Queen Elizabeth II spent a night in the hospital for tests after being forced to cancel a visit to Northern Ireland this week, Buckingham Palace said Thursday. 

“Following medical advice to rest for a few days, The Queen attended hospital on Wednesday afternoon for some preliminary investigations, returning to Windsor Castle at lunchtime today, and remains in good spirits,” a palace statement said. 

Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency said the trip to the hospital was unannounced as it was expected to be a short stay, and also to protect the 95-year-old monarch’s privacy. 

The overnight stay was for “practical reasons,” it added. 

Elizabeth was seen by specialists at the private King Edward VII’s Hospital in central London, where her late husband, Prince Philip, spent four weeks from February this year for treatment for a preexisting heart condition. 

Philip, who was married to the queen for 73 years, died in April just a few weeks before his 100th birthday. 

The queen, who has been on the throne since 1952 and is Britain’s longest-serving monarch, was said to be back at her desk on Thursday afternoon, undertaking light duties. 

She had been due to attend an ecumenical service in the border town of Armagh on Thursday to mark the 100th centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland. 

But the palace said on Wednesday morning that she had “reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for the next few days.” 

The decision was not related to the coronavirus, and she was said to have been resting at her Windsor Castle residence, west of London.

Busy schedule

The queen has had a busy schedule since returning from her remote Balmoral estate in northeast Scotland at the start of October. 

She has resumed public engagements since the funeral of Prince Philip, either alone or accompanied by other senior royals. 

Last week, she delivered a speech at the opening of the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, and on the weekend spent a day at Ascot Racecourse. 

On Monday, she held a virtual audience with the new governor-general of New Zealand, and on Tuesday received two ambassadors, also by video link. 

On Tuesday evening, she hosted a reception at Windsor for international business leaders attending a government investment summit, including the billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, and senior British ministers. 

At that reception, the queen appeared cheerful as she, her eldest son and heir Prince Charles, 72, and grandson Prince William, 39, mingled with guests, none of whom were wearing face masks. 

Coronavirus restrictions were lifted in Britain in July, but an increase in cases has prompted calls for measures to be reimposed to prevent further close-contact transmission. 

Daily virus cases crossed the 50,000 mark on Thursday, according to the latest government figures, the highest since July 17. 

Elizabeth and Philip moved to Windsor in March last year as the coronavirus outbreak took hold. 

They decided to self-isolate because of the increased risk of infection due to their age, although she has since been vaccinated. 

The queen is still expected to join other senior royals for a series of events linked to the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Glasgow next month. 

She was seen last week at a major public event using a walking stick, but royal officials said it was not linked to any specific health condition. 

But news that she stayed overnight in a hospital will inevitably raise fears for her health, given her advanced age, and questions about whether she should slow down. 

Next year she is due to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee to mark 70 years on the throne.
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A group of mixed-race women who were abducted as children by state officials in what was then Belgian Congo is suing the Belgian state for crimes against humanity. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the case comes as Belgium struggles to reconcile with its brutal colonial past.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is resisting calls by some public health officials to implement new COVID-19 restrictions, despite a surge of new infections hitting the nation.

The Health Ministry reported 52,000 new infections on Thursday, with a daily average the past week of more than 44,000 — a 16% increase from the previous week.

The World Health Organization reported this week that Britain has among the highest number of daily new infections in the European region, the only part of the world that saw an increase in new cases last week.

Speaking to reporters, Johnson said the government is going to stick to a plan it laid out earlier this year which called for a series of steps to allow the country to reopen and lift the restrictions.

Johnson said officials are carefully watching the COVID-19 numbers and said while the figures are high, they are within the parameters that government experts predicted.

Johnson said the best thing people can do now is get a booster shot. Almost 80% of British residents 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, and everyone over 50 is being offered a booster.

Johnson said, “Ninety percent of the adult population has antibodies right now. But we must fortify ourselves further.”

Critics of the government plan say the booster campaign is moving more slowly than the infection. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday the booster shot campaign is currently vaccinating about 165,000 people a day and that it should be closer to 500,000 per day.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. 

 
…

British authorities said Thursday that a British man has been charged in the fatal stabbing of lawmaker David Amess last week while he was meeting with constituents at a church. 

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old of Somali heritage, has been charged under the Terrorism Act.

The death of the longtime lawmaker has stunned Britain and particularly its politicians, who have a tradition of being accessible to constituents. His murder has sparked high level conversations about how Britain protects its leaders and confronts domestic extremism.

The 69-year-old Amess was a social conservative who opposed abortion and supported Britain’s exit from the European Union.

His killing came five years after Labour Party legislator Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist, the first British lawmaker to be killed since a peace agreement ended violence in Northern Ireland nearly three decades before.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 

 
…

A week ago, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would be prepared to increase natural gas exports to help Europe with an energy crunch that has triggered soaring prices. But there are no signs he will make good on promise of relief, say energy experts.

This week Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom appeared to have opted not to boost gas exports to Europe and refrained at auctions from reserving additional gas transit capacity on Ukrainian or Polish pipelines, according to Bloomberg data.

Last week, in an interview with American broadcaster CNBC, the Russian president dismissed suggestions the Kremlin was using gas as a geopolitical weapon, saying such talk was “politically motivated blather.”   

But Gazprom’s decision not to reserve additional capacity for gas exports to Europe has prompted anger from European leaders, who accuse the Kremlin of playing a political game.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told reporters in Brussels Monday that soaring gas prices have deep geopolitical roots. “It’s part of a geopolitical battle,” he said. But Borrell also acknowledged Russia has honored all its contracts. “It cannot be said that they are not delivering when they said they would, but it has not increased the quantities,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was more restrained in her language Wednesday when briefing the European Parliament, saying, “Gas prices are — and have always been — cyclical, and they are set by global markets. So, it is not a regional or local phenomenon, it is a global phenomenon.”

But she added she thought the Kremlin could do more to help, saying in previous years Gazprom had responded to higher demand.

Russia supplies 43% of the EU’s gas imports. Europe is heavily reliant on natural gas to generate much of its electricity. Gazprom exports actually fell in the first half of October.

Summit

EU national leaders are set to discuss the energy crunch at a two-day summit starting Thursday. In his summit invitation to national leaders, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said, “We will address the current hike in energy prices which is challenging the post-pandemic recovery and severely affecting our citizens and businesses.”

Some analysts say that while Russia may be seeking to exploit Europe’s energy crunch, the continent’s leaders have partly themselves to blame for their plight as they shifted away years ago from agreeing long-term contracts, preferring instead to opt for a system of market-based pricing, which can offer lower prices when supplies are in abundance but is highly volatile and can see prices skyrocket when there are shortages. Europeans have also done nothing to diversify suppliers.

The price jumps in natural gas are due largely to a surge in demand in Asia and low supplies of in Europe, which has seen an astonishing 280% increase in wholesale gas prices. Electricity prices are also soaring because natural gas is used across the continent to generate a substantial percentage of its electricity.

The International Energy Agency has called on Russia to boost gas exports. “The IEA believes that Russia could do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season,” it said in a statement earlier this month.

Nord Stream 2 and Ukraine  

There have long been fears, stretching back to the 1990s, that the Kremlin could use Europe’s dependence on Gazprom against it. A succession of U.S. presidents have urged European leaders to be wary and opposed the development of the just completed Nord Stream 2, NS2, natural gas pipeline, which will deliver energy from Russia to Germany while bypassing an older line running through Ukraine and Poland.

Some European politicians suspect the Kremlin is deliberately worsening Europe’s energy crunch as a tactic to pressure the EU into speeding up certification of the just completed NS2 pipeline.

Central European politicians have also opposed NS2 — which runs 1,200 kilometers from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, snaking under the Baltic Sea — and not only because their countries will lose lucrative transit fees from the older pipeline, but because they feared the Kremlin was building the new pipeline for political reasons and not commercial ones.

“Nord Stream 2 is no ordinary business project,” according to Inna Sovsun, a former Ukrainian minister and now a lawmaker and professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. “On the contrary, it is a geopolitical weapon aimed at the heart of Europe that has been conceived since day one as a tool to isolate Ukraine and strengthen Russia’s position in its confrontation with the Western world,” she said earlier this year in a paper for the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank.

She added, “In recent months, Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom has refused Ukrainian offers of additional pipeline capacity, despite surging European demand for gas due to a range of factors including maintenance on alternative Russian pipelines. Moscow prefers to wait for Nord Stream 2 to be commissioned and wants to send a clear message that it expects Russia’s European customers to facilitate this process without delay.”

European energy executives have warned of a difficult northern hemisphere winter ahead. Energy-intensive industries may have to slow down production, which could lead to shortages of fertilizers, steel, and food, they warn. Some energy companies have been trying all year to boost their gas stocks, which were depleted by last year’s exceptionally cold winter. Alfred Stern, CEO of Austria’s energy company OMV, says, “Everything will depend on how cold this winter is.”

On that score, the omens are not good. Meteorologists are forecasting a high risk of colder than normal winter weather this year. If those predictions play out, there will be even greater demand for natural gas and even higher energy prices, boosting overall European inflation which is running currently at 3.4%, the highest level since 2008.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers Thursday and Friday to talk about security issues in Afghanistan, tensions with Russia and technology policy.

“I’m here to help advance NATO’s military adaptation, and ensure the alliance is prepared for the challenges of the future,” Austin tweeted after arriving Wednesday.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the defense ministers would discuss preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists, and making sure Afghans evacuated during a massive airlift operation are able to resettle in NATO member states and not remain at transit centers.

“The most urgent role NATO has, and the most immediate task we are faced with, is to resettle Afghans who worked with us,” Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of the ministerial. “And NATO Allies and the NATO partners were able to get more than 120,000 people, many of them Afghans, out of Afghanistan. And we still, Allies and partners, are still working on how to get more people out.”

Austin traveled to Belgium from Romania, where he said Wednesday the Biden administration is committed to strengthening its Euro-Atlantic bonds while securing NATO’s eastern flank.

Speaking in Bucharest, Austin praised Romania for setting “an important example for allied commitment on sharing responsibility” and defense modernization.

Romania is one of the few NATO nations that spends more than 2% of its Gross Domestic Product on defense, with 20% of that spending going toward modernization — two key NATO spending goals.

The country also hosts about 1,000 rotational U.S. forces who help maintain security of the Black Sea region.

Austin’s visit to Romania followed stops in Ukraine and Georgia, two countries that aspire to join NATO and that are partially occupied by Russian and Russian-backed forces.

Tensions have risen between Russia and the longstanding alliance, with Russia announcing on Monday it was suspending its permanent mission to NATO in response to the alliance’s expulsion of eight Russians earlier this month.

Speaking in Kyiv Tuesday, Austin called Russia an “obstacle” to any peaceful resolution to the war raging in Ukraine’s east.

“We again call on Russia to end its occupation of Crimea, to stop perpetuating the war in Eastern Ukraine, to end its destabilizing activities in the Black Sea and along Ukraine’s borders,” Austin said.

Earlier this year, the largest number of Russian troops amassed near the Ukrainian border since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Kyiv. Russia soon pulled back its troops, however, after taking part in exercises near the Ukraine border.

Russia still occupies about a fifth of Georgia.
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German authorities on Wednesday detained two former soldiers who are alleged to have tried to form a mercenary group that would have intervened in the military conflict in Yemen.

Federal prosecutors said the men, identified only as Arend-Adolf G. and Achim A. in keeping with Germany privacy laws, were detained in southern Germany. Both are German citizens and former members of the Bundeswehr.

The men are accused of being ringleaders in the formation of a terror organization, prosecutors said in a statement.

Together, they allegedly decided in early 2021 to create their own mercenary group of between 100 and 150 former soldiers or members of the police.

The men’s primary motivation was to earn about 40,000 euros ($47,000) each per month by offering the group’s services to third parties, specifically Saudi Arabia, prosecutors said. The oil-rich kingdom has intervened in the conflict in neighboring Yemen against the Houthi rebel group.

Prosecutors said the men’s attempts to contact Saudi officials were unsuccessful.

The men were aware that their plans for military intervention in Yemen would inevitably require them to kill people, and they were aware that civilians might be injured and killed too, prosecutors said. 

Arend-Adolf G. is alleged to have won over at least seven people for the plan, they added.
…

An international Russia-hosted meeting Wednesday pressed the Taliban to form a “truly inclusive” government in Afghanistan and called for the United Nations to convene a donor conference as soon as possible to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe facing the war-torn country.

The huddle, known as the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan, was held with the participation of leaders of the interim Taliban government and senior officials from Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, India, as well as five formerly Soviet Central Asian states.

“Participating countries call on the current Afghan leadership to take further steps to improve governance and to form a truly inclusive government that adequately reflects the interests of all major ethno-political forces in the country,” said a post-meeting joint statement.

The delegates expressed “deep concern” over the deteriorating economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, stressing the need for the international community to mobilize efforts to provide assistance to the Afghan people.

Participants proposed to convene the U.N.-led donor conference “certainly with the understanding that the core burden of post-conflict economic and financial reconstruction and development of Afghanistan must be shouldered by troop-based actors which were in the country for the past 20 years.”

The statement pointedly referred to the United States and Western allied troops, whose abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years paved the way for the Taliban to regain control of the country in August. 

Washington also was invited to the Moscow talks, but U.S. officials cited technical reasons for not attending, though they promised to join future rounds.

While the West and world in general have refused to give official recognition to the Taliban government, Wednesday’s joint statement recognized the “new reality” of the fundamentalist group’s return to power in Kabul.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov while opening the meeting lauded the Taliban government’s efforts to improve the security and political situation. 

“[However], we see the formula for its successful solution mainly in the formation of a truly inclusive government, which should fully reflect the interests of all, not only ethnic, but also political forces of the country,” Lavrov said.

The head of the Taliban delegation, Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, while addressing the meeting, renewed a call for the global community to recognize the new government in Kabul and again demanded the United States unfreeze about $10 billon in Afghan central bank in foreign reserves.

Hanafi defended his interim government as “already inclusive” and said they would not accept any deal under pressure and cautioned against “isolating” Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s return to power has raised concerns whether they will protect human rights of Afghans and whether they will prevent the country from becoming a terror sanctuary. The worries stem from the Islamist movement’s rule in the 1990s, when it hosted leaders of the al-Qaida network and barred women from public life and girls from receiving an education. 

The Taliban have dismissed those fears, saying they have opened government offices for both male and female staff to return to work and girls are gradually being allowed to resume education activities. 

But the hardline group is already under fire for reneging on some of its pledges to protect human rights and is being accused of persecuting members of the ousted Afghan government.

“I would like to remind you all that the people of Afghanistan have no intention of harming any country or nation in the world,” Hanafi assured Wednesday’s meeting. He said the Taliban government “stands ready to address all the concerns of the international community with complete clarity, transparency and openness.”

Hanafi’s speech to the meeting in the Russian capital came a day after Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said he sees no situation where the Taliban would be allowed access to its funds in the U.S. reserves.

“We believe that it’s essential that we maintain our sanctions against the Taliban but at the same time find ways for legitimate humanitarian assistance to get to the Afghan people. That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Adeyemo told the Senate Banking Committee.

The U.S. and other Western countries are working out how to engage with the Taliban without giving them the legitimacy they seek, while facilitating the flow of humanitarian aid to Afghans.

Adeyemo said the Treasury was taking every step it could within its sanctions program to make clear to humanitarian groups that Washington wants to facilitate the flow of aid into Afghanistan.

Russia says its diplomatic offensive to garner support for Kabul stems from concerns that continued instability would encourage terrorist groups to threaten the security of Afghanistan’s neighbors and the wider region. 

Lavrov highlighted those fears while opening Wednesday’s meeting and urged the Taliban to deliver on their pledge to prevent terrorist groups from threatening Russia’s “friends and allies.”

The Afghan branch of Islamist State, known as IS-Khorasan, has in recent weeks carried out dozens of bomb attacks, killing and injuring hundreds of people across Afghanistan, most of them civilians.

The violence is of major concern to neighboring countries and is raising questions about the Taliban’s ability to counter the growing terror threat.
…

Spanish government geologists on Wednesday said the Cumbre Vieja on the Spanish island of La Palma is continuing to violently erupt with no signs of stopping or even slowing down. 

The geologist took video of huge pyroclastic blocks floating along a river of lava flowing from the volcano’s northern zone. Meanwhile, video filmed by the Volcanology Institute of the Canaries (INVOLCAN) showed the lava flows moving into the town of La Laguna approaching a gas station.

Officials say the station had been emptied of fuel and water in recent days in advance of the approaching flow.

Streams of red-hot lava have engulfed almost 800 hectares of land, destroying about 2,000 buildings and many banana plantations.

The volcano on one of the Canary Islands off northwest Africa has so far destroyed more than 1,800 buildings, mostly homes. Some 7,000 people have had to leave their homes.

The prompt evacuations have helped avoid casualties on the island of some 85,000 people. Scientists have seen no indication that the eruption is slowing, as rivers of lava continue flowing toward the sea.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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A French woman of African origin is leading a campaign to encourage more members of France’s African diaspora to register as bone marrow donors to potentially save lives. Elhame Lecoeur filed this report for VOA from Paris, narrated by Michael Lipin.

Camera: Elhame Lecoeur Produced by: Marcus Harton
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Russia has lauded the efforts of Afghanistan’s Taliban government to improve the national security and political situation but stressed the need for the Islamist group to ensure inclusivity in its governance to achieve a stable peace in the war-torn country. 

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the remarks Wednesday while opening a Moscow-hosted international meeting to discuss the Afghan crisis with Taliban leaders and delegates from 10 countries, including China, Pakistan, Iran and India. 

“A new administration is in power [in Kabul]. We note the efforts they take to stabilize the military and political situation and set up work for the state apparatus,” Lavrov said. 

“[However], we see the formula for its successful solution mainly in the formation of a truly inclusive government, which should fully reflect the interests of all, not only ethnic, but also political forces of the country,” said the Russian chief diplomat. 

Lavrov said Moscow believes it’s time to mobilize global efforts to provide Kabul with effective financial, economic and humanitarian assistance to help prevent a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. 

Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, while addressing the meeting, renewed a call for the global community to recognize the new government in Kabul and again demanded the United States unfreeze about $10 billon in Afghan central bank in foreign reserves. 

The senior Taliban leader defended his interim government as “already inclusive” and said they would not accept any deal under pressure, according to the text of the speech Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid shared with media. 

Lavrov had made it clear in the run-up to the Moscow meeting that the discussions would not cover the issue of granting recognition to the Taliban, stressing the need for the group to live up to “expectations” on human rights.  

Hanafi’s speech to the meeting in the Russian capital came a day after Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said he sees no situation where the Taliban would be allowed access to the county’s reserves. 

“We believe that it’s essential that we maintain our sanctions against the Taliban but at the same time find ways for legitimate humanitarian assistance to get to the Afghan people. That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Adeyemo told the Senate Banking Committee. 

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August after the United States and Western countries withdrew all their troops almost 20 years after the Islamist group was removed from power by the U.S.-led military invasion for harboring al-Qaida planners of terrorist attacks on America. 

The U.S. and other Western countries are working out how to engage with the Taliban without giving them the legitimacy they seek, while facilitating the flow of humanitarian aid to Afghans. 

Adeyemo said the Treasury was taking every step it could within its sanctions program to make clear to humanitarian groups that Washington wants to facilitate the flow of aid into Afghanistan. 

Chinese officials at Wednesday’s meeting renewed their resolve to work with the Taliban to help them deal with the economic and humanitarian challenges facing the country. 

Washington also was invited to the talks in Moscow, but U.S. officials cited logistical reasons for not attending them. 

The Taliban are under fire at home and internationally for reneging on some of their pledges to protect the rights of women and minorities. 

The hardline group is also being accused of persecuting members of the ousted Afghan government, charges Taliban officials reject as unfounded and politically motivated propaganda. 

Russia says its diplomatic offensive to garner support for Kabul stems from concerns continued instability would encourage terrorist groups to threaten security of Afghanistan’s neighbors and the wider region. 

Lavrov highlighted those fears while addressing Wednesday’s gathering in Moscow and urged the Taliban to deliver on their pledges of preventing terrorist groups from threatening Russia’s “friends and allies.”  

The Afghan branch of Islamist State, known as IS-Khorasan, has in recent weeks carried out dozens of bomb attacks, killing and injuring hundreds of people across Afghanistan, most of them civilians. The violence is of major concern to neighboring countries and is raising questions about the Taliban’s ability to counter the growing terror threat.

Reuters contributed some information for this report. 
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Soaring cases of COVID-19 and related deaths have prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to approve a Cabinet proposal for a week-long workplace shutdown. 

Russia reported a record high 1,028 coronavirus deaths Wednesday over the past 24 hours, the highest daily death toll since the pandemic began, boosting the country’s death toll to 226,353, by far the highest in Europe. 

Putin said in a televised meeting with government officials that employees would observe “non-working days” from October 30 to November 7, during which they would still receive salaries. He said the period, in which four of the seven days are state holidays, could start earlier or be extended in certain regions. 

Daily coronavirus deaths in Russia have been surging for weeks because of sluggish vaccination rates, casual attitudes toward precautionary measures and the government’s hesitancy to tighten restrictions. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the outlook is “very sad,” pointing out the vaccination rates in various regions are especially low. 

About 32% of Russia’s nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated, although it was the world’s first country in August 2020 to authorize a coronavirus vaccine and vaccines remain plentiful.

In July, Russia became one of the world’s first countries to launch a revaccination campaign, but the Kremlin said Wednesday Putin has yet to receive a booster shot. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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FBI agents raided homes Thursday in Washington and New York City linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin and to Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

The agents carried boxes out of a mansion in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods, with yellow “CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER” tape across the front yard, and towed away a vehicle. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the agency was conducting a court-authorized law enforcement activity at the home, which The Washington Post has previously reported was linked to the Russian oligarch.

The specific reason for sealing off and searching the Washington mansion was not immediately clear, and the FBI spokesperson did not provide details. 

A representative for Deripaska said the home, as well as the one in New York, belong to relatives of the oligarch. Reuters could not immediately determine Deripaska’s whereabouts. 

A spokesperson for the FBI’s New York field office confirmed “law enforcement activity” at the home in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood but declined further comment.

Deripaska, 53, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. Washington imposed sanctions on him and other influential Russians because of their ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin after alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Deripaska once employed Manafort, who was convicted in 2018 on tax evasion and bank fraud charges and was among the central figures scrutinized under investigations of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Moscow denies.

Russia used Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Trump win that election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter released last year. While still president last December, Trump pardoned Manafort.

The Senate report found Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. 

The report also alleged Manafort collaborated with Russians, including Deripaska and a Russian intelligence officer, before, during and after the election. 

Deripaska owns part of Rusal via his stake in the giant aluminum producer’s parent company En+ Group. 

Washington previously dropped sanctions against both companies but kept them on Deripaska. Rusal’s Moscow-listed shares extended losses after the report of the raid on the Washington home, falling 6%. 

The representative for Deripaska, who declined to give their name because of company policy, confirmed the raid on both homes and said they belong to Deripaska’s family rather than the executive himself.

The representative said the searches were carried out on the basis of two court warrants related to the U.S. sanctions but provided no further details. 

 
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says no third country has a veto on Ukraine’s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance. 

“Ukraine…has a right to decide its own future foreign policy, and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference,” Austin said during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, when asked about Russian objections to Ukraine’s entry into NATO.

Tensions have risen between Russia and the U.S.-led alliance, with Moscow announcing on Monday it is suspending its permanent mission to NATO in response to the alliance’s expulsion of eight Russians diplomats earlier this month.

Austin also called Russia an “obstacle” to any peaceful resolution to the war raging in Ukraine’s east.

“We again call on Russia to end its occupation of Crimea, to stop perpetuating the war in eastern Ukraine, to end its destabilizing activities in the Black Sea and along Ukraine’s borders,” Austin said.

“We will continue to do everything we can to support Ukraine’s efforts to develop the capability to defend itself,” he added.

Earlier this year, Russia massed the largest concentration of its troops near the Ukrainian border since it annexed Crimea in 2014. The troops pulled back after conducting exercises near Ukraine’s border.

Austin’s visit to Ukraine is his second stop in Europe this week. He visited Georgia on Monday. 

Bradley Bowman, a defense expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, called the stops in Georgia and Ukraine “an important and positive signal.”

“They’re important partners, and they’re partners that are literally, not metaphorically, literally on the front line against Russian aggression and invasion and continued occupation,” Bowman told VOA.

Russia still occupies about one-fifth of Georgia.

During his press conference Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Austin also urged Moscow to stop its “persistent cyberattacks and other malign activities” against the United States and its partners.

A White House official said last week Russia had taken “some steps” against ransomware groups operating from the country after President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to tackle the groups in June.

Russian hackers were accused of being behind last year’s massive breach of several U.S. federal agencies through exploiting SolarWinds software and a string of ransomware attacks on U.S. infrastructure and businesses, including the Colonial Pipeline attack in May.

On Wednesday, Austin plans to visit Romania ahead of his participation at a NATO defense ministerial in Brussels. 
…

Five hundred years after Hernán Cortés conquered Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, a Spanish mayor is demanding the return of the conquistador’s remains to his birthplace because of what he says are anti-Spanish sentiments in modern-day Mexico. 

Valentin Pozo Torres, mayor of Medellín, the village in western Spain’s Extremadura region where Cortés was born, sent a letter to the Mexican ambassador in Madrid expressing his “deep concern” about the “anti-Spanish drift” of the current Mexican government. 

Pozo, who represents the ruling Socialist Workers Party, said he feared that Cortés’ remains, which lie in Mexico, may be desecrated and demanded “his repatriation to the people who saw him born.”   

Cortés was born in Medellín in 1485 and died in 1547, six years after returning to Spain. His remains were re-buried in Mexico City at his own wish. They lie in a chapel in an ancient hospital – the oldest in the Americas – that he founded and that is not generally accessible to tourists. 

It is the latest chapter of an ongoing dispute between the two countries which revolves around their shared past. 

After the conquest, Spain governed Mexico not as a colony like those held by England or France but as a viceroyalty, or separate kingdom and an overseas territory known as New Spain. Its war for independence began in 1810 and was led by descendants of Spaniards, or criollos. 

Interpretations of history

In 2019, Mexico’s populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is known by the acronym AMLO, demanded that Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis should apologize for abuses committed during the Spanish conquest. 

Modern historians say that conquest was marked by violence, subjugation, cultural suppression, and plunder. 

Spain rejected this interpretation of history and instead said the conquest “cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations.”

Historical accounts, notably “The True History of the Conquest of New Spain” by Captain Bernal Díaz del Castillo, counter claims of cruelty but are also critical of Cortés campaign. Diaz del Castillo accompanied Cortés and notes that, with a force of 600 Spanish soldiers, defeated the Aztecs only by enlisting thousands of fighters among other indigenous people who were resentful of their Aztec oppressors and eager to cast them off. 

Among their tributaries, the Aztecs were notorious for their brutality, enslaving the populations they conquered and practicing human sacrifice, including of children, as part of their religion, according to historical accounts.  

Spain’s government has refuted Mexico’s demand for an apology for the conquest while praising the support Mexico gave Spanish leftist Republican exiles during and after the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.

“Mexico and Spain have a relationship with a long past, a very rich past which obviously on occasions we cannot agree on. But what we have is an extraordinary future,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in an interview with CNN in June. 

However, conservatives in Spain have been irritated by the Mexican president’s insistence that Madrid apologize for the past. 

Spain’s former conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, who is still an important player in current politics, ridiculed AMLO at a recent party conference.  

“Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Andres for the Aztec part, Manuel for the Mayan part, López is a mixture of Aztecs and Mayans and Obrador from Santander,” he said, referring to López Obrador’s Spanish roots that extend to his maternal grandfather. A biography based on accounts from relatives says José Obrador was born in northern Spain’s Cantabria region and immigrated to Mexico in 1917. 

López Obrador responded to Aznar’s remarks saying “It is an act of humility to offer forgiveness, it is an act that dignifies both the one who offers it and the one who receives it.” 

2021 marks both the 500th anniversary of the Conquest and the 200th anniversary of the end of Mexico’s 11-year war of independence.

As Mexico celebrated the anniversary of the consummation of its independence last month, Pope Francis sent a message to Mexican bishops saying this moment “necessarily includes a process of purifying memory, that is, recognizing the very painful errors committed in the past”. 

However, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the president of Madrid’s regional government and a rising star on the Spanish right, questioned the pope’s words, saying the conquest of Mexico brought the Spanish language and Catholicism that ended human sacrifice and enslavement. Mexico is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country with a population of 130 million compared to Spain’s 47 million. 

Complex relationship

Tomás Pérez Vejo, a professor at the National School for Anthropology and History in Mexico, said the relationship between Spain and Mexico is singularly important because of Mexican claims that it was a nation before the 16th century conquest. 

“The relationship with Mexico is without doubt the most important (among former colonies) because one line of thought is that is was a nation before the Spanish conquest. An alternative argument is that Mexico was born because of the Spanish Conquest. It is an identity civil war which has never been resolved.” he told VOA.

Unlike the British colonies where Native American populations were annihilated and their survivors pushed into reservations, Spanish colonists intermarried with indigenous Mexicans and multiplied. The result is that Mexico’s population today is overwhelmingly mestizo, of mixed Spanish and native North American ancestry and its culture is a hybrid of European and ancient Mexican traditions.

Despite political disputes, analysts say ties between Spain and Mexico run deep. 

Carlos Malamud, an expert in Latin America at the Real Elcano Institute think tank in Madrid, said despite the recent confrontational style of López Obrador, the relationship between Mexico and Spain remained strong. 

“Thousands of Spanish firms have invested in Mexico and there are constant intellectual exchanges between both countries. In the other direction, Mexican companies have invested in Spanish media companies,” he told VOA.

Spanish investment in Mexico over the past six years totaled $5.5 billion, according to the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.  

Mexico is Spain’s top trading partner in Latin America.

The relationship between the two Spanish-speaking nations prompts comparison with that of the US and its former colonial ruler, Britain. 

“The relationships are so different between both sets of countries.  The Atlantic friends have remained in a strong relationship despite the colonial past. In contrast, Spain and Mexico have an uneasy relationship,” Eduardo Garrigas, a former Spanish consul general in Los Angeles and writer, told VOA. 
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The European Commission is considering potential legal and financial responses after Poland’s constitutional court challenged the supremacy of EU law, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday. 

Speaking during a meeting of EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, von der Leyen said the Polish court’s ruling earlier this month was “a direct challenge to the unity of the EU.” 

“We cannot and we will not allow our common values to be put at risk,” she said. 

The judges for Poland’s highest court ruled that the national constitution had primacy over EU law. 

The increased tensions between Poland the EU fed speculation that Poland, which joined the bloc in 2004, could move toward withdrawing. 

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday that while his country will not be intimidated, it abides by EU treaties and expects a constructive dialogue on the issue. 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who died Monday at age 84, used his decades-long governmental and military career to defend traditional U.S. alliances with European nations, some analysts say.  

Family members say Powell died of COVID-19 complications. Doctors say he also suffered from multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that suppresses the body’s immune response, as well as Parkinson’s, a disease that, among other things, weakens the muscles. 

He first exerted influence over U.S. policy toward Europe as deputy national security advisor and then national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989, and later as the top U.S. military officer under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.  

“He was a key player in helping to shape U.S. policies in the 1980s and the early ’90s, during which we were able to put an end to the Cold War and erase some of the dividing lines across Europe,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Russia, in an interview with VOA’s Russian Service. Vershbow, who later served as NATO deputy secretary general, is an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.  

Some of the policy-making in which Powell was involved in the 1980s and early ’90s included U.S. planning for the defense of U.S. allies in western Europe from a potential land assault by the Soviet Union.  

Charles Ries is a former U.S. ambassador to Greece and an analyst with RAND Corporation, a California-based policy research organization. Ries told VOA in a separate interview that he recalled Powell reflecting upon the U.S. plans for a possible Soviet tank invasion of the Fulda Gap a lowland corridor between then-Soviet-occupied East Germany and U.S.-allied and occupied West Germany. 

“What the planning gave Powell was quite a deep appreciation for what the alliance with the Europeans and NATO was all about,” said Ries, who also served under Powell as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for European Affairs from 2000 to 2004. Powell was appointed Secretary of State by President George W. Bush in 2001 and served in the post until 2005. 

As the top U.S. diplomat, Powell saw U.S. relations with some European allies fray in 2003 when Bush planned and authorized a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq against the advice of leaders in Paris and Berlin. Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld further angered France and Germany in January 2003 by labeling them “old Europe” in contrast to what at the time were new eastern European NATO members from the former Soviet bloc, whom he said were on the side of the U.S.  

“Powell didn’t directly take on that quote in public, but he showed in the way that he engaged with, listened to, operated with [then-]French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin that he wasn’t going to let U.S.-European relations get ruined by this very important disagreement about what to do about [Iraq],” Ries said. 

Bush sought to heal the Iraq war dispute with some of his European allies at a U.S.-EU summit in Ireland in June 2004. “It was clear from the summit that the U.S. still had the respect and engagement of the Europeans, despite a very troubled first year of the war,” Ries said. “I think that is very much a tribute to Powell’s engagement and personal diplomacy,” he added.  

Vershbow, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2001-2005, said Powell faced another challenge as Secretary of State in trying to maintain the momentum of Russian overtures toward NATO in the years after the Soviet Union’s 1991 demise.  

Vladimir Putin, who began his first term as Russian president in May 2000, appeared to extend the overtures in June 2002 when he attended a Rome summit with Bush and other NATO leaders and agreed to the creation of a NATO-Russia Council as a forum for cooperation.  

But Vershbow said the positive signals from Putin’s first term were short-lived, as the Russian leader evolved into one of the U.S.’s chief international adversaries.  

“Secretary Powell, like I did as ambassador to Russia, shared the frustration that the trends in that period were heading in the wrong direction,” Vershbow said. Current U.S.-Russia tensions “reflect some of the missed opportunities which we were trying to seize back at the time when Secretary Powell was the U.S. chief diplomat,” he added.

Vershbow said Powell and the Bush administration “missed opportunities” to cooperate with Putin on missile defense, adapting the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, and preventing terrorism.  

This article originated in VOA’s Russian Service.  
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is warning Russia against distracting European leaders with new talks when it has yet to make good on previous commitments. 

“Russia, which currently occupies 20% of Georgia’s territory, should focus on honoring its 2008 cease-fire commitments before promoting any new discussion platforms,” Austin said Monday during a visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, to meet with the country’s prime minister and defense minister. 

“I’m here to reassure Georgia,” Austin added. “We have many shared interests, and of course, shared values, and we see a number of opportunities for security cooperation.” 

The visit to Georgia is the first stop of a European swing that will also take the U.S. defense secretary to Ukraine and Romania. 

Austin will also travel to Belgium to participate in a NATO defense ministers meeting. 

Russia recently floated the idea of a so-called 3+3 format for talks to resolve lingering issues with Georgia. The format would include Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Iran and Turkey. 

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the idea already has the support of Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey. 

Georgia has been steadily expanding ties with the U.S. and other Western countries, and like Ukraine, it has been seeking to join NATO. 

 
…

Chinese President Xi Jinping aims to bolster relations in Europe, a traditional stronghold of support for the United States, as a buffer against shaky Sino-U.S. ties, analysts believe.

Xi spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last Wednesday and with European Council President Charles Michel on Friday. The council is a policymaking body for the European Union, an economic bloc of 27 nations including Europe’s largest countries.

China hopes to build trade and investment ties with individual European countries as it seeks partnerships that can counter a half decade of acrimony with its superpower rival the United States, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.

Western Europe has been staunchly U.S.-leaning since World War II, though differences do surface — for example, France’s anger over a U.S.-UK-Australia military technology sharing deal (AUKUS) of nuclear-powered submarines reached last month.

“We’re seeing the European Union and Germany converge with the U.S., and that convergence is something that China would like to stop, as soon as possible,” Nagy said.

Convergence could isolate China in the developed world, complicating its global political and economic goals.

Series of sore spots in China-U.S., China-EU relations

Beijing and Washington have disagreed strongly since 2018 on the use of internet technology, the rules of international trade and China’s expansion in Asia including the South China Sea. Washington is especially watching to see whether China attacks Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Chinese leaders call their own.

EU-China relations have deteriorated as well for the past year over Beijing’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority and support for Taiwan’s autonomy among leaders in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. 

On the economic front, movement and discussion toward ratification of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) has been “justifiably been frozen” in May because of China imposing sanctions “on several European individuals and entities,” according to the European Parliament.

France, Germany and the UK further irked China this year by sending military vessels into the South China Sea where they joined Washington in keeping an eye on Beijing’s movements. Four Southeast Asian states and Taiwan call parts of the resource-rich sea their own, but China claims 90% of it.

Multiple countries in Europe now “recoil at the PRC’s illiberal policies at home and overreach abroad”, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York.

Up trend in China’s ties with individual European countries

While China-EU relations have been tense, China is still the EU’s No. 1 trading partner and the source of billions of dollars per year in direct investment, particularly in energy. Its relations vary from one member country to the next, with east-central European peers such as Hungary and Serbia eager to engage while Western European peers more skeptical – though seldom as harshly as the United States.

“Xi Jinping has presumably, and rightly, long seen the European Union as an easy mark and would doubtless be pursuing deeper relations there, whatever the state of Beijing’s ties with Washington,” King said. Beyond politics, he said, “the Communist Party of China surely craves access to European technology, markets, universities and think tanks.

In his video meeting with Merkel, head of Europe’s largest economy, Xi said both sides support trade and “believe that the common interests of China and the EU far outweigh contradictions and differences”, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. 

Beijing has been locked in a trade dispute with the United States since 2018, affecting $550 billion in two-way trade with an especially hard impact on Chinese exports.

China and the EU, “as two important forces in the world, have a responsibility to strengthen cooperation and work together to deal with global problems in the face of increasing global challenges and rising instability and uncertainty,” Xi said.

Xi said to the European Council President, it was “not surprising that competition and differences have emerged” between China and the EU, according to China’s CGTN news website. He suggested that the two sides work together more in technology and that China extend its multi-trillion-dollar, pan-Eurasia Belt and Road infrastructure building initiative.

Chinese leaders could attract European countries with open access to the Chinese market, where middle-class consumers still buy luxury brands from France and Italy, Nagy said. Trade “inducements” would appeal to the EU as it recovers economically from COVID-19, he said.

European nations want more investment in energy and clean technology, while both sides are looking for intellectual property protections, said James Berkeley, managing director of the advisory firm Ellice Consulting in London.

His 8-year-old consultancy does most of its business today with a U.S. focus, but it anticipates new interest in China if Sino-UK ties improve, Berkeley said. Chinese automotive companies, for example, may be able to refine intellectual property in Europe and reapply those rights in their home market, Berkeley said.

“There are Chinese investors that have an international perspective and they’re looking to deploy capital into businesses internationally in which they can build out the intellectual property and then reverse that intellectual property,” he said.

Brisker trade and investment ties won’t sway pro-U.S. European nations toward China politically, experts say. However, China may be able to improve ties with central and Eastern European countries and “split” the EU, Nagy said.

He likened that approach to Southeast Asia. Chinese aid on the Asian subcontinent has won the loyalty of Cambodia and Laos but missed that mark in Vietnam and the Philippines, where citizens have long distrusted China.
…

Witnesses, security camera footage and forensic evidence all point to two men charged in the murder of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, prosecutors said Monday as the trial of the suspects opened in Amsterdam.

De Vries, 64, was gunned down in July in the Dutch capital in a brazen attack that sent shockwaves through the Netherlands.

The suspected gunman is a 21-year-old Dutch man, identified under Dutch privacy rules only as Delano G. A 35-year-old Polish man, Kamiel E., is accused of being the getaway driver.

They both were arrested shortly after De Vries was shot July 6 on an Amsterdam street after making one of his regular appearances on a Dutch television show. He died nine days later.

Prosecutors said police found two weapons in the getaway car when the men were detained on a highway about 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside Amsterdam, a Heckler and Koch machine pistol and, in a Louis Vuitton bag, a blank-firing pistol that had been modified to take 9-millimeter rounds.

Prosecutors said forensic tests showed that a bullet found in De Vries’ head was likely fired by the modified gun.

Both suspects were present in court as the preliminary hearing got underway, along with relatives of De Vries.

Delano G. declined to make a statement in court and has refused to speak to police and prosecutors. Kamiel E., speaking in Polish with an interpreter translating his comments into Dutch, denied involvement in the shooting.

“Your honor, I didn’t kill anybody, I know nothing about the murder, I did not see a weapon,” he said.

The shooting sparked an  outpouring of grief — thousands lined up outside an Amsterdam theater to pay their last respects days after De Vries’ death — and condemnation in the Netherlands.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the shooting an “attack on a courageous journalist and also an attack on the free journalism that is so essential for our democracy, our constitutional state, our society.”

De Vries was the Netherlands’ most famous crime journalist, reporting on and writing a bestselling book about the 1983 kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken and campaigning tirelessly to resolve cold cases and clear the names of wrongfully convicted people.

De Vries recently had been an adviser and confidant for a witness in the trial of the alleged leader and other members of a crime gang that police described as an “oiled killing machine.” A lawyer representing the witness and the witness’ brother also have been murdered.

The suspected gangland leader, Ridouan Taghi, was extradited to the Netherlands from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2019. He remains jailed while standing trial along with 16 other suspects.

Prosecutors said that their investigations into who ordered De Vries’ murder is continuing.
…

The man held for the fatal stabbing last week of a British lawmaker had been referred to the British government’s anti-extremism program, called Prevent, because of his radical Islamist views, but the country’s security services, including MI5 – Britain’s domestic intelligence agency – had not deemed him a serious threat requiring monitoring, confirmed British officials. 
 
Police have not released the name of the suspect, but local media have identified him as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British national of Somali descent. Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that the suspect’s father, Harbi Ali Kullane, a former adviser to Somalia’s prime minister, said British counter-terrorism police had visited him at his home in north London. 
 
“I’m feeling very traumatized. It’s not something that I expected or even dreamed of,” the suspect’s father told the newspaper following the murder Friday of Conservative MP David Amess. 
 
The lawmaker was stabbed multiple times while meeting with constituents at a church hall an hour’s drive east of London. The Metropolitan Police have confirmed early investigations of the slaying suggest “a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism,” but have so far refrained from going into any details publicly. 
 
Ali was born in London. Many members of his wider family live in Somalia, where his aunt is head of a security think tank in Mogadishu. Ali’s uncle is Somalia’s ambassador to China. 
 
Britain’s security and counter-terror agencies have warned cabinet ministers of a possible wave of future attacks by what they term “bedroom radicals,” lone wolf militants radicalized online during pandemic lockdowns. Investigators are trying to establish whether Ali fits that profile and whether his radicalization intensified during the lockdown. 
 
They have so far found no evidence that he traveled overseas to train, a British official told VOA. The Sun newspaper quoted security sources as saying that Ali became increasingly radicalized after watching militant videos on YouTube. 

Amess eulogized 
 
The 69-year-old Amess is the second British MP to have been murdered in the past five years, and his death has prompted nationwide horror and outrage. Politicians across political divides praised him as a hard-working “gentleman MP,” one who eschewed a ministerial career in favor of focusing on the needs of his constituents. An independent-minded Conservative, he was widely known as a campaigner for animal welfare. 
 
Dozens of mourners attended a special church service Sunday in memory of the MP, one of the country’s longest serving lawmakers, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983. Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a rare joint appearance with Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s main opposition party, at the scene of the attack, where both laid flowers. 
 
Johnson described Amess, a father of five and a devout Catholic, as a “fine parliamentarian and a much-moved colleague and friend.” 
 
Amess’s family said in a statement released Sunday: “Our hearts are shattered.” They added, “We are trying to understand why this awful thing has occurred. Nobody should die in that way. Please let some good come from this tragedy. We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man.” 
 
Ali was arrested inside the church hall as paramedics battled to save the life of the MP. He used his phone immediately after the attack, but it is unclear whether he contacted anyone or was filming the scene of the crime. Police sources say he has been cooperating with investigators. He is being held under the Terrorism Act. 

Counter-terror efforts questioned 
 
Security officials told VOA under the condition of anonymity that the attack had been planned over several weeks and Amess’s suspected attacker made an appointment to see the MP, saying he was moving into the area from London. “At the moment there is not a specific reason why Amess was targeted — Ali was geared to attack any lawmaker, it was just he managed to get to Amess first,” said a security official. 
 
The referral by a teacher five years ago of Amess’ alleged killer to the Prevent program has prompted questions over the effectiveness of the de-radicalization scheme, which has been the subject of an ongoing review since January. A former counter-terror commander, Richard Walton, called on the government to “invest more” in the Prevent scheme so it is better equipped to “detect the signs and symptoms of radicalized individuals.” 
 
The security services have raised their fears about a potential wave of attacks by so-called bedroom radicals for weeks. In September the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, publicly cautioned that the pandemic had left many more people at risk of radicalization because militants had exploited the social isolation of lockdowns to recruit and proselytize. 
 
As police investigators question Ali and sift through evidence, the country’s politicians are debating about how to tighten security. Amess’s murder has underlined the potential danger Britain’s lawmakers face. Friday’s stabbing attack by a lone assailant bore striking similarities to the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016. Cox was about to hold meetings with constituents when she was shot and stabbed by a subsequently convicted far right militant.   
 
In 2010 Labour MP Stephen Timms was injured in a stabbing attack by an Islamist when he was holding a regular meeting with constituents. 
 
Some British lawmakers are likely to be offered police protection when meeting voters, Home Secretary Priti Patel acknowledged during several Sunday television appearances. Security officials are drawing up plans for a new minimum package of safety measures all police forces must offer lawmakers when they are away from the House of Commons. 
 
Not all MPs are happy with the idea of having police present during their meetings with local voters and fear it might undermine a tradition they hold dear of constituents having easy access to them. 
 
Britain’s Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, said Monday that online hate towards MPs is “out of control.” “The elephant in the room in all this is the online hate that we all get,” he told broadcaster Sky News. 
 
Raab echoed the fear of security services that the pandemic and lockdowns had not helped the situation. “There is certainly an element of more people who are at-risk and vulnerable because they’ve been spending more time online,” he added. 
…

Facebook says it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform.

The company said in a blog post Sunday that those high-skilled workers will help build “the metaverse,” a futuristic notion for connecting people online that encompasses augmented and virtual reality.

Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet as they also contend with other matters such as antitrust crackdowns, the testimony of a whistleblowing former employee and concerns about how the company handles vaccine-related and political misinformation on its platform.

In a separate blog post Sunday, the company defended its approach to combating hate speech, in response to a Wall Street Journal article that examined the company’s inability to detect and remove hateful and excessively violent posts.
…

A two-day storm in Athens last week killed a 70-year-old farmer, whose car was washed away as he was rushing to tend to his herd of sheep. Dozens of other people, including tourists, were rescued from the floodwaters that destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.

Roads turned into rivers, homes and apartment blocks collapsed like decks of cards and dozens of children at a school in Athens were ordered to stand on their desks to be saved as floodwaters surged into their classrooms like a tsunami.

The storm is the latest environmental calamity to hit Greece after devastating fires razed thousands of hectares of forest just two months ago, threatening even the nation’s capital.

And yet it is Athens, once more, Europe’s oldest metropolis and its 5 million residents who find themselves hardest hit, reeling again – because of long-standing flaws in infrastructure and urban planning that authorities have failed to remedy as the ancient city, they say, has pushed its way aggressively into modernity.

Speaking to a local broadcaster, Yiorgos Patoulis , the governor of the greater region of Athens acknowledged the deficiencies but said he could not be held accountable for decades of problems related to the capital’s urban planning.

The anger and despair are so intense this time around that an Athens prosecutor has singled out a near-deadly incident, ordering an urgent investigation, hoping to spark action from authorities.

The case involves dozens of commuters, including children who were traveling in a bus. The vehicle was immobilized by water that engulfed an underpass on a main motorway, nearly submerging the vehicle and its passengers not far from the center of Athens.

Critics have long blamed what they describe as the capital’s anarchic planning and years of infrastructure failings that have seen streams, that once snaked down the hills of this ancient capital and its surrounding plains, blocked and cemented … turned into motorways, streets or even parking lots, instead.

Without the creation of proper drainage, the lightest downpour here leads to flooding.

After devastating fires in August, razed forests that ringed the capital were not cleared, pushing trunks and tons of debris into already clogged drains across Athens.  

“I’ve never seen these drains cleared by anyone for as long as I know,” a local woman told a television network. “Look at them,” she said, standing just centimeters away from where the bus became stuck. She said the drains are clogged with sticks, stones, garbage and tons of masks.

Similar complaints about a lack of infrastructure and state response have poured in from all parts of the country.

Dimitris Stanitsas, the mayor of Ithaki, said his island would have been swallowed by floodwaters had local crews not moved to shatter pavements and roadblocks to allow waters gushing through roads and side streets, into the sea.   

The state has to finally take interest and undertake vital infrastructure projects to better shield its people and the country as a whole, he said.

State spending was cut dramatically during a 10-year recession, leaving key development works either idle or incomplete. Among them, a state-of-the arts drainage system, close to wear the bus and its passengers nearly drowned.

The sweeping destruction caused by the storm has sparked fierce debate with a blame game played out among state, local authorities and construction companies.

But with the fallout of climate change already obvious, experts like Efthymios Lekkas, a professor specializing in natural disasters, say the blame game is diverting attention from what has to happen; rapid state reaction.

“It’s no longer about climate change,” Lekkas said. “We are living a climate crisis, and phenomena like these are going to be so much more common. If Greece and its capital are to be shielded, then they have to be fitted with proper infrastructure.”

Government officials contacted by VOA were not available for comment.
…

A Russian actor and a film director making the first move film in space returned to Earth on Sunday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz MS-18 space capsule carrying Russian ISS crew member Oleg Novitskiy, Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko landed in a remote area outside the western Kazakhstan at 07:35 a.m. (0435 GMT), the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. 

The crew had dedocked from the ISS three hours earlier.

Russian state TV footage showed the reentry capsule descending under its parachute above the vast Kazakh steppe, followed by ground personnel assisting the smiling crew as they emerged from the capsule.

However, Peresild, who is best known for her role in the 2015 film “Battle for Sevastopol,” said she had been sorry to leave the ISS.

“I’m in a bit of a sad mood today,” the 37-year-old actor told Russian Channel One after the landing.

“That’s because it had seemed that 12 days was such a long period of time, but when it was all over, I didn’t want to bid farewell,” she said.

Last week 90-year-old U.S. actor William Shatner – Captain James Kirk of “Star Trek” fame – became the oldest person in space aboard a rocketship flown by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin.

Peresild and Shipenko have been sent to Russian Star City, the home of Russia’s space program on the outskirts of Moscow for their post-flight recovery which will take about a week, Roscosmos said.
…