During his first official visit to Kyiv Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the U.S. has told Russia it must take the first steps to de-escalate violence in Eastern Ukraine.

Tillerson spoke alongside Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko after the two met to discuss ways to help end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and support its ongoing reform efforts.  

“As long as the parties commit themselves to these goals I’m confident we can make progress,” Tillerson said, referring to the Minsk agreements – a cease-fire deal that Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in 2015.

Ukraine negotiations

Tillerson has named former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker to serve as Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations.

Volker, who was traveling with Tillerson to Ukraine, will also engage regularly with all parties handling the Ukraine negotiations under the so-called Normandy Format — Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine.

In an interview with VOA’s Ukraine service recently, Volker laid out his vision on Ukraine: “We need to have Ukraine, which is a sustainable, resilient, prosperous, strong democracy, so that it would be attractive to the regions in the East, and [be the place]where disinformation and propaganda attacks don’t really have much traction.”

Although Tillerson is seeking to rebuild trust with the Russians, Washington dismissed speculation that it will cut a deal with Moscow over Kyiv.

“There certainly is no intent or desire to work exclusively with Russia,” a senior State Department official said earlier this week. “This is a multiparty issue, resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine. “

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. would not be backing away from concerns of Russia’s support of rebels in eastern Ukraine.

“We believe that the so-called rebels are Russian-backed, Russian-financed, and are responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians,” Nauert said Thursday in a briefing. “We continue to call upon the Russians and the Ukrainians to come together.”

Make clear support for sovereignty

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA on Friday that Tillerson should make it clear of “U.S. strong support for Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity, U.S. recognition that Russia is conducting a war in Ukraine, and U.S. willingness to provide necessary support.”

Herbst said he expects Poroshenko to bring up the massive Russian cyberattack against Ukraine during Sunday’s meeting with Tillerson, and the U.S. “has a great deal to learn” for what Ukraine has done to counteract these Russia attacks.

“I suspect we will see more cooperation in the future,” Herbst added.

Tillerson had told U.S. lawmakers that the United States should not be “handcuffed” to the 2015 Minsk agreement in case the parties decide to reach their goals through a different deal.  

Senior officials later clarified that Washington would “not exclude looking at other options” as the U.S. is still fully supportive of the Minsk agreements.

“The Minsk agreements are the existing framework,” a senior State Department official said. “There is no better option out there.”

The so-called Minsk II agreement is a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing conflicts, including a cease-fire, between Moscow-backed rebels and government forces in eastern Ukraine. It was agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and separatists in February of 2015.

 
…

The third running of the bulls in this year’s San Fermin festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona produced no gorings and only a few minor injuries on Sunday, officials said.

The initial medical report included just two requests for medical treatment from knocks received during the clean and quick bull run, Red Cross spokesman Jose Aldaba said. 

Neither of the two patients had serious injuries, hospital spokesman Tomas Belzunegui said.

“It was a tranquil bull run,” Belzunegui said.

Over the first two days of the festival, five people — four Americans and a Spaniard — were gored during the daily bull runs. None were life-threatening injuries.

The bulls from the Puerto de San Lorenzo ranch, which debuted at the festival, completed the 930-yard (850-meter) cobbled-street course Sunday in 2 minutes, 22 seconds. That is well under the average of three minutes for the run.

A brown bull named Huracan broke away early and sped ahead through the parting crowds of runners, several of whom barely dodged its swinging horns.

Huracan came close to catching a runner when it hooked a horn in the pant leg of a young man entering the bullring, lifting him along the wall before dragging him for a few meters (yards). The man apparently escaped unscathed.

The nine-day San Fermin fiesta attracts tens of thousands of partygoers from Spain and abroad. It was popularized by Nobel Literature laureate Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
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Former Polish President Lech Walesa, a democracy hero, has been hospitalized with heart problems in his Baltic coast home city of Gdansk, his son said Saturday.

Jaroslaw Walesa told The Associated Press via text message that his father was feeling “unfortunately weak.” It was not immediately known when he could be discharged from the heart diseases ward of the Gdansk University Clinic.

Lech Walesa, 73, on Thursday attended a speech by President Donald Trump in Warsaw. He was booed by many in a crowd that supported the current government, which criticizes Walesa’s role in Poland’s politics.

Walesa strongly criticizes the government, saying its policies threaten democracy and hurt Poland’s ties with the European Union’s leading nations.

He had been expected to lead a demonstration Monday against monthly observances that the ruling populist party holds in memory of President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others killed in a 2010 plane crash in Russia. The head of the ruling party is Kaczynski’s twin brother, Jaroslaw, who is Poland’s most powerful politician.

Walesa says the monthly observances are used to rally support for the ruling party.

The protest planned for downtown Warsaw will proceed even if Walesa cannot attend, said another pro-democracy activist, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk.

Walesa in 1980 led a massive strike against Poland’s communist authorities, giving rise to the Solidarity freedom movement. Solidarity peacefully ousted the communists from power in 1989, ushering in democracy.

But Kaczynski claims that the transition included a secret deal that allowed the communists to retain some influence and wealth.
…

The G-20 summit of the world’s richest economies wrapped up Saturday against a backdrop of angry protests, and a pledge by leaders to fight protectionism in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and Brexit. The U.S. leader took center stage at the two-day gathering, and his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was the major headline. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Hamburg.
…

Firefighters and police in Italy Saturday pulled the eighth and final body from the rubble of a five-story apartment building that partially collapsed in a seaside town south of Naples. 

The digging through the debris for victims ended more than 24 hours after the residential building collapsed in the early morning. About 80 firefighters worked alongside police and other crews through the night. 

The dead were identified as an elderly resident and two families, one with children of elementary and high school age, and one with a grown son living at home. 

The cause of the collapse remained under investigation, but authorities said it may be linked to renovation work on the building, located along the Naples-Salerno railway line in the town of Torre Annunziata. Debris fell onto the rails, and the scenic line that connects Naples with the nearby Pompeii archaeological site and the scenic Amalfi coast remained closed. 

Witnesses said there was no explosion before the collapse but that a train had just passed by. The Italian railway said vibrations from the train have no impact on adjacent buildings because they are absorbed by ballast. 

Prosecutors were investigating possible charges.

Carabinieri were the first to respond to the collapse at 6:30 a.m. as many residents still slept, digging by hand to find survivors. The work continued for hours by hand until heavier equipment arrived, while sniffer dogs checked for signs of life. 

“We intervened immediately,” Carabinieri Marshall Francesco Murciano told Sky TG24. “We found ourselves before a chilling scene. We started to dig with our bare hands, without any tools.”
…

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has named former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker to serve as Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations.

The announcement came ahead of Tillerson’s first official visit to Kyiv Sunday, where he will meet with President Petro Poroshenko to discuss ways to help end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and support the country’s ongoing reform efforts.

“The United States remains fully committed to the objectives of the Minsk agreement,” Tillerson said in a statement Friday, referring to the cease-fire deal that Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in 2015.

Watch: Tillerson Heads to Ukraine Following Trump-Putin Meeting

​Ukraine negotiations

Volker, who will accompany Tillerson to Ukraine, will also engage regularly with all parties handling the Ukraine negotiations under the so-called Normandy Format — Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine.

In an interview with VOA’s Ukrainian Service recently, Volker laid out his vision on Ukraine.

“We need to have Ukraine, which is a sustainable, resilient, prosperous, strong democracy, so that it would be attractive to the regions in the East, and [be the place] where disinformation and propaganda attacks don’t really have much traction.”

Although Tillerson is seeking to rebuild trust with the Russians, Washington dismissed speculation that it will cut a deal with Moscow over Kyiv.

“There certainly is no intent or desire to work exclusively with Russia,” a senior State Department official said earlier this week. “This is a multiparty issue, resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. would not be backing away from concerns of Russia’s support of rebels in eastern Ukraine.

“We believe that the so-called rebels are Russian-backed, Russian-financed, and are responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians,” Nauert said Thursday in a briefing. “We continue to call upon the Russians and the Ukrainians to come together.”

Make clear support for sovereignty

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA Friday that Tillerson should make it clear of “U.S. strong support for Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity, U.S. recognition that Russia is conducting a war in Ukraine, and U.S. willingness to provide necessary support.”

Herbst said he expects Poroshenko to bring up the massive Russian cyberattack against Ukraine during Sunday’s meeting with Tillerson, and the U.S. “has a great deal to learn” from what Ukraine has done to counteract these Russia attacks.

“I suspect we will see more cooperation in the future,” Herbst added.

Tillerson had told U.S. lawmakers that the United States should not be “handcuffed” to the 2015 Minsk agreement in case the parties decide to reach their goals through a different deal. 

Senior officials later clarified that Washington would “not exclude looking at other options” as the U.S. is still fully supportive of the Minsk agreements.

“The Minsk agreements are the existing framework,” a senior State Department official said. “There is no better option out there.”

Ukraine agenda

In Ukraine, Tillerson will also meet with young reformers from government and civil society, as Washington is encouraging Kyiv to continue implementing “reforms that will strengthen Ukraine’s economic, political and military resilience.”

The government of Ukraine said Washington and Kyiv would soon sign a number of agreements boosting defense cooperation, according to Poroshenko after he met with U.S. President Donald Trump last month. Ukraine’s foreign minister said the deal would involve defensive weapons only.

“We’ve neither ruled out providing such weapons to Ukraine nor have we taken a decision to do so,” a senior State Department official said when asked about a possible defensive weapons deal earlier this week.

The so-called Minsk II agreement is a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing conflicts, including a cease-fire, between Moscow-backed rebels and government forces in eastern Ukraine. It was agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and separatists in February 2015.

VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
…

Anti-globalization protesters clashed violently Friday with police in Hamburg, Germany, where leaders from the world’s 20 largest economies gathered, causing injuries to nearly 200 police officers and dozens of activists.

Police said they had brought more than 900 additional officers from across the country to help control the situation, bringing the total number of police in the city to more than 20,000.

Officers patrolled dozens of protest marches, and while most demonstrators were peaceful, others set cars on fire, threw bottles at police and tried to enter the convention center where leaders were meeting.

Some protesters threw gasoline bombs, lit fires in the streets and looted businesses.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the protests were “unacceptable.”

“I have every understanding for peaceful demonstrations, but violent demonstrations put human lives in danger,” she said.

Protesters detained

More than 70 protesters were detained. Police used water cannons to push back protesters, including outside a closed metro station where protesters bent iron gates to force their way inside.

Violent protesters often tried to enter closed-off areas surrounding the summit venues.

A group of 22 swimmers from Greenpeace tried to reach a concert hall on the Elbe River where world leaders gathered in the evening to listen to Beethoven. They were intercepted by marine divers.  

Greenpeace boats also blasted music outside the concert hall in an attempt to disrupt the concert and their dinner meetings.

First lady trapped in hotel

Anti-globalization protesters trapped U.S. first lady Melania Trump in her hotel, keeping her from joining the spouses of the other world leaders on a tour of Hamburg harbor.

Officials said most of the injured police were not badly hurt, but some were taken to hospitals, including an officer who was injured when a firework went off in front of him. Fire officials said at least 60 protesters were taken to hospitals, including 11 who fell off a 4-meter wall after fleeing from police.

Police said the majority of the estimated 100,000 demonstrators were peaceful, while around 1,000 militant protesters caused much of the damage.

The protests were expected to continue through Saturday when the summit ends.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says President Trump put the issue of alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections at the very top of his agenda when the two leaders held their first face-to-face talks on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Germany Friday. The meeting appears to have gone better than expected, with Tillerson describing a “clear positive chemistry” between the two leaders. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Hamburg.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump “pressed” Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Moscow’s meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election at their first face-to-face meeting Friday, according to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson said Putin denied Russian involvement in the election, although the two leaders had a “very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject.”

“The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement,” Tillerson told reporters after the two leaders’ meeting that overshadowed the gathering in Hamburg, Germany, of the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who also attended the meeting, later said that Trump accepted Putin’s statements that Russia had not interfered in the election.

Tillerson said the two leaders agreed to continue the discussion, with the intent of securing a commitment from Russia not to meddle in U.S. affairs in the future. He said there was no sign that the two countries would ever agree on the issue, so both leaders were focused on moving forward.

There are several ongoing investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and interfered in last November’s U.S. presidential election.

At a joint news conference Thursday in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump addressed Russia’s involvement. “I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries,” Trump said. “Nobody really knows for sure.”

Trump’s stance on the issue has been somewhat at odds with the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election and with testimony his own nominees presented before Congress.

The meeting also produced an agreement designed to de-escalate fighting in Syria. The two leaders agreed to a cease-fire in southwestern Syria, a deal that increases U.S. involvement in the effort to resolve the Syrian civil war.

Israel and Jordan, which share a border with southern Syria, also have agreed to the cease-fire, which is set to take effect Sunday.

Although both the U.S. and Russia oppose the Islamic State militant group in Syria, the two countries have thrown their support behind opposing sides in the war. The U.S. supports rebel forces who are opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has the support of Moscow.

The agreement could give the U.S. more influence over who fills a leadership void that is developing as Islamic State is forced out of its most important Syrian strongholds.

The U.S. and Russia have been negotiating the cease-fire for some time, and it came to fruition at the formal bilateral meeting that was highly anticipated by the international community.

The meeting was fraught with symbolism as Trump, still new to the world of global diplomacy, sat down with Putin, a former KGB agent, who came to power in what amounted to a Kremlin coup 17 years ago.

The meeting was closely scrutinized for signs of how the two leaders interacted. Relations between Putin and former President Barack Obama were strained, and Trump repeatedly has said he would like to improve ties with Russia.
…

More than 120 countries are expected to adopt the first treaty to ban nuclear weapons Friday despite a boycott by all nuclear-armed nations, including the United States, which has pointed to North Korea’s escalating nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the U.N. conference that has been negotiating the legally binding treaty, told reporters Thursday that “we are on the verge of adopting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.”

“This will be a historic moment and it will be the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years,” she said. “The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” since the use of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of World War II.

Whyte Gomez, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said she hoped the treaty would be adopted by consensus, but she said the rules of procedure for the conference also allowed for a vote.

December resolution

In December, U.N. member states overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for negotiations on a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons, despite strong opposition from nuclear-armed nations and their allies who refused to participate in the talks.

Whyte Gomez said 129 countries signed up to take part in drafting the treaty, which represents two-thirds of the U.N.’s 193 member states. But all nuclear states and NATO members have boycotted the negotiations except for the Netherlands, which has U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory and was urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the negotiations.

Following Wednesday’s final review of the text after nearly three weeks of intense negotiations, Whyte Gomez said she was “convinced that we have achieved a general agreement on a robust and comprehensive prohibition on nuclear weapons.”

“I am really confident that the final draft has captured the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of those participating in the conference, including civil society,” she said.

Final language

The final draft treaty requires all countries that ratify “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons.

Retired British Royal Navy Cmdr. Rob Green, who flew nuclear strike aircraft and is now co-director of the Peace Foundation’s Disarmament and Security Center, said at a news conference Wednesday that “the heart of this treaty” was the prohibition on threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Richard Moyes, managing director of Article 36, a British-based organization that works to prevent harm from nuclear and other weapons, said it isn’t plausible to think the world can maintain security based on mutually threatening to incinerate hundreds of thousands of people with nuclear weapons “when we know there have been near-misses, errors of judgment — there’s been accidents — and there’s a degree of instability in the political leadership in the world.”

But not one of the nine countries believed to possess nuclear weapons — the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — is supporting the treaty.

The United States and other nuclear powers instead want to strengthen and reaffirm the nearly half-century-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of global nonproliferation efforts.

That pact sought to prevent the spread of atomic arms beyond the five original weapons powers — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China. It requires non-nuclear signatory nations to not pursue atomic weapons in exchange for a commitment by the five powers to move toward nuclear disarmament and to guarantee non-nuclear states access to peaceful nuclear technology for producing energy.

North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, including its July 3 launch, have become a timely argument for proponents and opponents of the treaty to ban atomic weapons.

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said 15,000 nuclear weapons around the world have not managed to deter Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and a new approach is needed starting with prohibition as the first step to eliminate nuclear arms.
…

High-level talks aimed at reunifying Cyprus have failed to reach an agreement, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday, again dashing hopes that the island’s 43-year ethnic split could be healed.

Guterres made the announcement after marathon, U.N.-sponsored talks concluded at a Swiss resort in the early hours of Friday. 

“Unfortunately … an agreement was not possible and the conference was closed without the possibility to bring a solution to this dramatically long-lasting problem,” Guterres told reporters.

“I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to the leaders of the two communities and to wish the best to all Cypriots north and south.”

Door not entirely shut

But Guterres didn’t entirely shut the door on any renewed, U.N.-assisted attempt to get the island’s Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots Mustafa Akinci back to the negotiating table again.

“The conference is closed,” Guterres said. “That doesn’t mean that other initiatives cannot be developed to address the Cyprus problem.”

Echoing Guterres, Cyprus government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said the failed result wasn’t “the end of the road” for peace efforts.

“The existing, unacceptable situation can’t be Cyprus’ future and the president will redouble his efforts,” Christodoulides said.

Why the talks collapsed

Also participating in the talks were Cyprus’ three ‘guarantors’ — Greece, Turkey and former colonial ruler Britain.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the talks collapsed because Greece and Greek Cypriots insisted Ankara pull all of its troops from the island and for military intervention rights to be abolished.

“For Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot side it is not acceptable for troops to be withdrawn,” he told reporters.

Security arrangements for an envisioned federal Cyprus were the linchpin to a reunification deal.

The issue revolves around the more than 35,000 troops that Turkey has kept in the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when it invaded following a coup mounted by supporters of uniting Cyprus with Greece.

Greek Cypriots in the island’s internationally recognized south perceive the Turkish soldiers as a threat and want them to leave. The island’s minority Turkish Cypriots want them to stay as their protectors.

Other key disagreements were on how much territory would make up the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot federal zones.

Greek Cypriots sought for the town of Morphou to be returned to Greek Cypriot administrative control so a large number of displaced people could swiftly reclaim lost homes and property. Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots offered only part of the town.

Another key difference was Turkey’s insistence that a peace accord grant Turkish nationals the right to relocate and transfer money, services and goods to a reunified Cyprus. Greek Cypriots were reluctant to cede unregulated access to Turkish nationals over concerns that the small island of 1.1 million people would be overwhelmed economically and demographically. 
…

The international community is watching in anticipation as Donald Trump, five months into his presidency, holds his first meeting with the man seen as his rival for the title of “most powerful leader” on the planet, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their formal bilateral discussion late Friday is overshadowing the two-day gathering in Hamburg, Germany, of heads of state of the world’s 20 strongest economies.

The meeting is fraught with symbolism as Trump, still new to the world of international diplomacy, sits down with Putin, who came to power in what amounted to a Kremlin palace coup 17 years ago, and has a reputation for keeping negotiating partners off balance.

Students of Washington-Moscow relations point to striking parallels between the scheduled Hamburg talks and another great-power meeting 56 years earlier.

Berlin Wall followed JFK’s summit

“In June 1961, five months after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, [Soviet leader] Nikita Khrushchev proposed a summit in Vienna,” said William Courtney, adjunct senior fellow at the Rand Corporation, who served as the first U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“JFK’s advisers advised against it because it wasn’t well prepared, but Kennedy decided to go ahead anyway. He admitted later that Khrushchev ‘beat the hell’ out of him. Two months later the Berlin Wall began to rise,” Courtney told VOA. “Now did JFK’s weak performance in the summit have anything to do with the timing of building the Berlin Wall? We’ll never know.”

On the eve of the Hamburg meeting, Trump signaled his intent to speak to Putin about Russia’s behavior in Eastern Europe and other world hotspots.

“We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes, including Syria and Iran,” Trump said Thursday in the Polish capital, which he visited before flying to Hamburg.

At a joint news conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump was less forthcoming about another sensitive issue: whether Russia interfered in last November’s presidential election.

“I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries,” Trump said. “Nobody really knows for sure.”

Trump aides have said he might bring up the election-meddling issue, but is not likely to dwell on it.

“That’s a difficult conversation to have in your first face-to-face, and Russia knows this,” said Lauren Goodrich, senior Eurasia analyst at the Stratfor geopolitical intelligence group in Texas.

‘Master strategist’ Putin vs. ‘unpredictable’ Trump

While Trump is the relative neophyte going into Friday’s meeting, Goodrich said Putin is wary of his American counterpart, who often is unpredictable in an international setting.

“Putin is a master strategist. He outplays the majority of his opponents the majority of the time. He’s well rehearsed and practiced for every single scenario,” Goodrich said. “The problem is, I’ve never seen him come up against a counterpart as unpredictable as Trump, so I think that may throw Putin off his game a little bit.”

For Putin, simply being seen on the world stage alongside a U.S. president will be considered a success, Goodrich added. After being frozen out during the final years of the Obama presidency, Putin knows that a picture of him and Trump sitting together in friendship will send an important message to countries on Russia’s border — both friends and foes.

“It’s enough that Russia can shape its messaging with its border lands that, ‘Look, at least the United States and Russia are talking again, so we’re going to be able to figure out the world. The United States is not talking to you about the world; they’re talking to us about the world,'” Goodrich said. “That’s really important to Russia among its border lands, to show that it’s on the same par as the United States on kind of shaping the world, instead of the U.S. working within those border lands outside Russian influence.”

‘Tremendous pressure’ on Putin

The Stratfor analyst said comparing the Hamburg meeting to the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit may be excessive, for one critical reason: Putin is desperate for a win on the world stage to ease massive headaches at home.

“Putin is under tremendous pressure. He has so many domestic problems that he has to find some way of relieving the pressure outside Russia, because at home it’s becoming very dangerous for him and his system,” Goodrich said.

Historian Dan Mahaffee points to another big difference between the 1961 Vienna summit and the Putin-Trump conversation, for which a relatively brief time has been allotted.

More than half a century ago, “it was a different Cold War environment,” said Mahaffee, who is policy director at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. “It was a time of a divided Berlin, the threat of nuclear war between superpowers, and trying to lower the temperature to avoid imminent conflict.”

Mahaffee mused that Kennedy had less difficulty going into his meeting with Khrushchev than Trump has had in the midst of exaggerated media speculation ahead of his face-to-face meeting with Putin. In contrast to intense attention in Washington devoted to the investigation of Russia’s attempts to influence last November’s U.S. election, the historian said with a chuckle that for Kennedy, “it was [Chicago Mayor] Richard J. Daley, not Khrushchev, who helped him win the 1960 election.”
…

France is confiscating weapons from roughly 100 people on a watchlist of potential Islamist militants, the interior minister said on Thursday, two weeks after state prosecutors said an assailant inspired by Islamic State had been a gun-club member.

Minister Gerard Collomb was speaking ahead of a parliamentary vote to extend emergency search-and-arrest powers given to police after Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015.

“We traced about a hundred … We’re sizing up the situation and taking the weapons away,” he told TV channel CNews, adding that police had foiled seven attacks in France this year alone.

The issue of weapons came to light last month when public prosecutors confirmed that a 31-year-old man, who died after ramming his car into a police convoy in Paris, had joined a gun

sports club to train as a jihadist fighter.

He had built up a large weapons arsenal and renewed his gun permit, despite being on an intelligence services list of people who appear to have been radicalized and could commit attacks.

Prosecutors said the man had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, whose bases in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by jets from a coalition of countries including France.

They say he appears to have been killed by the thick orange fumes that billowed out of his vehicle after he hit the police van on the Champs Elysees avenue.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron is proposing legislation to replace the system of emergency rule in November, including changes making it easier for officials vetting gun permit requests to cross-check against watchlists of would-be militants.

More than 230 people have been killed in France by Islamist assailants in the past two and a half years.

In the most recent operation, police arrested a man in northern France this week and four more were arrested in Brussels in a Belgian-led counter-terrorism swoop.
…

Belgian authorities are looking for more suspects after they raided a half-dozen sites and charged two men with terror-related offenses, but they insist they have no information that an extremist attack was imminent.

Federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said Thursday that even though they keep investigating the case, “to say that there would be a new attack, that is more than a bridge too far.”

“We have no material element whatsoever to assume that a new attack would be planned,” Van der Sypt said in a telephone interview.

Prosecutors said the investigation was not linked to past extremist attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Van der Sypt refused to elaborate how many suspects authorities are still looking for. “In investigations like this you are always looking for people,” he said.
…

Europe has made a dangerous turn on the Mediterranean Sea as it looks to Libya for help in slowing the number of migrants attempting to reach the continent in flimsy boats, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday. The organization called the European Union’s strategy of training the Libyan coast guard to rescue migrants “reckless.”

By turning to Libya, a country in chaos that is the jumping-off point for the hazardous journey, the EU has created “A Perfect Storm” — the title of Amnesty’s report — that could hammer often-desperate migrants with a double vengeance. They face the risk of dying at sea or grave human rights abuses once they are returned to Libya and trapped there, the human rights group said.

More than 2,000 migrants to Europe have died at sea so far this year while more than 73,380 have reached Italy, the report said, citing figures from Italy’s Interior Ministry. By year’s end, the number of arrivals is expected to match or exceed the 181,400 who made it in 2016, which was more than in the two previous years, the report said.

EU looks to Libya

The European Union has been casting about for ways to deal with the crisis, notably looking to Libya, which has two rival governments, for help preventing departures. The EU is focusing in particular on equipping and training the Libyan coast guard and Navy to conduct sea rescues and to lead the fight against smuggling and trafficking networks.

Amnesty said it was “deeply problematic” to unconditionally fund and train Libya, where human rights are lacking and the coast guard has been known for violence and even smuggling.

The group cited an August incident off Libya’s coast in which attackers shot at a Doctors Without Borders rescue boat. A U.N panel of experts on Libya later confirmed that two officers from a coast guard faction were involved.

In May, the Libyan coast guard intervened in a search-and-rescue operation another non-governmental organization was performing. The coast guard officers threatened migrants with weapons, took command of their wooden boat and took it back to Libya, Amnesty reported.

“The current situation with the Libyan coast guard is absolutely outrageous,” Iverna McGowan, who leads Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said in an interview in Brussels. “It is unconscionable that the EU … would allow certain rescue operations that we know are inadequate and trust that with people’s lives.”

The worst may go unseen, McGowan said. “People who are disembarked in Libya are going back to unlawful detention centers where they are facing torture, rape and other unthinkable abuses,” she said.

Keep NGOs involved 

The report argues that NGOs need to continue participating in migrant rescues even though Amnesty says responsibility for the task rests with governments. It makes no mention of the recent threat by an overwhelmed Italy to prohibit some NGOs from bringing migrants to ports in southern Italy.

Amnesty said a “multicountry humanitarian operation” under control of Italy is urgently needed and that use of Libyan resources should be conditional on certain limitations, including no rescue operations outside territorial waters and the transfer of all rescued migrants to EU or other appropriate vessels.

Amnesty is not alone in its concern about relying on Libya to ease the European migrant crisis.

The search-and-rescue director for Save the Children, Rob MacGillivray, said in a statement that rescued migrants have recounted horrors from Libya, including claims of sexual assaults, sales to others for work and whippings and electrical shocks in detention centers.

“Simply pushing desperate people back to Libya, which many describe as hell, is not a solution,” he said.

Precarious conditions

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitri Avramopoulos conceded at a recent news conference in Paris that the EU is drawing on a country in “very precarious conditions.”

The European Union executive Wednesday beseeched member states to step up their efforts and show goodwill in helping Italy and Greece cope with the surge in migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said, to the applause of legislators at the European Parliament, that “it would already make a world of difference in Europe if every single member state would live up to their commitments to show solidarity.”

The EU made commitments to ease the migrant pressure on Italy and Greece by having other member states take in some of the refugees who have made the dangerous Mediterranean crossing, but several countries in eastern and central Europe have shown little or no appetite for doing so.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will make his first official visit to Ukraine next week after accompanying President Donald Trump at the G-20 summit, the State Department said in a statement Wednesday.

Tillerson will meet with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko and “young reformers” from both the government and civil society on July 9.

“The Secretary will reaffirm America’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while encouraging the government of Ukraine to continue implementing reforms that will strengthen Ukraine’s economic, political, and military resilience,” the statement said.

President Trump hosted his Ukrainian counterpart at the White House last month, after which the U.S. Department of Treasury announced additional sanctions against Russia, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and individuals and companies associated with them.

The increased sanctions were in response to continued Russian support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
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Rifts are widening in Theresa May’s Cabinet over Brexit with two rival schools of thoughts emerging, one favoring a sharp break with the European Union and the other, led by the ruling Conservatives’ increasingly influential Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, wanting closer ties with the European bloc.

The mounting tensions are emerging as surveys suggest British voters are becoming more skittish over Brexit, possibly a reflection of increasingly bad news about the British economy, which is the worst performing major economy.

According to a YouGov poll, 60 percent of Britons believe trade with Europe should take priority in the departure negotiations with the bloc, rather than immigration issues, thought to be a key driver of the Brexit vote a year ago.

Rising public concern about post-Brexit economic prospects comes amid signs that Britain will need to improve the skills of its own workers rapidly or make better use of robots in manufacturing and assembly plants, as it could be faced with a crippling skills shortage.

The consultancy firm Deloitte found in a survey last week that 47 percent of highly skilled workers from other European countries are thinking of leaving. It warned that if they do, there will be a serious implications for employers.

“Overseas workers, especially those from the EU, tell us they are more likely to leave the UK than before,” said David Sproul of Deloitte.

The split within the upper echelons of the ruling Conservatives over Brexit has gotten sharper since last month’s inconclusive elections that left May weakened and her party remaining in government thanks to a voting deal she made with 10 Northern Ireland lawmakers to give her a slight working majority in the House of Commons.

Few analysts believe May will see out the year before she has to step down and is replaced. The battle is playing out in public with key ministers taking swipes at each other over how Britain should leave the European Union, adding to the sense of a government in disarray.

Hammond has warned that “petty politics” must not be allowed to “interfere with economic logic”, while the minister charged with overseeing Brexit negotiations with Brussels, David Davis, has remained firm that Britain should leave by March 2019 both the single market and customs union. It could remain in both, if London agreed to pay into the EU budget and accept the principle of free movement of labor.

The stark division within the party was illustrated Tuesday when a 2010 video surfaced of Conservative lawmaker Steve Baker speaking to a Libertarian Alliance gathering. Baker, a junior minister and a member of Davis’s Brexit negotiating team, branded the European Union as an “obstacle” to world peace and “incompatible” with a free society. He argued it should be “wholly torn down.”

That is not the position of most Conservative lawmakers, but reflective of a hard-core minority who are propping up May, fearful that if she goes Hammond would probably be the most likely to replace her.

Moderate backbench Conservative lawmakers have been reaching out to opposite numbers in the Labour and Liberal Democrat ranks to try to plot a parliamentary way forward to block a so-called hard Brexit and to fashion one that would allow Britain to retain membership of the Single Market and Customs Union. They are not being helped by Labour’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is presiding over a party almost as divided as the Conservatives over Brexit.

Labour’s position isn’t clear, it campaigned last month as a Brexit party that wants to withdraw Britain from the Single Market, doing so because it feared desertion by working-class voters angry over the large number of immigrants working in the country. Corbyn has talked since about wanting a jobs-focused Brexit, but has punished 49 Labour lawmakers who ignored him last week and supported a rebel amendment calling for Britain to stay in the single market and customs union.

European officials say with the incoherence underlining British politics they are becoming increasingly fearful that Brexit negotiations will collapse, leaving Britain exiting Europe with no trade deal.

They aren’t the only ones worried. This week the director of the Leave campaign during last year’s referendum, expressed grave doubts about Brexit. In a Twitter exchange Dominic Cummings said he feared a debacle in the EU negotiations and admitted the referendum had been a “dumb idea.” Leaving the European Union could be an error, he said.
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The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party has pledged to continue his campaign for justice in the face of government accusations of supporting terrorism.  

The head of Turkey’s main opposition Republican Peoples Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is leading thousands of people on a 450-kilometer justice march, from the capital, Ankara, to the country’s largest city, Istanbul.

The march is in response to a year-long crackdown following last July’s failed coup attempt.  The crackdown has resulted in more than 100,000 people losing their jobs and more than 60,000 jailed.  

Kilicdaroglu, who is leading a 25-day justice march from Ankara to Istanbul, told VOA the protest was triggered by the jailing of fellow parliamentary deputy and close ally Enis Berberoglu for 25 years on charges of releasing state secrets.

He says the introduction of the State of Emergency decree was a civil coup.  All the negative outcomes of this civilian coup came one after the other, he said.  Adding MPs (members of parliament) and journalist were arrested and academics were dismissed from their positions.

He says Berberoglu’s arrest became the moment when the water over spilled the glass and his party made the decision to march.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government have repeatedly condemned the march, saying it supports terrorism and coup plotters.  

Despite the criticism, the numbers joining the march continue to grow, with around 10,000 marching with Kilicdarolgu.  He expects those numbers will grow by the time the march concludes Sunday in Istanbul.  But Kilicdaroglu promised the march is only the beginning and civil protest will not end.

He says the struggle will continue with all possible effort and within democracy and using all the force the party has in parliament and outside parliament.

Amid rising political tensions over the march, a heavy police presence has been deployed to protect demonstrators, particularly Kilicdarolgu.

Police say they have detained six people linked to Islamic State who were planning to carry out an attack on the march.  Kilicdaroglu said he and marchers have faced threats and provocations.  

The march is due to end Sunday at the prison where Berberoglu is serving his prison sentence.
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The U.S. government has long warned that Russian organized crime posed a threat to democratic institutions, including “criminally linked oligarchs” who might collude with the Russian government to undermine business competition.

Those concerns, ever present if not necessarily always top priorities, are front and center once more.

A special counsel investigation is drawing attention to Russian efforts to meddle in democratic processes, the type of skulduggery that in the past has relied on hired hackers and outside criminals. It’s not clear how much the probe by former FBI Director Robert Mueller will center on the criminal underbelly of Moscow, but he’s already picked some lawyers with experience fighting organized crime. And as the team looks for any financial entanglements of Trump associates and relationships with Russian officials, its focus could land again on the intertwining of Russia’s criminal operatives and its intelligence services.

Russian organized crime has manifested itself over the decades in more conventional forms of money laundering, credit card fraud and black market sales. Justice Department prosecutors have repeatedly racked up convictions for those offenses.

Espionage plus greed

In recent years, though, the bond between Russian intelligence agencies and criminal networks has been especially alarming to American law enforcement officials, blending motives of espionage with more old-fashioned greed. In March, for instance, two hired hackers were charged along with two officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service in a cyberattack on Yahoo Inc. in 2013.

It’s too early to know how Russian criminal networks might fit into the election meddling investigation, but central to the probe are devastating breaches of Democratic email accounts, including those of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. U.S. authorities have blamed those hacks on Russian intelligence services working to discredit Clinton and help Trump — but have said the overall effort involved third-party intermediaries and paid internet trolls.

Former law enforcement officials say Russian organized crime has been a concern for at least a couple of decades, though not necessarily the most pressing demand given finite resources and budget constraints. The threat is diffuse and complex, and Russia’s historic lack of cooperation has complicated efforts to apprehend suspects. And the responsibility for combating the problem often falls across different divisions of the FBI and the Justice Department, depending on whether it’s a criminal or national security offense — a sometimes blurry boundary.

‘Very dangerous’

“It’s not an easy thing to kind of grasp or understand, but it’s very dangerous to our country because they have so many different aspects, unlike a traditional cartel,” said Robert Anderson, a retired FBI executive assistant director who worked counterintelligence cases and oversaw the criminal and cyber branch.

“You have to know where to look, which makes it more complicated,” he added. “And you have to understand what you’re looking for.”

Federal prosecutors continue to bring traditional organized crime cases, such as one last month in New York charging 33 members and associates of a Russian crime syndicate in a racketeering and extortion scheme that officials say involved cargo shipment thefts and efforts to defraud casinos. But there’s a heightened awareness about more sophisticated cyberthreats that commingle the interests of the government and of criminals.

“An organized criminal group matures in what they do,” said retired FBI Assistant Director Ron Hosko. “What they once did here through extortion, some of these groups are now doing through cyberattack vectors.”

Within the Justice Department, it’s been apparent since the collapse of the Soviet Union that crime from that territory could affect national security in Europe and the U.S.

A 2001 report from the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, a research arm, called America “the land of opportunity for unloading criminal goods and laundering dirty money.” It said crime groups in the region were establishing ties to drug trafficking networks, and that “criminally linked oligarchs” might work with the government to undermine competition in gas, oil and other strategic networks.

Three months later came the September 11 attacks, and the FBI, then under Mueller’s leadership, and other agencies left no doubt that terrorism was the most important priority.

“I recall talking to the racketeering guys after that and them saying, ‘Forget any focus now on organized crime,’ ” said James Finckenauer, an author of the report.

Besides cyberthreats, Justice Department officials in recent years have worried about the effect of unchecked international corruption, creating a kleptocracy initiative to recover money plundered by government leaders for their own purposes.

Yanukovych regime

In 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder pledged the Justice Department’s commitment to recouping large sums believed to have been stolen during the regime of the Russia-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president chased from power that year.

That effort led to an FBI focus on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman who did political consulting work on behalf of Yanukovych’s political party and who remains under scrutiny now.

But those same foreign links have also made cases hard to prove in court.

In many instances, foreign criminal hackers or those sponsored by foreign governments — including China, Iran and Russia — have remained out of reach of American authorities. In some cases, judges have chastised U.S. authorities for prosecutorial overreach in going after international targets.

A San Francisco federal judge, for instance, in 2015 dismissed an indictment involving two Ukrainian nationals who’d been accused of trying to bribe an official at a U.N. agency responsible for creating standards for machine-readable international passports.

The judge said he couldn’t understand how the government could apply a foreign bribery law to conduct that had no direct connection to the U.S.
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As police step up patrols and protesters set up camp in Hamburg, Germany, no one is expecting an easy weekend when U.S. President Donald Trump joins other heads of the world’s 20 leading economies.

Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are on a collision course on issues of climate and trade, but counterterrorism efforts, recent North Korean missile tests and Chinese steel dumping could bring them together.

Merkel pledges to work toward consensus on wider issues, but foresees no miracles in her relations with the U.S. administration.

“I do not think we will have unified positions on all issues at the end, but it is sensible and honest to talk to each other on all issues of international diplomacy,” Merkel told reporters ahead of the summit.

WATCH: Preview of G-20 meeting

President Trump said he has “bold” plans to impose steep tariffs or quotas on steel imports, the latest and perhaps most serious of threats to protect U.S. industry, and part of his America First strategy, one that has G-20 partners feeling nervous.

“What he is doing is he is throwing all kinds of cards up in the air — NAFTA, critique of climate change — because he actually wants a bit of a zero base policy,” said Tim Evans, a political economist at Middlesex University. “I think at the end of the day he probably, of course, wants free trade in the win-win sense, but what he is trying to expose is perhaps some of the hypocrisy of countries like China who talk the talk of openness but do not always deliver. So there is going to be a real clash of the titans at this summit.”

Shock talk brings results

After threatening to not stand by NATO allies unless they pay their share of defense, members pledged to boost their contributions. Trump said he would rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and now he has a deal with Mexico on sugar exports.

The U.S. leader’s target now is China and its cheap steel exports that are blamed for killing jobs not only in the United States, but in Britain and other G-20 states, including Germany.

Chinese officials are closely watching the direction of U.S. policy and have called on Washington to exercise caution.

Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord has stoked the anger of demonstrators in Hamburg as well as concern among Merkel and some other G-20 leaders, but analysts say the threat of cheap Chinese steel imports could be a common cause, and take precedence.

“Many of the G-20 members are experiencing exactly the same kinds of economic forces and constraints the U.S. is facing,” Shanker Singham, director of economic policy and prosperity studies at the Legatum Institute in London, told VOA. “So for example, in the U.K., the steel mills in Port Talbot and Redcar were closed because of, really, overcapacity of supply by the China steel sector. That is not very much different from what has been going on in Ohio and Pennsylvania. So I think this actually has the opportunity or a chance to get a lot of support.”

Wait-and-see approach

G-20 leaders, while nervous, are waiting to see what Trump actually does before taking any action, and all indications are that they are not rushing to adopt protectionist measures.

Global Trade Alert, a group that monitors protectionism, this week reported a drop in the number of such measures adopted by G-20 members in the last several months compared with the same period last year.

“The Trump administration has said a lot about ‘America First’ and fair trade and so forth, but they haven’t actually done that much so far,” said Singham. “G-20 members will be looking at ‘What do you really mean by this policy?’ in order to determine what their response to that policy will be.”

None of the major issues is likely to be resolved, but analysts say more clarity may emerge, given who the players are.

“The landscape that we see looming in Hamburg is one of showmanship,” said Evans. ”We have a lot of unpredictability because we have a lot of very charismatic, very outspoken leaders — people like [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan from Turkey, [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi from India, Vladimir Putin from Russia and of course President Trump. These people know how to play to global audiences.”
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A Washington lawyer’s simultaneous representation of President Donald Trump and a jailed American pastor in Turkey doesn’t pose an ethical issue as long as his work for one doesn’t undermine the other, legal experts say.

Jay Sekulow, founder and chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), had been representing Andrew Brunson for months when he went to the White House to lobby Trump to press Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the case. He began representing Trump soon afterward.

Brunson, a native of North Carolina who has lived in Turkey with wife, Norine, for 23 years, were arrested for alleged immigration violations in early October. She was released 13 days later, while his charges have been upgraded to supporting terrorism.

Gene Kapp, media director for ACLJ, which focuses on conservative issues, told VOA that Sekulow is representing Trump in his personal capacity and has been representing Brunson in his ACLJ role.

“His work as a member of the president’s legal team is not connected to his work at the ACLJ and the ongoing efforts to get Pastor Brunson released,” Kapp said, adding that Sekulow does not charge Brunson.

On his radio show on May 19, Sekulow said he met with the president and others at the White House “for over an hour” the day before, his second visit in two weeks.

“I anticipate there will be a release soon,” Sekulow said, adding that his group was working with Congress, the State Department and White House.

Gulen connection alleged

A column four days later in Takvim, a pro-government Turkish newspaper, suggested that Brunson was an American spy who had been working with Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who Ankara claims masterminded a coup attempt last July 15, and supporting the PKK, a banned Kurdish militant group. Kapp called the allegations bogus.

U.S. relations with Turkey have soured recently over a number of issues, including Turkey’s unsuccessful efforts to get the U.S. to hand over Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, and Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.

There has been no obvious recent movement in Brunson’s case. Turkish media have suggested that he is being held as leverage for Gulen’s extradition.

“Andrew is extremely discouraged and really really needs your prayers!” Norine said in a May 27 post on the couple’s Facebook page.

Kapp said the ACLJ is continuing to do everything it can, in the U.S. and Turkey, to obtain the pastor’s release.

“We are very concerned about his health,” Kapp said. “He is being held in a cell built for eight people but houses 22.”

Brunson’s case has drawn attention in Congress, too. In February, a bipartisan letter from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, signed by 78 lawmakers, called for Brunson’s unconditional release.

William Hodes, a legal ethics expert and professor of law emeritus at Indiana University, said he didn’t see Sekulow’s representation of Trump and Brunson as an ethical problem.

“This lawyer’s two clients are not adverse to each other, and it is hard to see how one client would fear that his confidences would be leaked to the other to the first client’s detriment,” Hodes said.

Communication advised

But Hodes added it’s possible that Brunson could become irked if he felt Trump wasn’t doing enough or working quickly enough, while Trump might have diplomatic reasons to go slowly.

“Lawyers have a lot of different clients with lots of different interests, but lawyers do have to avoid a conflict of interest between the clients,” said Richard Painter, who served as former President George W. Bush’s White House ethics czar.

In this instance, Sekulow needs to talk to both clients and make sure they don’t object to his dual representation, and ensure that the work he’s doing for one doesn’t undermine his representation of the other, said Painter, who teaches law at the University of Minnesota.

A June 7 article in The Washington Post said Sekulow has built a powerful charity empire leading a team of ACLJ attorneys who jump into high-profile court cases over such issues as religious liberty and abortion rights. It said Sekulow’s family or their companies received nearly $230 million in charitable donations in 2011-15.
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In the southwestern part of Germany, the mountain ranges are crisscrossed with subterranean rivers that have left the area honeycombed with ancient limestone caves. This area is rich in human history and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, is considering declaring the caves a World Heritage Site. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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French President Emmanuel Macron says the European Union has lost its way amid bureaucracy and needs a new generation of leaders to put it back on track. In a major speech at Versailles Monday, Macron also called for a radical overhaul of the country’s government, which he wants reduced by one third. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports his message received mixed reactions.
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Italy says the number of migrants arriving on its shores during the first half of this year rose nearly 20 percent above the levels reached by the same date in 2016.

Interior ministry officials in Rome said that, as of Monday, 85,183 migrants have landed from the Mediterranean Sea, nearly 14,000 more people than at the same time in 2016.

Many of the arriving migrants were rescued by coast guard patrol boats and other vessels after their flimsy crafts began taking on water. Another 2,000 migrants have died this year attempting to make the trip from North Africa.

Before the final migration totals were disclosed, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that unless the European Union does more to help alleviate the surge of migrants to Italy, the influx will feed “hostile reactions in our society.”

Italy appeals to all of Europe

Speaking in Rome, he said: “The whole of Italy has mobilized to deal with the flows of migrants in the central Mediterranean and asks the EU for engagement, which is necessary if Europe wants to stay faithful to its own principles, own history, own civilization.”

Italy threatened last week to close its ports to migrant rescue boats in order to force the vessels to go to other Mediterranean countries, and pleaded with other countries to take in the refugees. On Monday, however, refugees were still landing freely.

France, Germany and the EU’s migration commissioner pledged they would give more support to Italy in handling the influx of migrants, but made no direct reference to the Italian government’s appeal to other European countries to allow rescue boats to dock at their ports.

The French and German interior ministers and the EU’s migration chief agreed to bolster training and funding for the coast guard in Libya, where migrants pay people-smugglers to carry them across the sea, and also to relocate asylum seekers more quickly.

Do aid groups make problem worse?

The bigger European states also said they would draw up a “code of conduct” for aid groups working in the Mediterranean, who supply boats that pick up many of the refugees unable to reach Italy unaided. Many people in Italy contend the nongovernmental aid groups are, in effect, aiding the human smugglers and allowing the trade to continue.

The U.N. refugee agency said Italy cannot continue absorbing tens of thousands of migrants, and called on European countries to show more solidarity with Rome.

“It is unrealistic to think that Italy should have the responsibility to disembark everyone,” said UNHCR special envoy for the central Mediterranean Vincent Cochetel. “This is not sustainable; this is not tenable. So we need to have other countries joining Italy and sharing that responsibility.”

The flood of migrants who see Italy as their main gateway to Europe and a recent stretch of good weather and calm seas has pushed the number of arriving migrants to more than 10,000 in a week. The travelers’ sea voyages begin in Libya, but they originate from many places: across sub-Saharan Africa, from the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Syria and Bangladesh.

Migrants must declare their nationality when they arrive in Italy. Around 15 percent of all migrants this year have been from Nigeria; 12 percent are from Bangladesh, 10 percent from Guinea and 9 percent from Ivory Coast.

 
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Negotiators in Cyprus peace talks are gearing up for a tough second week at a Swiss resort, with the rival sides submitting their positions in writing. 

Officials are trying to crack the most difficult issues blocking an accord, including agreeing on post-agreement security arrangements.

Other key issues include executive power-sharing in an aimed-for federated Cyprus that was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup mounted by supporters of union with Greece. 

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said Monday that responsibility weighs heavy on all sides to strike a deal that allows Cyprus to become what U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a “normal state.”

Mustafa Akinci, leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots, said earlier that this week of talks will be decisive for the island’s future. 
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French President Emmanuel Macron has announced military and financial support to a group of countries fighting terrorism in Africa’s Sahel region. Macron was in Mali on Sunday to consolidate western backing for a five-nation regional force against the militants. During his visit, an al-Qaida-affiliated group based in Mali released a video of six foreign hostages it is holding for ransom. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Two gunmen opened fire outside a mosque in the southern French city of Avignon Sunday, wounding eight people. Police said they are “not at all treating it as terrorist-related,” the regional newspaper La Provence reported.

Reports from witnesses said two men got out of a car near the mosque and opened fire with a shotgun and another weapon, local authorities said.

Two of the eight people wounded were hospitalized, but their injuries reportedly were not serious. La Provence said four people were wounded outside the mosque and four members of a family were hit by shrapnel in their apartment about 50 meters away.

The newspaper said worshippers leaving the mosque were not the target of the late-evening attack. It quoted a judicial source as saying that police suspect a dispute among youth groups sparked the gunplay.
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With an eye on anti-globalization protests brewing in Hamburg before this week’s G20 summit, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday leaders will have to focus on sustainable and inclusive economic growth rather than their own prosperity.

In her weekly podcast, the German chancellor said this year’s G-20 summit will delve into issues championed by protesters such as distribution of wealth and consumption of resources — alongside related issues like climate change, free markets, consumer protection and upholding social standards.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched against the meeting in the rain in Hamburg on Sunday in a prelude to the July 7-8 gathering, where 21,000 police from across Germany will protect the meetings of the world’s 20 largest economies.

“It’s not only going to be about [economic] growth but rather sustainable growth,” Merkel said. “We’ve got to have a ‘win-win’ situation for everyone. The issues obviously revolve around: how do we achieve inclusive or sustainable growth?”

Merkel, seeking a fourth term in a Sept. 24 election, outlined the issues as: “What are we doing with our resources? What are the rules for distribution of wealth? How many people are taking part? And how many countries are able to profit from that?”

Without mentioning the protests that have German security officials worried about possible acts of sabotage this week in the country’s second-largest city, Merkel noted that these non-traditional issues were forced onto the G-20 agenda.

“If we simply try to carry on as we have in the past, the worldwide developments will definitely not be sustainable and inclusive,” she said. “We need the climate protection agreement, open markets and improved trade agreements in which consumer protection, social and environmental standards are upheld.”

In a speech to parliament last week, Merkel promised to fight for free trade and press on with multilateral efforts to combat climate change at the summit, challenging the “America First” policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The G-20 meeting follows a G-7 summit in Sicily a month ago that exposed deep divisions between other Western countries and Trump on climate change, trade and migration. Trump later announced he was pulling the United States out of a landmark agreement to combat climate change reached in 2015 in Paris.

German authorities are bracing for trouble in Hamburg, worried that the protests could turn violent as they did outside a G8 summit in Genoa, Italy in 2001 when one person was shot dead and hundreds injured.

The German Federal Crime Office warned that violent G-20 opponents could carry out arson and sabotage at infrastructure targets such as the Hamburg harbor and airport, newspaper Welt am Sonntag said on Sunday.

“New and creative forms of attack have to be watched out for,” the report said. It added Hamburg police are bracing for attempts by activists to disrupt electrical power in Hamburg.

Sunday’s demonstration was organized by a group called “Protest Wave G20”, with 50,000 to 100,000 protesters expected on an afternoon march through the city center. Other

demonstrations this week are called “Welcome to Hell” and “G-20 Not Welcome”.

 
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The chief executive of Russia’s Kaspersky Lab says he’s ready to have his company’s source code examined by U.S. government officials to help dispel long-lingering suspicions about his company’s ties to the Kremlin.

In an interview with The Associated Press at his Moscow headquarters, Eugene Kaspersky said Saturday there’s never been any truth to rumors of his work with Russian intelligence. But he acknowledges it’s unusual for a successful company to operate independently of the government in Russia, saying, “I do understand why we look strange.”

But he says the firm never cooperates with cyberespionage, saying he shuts down the conversation when he occasionally sensed that unidentified governments were pushing him to.

He says “we stay on the bright side and never, never go to the dark side.”
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Pope Francis is calling for an end to the violent anti-government protests in Venezuela and expressing solidarity with families of those killed.

Francis led thousands of people in prayer for Venezuela on Sunday as he noted the country is to mark its independence on Wednesday.

He said, “I assure this dear nation of my prayers and express my closeness to the families who have lost their children in the protests. I appeal for an end to the violence and for a peaceful and democratic solution to the crisis.”

At least 80 people have been killed since anti-government protests erupted three months ago.

The Vatican sponsored a dialogue last year that failed. Recently, Venezuelan bishops have travelled to the Vatican and briefed Francis on their criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian bent.
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