Hurricane Ophelia, a rare storm for the North Atlantic, was expected to bring high winds and rough seas to five western counties of Ireland this weekend.

Ophelia, strengthening offshore near the Azores Islands, was a   Category 3 storm, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It had top sustained winds of 185 kilometers per hour (115 mph) and was expected to produce total rain accumulations of up to 10 centimeters (4 inches) over the southern Azores.

Seven of the nine islands of the Azores were on red alert as ordered by regional civil protection services. The islands were expecting heavy rainfall overnight.

The 245,000 people who inhabit the Azores were told to stay inside while the storm passes.

Ophelia was expected to wind down slightly before reaching Ireland as a tropical cyclone on Monday. Five counties were placed on red alert for severe weather conditions on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Irish Meteorological Service.

Ireland, which only rarely sees hurricanes, was expected to endure winds in excess of 130 kph (80 mph) on Monday.

Coincidentally, Monday will be the 30th anniversary of what has been nicknamed the Great Storm of 1987, a hurricane that took down 15 million trees in Britain and killed more than 20 people in Britain and France together.
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The United Nations warns some 4 million people across Ukraine are facing a desperate situation as winter approaches and are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance to survive the bitterly cold months ahead.

Ukraine is into its fourth year of war, a war that the United Nations estimates has killed about 10,000 people and injured more than 23,500 others. No resolution is in sight to what has become a frozen conflict between the Kyiv government and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.

This is causing immense suffering to millions of people living in zones close to the contact line that separates the areas controlled by each side. The UN reports some four million people need food, health services, shelter, water and sanitation and protection as winter approaches.

Jens Laerke is spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He says most of the people in urgent need of aid live in the rebel-controlled areas in the east, though pockets of need also exist in Government-controlled areas throughout the country.

“One of the results of this deteriorating crisis is that we now estimate that 1.2 million people in Ukraine on both sides of the contact line…are food insecure. So, that is certainly a concern,” said Laerke.

Laerke says some 600,000 people, most living in separatist east Ukraine, are unable to access their pensions, which are critical for their survival.

He warns aid agencies will not be able to provide the humanitarian aid needed to help Ukraine’s millions of vulnerable people this winter without more money. He notes only 26 percent of this year’s $200 million U.N. appeal for Ukraine has been received.
…

The Vatican trial over $500,000 in donations to the pope’s pediatric hospital that were diverted to renovate a cardinal’s penthouse is reaching its conclusion, with neither the cardinal who benefited nor the contractor who was apparently paid twice for the work facing trial.

Instead, the former president of the Bambino Gesu children’s hospital and his ex-treasurer are accused of misappropriating 422,000 euros from the hospital’s fundraising foundation to overhaul the retirement home of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope Benedict XVI.

Prosecutors have asked for a guilty verdict, a three-year prison term and a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,910) for the ex-president, Giuseppe Profiti. They asked to dismiss the case against the ex-treasurer, Massimo Spina, for lack of evidence.

The trial, which began in July and resumes Saturday with the defense’s closing arguments, exposed how Bertone bent Vatican rules to get his retirement apartment in shape for him to move into after Pope Francis was elected in 2013 and named a new secretary of state.

Retirement nest 

After retiring in 2013, Bertone was assigned a 400 square meter (4,305 square feet), top-floor apartment in the Vatican-owned Palazzo San Carlo, which sits on the edge of the Vatican gardens and offers fabulous views of St. Peter’s Basilica and overlooks the Vatican hotel where Francis lives.

During the trial, Bertone was shown to have personally engineered the unprecedented maneuver to get an old friend, Gianantonio Bandera, to do the renovation. Bertone’s project jumped the queue for Vatican real estate repairs, and avoided the normal external bidding process required for such an expensive overhaul, presumably because he promised to foot the bill himself.

And Bertone did indeed pay some 300,000 euros ($355,000) out of his own pocket. The problem is the hospital foundation also paid Bandera’s firm 422,000 euros for a job that totaled 533,000 euros, including communal repairs to the palazzo’s leaky roof.

The chief engineer of the Vatican’s building maintenance office, Marco Bargellini, testified that Bertone’s August 2013 request for renovations was unique. Bargellini said he had never seen a case where a tenant proposed a project with the construction firm already chosen, since the Vatican has a list of contractors who would normally bid for the contract.

Bandera’s firm, Castelli Re, originally estimated the renovation at 616,000 euros, a fee Bargellini said was excessive compared to market rates. But he said the Vatican approved it after Bandera offered a 50 percent discount up-front.

In the end, Castelli Re went bankrupt, and the hospital’s 422,000 euros were sent instead to another Bandera company located in Britain. 

A donation made

The only hint of a potential kickback from Bandera’s apparent double-billing involved a proposed six-figure “donation” from Bandera to the hospital foundation. Profiti said he “didn’t exclude” that he had sought such a donation, and Spina testified that he tried to get the money out of Bandera. Bandera, however, pleaded financial hardship after his company went bankrupt and never paid up.

Neither Bertone nor Bandera were indicted in the case, though it’s possible prosecutors in the Vatican and Italy now have the evidence they need to mount a case against the builder over the apparent double billing.

At the trial, Bandera testified that he never billed twice for the work, though he acknowledged he was no longer fully in control of the company after it went bankrupt in early 2014.

Bertone has insisted he knew nothing of the hospital’s payment. After the scandal came to light in late 2015, Bertone quickly made a 150,000 euro ($177,300) “donation” to the hospital. He insisted it wasn’t a payback but a gesture of goodwill.

Profiti, for his part, admitted he used foundation money to spruce up Bertone’s flat because he planned to host hospital fundraising soirees there. None were ever held.

Profiti’s replacement as hospital president, Marella Enoc, testified that “it’s not my style to have fundraising dinners in the homes of cardinals or celebrities.”
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UNESCO’s executive board voted Friday to make a former French government minister the U.N. cultural agency’s next chief after an unusually heated election that was overshadowed by Middle East tensions.

The board’s selection of Audrey Azoulay over a Qatari candidate came the day after the United States announced that it intends to pull out of UNESCO because of its alleged anti-Israel bias.

The news rocked a weeklong election already marked by geopolitical resentments, concerns about the Paris-based agency’s dwindling funding and questions about its future purpose.

If confirmed by UNESCO’s general assembly next assembly next month, Azoulay will succeed outgoing Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, whose eight-year term was marred by financial woes and criticism over Palestine’s inclusion in 2011 as a member state.

Azoulay narrowly beat Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari in the final 30-28 vote after she won a runoff with a third finalist from Egypt earlier Friday. The outcome was a blow for Arab states that have long wanted to lead the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

UNESCO has had European, Asian, African and American chiefs, but never one from an Arab country.

In brief remarks after she won the election, Azoulay, 45, said the response to UNESCO’s problems should be to reform the agency, not to walk away from it.

“In this moment of crisis, I believe we must invest in UNESCO more than ever, look to support and reinforce it, and to reform it. And not leave it,” she said.

The new director will set priorities for the organization best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions. The agency also works to improve education for girls, promote an understanding of the Holocaust’s horrors, defend media freedom and coordinate science on climate change.

The next leader also will have to contend with the withdrawal of both the U.S. and Israel, which applauded its ally for defending it and said Thursday that it also would be leaving UNESCO.

The election itself had become highly politicized even before the U.S. announced its planned departure.

Azoulay started the week with much less support than Qatar’s al-Kawari but built up backing as other candidates dropped out. She went on to win a runoff with a third finalist, Moushira Khattab of Egypt. Egypt’s foreign ministry has demanded an inquiry into alleged “violations” during the voting.

Jewish groups opposed al-Kawari, citing a preface he wrote to a 2013 Arabic book called “Jerusalem in the Eyes of the Poets” that they claimed was anti-Semitic. He wrote, “We pray to God to liberate (Jerusalem) from captivity and we pray to God to give Muslims the honor of liberating it.”

In March, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote an open letter to German Ambassador Michael Worbs, chair of the UNESCO Executive Board, to criticize the organization for accepting the former Qatari culture minister’s candidacy.

During the months leading up to the election, Egypt and three other Arab nations were engaged in a boycott of Qatar over allegations that the government funds extremists and has overly warm ties to Iran.

French media reported that Qatar recently invited several members of the UNESCO executive board on an all-expenses-paid trip to the country’s capital, Doha.

Azoulay’s late entry into the leadership race in March also annoyed many UNESCO member states that argued that France shouldn’t field a candidate since it hosts the agency. Arab intellectuals urged French President Emmanuel Macron to withdraw his support for her.

She will be UNESCO’s second female chief and its second French chief after Rene Maheu, UNESCO’s director general from 1961-74. While she is Jewish, her father is Moroccan and was an influential adviser to Moroccan kings, so she also has a connection to the Arab world.

The Trump administration had been preparing for a likely withdrawal from UNESCO for months, but the timing of the State Department’s announcement that it would leave at the end of 2018 was unexpected. Along with hostility to Israel, the U.S. cited “the need for fundamental reform in the organization.”

The outgoing Bokova expressed “profound regret” at the U.S. decision and defended UNESCO’s reputation.

The U.S. stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011, but the State Department has maintained a UNESCO office and sought to weigh in on policy behind the scenes. UNESCO says the U.S. now owes about $550 million in back payments.

Azoulay acknowledged the image of the organization — founded after World War II to foster peace, but marred by infighting between Arab member states and Israel and its allies — needed rebuilding.

“The first thing I will do will be to focus on restoring its credibility,” she said.

While UNESCO’s general assembly must sign off month on the executive board’s leadership pick, but officials said the confirmation vote typically is a formality.
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Iran’s president said Friday that the nuclear deal it signed with six world powers in 2015 could not be revoked, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would not certify that Iran was in compliance with it.

In a nationally televised speech following Trump’s remarks, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged all signatories to the agreement to honor their commitments. He called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) “an outstanding achievement” in international diplomacy and said Iran would continue to comply with it.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not be the first to withdraw from the deal. But if its rights and interests in the deal are not respected, it will stop implementing all its commitments and will resume its peaceful nuclear program without any restrictions,” Rouhani said.

The Iranian leader also hit back at Trump’s characterization of Iran as a “dictatorship” and “rogue regime,” calling the American president a “liar” and a “dictator.”

“Today the U.S. is more isolated than ever against the nuclear deal, isolated than any other time in its plots against [the] people of Iran,” Rouhani said.

He rejected Trump’s remarks listing Tehran’s support for international terrorism, calling the examples “baseless accusations” and adding that the “Iranian nation does not expect anything else from you.”

EU reaction

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini held a news conference in Brussels minutes after Trump spoke, saying the EU and the rest of the international community were committed to preserving the deal.

“It is not a bilateral agreement. It does not belong to any single country. And it is not up to any single country to terminate it,” Mogherini said.

She noted the multilateral agreement had been unanimously endorsed in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231.

“We cannot afford as an international community, as Europe for sure, to dismantle a nuclear agreement that is working and delivering — especially now,” Mogherini said.

The EU foreign policy chief noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency had verified eight times, via a “comprehensive and strict” monitoring system, that Iran was meeting all its nuclear-related commitments.

“There have been no violations of any of the commitments included in the agreement,” Mogherini told reporters.

IAEA Director Yukiya Amano released a statement saying Iran was already subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime and was implementing the deal’s requirements.

WATCH: Highlights of Trump’s Speech on Iran Nuclear Deal

In a joint statement, British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they were concerned about the possible implications of Trump’s decision not to recertify the Iran nuclear deal.

“Preserving the JCPOA is in our shared national security interest. The nuclear deal was the culmination of 13 years of diplomacy and was a major step toward ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program was not diverted for military purposes,” the European leaders said in the statement.

Opportunity seen

Asked whether he was confident he could get the Europeans to renegotiate the Iran deal, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that he thought there was a real opportunity to address all the threats posed by Iran.

“I fully expect that our allies and friends in Europe and in the region are going to be very supportive in efforts undertaken to deal with Iran’s threats,” Tillerson told reporters.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country was committed to supporting the Iran nuclear deal.

Ahead of Trump’s remarks, the Kremlin warned that if the United States abandoned the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran would be likely to quit it as well. Russia is a signatory to the JCPOA, along with the United States, Iran, Britain, Germany and France.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying also voiced support for the Iran nuclear deal during Friday’s regular news briefing.

“China’s position on the Iranian nuclear issue has been consistent. The JCPOA has played a key role in upholding the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and the peace and stability of the Middle East region,” she said. “We hope that all relevant parties will continue to uphold and implement the JCPOA.”

Praise from Netanyahu

Praise for Trump’s tough stance on Iran came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who released a video statement in English.

“I congratulate President Trump for his courageous decision today. He boldly confronted Iran’s terrorist regime,” Netanyahu said.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain also expressed strong support for Trump’s shift in policy toward Iran.

The Saudi Press Agency said Riyadh praised Trump’s “vision” and commitment to work with U.S. allies in the region in order to face common challenges, particularly “Iran’s aggressive policies and actions.”

But the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, strongly criticized Trump’s decision.

The group’s executive director, Beatrice Fihn, said Trump’s “attempt to disrupt” the Iran deal despite Tehran’s compliance was a reminder of the “immense nuclear danger now facing the world” and the “urgent need” to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.

“In a time with great global tension, with increasing threats of nuclear war, the U.S. president is igniting new conflict rather than working to reduce the risk of nuclear war,” she said.
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The current diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the United States, sparked by the arrest of local U.S. employee Metin Topuz at a diplomatic mission, is underscored by growing fears in Ankara that Washington is conspiring against it.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a speech Friday, warned that Turkey is the target of daily attacks and plots, and in a thinly veiled reference to Washington added, “Those who supported terror groups such as the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and the PKK failed to corner Turkey … [and] now are taking direct action.”

In its war against Islamic State, Washington is arming the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG. Ankara claims the group is linked to the PKK that has been fighting Turkey for decades and is designated by the U.S. and European Union as a terrorist organization.

Ankara blames FETO for last year’s failed coup in Turkey. Its alleged leader, Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, lives in the United States and has been subject to what so far have been failed attempts by Turkey to extradite him.

But behind the current war of words and reciprocal restrictions on the issuance of visas between the NATO allies is a pending New York court case.

“First and foremost is the case of Reza Zarrab, the Turkish Iranian so-called businessman, who [allegedly] has been involved in illicit trade with Iran, contravening the American embargo at the time. He is now in jail,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

Zarrab allegedly organized a multibillion-dollar scheme to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran. U.S. prosecutors say the scheme also has implicated a senior Turkish state bank employee and a former minister.

“On the one hand, you arrest the deputy manager of my bank, who has not committed any crime,” Erdogan said Thursday, attacking the U.S. legal probe. “But on the other hand, my citizen [Zarrab] has been in prison in the U.S. for two years without crime, trying to use him as a confessor.”

Analysts suggest Ankara fails to understand the limitations of Washington’s influence.

“The indictment against the Iranian trader, Zarrab, and then later on, against Turkey’s deputy manager of Halkbank, is essentially now being driven by the judiciary in the U.S.,” said Sinan Ulgen, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Institute in Brussels. “So the executive .. in accordance with the principles of the independence of the judiciary, has little influence on how this procedure will unfold. And that’s something that Turkey’s policymakers should take into consideration.”

But Ankara views the Zarrab case not as a legal matter, but more as a conspiracy.

“He [Erdogan] believes there is a massive conspiracy against him, and America is part of this, and so is this court case,” said Semih Idiz, political columnist for the al-Monitor website.

This case, he added, “has potential political land mines strewn in it as far as the present [Turkish] administration is concerned, in connection with previous allegations of corruption.

Idiz went on to say that three ministers had to resign over those allegations. “And it has also involved the president’s son,” he added. “And there is the fear within the government and party that this case may revive that all again, especially as we are heading for elections in two years.”

In December 2013, Erdogan’s government was almost brought down by Turkish prosecutors investigating Zarrab on graft charges that implicated senior ministers and extended to a member of Erdogan’s own family.

The probe was shut down, and the prosecutors were arrested and accused of being followers of Gulen. Erdogan claimed the investigation was the first attempt by Gulen to unseat him from power, calling it a “judicial coup attempt.”

Pro-Erdogan media have sought to link this month’s arrest of U.S. diplomatic employee Topuz to the Zarrab case, producing video allegedly showing Topuz meeting with one of the Turkish prosecutors involved in investigating Zarrab in 2015.

Pro-government media also point out that while the Zarrab case is about to begin, Ankara’s year-long demand to extradite Gulen has not even reached the court.

With the Zarrab trial due to start in November in New York, the potential for more damage to already frayed U.S.-Turkish relations is real.

“It does not bode well,” warned columnist Idiz, “because the number of names involved [in the case] are likely to grow. And the [court] revelations, if they anger Erdogan and the government again … will be seen as part of this conspiracy against Turkey and against Erdogan. And the allegations put forward will heighten Americanism here.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump, following impassioned appeals from some of America’s closest allies and members of his own administration, is likely to stop short Friday of calling for the abandonment of a 2-year-old nuclear deal with Iran while unveiling a more confrontational overall strategy towards Tehran.

The White House, early Friday, announced that the president, in consultation with his national security team, “has approved a new strategy for Iran.”

Lawmakers say that while Trump will no longer certify what is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) he will not urge Congress to reapply sanctions on Iran.

“He’s signaling his intense dislike for the deal, but taking no concrete steps to undermine it or to leave it,” Democrat Sen. Chris Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told MSNBC.

​Against it from the beginning

Trump has strongly opposed the deal since it was approved in 2015 with Iran by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. 

While accusing Iran of seeking to exploit loopholes in the deal and refusing to allow the United Nations’ atomic watchdog to inspect nuclear facilities on military sites, behavior the White House says “cannot be tolerated,” the Trump administration is now calling for the deal to “be strictly enforced.”

The Trump Iran policy instead focuses “on neutralizing the government of Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants.”

White House officials said the goal will be to “deny the Iranian regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.”

If the president, as expected, announces he will no longer certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, Congress will have 60 days to decide whether to re-impose U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

Trump is “deep in thought, to say the least, about a way ahead in Iran,” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told reporters Thursday. “He’s not the only one that thinks that maybe the deal that was struck under the previous administration is a deal that, in the long term, even in the medium and long term, will not protect America.”

“Iran is now a powerful nation state that remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” CIA Director George Pompeo said Thursday, adding that its intelligence and security ministry in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “are the cudgels of a despotic theocracy,” Kelly said.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, pledged Wednesday a “tougher” response if Trump finds Tehran not in compliance with the deal. An Iranian military spokesman further promised that his country’s forces would teach the U.S. “new lessons” if needed.

​Concern at home, abroad

Word that the president would likely not certify the deal prompted an outpouring of concern earlier this week, both at home and abroad.

British Prime Minister Theresa May phoned Trump on Tuesday to urge him to think carefully about the consequences, calling the agreement “vital for regional security.” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called his counterpart Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to argue that the deal was “making the world a safer place.”

At a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, the ranking Democrat, Rep. Elliott Engel, said he had originally opposed the JCPOA, when it was agreed to by the Obama administration. But he said he is now opposed to backing away from it.

“As the administration seems poised to take the first step from the JCPOA, I must say I view that course as a grave mistake,” Engel said. “Unless we see solid evidence that Iran is cheating, the United States has to live up to our word.”

Later, when questioned by a Republican committee member, Dana Rohrabacher, about whether they thought Iran is complying with the agreement, three of four witnesses testifying replied in the negative.

​What it required

The accord required Tehran to sharply restrict its nuclear program and allow more access to international inspectors. Iranian leaders also promised not to seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons. In return, Iran received relief from crippling economic sanctions, including the release of billions of dollars in frozen overseas assets and re-admittance to the international banking system.

The Iran Project, a group led by several former U.S. diplomats backing the accord, says not recertifying “would have grave long-term political and security consequences for the U.S. — including another regional war.”

The group’s statement argues “no American national security objective would be served by scuttling the nuclear agreement as long as Iran remains in compliance and without a nuclear weapon.

But current and former U.S. intelligence and military officials say any Iranian action is unlikely to be carried out directly and that such behavior would not be a dramatic departure from Iran’s behavior since the JCPOA went into effect.

Peter Heinlein, Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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Human rights group Amnesty International held events Thursday to mark 100 days since several of its Turkish staffers were detained in Istanbul.

This week, Turkish prosecutors officially filed an indictment against 10 of the human rights activists detained in July, along with Amnesty’s Turkey chairman Taner Kilic, and demanded jail sentences of up to 15 years on charges of supporting terrorist organizations.

Amnesty labeled the indictment “trumped-up and absurd.”

WATCH: Amnesty Marks 100 Days of Detention for Turkey Staff, as Ankara’s Rift With West Grows

“They were on day three of a workshop, a very routine workshop about digital security and also about maintaining the well-being of human rights defenders in difficult circumstances,” Amnesty’s Milena Buyum told VOA. “The imprisonment of human rights defenders is doubly problematic, because then the people who would be the defense against abuses are themselves being silenced.”

The detentions are part of a government crackdown following the 2016 failed coup, which has soured relations between Ankara and its Western allies, culminating this week in the mutual suspension of visa services between the United States and Turkey.

Bass announces visa suspensions

The outgoing U.S. ambassador, John Bass, announced the suspension of nonimmigrant visa services Sunday, following the recent unexplained arrests of two local employees.

“This arrest has raised questions about whether the goal of some officials is to disrupt the long-standing cooperation between Turkey and the United States,” said Bass, who is leaving Turkey to assume a new assignment in Afghanistan. “If true, this would put the people who work with, and work at, and visit our diplomatic facilities at risk,” he told reporters.

Turkey has accused the detained workers from the U.S. diplomatic mission of having links to U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, whom Turkey blames for the coup attempt. Gulen denies any involvement in the failed coup.

War of words

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed the war of words at a press conference Thursday.

“The United States is trying to protect the rights of someone who has links to the Fetullah Terror Organization, who is hiding in their consulate with no diplomatic identity.”

Turkey’s rift with Berlin has also deepened as 11 German citizens go on trial on terror charges. Some German lawmakers want Europe to follow Washington’s lead.

“We still have a military cooperation with Turkey, our intelligences work together, we subsidize Turkey, the EU is in negotiations with Turkey about a customs union and visa liberalization is on the table as well. We see that the U.S. dealt with the issue differently. We have to ask ourselves what we need to do right now,” German lawmaker Heike Haensel said Wednesday before the start of the trial in Istanbul.

As relations between Turkey and its NATO allies continue to be strained, the United States says it is continuing to engage the Turkish government to seek an explanation for the arrests of its embassy staff.
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Human rights group Amnesty International has held events to mark 100 days since several of its Turkish staff were detained in Istanbul. Prosecutors filed terror charges against the activists this week, the latest trials in a widespread crackdown that has soured relations between Ankara and its Western allies, culminating this week in the mutual suspension of visa services between the United States and Turkey. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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The International Organization for Migration says there has been a dramatic drop in the number of migrants from West Africa crossing the Sahel region into Niger, on their way to Europe. 

Migration officials attribute the drop in African migration to strong action by the government of Niger against human smuggling networks.  

The International Organization for Migration reports Niger has closed three of six transit houses in the town of Agadez, where migrants often stop on their journey.

IOM Niger Chief of Mission Giuseppe Loprete says migrants used to wait in the houses for smugglers’ vehicles to take them to Algeria or Libya.

“Many vehicles have been withdrawn by the army along the migratory routes.  Smugglers have been arrested,” Loprete said. “So, all this created a context—sent across a message that transiting Agadez is not easy, is not that easy.” 

Loprete tells VOA fewer migrants are arriving and staying in Agadez because of the difficulty in finding smugglers to take them to North Africa.

“Last year, the first six months, we were estimating five to 7,000 migrants transiting per week going to Algeria or Libya,” Loprete said. “Right now, our numbers show that we are 5,500 migrants per month transiting.  So definitely less migrants.” 

While the Agadez route is drying up, Loprate says migration to Europe is not.  He says smugglers are finding alternate, possibly more dangerous routes to transport their human cargo. 

He says Africans desperate to carve out a better life for themselves in Europe continue to risk their lives, making the perilous journey across the Sahel and eventually, across the Sahara Desert.
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Kosovo’s prime minister has confirmed that the government will try to transform the nation’s security forces into a regular army through constitutional changes to satisfy the country’s international partners.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said during a visit to Kosovo Security Force headquarters on Thursday that “we should give the constitutional mandate” to the future army.

Haradinaj has been prime minister since September.

President Hashim Thaci bowed to pressure from NATO and the U.S. earlier this year and withdrew legislation aimed at accomplishing the transformation.

The draft law needed only a majority vote in parliament to pass. Constitutional amendments would require backing from lawmakers representing Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs and other minority groups. They say they won’t back the change.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Serbia refuses to recognize.

 
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Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Thursday she “absolutely” supports the public release of all advertisements produced by a Russia-linked organization during the 2016 presidential election.

Sandberg said the company is “working on transparency” following the revelation last month that a group with alleged ties to the Russian government ran $100,000 worth of ads on Facebook promoting “divisive” causes like Black Lives Matter.

“Things happened on our platform that shouldn’t have happened,” she said during the interview with Axios’s Mike Allen.

Later Thursday, Sandberg is set to meet with Congressional investigators who are looking into what role the advertisements which began running in 2015 and continued through this year may have played in the 2016 presidential election.

The $100,000 worth of ads represent a very small fraction of the total $2.3 billion spent by, and on behalf of, President Donald Trump and losing-candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaigns during the election.

Multiple congressional investigations have been launched, seeking to determine what effect alleged Russian meddling may have played in the election.

In addition, Robert Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is conducting a criminal probe, including whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian operatives during the election season. Trump has denied working with the Russians.

Facebook had previously agreed to disclose the thousands of Facebook ads to congress. Sandberg said Thursday she thinks “it’s important that [the investigators] get the whole picture and explain that to the American people.”

In response to the Russian ad buys, Sandberg said Facebook is hiring 4,000 new employees to oversee ads and content. She said the company is also using “machine learning and automation” to target fake accounts that spread fake news.

She defined fake news as “things that are false hoaxes” and said Facebook is working to stamp out the bad information by teaming up with third-party fact checkers and warning users before they share news deemed fake by Facebook.

She said it is important to be cautious when going after fake news because “a lot of what we allow on Facebook is people expressing themselves” and “when you cut off speech for one person, you cut off speech for all people.”

“We don’t check the information posted on Facebook before people post it, and I don’t think people should want us to,” she said.

Hundreds of fake accounts were used to distribute the Russia-linked advertisements, Sandberg said. But had those ads been posted by legitimate users, “we would have let them run,” she said.
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