ІНСАЙДЕР УКРАЇНА

Rafael Nadal defeated Stan Wawrinka in straight sets Sunday in the final match of the tennis French Open, winning the grand slam for the 10th time in his career.

“It is really incredible. To win La Decima is very, very special,” the 31-year-old Spaniard said shortly after becoming the only man in tennis history to win a major tournament 10 times.

Defeating Wawrinka of Switzerland 6-2, 6-3, 6-1, Nadal, often referred to as the “king of clay”, showed his dominance over the red clay courts of the French Open, also referred to as Roland Garros in Paris.

“The nerves, the adrenaline I feel when I play on this court, it is impossible to compare … it is the most important event in my career, to win again here is impossible to describe,” he said.

Just one day earlier, history was also made in Women’s Singles at the tournament when 20-year-old Latvian Jelena Ostapenko became the lowest ranked player ever to win the championship.

“I am really happy to win here. I think I’m still — I still cannot believe it, because it was my dream and now it came true,” she told reporters after defeating Simona Halep, who was seeded third in the tournament.

An unseeded player has not won the French Open since 1933.

 
…

Ukrainians celebrated the first day of visa-free travel to the European Union Sunday in what President Petro Poroshenko called “a final exit of our country from the Russian empire.”

“The visa-free regime for Ukraine has started! Glory to Europe! Glory to Ukraine!” he tweeted from his official account Sunday morning.

The arrangement will allow Ukrainians with biometric passports to enter all EU member states other than Britain and Ireland for up to 90 days every six months for tourism or to visit family and friends.

Poroshenko met with Slovak counterpart Andrej Kiska Saturday on their common border, opening a symbolic “door to the EU.”

“Welcome to Europe,” Kiska told a crowd. “I want to call on you to continue carrying out reforms.”

Thousands of Ukrainians had crossed into EU countries by midday, according to the Ukranian Foreign Ministry’s consular department.

“#Bezviz [no visa] is just the beginning!” Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin wrote on Twitter, accompanied by photos of himself crossing the border into Hungary.

The EU approved the arrangement last month after repeated delays since it promised to cement ties with Kyiv in 2014. Ukraine that year became the scene of the worst confrontation between Russia and the West in Europe since the Cold War, with Moscow annexing Crimea and backing separatist rebels in the east of the country.

Visa-free travel is seen as a step toward Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, though major hurdles remain based on economic instability and fears of furthering escalating the conflict with Russia.
…

Prime Minister Theresa May’s office said on Sunday there had been no change to plans for U.S. President Donald Trump’s to come to Britain on a state visit, after the Guardian newspaper reported the trip had been postponed.

The paper, citing an unnamed adviser at May’s Downing Street office who was in the room at the time, reported Trump had told May by telephone in recent weeks that he did not want to come if there were likely to be large-scale protests.

“We aren’t going to comment on speculation about the contents of private phone conversations,” a spokeswoman for May’s office said. “The queen extended an invitation to President Trump to visit the UK and there is no change to those plans.”

The White House had no immediate comment on the report.

No date has been set for the visit, which was agreed during May’s visit to Washington in January, but British media had reported it was planned for October.

Trump has come under fire in Britain this month for his public criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s response to an attack by Islamist militants in London, in which eight people were killed. May found herself forced to defend Khan, who is from the opposition Labour party.

At that time, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said there was no reason to cancel the visit, while White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that Trump intended to go and that “he appreciates Her Majesty’s gracious invitation”.
…

Russia said on Saturday it had told the United States it was unacceptable for Washington to strike pro-government forces in Syria after the U.S. military carried out an airstrike on pro-Assad militia last month.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov relayed the message to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Saturday initiated by the U.S. side, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

U.S. officials told Reuters last month that the U.S. military carried out the airstrike against militia supported by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which it said posed a threat to U.S. forces and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in the country’s south.

Russia said at the time that the U.S. action would hamper efforts to find a political solution to the conflict and had violated the sovereignty of Syria, one of Russia’s closest Middle East allies.

“Lavrov expressed his categorical disagreement with the U.S. strikes on pro-government forces and called on him to take concrete measures to prevent similar incidents in future,” the ministry said.

The two men had also exchanged assessments of the situation in Syria, it added, and confirmed their desire to step up cooperation to try to end the conflict there.

The ministry said Lavrov and Tillerson had also discussed the need to try to mend the rift between Qatar and other Arab nations through negotiations, and had talked about the state of U.S.-Russia relations and planned meetings between officials from the two countries.
…

Amsterdam police said there was “no indication whatsoever” of terrorist involvement in an incident Saturday in which eight pedestrians were struck and injured by a car.

The car was parked illegally near Amsterdam Central Station, the city’s main rail terminal, police said. When officers approached the driver, the car lurched forward into a retaining wall, striking several pedestrians.

The police later tweeted, after speaking with the driver, that the incident appeared to have been unintentional. They said the driver had apparently been ill, but he was arrested.

Six of the injured people were hospitalized, a police spokeswoman said, adding that two were in serious condition.

Attacks over the past three weeks in England, beginning with a deadly suicide bombing at a concert hall in Manchester, and other terror-related incidents have put authorities in many European countries on high alert.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump will visit NATO ally Poland before he heads to Germany for the Group of 20 (G-20) summit in July, the White House announced.

“The visit will reaffirm America’s steadfast commitment to one of our closest European allies and emphasize the administration’s priority of strengthening NATO’s collective defense,” the White House said in a statement late Friday.

Trump will deliver a major speech during the visit, and attend the Three Seas Initiative summit as a symbol of Washington’s “strong ties to Central Europe,” it said.

Leaders from several central, eastern and southern European countries are to meet in the city of Wroclaw in western Poland for the Three Seas summit on July 6-7.

The G-20 summit takes place in Hamburg on July 7-8.
…

Peace talks on divided Cyprus are to resume in Geneva on June 28, the United Nations said Friday, ending a stalemate on procedure that had threatened to derail two years of negotiations.

Talks between Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci stalled last month in disagreement about a conference in Geneva including Britain, Turkey and Greece that would address post-settlement Cyprus security issues.

Both leaders met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday in New York and agreed to resume talks.

They will both travel to Geneva for the negotiations later this month, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement Friday, along with Greece, Turkey and Britain as guarantor powers, and the European Union as an observer.

Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974, triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.

Security issues related to the presence of up to 30,000 troops in the breakaway north of the island are a key sticking point in talks. Greek Cypriots perceive their presence after a settlement as a threat, while Turkish Cypriots say the troops are necessary for their security.
…

The carnage of the London Bridge attack could have been worse: One of the attackers tried to rent a larger truck that could have killed more people, but his payment was declined. The bloodthirsty gang was also shot dead before they could make their way back to the van where their petrol bombs were stored.

In a rare glimpse into the weeklong investigation, police released details on Saturday that showed Khuram Butt originally tried to rent a 7.5 ton truck. The intended truck was smaller but similar to the one used in the Nice attack last year that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in the resort town in the south of France.

After his payment was declined, Butt and his two accomplices rented a smaller van that they used to plow into crowds before they leapt from the vehicle and went on a stabbing rampage in an attack that left eight people dead and nearly 50 people injured. It was the third such deadly attack in Britain in the three months.

​Knives featured pink blades 

After leaving the small white van, the men used 12-inch knives with bright pink blades, according to Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command.

Police also disclosed that multiple petrol bombs were discovered in the van, and a copy of the Quran opened at a page “describing martyrdom” was found at one of the attackers’ houses.

Investigators believe three victims were killed on the bridge, including one man who was thrown into the Thames River, before the attackers left the vehicle and stabbed five people to death around London’s busy Borough Market, Haydon said. Police believe Butt was driving the van.

“When I come back to Butt trying getting hold of a 7.5 ton lorry — the effect could have been even worse,” he said.

Molotov cocktails found

More than a dozen wine bottles filled with flammable liquid and rags wrapped around them in the shape of Molotov cocktails were found in the van. Two blow torches were also found.

Haydon said the men may have been planning even more bloodshed if they had survived their stabbing spree and made it back to the van.

Police also found a number of office chairs, gravel and a suitcase in the van.

Detectives believe the gravel may have been placed in the vehicle to make it heavier, or as part of a cover to justify hiring it, while the chairs may have been used to convince family and friends they were moving furniture.

Butt, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born British citizen, and his two accomplices, Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, were shot dead by armed police eight minutes after the first emergency call.

Fake suicide belts

The three attackers were wearing fake suicide belts consisting of plastic water bottles wrapped in grey duct tape.

Haydon described the pink knives as “pretty unusual” and appealed for anyone with information about where they came from to contact police.

Police raided Redouane’s small residence on Tuesday and said he had been renting it since April. This was the safe house where the attack was planned, police said. In the residence, police found an English language copy of the Quran opened at a page describing martyrdom, pieces of cloth which appeared to match material wrapped around the petrol bombs and water bottles similar to those used in the fake suicide vests, police said. Luggage straps, plastic retractable craft knives and rolls of duct tape were also found.

Eighteen people have been arrested in connection with last week’s attack. All but five have been released. Searches are continuing.

Questions remain

The question remains how the men met and knew one another but police said Saturday they did not suspect a wider plot.

“It looks as if it is pretty much a contained plot involving the three of them, which is supported by the forensic evidence we’ve got back so far,” Haydon said.

Butt, who police consider the attack ringleader, had been on bail after being arrested for fraud in a case in October of last year, police said. He had also been repeatedly reported to police for violent behavior and trying to recruit young children to the Islamic State group as well as featuring in the documentary, “The Jihadis Next Door,” where he was seen next to a group of men unfurling a black-and-white flag scrawled with Arabic script and associated with the Islamic State group.

Warned by police

“There was no evidence uncovered of any attack-planning in relation to him,’ Haydon said.

Butt had been warned by police on two occasions — once for fraud in 2008 and once in 2010 for assault. Still, he did not have any criminal convictions.

Zaghba and Redouane lacked any criminal convictions or such warnings in Britain.

“From what I’m seeing, there is nothing that suggests at the moment that we got that wrong,” Haydon said, referring to Butt.

 
…

Britain has been plunged into political chaos after a shock result in Thursday’s general election that saw the ruling Conservative Party’s majority wiped out.

Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap poll hoping to boost her mandate for talks on Britain’s exit from the European Union, due to start next week. But the Brexit timetable has been thrown into jeopardy as the opposition Labor Party saw its vote share soar.

May on Friday resisted calls to quit — calls that came even from senior figures in her party.

After visiting Queen Elizabeth II on Friday, a part of electoral procedure, May announced she would try to form a minority government supported by the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, from Northern Ireland.

“Our two parties have enjoyed a strong relationship over many years, and this gives me the confidence to believe that we will be able to work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom,” May said.

Solid majority seen vital

The prime minister maintained that the Brexit talks would begin as planned next week, but with her party’s loss of 13 seats and its parliamentary majority, May will rely on the support of the DUP vote by vote. That is simply unsustainable, said political analyst Ian Dunt, author of the book Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?

Minority governments in Britain “have very bad track records — they always get torn apart. The system doesn’t like it. When you’re doing that going into Brexit negotiations — some of the most brutal, arduous negotiations this country has ever faced — you don’t have a chance going up against it without really a strong majority.”

So is Britain’s EU exit now in doubt? No, Dunt said, but May’s vision of a so-called “hard Brexit” — in which the U.K. would most likely leave the single European Union market, take full control over its borders, strike new trade deals and apply laws within its own borders — has been rejected.

“She said, ‘Give me a mandate.’ And the answer was, ‘No.’ And that means we have to rethink everything, the entirety of the way we’re doing Brexit,” Dunt said.

The Conservatives’ losses were largely gains for the Labor opposition, which defied polls and predictions to gain 29 seats — a vindication for leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose grip on the party appears to have strengthened.

“We put forward our policies — strong and hopeful policies — and they’ve gained an amazing response and traction,” he said.

Youth vote energized

Among those was scrapping university tuition fees, which energized the youth vote. As one teaching student at the University of London told VOA, “I think most of us here were against Brexit last year. And I don’t feel like the current prime minister or, indeed, the Tory party, has any idea about what to do with Brexit at the moment.”

Elation in the Corbyn camp is tempered by electoral reality, said Dunt, making a comparison to last year’s U.S. presidential campaign.

“In a sort of Bernie Sanders way, he just created this sort of idealistic momentum around young people,” Dunt said. “He’s done something extraordinary. But he still doesn’t have that many seats.”

A year after the Brexit vote, Britain appears as divided as ever — between young and old, left and right, pro- and anti-Europe.

May’s campaign catchphrase of a “strong and stable government” has backfired. Britain looks set for months of political chaos.
…

Britain was thrown into political uncertainty Friday after the Labour Party, the country’s main opposition, made an extraordinary electoral comeback, denying Prime Minister Theresa May and the ruling Conservatives a majority in the House of Commons, largely thanks to a surge in youth voters.

In what will rank as one of the most remarkable elections in modern British history, May’s gamble to expand her party’s parliamentary majority failed spectacularly, raising doubts that she will be able to persevere and lead a minority government with the support of Northern Ireland’s Unionists.

Calls mounted Friday from the Labour Party, the leaders of third parties and from some Conservatives for the prime minister to step down.

But May made clear she would struggle on and seek to govern after receiving Unionist assurances. Downing Street officials said May will head to Buckingham Place to ask the Queen for permission to form a government. Her plan is to govern with the support of Northern Ireland’s Unionists and she would have a one-seat majority.

May’s plan will be then to face a vote of confidence in the House of Commons next week.

Despite their anger at her decision to call a snap post-Brexit referendum election and her conduct of the party’s campaign, Conservative lawmakers appeared ready in the short-term to back her.

If May were to lose a Commons confidence vote next week, it would give Labour a chance to form a coalition government of its own, or seek to govern as a minority government, although it is unclear if Labour would be able to do so.

​Calls for May to step down

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was all but written off at the start of the election campaign 50 days ago, called on the prime minister to resign, saying she should “go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country.” He said Labour had denied her a “hard Brexit” mandate.

“We are ready to do everything we can to put our program into operation,” he added:

Former Conservative finance minister George Osborne, removed from the Cabinet by May and now editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, told ITV: “I doubt she will survive in the long term as Conservative party leader.”

And former Conservative minister Anna Soubry said May should take personal responsibility for a “dreadful” campaign.

Among conservatives there was clear fury at the result, a seismic political shock that could trigger a second election within months. Few commentators appeared to believe that a minority Conservative government is sustainable for more than a few months. “Does she really think she can blunder on?” said Lord Ashcroft, a former Liberal Democrat leader.

​Brexit not the only issue

Exit polls on Thursday night suggesting Britain was heading for a hung parliament prompted gasps at Conservative Party headquarters in London.

May focused her party’s election campaign on Brexit, saying she would be able to bring the strength necessary to get the best deal for Britain with the European Union.

At the start of the campaign it looked as if she might pull off a landslide victory, but opinion polls showed the race tightening, and May came under criticism for running an aloof campaign that took the voters for granted.

A turning point in the campaign appeared to come when the parties unveiled their election manifestos. The Conservatives had to backtrack on plans to make the elderly pay more for residential and social care.

May spent more than half of the election campaign in Labour-held seats, demonstrating how confident she was of making gains from a Labour Party led by the most left wing leader in its history, a man the press sees as a throwback to the militant 1970s.

With 10 days to go before Brexit negotiations, it remains unclear whether Britain will have a government in place to take on the formal talks — or whether the government that starts the talks will be the government that finalizes them.

European officials and lawmakers warned Friday a hung parliament could be a “disaster” that hugely increases the chance of Brexit talks failing. They said political uncertainty would likely delay talks, with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, questioning whether he would have someone to really negotiate with about Brexit.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit representative, described the result as “yet another own goal” for Britain.

Some analysts compared the political situation to 1923, when Conservative Stanley Baldwin failed to win a parliamentary majority, struggled on for a few months as prime minister and then lost a confidence vote in the House of Commons. The king then had to ask Labour to form a minority government.

The election result also throws into doubt whether Britain will now seek the hard Brexit that May and the right wing of her party have been advocating. There is now likely a majority across the parties in the new House of Commons for a softer Brexit, one that might see Britain remain in the single market.

“What it means is we will have pressure in the House of Commons for a soft Brexit,” said Jack Straw, a former Labour foreign minister. “The math and chemistry in the Commons will be pushing away from a hard Brexit,” he added.

Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage complained about the election result in a tweet, saying May’s failure had put Brexit in jeopardy. Some commentators argued the election could be seen as a second referendum on Brexit, a vote about a ‘hard’ or ‘soft Brexit,’ certainly when it came to the youth vote.

Hundreds of thousands of people ages 18 to 34 registered to vote before last month’s closing date, including more than 450,000 on the final day. Voters ages 18 to 24 appear to have voted heavily in favor of Labour. 
…

Prime Minister Theresa May faced calls to quit Friday after her election gamble to win a stronger mandate backfired as she lost her parliamentary majority, throwing British politics into turmoil and potentially disrupting Brexit negotiations.

May failed to get the 326 seats her Conservative party needs for an outright majority. She needs 18 more seats, with only 17 more seats left to declare.

The result looks set to trigger a period of political uncertainty and could throw Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union, due to start June 19, into disarray. The pound lost more than 2 cents against the dollar within seconds of an exit poll projecting an uncertain result.

With only 17 of the 650 seats still to declare, the results largely bore out the exit poll, which predicted the Conservatives would get 314 of the 650 House of Commons seats, down from 330. The Labour Party was projected to win 266, up from 229. 

John Curtice, who oversees the exit poll for a consortium of broadcasters, said Friday that the Conservatives’ final tally might be a bit higher than 314, but it was extremely unlikely they would get a majority.

Minority government likely

As the results piled up, some form of minority or coalition government appeared increasingly likely. That raised the odds that an election called by May to provide “strong and stable government” would bring instability and the chance of yet another early election.

The results confounded those who said the opposition Labour Party’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was electorally toxic. Written off by many pollsters, Labour surged in the final weeks of the campaign. It drew strong support from young people, who appeared to have turned out to vote in bigger-than-expected numbers.

Calls for May to resign

By Friday morning, pressure was mounting on May, who called the snap election in the hope of increasing her majority and strengthening Britain’s hand in exit talks with the European Union. 

“This is a very bad moment for the Conservative Party, and we need to take stock,” Conservative lawmaker Anna Soubry said. “And our leader needs to take stock as well.”

As she was resoundingly re-elected to her Maidenhead seat in southern England, May looked tense and did not spell out what she planned to do.

“The country needs a period of stability and whatever the results are the Conservative Party will ensure we fulfill our duty in ensuring that stability so that we can all, as one country, go forward together,” she said.

Others predicted she would soon be gone.

Scottish party suffers as well

Corbyn said the result means “politics has changed” and voters have rejected Conservative austerity. Speaking after being re-elected to his London seat, Corbyn said May should “go … and make way for a government that is truly representative of all the people of this country.”

The result was bad news for the Scottish National Party, which by early Friday had lost about 20 of its 54 seats. Among the casualties was Alex Salmond, a former first minister of Scotland and one of the party’s highest-profile lawmakers.

The losses complicate the SNP’s plans to push for a new referendum on Scottish independence as Britain prepares to leave the EU.

May had hoped the election would focus on Brexit, but that never happened, as both the Conservatives and Labour said they would respect voters’ wishes and go through with the divorce.

May, who went into the election with a reputation for quiet competence, was criticized for a lackluster campaigning style and for a plan to force elderly people to pay more for their care, a proposal her opponents dubbed the “dementia tax.” As the polls suggested a tightening race, pollsters spoke less often of a landslide and raised the possibility that May’s majority would be eroded.

Then, attacks that killed 30 people in Manchester and London twice brought the campaign to a halt, sent a wave of anxiety through Britain and forced May to defend the government’s record on fighting terrorism. Corbyn accused the Conservatives of undermining Britain’s security by cutting the number of police on the streets.

Eight people were killed near London Bridge on Saturday when three men drove a van into pedestrians and then stabbed revelers in an area filled with bars and restaurants. Two weeks earlier, a suicide bomber killed 22 people as they were leaving an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

Reuters contributed to this report.
…

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that the United States supported peace talks on Cyprus aimed at reunifying the divided island.

Pence hosted Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades at the White House on Thursday. The White House said Pence expressed hope that Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders “will agree to a settlement that would reunify Cyprus as a bizonal, bicommunal federation to the benefit of all Cypriots.”

Pence also thanked Cyprus for its support for the Middle East peace talks and the fight against Islamic State.

Anastasiades said that he invited Pence to visit the island and that “what satisfied me most is that the U.S. acknowledged the role Cyprus plays as a result of its excellent relations with all its neighboring nations.”

Cyprus has been split between a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkey invaded in response to a military coup aimed at unifying the island with Greece.

The south is recognized as the sole Cypriot government, while only Turkey recognizes a separate Turkish Cypriot north.

U.N.-sponsored reunification talks have been slow because of several sensitive issues, including Turkish demands that Turkish forces be allowed to stay on the island. The Greek Cypriots want them to leave.
…

NATO member nations are united in their stance toward Russia in a way they have not been for many years, says General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg. In an interview with VOA’s Jela de Franceschi, Stoltenberg also said NATO is committed to stepping up its defense while at the same time continuing dialogue with Russia.
…

Three men arrested in a series of raids Wednesday in east London are suspected of having been in the final stages of plotting a terror attack in the British capital similar to the murderous rampage carried out last Saturday at London Bridge, say officials.

The men, all in their 30s, are not connected to last week’s van-and-knife attack in the London Bridge and Borough districts of the capital that left eight dead and 48 injured, say police officers.

Video of recent attack

The news of the arrests came as new video footage emerged of the dramatic shooting of the London Bridge attackers by armed police last Saturday. It shows officers leaping out of a moving police car to shoot the men in a few seconds of frenetic activity, bringing an end to a killing spree that lasted eight minutes.

The footage, taken by a local resident, has been circulated on social media sites. 

Other footage has also emerged of the three London Bridge attackers, who have been identified as Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba, meeting outside an all-Muslim gym the trio frequented in east London five days before the attack. 

In the video obtained by The Times newspaper, the three are seen hugging and laughing outside the Ummah Fitness Center near where Butt lived with his wife and two young children. 

The men appear to want to evade surveillance.

Redouane is seen placing his cellphone on a builder’s sack nearby before the men walk away. Presumably, they feared the phone was bugged. They are out of view of the CCTV camera for 10 minutes and when they return Redouane retrieves his phone. 

The footage of the meeting outside the gym will reinforce pressure on the British intelligence services to explain why the three were not under full-time surveillance. 

The Ummah Fitness Center was once run by a man accused of helping to train the Islamic extremists responsible for the coordinated July 7, 2005, underground train bombings in London, Britain’s first-ever Islamist suicide attack.

Fifty-two people were killed across the city in the 2005 coordinated strike that left more than 700 injured.

Missed chances

The British intelligence service, MI5, has been accused of missing a string of chances to identify Butt as a high-risk militant.

On Tuesday The New York Times reported that in 2015 FBI informant Jesse Morton, a one-time al-Qaida recruiter, warned his American handlers about the London Bridge terrorist. “Khuram Butt was on our radar rather a lot,” he told the newspaper.

Questions are also being asked about why the British security services didn’t act on information supplied by Italian police on Zaghba, an Italian-Moroccan, who had been stopped at Bologna airport last year on suspicion he was heading to join the Islamic State in Syria.

Italian authorities say they informed British intelligence agencies about him and uploaded his details to a European Union database that’s designed to trigger an alert to passport control officers.

Officer injured in attack

Meanwhile, the rookie transport policeman who was stabbed in an eye while tackling the London Bridge terrorists armed only with a baton issued a statement Wednesday saying he “did everything I could” to stop them.

He has not been named by the authorities. He was one of the first officers to confront the London Bridge assailants.

“I am truly moved and overwhelmed by all the support and comments that I’ve received, not only from people in this country, but across the world,” the officer said.

He has been hailed as a national hero, but he dismissed the description.

“Like every police officer who responded, I was simply doing my job,” he said. “I didn’t expect the level of love and well wishes I have received. I feel like I did what any other person would have done. I want to say sorry to the families that lost their loved ones.”
…

There was a different kind of rush in Alipasa and Lalabey in Sur, Diyarbakir, Turkey as residents gathered for an iftar dinner put on by the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions of Turkey (KESK). The neighborhoods face demolition because the government wants to rebuild the majority of the Sur district following battles between security forces and PKK’s youth branch last year. The concept of ‘Earth Surface Table’ outdoor iftar dinner was first happened after the Gezi Protests in 2013 in Istanbul.
…

Prime Minister Theresa May called the general election that Britain is holding Thursday in the hope of winning strong backing for her government during upcoming negotiations in Brussels on the country’s exit from the European Union.

May called the snap election — an early vote, three years before Parliament’s term was due to expire — in early April. The prime minister originally expected a big win to boost her Conservative Party’s majority in Parliament, but that optimism faded as her campaign sputtered over the past few weeks.

Late developments, however, could upend the experts’ predictions once again.

Polls: Labour Party is gaining

Several recent opinion polls showed the opposition Labour Party was gaining on the Conservatives, or Tories as they are known in Britain. Not all of the polls agreed, though, and Conservative activists professed confidence.

The Times newspaper reported Wednesday night that a final poll by the YouGov group showed the Conservatives’ lead over Labour had widened to seven percentage points — up from four percent on Saturday, just hours before the London Bridge terrorist attack that killed eight people.

All 650 seats in the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament, are up for election Thursday. A party needs to win 326 seats to form a majority government.

The deadly terror attacks in England — in London last Saturday, and in Manchester 12 days earlier — have overshadowed the late stages of political campaigning. Speaking at a rally Tuesday, the prime minister pledged to put security first:

“And if, if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we’ll change those laws so we can do it,” she told supporters to enthusiastic applause.

Proper funding needed

May’s threat to tear up the Human Rights Act drew criticism from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“The way you deal with the threat to the democracy is not by reducing democracy, it’s by dealing with the threat,” he said during a campaign visit to Glasgow Wednesday. “That means properly funding our police and security services.”

Political analyst Professor Iain Begg of the London School of Economics says the prime minister is now fighting to save face:

“If she does no better than [former Conservative prime minister] David Cameron did in 2015, it would be deemed a considerable defeat for her. Jeremy Corbyn seems to be doing far better than most people expected.”

Needed: Young voters

Corbyn needs a big turnout by young voters, and his focus on improving public services and reducing fees for university students has won support. But he also has faced questions over national security and his past associations with groups including Hamas and the Irish Republican Army.

Third in the polls are the Liberal Democrats, whose central theme is opposition to Brexit — Britain’s departure from the European Union. On that question, analyst Iain Begg says, the country appears to have moved on.

“Economy, national health services and party leaders are the top issues,” Begg said. “Even in this Brexit context, Europe is not as high an issue as it might otherwise be, and therefore the Liberal Democrats have probably backed the wrong horse by trying to emphasize their campaign is about Brexit.”

May needs a big win

Support for the far-right UK Independence Party has collapsed. With Brexit decided, pollsters say many UKIP voters have switched to the Conservatives.

Theresa May says she needs a big win to give her a stronger hand in upcoming Brexit negotiations, but officials in Brussels say the size of her majority will have no bearing on the talks.

There will be no political honeymoon for the winner, says Kevin Schofield, editor of the website politicshome.com, the self-styled “home of digital public affairs” in Britain.

“You’re straight into the biggest discussions, the biggest negotiations that any British government has faced in a generation, probably since the Second World War, Schofield said. “So there is no respite, there is no letup.”

Independence for Scotland?

A big Conservative win would encourage those who support independence for Scotland. Breaking away from the United Kingdom and becoming an independent nation won considerable support earlier in this decade, but the Scots rejected independence in a referendum three years ago.

Now, however, following the Brexit decision by voters nationwide — in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — the Scottish National Party is demanding a second referendum on independence.

“In actual fact, the Scottish people, most of them don’t want a referendum so soon,” said website editor Schofield. “They think that they’ve made their decision in 2014.”

Terrorism, Brexit and the potential breakup of Britain are daunting challenges that lie ahead for the winner of Thursday’s election. Each political party is offering voters a very different road map to the future.
…

Slovakia wants to be a part of the EU “integration machine,” its prime minister said on Wednesday, in comments that follow calls by Germany, France and Spain for deeper cooperation and contrast with the eurosceptic stance of some other east European states.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s new President Emmanuel Macron agreed in May to outline a road map for deeper European Union integration while Spain suggested that members of the bloc should pool some aspects of their debt management and share a budget to fight crisis shocks.

“Slovakia meets conditions to be a part of the EU integration machine led by Germany and France,” said Robert Fico, Slovakia’s leftist third-time prime minister who oversaw his country’s adoption of the euro in 2009.

“Deeper cooperation and integration with stronger countries suit a small country like Slovakia, this is a historic chance to come closer to the average living standards of the EU,” he told reporters after a regular government meeting.

“Either we get in the integration express or we’ll be stuck in the depot on the second track,” he said, distancing himself from eurosceptic governments in neighbouring Hungary and Poland, and the Czech Republic, where integrationist Social Democrats are expected to lose an election in October.

Slovakia is the only one of these so-called Visegrad Four countries that uses the euro as its currency.

It has been one of the better budget performers in the eurozone, with public debt load expected to fall to 51.8 percent this year, less than the eurozone average at 89.2 percent in 2016.

Fico also called on opposition parties to get behind the consensus on Slovakia’s foreign policy direction.

Richard Sulik, leader of the eurosceptic, anti-immigrant Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, Slovakia’s second largest after Fico’s center-left SMER, said on Tuesday Bratislava should not try to be part of the eurozone core as it would be forced to agree to tax harmonization and refugee quotas.

Slovakia under Fico’s government, along with the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, refused to accept EU refugee quotas and challenged them in an EU court.
…

About 25,000 military forces from the United States and 23 other countries will take part in a large-scale military exercise called Saber Guardian planned in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania next month.

In addition, several U.S. B-1B heavy bombers have arrived in Britain in support of two separate multinational exercises planned in the Baltic region and other parts of Europe this month to improve coordination among partner countries.

The U.S. military plans were announced by Stuttgart-based U.S. European Command, which said this year’s Saber Guardian exercise — held annually in the Black Sea region since 2013 — was “larger in both scale and scope” than previous exercises.

The news could exacerbate tensions that are already running high between Moscow and Washington.

Russia scrambled a fighter jet on Tuesday to intercept a nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 strategic bomber it said was flying over the Baltic Sea near its border, in an incident that had echoes of the Cold War.

Washington said the long-range bomber was operating in international airspace.

European Command said the Saber Guardian exercise would include an array of live fire exercises, river crossings and a mass casualty exercise and was aimed at drilling “the ability to mass forces at any given time anywhere in Europe.”

“It is deterrence in action,” it said in a release.

The U.S. army said the larger exercise would be preceded by several smaller events — all aimed at shoring up the security and stability of the Black Sea region, where increased Russian submarine activity has sparked concerns.

The Saber Guardian exercise rotates through Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, with a goal to increase the ability of European and U.S. military forces to operate together in the event of an armed conflict.

It will be the largest of 18 separate Black Sea exercises planned this year, European Command said.

The B-1B bombers were deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to a U.K. air base in Fairford to support two separate exercises planned this month, Saber Strike and BALTOPS, according to European Command.

It said an undisclosed number of B-1B bombers would join three B-52H bombers that were already in Europe for training.

BALTOPS is a recurring multinational exercise that will involve 4,000 shipboard personnel, 50 ships and submarines, and more than 50 aircraft.

Saber Strike, now in its seventh year, is aimed at improving cooperation among allies and partners while promoting regional stability and security, European Command said.
…