British Prime Minister Theresa May got plenty of attention for her trip to Africa last week. Videos of her dancing — one with secondary students who greeted her in South Africa and another with her dancing with young scouts in Kenya — went viral.

But May’s dance-floor diplomacy didn’t overshadow her larger mission in Africa, which was to forge business ties for a post-Brexit Britain. In Cape Town, she pledged more than $5 billion to support African markets and also promised that her country would overtake the United States to become the biggest investor in Africa out of the G-7 countries.

Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at the Lagos-based research firm SBM Intelligence says Britain is desperately trying to find new trade partners. “Because Brexit isn’t working out as it had expected,” he said. “Brexit is seven or eight months away now and they’re so many contentious issues that will need to be resolved.”

Playing catch up to China

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her own recent foray to Africa, visiting Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana, also seeking economic benefit. China has played the role of Africa’s largest trading partner for the past nine consecutive years, and both Britain and Germany have a lot of catching up to do.

According to British government figures, the country’s total trade with Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya — the countries May visited — amounted to $16.9 billion in 2016. That’s less than 2.5 percent of the $712 billion in goods and services that Britain exchanged with the European Union in the same year, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Germany declared 2017 a key year for its Africa policy and hosted African presidents in Berlin at a G-20 summit to boost private investment. However, to date, Germany only has about 1,000 companies that are active in Africa.

In comparison, China has 10,000 firms in Africa. It has financed more than 3,000 infrastructure projects on the continent, building thousands of kilometers of highways, generating thousands of megawatts of electricity and creating thousands of jobs across the continent.

“China is challenging all the Western countries, even the United States. China has no historical background of colonialism [in Africa] so many Africans prefer working with China,” said Bakary Sambe, a development and peace studies analyst in Senegal.

This week, several African presidents are in China for the 2018 Forum for Africa-China Cooperation, which China’s Foreign Minister Wang Li described as the biggest summit of all time.

But, Nii Akwuetteh, a prominent independent Ghanaian policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., recommends African politicians, businesses and civil society members be wary of both the West and the East.

“If I had my way, they would be far more vigilant and tougher against Merkel, against May, and even against the Chinese, because all these global powers are rushing to Africa now and they all claim that they love Africa and they want to help. Well, we all heard that before and it led to slavery and it led to colonialism,” he said.

Stopping migration

Akwuetteh said May and Merkel are motivated in part by a desire to stop the waves of African migrants showing up on Europe’s shores.

“They are doing this because their populace don’t like Africans. Merkel is very clear, that’s why she’s doing this — we want to create jobs in Africa so you all don’t come to Europe,” he said.

Merkel said she wants to work with these governments to tackle issues the three countries are struggling with, such as the Boko Haram insurgency and widespread unemployment.

One of the agreement she said was an MOU signed between German automaker Volkswagen and partners in Ghana and Nigeria. Volkswagen announced last week it would assemble cars in Ghana and make Nigeria an automotive hub.

Ayisha Osori, the head of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, commends this effort and says African leaders need to acknowledge the reasons why citizens are risking their lives to flee.

“It’s a good deal to create more jobs to keep people away from migrating, coming over to Europe in less numbers. Looking at the people who try to cross the desert, that go by sea or by boat, what are they running away from? What is it about their lives that is making them to take such dangerous journeys?” Osori asks.

U.S. role?

In this scramble for Africa, the United States looms in the background, contributing mostly military support. The Brookings Institution says U.S.-Africa relations will not reach their potential if the executive office fails to provide diplomatic and policy leadership.

But U.S. President Donald Trump has shown little interest in the continent and angered many Africans with offensive remarks.

Though Trump has no announced plans of going to Africa, first lady Melania Trump announced in August that she will visit — without the president.
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Pope Francis on Monday recommended silence and prayer to counter those who “only seek scandal,” division and destruction in what appeared to be an indirect response to allegations that he had covered up for a U.S. cardinal embroiled in sex abuse scandals.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal envoy in Washington, stunned the faithful last month by claiming Francis allegedly lifted unconfirmed Vatican sanctions against disgraced U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope resign.

“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer” is the path to take, Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives.

Hours after Vigano made the claim in a statement given to conservative Catholic news media, Francis had told journalists seeking his response that he “won’t say a word” about the claims by the disgruntled former diplomat.

In his homily Monday, Francis indicated he takes his cue from God on whether to speak out or not about Vigano’s allegations.

“May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we should speak and when we should stay silent,” Francis said. “This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society.”

“Truth is meek, truth is silent, truth isn’t noisy,” the pope said in his Mass remarks.

Vigano has contended that while Benedict XVI was pope, he had sanctioned McCarrick, including avoiding public life, but that Francis later allegedly lifted the punishment.

During the years that McCarrick was purportedly under sanctions, the cardinal celebrated public Masses and attended other public functions, even before Francis became pontiff. Vigano claimed that he told Francis, shortly after he was elected pontiff in 2013, that McCarrick had been given sanctions by Benedict.

Weeks before Vigano went public with his claims, Francis in July yanked McCarrick’s cardinal rank after U.S. church panel deemed credible the American had sexually abused an altar boy. McCarrick has denied wrongdoing in that case.

It was the first time that a prelate had lost his cardinal’s rank in a sex abuse scandal, and the move was widely viewed as an indication that Francis was trying to make good on promises to crack down on clerics who either were found to have abused minors or adults or who covered up for priests who did.

The Vatican let several days pass before attempting to knock down some of Vigano’s contentions. On Sunday night, a former Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, and his English-language assistant, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, jointly disputed the prelate’s claims about an embarrassing encounter he arranged with U.S. anti-marriage crusader Kim Davis during Francis’ visit in the United States in 2015.

Vigano last week had insisted that Francis knew very well who Davis was and that the Vatican’s top brass had given advance approval.

Rosica said Vigano had told them that Francis had chewed him out for “deceiving” him about the meeting and for having not told the pope that Davis had been married four times. Lombardi, who served as spokesman for both Benedict and for a few years also for Francis, contended that the papal envoy should have figure out that the meeting would have caused a furor.

The Davis meeting contributed to chilly relations between Francis and the former diplomat.

Following decades of complaints by faithful in the United States and elsewhere that they were sexually abused as minors or adults by priests, or that their abusers were quietly shuffled from parish to parish, the church, including at the Vatican, has been struggling to effectively deal with the problem, including the role of higher-ups in hiding the abuses.
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A key opponent of high-tech, automated weapons known as “killer robots” is blaming countries like the U.S. and Russia for blocking consensus at a U.N.-backed conference, where most countries wanted to ensure that humans stay at the controls of lethal machines.

Coordinator Mary Wareham of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots spoke Monday after experts from dozens of countries agreed before dawn Saturday at the U.N. in Geneva on 10 “possible guiding principles” about such “Lethal Automated Weapons Systems.”

Point 2 said: “Human responsibility for decisions on the use of weapons systems must be retained since accountability cannot be transferred to machines.”

Wareham said such language wasn’t binding, adding that “it’s time to start laying down some rules now.”

Members of the LAWS conference will meet again in November.

 
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The U.N. refugee agency says people smugglers are taking greater risks to ferry their human cargo toward Europe as Libya’s coast guard intercepts more and more boats carrying migrants, increasing the likelihood that those on board may die during the Mediterranean journeys.

That’s one of the key findings from the latest UNHCR report about efforts to reach Europe. The report, released early Monday and titled “Desperate Journeys,” says that even though the number of crossings and deaths has plunged compared to recent years, the voyage is more deadly in percentage terms for those who venture across.

The report says 2,276 people died last year while trying to cross, or one death for every 42 arrivals.

This year, it’s 1,095 deaths, or one out of every 18 arrivals. In June alone, the proportion hit one death for every seven arrivals.

On the Central Mediterranean route so far this year, there have been 10 separate incidents in which 50 or more people died — most after departing from Libya. Seven of those incidents have been since June alone, UNHCR said.

“The reason the traffic has become more deadly is that the traffickers are taking more risk, because there is more surveillance exercised by the Libyan coast guards,” said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s special envoy for the central Mediterranean. “They are trying to cut the costs: It costs them more to keep those people here longer in their warehouses, under captivity.”

Libyan authorities intercepted or rescued 18,400 people between August last year and July this year — a 38-percent increase from the same period of 2016 and 2017. Arrivals by sea from Libya to Europe plummeted 82 percent in those comparable periods, to 30,800 in the more recent one.

UNHCR says a growing worry these days is deaths on land by people trying to get to Libya in the first place, or getting stuck in squalid, overcrowded detention centers: Many get returned there after failing to cross by sea to Europe.

“The problems after disembarkation (is that) those people are sent back to detention centers, and many disappear,” Cochetel said. “Many are sold to militias, and to traffickers, and people employing them without paying them.”

He said the drop in departures means that traffickers attempt to “monetize their investment, which means they have to exploit more people. That results in more cases of slavery, forced labor, prostitution of those people — because they (smugglers) want to make money on those people.”

Would-be workers and migrants are still pouring into Libya: Some are fleeing injustice, abuse or autocrats in their home countries further south in Africa. Others are looking for work in the oil industry or agriculture.

“I think you have more deaths on land,” Cochetel said, referring to treks across the desert in Sudan, Algeria, Chad and Niger. “Many people in Libya are reporting having seeing people dead in the desert on the way to Libya.”

In Libya, instability continues even seven years after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi. French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said Friday that fighting between rival militias in Tripoli, the capital, has endangered the lives of people trapped there and worsened humanitarian needs — especially at migrant detention centers.

Cochetel said Europe — where some countries have shown “appalling” squabbles about who would take in rescue ships carrying migrants — should look at the root causes of such journeys. European populations need to shun anti-migrant rhetoric and realize that figures are down sharply, and migrant flows are clearly manageable at current levels, he said.

“Europe has to show the lead, has to be exemplary in its response, but it’s quite clear that it’s already too late when the people are in Libya,” he said. “We need to work downstream in country of first asylum, in country of origin, and that takes time.”

 
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Human Rights Watch is calling for an immediate end to all arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the bombing of a schoolbus last month that killed 51 people, including 40 children.

In a report released Sunday, the HRW called the attack an “apparent war crime,” saying it only added to the Saudi-led coalition’s “already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals and schools in Yemen.”

The coalition, which has the support of the United States, has been fighting the Houthi rebels since March 2015. The coalition backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and aims to restore it to power.

The HRW report comes just a day after the coalition said it has accepted the conclusions of its investigative body that there were “mistakes” made in the attack, including failing to take measures to minimize collateral damage.

The coalition vowed to “take all the legal measures to hold accountable those who were proven to have committed mistakes” once it officially receives the findings. It also pledged to coordinate with Yemen’s government to compensate civilians.

The U.S. State Department on Sunday welcomed the coalition’s statement as “an important first step toward full transparency and accountability.”

But, Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher for HRW, urged the U.S. and other countries to “immediately stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening the independent U.N. inquiry into violations in Yemen, or risk being complicit in future atrocities.”
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The archbishop of Philadelphia has asked Pope Francis to cancel a bishops’ conference focusing on youth in the wake of the child sex abuse crisis roiling the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed Saturday that Archbishop Charles Chaput made the request by letter, but he declined further comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The Youth Synod, which would include bishops from the around the world, has been planned for two years and its website says it is to be focused on “young people, the faith and vocational discernment.” An international panel of young people is expected to join the council of bishops for the event.

“I have written the Holy Father and called on him to cancel the forthcoming synod on young people,” Chaput said at a conference Thursday at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, according to LifeSite News, a conservative Catholic website. “Right now, the bishops would have absolutely no credibility in addressing this topic.”

Instead, Chaput asked that the synod be refocused on the life of bishops.

A nearly 900-page grand jury report released last month said more than 300 Catholic priests abused at least a thousand children over the past seven decades in six Pennsylvania dioceses, and senior figures in the church hierarchy systematically covered up complaints.

A description of the purpose of the Oct. 3-28 synod at the Vatican begins “Taking care of young people is not an optional task for the Church, but an integral part of her vocation and mission in history.”
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A new U.S. study finds that when temperatures around the world start creeping up, insects that eat crops will not only become hungrier, their numbers will grow. Scientists say this will mean more insect damage to wheat, corn and rice crops, and therefore less food on the dinner table. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Russia is not giving up on efforts to destabilize Afghanistan and drive divisions between the United States and its coalition partners, according to the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in the country.

The commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and of Operation Resolute Support, General John Nicholson, is scheduled to step down Sunday after serving in the position for more than two years.

But before relinquishing command, he took time to cast doubts on Russia’s intentions in the region, despite recent overtures from Moscow to help the Taliban reconcile with the Afghan government.

“We know that Russia is attempting to undercut our military gains and years of military progress in Afghanistan, and make partners question Afghanistan’s stability,” Nicholson said in an email to Voice of America, following on questions from his August 22 briefing with Pentagon reporters.

“It is no secret that Russia seeks any opportunity it can find to drive a wedge between the United States and our Central Asian partners, including Afghanistan,” Nicholson added.

Aid to Taliban

U.S. and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of meddling in Afghanistan by providing Taliban insurgents with both weapons and training.

Moscow has rejected the allegations, saying it has only political ties with the Taliban. Still, Russia has faced growing suspicion from the U.S. and its allies, who say the Kremlin has been increasingly working to expand its influence in Afghanistan and beyond.

Most recently, the U.S. and Russia have been competing over efforts to kick-start peace negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Russia was set to host both parties, along with the U.S. and other countries, for talks starting September 4, but was forced to postpone after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani declined the invitation.

The U.S. also has been hoping for talks between the government and the Taliban.

“We talk about an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned reconciliation process,” U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said during a briefing with reporters this past week. “We believe that the best way to get there is to ensure Taliban recognizes they can’t win on the battlefield, they must negotiate.”

But while U.S. officials have touted what they see are signs of progress, including increased support for a peace process from various sectors of the Afghan population, the government’s recent cease-fire offer to the Taliban appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have been angered by what they see as Russian efforts to derail peace and stabilization efforts with disinformation campaigns.

​Charges repeated

Just over a week ago, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised concerns about “unidentified” helicopters flying missions in support of fighters for the Islamic State terror group, also known as IS-Khorasan or IS-K, in the northern Sar-e-Pul province, suggesting the U.S. and NATO might be responsible.

“Who is arming the terrorists and secretly creating their bases?” she asked. “Why is this happening if NATO command is effectively in control of Afghanistan’s airspace?”

Pentagon officials rejected the suggestion of U.S. or NATO involvement as “completely untrue,” noting it was not the first time Moscow had levied such charges.

“As they [Russia] perpetuate false narratives about ISIS-K, the United States and the Afghan Special Security Forces eliminated the Jowzjan ISIS-K enclave and are killing ISIS-K leaders and fighters in Nangarhar,” Nicholson said in his statement to VOA.

Still, the outgoing commander said he held out hope Russia could play a constructive role. 

“We have shared interests with Russia in Afghanistan — peace, counterterrorism and counternarcotics,” Nicholson said. “We hope to see Russia support Afghanistan and the NATO-led coalition in these areas going forward.”

VOA’s Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.
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No one knows what will happen in the next 48 hours in Chemnitz, the Saxon town which this week saw the worst rioting in Germany in three decades, with mobs of far-right supporters and soccer hooligans overwhelming local police and beating anyone in the streets who appeared to be a foreigner while flashing illegal Nazi salutes.

Federal authorities and neighboring German states have sent police reinforcements to Saxony to confront any repeat of the violence seen on Monday, when more than 6,000 anti-migrant protesters rallied to vent their fury at the stabbing of a 35-year-old German man, Daniel Hillig, during a brawl with a pair of asylum-seekers from Syria and Iraq.

The stabbing came at the end of a street festival celebrating the 875th anniversary of Chemnitz, a declining industrial town of drab Communist-era apartment blocks with a population of 250,000.

With four anti-migrant rallies scheduled for Saturday alone — one organized by Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that last year became the largest opposition faction in the German parliament, the Bundestag, as well as counterprotests planned by left wing groups — police are preparing for the worst.

So, too, are many store owners and the 20,000 migrants who live in Chemnitz, nestled in the foothills of the Ore Mountains, which during the Communist era was known as Karl Marx Stadt. Migrants contacted on social media say they fear for the worst.

“I won’t be going outside today [Saturday],” said Farid, a 46-year-old Moroccan who asked that his full name not be published. “And neither will my wife nor daughters,” he said.

“Will we ever be safe again?” he asked. Like many other migrants, what shocked him the most was spotting neighbors among the rioters screaming for foreigners to go home. “I wasn’t born here but my two daughters were — this is their home,” he added. He says the rioting this week, the pitched street battles between overwhelmed local police and the protesters and the hunting down of foreigners for beatings, have convinced him that a tipping point may have been reached in Chemnitz and Saxony — and “possibly in Germany as well.”

Simmering tensions

He’s not alone in harboring such a fear.

Alara, a 36-year-old Turkish woman, says she, too, has been shocked by the participation in the violent anti-migrant protests of middle-class German “neighbors and co-workers.” “I thought they were my friends,” she laments.

In the middle of the week, a shocked German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her fear that far right rioting, along with Hitler salutes that are banned in the country, and the confidence protesters demonstrated in flaunting their affection for a dark German past, represented a threat to the very underpinnings of the post-Second World War state.

“There is video footage of chases, rioting and hatred on the street. And that has nothing to do with our constitutional state,” she said. Tensions over migrants have roiled German politics since 2015, when Merkel announced an open-door policy for war refugees from the Middle East that saw more than 1.2 million admitted.  

Merkel’s controversial immigration policy fueled the rise of the AfD. The group’s electoral performance in last year’s elections, in which it seized nearly 100 seats in the Bundestag, marked a startling new phase in the party’s progress from the fringe of German politics closer to the center of power in Berlin. For far right opponents, the AfD’s election success, built on menacing social media propaganda playing on fears of Islam and Muslim criminality and on foreigners in general, represented a door opening on a German past they thought long buried.

The anti-migrant violence this week in Chemnitz — and the threat of more to come — is prompting questions about whether that door is opening even wider in Germany.

Well organized

Aside from the participation of “ordinary” locals, officials acknowledge they also were taken aback by the speed with which the anti-migrant protesters were reinforced, as well as the level of organization and coordination displayed by a variety of far right groups, including AfD, Pegida and the National Democratic Party. These groups glorify the Third Reich and have averted efforts by the government to ban it.

Saxony’s interior minister, Roland Woller, told media this week that known soccer hooligan groups with strong ties to the far right — and some with solidarity links to Russian fan-clubs and martial arts groups —  helped to mobilize people from across Germany and transport them to join the street battle.

German officials blame orchestrated “fake news” peddled by far right groups on social media sites for helping to stoke the rioting that broke out Monday. “We have to acknowledge that mobilization on the internet was stronger than in the past,” said Michael Kretschmer, the state prime minister of Saxony. The trouble was fueled partially by false claims that the stabbed man had intervened to protect a woman from being raped by asylum-seekers.

The showdown in Chemnitz could continue well into next week. A concert is planned for Monday by a left-wing band. But it is the planned Saturday night marches that now have the focus. In a statement announcing its march, the AfD called Daniel Hillig “the next, avoidable victim of an irresponsible government policy that accepts the multiple deaths of natives with icy coldness.”

“The cartel media have tried to make Chemnitz, the city of the victims, into a city of the perpetrators,” the AfD statement said.

AfD senses a huge opportunity in Chemnitz, say analysts, and is determined to stoke Germany’s political divisions over migration and national identity, hoping the agitation will translate into greater electoral gains in the future.  

 
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Poland says it lost more than 5 million citizens and over $54 billion dollars (46.6 billion euros) worth of assets under the Nazi German occupation of the country during World War II.

A parliamentary commission announced the numbers as part of the current Polish government’s declared intent to seek damages from Germany.

Poland spent decades under Soviet domination after the war and wasn’t able to seek damages independently. However, Germany is making payments to Polish survivors of Nazi atrocities.

Preliminary calculations done for the commission put the number of Polish citizens killed from 1939 to 1945 at 5.1 million, including 90 percent of Poland’s Jewish population.

Losses in cities were estimated to be worth 53 billion zlotys ($14 billion; 12 billion euros). Additional losses in agriculture and transportation infrastructure also were factored in.
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The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) warns asylum seekers and migrants who came ashore on the Greek islands are living in conditions unfit for human habitation. The agency is urging the Greek government to speed up the  transfer of these individuals to the mainland so they can receive proper care.

According to UNHCR, thousands of asylum seekers and migrants who made the perilous journey across the Aegean Sea are forced to live in squalid, overcrowded centers on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios and Kos.

For example, the agency said more than 7,000 asylum-seekers and migrants on Lesbos are crammed into shelters built to accommodate just 2,000 people, one-quarter of them children.

UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxley said these conditions are having a devastating impact on peoples’ well-being.

“We are seeing increasing numbers of people including children presenting with mental health problems,” he said. “… We are seeing rising levels of sexual assaults because there is insufficient security in place and the sanitary facilities as well. On recent missions to the islands, staff have commented that the sanitary facilities are essentially unusable in some cases.”

Yaxley noted an average of 114 people are arriving on the islands every day — more than 70 percent are families from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He said the new arrivals are adding to the congestion and deteriorating conditions.

The UNHCR said Greek authorities must do more to overcome bureaucratic delays that are preventing the speedy transfer of people to the mainland. If no ready solution can be found, it said extraordinary measures should be considered, including the use of emergency accommodations, hotels, and other alternative housing facilities.

However, at the request of the Greek government, the UNHCR said it has “exceptionally agreed to continue its support in transport of asylum-seekers to the mainland in September in order to avoid further delays.”
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The official media outlet of Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine confirmed rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko had been killed on Friday.

The Donetsk News Agency said in a statement on its website that Zakharchenko had been killed in an explosion in central Donetsk, citing the rebel leader’s administration.
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Pope Francis was described Thursday by a top aide as ‘serene’ in the face of the unprecedented public skirmishing breaking out among Catholic prelates over an explosive charge that the pontiff knew about sexual misconduct allegations against a U.S. cardinal but chose to ignore them.

The Vatican’s secretary of state said Francis is maintaining his grace despite “bitterness and concern” in the Vatican over the accusation leveled against him by a onetime top Catholic envoy, who has demanded the Pope resign.

The Pope’s accuser, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador and a doctrinal opponent of Francis, has gone into hiding after making his claim last Sunday in a scathing 11-page document that was crafted with the assistance of a well-known Italian journalist and a stalwart critic of the Pope. According to Vigano, Francis ignored misconduct allegations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The incendiary document, which also warned of a homosexual culture in the church, was leaked to several conservative Catholic newspapers and blogs, all determined foes of Francis. They agreed to publish it on the second and final day of Francis’s trip to Ireland, in a coordinated effort, say Francis loyalists, to cause him maximum damage.

The publication of the letter upended the visit to Ireland, where Pope Francis had hoped to stanch the damage being done to the Holy See by the clerical sex abuse crisis that has roiled the Roman Catholic Church worldwide for decades. Just two weeks before the Ireland trip, the Church was rocked by further clerical abuse allegations with the release of a grand jury report in the U.S. which detailed the abuse of children in six Pennsylvania dioceses over the past seven decades by hundreds of “predator priests.”

In Ireland, Pope Francis met Irish abuse victims and asked for the faithful to forgive the church for its failings. “We ask forgiveness for the times that we did not show [abuse] survivors compassion or the justice they deserve in the search for truth,” he said. And he then added: “We ask forgiveness for members of the Church hierarchy who did not take care of these situations and kept quiet.”

But Vigano says Francis is one of the church leaders who’s colluded in covering up abuse or has been too ready to overlook abuse allegations when leveled against friends and progressive allies. He has also claimed that a tolerant attitude towards homosexuality in the Vatican — even alleging a progressive gay cabal in the upper echelons of the Church — is the root cause of clerical sex abuse. Francis supporters scoff at that charge, noting that clerical sex abuse has been going on for decades and for most of that time traditionalists were in control of the Vatican.

‘Conspiracy of silence’

Midweek Vigano reemerged to give an interview to La Verità newspaper, saying he spoke up out of a sense of duty to the Catholic Church and not because the Pope had passed him over for promotion. “I have never had feelings of vendetta or rancor,” he said, adding that there is a “conspiracy of silence” in the Church “not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia.”

Vigano says Francis was aware of the grave allegations of sexual misconduct against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who’s been accused of abusing young priests and molesting seminarians for decades. Unlike his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, who imposed sanctions on McCarrick, Francis and his circle of advisers chose to rehabilitate the U.S. cardinal, argues Vigano.

The claims are shaking Francis’s five-year papacy.

Amid the swirl of charge and counter-charge between church liberals and conservatives locked in a power struggle, there’s mounting anxiety in the Vatican that traditionalists, opposed to the Pope’s efforts to make the Church more inclusive and less rigid doctrinally, are determined to use the clerical sex abuse scandal to gain politically.

The pope’s supporters say Francis’ doctrinal opponents won’t be satisfied until they have either forced him to resign, or so damaged him that he’s stripped of the authority needed to drive the reforms they’re determined to halt. They say traditionalists have been emboldened by the resignation of Benedict, whose stepping down as leader of the Catholic Church in 2013 made him the first pope to relinquish the office since 1415, setting a modern-day precedent for pontiffs not having to stay in office until they die.

Abuse survivors are also suspicious of the motives of Vigano and the circle of traditionalists supporting him. Despite their own frustrations with Francis at what they see as a failure by his Vatican to take concrete steps to root out corrupt clergy, they worry traditionalists are enlisting homophobia in their campaign against Francis and are not truly focused on the well-being of abuse survivors.

Not a word

Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, one of the Pope’s closest advisers, dismissed Vigano’s attacks, telling La Repubblica newspaper Thursday, “Transforming information of a private nature into a bombshell headline that explodes around the world damaging the faith of many people doesn’t seem to me to be a correct action.” But Maradiaga did not engage with the details of Vigano’s central charge — that the pope ignored misconduct allegations against McCarrick, who last month resigned, becoming the first cardinal to do so since 1927.

Francis, too, has continued to remain silent about McCarrick.

The 81-year-old pope told journalists who accompanied him on his two-day visit to Ireland that he wouldn’t comment. Asked in an impromptu press conference on board his plane on the return to Rome about Vigano’s accusation, the Pope said he left it up to the journalists to judge for themselves. “I won’t say a word about it,” he said.

Vatican analysts say the Holy See appears to be hoping that by ignoring the substance of the claim against Francis, the storm can be ridden out.  But they warn that appears to be a forlorn hope — by shunning the charge, Francis is fueling it and prompting the question, ‘why won’t the pope answer?’ If the claim is inaccurate, “why wouldn’t the pope correct it, just as he has spoken so openly about so many other things?” queried commentator Tim Stanley in a commentary for the London Sunday Telegraph.

Francis’ conservative critics are gearing up to press formally for an answer. In an open letter to his diocese in Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland midweek said: “Let us be clear that they are still allegations, but as your shepherd I find them to be credible.” He says he will agitate for an investigation.

Other prelates are plotting to do so as well, next month in Rome at a synod of bishops to discuss young people and faith.

The Diocese of Dallas in Texas has petitioned the Pope to hold a special synod, or summit, of bishops on the clerical sex abuse scandal.

Progressives started to rally Friday around Francis with prelates from Latin America, the pope’s home continent, as well as Portugal  leading the charge.

Of the accusations, Cardinal António dos Santos Marto, of Fatima, Portugal, told the Observador newspaper, “It’s a campaign organized by ultra-conservatives to mortally wound the pope.”

Marto predicted Francis will be strengthened by the controversy, adding, however, that “in this moment it’s necessary for the entire Church to manifest her support for the pope.” He said Francis may soon switch tactics and address head-on the accusations against him.

Francis also received backing from a top aide to his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Archbishop Georg Ganswein dismissed Vigano’s claim that Benedict had informed Francis of the misconduct allegations against McCarrick. He told Italian newspapers Friday: “It’s all rubbish.”

 
…

Iran has remained within the main restrictions on its nuclear activities imposed by a 2015 deal with major powers, a confidential report by the U.N. atomic watchdog indicated Thursday.

In its second quarterly report since President Donald Trump announced in May that the United States would quit the accord and reimpose sanctions, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had stayed within the caps on uranium enrichment levels, enriched uranium stocks and other items.

In its last report in May, the IAEA had said Iran could do more to cooperate with inspectors and thereby “enhance confidence”, but stopped short of saying the Islamic Republic had given it cause for concern. Thursday’s report to member states seen by Reuters contained similar language.

It said the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog was able to carry out all so-called complementary access inspections needed to verify Iran’s compliance with the deal.

“Timely and proactive cooperation by Iran in providing such access facilitates implementation of the Additional Protocol and enhances confidence,” said the report, which was distributed to IAEA member states.

“The production rate [of enriched uranium] is constant. There is no change whatsoever,” a senior diplomat added.

With the United States reimposing its sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the nuclear deal, many diplomats and analysts now doubt that the accord will survive despite European Union efforts to counter some of the effects of Trump’s move.

Sticking to the nuclear accord is not the only way forward for Iran, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday. “Being the party to still honor the deal in deeds & not just words is not Iran’s only option,” he said on Twitter.

​EU action urged

Speaking after the IAEA report was sent to the agency’s member states, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the deal was still holding, despite the U.S. withdrawal.

He urged his fellow ministers, who met in Vienna on Thursday to discuss EU policy on Iran, to do more to protect Tehran from U.S. sanctions, calling for “permanent financial mechanisms that allow Iran to continue to trade.”

The EU implemented a law this month to shield European companies from the impact of U.S. sanctions on Tehran and has approved aid for the Iranian private sector, although large European companies are pulling out of Iran.

Adhering to the deal should bring Iran economic benefits, Zarif said. “If preserving [the accord] is the goal, then there is no escape from mustering the courage to comply with commitment to normalize Iran’s economic relations instead of making extraneous demands,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cast doubt on the ability of EU countries to save the agreement and said Tehran might abandon it.

Khamenei told President Hassan Rouhani not to rely too much on European support as he came under increased pressure at home over his handling of the economy in the face of U.S. sanctions, with key ministers under attack by parliament.

Le Drian, whose country signed the Iran deal along with Britain, Germany, China, Russia and the United States under then-President Barack Obama, said Tehran should be ready to negotiate on its future nuclear plans, its ballistic missile arsenal and its role in wars in Syria and Yemen.

Those issues were not covered by the 2015 deal, and Trump has cited this as a major reason for pulling Washington out of it.

Le Drian said Iran, which says its missiles are only for defense, was arming regional allies with rockets and allowing “ballistic proliferation,” adding: “Iran needs to avoid the temptation to be the [regional] hegemon.”

Iran has ruled out negotiations on its ballistic missiles and broader Middle Eastern role.
…

The Taliban urged Afghan soldiers on Thursday to attack Dutch troops serving in the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in retaliation for a contest of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad planned by far-right

politician Geert Wilders.

The Taliban threat was issued shortly before Wilders announced Thursday that he was calling off the contest because it posed too great a threat of provoking violence against innocents.

In a statement, the Taliban’s main spokesman called the contest a blasphemous action and a hostile act by the Netherlands against all Muslims.

Members of the Afghan security forces, “if they truly believe themselves to be Muslims or have any covenant towards Islam, should turn their weapons on Dutch troops” or help Taliban fighters attack them, the statement said.

Around 100 Dutch troops are serving in the 16,000-strong Resolute Support mission to train and advise Afghan forces, according to the Dutch defense ministry. About half of the NATO-led force is made up of Americans.

Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party, which has become the second largest in the Netherlands, announced the competition in June, saying it had the right to hold it under freedom-of-speech laws.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had said that he didn’t support the planned contest but that he would defend Wilders’ right to hold it.

Images of the Prophet Muhammad are traditionally forbidden in Islam, and caricatures are regarded by most Muslims as deeply offensive.

In 2005, a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet that sparked a wave of protests across the world. Ten years later, Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published similar caricatures.
…

The Trump administration told Russia on Thursday to stop what it said was harassment of international shipping vessels in the Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait aimed at trying to weaken Ukraine’s economy.

“Russia’s actions to impede maritime transit are further examples of its ongoing campaign to undermine and destabilize Ukraine, as well as its disregard for international norms,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. 

The U.S. accused Russia of delaying commercial ships since April and stopping at least 16 commercial ships from reaching Ukranian ports.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine have deteriorated since Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region and provoked conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko observed Ukraine’s Independence Day last week by announcing that his country had “cut all ties with the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.”

The Kremlin did not immediately respond to the U.S. request. 
…

The United States cannot guarantee that it will provide India a waiver from sanctions if it purchases major weapon and defense systems from Russia, a top Pentagon official said on Wednesday, ahead of a high-level dialogue between Washington and New Delhi.

The United States has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, under which any country engaged with its defense and intelligence sectors could face secondary U.S. sanctions.

However, a new defense bill gives the president the authority to grant waivers in case of national security interests.

Randall Schriver, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, said there was an “impression that we are going to completely protect the India relationship, insulate India from any fallout from this legislation no matter what they do.” 

Media reports from the region have suggested that India would get a waiver.

“I would say that is a bit misleading. We would still have very significant concerns if India pursued major new platforms and systems (from Russia),” Schriver said at a think tank event.

“I can’t sit here and tell you that they would be exempt, that we would use that waiver, that will be the decision of the president if he is faced with a major new platform and capability that India has acquired from Russia,” he added.

The Indian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has publicly been a strong proponent of granting India waivers.

The United States is concerned about India’s planned purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, Schriver said. Russia has said it expects to sign a deal with India later this year on the sale.

On Tuesday, Mattis said the United States was also concerned about Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile defense system, which cannot be integrated into NATO. Schriver said the United States was willing to talk to India about potential alternatives.

Senior U.S. officials are expected to go to India next week for high level talks, agreed upon by U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year. 

The meeting was originally planned for April but was postponed after Trump fired Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Washington put off the meeting for a second time in June.

 
…

Germany announced a new agency on Wednesday to fund research on cybersecurity and to end its reliance on digital technologies from the United States, China and other countries.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told reporters that Germany needed new tools to become a top player in cybersecurity and shore up European security and independence.

“It is our joint goal for Germany to take a leading role in cybersecurity on an international level,” Seehofer told a news conference with Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. “We have to acknowledge we’re lagging behind, and when one is lagging, one needs completely new approaches.”

The agency is a joint interior and defense ministry project.

Germany, like many other countries, faces a daily barrage of cyberattacks on its government and industry computer networks.

However, the opposition Greens criticized the project. “This agency wouldn’t increase our information technology security, but further endanger it,” said Greens lawmaker Konstantin von Notz.

The agency’s work on offensive capabilities would undermine Germany’s diplomatic efforts to limit the use of cyberweapons internationally, he said. “As a state based on the rule of law, we can only lose a cyberpolitics arms race with states like China, North Korea or Russia,” he added, calling for “scarce resources” to be focused on hardening vulnerable systems.

Germany and other European countries also worry about their dependence on U.S. technologies. This follows revelations in 2012 by U.S. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of a massive spying network, as well as the U.S. Patriot Act which gave the U.S. government broad powers to compel companies to provide data.

“As a federal government we cannot stand idly by when the use of sensitive technology with high security relevance are controlled by other governments. We must secure and expand such key technologies of our digital infrastructure,” Seehofer said.
…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Senegal late Wednesday on a three-nation West African visit focusing on economic development and migration.

Merkel is meeting with the presidents of Senegal, Ghana and then Nigeria as she presses for further investment in a region that is a source of many of the migrants who make their perilous way toward Europe.

Migrant arrivals in Europe across the Mediterranean from Africa and Turkey are at their lowest level in five years, but the issue remains sensitive. Merkel, who refused to close Germany’s borders at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, has toughened her stance recently to salvage her government from a rift over the issue.

Some in Europe hope that investing more in West Africa will help keep people in a region plagued with unemployment, dodgy infrastructure, rising extremism and now the effects of climate change from leaving.

“We must fight illegality but also create legality and conditions for work here on the ground,” Merkel said after meeting with Senegalese President Macky Sall, according to her spokesman Steffen Seibert. “We want to help with the future.”

A day before leaving for Africa, the German leader hosted U2 frontman Bono for a discussion on Africa and its “development opportunities,” the Chancellery said in an Instagram post .

Senegal and Ghana are two of Africa’s fastest-growing economies and among its most stable countries. Both have signed on to the Compact with Africa initiative to promote private investment that Germany launched last year during its presidency of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.

Nigeria is West Africa’s regional power, Africa’s most populous country and one of the continent’s top oil producers. It is plagued, however, by widespread corruption and security threats that include Boko Haram and Islamic State-linked extremists in the north, violent clashes between herders and farmers in the central region and oil militants in the south.

Merkel on Tuesday spoke with the new leader of another of Africa’s top economies, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and invited him to visit, his chief of staff Fitsum Arega said on Twitter. Germany is just one of the countries responding with curiosity to the recent reconciliation between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea, with Germany’s development minister visiting the long-reclusive country last week.
…

The U.N. human rights chief says threatened U.S. funding cuts wouldn’t be “fatal” for his office, but says he hopes other countries won’t follow suit.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein insisted “the office will continue to survive” even if the U.S. carries out the promise made by U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton in an interview with The Associated Press last week.

Zeid told reporters Wednesday that “clearly what one doesn’t want to see is a whole series of withdrawals and withdrawal of funding.”

Bolton’s pledge that the U.S. will cut funding to the rights office, and the U.N.’s top human rights body was the latest Trump administration salvo against U.N. institutions.

The U.S. is the U.N.’s largest single donor, providing about 22 percent of its budget.

 
…

Pope Francis lamented Wednesday how Irish church authorities failed to respond to the crimes of sexual abuse, speaking during his first public appearance at the Vatican after bombshell accusations that he himself covered up for an American cardinal’s misdeeds.

Francis presided over his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square and spoke about his weekend trip to Ireland, where the abuse scandal has devastated the Catholic Church’s credibility.

The final day of the trip was overshadowed by release of a document from a retired Holy See diplomat accusing Vatican authorities, including Francis, of covering up for ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite knowing for years that he regularly slept with seminarians.

The author of the document — retired Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano — said Francis should resign for his complicity in the McCarrick scandal, which has implicated two decades’ worth of U.S. and Vatican church leaders.

Francis referred Wednesday to the Irish culture of cover-up, but he omitted from his remarks a line in his prepared text noting how he had prayed in Ireland for the Virgin Mary to intervene to give the church strength to “firmly pursue truth and justice” to help victims heal.

U.S. bishops, as well as rank-and-file Catholics, have called for an independent investigation to find out who knew about McCarrick’s abuse and when, and how he was able to rise through the ranks even though it was an open secret that he regularly invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and into his bed.

Francis last month removed McCarrick as a cardinal and ordered him to live a lifetime of penance and prayer after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.

Vigano’s 11-page j’accuse alleges that Francis knew of McCarrick’s penchant for adult seminarians starting in 2013, but rehabilitated him from sanctions that Pope Benedict XVI had allegedly imposed on him in 2009 or 2010. The claims have shaken Francis’ five-year papacy.

There is ample evidence, however, that the Vatican under Benedict and St. John Paul II also covered up the information, and that any reported sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced since McCarrick travelled widely for the church during those years, including to Rome to meet with Benedict and celebrate Mass with other U.S. bishops at the tomb of St. Peter.

Vigano provided no evidence that Francis had lifted the alleged sanctions, saying only that McCarrick announced after a meeting with the pope that he was going to China.

But he said McCarrick had become a close adviser to Francis, who was seeking to appoint more pastorally-minded bishops to the U.S. church, which he believed had become too ideologically driven by right-wingers.

 
…

British officials have been turning to Japan for tips on how to dodge American sanctions on Iran, according to local media.

Britain is already seeking from Washington exemptions from some U.S. sanctions, which are being re-imposed by President Donald Trump because of the U.S. withdrawal earlier this year from a controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. The British are especially keen to maintain banking links with Iran and to import Iranian oil.

According to local media, U.K. officials have been asking their Japanese counterparts how they managed in the past to sidestep some aspects of the pre-2015 sanctions regime, which allowed Tokyo to sign oil deals with Iran as well as insurance contracts without incurring U.S. penalties.

Re-imposed U.S. sanctions penalize any foreign companies that deal with Iran by barring them from doing business in America. That threat has already persuaded more than 50 Western firms to shutter their operations in Iran, including French automakers Renault and Peugeot and the French oil giant Total as well as Germany’s Deutsche Bahn railway company and Deutsche Telekom.

Seeking waivers

British ministers have publicly announced that they are hoping to secure waivers from sanctions for oil imports, tanker insurance and banking. There is particular concern, say British officials, about the position of a gas field 240 miles from Aberdeen which is jointly owned by BP and a subsidiary of Iran’s state-controlled oil company.

According to The Times newspaper, British diplomats and Treasury officials have discussed with their Japanese counterparts what options they may have of evading penalties, if British firms continue to trade with Iran. Britain’s Foreign Office hasn’t commented on the specific claims in report. But in a general statement it says: “We are working with European and other partners, to ensure Iran continues to benefit from sanctions relief through legitimate business, for as long as Iran continues to meet its nuclear commitments under the deal.”

Faltering Iranian economy

On Tuesday, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani was grilled by the country’s lawmakers, who for the first time in his five-year tenure called him before parliament to answer questions about the country’s faltering economy amid the tightening U.S. sanctions.

They asked him about high unemployment, rising food prices and the collapsing value of the Iranian currency. Rouhani, who overcame the opposition of hardliners in the first place to sign the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers, insisted Iran would overcome the “the anti-Iranian officials in the White House.”

He added: “We are not afraid of America or the economic problems. We will overcome the troubles.” His answers didn’t reassure lawmakers, who voted to reject most of them. Earlier this month the parliament impeached the economy and labor ministers amid growing anger about the economy.

In order to try to keep open financial channels with Tehran and facilitate Iran’s oil exports, the European Union has taken steps to counter renewed U.S. sanctions, including forbidding EU citizens and firms from complying with them.

The European Commission updated a blocking statute on August 7, which bans companies from observing the sanctions — unless expressly authorized by Brussels to do so. It would allow EU firms to recover damages arising from the sanctions. But many companies say they are fearful of losing current or potential business in the U.S.

“Under these conditions it is very difficult,” according to the Director for International Relations at BusinessEurope, a lobby group, Luisa Santos. She says even small and medium-sized businesses which don’t trade with U.S. will face significant challenges because they will need financing from Western banks.

The first round of U.S. nuclear sanctions on Iran officially snapped back into place earlier this month but the more biting sanctions will be re-imposed on November 4 as Washington seeks to pummel the Iranian economy. The first phase U.S. sanctions prohibit any transactions with Iran involving dollars, gold, precious metals, aluminum, steel, commercial passenger aircraft, shipping and Iranian seaports.

Earlier in August, Woody Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, cautioned there would be trade consequences for Britain, which he described as the closest U.S. ally, unless London breaks with the EU and abides by the re-imposed sanctions on Tehran.

The envoy also delivered a clear ultimatum to British businesses, instructing them to stop trading with Iran or face “serious consequences.”

Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to nuclear curbs in return for sanctions relief, paved the way for the restoration of unilateral American economic penalties on Iran.

The U.S. administration blames Iran for fomenting instability in the Middle East and encouraging terrorism. Trump has described the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a “horrible, one sided” agreement.

U.S. officials say Iran has used the money going into the country after the 2015 deal, when sanctions were eased, not to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians but to increase spending on the military and proxy forces in the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and militants in Yemen.
…

President Vladimir Putin hinted on Tuesday he was ready to soften an unpopular proposal to reform the pension system which has pushed his approval rating down to its lowest level in more than four years.

He said he would deliver his views in a public statement on the issue, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, adding he was aware of public unhappiness about the proposed reform and decisions had to be undertaken cautiously.

“I ask you not to forget that our decisions will affect the fates of millions of people and must be fair. One should not act mechanically, formally, but only take a balanced and cautious approach,” Putin said.

Lawmakers, in a preliminary vote in July, backed a government proposal to sharply raise the retirement age, part of a controversial budget package designed to shore up state finances.

Putin, who once promised never to raise the retirement age, had until now been careful to distance himself from the proposed reforms, which envisage raising the retirement age to 65 from 60 for men and to 63 from 55 for women.

Polls show that around 90 percent of the population oppose the proposed reform.

But on Tuesday he told a government meeting in the Siberian city of Omsk that he would soon intervene.

“In the nearest future, maybe even tomorrow, I will formulate my attitude [to the reform] in detail and will make the respective statement.”

Putin said any decision on the pension system had to be balanced and cautious. He said he was aware of the public’s extremely negative reaction to the proposed reform.

“Of course, all this has drawn a predictable reaction, a rather sharp discussion in public,” Putin said, adding that any changes in the pension age must provide a decent standard of living for Russia’s 147 million-strong population.

‘Politically sensitive’

The retirement age proposal is politically sensitive for Putin, who was re-elected in March, because it has prompted a series of protests across Russia since it was announced on June 14, the day Russia played the first match of its soccer World Cup.

According to opinion polls, Putin’s approval ratings have fallen to levels last seen before Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea which provided the Russian leader with a popularity boost.

Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday dismissed speculation that Putin had been pushed into addressing the issue by a drop in his approval ratings, however.

While Putin said authorities could not act “routinely” and “formally” when it came to reforming the pension system, he made clear that some kind of reform was needed though.

“… We need to take into account the current situation in the economy and the labor market, we must understand what the future holds for the country in 10, 20 and even 30 years,” Putin said.

He said he had asked the government to consult with political parties, public organizations and regional administrations to review the legislation before its second reading in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Lawmakers passed the bill in the first reading in July. To become law, the bill must pass three readings in the State Duma and must then be approved by the upper house and finally signed into law by the president.

 
…

Russia has deployed several frigates to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus, an analysis of shipping traffic showed, part of what a Russian newspaper on Tuesday called Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015.

The reinforcement comes as Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is believed to be considering an assault on the last big rebel-held enclave, Idlib in the north.

Russia has accused the United States of building up its own forces in the Middle East in preparation for a possible strike on Syrian government forces.

On Saturday, the Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Essen frigates sailed through Istanbul’s Bosphorus towards the Mediterranean, Reuters pictures showed.

The day before, the Pytlivy frigate and landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov were pictured sailing through the Turkish straits that connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. The Vishny Volochek missile corvette passed through earlier this month.

The Izvestia newspaper said Russia had gathered its largest naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea since it intervened in Syria in 2015, turning the tide in Assad’s favor.

The force included 10 vessels, most of them armed with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles, Izvestia wrote, adding that more were on the way, and that two submarines had also been deployed.
…

A Pakistani cricketer has offered a reward for the murder of firebrand anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders for organizing a cartoon contest depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The incendiary bounty offer is adding to fears in the Netherlands that the cartoon competition, which was announced June 12, will lead to targeted violence, either in Holland or against Western targets in Pakistan, by religious militants including so-called Islamic State (IS) or assassins inspired by the terror group.

In 2015, two French militants who had sworn allegiance to al-Qaida massacred 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices, ostensibly for the printing of cartoons of Muhammad.  The attack was the first in a wave of terrorism in France that has left more than 240 dead during the past three years.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 protesters in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, were prevented earlier this month from pelting the Dutch embassy with stones.  Protesters say the contest is sacrilegious.

Khalid Latif, who last year was banned from playing cricket for five years in a spot-fixing scandal, announced a $24,000 bounty on Wilders and his far-right party colleagues on Facebook.  Spot-fixing is predetermining the outcome of a particular passage of play, as opposed to fixing the outcome of a match.

Wilders has said he has more than 200 entries for the contest, which will be judged by American cartoonist and former Muslim Bosch Fawstin.

Because the judge is an American, Pakistani Islamists say the United States should also be blamed for holding the contest.  The Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which has demanded Islamabad break diplomatic ties with the Netherlands, says “strict measures should also be taken against the U.S.”  

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan, a former international cricketer, has acknowledged the growing furor, promising in his maiden speech this week in the Pakistani Senate that he will raise the issue of blasphemous caricatures in the U.N. General Assembly.  “Very few in the West understand the pain caused to Muslims by such blasphemous activities,” said Khan.

Wilders’ Dutch Party for Freedom, which opposes Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, is the second-largest in the Dutch parliament.  Wilders tweeted he had received clearance from the Dutch counterterrorism agency to hold the competition in the PVV’s parliamentary offices.

Wilders’ Dutch critics say the contest is needlessly provocative and Prime Minister Mark Rutte has denounced the competition as “not respectful,” but he has refused Pakistani demands for the contest to be banned, arguing the Netherlands values freedom of speech.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament turned down Wilders’ plan to hold an exhibition of anti-Islam cartoons inside the legislature’s complex, saying “exhibitions in parliament must focus on the role of parliament and should not offer a platform to party political statements or be controversial.”

Khan says he will campaign for a global ban on cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.  A pledge secular-minded critics of the new prime minister say is playing politics with religion.  Khan has condemned religious killings, but he supports an article in Pakistan’s constitution mandating the death penalty for any “imputation, insinuation or innuendo” against Muhammad.

“Less than a week in office, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has made blasphemy one of his first issues, empowering militants and initiating international moves, long heralded by Saudi Arabia, that would restrict press freedom by pushing for a global ban,” argues James Dorsey, an analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Senate approved a unanimous resolution condemning the caricature contest, saying that it “considers the proposed competition tantamount to inciting hatred, racial prejudice, unrest, conflict and insecurity in a world that has already seen much bloodshed, racism, extremism, intolerance and Islamophobia.”

The furor over Wilders’ contest echoes Muslim protests 13 years ago against a Danish newspaper for publishing cartoons depicting Muhammed in bad light.  The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen editorial cartoons in 2005, saying it was an attempt to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship. One of the cartoons showed the prophet with a bomb in his turban. Anger about the publication built up over time.

Now, as then, hardline Islamists began to jump on the controversy.

Last week, the head of an influential madrassa in Lahore, radical spiritual leader Mufti Muhammad Abid Jalali, warned, “In the name of so-called freedom of speech, the West continues to publish blasphemous texts and images.  Even certain animals are sometimes used, while knowing how sensitive that is in Islam.  If the West perseveres in this, it can expect an appropriate response.”

He told Dutch reporters, “Islam is above all a religion of peace, and we condemn all terrorist groups that commit violence on behalf of Islam.  But if non-Muslims have no respect for the prophet, peace with him, or ridicule Islam, as is happening in the Netherlands, we have no choice but to respond.”
…

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras saw his interior minister take up a key post in his leftist Syriza party on Monday, heralding a cabinet reshuffle to shore up waning support after painful bailouts.

In a rousing speech, Tsipras ruled out early elections, telling his party faithful that polls would be held as scheduled in the autumn of 2019, but that his government and the Syriza movement needed ‘new blood.’

The country emerged from the biggest bailout in economic history last week but jaded Greeks found little reason to celebrate after nine years of cuts and job losses.

“It will be the mother of all battles,” Tsipras declared, referring to the election next year, effectively firing the opening salvo to what appears to be a long-drawn out election campaign.

“To give all these battles victoriously we need to rally together, unity and renewal. Our country, the government and the party, need new blood and more appetite to get to work,” he said.

Greece holds parliamentary elections every four years, with the next expected by October 2019 at the latest.

Based on the latest three opinion polls conducted by Greek media, Syriza is trailing the main opposition New Democracy conservatives by between 5.3 and 11.6 percentage points.

Panos Skourletis, the interior minister nominated by Tsipras to become new Secretary of Syriza’s Central Committee, is a party stalwart with widespread support at a grassroots level. He was backed by a wide majority of central committee members and was elected for the post late on Monday.

Tsipras was elected in 2015 promising to end years of austerity for Greece, imposed by international creditors. But he was forced to reverse course by the prospect of the country being kicked out of the euro zone and pursue deeper reforms under a third international bailout program.

“From now on… we no longer have the alibi of implementing a program which is not ours,” Skourletis told the central committee, adding that he saw potential for reform but also challenges for the party in the post-bailout period.

Austerity and political turmoil followed as the economy shrank by a quarter, pushing a third of the population into poverty and forcing the migration of thousands abroad.

The bailout programmes concluded last week. Greece has received 288 billion euros in financial aid since 2010.

Tsipras said the government now had the fiscal space to alleviate some tax burden on business and individuals, but was not specific. “We are ready to proceed with brave interventions,” he said.

Government officials have previously said the government may scrap plans for further pension cuts next year.

Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, who steered the country’s exit from the third bailout, was likely to remain in his post, sources said.

Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, instrumental in brokering an accord ending years of dispute with Macedonia over its name, was also  expected to stay on board.
…

A Russian court sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny to 30 days in jail on Monday after convicting him of breaking public protest laws, a move he said was illegal and aimed at stopping him leading a rally against pension reform next month.

Navalny, who was detained by police outside his home on Saturday, was found guilty of breaking the law by organizing an unauthorized Moscow rally on Jan. 28 which called for a boycott of what he predicted would be a rigged presidential election.

Under Russian law, the time, place and size of such protests must be agreed in advance with the authorities who have a track record of rejecting applications to rally in central Moscow and of suggesting less prominent locations instead.

Navalny, who was barred from taking part in the March presidential election over what he said was a trumped-up suspended prison sentence, has been repeatedly jailed for going ahead with such protests anyway despite official rejections.

The 42-year-old politician, who told the court he would never give up trying to organize street protests, said on Monday he believed the authorities were jailing him now, more than six months after his alleged offense, to stop him taking part in a protest planned for Sept. 9 against plans to raise the retirement age in Russia.

That is the same day as Moscow elects a new mayor, a contest expected to be easily won by incumbent Sergei Sobyanin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, and authorities have rejected an application by Navalny’s supporters to rally in central Moscow.

‘Strange trial’

“This strange trial is happening with the single aim of not allowing me to take part in the protest,” Navalny told the presiding judge. “You and I both know it.”

As he was led out of the courtroom, he shouted out the date and time of the planned rally.

“Everyone come to the meeting,” he said. Navalny is hoping to tap into public anger over government plans to raise the retirement age to 65 from 60 for men and to 63 from 55 for women.

Opinion polls show most Russians strongly oppose the plan, which has been seen as responsible for a drop in Putin’s approval rating in recent months, prompting speculation that the Russian leader, whom Navalny has likened to an autocratic tsar, may decide to dilute the reform.

Putin, who makes a point of never saying Navalny’s name aloud when asked about him, has dismissed him as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of the United States.

Navalny has used protests and corruption exposes of the sometimes gilded lives of government officials to mobilize support. But many Russians, who still get much of their news from state TV which either ignores or derides him, say they do not know who he is.
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The European Union does not believe Syria is safe for refugees to go back, officials in Brussels said of a Russian push to have people return to the war-torn country and the international community to spend money on rebuilding it.

The bloc’s foreign ministers will discuss the matter in Austria later this week.

EU officials expect the bloc to stick to its line that it would not offer reconstruction money for as long as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — propped back to power by Russian and Iranian militaries — does not let the opposition share power.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said before talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this month that everything needed to be done for Syria refugees to return. “But the conditions are just not there. Russia would want us to pay for it but Syria under Assad is not safe,” said one EU official.

The EU has backed Syrian opposition groups in the multi-faceted war that has raged for more than seven years, largely because global and regional powers disagree on how to end it.
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Pope Francis has apologized for the abuse perpetrated by the powerful Catholic Church in Ireland, but critics say it is not enough. The victims of abuse and their supporters gathered in Ireland’s capital Dublin on Sunday to protest what they call the Church’s attempt to silence and marginalize the abuse. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the protests come as a senior Vatican official calls on the pontiff to resign for failing to act sooner against a former U.S. cardinal.
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Turkey’s Erdogan says will bring safety and peace to Syria, Iraq

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Sunday to bring peace and safety to Iraq and areas in Syria not under Turkish control and said terrorist organizations in those areas would be eliminated.

Turkey, which has backed some rebel groups in Syria, has been working with Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar al Assad, and Iran for a political resolution to the crisis.

It has so far carried out two cross-border operations along its border with Syria and set up a dozen military observations posts in the northern Syrian region of Idlib.

The rebel-held Idlib enclave is a refuge for civilians and rebels displaced from other areas of Syria as well as for powerful jihadist forces, but has been hit by a wave of air strikes and shelling this month.

The attacks posed a possible prelude to a full-scale Syrian government offensive, which Turkey has said would be disastrous.

Speaking in the southeastern province of Mus to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Manzikert of 1071, Erdogan vowed to bring peace and safety to Syria and Iraq.

“It is not for nothing that the only places in Syria where security and peace have been established are under Turkey’s control. God willing, we will establish the same peace in other parts of Syria too. God willing, we will bring the same peace to Iraq, where terrorist organizations are active,” he said.

Erdogan also linked regional conflicts and an ongoing currency crisis in Turkey, which he has cast as an “economic war”, to previous attempts to invade Anatolia, warning that the this would lead to the collapse of surrounding regions.

“Those who seek temporary reasons behind the troubles we have been facing recently are wrong, very wrong. The attacks we face today… are rooted in history,” he said.

“Don’t forget, Anatolia is a wall and if this wall collapses, there will no longer be a Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Balkans or Caucasus.”

Turkey’s lira has tumbled nearly 40 percent this year as investor concerns over Erdogan’s grip on monetary policy and a growing dispute with the United States put pressure on the currency.

Ankara has accused Washington of targeting Turkey over the fate of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor being tried in Turkey on terrorism charges that he denies.

“Some careless people among us think this is about Tayyip Erdogan or the AK Party. No, this is about Turkey,” Erdogan said.
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