Three weeks before Germany’s election and with at least one poll suggesting nearly half of all voters don’t know what they will do, the government has unveiled an updated online tool to help them decide.

Around two dozen young people from around Germany helped launch the “Wahl-O-Mat” (roughly Vote-O-Meter) on Wednesday – a website that matches people with a party after they answer a series of policy questions.

One of the first to try was Hubertus Heil, general secretary of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition.

“I got 100 percent,” he beamed after completing the 10-minute process.

Participants choose whether they agree, disagree or are neutral about 38 issues identified in recent months by 26 young people chosen from 500 volunteers. The issues center on key topics such as increased video surveillance, raising taxes on diesel cars, and setting limits on migration.

Merkel is widely expected to win a record-tying fourth term, with her CDU/CSU conservatives maintaining a two-digit lead over the SPD despite continuing concerns over her 2015 decision to allow in over a million migrants.

But it remains unclear which parties will be involved in the next coalition government.

A poll by the Allensbach Institute last week showed that 46 percent of voters had not made up their minds on how to vote – the highest rate since in two decades so close to an election, which is being held on September 24.

The voter tool is available online at www.wahl-o-mat.de or via apps on mobile phones. A pared-down analogue version will also tour Germany over the next three weeks for those not online.

The tool has been around before, and less official versions have been available in other countries. But Thomas Krueger, head of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, which created it, expects many millions of hits.

It was used over 13.2 million times in the last national election in 2013 and even more people are expected to participate this time, he said.

“We’ve seen that about six percent of those who were not planning to participate in the election changed their minds after using the tool,” he said.

Markus Blume, general secretary of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s CDU, said voter participation had been higher in recent state elections and he hoped the trend would continue for the national election.

“Germany is experiencing a re-politicization because people realize we are living in uncertain times, that a great deal is at stake in this parliamentary election, and that it’s not irrelevant who’s elected.”

Richard Hilmer, director of the Berlin think tank Policy Matters, said the tool was critical, especially for younger voters who had not been involved in politics before.

“Interest is definitely higher in this election, but so is uncertainty. It remains to see how that will affect participation. It could well be that if people remain uncertain that they simply stay home.”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday threw her weight behind the European Commission in its row with Warsaw over freedom of Poland’s court system.

The previously reticent Merkel, speaking in Berlin, said she took the issue “very seriously” and would talk about it with Commission President Jean-Claude Junker on Wednesday.

In July, the commission, the European Union’s executive, gave Warsaw a month to address its concerns about reforms it saw as interfering with an independent judiciary.

Warsaw’s reply signaled that the ruling nationalist and euroskeptic Law and Justice (PiS) party had no intention of backing down and even doubted the commission’s right to intervene.

While two of the new Polish laws questioned by the commission have been sent back for reworking by an unexpected presidential veto, a third one, giving the justice minister powers to fire judges, has become law.

The commission said it undermined the independence of the courts and therefore EU rules.

“This is a serious issue because the requirements for cooperation within the European Union are the principles of the rule of law. I take what the commission says on this very seriously,” Merkel said at a news conference.

“We cannot simply hold our tongues and not say anything for the sake of peace and quiet,” she said.

‘Political emotions’

Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said Merkel’s remarks showed the criticism was political, rather than factual.

“I’m convinced that Polish government will be executing its targets despite political emotions that appear in politicians’ statements,” Ziobro told reporters in Warsaw.

“Every country which is independent within the EU has its own laws and should settle its problems within democratic mechanisms,” he said in remarks broadcast on state TV.

In its reply to the commission on Monday, the Polish foreign ministry said the legislative process of overhauling its judiciary was in line with European standards.

It called the commission’s concerns groundless and noted that judiciary was the province of national governments, not the commission.

“We have received the reply from the Polish government. Regarding the point that we have no competence in this sphere, this is something that we would actually quite powerfully refute,” a commission spokeswoman said.

“The rule of law framework sets out how the commission should react should clear indications of a threat to the rule of law emerge in a member state. The commission believes that there is such a threat to the rule of law in Poland,” she said.

The commission said in July that it would launch legal action against Poland over the judicial reforms. It also said that if the government started firing Supreme Court judges, the commission would move to suspend Poland’s voting rights in the EU — an unprecedented punishment that would, however, require the unlikely unanimous support of all other EU governments.

Merkel’s remarks on Tuesday followed openly critical statements from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said last Friday that Poland was isolating itself within the EU and Polish citizens “deserved better” than a government at odds with the bloc’s democratic values and economic reform plans.

Logging

In another unprecedented sign of defiance against the EU, the Polish government ignored an order by the EU’s highest court to cease logging in the Bialowieza forest.

The court will convene September 11 to decide how to react to Warsaw’s failure to honor the injunction, the first in EU history.

As the EU’s spats with the PiS government get increasingly tense, the bloc’s member states are due to discuss again this autumn whether the situation in their largest ex-communist peer merits launching an unprecedented Article 7 punitive procedure.

The maximum punishment under the procedure, however unlikely, would be stripping Poland of its voting rights in the EU over not respecting democratic principles on which the bloc is built.
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The Archbishop of Paris is on a 100 million-euro ($120 million) fundraising drive to save the crumbling gargoyles and gothic arches of the storied Notre-Dame cathedral.

Every year, 12 million to 14 million people visit the 12th-century Parisian landmark on an island in the Seine river. Groundbreaking for the structure occurred in 1163 and construction was completed in 1345. Pollution and exposure to elements over time have resulted in losses of large chunks of stone.

“If we don’t do these restoration works, we’ll risk seeing parts of the exterior structure begin to fall. This is a very serious risk,” said Michel Picaud, president of the Friends of Notre-Dame charity set up by the archbishop.

Church officials, who have created what they are calling a “stone cemetery” from fallen masonry, say the cathedral remains safe to visit.

Entry to the cathedral is free, and the French state, which owns the building, devotes 2 million euros a year to repairs.

But that is not enough to embark on major restoration works, the last of which were carried out during the 1800s, officials at the cathedral and charity said.

Hugo’s book

Notre-Dame has long drawn tourists from around the world.

It is most famous in popular culture as the locale for 19th-century author Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” and films of the same name, including the 1939 classic with Charles Laughton and the 1996 Disney musical animation.

The latter in particular raised the cathedral’s profile for modern-day tourists from China to the United States.

“It’s the movie for me. I just think of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and the book as well. After reading that book, I actually really wanted to come see it,” said U.S tourist Claire Huber as she visited the cathedral.

Church authorities hope the cathedral’s worldwide fame will attract donors, particularly from the United States.

“Gargoyles are what people want to see when they come to Paris. If there are no more gargoyles, what will they see?” Notre-Dame communications chief Andre Finot said.
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Moroccan authorities have arrested a man suspected of supplying gas canisters to a jihadist cell that carried out a double attack in Catalonia earlier this month that killed 16 people, a source from the Spanish investigation said.

The cell accumulated around 120 canisters of butane gas at a house in a town south of Barcelona with which, police say, it planned to carry out a larger bomb attack.

Police believe the cell accidentally ignited the explosives on Aug. 16, the eve of the Barcelona attack, triggering a blast that destroyed the house in the town of Alcanar.

The remaining attackers then decided to use hired vans to mow down crowds along Barcelona’s most famous avenue and later mount an assault in the resort town of Cambrils.

Moroccan police arrested the man in the city of Casablanca, the source said, without giving further details.

Spain’s interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, said on Tuesday that Moroccan authorities had arrested two people linked to the attacks but declined to give details about them.

Spanish news agency EFE said the second man was arrested in the city of Oujda and was a relative of one of the members of the Barcelona cell. The source did not confirm that.

Zoido, speaking after a meeting with the Moroccan interior minister in Morocco’s capital Rabat, said Spanish and Moroccan authorities were working closely together in the investigation.

Most of the suspected attackers were Moroccan and an imam suspected of radicalizing the cell traveled there shortly before the attack took place.

Six of the attackers were shot dead by police and two died in the explosion at the house in Alcanar. Four other people were arrested over the assaults, two of whom have now been released under certain conditions.
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A United Nations human rights panel called on the Russian Federation on Monday to step up prosecutions of racist attacks by ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis and of hate speech by politicians.

Russian authorities must intensify measures to “vigorously combat racist behavior in sports, particularly in football, and ensure that sports regulatory bodies investigate manifestations of racism, xenophobia and intolerance,” the U.N. Committee against Racial Discrimination (CERD) said.

Fines or administrative sanctions should be imposed for such cases. The panel, referring to “the upcoming (2018) World Cup, expresses its concern that racist displays remain deeply entrenched among football fans, especially against persons belonging to ethnic minorities and people of African descent.”

Russia has pledged to crack down on racism and fan violence as it faces increased scrutiny before hosting the World Cup finals next summer. Russian Premier League champions Spartak Moscow and rivals Dynamo Moscow were each fined 250,000 rubles ($4,250) over fans’ racist behavior, the Russian Football Union (RFU) said last month.

The 18 independent experts, who reviewed Russia’s record and those of seven other countries at a session that ended on Friday, issued their findings on Monday.

Igor Barinov, head of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs of the Russian Federation, told the panel on Aug. 4 that Moscow had taken measures against the propagation of racist ideas.

Russia consistently combats the glorification of Nazism — made a crime in 2014 — the propaganda of Nazi ideas and attempts at racial hatred or discrimination, he said. In 2016, officials had identified 1,450 extremist crimes, 993 had been sent to court and 934 people were found guilty, he said.

The U.N. panel said violent racist attacks had decreased in recent years, but added: “Violent racist attacks undertaken by groups such as neo-Nazi groups and Cossack patrols, targeting particularly people from Central Asia and the Caucasus and persons belonging to ethnic minorities including migrants, the Roma and people of African descent, remain a pressing problem.”

It called for an end to “de facto racial profiling by the police,” decrying arbitrary identity checks and “unnecessary arrests.”

“Racist hate speech is still used by officials and politicians, especially during election campaigns, and remains unpunished,” it said, recommending investigations.

Russia still lacks anti-discrimination legislation and the definition of extremist activity in its federal law “remains vague and broad,” it said.

Regarding Crimea, seized by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, the panel voiced concern at the fate of Crimean Tatar representative institutions, such as the outlawing of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar’s semi-official legislature, the closure of several media outlets, and “allegations of disappearances, criminal and administrative prosecutions, mass raids, and interrogations.”

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump, who met with his Finnish counterpart at the White House on Monday, said the United States was “very protective” of the Baltic region, especially in terms of the northern European states’ relations with Russia.

“We are very protective of that region,” Trump said at a joint news conference with visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto after the two held talks in the Oval Office.

“That’s all I can say,” Trump added. “We are very, very protective. We have great friends there, great relationships there.”

He added that he thought Russia respected Finland and that he hoped the United States would also develop a good relationship with Russia.

“I say it loud and clear, I’ve been saying it for years,” Trump told reporters. “I think it’s a good thing if we have great relationships, or at least good relationships, with Russia. That’s very important.”

Niinisto said “the U.S. and NATO presence in Europe — and in the Baltic Sea — are most important, and they are increasing rapidly.” He also said small but positive steps had been made toward reopening dialogue between NATO and Russia.

The two leaders also discussed terrorism, and Trump said the United States stood in solidarity with Finland against terrorist threats. “We must all work together to deny terrorists safe havens, cut off their finances and defeat their very wicked ideology,” the American president said.

Earlier this month, a man stabbed eight people in western Finland, killing two of them in the city of Turku. Finnish police said at the time that it was too early to link the attack to international terrorism.

Niinisto said his talks in the Oval Office with Trump also included a discussion of the Arctic region, where climate changes and rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have greatly reduced ice levels and are endangering the environment.

“If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe,” Niniisto said.
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Poland said on Monday that the legislative process overhauling its judiciary is in line with European standards and called the European Commission’s concerns about rule of law in the country groundless.

On July 26, the Commission said it would launch legal action against Poland over the reforms and gave Warsaw a month to respond to concerns that the process undermines the independence of judges and breaks EU rules.

Last month, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed into a law a bill giving the justice minister the power to replace heads of ordinary courts, but after mass street protests blocked two other bills.

The vetoed bills would have empowered the government and parliament to replace Supreme Court judges and most members of a high-level judicial panel.

“In response … the Polish side emphasized that the legislative process which has the primary goal of reforming the justice system is in line with European standards and answers social expectations that have been growing for years, therefore the Commission’s doubts are groundless,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also said that “in the spirit of loyal cooperation” it has provided the European Commission with all necessary information on the situation in Poland.

Poland’s right-wing, eurosceptic government says the reforms are needed to streamline a slow, outdated legal system and make judges more accountable to the people. It has already tightened control of state media and took steps that critics said politicized the constitutional court.
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The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is urging U.S. President Donald Trump to stop his attacks on the press, saying they “degrade” the essential role of the media in a democracy.

The OSCE’s media freedom representative, Harlem Desir, Monday said Trump’s comments about the media are “deeply problematic,” adding that such statements, especially those identifying the media as “the enemy of the people,” could make journalists more vulnerable to being targeted with violence.

“I urge the United States administration to refrain from delivering such attacks on the media,” said Desir in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Desir highlighted remarks Trump made last week in Phoenix, Arizona in which the president accused the media of being “truly dishonest,” “fake,” “crooked,” and of making up stories and deepening divisions within the country.

Desir said the comments are “particularly worrying given the United States’ long-standing position as one of the global leaders in defending free speech and press freedoms.” He said the media play a key role in democracies to hold governments accountable and to offer a platform for diverse voices.

The Vienna-based OSCE monitors security and election issues across the group’s 57 member states, including Europe, much of central Asia, Russia and the United States.

Trump has popularized use of the term “fake news” to criticize news media and reporters that he contends treat him unfairly.

A poll released last week by Quinnipiac University found that the majority of Americans agrees with Trump: 55 percent of voters said they disapprove of the way in which the news media report on Trump, compared to 40 percent who approve.

An even larger number of voters – 62 percent – said they disapprove of Trump’s negative comments about reporters and their employers. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said they agree with Trump on such issues.
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Italy is being accused of paying off Libyan militias linked to people smugglers in order to stop trafficking migrants across the Mediterranean for a month.

The claim, which coincides with an 86 percent fall in the number of asylum-seekers reaching Italy this month, compared to August of last year, comes as European and African leaders met in Paris to discuss how to stem the migrant flow roiling Europe.

According to Middle East Eye, a London-based news site, the Italian government has been paying off local brigades in the city of Sabratha, 80 kilometers west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. The alleged payoffs involve cash, aid and equipment, and are channeled through the city’s municipal authorities, which are controlled by the militias, the site claims.

Earlier this month, the Italian Development Cooperation Agency announced it shipped 11 tons of aid to Sabratha University Hospital. Italian government spokespersons are refusing to respond to the payoff allegations, but last week the Reuters news agency reported an armed group has been stopping migrant boats from setting off across the Mediterranean from Sabratha beaches.

There have also been reports that trafficking from nearby Zawiya has come to a virtual standstill. The trafficking trade may have been disrupted, too, by the arrest in recent days of Fahmi Salim Musa Bin Khalifa, nicknamed the “king of smuggling,” by a mainly Islamist militia, known as the Rada Special Deterrence Force, in Tripoli.

A Rada statement said, “He is considered to be one of the biggest smugglers across the [Mediterranean] Sea, and owns transporters. He is also very active in sending death boats [migrant boats] across the [Libyan] shores of Zuwara and Sabratha.” Zuwara is a port city in northwestern Libya, 60 kilometers from the Tunisian border.

Drop in crossings

In explaining the sharp drop in numbers during July and August, Italian authorities say weather conditions have been highly changeable in what is normally peak season for crossings, but the weather has been highly favorable, according to seafarers.

Another explanation offered has been the Libyan coast guards have been more effective in their interdiction efforts, because of training and equipment offered by the Italian navy. An Italian warship is docked at Tripoli’s port.

According to analysts, some coast guard units are also tied to the militias.

On Saturday, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti met mayors from southern Libya to renew a commitment to fight people trafficking as part of an agreement signed earlier this year between Rome and the internationally recognized government of Fayez al-Sarraj, who heads one of Libya’s three rival governments.

The meeting focused on helping to shape economic alternatives to human trafficking and contraband smuggling in Libyan towns that profit from the migrant trade. “Youngsters in those areas and the whole of Libya deserve a future of hope, free from the threats of criminal organizations,” Italy’s Interior Ministry said in a joint statement with the Libyans.

“Libya looks forward to the timely support of Italy and the European Union,” the statement continued.

From Libya to Italy

Since 2014, more than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea from Libya, where people smugglers linked to dozens of mainly town-based militias have operated with impunity in the turmoil that has engulfed the country since the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Italy’s coalition government of Paolo Gentiloni has been stepping up efforts to curb the migrant influx.

Last month, Italian authorities introduced a code of conduct for NGOs operating humanitarian migrant rescue vessels in the Mediterranean.

The charities were accused of at best acting as a “pull factor,” encouraging asylum-seekers to risk the perilous crossing and, at worst, actually coordinating with the people smugglers and facilitating the trafficking.

Five of eight aid groups that operate migrant rescue ships, which pick up about 40 percent of the migrants rescued in the Mediterranean, have refused to sign up to the code, which discourages them from patrolling in Libyan territorial waters.

Paris meeting

At the meeting Monday in Paris, Italy was to push the European Union to try to replicate with Libya a deal struck last year with Turkey that largely shut down the migrant route through the Balkans.

Analysts warn such a deal would be unworkable when it comes to Libya, given its lack of an effective central authority. The Italians, with German support, have been pushing for a concerted interdiction effort along Libya’s southern borders.

Minniti also met Monday with the interior ministers of Chad, Libya, Mali and Niger to discuss strengthening controls on sea and land borders. Rome wants the U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration involved in setting up migrant centers in Niger and Chad.

Meanwhile, with full migrant centers, Italian authorities are considering using property confiscated from the mafia to house asylum-seekers.
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The European Union and Britain start a third round of Brexit negotiations on Monday, with London looking to move discussions to the future relationship and Brussels demanding more clarity on the terms of the divorce first.

Almost five months after the two-year divorce process began, the Brexit discussions have made little headway, interrupted by a British general election as well as the summer. As things stand, Britain has little idea what relationship it will have with the other 27 countries of the EU past the Brexit date of March 2019.

On the EU side, the frustration is increasingly evident. On Monday, Germany’s main business lobby group criticized the British government for what it called an unclear stance on the future. The head of the Federation of German Industries — an influential group in the EU’s biggest economy — said that “appreciable progress can hardly be expected” during four days of talks this week.

Dieter Kempf said that there doesn’t appear to be a single agreed British government position. He added that British proposals on customs arrangements after the U.K. leaves the EU would require “disproportionately high bureaucratic effort” and are impractical for companies.

Kempf said that the U.K. must make clear statements on the terms of its withdrawal.

The EU has insisted that key issues of the withdrawal must be dealt with before any post-Brexit discussions can begin. Britain is hoping those discussions can begin as soon as October.

The bloc says that is impossible until there has been “sufficient progress” in agreeing terms of the divorce, including how much Britain must pay to settle its existing commitments to the EU.

Britain’s Brexit minister, David Davis, acknowledged that this week’s talks will be mainly technical, but urged EU negotiators to show “flexibility and imagination.”

“We want to lock in the points where we agree, unpick the areas where we disagree, and make further progress on a range of issues,” he said Monday.

In recent weeks Britain has released a series of position papers on aspects of Brexit ahead of the resumption of talks, but they received a muted reception from Brussels.

Meanwhile, Britain’s main opposition Labour Party announced Sunday that it backs the U.K. staying in the EU single market, which guarantees tariff-free trade, and customs union during a “transition period” of several years after Brexit, arguing that would give much-needed certainty to businesses and consumers. In return for remaining a member of the single market, Britain would have to agree to abide by the EU’s four freedoms, including the freedom of movement within the bloc. And by remaining in the customs union, Britain would not be able to carve out its own trade deals, possibly with the United States.

The government has also called for a transition period, but insists Britain will be out of the single market and customs union once Brexit actually takes place.

Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin. Lawless wrote from London.
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Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has named a restructured Cabinet with a goal of increasing the country’s economic growth from 3.8 to 5 percent in four years.

Rama on Sunday told his Socialist Party leadership that his Cabinet would be reduced from 20 to 14 ministerial posts, making it “a smaller but more cooperative one.”

The new structure merges the finance ministry with the economy ministry, and the energy ministry with the transport and infrastructure ministry. A new ministerial post has been created to oversee the Albanian diaspora and to coordinate with businesses.

Most of the appointees are holdovers from the previous government, but serving in different positions. Four are new appointments. The new Cabinet preserves an equal number of women and men.

The left wing Socialists secured a second mandate in a June election, winning 74 seats in the 140-seat parliament and can run the government without allies.

The opposition Democratic party won 43 seats while the Socialist Movement for Integration Party that was in Rama’s governing coalition in the previous mandate secured 19 seats. Four other seats were won by a smaller political grouping.

The Democrats said the Cabinet picks represented “the return to power of the former communist elite” that would lead to “deepening Edi Rama’s and a small group’s private reigning.”

Rooting out corruption, fighting drug trafficking, improving pay and lowering unemployment are some of the key issues in Albania, a NATO member since 2009 that wants to launch membership negotiations with the European Union next year.

The new Cabinet will be subject to a vote when parliament convenes early next month.
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A Jordanian official said Sunday that Jordan is negotiating with Germany over the legal status of German troops to be stationed in the kingdom, amid reports that disagreements delayed deployment.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Germany seeks immunity in Jordan for 250 soldiers who are part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State group extremists. The report says Jordan balked at the demand.

The Jordanian official said talks with Germany are “subject to international diplomatic rules” and “equal mutual treatment.” He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters on the issue.

Germany’s Defense Ministry played down the report saying the negotiation process is ongoing and that “we are in fruitful talks with Jordan.”

“We already started the deployment… and are expecting to be fully operational by October,” said a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Germany chose Jordan after previous host Turkey prevented German lawmakers from visiting the troops there.
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A 51-year-old German woman died Sunday from injuries suffered in the Aug. 17 vehicle attack in Barcelona, raising the overall death toll in Spain’s recent attacks to 16, health officials in Catalonia said.

The woman died in the intensive care unit of Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, according to the regional health department.

The latest death raises the toll to 14 in the van attack in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard. Another man was stabbed to death in a carjacking that night as the van driver made his getaway, and another woman died in an Aug. 18 vehicle-and-knife attack in the nearby coastal town of Cambrils.

More than 120 people were wounded in the attacks. Authorities say 24 remain hospitalized, five of them in critical condition.

On Saturday, an estimated 500,000 peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona shouting “I’m not afraid” — a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.

Emergency workers, taxis drivers, police and ordinary citizens who helped immediately after the Las Ramblas attack led the march. They carried a street-wide banner with black capital letters reading “No Tinc Por,” which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language.

The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a slogan that Spain’s entire political class has unanimously embraced.

Spain’s central, regional and local authorities tried to send an image of unity Saturday by walking behind the emergency workers, despite earlier criticism that national and regional authorities had not shared information about the attackers well enough with each other.

In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration, walking in Barcelona along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other officials. A separate anti-violence rally was held in the northern town of Ripoll, home to many of the attackers.

Eight suspects in the attacks are dead, two are jailed under preliminary charges of terrorism and homicide and two more were freed by a judge but will remain under investigation.

 
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Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is announcing a policy shift which opens the possibility of the country remaining in the European Union’s single market and customs union for several years as part of a “soft” Brexit, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The party would propose the same “basic terms” as Britain’s current relationship with the EU during a transition period following Brexit in 2019, and after that for all options to be open, a spokesman for Labour said.

His comments came in response to a report in Britain’s Guardian and sister newspaper Observer in which shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer backed “continued membership of the EU single market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU,” so that Labour would become the party of a “soft Brexit” and offer a smoother economic outcome.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party would also “leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period”, the paper said.

However, a longer-term arrangement would only be considered if a Labour government could by that point have persuaded the rest of the EU to “agree to a special deal on immigration and changes to freedom of movement rules,” the paper said.
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Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is also a former governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, has accused the authorities of Georgia and Ukraine of planning to accuse of planning a coup in Georgia.

Saakashvili wrote on Facebook on Saturday that the Georgian authorities “in complete coordination with officials in Ukraine” were planning to make the accusation soon.

“They promised [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko that they would file the charges before September 10,” he wrote.

Saakashvili said the charges would give Ukrainian authorities “a legal basis” for detaining him if he entered Ukraine.

He added that the charges were risible and politically motivated.

Earlier the same day, Nika Gvaramia, the head of Georgia’s Rustavi-2 television, said he believed charges of plotting a coup might be filed against Saakashvili.

Background

Saakashvili, 49, once a lauded pro-Western reformist, served two terms as Georgia’s president, from January 2004 to November 2013.

His popularity declined toward the end of his second term, in part because of a five-day war with Russia during which Moscow’s forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country, and his long-ruling party was voted out of power in a 2012 parliamentary election.

In 2015, Saakashvili forfeited his Georgian citizenship by accepting an offer from his old college friend, Poroshenko, to become governor of Ukraine’s southwestern Odessa Oblast province — a post that required Ukrainian citizenship.

Saakashvili, who harbors Ukrainian political ambitions, resigned as governor of Odessa in November 2016, complaining of official obstruction and corruption. He accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and said his central government had sabotaged democratic reforms required for membership to the European Union and NATO.
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Several people have reportedly been detained in Moscow at a sanctioned demonstration in support of internet freedom.

One demonstrator was detained on Saturday while wearing a T-shirt reading, “Putin is worse than Hitler,” referring to President Vladimir Putin.

Several other demonstrators were detained while wearing symbols supporting equal rights for the LGBT community.

Some at the rally, which had been approved by local officials, shouted, “Russia will be free,” and “Russia without censorship.”

According to Moscow officials, about 1,000 people attended the rally.

Similar demonstrations were held in several other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk and others.

Demonstrators were calling for changes to legislation restricting the internet that were included in the so-called Yarovaya package of laws — named after conservative State Duma member Irina Yarovaya.

Last month, Russia’s parliament approved legislation that forbids the use of certain web tools that allow internet users to access certain websites that have been banned by officials.

Protesters also called for the release of people jailed for purportedly disseminating “extremist” material via the internet and for the resignations of the leadership of Roskomnadzor, the state agency that monitors and regulates the internet.
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The EU’s commissioner for migration says Brussels may withhold development aid and impose trade and visa restrictions on migrant-source countries in Africa and Asia to force them to take back failed asylum-seekers.

In an interview with Britain’s The Times published Saturday, Dimitris Avramopoulos said EU chiefs “are considering stopping funding of major development projects. We invested in these regions to create opportunities and keep people there.”

He said countries which failed to cooperate with repatriations could face blanket visa restrictions. Germany recently threatened to withhold visas from the ruling elites of migrant-source countries that do not accept returnees.

But Avramopoulos appeared to indicate a much broader visa embargo is now being contemplated, saying “thousands of foreigners, from diplomats and doctors to students and researchers” would be impacted by the travel restrictions now under discussion.

“The EU is not afraid to make use of leverages in trade or visa policy. Let’s be honest: it is neither good for Africa nor for Europe that so many people cross the Mediterranean,” he said.

This is the first time EU commissioners have threatened to block access to European markets in response to a long-running migration crisis that’s roiling the continent and threatening to upend traditional party politics and empower populist nationalists.

The “hard borders” approach now being considered is being condemned by humanitarian NGOs, which often embrace a “no border” ideology.

On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France will chair talks featuring European and African leaders in Paris in a renewed bid to thrash out a more effective strategy to stem migrant flows. African leaders are likely to argue they need more development aid.

Italy’s dilemma

The following day EU national leaders will hold one of their regular summits in which the migration issue will figure prominently.  Both Italy and Germany have national elections in coming months and Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni and Germany’s Angela Merkel will likely want to show voters they are shutting down migrant routes.

Italy will push the EU to try to replicate with Libya a deal that was struck with Turkey last year, which largely shut down the migrant route through the Balkans. But analysts say such a deal would be unworkable when it comes to Libya given the lack of an effective central authority in the northern Africa state.

The migration influx has morphed into a political crisis for Italy’s left-leaning coalition government. In municipal elections earlier this year the coalition lost ground to center-right parties such as Matteo Salvini’s Northern League, which has called for a “stop to the invasion.”

Italy’s right-wing Forza Italia party has campaigned for the denial of landing rights to NGO ships carrying migrants. And even the maverick radical Five Star Movement is moving to an anti-immigrant position, calling for a halt to any new migrants being lodged in Rome.

Gentiloni has accused fellow EU nations of “looking the other way,” and not doing enough to assist Italy with the surge in migrants crossing the Mediterranean. A burden-sharing system across the EU has failed with just a few thousand taken off Italy’s hands by other EU member states.

Libya has become the main gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from across sub-Saharan Africa, and also from the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Syria and Bangladesh. Many are fleeing war and persecution, but most who are using Libya are seeking to escape poverty. Italy has become the main point of arrival of those rescued off the coast of Libya.

As the economic migration has grown, with only a small proportion of asylum-seekers coming from countries engulfed in war, so sentiment in Italy has shifted with Italians becoming enraged at the strain the influx is having on the country’s migrant facilities, which are now all full, and the appearance of migrants even in far-flung villages.

600,000 asylum seekers

This week, police evicted more than a hundred Eritreans and Ethiopians from an abandoned office building near Rome’s central railway station. The occupants — who had been given refugee status — complained that Italy doesn’t help asylum-seekers integrate, fails to house them and provide language classes.

In fact, the Italian authorities do, housing many in villages across the country, providing months-long language tuition and up to 45 euros a day per refugee. But many refugees bolt the system, preferring to live in large cities such as Rome, Naples, Milan and Bologna and to try their luck.

The sheer numbers — more than 600,000 asylum-seekers have entered Italy since 2014 — are overwhelming. And the assistance asylum-seekers do receive is increasingly infuriating ordinary Italians in villages migrants are sent to for temporary periods. “I don’t get that money from the government and we are struggling as well — we don’t have enough jobs for our kids and now migrant kids will be competing for the few jobs that are around,” says Anna-Maria Bianchi, a mother-of-two from a Lazio village just north of Rome.

The only good news as far as Italian authorities are concerned is that there has been a fall-off in the rate of new arrivals this August and July. Official figures show arrivals in Italy from North Africa dropped by more than 50 percent in July from a year earlier and August arrivals are down even further, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The decline is being put down to several factors — from changeable sea conditions to a heightened Libyan coastguard presence and a reduction in humanitarian rescue-refugee operations.  There are also several probes by Italian authorities, who say NGOs have been colluding with people-traffickers. 
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday the alliance would closely watch Russian military exercises in western Russia and Belarus next month, urging Moscow to be transparent about the drills.

The maneuvers, the largest in years, with tanks, naval and air units operating in and around the Baltic and North Sea, have raised NATO’s concern that the official number of troops participating might be understated.

‘Watching very closely’

“We are going to be watching very closely the course of these exercises,” Stoltenberg told reporters after meeting Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo on a visit to check on the deployment of the U.S.-led alliance’s forces in the country’s east.

“All countries have the right to exercises of their armed forces, but the countries should also respect the obligation to be transparent.”

Russia has said that 13,000 troops will participate in the Sept. 14-20 drills, which under an international agreement is the limit for not requiring the presence of external observers. Western estimates have put the number of troops involved much higher.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday the drills were purely defensive and concerns about troop numbers were “inflated hype of an artificial nature” in Western media.

“We would like to emphasize that it is precisely these actions which lead to increased military tension in Europe,” the ministry said in a statement.

More meetings

Stoltenberg will meet with Polish, Turkish and Romanian foreign ministers later on Friday before visiting NATO troops in Poland’s Orzysz, about 57 kilometers (35 miles) south of Russia’s Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, where Moscow has stationed nuclear-capable missiles and an S-400 air missile defense system.

“[The NATO deployment] is a clear signal that an attack on one ally is an attack on the whole alliance,” Stoltenberg said. “The matter here is to prevent conflicts and not to provoke them.”
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A man armed with a knife was detained Friday evening outside London’s Buckingham Palace, and two police officers were injured while arresting him, police said.

The Metropolitan Police force says two officers suffered minor injuries while detaining the suspect, who is being held on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and assaulting police.

Police said the officers did not require hospital treatment. No other injuries were reported.

A large number of police vehicles could be seen in the Mall, the wide road outside the palace.

Police said it was too early to say whether the incident was terrorism-related.

Buckingham Palace is one of London’s main tourist attractions, and the London home of Queen Elizabeth II.

The queen, however, usually spends August in Scotland at her Balmoral estate with family members.

Police stepped up patrols around major U.K. tourist sites after attacks with vehicles and knives earlier this year on Westminster Bridge, which is near Parliament, and London Bridge.

Buckingham Palace, which is surrounded by tall gates, has seen past security breaches. Last year, a man convicted of murder climbed a wall while the queen was at home, and was detained in the grounds.

In 1982, an intruder managed to sneak into the queen’s private chambers while she was in bed. Elizabeth spent 10 minutes chatting with him before calling for help.

A palace spokeswoman said the palace did not comment on security issues.
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A court in Azerbaijan on Friday jailed the head of an independent news agency pending an investigation on tax evasion charges, a move that the opposition denounced as an attack on the freedom of speech in the ex-Soviet nation.

The court in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, put Turan news agency director Mehman Aliyev in prison for three months. He was arrested on Thursday night.

Tax authorities have accused Aliyev of failing to pay the equivalent of nearly $22,000 in taxes in 2014-2016.

Turan has denied the charges. It said in a statement that its bank accounts have been blocked by authorities, forcing it to halt operations starting Sept. 1.

International rights groups have repeatedly criticized the oil-rich Caspian nation for cracking down on independent media and opposition activists.

The opposition Musavat party and National Council movement criticized Aliyev’s arrest as the latest attack on media freedom and called for his release.

“The tax agency has been used as a weapon against independent media,” the National Council said in a statement.

 
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A bitter exchange of words erupted between France and Poland on Friday after French President Emmanuel Macron sharply criticized Poland’s opposition to plans to change European Union rules on “posted workers” — the cheap labor from eastern countries sent to more prosperous EU nations.

On a trip Friday to Bulgaria, Macron said the Polish reluctance to reform the bloc’s labor rules is “an illustration of the mistakes made by this government.”

His comments came on the final leg of a three-day visit to Central and Eastern Europe that has included meetings with Austrian, Czech, Slovak and Romanian leaders but not with Polish officials.

“Poland has decided to isolate itself from Europe and its refusal to revise this directive doesn’t change my confidence in [getting] a positive outcome” on the rules change, Macron said, adding Poles “deserved better.”

“The [Polish] prime minister will have difficulty explaining why it’s good to pay the Poles badly,” Macron said.

Poland is the largest source of posted workers, about 300,000 to 400,000 a year. Critics say having posted workers leads to lower wages and fewer jobs for workers from wealthy nations and reduces the taxes coming in to fund social programs in wealthy nations.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo hit back, calling the French leader’s criticism “arrogant,” advising him to “mind the business of his own country.” She also accused France of trying to “take apart one of the pillars of the EU” — the free movement of workers among the bloc’s 28 nations.

“The future of Europe will not be decided by the president of France, or by any other individual leader, but jointly, by all the member states,” she said.

Later Friday, Poland’s deputy foreign minister urgently summoned a French diplomat to express his “indignation” over Macron’s criticism of the Polish government.

On Thursday, Szydlo vowed to defend “Poland’s interests and Poland’s workers,” but added that “all member states are putting their heads together” over the issue.

Posted workers, while abroad, continue to pay into the tax and social security systems of their home countries, allowing their employers to hire them for less than workers in Western countries where government taxes are generally higher. The largest number work in construction, but many also work caring for the elderly.

Macron, said Poland “cannot be the country that gives Europe its direction.”

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said it was important not to violate the EU’s basic principle of free movement when it considers changes to rules on posted workers. He said new rules should seek a balance between the older and newer EU members, such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

Radev said he shared Macron’s “anguish about social dumping.”

“Bulgaria is against all social security fraud,” he said.

Bulgaria’s prime minister said he regretted divisions that have emerged in the EU over the issue.

“Poland and Hungary are our friends and it is fatal that there is such confrontation in the European Union,” said Prime Minister Boyko Borisov Friday after talks with Macron.

Borisov said officials would discuss the issue with Szydlo when she visits Bulgaria in September. He said Bulgaria wanted a solution on posted workers before it takes over the rotating presidency of the EU on January 1, 2018.

An estimated few thousand Bulgarian workers have relocated to other EU states working in construction, trucking and shipbuilding.

Macron and Borisov also discussed business, investment and Europe’s passport-free Schengen travel zone, which Bulgaria wants to join. Bulgaria also wants to join the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international organization representing many of the globe’s advanced economies.

The leaders discussed defense issues and Bulgaria’s plans to upgrade its military, spending 1.8 billion euros ($2.12 billion) on new hardware between 2017 and 2029.

Scislowska reported from Warsaw, Poland. Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw also contributed to this report.
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Nearly 1,000 people were forced out of their jobs Friday in Turkey, joining more than 150,000 people who have been fired as part of an ongoing government crackdown following a failed coup last year. The opposition is increasingly rallying around two purged educators who have been on a hunger strike for more than five months.

“Semih, Nuriye, we are with you,” protesters chanted earlier this month in the heart of Istanbul. It was the latest show of support for Professor Nuriye Gulmen and schoolteacher Semih Ozakca, two protesters who are in their fifth month of a hunger strike over the firing of educators during the government crackdown.

The Istanbul protest did not last long. Dozens of heavily armed riot police and plainclothes police officers began making arrests. With the condition of the two hunger strikers deteriorating, the crackdown on their supporters is intensifying.

The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, has ruled out concessions.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we are not sending our children to schools to be educated as terrorists. We can’t surrender our children to the hands of the terrorists for their education.”

Gulmen and Ozakca were fired for alleged ties to Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for masterminding the coup attempt. Like many people fired since the start of the crackdown, Gulmen and Ozakca say they are staunchly secular and oppose Gulen. Gulen denies the government’s accusation against him.

Gulmen and Ozakca, however, are critical of the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With their hunger strike becoming an increasing focal point of opposition to the crackdown, the two were jailed on terrorism charges.

Political scientist Cengiz Aktar says the crackdown on Gulmen and Ozakca and their supporters is driven by panic.

“It’s done out of irrationality and fear. They don’t realize by doing so, they are making these two unlucky fellows heroes,” Aktar said. “If they happen to die, which I really hope not, things will get worse. People will take up this issue more strongly. Others may follow suit. Other hunger strikers may follow suit, and it may become something uncontrollable.”

Protests in support of Gulmen and Ozakca continue. Their names can be seen in graffiti on walls and pavement in towns and cities across Turkey. Despite the risks, demonstrators remain defiant.

“I am extremely worried, I am so worried, even I am losing weight because I don’t enjoy existing while this is happening,” one woman said. “We will definitely find a way of continuing to exist. Not just exist, but to resist and get a strong win in the end. What we are fighting for is justice, human rights. It’s a good cause.”

Tensions are further fueled by reports that authorities are planning to force feed Gulmen and Ozakca.
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Norway and China have resumed talks on a bilateral free trade deal, Norway’s Industry Ministry said Thursday, in another sign that their relationship was thawing after a row over the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Beijing suspended discussions immediately after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Liu in 2010.

The dissident was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power” after he helped write a petition known as “Charter 08” calling for sweeping political reforms.

Liu died on July 13 from liver cancer.

China and Norway agreed to resume full diplomatic relations late last year and in June stepped up energy cooperation.

Several Norwegian firms, including Statoil, signed memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with Chinese partners.

“It is good that negotiations are resuming,” Trade and Industry Minister Monica Maeland said in a statement.

The two sides had agreed to meet once more before the end of the year to discuss the trade of goods, services and investments, the statement said.

Initial reports from Norwegian negotiators were “very promising,” Maeland said.

A free trade deal would benefit producers of farmed salmon — Norway is the world’s largest producer — such as Marine Harvest, Salmar, Leroey, Norway Royal Salmon and Grieg Seafood.
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A new U.S. study has found an “extreme level” of wealth inequality in Russia that has increased much more significantly than it has in former Eastern European communist countries and in China since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

The study, conduced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found inequality in Russia has been driven by the transition from communism, during which wealthy Russians accumulated offshore wealth about three times larger than the net value of the country’s foreign reserves. This offshore wealth is comparable to all the financial assets held by households throughout Russia.

‘Dramatic failure’

“The dramatic failure of Soviet communism and egalitarian ideology … seems to have led to relatively high tolerance for large inequality and concentration of private property,” the study said.

It predicts inequality in Russia will persist “as long as billionaires and oligarchs appear to be loyal to the Russian state and perceived national interests.”

Russian living standards were between 60 percent to 65 percent of the Western European average in 1990 and 1991 and increased to 70 percent to 75 percent by the mid-2010s, according to the study.

Rent-based resources

The levels of inequality in Russia are in part the result of “a persistent concentration of rent-based resources, which are unlikely to be the best recipes for sustainable development and growth,” researchers said.

The study said official estimates of inequality in Russia greatly underestimate the concentration of income. Researchers said the report includes the “first complete balance sheet series” detailing private, public and national wealth and offshore wealth estimates in post-Soviet Russia.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday during a visit to Ukraine that the Trump administration was “actively reviewing” whether to provide lethal defensive weapons to the war-torn country.

When asked whether Russia might see such a move as a threat, Mattis responded, “Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you’re an aggressor.”

The previous U.S. administration held the view that sales of defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine would unnecessarily provoke Russia, but Trump administration officials have reopened consideration of the previously rejected plan.

“The morality of doing something that would have a counterproductive result struck [President Barack] Obama as a mistake. That was his interpretation. We don’t know where President [Donald] Trump’s interpretation will wind up,” Michael O’Hanlon, a senior defense fellow at the Brookings Institution policy research group in Washington, told VOA.

WATCH: Mattis on U.S. Support for Ukraine

During a joint news conference with Mattis following Thursday’s talks, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did not directly respond when asked about a timeline for any weapons transfer, but noted that defensive weapons “would increase the price if Russia made the decision to attack my troops and my territory.”

Crimea annexation

Mattis, who reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Ukraine while in Kyiv, said Washington does not accept Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. He added that Russia was “seeking to redraw international borders by force,” and that U.S. sanctions against Russia would therefore remain in place until the government in Moscow changed its behavior.

The U.S. defense secretary visited the country a day before an expected cease-fire in eastern Ukraine that will coincide with the start of the new school year. However, O’Hanlon cautioned that the cease-fire was most likely a tactical and self-serving move by the Russians.

“I don’t believe it will be likely to endure, but it’s probably a negotiating ploy to try to get the United States and other countries and actors to see things more in favor of avoiding any escalation and avoiding giving weaponry to the Ukrainians,” O’Hanlon said.

Mattis said Russia was not “adhering to the letter, much less the spirit,” of commitments in the Minsk Agreement to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as other deals the country has endorsed.

“The U.S. and our allies will continue to press Russia to honor its Minsk commitments, and our sanctions will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them,” Mattis said. “As President Trump has made clear, the United States remains committed to diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”
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The Nazi symbol known as the swastika was on display in Charlottesville, Virgina, during a white supremacist rally earlier this month that led to violence and division in the U.S. It sparked a national debate about how to respond. In Germany, where the swastika is banned, a group of graffiti activists have taken it upon themselves to transform that symbol of hate into something beautiful and positive. Faiza Elmasry tells us how. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Even as tensions between the United States and Russia fester, there is one surprising place where their military-to-military contacts are quietly weathering the storm: Syria.

It has been four months since U.S. President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes against a Syrian airfield after an alleged chemical weapons attack.

In June, the U.S. military shot down a Syrian fighter aircraft, the first U.S. downing of a manned jet since 1999, and also shot down two Iranian-made drones that threatened U.S.-led coalition forces.

All the while, U.S. and Russian military officials have been regularly communicating, U.S. officials told Reuters. Some of the contacts are helping draw a line on the map that separates U.S.- and Russian-backed forces waging parallel campaigns on Syria’s shrinking battlefields.

There is also a telephone hotline linking the former Cold War foes’ air operations centers. U.S. officials told Reuters that there now are about 10 to 12 calls a day on the hotline, helping keep U.S. and Russian warplanes apart as they support different fighters on the ground.

That is no small task, given the complexities of Syria’s civil war. Moscow backs the Syrian government, which also is aided by Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as it claws back territory from Syrian rebels and Islamic State fighters.

The U.S. military is backing a collection of Kurdish and Arab forces focusing their firepower against Islamic State, part of a strategy to collapse the group’s self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.

Conversations maintained

Reuters was given rare access to the U.S. Air Force’s hotline station, inside the Qatar-based Combined Air Operations Area, last week, including meeting two Russian linguists, both native speakers, who serve as the U.S. interface for conversations with Russian commanders.

While the conversations are not easy, contacts between the two sides have remained resilient, senior U.S. commanders said.

“The reality is we’ve worked through some very hard problems and, in general, we have found a way to maintain the deconfliction line [that separates U.S. and Russian areas of operation] and found a way to continue our mission,” Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East, said in an interview.

As both sides scramble to capture what is left of Islamic State’s caliphate, the risk of accidental contacts is growing.

“We have to negotiate, and sometimes the phone calls are tense. Because for us, this is about protecting ourselves, our coalition partners and destroying the enemy,” Harrigian said, without commenting on the volume of calls.

The risks of miscalculation came into full view in June, when the United States shot down a Syrian Su-22 jet that was preparing to fire on U.S.-backed forces on the ground.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those were not the only aircraft in the area. As the incident unfolded, two Russian fighter jets looked on from above and a American F-22 stealth aircraft kept watch from an even higher altitude, they told Reuters.

After the incident, Moscow publicly warned it would consider any planes flying west of the Euphrates River to be targets. But the U.S. military kept flying in the area, and kept talking with Russia.

“The Russians have been nothing but professional, cordial and disciplined,” Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the Iraq-based commander of the U.S.-led coalition, told Reuters.

Dividing line

In Syria, U.S.-backed forces are now consumed with the battle to capture Islamic State’s former capital of Raqqa. More than half the city has been retaken from Islamic State.

Officials said talks were underway to extend a demarcation line that has been separating U.S.- and Russian-backed fighters on the ground as fighting pushes toward Islamic State’s last major Syrian stronghold, the Deir ez-Zor region.

The line runs in an irregular arc from a point southwest of Tabqa east to a point on the Euphrates River and then down along the Euphrates River in the direction of Deir ez-Zor, they said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, during a visit to Jordan this week, said the line was important as U.S.- and Russian-backed forces come in closer proximity of each other. “We do not do that [communication] with the [Syrian] regime. It is with the Russians, is who we’re dealing with,” Mattis said. “We continue those procedures right on down the Euphrates River Valley.”

Bisected by the Euphrates River, Deir ez-Zor and its oil resources are critical to the Syrian state.

The province is largely in the hands of Islamic State, but has become a priority for pro-Syrian forces. It also is in the cross hairs of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

SDF spokesman Talal Silo told Reuters last week that there would be an SDF campaign toward Deir ez-Zor “in the near future,” though the SDF was still deciding whether it would be delayed until Raqqa was fully taken from Islamic State.
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Officials in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on Wednesday canceled a performance by the American rock group Allah-Las following a tip from Spanish police that a terror attack might be imminent.

Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said at a hastily arranged news conference that police were questioning the driver of a van loaded with gas tanks that was found near the concert venue. The vehicle was registered in Spain.

Concert organizer Rotown said on Twitter that the concert venue, a former grain silo and elevator called Maassilo, had been evacuated. The decision to cancel the event was made less than an hour before doors were to open to the public.

Dutch television images from Maassilo showed officers wearing body armor, escorting a group thought to be members of the band, whose name refers to the Islamic deity.

Aboutaleb said Spanish police reported the terror threat just hours before the California band was due to take the stage, and the tip was serious enough to warrant canceling the concert.

However, he added, no link had yet been established between the alleged attack plan uncovered by Spanish police and the van, which explosives experts were searching.

The Allah-Las group is from Los Angeles. The four musicians told the British newspaper The Guardian last year that they chose Allah, the Arabic name for God, for their group’s name because they wanted something “holy sounding” and did not realize it might cause offense.

“We get emails from Muslims, here in the U.S. and around the world, saying they’re offended, but that absolutely wasn’t our intention,” lead singer Miles Michaud told the newspaper. “We email back and explain why we chose the name, and mainly they understand.”

Details of the threat relayed to Rotterdam from Spain were not disclosed. Spanish police have been investigating deadly vehicle attacks that killed 15 people in and near Barcelona last week.

They have recovered bomb-making equipment that included more than 100 tanks of butane gas, nails and 500 liters of highly flammable acetone.
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Danish police said Wednesday that a headless torso found in the Baltic Sea has been identified as that of missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who is believed to have died on an amateur-built submarine that sank earlier this month.

Wall, 30, was last seen alive Aug. 10 on Danish inventor Peter Madsen’s submarine, which sank off Denmark’s eastern coast the day after. Madsen, who was arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges, denies having anything to do with Wall’s disappearance. 

The headless torso was found on a beach by a member of the public who was cycling on Copenhagen’s southern Amager island Monday, near where she was believed to have died. Copenhagen police said Tuesday that the arms and legs had “deliberately been cut off” the body.

Cause of death not yet known

Copenhagen police investigator Jens Moeller Jensen told reporters Wednesday that DNA tests confirmed the body matched with Wall. He said it was attached to a piece of metal, “likely with the purpose to make it sink.” 

The body “washed ashore after having been at sea for a while,” he said. He added police found marks on the torso indicating someone tried to press air out of the body so that it would not float. 

Dried blood was found inside the submarine that also matched with Wall, he said. 

“On Aug. 12, we secured a hair brush and a toothbrush (in Sweden) to ensure her DNA. We also found blood in the submarine and there is a match,” Moeller Jensen said. 

The cause of the journalist’s death is not yet known, police said, adding they were still looking for the rest of her body.

Inventor in custody

Madsen, who remains detained in police custody on suspicion of manslaughter, initially told police that Wall disembarked from the submarine to a Copenhagen island several hours into their trip and that he did not know what happened to her afterward. He later told authorities “an accident occurred onboard that led to her death” and he “buried” her at sea.

Wall, a Sweden-born freelance journalist, studied at the Sorbonne university in Paris, the London School of Economics and at Columbia University in New York, where she graduated with a master’s degree in journalism in 2013. 

She lived in New York and Beijing, her family said, and had written for The New York Times, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post and Vice Magazine, among other publications.

Her family had told The Associated Press she was working on a piece on Madsen. 
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As many as 200 migrants clashed near the northern French port city of Calais, using sticks and iron bars in five mass brawls that mainly pitted Afghans against Eritreans, authorities said Tuesday.

A total of 21 migrants and six riot police were injured, none seriously, during the clashes that broke out between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture said.

Up to 150 migrants were involved in the last fight, which started on a road leading out of the Calais city center and moved to a highway, the prefecture said. The regional Voix du Nord newspaper said the violent skirmishes held up traffic.

Four other fights began late Monday and continued until dawn as police dispersed the groups with tear gas.

Police detained seven migrants for questioning and put 20 others in administrative detention, meaning they risk expulsion from France, according to the prefecture.

Authorities cleared some 7,000 migrants from a makeshift camp in Calais last fall, but people hoping to enter Britain by crossing the English Channel in trains or ferries are steadily returning. Authorities estimate about 400 migrants are now in the Calais area, while aid groups put the number at about 600.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said three weeks ago that even though there are far fewer migrants in Calais compared to a year ago, 30,000 attempts to sneak into the Eurotunnel complex or onto ferries had been made since the start of 2017. Many of the people on the French side of the Channel make repeated attempts.

The interior minister announced at the end of July that two special centers to shelter migrants in Calais would be opened. However, the shelters for willing occupants are aimed at speeding up assessments of their situations, including whether they are to be expelled from France.
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