as housing, a scrapping of a reduced VAT rate for the hospitality sector mostly funded the extra 700 million euro of spending.

That allowed the government to keep giving workers a small annual tax break it has promised to continue in future budgets, reverse welfare cuts imposed during a series of austerity budgets a decade ago, and boost infrastructure spending. 

“The shared progress we have made is real. However the risks and challenges that we now face are equally real,” Donohoe told parliament in a speech that went long past the allotted hour as he reeled off measure after measure but also struck a tone of caution with 25 different mentions of Brexit.

Donohoe said the government’s “central case” was that Britain and the European Union would reached a Brexit deal in the coming weeks, but the possibility of a no deal had influenced the financial decisions made.

Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warned of “carnage” if Britain crashed left without a deal, though he said that would mostly be felt by Britain, with Ireland likely to benefit from “huge solidarity” from fellow EU member states.

A further round of “Brexit-proofing” measures, which have had mixed results to date, were announced in the budget, including a 300 million euro loan scheme for small and medium sized businesses and the agriculture and food sectors to invest in future growth.

Balanced budget 

Donohoe said the best preparation for Brexit was responsible budgeting and he intended to balance the state’s books for the first time in more than a decade next year, an improvement on the tiny deficit originally planned but still not the surplus the central bank says should already be running.

The state’s independent fiscal watchdog, set up in response to the years of reckless spending that left the exchequer massively exposed when the 2008 financial crisis hit, voiced concerns over the “not very good budgetary practice” of recent years.

It is particularly worried by successive years of spending coming in over budget, which it fears will happen again next year.

Hotel and restaurant owners were unhappy at their return to the standard 13.5 percent VAT from the 9 percent rate introduced in 2011 to boost the then struggling sector. In a report in July, Ireland’s finance department said the lower rate had become a “significant deadweight.”

“#Budget19 will be known as an election budget paid for by the tourism industry,” Adrian Cummins, head of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, tweeted.

Ireland’s betting tax was also doubled to 2 percent, hitting the country’s largest operator, Paddy Power Betfair, which said it would have cost it 20 million pounds  ($26 million) this year. Its shares closed down 5 percent.

Donohoe outlined his planned “exit tax” for firms that move assets or migrate their tax residence from Ireland, setting it in line with the corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent but surprising business by introducing it immediately and not by 2020 when Ireland was obliged to come in line with EU rules.

A company would be liable to pay the exit tax on gains built up in Ireland from any asset — such as intellectual property — it planned to move out of the scope of the Irish tax authorities. The measure is part of a new EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive.

The budget will be the last before the next parliamentary election if Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael-led minority government cannot agree an extension to its “confidence and supply” deal with the largest opposition party, Fianna Fail.

They agreed to open talks on Tuesday but while Varadkar said he wanted to complete the review and potential renewal by the end of the month, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin saw talks lasting until until Christmas.
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Hacking computer networks, poisoning, election meddling — it’s hard to keep track of all the Russian spies and agents suspected of committing crimes abroad on the Kremlin’s behalf.

The latest development: Investigative group Bellingcat has revealed new information about a Russian doctor accused of the nerve agent poisoning in Britain in March.

These Russians aren’t just suspected of interfering in foreign elections or attacks on foreign soil. Western authorities believe Russian spies are working to thwart international investigations into Moscow’s past wrongdoing.

The Kremlin denies everything, calling it a Western smear campaign against Vladimir Putin’s resurgent Russia.

A look at some key plots and groups of alleged plotters:

Salisbury Suspects

Two Russian military intelligence officers are suspected of using nerve agent Novichok to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain in March. The attack prompted new Western sanctions on Russia and fears of a stepped-up Kremlin campaign against its enemies outside Russia’s borders.

British authorities published the passports that the two officers used to enter the U.K., apparently under assumed names: Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

Bellingcat investigators reported Monday that Petrov is in fact Alexander Mishkin, a doctor who works for Russian military intelligence agency GRU. The group had earlier identified Boshirov as decorated GRU agent Anatoliy Chepiga.

Russia’s government, and the suspects themselves, deny involvement in the poisoning.

Parking Lot Hackers

Four other Russians are suspected of trying to hack into the world’s chemical weapons watchdog — which just so happened to be investigating the Skripal poisoning, as well as the widely believed use of chemical weapons by Syria’s Russia-backed military.

The four were arrested, and Dutch authorities revealed last week how they found a car full of hacking equipment near the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. Dutch authorities say they were trying to infect the agency’s Wi-Fi network, and identified them as GRU agents.

Russia’s foreign minister says they were ordinary officials on a routine trip.

Research by The Associated Press and other media has found apparent links between the GRU and the four men, identified as Alexei Minin, Yevgeny Serebryakov, Alexei Morenets and Oleg Sotnikov.

Enemy Athletes

Those four Russians — and three others — are also suspected of cyberattacks aimed at disrupting international investigations into Russia’s state-sponsored doping program. The seven suspects were indicted by the U.S. Justice department last week.

The indictment alleges they targeted some 250 athletes who had publicly supported a ban on Russian athletes in international sporting competitions.

Authorities also accuse the GRU of sustained efforts to breach the computer systems of global and national anti-doping agencies, the International Olympic Committee and soccer’s FIFA.

Plane Crash Hackers

Additionally, GRU agents are suspected of trying to collect information on the international investigation of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over war-ravaged Ukraine in 2014.

British and Dutch authorities allege that a GRU cyber operation targeted the Malaysian Attorney General’s office and Malaysian police.

Investigators say they have strong evidence the Buk missile that downed the plane came from Russia, a charge Russia denies.

Meddling in the US

Yet another group of GRU agents is suspected of a damaging hack of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Special investigator Robert Mueller indicted 12 people identified as GRU officers in July as part of his probe into possible Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign.

In addition, Mueller also indicted 13 Russians working for a so-called troll factory suspected of spreading disinformation and manipulating U.S. voters online during the 2016 campaign.

Russia denies any meddling in the U.S. election.
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The unmasking of a second Russian intelligence officer suspected of carrying out a nerve-agent attack in England earlier this year is prompting behind-the-scenes fury in the Kremlin, which is likely to respond by purging the senior ranks of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, Russian media is reporting.

On Monday, the investigative website Bellingcat identified the second suspect responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia as Alexander Mishkin, a medical doctor working for Russia’s GRU.

The website said it had been able to make the identification after obtaining a scanned copy of his actual passport and confirming the details about the man both with people who knew him and by using other open source information.

Last month, Bellingcat, along with its partner investigators at the news-site Insider, identified the other suspected poisoner as special-forces veteran Anatoliy Chepiga, a colonel in the GRU.  Chepiga used the alias Ruslan Boshirov and Mishkin used the alias Alexander Petrov.

Former British foreign secretary William Hague says the revelations by Bellingcat and others on the GRU assassination attempt have “illuminated the duplicity of the endless denials” by the Kremlin of any Russian involvement in the murder bid.  “The eyes of other governments and the wider public will have been opened to what is really going on,” Hague said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin officials have dismissed allegations about GRU operatives mounting the murder attempt on Skripal, and they also reject claims of the Russian intelligence services carrying out other so-called active measures in Europe and elsewhere as “fantasies.”  The Kremlin has maintained variously that the Skripal poisoning never happened, that it was carried out by the British spies in order to blame Russia or that murky third parties were responsible.

Skripal was a double agent for British intelligence in the 1990s. In December 2004 he was arrested by Russian authorities, tried, convicted of high treason and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was included in a Cold War-style 2010 spy swap and settled in the English cathedral town of Salisbury.

Moscow’s denials have not been helped by the trail left behind by the would-be GRU assassins.  Nor has the Kremlin been helped by other GRU agents in recent Russian espionage operations in Europe, who appeared also weak on the basics of traditional spycraft.  Last week, Dutch and British authorities revealed a four-man GRU team attempted earlier this year to hack the computers in the Netherlands of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog.

The poison used, according to British authorities, was novichok, an especially dangerous nerve agent, and, analysts say, it was almost certainly Mishkin’s role to apply the poison, which is thought to have been smeared on the handle of Skripal’s front-door.

“Dr. Mishkin probably knew, better than most assassins, exactly what he was trying to do,” commented Ben Macintyre, a spy historian, in Tuesday’s edition of The Times.

British lawmaker Bob Seely, a member of the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said, “It is appalling that a medical doctor appears to have been part of a team of GRU operatives.”

A local woman not connected to the original attack in Salisbury died in July after being exposed to the same toxin, which was contained in a perfume bottle discarded in a trash bin.  The British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after unwittingly spraying the novichok on her wrists.

According to Bellingcat, Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin was born in 1979.  “He studied and graduated from one of Russia’s elite Military Medical Academies, and was trained as a military doctor for the Russian naval armed forces,” Bellingcat says, adding that the GRU recruited him while he was studying medicine and by 2010 had relocated to Moscow, where he received a national ID and travel passport under the alias Alexander Petrov.

Curiously, Mishkin’s cover identity retained a lot of his authentic biography, including his real birth-date, his first and patronymic names, and the first names of his parents.  For several years he used, inexplicably say analysts, the address of the GRU headquarters as his home address.

British Security Minister Ben Wallace warned Tuesday against underestimating Russian espionage.  While recent failings by the GRU had made it easy to mock the spy agency, he said, it would be foolish not to take them seriously.  

“It is easy to laugh at some of the GRU’s poor tradecraft and their abilities, but we should not underestimate them nor indeed the dangerous and reckless use of nerve agent on our streets,” he said.
…

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry says authorities will search Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul in connection with the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A ministry statement said Saudi Arabia indicated it was open to cooperation. There were no details about when the search would take place.

Khashoggi has not been seen since entering the consulate last week. Turkish officials have said he was murdered there, while Saudi Arabia says he safely left the building.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi officials need to prove that Khashoggi left the building after arriving last Tuesday to get a document for his upcoming marriage. His Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who waited for him outside the consulate, said he never came out of the building.

“We have to get an outcome from this investigation as soon as possible. The consulate officials cannot save themselves by simply saying, ‘He has left,'” Erdogan said Monday on a visit to Budapest.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last week that Riyadh was “ready to welcome the Turkish government to go and search our premises,” because it had “nothing to hide” about the missing journalist.

Khashoggi, who had been critical of the Salman government, has been living for a year in self-imposed exile in the United States after a Riyadh crackdown on dissent in the kingdom.

Protesters gathered outside the Saudi consulate Monday demanding to know what had happened to Khashoggi. Banners read, “We will not leave without Jamal Khashoggi.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Saudi Arabia to support a thorough, transparent investigation.

“We have seen conflicting reports on the safety and whereabouts of prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi,” Pompeo said in a statement late Monday. “State Department senior officials have spoken with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through diplomatic channels about this matter.”

His comments came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concern about the situation.

“Right now nobody knows anything about it. I do not like it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he and other lawmakers “agree if there was any truth to the allegations of wrongdoing by the Saudi government, it would be devastating to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and there will be a heavy price to be paid – economically and otherwise.”

A Turkish official told the Reuters news agency, “The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate.”
…

Around 12,000 people were evacuated after a fire and explosions at a rate of two to three a second hit a Ukrainian Defense Ministry ammunition depot early on Tuesday morning, officials said.

No casualties were reported.

Ukraine’s state security service said it was investigating possible sabotage, and the defense ministry’s spokesman said the fact that explosions were set off in different parts of the depot pointed to sabotage.

The depot is located in the Chernihiv region, 176 km (109 miles) east of the capital, Kyiv. A woman who lived 50 km away told the TV channel 112 she could hear the explosions.

“There are no victims, wounded, injured or killed among military personnel, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the local population,” a Defense Ministry statement said.” As of 7 a.m., the intensity of explosions is two to three explosions per second.”

The airspace in a 30 km radius was closed and road and rail transport suspended. The emergency services reported gas and electricity supplies to the area have been disrupted.

Hundreds of people and equipment were deployed to the site, a statement by the emergency services said, joined by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and the head of Ukraine’s armed forces Viktor Muzhenko. The president has called for a report.

Several large fires have hit ammunition and weapons depots in recent years, an additional drain on Ukraine’s military.

Fighting between Ukrainian troops and Moscow-backed separatist rebels has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014.

Last year, massive explosions at a military depot in the Vynnytsya region, 270 km west of Kiev, forced the authorities to evacuate 24,000 people.

Following that, a parliamentary defense committee inspected other depots. It warned that there were significant shortcomings in how the depot in the Chernihiv region was managed, according to a lawmaker who was on the committee.

A “number of shortcomings, including significant ones, were identified,” Dmitry Tymchuk wrote on Facebook. “As a result of this trip, I sent an address to the heads of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces, which listed the shortcomings identified with a request to intervene in the situation and solve existing problems.”

The defense ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says four Russians detained and expelled by the Dutch government on suspicion of spying were merely testing the IT systems of the Russian embassy.

The Netherlands said last week they had disrupted a Russian attempt in April to hack into the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an intergovernmental organization based in the Hague.  Authorities said they found the four accused with spying equipment in a hotel next door.

Describing the men’s trip as “routine,” Lavrov said Monday Moscow had not received a complaint from the Dutch government at the time.
…

Turkey sought permission Monday from Saudi Arabia to search Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul, looking for clues to the disappearance of a Saudi Arabian journalist whom Turkish officials have concluded was murdered inside the diplomatic outpost.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last week that Riyadh was “ready to welcome the Turkish government to go and search our premises,” because it had “nothing to hide” about the missing journalist, 59-year-old Jamal Khashoggi.

But it was not immediately clear whether Turkish officials were granted access to the consulate after Monday’s request. Saudi officials say the Turkish investigators’ claim that Khashoggi was murdered are “baseless.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi officials need to prove that Khashoggi left the building after arriving last Tuesday to get a document for his upcoming marriage. His Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who waited for him outside the consulate, said he never came out of the building.

“We have to get an outcome from this investigation as soon as possible. The consulate officials cannot save themselves by simply saying, ‘He has left,'” Erdogan said on a visit to Budapest.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing writer who had been critical of the Salman government, has been living for a year in self-imposed exile in the United States after a Riyadh crackdown on dissent in the kingdom.

Turkish officials summoned the Saudi ambassador for the second time on Sunday, telling the envoy it expected “full cooperation” in its investigation.

Protesters gathered outside the Saudi consulate Monday demanding to know what had happened to Khashoggi. Banners read, “We will not leave without Jamal Khashoggi.”

The U.S. says it is “closely following” the investigation but has not confirmed Turkish officials’ conclusion that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate. Police said earlier that about 15 Saudis arrived in Istanbul on two flights last Tuesday and were at the consulate at the same time as Khashoggi.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he and other lawmakers “agree if there was any truth to the allegations of wrongdoing by the Saudi government, it would be devastating to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and there will be a heavy price to be paid — economically and otherwise.”

Erdogan told reporters Sunday, “I am following the [incident] and we will inform the world whatever the outcome” of the official probe. “God willing, we will not be faced with a situation we do not want.”

Erdogan said police are looking at surveillance video of the consulate’s entrances and exits, as well as at the Istanbul airport.

A Turkish official told the Reuters news agency, “The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate.”

Reuters’ Turkish sources did not say how they thought Khashoggi was killed.

The Washington Post editorial board said Sunday that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States “bear inescapable responsibility” to act in response to Khashoggi’s disappearance.

The board said Saudi Arabia has to identify the 15 officials who were at the consulate and exactly what happened inside. Turkey, it said, must back up its conclusion Khashoggi was killed by making public any evidence it has.

Amnesty International’s Middle East research director, Lynn Maalouf, said if the reports of Khashoggi’s killing are true, it “would be an abysmal new low” and “amount to an extrajudicial execution. This case sends a shockwave among Saudi Arabian human rights defenders and dissidents everywhere, eroding any notion of seeking safe haven abroad.”

A New York Times account reported Turan Kislakci, a friend of Khashoggi and head of the Turkish Arab Media Association, said Turkish officials had called him and confirmed two things — that Khashoggi was killed and his body was dismembered.

Multiple media reports say that the group of 15 Saudis descended on the consulate Tuesday and later left. Turkish officials are trying to identify them as part of their probe into Khashoggi’s disappearance.

The New York Times account says its sources report the Saudis “had arrived to silence Mr. Khashoggi, but that it was not clear if the plan had been to bring him back to Saudi Arabia alive, and something went wrong, or if the intention was to kill him there.”
…

Trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped to 39 percent among Russians amidst controversy over his decision to raise the age of retirement for men and women, according to a poll released Monday, the lowest rating he has received in four years.

Putin’s trust rating has fallen nine percent since June, and 20 percent since November of last year. Thirteen percent of Russians said they did not trust their president, according to the independent Levada Center.

Putin signed a bill last week that will increase the state retirement age for men to 65 and for women to 60. The decision, deeply unpopular among most Russians, has sparked street protests.

Adding to the Russian president’s fall in ratings are rising prices and a decline in earnings.  

Putin’s lowest-ever rating in a Levada poll was 30 percent in August 2013, following the 2008 economic crisis and a series of protests.
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Pro-Russia Serb leader Milorad Dodik declared victory Sunday in the race to fill the Serb seat in Bosnia’s three-member presidency, deepening ethnic divisions in the country that faced a brutal war some 25 years ago.

Dodik said he was projected to win 56 percent of the vote in the election and his main opponent, Mladen Ivanic, 44 percent. The projection was made with 85 percent of ballots counted, he said.

“The people have decided,” Dodik said.

Preliminary official results are expected Monday. After polls closed, Dodik and Ivanic both said they were in the lead.

The presidency also has a Muslim and a Croat member. Dodik advocates eventual separation of Serbs from Bosnia. His election deals a blow to efforts to strengthen the country’s unity after the 1992-95 war.

The ballot was seen as a test of whether Bosnia will move toward integration in the European Union and NATO or remain entrenched in rivalries stemming from the 1992-95 war.

More than half of Bosnia’s 3.3 million eligible voters cast ballots, election officials said. Voters chose an array of institutions in Bosnia’s complex governing system, which was created by a 1995 peace accord that ended the war that killed 100,000 people and left millions homeless.

Election officials described the voting that took place as “extremely fair” despite several incidents.

The country consists of two regional mini-states — one Serb-run and a Muslim-Croat entity — with joint institutions in a central government. Along with the Bosnian presidency, voters were electing the Serb president and the two entities’ parliaments and cantonal authorities.

The campaign was marred by divisive rhetoric and allegations of irregularities that fueled tensions.

 
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The body of a popular Bulgarian TV journalist investigating alleged corruption involving politicians and EU funds was found over the weekend, police said.

Prosecutors said the body of 30-year-old Viktoria Marinova was found Saturday in a park in the northern city of Ruse. Her mobile phone, car keys, glasses and some of her clothes were missing.

Police say she was raped before she was killed.

“Her death was caused by blows to the head and suffocation,” Ruse prosecutor Georgy Georgiev said, adding that investigators were able to obtain a lot of DNA evidence.

Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said there have been no signs linking Marinova’s death to her work as a TV investigative journalist.

Another reporter from Marinova’s television station also said no one at the station had been threatened.

But the owner of a website involved in the investigation of the alleged corruption, and whose own journalists were interviewed by Marinova, said his group had gotten credible information that there would be trouble.

“Viktoria’s death, the brutal manner in which she was killed, is an execution. It was meant to serve as an example, something like a warning,” Asen Yordanov told the French News Agency Sunday.

Marinova worked for the Ruse-based television station TVN and hosted a talk show Detector.

The Reporters Without Borders global index of press freedom rated Bulgaria 111 out of 180 countries in 2018 — the lowest of any EU member.
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An opposition party favored by Latvia’s large ethnic Russian minority has won the Baltic nation’s parliamentary election, but it’s expected to face difficulties forming a ruling coalition after a vote that saw new populist parties surge and government parties falter.

Voters in Latvia, a member of the European Union and NATO, chose Saturday from more than 1,400 candidates and 16 parties to fill the country’s 100-seat parliament.

With all the votes counted, results Sunday from Latvia’s electoral committee showed the left-wing Harmony party winning with 19.8 percent support.

The country’s Russian minority is a major political force as it accounts about 25 percent of Latvia’s nearly 2 million people, a legacy of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation that ended in 1991.

Harmony is led by Nils Usakovs, the mayor of Riga, the capital, since 2009. But it has been shunned by other Latvian parties and kept out of the Cabinet over suspicions that it’s too cozy with Moscow, despite the party’s pro-EU stance.

Sunday’s result would give the party 23 seats at the Saeima legislature, one less it has now.

Voters, however, dealt a severe blow to Latvia’s current three-party ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis.

His centrist Union of Greens and Farmers came in sixth place with only 9.9 percent support, while the government’s junior partners — the conservative National Alliance and the liberal New Unity — were fifth and seventh with 11 percent and 6.7 percent of the vote.

Two new smaller parties running on a strong anti-establishment, anti-corruption agenda moved into the forefront of Latvia’s complex political landscape.

The populist KPV party — abbreviation for “Who Owns the State?” — led by the colorful actor-turned-lawmaker Artuss Kaimins and the anti-corruption New Conservative Party took second and third place, with 14.3 percent and 13.6 percent of the votes respectively.

The liberal For Development/For! party also made a good run and got 12 percent support.

A total of seven parties exceeded the five percent threshold for getting seats in parliament.

Voter turnout was 54.6 percent according to preliminary data, the lowest since Latvia regained independence in 1991, the Baltic News Service reported.

The result means difficult weeks ahead trying to form a broad government coalition that has at least 51 seats in parliament. Only KPV has so far indicated it is open for talks with Harmony, the possible kingmaker.

But Harmony’s pro-Russian stance is still an issue.

Relations between Russia and Latvia have been frayed by Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea Peninsula from Ukraine and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a strong interest in defending the rights of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been wary of increased Russian military presence in the region.

Earlier this year Harmony cut its cooperation deal with Putin’s United Russia party — a pact that was a major source of irritation to other Latvian parties.

 
…

Prime Minister Theresa May appealed to wavering British voters on Sunday ahead of a defining few months in which she hopes to secure a Brexit deal and face down opponents who say her EU exit plan is too hard, too soft, or just plain wrong.

May, tasked with delivering Britain’s exit from the European Union after a 2016 referendum which continues to divide the country, must find a way through deadlocked talks in Brussels and then convince a skeptical parliament to back the outcome.

On Sunday she launched an unusual plea for the backing of center-ground voters who had previously backed the Labour Party but felt alienated by a shift to the left under current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“I want voters who may previously have thought of themselves as Labour supporters to look at my government afresh. They will find a decent, moderate and patriotic program that is worthy of their support,” May wrote in an article for the Observer newspaper.

Hot off the heels of a speech at her annual conference which polls showed was well received, May sought to reinforce her message that the end of over eight years of austerity was in sight, and that she was capable of delivering reform beyond Brexit.

Labour called her message on austerity a con and said she was making “desperate pleas in an attempt to revive her failing administration.”

It looks increasingly likely May will have to rely on the support of so-called ‘moderate’ Labour lawmakers to win parliamentary approval for whatever Brexit deal she is able to strike with the EU.

On Sunday, Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said her 35 lawmakers would likely vote against the deal, and could instead support a second public vote on the terms of Britain’s EU exit.

Labour’s left-wing leadership have promised to vote against May’s deal unless it meets their tests – which it currently is unlikely to do.

The 10 votes of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party which May relies on to prop up her minority government are also in doubt, depending on what kind of compromise May has to strike in Brussels to resolve issues over the Irish border.

Critics within May’s own party, among them former foreign minister Boris Johnson, want her to ditch the current Brexit plan. However the Sunday Telegraph reported that a sizable euroskeptic faction could be willing to drop some of their objections to secure a deal.

If May fails to win a vote in parliament, Britain faces an unmanaged exit from the bloc, which businesses and economists fear could badly damage the economy.

The outgoing chief executive of insurance market Lloyd’s of London, Inga Beale, said her firm is accelerating Brexit contingency plans to transfer contracts to a Brussels subsidiary as she feel Britain is getting closer to leaving the EU without a deal.

But Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said the possible negative consequences for Britain, Ireland and other EU countries meant he thought the chances of securing a deal with the EU were “good.”
…

Dissatisfied Latvians rejected the right-of-center ruling coalition in Saturday’s parliamentary election, but suspicion of the left-leaning pro-Russia party makes it likely the next government will be another formation of ethnic Latvian parties to the right.

The result means a confirmation of the European Union and NATO member’s role as a bulwark against Russia in the increasingly hostile relationship between the West and President Vladimir Putin.

Latvians, fed up with corruption and weak democracy in the Baltic country of 2 million, punished the ruling three-party coalition, which lost almost half of its votes, mostly to two newcomers.

Anti-corruption

The populist KPV LV and anti-corruption New Conservatives won 14.1 and 13.6 percent respectively to become the second- and third-biggest parties.

“Our voters want a change from the old post-Soviet politics, which has been very powerful up to now,” said Janis Bordans, leader of the New Conservatives. “They want to have a stable Latvia, but a one which doesn’t stagnate.”

The New Conservatives, whose leadership features several former officers from the country’s anti-corruption agency, want to beef up law enforcement and get rid of a number of current officials who they say are corrupt.

Bordans said he would like to be the new prime minister.

“If we count out Harmony then it’s logical that we take responsibility. We have to be ready to do it and it is very realistic,” he said.

Ethnic divide

The pro-Russia party Harmony, which is supported by ethnic Russians who make up a quarter of the population, took 19.9 percent of the vote but will find it almost impossible to be part of any government.

The ethnic divide is strong in Latvian politics, and other parties have always shut Harmony out of government. It has tried to rebrand itself as a Western-style social democratic party but severed official ties to Putin’s United Russia party only last year.

“I don’t think this is a norm-breaking election. It carries on the tradition we have seen in Latvia that a quarter of the seats go to the Russian-speaking party,” said Daunis Auers, professor of comparative politics at the University of Latvia, adding that other parties would have no problem shutting out Harmony.

“Now they have no reason to form a government with Harmony. They can form a coalition among themselves,” he told Reuters.

Concerns about Russia

Before the election, some Latvians were concerned that a strong result for Harmony and the populist KPV could lead to their forming a government and bringing Latvia’s foreign policy closer to Putin’s Russia.

The result will lead to a more fragmented parliament of seven parties, of which six won between 10 and 20 percent support each. The forming of a government coalition could take months.

Harmony will get 24 seats and remain the biggest bloc. It is followed by the New Conservative Party with 16 seats, KPV LV with 15 seats, the National Alliance with 13 seats, Development/For with 13 seats, the Greens and Farmers Union with 11 seats and New Unity with eight seats.
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The Czech prime minister’s ANO emerged the strongest party in nationwide municipal elections Saturday, winning in all regional capitals except two, including Prague, in the first popular test for the minority government formed in July.

The municipal votes are held four times a year, and this one may carry more weight as local budgets have helped to keep the overall Czech fiscal balance in surplus in the past two years.

With 60 percent of the votes counted, the ANO of Andrej Babis came in third with 15.9 percent in Prague, where it won four years ago.

The capital’s budget is worth 70 billion crowns ($3.13 billion) or 1.4 percent of the Czech gross domestic product in 2018, surpassing the country’s 58 billion-crown defense spending.

ANO’s coalition partner in the minority government, the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), looked on course to have no member on the Prague city assembly for the first time ever as the oldest Czech party fared poorly across the country.

Babis, who called his party’s overall numbers a success, said after the vote that the CSSD result would not affect the two parties’ cooperation in government.

Czechs were also picking one-third of the upper chamber of parliament, the Senate. Most of the 27 seats contested will be decided in the second round, which takes place Oct. 12-13.

The CSSD will have just five candidates in the second round, not enough to retain the 12 seats it was defending in the vote, making the party likely to lose the post of the Senate speaker.
…

Turkish authorities believe that prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared four days ago after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, was killed inside the consulate, two Turkish sources said 

Saturday.

“The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate,” one Turkish official told Reuters.

The sources did not say how they believed the killing was carried out.

Saudi Arabia’s consul-general told Reuters on Saturday his country was helping search for Khashoggi, and dismissed talk of his possible abduction.

Khashoggi, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Washington for the past year, fearing retribution for his critical views on Saudi policies, entered the consulate on Tuesday to secure documentation for his forthcoming marriage, according to his fiancee, who waited outside. He has not been heard from  since.

Since then, Turkish and Saudi officials have offered conflicting accounts of his disappearance, with Ankara saying there was no evidence that he had left the diplomatic mission and Riyadh saying he exited the premises the same day.

Earlier on Saturday, Turkish officials said prosecutors had begun investigating Khashoggi’s disappearance, and a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party said authorities would uncover his whereabouts.
…

Pope Francis said Saturday that silence on sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church could “no longer be tolerated,” and he ordered a “thorough study” of all documents in Vatican offices that concern former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned in July.

Francis declared in a statement that the church had to “tackle the great scourge of abuse within and beyond” the institution. He said the church had a duty “to prevent such crimes from being committed in the future to the harm of the most innocent and most vulnerable in society.”

The pope, who has refused so far to comment on accusations he was aware of misdeeds and abuse committed by former American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick long before he accepted his resignation in July, now has called for an investigation of the paper trail on his case.

Francis ordered McCarrick, 88, the first cardinal in living memory to resign, to a life of prayer and penance.

The scandal reached new heights in August when Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., wrote a letter in which he called on the pope to resign because he had known of McCarrick’s sexual misconduct with seminarians for years without doing anything about it.

Vigano also accused other Vatican and American church leaders of being aware and covering up for the powerful cardinal.

The Vatican statement said Francis was “aware of and concerned by the confusion that these accusations are causing in the conscience of the faithful.”

Earlier this week and at this time of crisis for the church, because of the sexual abuse scandals, Francis opened a synod of bishops focused on youth, which will run until Oct. 28. More than 250 bishops from all over the world are attending the meeting, as well as 40 young people.

In a speech at the first working session, the pontiff said, “Brothers and sisters, may the synod awaken our hearts! The present moment, and this applies also to the church, appears to be laden with struggles, problems, burdens.”

During a morning Mass in St. Peter’s Square for the opening of the synod, the pope urged the bishops to dream of a future free of the mistakes and sins of the past.

American church leaders have been calling for an investigation into how McCarrick managed to rise in the church’s hierarchy despite his misconduct. Saturday’s statement appeared to be an initial response to the calls.

The statement said Francis “has decided that information gathered during the preliminary investigation be combined with a further thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See … to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively.”
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A Salvadoran woman whose unexpected recovery from a life-threatening condition was deemed a miracle, paving the way for the upcoming canonization of the late Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, said Friday she’s convinced he is a saint.

Speaking days before a planned pilgrimage to the Vatican along with her husband and thousands of others, Cecilia Maribel Flores also expressed hopes of meeting Pope Francis, who earlier this year approved the miracle and decided to elevate the martyred cleric to sainthood.

“We know that Romero is a saint, a man of God, who as a pastor defended his flock, defended the poor, the most needy, the victims,” Flores said during a visit to the hospital chapel where 38 years ago Romero was shot to death while celebrating Mass.

“What God has given me, I must share,” she added.

​Beloved archbishop

Romero, already known to many as “Saint Romero of the Americas,” was beloved among the working class and poor for defending them against repression by the army. He was equally loathed by conservative sectors who saw him as aligned with leftist causes as the country descended into a 1980-1992 civil war.

Crucial to Romero’s canonization, scheduled for Oct. 14, was Francis’ approval of a miracle attributed to his intercession in Flores’ case.

“If you believe in God or if you believe in anything, ask Him for your wife to be saved with a miracle” — that’s what a doctor told Alejandro Rivas in September 2015 after Flores, his wife, underwent an emergency cesarean section for their third child and was diagnosed with an infection that left her in a coma.

Suffering from internal hemorrhaging and with her kidneys on the verge of collapse, she was not expected to survive.

“They had told me that she was dying and I had to figure out what to do,” Rivas said Friday, “what was going to happen with her and with my children.”

​Prayers to Romero

Arriving back home he remembered his late grandmother had tried to instill in him her devotion to Romero, although it had never quite resonated for him. He asked his grandmother for help.

Later he picked up her Bible and inside found a card with Romero’s image. Kneeling, Rivas prayed to Romero for intervention.

He slept, woke up in the morning and returned to the hospital, where a nurse had stunning news: Flores had begun to improve around 2 or 2:30 a.m., the same time he had made his prayer.

“It left me frozen. I didn’t understand what was going on,” Rivas said. “Now I do understand, that it is an incredible miracle.”

Flores made a full recovery.

Beatified in 2015

Romero was previously beatified, a necessary step before canonization, in May 2015 in an emotional ceremony in the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador.

The day before his assassination, Romero sent a blunt message to the country’s military in his Sunday homily: “In the name of God and this suffering people, I implore you, I order you, in the name of God, to cease the repression.”

The gunman who killed him was contracted by right-wing death squads. A U.N. truth commission determined that one intellectual author of the assassination was Maj. Roberto d’Aubuisson, a founder of the conservative Arena party that governed the country from 1989 to 2009.

D’Aubuisson died in 1992. Neither he nor anyone else who may have ordered the killing was ever punished.

A 1993 amnesty decree prevented prosecution for civil war-era crimes for over two decades until it was declared unconstitutional in 2016.
…

The Yazidi community in Iraq and around the world expressed joy and hope after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2018 Peace Prize to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi activist and survivor of sexual slavery by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.

Murad will be sharing the prize with  Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who treated thousands of women victims of rape and sexual violence.

The Nobel Peace Committee praised Murad’s courage because she did not accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and shamed after abuse.

“She has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims,” the Norway-based Nobel Peace Prize Committee said.

Members of the Yazidi community told VOA their voices are now being heard and their plea for justice after the Sinjar massacre is being acknowledged by the world. 

Nagham Hasan, an Iraqi Yazidi activist and a gynecologist who offered treatment and counseling for many Yazidi women in refugee camps in Iraq including Nadia Murad, told VOA that the recognition of Murad is not just the recognition of the plight of Yazidi women, but also everyone else in Iraq who suffered at hands of extremists.

“When Nadia escaped her captivity and arrived to the camp in Sinjar she was traumatized and afraid, but now she blossomed into this strong woman and became the voice of all men and women victims of sexual violence,” Hasan said.

Hasan’s work was recognized in 2016 when she was awarded the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award for “promoting gender equality, combating gender-based violence, and providing psychological support for survivors of violence.”

Women struggle

Mirza Dinay, a Yazidi physician who helped hundreds of Yazidi girls seek asylum in Germany, told VOA that he is thrilled that Murad got this prize, which is a symbol of women’s struggle against sexual violence worldwide. 

“This is a win for Iraqis, Kurds and the Yazidi community and I hope this will encourage the Iraqi government to provide more support to the girls and women survivors of sexual violence,” Dinay said. 

Dawood Saleh, a Yazidi man from Sinjar who has resettled in the U.S., told VOA that Murad’s persistence in making the world listen to Yazidis’ plight has paid off.

“As a Yazidi survivor from IS genocide I feel happy that Nadia received this award. It means to me that Yazidis have value in the world,” Saleh said.

Murad’s reaction

According to United Nations, at least 10,000 Yazidis were either killed or abducted during the IS attack on Sinjar in 2014. The attack sparked international outcry and condemnation.  

Murad was one of those kidnapped by IS in Sinjar mountain in northwestern Iraq. She was sold several times as a sex slave to different IS members before she managed to escape after 3 months in captivity.

In reaction to Friday’s announcement, Murad told Nobel Committee that she did not think that she had the strength to do the work she has been doing. 

She said she derived her strength from thinking about what happened to her community and from the loss of many of her family members including her mother. 

“This prize will make the voices of women who suffered from sexual violence in conflict heard, especially the women in minorities like my community the Yazidis. It tells us that our voices will be heard,” Murad told the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Murad has been a strong advocate for justice for all Yazidis who were kidnapped and abused by IS and continues to raise her voice against sexual violence.

“Whatever has happened to Yazidis, from August 3rd (2014) till now, they should get their justice. An international tribunal should be formed as soon as possible and Yazidis and other minorities who cannot protect themselves should be protected,” Murad told VOA in 2016 during an exclusive interview. 

Yazidi rights groups estimate about 3,000 women and children remain missing, while thousands live under dire conditions in refugee camps in Iraq.
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is stepping up his rhetoric over Cyprus in a move seen by analysts as taking on a more assertive approach that could result in a permanent partition of the divided Mediterranean island.

Addressing parliament Tuesday, Erdogan issued a stark warning. “No step can be taken in Cyprus or in the Aegean Sea at the expense of Turkey. Those who do disregard Turkey would put their own existence entirely at risk,” Erdogan said to his cheering deputies in the ruling AK Party.

Cyprus is divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since a Turkish military invasion in 1974 in response to an Athens-inspired coup. Ankara only recognizes the Turkish Cypriot government.

Tensions over the island are being stirred by the discovery of large offshore natural gas reserves. The find has sparked an exploration rush by international companies. Ankara maintains that both administrations on the island should control the energy exploration. The Greek Cypriots reject such calls, saying it is the only internationally recognized government on the island.

Erdogan has dispatched warships to back Turkish Cypriot claims. Analysts suggest the deployment is likely to be only saber-rattling.

“There is the new deal with France where it will position its warships in Cyprus in Larnaca [Greek Cypriot port],” former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen said. “According to some other reports, there will be U.S. warships escorting the Exxon [an American energy company] exploration, so Turkey will not be able singlehandedly to stop new exploration.”

EU membership

Ankara’s robust stance over Cyprus is seen by some observers as a sign of a broader shift in policy. “Erdogan has realized the classic Turkish policy to show muscle to show strength,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “I don’t expect any solution in Cyprus in political terms.”

The allure of Turkey joining the European Union has been a powerful impetus for Ankara backing reunification efforts of the island. With the Greek Cypriot side already an EU member and holding a veto over Turkey’s membership bid, Brussels says the island has to be reunified if Ankara’s bid is to succeed.

Ankara’s EU dream is now widely seen as over, with the economy in crisis and growing human rights concerns.

“With Turkey and the EU, there is no talk about EU membership; there are no talks about even a new customs union,” Selcen said. “Erdogan insists now that Turkey should have this businesslike transactional relationship with the EU. ”

The collapse in Turkey’s EU bid is seen as giving Erdogan a freer hand over Cyprus. “With Turkey not becoming a full member in the foreseeable future, why should Erdogan make any concessions on Cyprus to the Greek side?” asked international relations professor Bagci.

“In Turkish domestic politics, Tayyip Erdogan was very heavily criticized for making concessions to the Greek side,” Bagci added. “So he is now not going to make any more concessions.”

Previous reunification efforts

When coming to power as prime minister in 2003, Erdogan invested heavily in seeking a solution to reuniting the divided island. Under intense pressure by Erdogan, the then-Turkish Cypriot president, Rauf Denktas, reluctantly agreed to a U.N.-backed plan to reunite Cyprus. In 2004 simultaneous referendums, the U.N. plan was overwhelmingly backed by Turkish Cypriots but rejected by Greek Cypriots.

Subsequent U.N. efforts to reunite Cyprus have ended in deadlock, the most recent being last year. U.N. Security-General Antonio Guterres is to decide this month what to do to reunite the island.

Analysts say reunification efforts are likely to be further complicated by Erdogan’s announcement last month to increase the Turkish military presence on the island. Turkey’s military presence, estimated at around 30,000 strong, is a significant obstacle to reunification efforts. Nicosia is calling for a total Turkish withdrawal from the island.

“Not to reduce the military presence but to increase it, is showing muscles. Turkey is going back to the policy of the 1990s,” Bagci said. “That is a policy of showing military strength, and not to be open for any solution on the island.

“The Greeks have to realize there is only one solution, the recognition of the north [of the island] as an independent Turkish Cypriot state,” Bagci added.

Some observers suggest Erdogan’s shift on Cyprus is motivated by his courting of nationalist voters ahead of next year’s key local elections.

“The new muscular approach toward Cyprus could be to do with domestic politics rather than foreign policy,” said Selcen. “Because we are going toward the local elections, there is this delicate balance between AKP and nationalists, who call for a strong stance against Greek Cypriots.”

Turkish local elections are due to be held in March 2019; few observers expect any softening of Erdogan’s stance on Cyprus ahead of the crucial polls, declared a priority by the Turkish president. Analysts point out that even after the elections, there remains little incentive for Ankara to back reunification efforts given its EU bid is all but dead, at least for the foreseeable future.
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The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist treating victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State in Iraq.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement that the award recognizes “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”

“Mukwege is the foremost, most unifying symbol, both nationally and internationally, of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflicts,” the statement said. “His basic principle is that justice is everyone’s business.”

Murad, herself a victim of war crimes, “refused to accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and ashamed of the abuses to which they have been subjected,” the statement said. “She has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee received nominations for 216 individuals and 115 organizations. Only a few dozen of them are known, the committee keeps the list of nominations secret for 50 years, although some candidates are revealed by their nominators.

Among those put forward this year are the Syrian civilian aid group White Helmets, Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Edward Snowden and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Last year’s winner was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry were awarded earlier in the week.

The literature prize was not given this year because of a sexual misconduct scandal at the body that decides the award.

The Nobel Memorial Prize for economic sciences will be awarded Oct. 8.

​The prize will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will. It comes with an award of $1.1 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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A Saudi Arabian journalist has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this week.

Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national and a contributor to The Washington Post, has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since last year when Saudi authorities began to crack down on dissident voices. The journalist has been critical of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.

Khashoggi went to the consulate Tuesday to obtain documents for his wedding.

Reported missing

His fiancee waited from him outside the consulate, but Khashoggi never came out of the building, she said.

She reported him missing, and Turkey summoned the Saudi ambassador.

Media reports say the Saudi ambassador met Wednesday with Turkey’s deputy foreign minister.

After the meeting, Saudi Arabia denied detaining Khashoggi.

Turkey, however, claimed to have information that Khashoggi was being held at the consulate.

“If Saudi authorities surreptitiously detained Khashoggi it would be yet another escalation of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s reign of repression against peaceful dissidents and critics,” said Sarah Leah Whiteson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director. “The burden of proof is on Saudi Arabia to produce evidence for its claim that Khashoggi left the consulate alone, and that Saudi agents have not detained him.”

‘A missing voice’

On Friday, The Washington Post printed a blank column with the headline “A Missing Voice” in solidarity with Khashoggi.

The journalist’s fiancee told the newspaper that Khashoggi “had been concerned about going to the consulate.” She said, “How comfortable can one be if he is not liked by his country?”

Sherif Mansour, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said “Given the Saudi authorities’ pattern of quietly detaining critical journalists, Khashoggi’s failure to emerge from the Saudi consulate on the day he entered is a cause for alarm.”

CPJ said in a statement it has recently documented a steadily increasing number of bloggers and journalists detained in unknown locations without charges since the start of what Saudi authorities term an anti-corruption campaign in September 2017.
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Western nations are warning Russia to stop aggressive behavior, including a violation of an arms control treaty, widespread cyberattacks and attempts to kill citizens in other countries. At a NATO meeting in Belgium Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Russia is violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Netherlands said it prevented a Russian cyberattack on an organization investigating chemical weapons use. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports on coordinated response.
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The U.N. refugee agency warns populist politics and fear-mongering about immigration are eroding international protection for refugees fleeing conflict and persecution.  The UNHCR protection chief spoke about growing protection concerns at the agency’s annual refugee conference. 

Conflict, persecution and violence have displaced a record 68.5 million people around the world.  Most are internally displaced, while 25 million are refugees.  These are people who have crossed international borders and are entitled to international protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

But U.N. Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Turk says this right is slipping away.  He says some governments are taking political and legal measures to narrow the concept of who is a refugee.  He says being able to flee and be recognized as a refugee can be a matter of life and death.  

Unfortunately, he notes the issue of security is too often used to adopt restrictive approaches to deny refugees protection.

“Of course, there is no doubt governments need and must ensure the security of their citizens, but this is entirely complementary with providing refuge to people who flee persecution,” said Turk.

Turk says refugees are the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence and terror.  He says they often have rejected extremism and been targeted, forcing them to flee for their lives.  He says it is unjust to deny security to people who need it most.

“I think both in the global North and the global South, I have to say, it is our observation, that the dehumanization of refugees, of migrants, of IDP’s, of stateless individuals has become a worrying trend,” said Turk. “It results from inappropriate language, misinformation, deterrence, detention, separation of families and children, and ‘warehousing.”

Turk says xenophobia, racism, and bigotry often are driven by fear, anger and anxiety within communities.  He says they must be confronted and addressed.  He warns history shows how the mistreatment of the foreigner paves the way for the mistreatment of the citizen.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday Russia’s violation of a global arms control treaty is “untenable” and warned the U.S. would be forced to match Moscow’s military capabilities if it continues to violate the pact.

The U.S. maintains Russia’s Novator 9M729 cruise missile violates the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement that bans medium-range missiles capable of striking Europe or Alaska. The treaty bans all nuclear and conventional ground-launched and cruise missiles of intermediate range.

Mattis told reporters Thursday after a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels the U.S. is reviewing its military and diplomatic options because of Russia’s continued violation of the treaty.

“Russia must return to compliance with the INF Treaty or the U.S. will need to match its capabilities to protect U.S. and NATO interests. Make no mistake, the current situation with Russia in violation of this treaty, is “untenable,” Mattis said.

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchinson said if Russia does not comply with the treaty, the U.S. will explore ways to “take out” Russia’s cruise missile system. She later said she did not mean the U.S. would strike Russia pre-emptively, but wanted to emphasize the importance of Moscow’s adherence to the treaty.

Russia has consistently denied any such violation and has asserted that the U.S. has positioned missile defense systems in violation of the pact.

The U.S. initially accused Moscow early last year of deploying the cruise missile system.

Mattis’ remarks may exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations, which have deteriorated to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War due to Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, its continuous bombing of Syria and it’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
…

At an upcoming U.N. disarmament conference, the United States vows to push back against Russian and Chinese threats against the peaceful use of outer space. The U.N. General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security opens Monday in New York and is scheduled to run five weeks.

Ambassador Robert Wood, U.S. permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, laid out some of Washington’s main priorities in advance of the U.N. disarmament and security meeting.

He said the U.S. delegation plans to actively push against issues that go against U.S. and allied security interests. Foremost among these, he said, was the U.S. determination to counter Russian and Chinese outer space and cyber threats.

He said the U.S. dismisses claims that activities by Moscow and Beijing are aimed at preventing the militarization of outer space.  

“What they want to do is to limit the United States’ ability to operate in space by in essence going forward with an initiative that allows them to be able to attack satellites and other peaceful space vehicles through the use of anti-satellite weapons,” Wood said.

In 2014, the Russian and Chinese governments submitted a new version of a draft treaty on the prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space Treaty (PPWT).  When they introduced the draft treaty, they said, “We consider a legally binding ban on placement of weapons in outer space as one of the most important instruments of strengthening global stability and equal and indivisible security for all.”

Ambassador Wood, during a press conference, said the proposed treaty was “not verifiable” and does not deal with the fundamental issue, which is banning anti-satellite weapons – terrestrial based anti-satellite weapons. The treaty does not cover that subject. He said that was one of the major threats to the peaceful use of outer space.

“When we ask the Russians and Chinese why do you not take on this issue in full, they kind of fudge (obfuscate) and do not really address the issue,” he said.

Wood said a second priority is to uphold the norm against chemical weapons use. Over the past year, he noted, Russia has worked to discredit the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The main function of the OPCW is to ensure the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.   

“You have seen many public statements by Russian officials dismissing independent analyses, independent investigations, the work of the OPCW with regard to Syria’s chemical weapons use. So, this, first and foremost, is a major challenge trying to counter this very, very strong Russian propaganda effort,” he said.  

Wood said the U.S. and its allies have to push back against Russian claims that Syria never used chemical weapons. He said both Syria and Russia must be held accountable for these crimes.

 
…

Pope Francis urged Catholic bishops to dream of a future free of the mistakes of the past as he opened a global church leadership meeting Wednesday amid renewed outrage over the priestly sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

Yet down the block from the Vatican’s synod hall, about two dozen abuse survivors staged a sit-in, demanding their cause be taken up at the meeting and voicing outrage that some of the delegates had covered up for abusive priests.

“Make ‘Zero Tolerance’ Real,” read one protest sign.

Francis welcomed more than 250 priests, bishops and cardinals — as well as 34 young Catholics — to a monthlong meeting on ministering to future generations, urging young and old to listen to one another without prejudice.

He prayed for God’s help to ensure the church “does not allow itself, from one generation to the next, to be extinguished or crushed by the prophets of doom and misfortune, by our own shortcomings, mistakes and sins.”

The Oct. 3-28 synod comes amid new revelations about decades of sexual misconduct by priests and cover-ups in the U.S., Chile, Germany and elsewhere. That has sent confidence in Francis’ leadership to all-time lows among the American faithful.

31 percent support

A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that just 31 percent of U.S. Catholics felt the pope was doing an excellent or good job in addressing the abuse issue, down from 45 percent in January and 55 percent in 2015.

It has been a disastrous year for the pope on the abuse front, after he botched a prominent cover-up scandal in Chile before changing course. More recently, he has been accused of rehabilitating an American ex-cardinal who pressured seminarians to sleep with him.

Those cases, coupled with the release of devastating studies about decades of abuses and cover-ups in Pennsylvania and Germany that predated his papacy, have fueled doubts about his oft-stated pledge of having “zero tolerance” for that, since implicated bishops remain in place.

“Pope Francis talks about ‘zero tolerance,’ and that bishops who cover up should be removed and put on trial,” said Alessandro Battaglia, who was 15 when he was abused by a Milan-area priest who last month was convicted and sentenced to over six years in prison.

The current archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, testified at the trial of the Rev. Mauro Galli that he had transferred Galli to another parish rather than report him to police or keep him away from other potential victims, as Battaglia’s family had requested.

Despite publicity about the case, Francis named Delpini archbishop of Milan in July and named him a papal delegate at the synod.

“What is this ‘zero tolerance’?” Battaglia asked at the protest Wednesday. ‘If he wants to give a sign of zero tolerance and coherence and credibility, remove him [Delpini].”

Provolo Institute

Among those participating in the protest were the hearing-impaired victims of the notorious Antonio Provolo Institute in Verona, Italy, where deaf children were sodomized for years by Catholic priests and brothers. The victims have found no justice even though Francis and the Vatican were informed of their plight in 2014. They are now preparing a case to take to Italian prosecutors.

“We think young people should question the way the church has dealt with this in the past,” said Matthias Katsch of the Ending Clergy Abuse global advocacy group.

Francis didn’t refer directly to the abuse scandal in his homily at Mass or later Wednesday in his opening speech to the synod. He did, however, call for an end to the “scourge of clericalism” — the culture that puts clergy on a pedestal and unaccountable to their flocks, which Francis has blamed for the scandal.

“Clericalism is a perversion and is the root of many evils in the church,” he told the delegates. “We must humbly ask forgiveness for this and above all create the conditions so that it is not repeated.”

Francis choked up during his homily when he welcomed two Chinese bishops to the gathering, the first time Chinese bishops have attended a Vatican synod. That was made possible thanks to a landmark agreement with Beijing over bishop nominations that unified the Chinese Catholic leadership for the first time in decades.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Israel on Wednesday for the latest in a series of joint government consultations highlighting the countries’ close bond seven decades after the Holocaust, even as recent developments have tested the tight ties. 

Her two-day visit is expected to focus on bilateral economic issues, with an emphasis on innovation, technology and development projects. But looming in the background will be sharp differences in Israeli and German policies toward Iran and the Palestinians. 

Merkel, who is accompanied by much of her Cabinet, a large business delegation and her new czar for combatting anti-Semitism, will visit Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and receive an honorary doctorate from Haifa University. It’s the seventh such joint government meeting since Israel and Germany established the tradition a decade ago. 

Merkel headed to Jerusalem shortly after landing for dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Germany is Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe and for the past few decades has been perhaps its strongest ally. Israel was established three years after the end of World War II, and the German government has paid billions in reparations to Holocaust survivors and positioned itself as a leader in combatting anti-Semitism. 

But differences have been exacerbated following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. 

Netanyahu has been one of Trump’s staunchest international supporters, lauding him for pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal that Merkel and other world leaders helped negotiate in 2015. Netanyahu says the deal, which curbed Iran’s nuclear program, does not include enough safeguards to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapons capability. 

Trump also has largely refrained from criticizing Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank — a frequent European complaint — recognized Jerusalem as its capital and moved the U.S. embassy there. He also has cut funding to the Palestinians and fully pinned the blame for stalled Mideast peace talks on them. 

Netanyahu’s rapport with Merkel has been cordial and even cool at times. Merkel has continued to champion the traditional approach to peacemaking, calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state and for Israel to refrain from unilateral steps to undermine its prospect. Germany, for instance, has been among the European countries calling on Israel to refrain from carrying out its plans to demolish a West Bank hamlet it says was illegally built. 

Israel has offered to resettle the 180 Bedouin Palestinian residents of the Khan al-Ahmar encampment a few miles (kilometers) away. But Palestinians and their European backers say the demolition is aimed at displacing Palestinians in favor of settlement expansion and would deal a devastating blow to hopes for Palestinian statehood. 

Israel’s Supreme Court recently rejected a final appeal against the plans and residents are bracing for the move any day. Israeli forces are unlikely to carry it out though during Merkel’s brief stay for fear of sparking a crisis. 

Regardless, Israeli officials say they don’t expect that issue — or Merkel’s long held preference to maintain the Iran deal — to overshadow the visit, which is expected to bring about new economic agreements, the creation of a formal youth exchange and a renewed commitment to combating anti-Semitism, after Israel raised alarm over several recent cases in Germany. 

Shimon Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany, said that despite the Israeli government’s growing alliances with several eastern European countries in the battle against radical Islam, Germany remains its strongest and most significant European backer. 

“These routine consultations have created a symbolism for the relationship that should not be overlooked,” he said. “Germany doesn’t always see eye to eye with Israel … but it is the leading supporter of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1965, after which Germany began paying reparations for the Nazi-led Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were murdered. 

The first joint consultation was in March 2008, when Merkel and her Cabinet arrived to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence. During that three-day visit, Merkel addressed the Israeli parliament, in German, and expressed shame over the Holocaust. The 20-minute speech earned Merkel a standing ovation.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday strongly defended a prospective Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline as economically feasible and voiced hope that European Union nations will be able to resist U.S. pressure to thwart the project.

U.S. officials have warned that Washington could impose sanctions on the undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The U.S. and some EU nations oppose it, warning it would increase Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. The U.S. is also interested in selling more of its liquefied natural gas in Europe.

Speaking Wednesday after talks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in St. Petersburg, Putin noted that Bulgaria caved in to pressure and dumped the Russian South Stream pipeline.

He added that he hopes that “Europe as a whole won’t look like Bulgaria and won’t demonstrate its weakness and inability to protect its interests.”

“Russia always has been and will remain the most reliable supplier,” Putin said, adding that the Russian gas supplied via pipelines is significantly cheaper than U.S. liquefied gas. “Supplies come directly from Yamal in Siberia. There are no transit risks.”

It would be “silly and wasteful” if Europe opts for a more expensive option, hurting its consumers and its global competitiveness, Putin charged.

Ukraine, which has served as the main transit route for Russian gas supplies to Europe, has strongly opposed the Russian pipeline, fearing that it would leave its pipeline empty. The two ex-Soviet neighbors have been locked in a bitter tug-of-war after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Kurz spoke in support of Nord Stream 2 but also emphasized the importance to continue supplies via Ukraine.

“It’s very important that Ukraine’s interests as a key transit country be upheld,” he said.

Putin has previously pledged to consider the continuation of gas supplies via Ukraine if it settles a commercial dispute with Russia over previous gas supplies.
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