Four months ago, Germany’s Green Party was riding high in the opinion polls and at one point even overtook Angela Merkel’s storied Christian Democrats and its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union, to briefly become the country’s most popular party in Germany.  
 
As the country headed into the campaign for September 26th federal elections there was much talk that 40-year-old party leader Annalena Baerbock, a fresh face, could become Europe’s first Green head-of-government. Germany’s media described her as the “superior candidate” to succeed longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s retiring from politics.  
 Stern magazine put her on the cover and announced, “At Last, Something Different.”
 
But now, two weeks away from voting, and Baerbock seems unlikely to pull off the political equivalent of what British sports-star Emma Raducanu managed this week in winning the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The Greens have slipped to third place according to pollsters, losing around 10 percent since highs in April and May.
 Popularity waningBaerbock’s star has waned with voters worrying how climate-action policies will impact their livelihoods and lifestyles, dashing the party’s hopes of repeating its success in May when it surged past the Social Democrats to capture second place in European parliamentary elections.
 
The precipitous slump is partly due to the impact of an old political tactic employed by their establishment opponents — labeling the Greens as nagging, didactic and keen to ban things, say pollsters. Baerbock has argued on the campaign trail that there should be a super-ministry with environmental veto powers over other Cabinet departments.  Armin Laschet, chairman of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the party’s top candidate for the federal election, addresses the media during a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 13, 2021.Earlier in the campaign, Christian Democrat leader Armin Laschet was quick to seize on the Greens call for a hike in gas prices, accusing them of wanting to punish working-class motorists and of being too ready to ignore the needs of less-well-off Germans living in rural areas and small towns where public transport is less available. A Green plan to ban short-haul flights also appeared to go down badly with voters and the fall in their support started to be seen in the opinion polling.
 
On Sunday during a three-way televised debate with Laschet and the leader of the Social Democrats, Olaf Scholz, currently Germany’s finance minister, Baerbock was unable to revive her flagging campaign. She said Germany faced a stark choice between a new start or getting bogged down in “more of the same.”  
 
But snap polling after the debate by broadcaster ARD showed that 41% of those asked thought Scholz was the most compelling performer, compared to 27% for Laschet and 25% for Baerbock.
 
Part of the Green dip can be blamed on Baerbock, say analysts. While widely seen as tough, talented and highly ambitious, she has come under fire after the discovery of several exaggerations on her official resumé, lapses that undermined her party’s commitment to transparency and integrity.  And she faced calls to quit over plagiarism claims after it emerged, she copied dozens of passages from other works for a book she published this year.
 
Baerbock has also had to acknowledge during the campaign to break parliamentary rules by failing to declare thousands of euros she received from her party in addition to her salary as a federal lawmaker. The lapses have allowed critics to cast doubt on whether the 40-year-old is ready for the highest office after serving just eight years as a federal lawmaker.
 
“The number of unforced errors on the part of Baerbock, from embellishing her resumé to publishing an ill-conceived book, has sown doubts about her suitability. It has become obvious that the Green candidate and those around her may not yet have reached the level of professionalism required to aim at the highest office,” according to Henning Hoff, editor of the Internationale Politik Quarterly, which is published by the German Council on Foreign Relations.Olaf Scholz Another key factor has been the surprising campaigning success of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats under the leadership of the candidate for the chancellorship, Olaf Scholz. The story so far of this year’s German election campaign has been the unexpected rise in the fortunes of the Social Democrats. “
 
With great strategic foresight and remarkable focus, the Social Democrats’ candidate Olaf Scholz is now leading the race to replace Angela Merkel,” according to Hoff.  
 
In April, the SPD was only attracting around 13% support in opinion polls. An Insa poll Monday put the SPD on 26% ahead of Laschet, whose CDU is on 20%. “With the German election campaign entering its final stretch, Scholz’ popularity — always much greater than Baerbock’s and Laschet’s — has finally morphed into support for his party,” says Hoff. “With only two more weeks to go, there is now much to suggest that Germany’s next government will be led by Olaf Scholz,” he adds.
 
Merkel announced in October 2018 that she would be stepping down as chancellor in 2021. She has held the office since 2005. Part of the reason for Scholz’s rise has been success in presenting himself as a safe pair of hands and a natural successor to Merkel, say pollsters. His climate-policy proposals are more cautious — suggesting Germans may not be ready to be as green as the Greens.
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Firefighting crews in southern Spain are looking at the sky for much-needed rainfall expected on Monday and that they hope can help extinguish a major wildfire that has ravaged 7,700 hectares in five days and displaced around 2,600 people from their homes.     Authorities are describing the blaze in Sierra Bermeja, a mountain range in the Malaga province, as a sixth-generation fire of the extreme kind brought by the shifting climate on the planet. The “mega fires” are catastrophic events that kill, blacken large areas and are difficult to stop.     In Spain, that is paired with an increasing dynamic of rural areas losing population, leading to poorer management of forests and accumulation of burnable material.     “We are facing the most complex fire known by the forestry extinction services in recent years,’ Juan Sanchez, director of the southern Andalusia region’s anti-fire service, told reporters late Sunday.     “We have been talking a lot about the consequences of the abandonment of the rural environment and climate change,” Sanchez added. “We are seeing them today.”     The affected area has doubled since Saturday, when authorities said that the flames were contained within a perimeter of around 40 kilometers. An ember cloud led to a new fire hot spot soon after, causing a new wildfire that eventually joined the previous blaze, experts said Sunday. By Monday morning, the perimeter had reached 85 kilometers.     Spain’s weather agency, AEMET, had forecasted rain in the area for later Monday, but it was unclear if the rainfall would be sufficient to quell the flames.     About 500 firefighters were working in shifts on the ground, assisted by 50 water-dropping airplanes and helicopters from the air. They were joined on Sunday by 260 members of a military emergency unit. A 44-year-old firefighter died Thursday while trying to extinguish the blaze.     Around 2,600 residents have been relocated in total. Most of those evacuated from parts of the resort town of Estepona, had been able to return home by Monday, but 1,700 people remained displaced from six villages and hosted in other towns, including in a pavilion in the city of Ronda.     Climate scientists say there is little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms.     In Spain, official data showed that the country had experienced fewer fires so far this year than the average during the past decade, but the number of big forest fires — those affecting more than 500 hectares — was 19 in the first eight months of 2021 compared to 14 on average for the same period since 2011.      That has also led to a greater bush and forest area burned: 75,000 hectares as of Sept. 5, compared to an average of 71,000 hectares on average in the previous years, data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition showed. 
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Poland’s top political leaders on Sunday attended the beatification of two revered figures of the Catholic Church — a cardinal who led the Polish church’s resistance to communism and a blind nun who devoted her life to helping others who couldn’t see.Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Mother Elzbieta Roza Czacka took a step toward sainthood at a time of declining church attendance and as some Poles have left the church over sex abuse scandals and the church’s coziness with the current right-wing government.In a time of growing secularization and societal divisions, the celebration was a reminder of the moral authority and the unifying power the church once held over Poland.The Mass was led by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.  It took place in the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw, attended by President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and many faithful.Wyszynski was Poland’s primate, or top church leader, from 1948 until his death in 1981. He was under house arrest in the 1950s for his refusal to bend to the communist regime and was considered by some to be the true leader of the nation. His long resistance to communism is credited as a factor that led to the election of a Polish pope, John Paul II, and ultimately the toppling of Poland’s communist system in 1989.Czacka, born in 1876 to an aristocratic family, went blind as a young woman and devoted the rest of her life to helping others. The Franciscan nun helped develop a Polish version of Braille and opened a center for the blind near Warsaw.Pope Francis paid tribute to them both during a visit to Budapest on Sunday, recalling how Wyszynski was arrested and imprisoned and how Czacka devoted her whole life to helping the blind.”May the example of these new Blesseds encourage us to transform darkness into light with the power of love,” he said.Wyszynski led the church through nearly three turbulent decades of often bitter conflict with the communist authorities, followed later by a form of partnership with the secular regime. Late in his life, Wyszynski had become accepted by the authorities as an important force in national life, and members of the regime attended his funeral.During the difficult years of the 1950s, when Poland’s avowedly atheistic government sought to silence the church, the tall, slender Wyszynski thundered from his pulpit that “Christ has the right to be announced, and we have the right to announce him.”Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz recalled Wyszynski as a man who saved the Polish church under communism.Wyszynski is often called the Primate of the Millennium in recognition of his achievement of holding a celebration of Poland’s millennium of Christianity in 1966.Sunday’s ceremony comes after the Holy See has punished around 10 Polish bishops and archbishops over reported cover-ups of sexual abuse of minors by priests under their authority.The revelations of clerical abuse and coverups have been pushing some Poles away from the church and leading some to take their children out of religion classes in schools.Some Poles are also angry about the church’s closeness with the right-wing government and a new restriction on abortion. The ruling, which went into effect earlier this year, denies women the right to abort fetuses with congenital defects.
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North Sea oil and gas have helped make Norway one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But as Norwegians head to the polls on Monday, fears about climate change have put the future of the industry at the top of the campaign agenda.The ruling Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Erna Solberg, and the opposition Labor Party, which is leading in opinion polls, both advocate for a gradual move away from the fossil fuels that continue to underpin the economy.But the larger parties rarely rule alone in Norway; smaller players are usually required to build a majority coalition, and they can have an outsize influence on the government agenda. Some are demanding a more radical severing with the country’s dominant industry and income stream.”Our demand is to stop looking for oil and gas, and stop handing out new permits to companies,” says Lars Haltbrekken, climate and energy spokesman for the Socialist Left party — a likely coalition partner for Labor. He claims that after eight years in charge the government is protecting a status quo at a time when the country is thirsty for a post-oil future.A report in August from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting global floods and fires created a wave in Norway that has crested throughout this election campaign.It is also forcing Norwegians to wrestle with a paradox at the heart of their society.With their hydro-powered energy grid and electric cars, they are among the world’s most enthusiastic consumers of green power, but decades of exporting oil and gas means this nation of 5.3 million enjoys a generous welfare buffer and sits on the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.Tina Bru, the oil and energy minister, says it’s unthinkable that the country should force an end to the country’s biggest industry, which is responsible for more than 40% of exports and directly employs more than 5% of the workforce.”My question is always: What happens after you stop? What else are you going to do to make sure the world reaches its climate goals? It might affect our own climate budget, but it’s not going to make a difference globally,” she says.She agrees with a report highlighted by the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, an industry group, that says an end to Norwegian production would have a net negative effect on global emissions. Demand would stay the same, and cleaner Norwegian production would be replaced by other countries with higher emissions, she says. She prefers a longer-term approach that focuses on demand.”It is kind of disappointing in this campaign where we see the only way to discuss policy and have credibility on your will to cut emissions is to stop producing oil and gas. It is such a more nuanced issue involving other things like agriculture and transport.”About 70% of all new cars sold in Norway are electric, with consumers continuing to benefit from government subsidies, and the government has signaled that environment taxes will rise. Earlier this month, it also proposed a tweak to the existing tax regime, where some explorers will have to shoulder more of the risk of searching for oil.Labor supports the approach and admits that it charts a similar future for the industry. But it has promised a more interventionist industrial policy that will funnel support to new green industries, like wind power, “blue hydrogen” that uses natural gas to produce an alternative fuel, and carbon capture and storage, which seeks to bury carbon dioxide under the ocean.However, any post-election horse trading is likely to be fraught for Labor. The Socialist Left says it won’t offer support lightly, and the other probable partner, the Center Party, is also demanding a more aggressive approach to the energy shift.”Right now our plan is to run together with our two old friends from these parties,” says Espen Barth Eide, Labor’s Energy spokesman. “We still think this works. But if their opening position is to end exploration, that is not going to happen. … We will try to have a mature dialogue about the next phase of the oil industry.”Most of the country’s oil and gas still comes from mature areas in the North Sea, but most of the untapped reserves are in the Barents Sea, above the Arctic Circle — a red line for environmentalists. Eide says a possible compromise might be found by focusing on where oil exploration can be carried out in the future.  However, Haltbrekken, a former chairman of Norway’s Friends of the Earth, a climate charity, says the new government needs to be more urgent.  “The IPCC report made a huge impression on the population,” he said. “But there is one thing I fear more than what was in the report, and that is that apathy and hopelessness will take over. People could think this is such a huge problem that we cannot do anything. But we can. We can do a lot to solve it. It just has to start now.”Election forecasts will be released when voting closes at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday. The final official tally for the 169-member parliament usually comes at some point overnight, but experts believe the results could come quicker this year with a record number of people having already made their choice in advance voting. More than 78% of eligible people in this nation of 5.3 million voted in the last national election.
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Two French politicians kicked off their presidential campaigns Sunday, seeking to become France’s first female leader in next year’s spring election.The far-right National Rally party’s Marine Le Pen and Paris’ Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, both launched their presidential platforms in widely expected moves.  They join a burgeoning list of challengers to centrist President Emmanuel Macron. This includes battles among multiple potential candidates on the right — including another female politician, Valerie Pecresse — and among the Greens.Hidalgo, 62, mayor of the French capital since 2014, is the favorite to win the Socialist Party nomination. She launched her candidacy in the northwestern city of Rouen.  “I want all children in France to have the same opportunities I had,” she said, invoking her roots. Hidalgo is the daughter of Spanish immigrants who fled their country in search of freedom amid dictator Francisco Franco’s rule.Le Pen, the 53-year-old leader of France’s far-right party, started her campaign in the southern city of Frejus with a pledge to defend French liberty. In keeping with a hard-right message that critics say has vilified Muslim communities, Le Pen promised to be tough on “parts of France that have been Talibanized.” Although she launched her candidacy earlier this year, on Sunday she made 26-year-old Jordan Bardella the acting head of the party as her campaign shifts into full gear.Le Pen is also remaking her image for this election. Gone is the dark blue wardrobe that has been her trademark. She now will be donning light blue for the campaign, “to show our vision, less partisan, (reaching) higher,” Le Pen’s special councilor Philippe Olivier was quoted as saying by Le Figaro, the conservative daily.  Macron, 43, has not yet announced his reelection bid but is expected to do so. Launching a candidacy in France is a necessary formality for each presidential election.  The vote is expected to boil down to a duel between Le Pen and Macron, as it was during France’s last presidential election in 2017.
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The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it has recorded 224.3 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.6 million global deaths.  The center also said 5.7 billion vaccines have been administered.    Britain is expected to announce this week its plans for inoculating 12- to 15-year-old youngsters in the battle against the coronavirus.   The vaccine campaign will likely start later this month.   More than 50% of Japan’s population has received COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Japanese government.  Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said in a television interview Sunday that the inoculation rate is expected to reach 60% by the end of September.  Myanmar is fighting a third COVID-19 wave at a time of increasing political tensions.FILE – A man receives a COVID vaccine at a vaccination site, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Jan. 29, 2021, just days before a military coup threw the country into turmoil.According to World Health Organization data, more than 400,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in Myanmar, with more than 16,000 dead.  Public health officials, however, say they believe the figures are widely undercounted.    The Times of India reported that the northeastern state of Mizoram’s COVID-19 tally reached 70,000, after 1,089 new cases were recorded Sunday, including 245 children.  Johns Hopkins has recorded 33.2 million COVID-19 cases in India and more than 442,000 deaths.  Health officials say they believe that India’s COVID-19 numbers are likely undercounted.   India is second only to the United States in COVID infections.  The U.S. has a COVID-19 tally of 41 million infections and nearly 660,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. COVID-sniffing dogs at Miami AirportTwo COVID-sniffing dogs, a Belgium Malinois and a Dutch shepherd, are smelling the face coverings of employees at Miami International Airport to detect the presence of the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease.   Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade county, said in a statement about the pilot program that, “This pandemic has pushed us to innovate to stop the spread.”  Miami International Airport said the dogs, which have been deployed to an employee security checkpoint, were trained at Florida International University, where they “achieved accuracy rates from 96 to 99% for detecting COVID-19 in published peer-reviewed, double-blind trials.”  If the dogs identify someone as carrying the coronavirus odor, that person is then directed to a rapid COVID test.  Miami International said it is the first U.S. airport to utilize COVID-sniffing dogs.  
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The human rights records of more than 40 countries will come under scrutiny by the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council during its upcoming four-week session.  
The session promises to be extremely busy.  Nearly 90 reports on a wide range of thematic issues will be presented.  They include torture, enforced disappearances, the right to development, slavery, the rights of people of African descent and racism. As in previous years, the council’s laser-lens focus on the way governments treat their people is expected to garner a lot of attention.  Reported abuses, some amounting to crimes against humanity, will be examined in countries such as Myanmar, Belarus, Syria, Eritrea, Burundi, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet will present an oral update on the situation in Afghanistan Monday as a follow-up to the council’s August 24 special session on that country. The European Union, Mexico and Britain along with human rights activists have criticized the resolution that was adopted for failing to establish a robust independent mechanism to monitor violations by the Taliban. Council President Fiji Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan says discussion on Afghanistan has not ended with the special session. “And, really, it is a matter for states to decide whether they want to take the outcome of the special session further and achieve another result,” she said. “But I do want to note that the Security Council on the 30th of August adopted a resolution on safe passage.  It addressed human rights concerns particularly as it relates to women and children.”   Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth says he is dismayed at the council’s reluctance to take on powerful countries such as Russia and China.  He says he fears the Kremlin will not be held to account for its unprecedented crackdown on opposition parties in advance of this month’s parliamentary elections. “Ideally, we would like to have a resolution.  At minimum, there should be a joint statement.  But, again, this is a situation that just because a government is relatively powerful, should not mean that it escapes scrutiny.  And this is again a bit of a test of the council’s credibility,”  he said.Roth says the same dynamics are playing out regarding China’s abusive treatment of more than a million Uyghurs in internment camps in Xinjiang province. “China has always escaped formal scrutiny by the council.  There has never been a resolution on China.  It is time to end that, given the severity and the atrocities, the crimes against humanity being committed in Xinjiang,”  he said.China maintains the Uyghurs are being held in reeducation camps and that the vocational training they are receiving is necessary to counter terrorism and alleviate poverty.   Roth is calling on Bachelet to present a report describing the inhumane conditions under which the Uyghurs are being incarcerated and to call for the Chinese government to be held accountable. 
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Pope Francis arrived in Hungary early Sunday at the start of his first big international outing since undergoing intestinal surgery in July. He will celebrate a Mass and meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose right-wing, anti-immigrant policies clash with Francis’ call for countries to welcome refugees.Francis’ arrival at Budapest airport opened his four-day trip primarily to Slovakia with a seven-hour stop Sunday in the Hungarian capital. He is passing through Budapest to celebrate the closing Mass of an international conference on the Eucharist, though he will also meet with Hungarian religious figures and Hungary’s president and prime minister.Organizers expect as many as 75,000 people at the Mass in Heroes’ Square, which is going ahead with few coronavirus restrictions even as Hungary, like the rest of Europe, is battling infections fueled by the highly contagious delta variant.Despite pleas from the Hungarian Chamber of Doctors, congress organizers decided not to require COVID-19 vaccinations, tests, masks or social distancing for attendance. Organizers, however, said they had ordered 30,000 masks to distribute as well as hand sanitizer, and urged all attending to be prudent.During the flight from Rome, Francis seemed in good form and stayed so long greeting journalists at the back of the plane that an aide had to tell him to get back to his seat because it was time to land.Francis said he was happy to be resuming foreign trips again after the coronavirus lull and then his own recovery this summer from surgery to remove a 33-centimeter section of his colon. “Bad weeds never die,” he quipped about his recovery, quoting an Argentine dictum.The Vatican and trip organizers have stressed that Francis has only been invited to Hungary to celebrate the Mass – not make a proper state and pastoral visit as he is doing in Slovakia. But Francis and Orban disagree on a host of issues, top among them migration, and Francis’ limited stay in Budapest could indicate that he didn’t want to give Orban’s government the political boost of hosting a pope for a longer pilgrimage before the general election next spring.“At the beginning there were a lot who were angry (that Francis wasn’t staying longer), but now I think they understand,” said the Rev. Kornel Fabry, secretary general of the Eucharist conference.He noted that a majority of Hungarians back Orban’s migration policies, “that we shouldn’t bring the trouble into Europe but should help out where the trouble is.”Pope Francis, left, leaves by car upon arrival at Budapest International Airport in Budapest on Sept. 12, 2021, for a visit to Hungary.Orban has frequently depicted his government as a defender of Christian civilization in Europe and a bulwark against migration from Muslim-majority countries. Francis has expressed solidarity with migrants and refugees and criticized what he called “national populism advanced by governments like Hungary’s. He has urged governments to welcome and integrate as many migrants as they can.About 39% of Hungarians declared themselves to be Roman Catholic in a 2011 census, while 13% declared themselves to be Protestant, either Lutheran or Calvinist, a Protestant branch with which Orban is affiliated.Still, religious commitment in Hungary lags behind many of its neighbors. According to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center, only 14% of Hungarians said religion was an important part of their lives, and 17% said they attend religious services at least monthly.Despite that, registered churches have been major beneficiaries of state support under Orban since he returned to power in 2010. According to estimates by business website G7, contributions to churches from Hungary’s central budget rose from around $117 million in 2009 to more than $588 million in 2016.Additionally, around 3,000 places of worship have been built or restored using public funds since 2010, part of an effort by Orban’s government to advance what he calls “Christian democracy,” an alternative to liberal governance of which he is a frequent critic.Orban has been under fire for recent policies seen as targeting the rights of LGBT people, including a law passed in June forbidding the depiction of homosexuality or sex reassignment in media consumed by minors. The European Union’s executive branch launched two separate legal proceedings against Hungary’s government in July over what it called infringements on LGBT rights. The government says the measures, which were attached to a law that allows tougher penalties for pedophilia, seek only to protect children.Critics, though, have compared the legislation to Russia’s gay propaganda law of 2013, saying it wrongly conflates homosexuality with pedophilia as part of a campaign ploy to mobilize conservative voters before elections.The Roman Catholic Church, which has a dreadful record on protecting children from priestly predators, holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” and Francis recently authorized a statement saying priests can’t bless same-sex unions.But he has also called for the church to accompany the LGBT community and backed civil unions when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires as an alternative to gay marriage. He is seen as being much more welcoming of gays than his predecessors.As a result, some gay Catholics were welcoming Francis’ visit to Hungary, however brief, in hopes he might issue a message of encouragement.“Pope Francis has been extremely accepting of them, and I trust that for those who may still have some prejudices or reservations about LGBTQ people and other minorities, it will open their hearts a little bit and make them more accepting,” said Csaba Hegedus, a member of Hungary’s LGBT community and a practicing Catholic who planned to attend the pope’s Mass.   
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Pope Francis arrives in Budapest on Sunday morning to celebrate a Mass, with eyes focused on his meeting with the anti-migration Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.The head of 1.3 billion Catholics will have a half-hour meeting with Orban — accompanied by Hungarian President Janos Ader — in Budapest’s grand Fine Arts Museum, in what could be an awkward brief encounter.On the one side, Orban, a self-styled defender of “Christian Europe” from migration. On the other, Pope Francis, who urges help for the marginalized and those of all religions fleeing war and poverty.But the approach, eminently Christian according to the pope, has often been met with incomprehension among the faithful, particularly within the ranks of traditionalist Catholics.Over the last few years, there has been no love lost between Orban supporters in Hungary and the leader of the Catholic world.Pro-Orban media and political figures have launched barbs at the pontiff calling him “anti-Christian” for his pro-refugee sentiments, and the “Soros Pope”, a reference to the Hungarian-born liberal US billionaire George Soros, a right-wing bete-noire.Eyebrows have also been raised by the pontiff’s whirlwind visit to close the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress.His seven-hour-long stay in 9.8 million-population Hungary will be followed immediately by an official visit to smaller neighbor Slovakia of more than two days.”Pope Francis wants to humiliate Hungary by only staying a few hours,” said a pro-Orban television pundit.Born Jorge Bergoglio to a family of Italian emigrants to Argentina, the pope regularly reminds “old Europe” of its past, built on waves of new arrivals.And without ever naming political leaders he castigates “sovereigntists” who turn their backs on refugees with what he has called “speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934.”In April 2016, the pope said, “We are all migrants!” on the Greek island of Lesbos, gateway to Europe, bringing on board his plane three Syrian Muslim families whose homes had been bombed.Hungary HelpsIn contrast, Orban’s signature crusade against migration has included border fences and detention camps for asylum-seekers and provoked growing ire in Brussels.Orban’s supporters point instead to state-funded aid agency Hungary Helps which works to rebuild churches and schools in war-torn Syria and sends doctors to Africa.”The majority of Hungarians say the same thing: we should not bring the problem to Europe, but should help out where the problem is instead,” said Father Kornel Fabry, secretary general of the congress.Orban’s critics, however, accuse him of using Christianity as a shield to deflect criticism and a sword to attack opponents while targeting vulnerable minorities like migrants.Days before the pope’s arrival posters appeared on the streets of the Hungarian capital — where the city council is controlled by the anti-Orban opposition — reading “Budapest welcomes the Holy Father” and showing his quotes including pleas for solidarity and tolerance towards minorities.During the pope’s time  in Budapest he will also meet the country’s bishops and representatives of various Christian congregations.He will also meet leaders of the 100,000-strong Hungarian Jewish community, the largest in Central Europe.Rounding off his stay he will celebrate the open-air mass on the capital’s vast Heroes’ Square. Orban — who is of Calvinist Protestant background — and his wife, who is a Catholic — are to attend.Around 75,000 people have registered to attend the mass, with screens and loudspeakers placed the length of a main boulevard near the square to allow others to follow the ceremony.The trip to Budapest was at the invitation of the congress and follows the path of John Paul II who also attended the event in 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya.It is the first papal trip to Hungary since Pope John Paul II in 1996.”To welcome the Holy Father is an honor for us, but the organizers have asked us to take care of the pope, who is not young anymore,” said Father Fabry.The 84-year-old pontiff’s 34th foreign trip comes two months after a colon operation that required a general anesthetic and a 10-day convalescence in hospital. 
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Pope Francis travels to Hungary and Slovakia Sunday on his first foreign trip since undergoing surgery in July. He will meet Hungarian officials during a very short visit to Budapest, and preside over the closing mass of a eucharistic congress. Francis then travels to Slovakia, where he is expected to visit three cities before returning to the Vatican on Wednesday.  Francis will spend just seven hours in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where he will be closing the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress. The visit to Hungary and Slovakia, the 34th abroad of this papacy, is his first foreign trip since the 84-year-old pontiff underwent intestinal surgery just two months ago.
 
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the visit is intended to be a “spiritual journey.” It starts with the Christian rite of Holy Communion and ends with prayers and celebration of Our Lady of Sorrows, Slovakia’s patron saint, who is believed to watch over Slavic lands wounded by totalitarianism.  
 
Francis asked for prayers for his pilgrimage to the heart of Europe, where he is expected to address issues that affect the entire continent.  
 
These will be days marked by adoration and prayer in the heart of Europe, the pope said, thanking those who helped prepare this visit. The pope sent greetings to those waiting to meet with him and said he was looking forward to this visit.  
The Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, told Vatican Radio that the people of Hungary view the pope’s presence in Budapest as “a real gift.”
 
Francis will meet with the country’s top authorities, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Observers and Catholic media have noted that the brevity of his stay in Hungary compared to Slovakia is likely due to the differences that exist between the pope and the nationalist and anti-immigrant policies of the prime minister.
 
The pope’s meeting with Orban will take place before the closing mass of the Eucharistic Congress, a gathering of clergy, monks, nuns and lay people, in Budapest’s Heroes Square.
 
After the Sunday afternoon mass, Francis will travel to Bratislava, where he will stay until Wednesday, while visiting three other cities in Slovakia. He will meet with the country’s authorities, the Jewish community and the Roma population in the town of Kosice.  
 
The pope will celebrate two open air masses in Slovakia. The leadership in this country is also against uncontrolled immigration but their opposition has not been quite as strong and vocal as in Hungary.
 
This four-day pilgrimage will test the pope’s strength following his recent surgery. Bruni said no special measures have been adopted, except the usual caution for a papal trip. He said there is always a doctor and nurses in the papal entourage.
 
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Spain’s state television on Friday condemned a racist comment made by a guest sports commentator during the presentation of Real Madrid player Eduardo Camavinga.
 
During Wednesday’s presentation of Camavinga, analyst Lorena González was heard off camera saying “this guy is blacker than his suit.”
 
The 18-year-old Camavinga, a French player born in Angola, is Black.
 
Spanish broadcaster RTVE said González’s comments “showed a lack of respect and are inappropriate for a public television channel” while it apologized “to the player and laments and firmly condemns the denigrating comments.”
 
González, a regular guest on RTVE’s sports talk show “Estudio Estadio,” issued a statement on social media “to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who felt offended.”
 
“My comment, which was made without malice or disrespect toward the player, was however unfortunate,” she wrote. “It was a comparison that I could have made about any person of any color. But I understand and feel that in this sensitive time we are going through, even though I also believe that things are becoming too radicalized and politicized, the media has an even bigger responsibility to help the fight against racism and any form of unjust inequality.”
 
The network said it was investigating the incident “and would take the appropriate action.”
 
Camavinga joined Madrid on a six-year contract from Rennes. He made his debut for France’s senior team last September.
 
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Britain’s Prince Andrew has been served with a lawsuit by a woman accusing him of sexually assaulting and battering her two decades ago, when she says she was also being abused by the financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Friday court filing. In an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Cesar Sepulveda, identifying himself as a “corporate investigator/process server,” said he left a copy of Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit on August 27 with a police officer guarding the Royal Lodge in Windsor, England, a property Andrew occupies. The London-based Sepulveda said police had told him a day earlier they were instructed not to accept court documents on Andrew’s behalf, but upon his return he was told documents would be forwarded to the prince’s legal team. Spokespeople for Andrew said on Friday that his lawyers had no comment. A source close to Andrew’s legal team said the prince had not been personally served. Andrew, 61, is one of the most prominent people linked to Epstein, charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors in July 2019 with sexually exploiting dozens of girls and women. Epstein, a registered sex offender, killed himself on August 10, 2019, at age 66 in a Manhattan jail. In her lawsuit dated August 9 this year, Giuffre said Andrew forced her to have unwanted sexual intercourse at the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and Epstein’s longtime associate. Giuffre also said Andrew abused her at Epstein’s mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and on a private island that Epstein owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  In a November 2019 BBC interview, Andrew, who had been a friend of Epstein’s, denied Giuffre’s claims of sexual abuse and said he did not recall meeting her. “I can absolutely, categorically tell you it never happened,” Andrew said. An initial conference is scheduled for Monday afternoon before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan. Maxwell faces a scheduled November 29 trial before a different Manhattan judge on charges she aided Epstein’s sexual abuses. She has pleaded not guilty. In 2017, Maxwell settled a $50 million civil defamation lawsuit against her by Giuffre for an unspecified amount. Maxwell is not a defendant in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Andrew.   
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Friday that all-out war with neighboring Russia was a possibility, and that he wanted to have a substantive meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Asked at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit if there could really be all out-war with Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and backs pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east, Zelenskiy said: “I think there can be.” “It’s the worst thing that could happen, but unfortunately there is that possibility,” he added, speaking in Ukrainian. Kyiv says the conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed 14,000 people since 2014. Zelenskiy said relations with the United States had improved, but he bemoaned the fact that Ukraine had not received a clear answer to its request to join the NATO military alliance — a move that would be certain to infuriate Moscow. “We have not received … a direct position on Ukraine’s accession to NATO,” he said. “Ukraine has been ready for a long time.” He said a refusal to admit Ukraine would weaken NATO while playing into Russia’s hands. FILE – A Ukrainian soldier is seen at fighting positions on the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels near Donetsk, Ukraine, April 19, 2021.Tensions between Kyiv and Moscow increased earlier this year when fighting in eastern Ukraine intensified and Russia massed more troops near the border. Moscow accused Ukraine of losing interest in peace talks, while Zelenskiy pushed in vain for a meeting with Putin in the conflict zone. “Honestly, I don’t have time to think about him,” Zelenskiy said on Friday. “I’m more interested in whether we can really meet substantively, not declaratively as he does with some states,” he added. “It seems to me that today … they do not see the sense in resolving issues. End the war and resolve conflict issues quickly — they don’t want this.” 
 
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Russia has been treading carefully in its dealings with the Taliban, engaging with them but so far withholding formal recognition of Afghanistan’s new rulers.Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aides have been quick to cheer the U.S.-led NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, presenting it as a strategic setback for Washington. But they fear Afghanistan falling apart and being plunged into a protracted civil war, which could allow the country to become a sanctuary once again for jihadists to hatch plots against Russia and its Central Asian allies, according to Western diplomats and analysts.Commenting last week, Putin said NATO’s 20-year intervention had accomplished nothing. “The result is zero, if not to say that it is negative,” he said. Like his Western counterparts, though, the Russian leader appears also to have been surprised by the speed of the collapse of the government of President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban’s sweep of the country. When the Taliban seized Kandahar on August 13, Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said he doubted the Taliban would take control of Kabul any time soon. They seized it within two days.FILE – Russian envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, left, speaks with Taliban representatives prior to their talks in Moscow, May 28, 2019.With Afghanistan right on its doorstep, there are more downsides and risks for Russia from NATO’s departure arguably than there are for the Western powers, and the Kremlin is casting a wary glance south, according to Paul Stronski, who was director for Russia and Central Asia at the U.S. National Security Council from 2012 to 2014. “Russia has been eying the departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan with schadenfreude. But the Kremlin does not relish the prospect of an unstable Afghanistan,” Stronski wrote in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment, a think tank in Washington.“Even though Moscow has publicly cheered the removal of U.S. and NATO troops from the region, Russian officials are sober-minded enough to appreciate the downsides of their departure,” he says. “The key question now is whether Moscow is equipped to deal with a combustible situation along its southern flank that is unfolding far more quickly than anyone might have expected,” he added.Midweek, top Russian and Indian security officials met in Delhi to discuss the implications of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. In the subsequent readouts of their talks for the press, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a key Putin adviser, and Indian counterpart Ajit Doval highlighted the security dangers, with their officials saying global militant groups operating from Afghanistan pose a threat to Central Asia and to India. They agreed to deepen counterterrorism cooperation.FILE – Taliban fighters atop Humvee vehicles parade along a road to celebrate the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, in Kandahar, Sept. 1, 2021, following the Taliban’s military takeover of the country.“U.S. withdrawal and Taliban triumph generate an acute security challenge for Russia,” according to Pavel Baev of the Brookings Institution. A former researcher in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense, he says the problem for the Kremlin is the NATO withdrawal “yields no rewards” and presents Moscow with a security “black hole” on its southern flank. Like their Western counterparts, Russian security chiefs are trying to judge whether the Taliban will abide by the promises its leaders made in political talks in Doha, Qatar, to stop Afghanistan once again from turning into a sanctuary for al-Qaida and other global jihadist groups.The Kremlin also is alarmed by the prospects of an increase in opiate drug trafficking, which alone may earn the Taliban $416 million a year, according to a U.N. assessment.Taliban leaders have said they won’t permit any opium poppy cultivation. But with a financial crunch looming for the country — and for the militant group — there are widespread doubts that they will — or can — keep to that promise. Afghanistan is estimated to be responsible for about 80 percent of global opium and heroin supplies.In July, following a string of bilateral talks with the Taliban, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Taliban leadership was “rational.” He added: “They are sane people. They clearly stated that they have no plans to create problems for Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors.”FILE – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, second left, speaks as he attends a conference on Afghanistan with representatives of the Taliban, in Moscow, Russia, Nov. 9, 2018.Baev believes that statement was “an exercise in wishful thinking.” “The best Russian diplomats can hope for is to dissuade the shrewd leadership of the Taliban from launching cross-border attacks northwards,” he says. The Taliban remains proscribed in Russia as a terrorist organization. Its ties with Central Asian jihadists, including Chechen separatists who the Taliban allowed to train in Afghanistan, prompted President Putin in September 2001 to acquiesce regarding the U.S. building military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to facilitate the U.S.-led NATO invasion of Afghanistan. Putin also allowed the U.S.-led coalition to use Russian airspace for the invasion.The Kremlin appears to be readying for the worst, and it has been for some time. In 2012, it signed an agreement with Tajikistan to extend its lease on a military base in Dushanbe until 2042, and in 2016 it started modernizing the base and rearming it, including with armed Orlan-10 drones.Last month, the Russian, Tajik and Uzbek militaries held joint exercises on the Afghan border. Recently, Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu pledged to strengthen military cooperation with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
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In an interview Thursday, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said there are questions about how the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled, “but we need to first save the lives [of Afghans].”Rama, whose country is temporarily hosting 4,000 Afghan refugees, said that as a NATO member country, Albania has to take its “share of responsibility” to protect those who worked with the organization in Afghanistan.Rama told Mirwais Rahmani of VOA’s Afghan Service that Afghan refugees can stay in Albania for as long as they wish.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.VOA: Mr. Prime Minister, thank you so much for your time. Albania was one of the first countries that offered to host Afghan refugees. Tell us why.Prime Minister Edi Rama: Because of who we are. We have a very proud history of having built our life in this country for generations based in our first common law, which says that the house of the Albanians belongs to God and the guest. The accurate translation would be the traveler. And then there is a whole explanation of the duty behind the knock at the door of whomever is behind the door and in whatever situation he, she or they are, you have to open the door and you have to offer shelter to the traveler that is lost or needs refuge or needs to be fed or whatever. So, that is first. Second is our history. Our grandparents did something fascinating and thanks to them, Albania became the first and the last European country that had more Jews after the war than before and independent from their religion.And many Jews were saved by being hidden from Muslim armies. Because we have Muslims and Christians here but independent from their religion, Albania was protecting Jews. And then we were like the Afghans 30 years ago. So, it was at that time us demanding help and knocking on others’ doors for shelter.Now it’s the time to give what we got. And finally, I would say that we owe it to our children. Our children need to inherit this attitude, and every generation should cultivate it when the chance is being presented because, God forbid, we become a cynical rich country.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 2 MB480p | 3 MB540p | 3 MB1080p | 9 MBOriginal | 16 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioEdi Rama: Thirty years ago, “it was at that time us demanding help and knocking on others’ doors for shelter. Now it’s the time to give what we got.”VOA: I’m sure you saw the chaos and tragedy in Kabul airport during the last two weeks of August. Many believe it was a result of hasty withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan. What’s your take on this?Rama: As I said and I want to repeat, for sure what happened in the last weeks and what the world saw live from Kabul, from the airport, from the scenes of desperate people losing gravity and falling from the sky will absolutely raise many questions – many questions about our civilization, about our democratic world, about NATO, about the future of NATO and how we should see and shape it. But it’s not the time to enter in this (conversation) until the last person that is in need is saved from whatever the danger might be for him or her in Afghanistan. We should take care of human lives, and then of course, the discussion will follow. But on the other hand, I have to say that, you know, it’s quite hypocritical to put the blame on the United States and on the administration and just wash their hands like Pontius Pilate. After all we have been in this together. Yes, there are questions, of course, and the withdrawal had its problems, and it’s obvious but we need to first save the lives. And the blame on the withdrawal, the whatever mismanagement of the withdrawal, the dramatic episodes of the withdrawal, should not be alibis or should not be instruments to forget the real thing – the lives of people.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 3 MB480p | 4 MB540p | 4 MB1080p | 13 MBOriginal | 22 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioEdi Rama: “The withdrawal had its problems and it’s obvious, but we need to first save the lives.”VOA: I talked to some Afghan evacuees in Albania. Their main concern is the uncertainty surrounding the process of their application. An Afghan evacuee, while thanking your government for the warm hospitality, had a question for you: in case their application or resettlement process takes months or years, will the Albanian government provide them with health services and education opportunities for their children?Rama: Thank you for the question. It’s a very good question. First of all, they should forget months. It will not be months. It will be more than months because the mass of applications and the massive bureaucratic work that has to be done back in the [United] States for so many people that have been parked, as they said, in different places in Europe or elsewhere, is huge. So, it will be more than months. Secondly, we have already decided that we will offer them free health care.The concern of the kids and the young students is a common concern. So, we are working to come up with a plan, we are working to be able to create a network of teachers because we can put them right away in our schools. But it’s in Albanian, and we need to somehow give them some continuity to have their language and English, so we are working on that. And we will not let them, you know, drag in the places they are for more than months without sending those kids to school, without being able to see a future. At the same time, I would invite all of them to think about integrating while waiting – they are great people.VOA: The U.S. might not take in those Afghans who fail security background checks, or their cases are rejected. How will Albania deal with such a scenario? Are you ready to take in those Afghans who will have no other place to go, or is there any alternative solution?Rama: They are at home here. They should feel at home here, and if they want to stay, they are welcome. We will never tell them to leave the country because they don’t fulfill criteria. We’ll never tell them they have to apply for a visa clearance in Albania. We suffered a lot from visa regimes, and we are not going to be now a visa regime country for them, so they are more than welcome to stay.VOA: What’s Albania’s reaction to the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan? Will Albania, as a country that hosts hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghans, recognize a government led by the Taliban?Rama: Albania had its Taliban. They were not Islamic Taliban. They were Marxist and Leninist Taliban. And we saw religion being bombed. We saw God being declared illegal. We saw our own culture of the 20th century being bombed. We saw the jailing of artists, of writers, of play writers. We saw a total lack of freedom of expression. We saw full nationalization, and private property being dumped and being bombed and so many other things that, you know, you have seen in that country. Every comparison has its weakness. So, I’m not going further. But no, we will not be part of any club that will recognize this regime.Let me add this. While I said this, I say also the other thing, that it’s important to build communication, it’s important to talk with that regime. Because for the sake of all that need to be helped, demands it. So, one of the strengths of our Taliban regime was that not only didn’t they want to talk to others, but the others didn’t want to talk to them. So, this is something to be remembered.
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With no masks in sight, buzzing offices and concerts drawing tens of thousands, Denmark on Friday ditches vaccine passports in nightclubs, ending its last COVID-19 curb.The vaccine passports were introduced in March 2021 when Copenhagen slowly started easing restrictions.They were abolished at all venues on Sept. 1, except in nightclubs, where they will be no longer necessary from Friday.”We are definitely at the forefront in Denmark as we have no restrictions, and we are now on the other side of the pandemic thanks to the vaccination rollout,” Ulrik Orum-Petersen, a promoter at event organizer Live Nation, told AFP.On Saturday, a sold-out concert in Copenhagen will welcome 50,000 people, a first in Europe.Already on Sept. 4, Live Nation organized a first open-air festival, aptly named “Back to Live,” which gathered 15,000 people in Copenhagen.”Being in the crowd, singing like before, it almost made me forget COVID and everything we’ve been through these past months,” said Emilie Bendix, 26, a concertgoer.Denmark’s vaccination campaign has gone swiftly, with 73% of the 5.8 million population fully vaccinated, and 96% of those 65 and older.’Aiming for free movement'”We’re aiming for free movement… What will happen now is that the virus will circulate, and it will find the ones who are not vaccinated,” epidemiologist Lone Simonsen told AFP.”Now the virus is no longer a societal threat, thanks to the vaccine,” said Simonsen, who works at the University of Roskilde.According to the World Health Organization, the Scandinavian country has benefitted from public compliance with government guidelines and the COVID-19 strategy adopted.”Like many countries, Denmark has, throughout the pandemic, implemented public health and social measures to reduce transmission. But at the same time it has greatly relied on individuals and communities to comply voluntarily,” said Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s emergency officer.With around 500 daily COVID-19 cases and a reproduction rate of 0.7, Danish authorities say they have the virus under control.Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has however vowed that the government would not hesitate to swiftly reimpose restrictions if necessary.Authorities insist that the return to normal life must be coupled with strict hygiene measures and the isolation of sick people.The WHO still considers the global situation critical and has urged caution.”Every country needs to remain vigilant as and when the epidemiological situation changes,” Smallwood said.Denmark has said it will keep a close eye on the number of hospitalizations — just under 130 at the moment — and conduct meticulous sequencing to follow the virus.A third dose has also been available to risk groups since Thursday.Simonsen said the vaccines have so far provided immunity from variants “but if escape variants (resistant to the vaccine) were to appear, we will have to rethink our strategy.”Christian Nedergaard, who owns several restaurants and wine bars in Copenhagen, said that while everyone is happy about the return to normal life, “the situation is still complicated.””The memory of coronavirus will fade very quickly from some people’s minds but not for everyone, and for restaurants this period has for sure been a game-changer,” he said.”The industry needs to think about how to become more resilient.”Travelers entering Denmark must still present either a vaccine passport or a negative PCR test, and masks are mandatory in airports. 
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Britain has approved plans to turn away boats illegally carrying migrants to its shores, deepening a rift with France over how to deal with a surge of people risking their lives by trying to cross the Channel in small dinghies. 
 
Hundreds of small boats have attempted the journey from France to England this year, across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The summer surge happens every year, but it now is larger than normal as alternative routes have been shut down. 
 
Border officials will be trained to force boats away from British waters but will deploy the new tactic only when they deem it safe, a British government official who asked not to be named said on Thursday. 
 
Michael Ellis, Britain’s acting attorney-general, will draw up a legal basis for border officials to deploy the new strategy, the official said. 
 
Home Secretary Priti Patel told French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin that stopping people making their way from France on small boats was her “number one priority.” 
 
Patel had already irritated the French government earlier this week when she indicated Britain could withhold about $75 million (54 million pounds) in funding it had pledged to help stem the flow of migrants. 
 
Darmanin said Britain must honor both maritime law and commitments made to France, which include financial payments to help fund French maritime border patrols. 
 
“France will not accept any practice that goes against maritime law, nor financial blackmail,” the French minister tweeted. 
 
In a letter leaked to British media, Darmanin said forcing boats back toward the French coast would be dangerous and that “safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy.” 
 
Britain’s Home Office, or interior ministry, said: “We do not routinely comment on maritime operational activity.” 
 
Politically charged 
 
Charities said the plans could be illegal and some British politicians described the idea as unworkable. 
 
Channel Rescue, a citizen patrol group that looks for migrants arriving along the English coast, said international maritime law stipulated that ships have a clear duty to assist those in distress. 
 
Clare Mosely, founder of the Care4Calais charity, which helps migrants, said the plan would put the lives of migrants at risk. “They’re not going to want to be sent back. They absolutely could try and jump overboard,” she said. 
 
Tim Loughton, a member of parliament for the ruling Conservatives, said the tactics would never be used because people would “inevitably” drown. 
 
“Any boat coming up alongside at speed would capsize most of these boats anyway and then we’re looking at people getting into trouble in the water and drowning,” he said. 
 
A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was exploring a range of safe and legal options to stop the boats. 
 
The number of migrants crossing the Channel in small dinghies has risen this year after the British and French governments clamped down on other forms of illegal entry such as hiding in the back of trucks crossing from ports in France. 
 
The numbers trying to reach Britain in small boats – about 13,000 so far in 2021 – are tiny compared with migrant flows into countries such as Lebanon and Turkey, which host millions of refugees. 
 
But the issue has become a rallying cry for politicians from Johnson’s Conservative Party. Immigration was a central issue in the referendum decision in 2016 to leave the European Union. 
 
France and Britain agreed in July to deploy more police and invest in detection technology to stop Channel crossings. French police have confiscated more dinghies, but they say they cannot completely prevent departures. 
 
British junior Health Minister Helen Whately said the government’s focus was still on discouraging migrants from attempting the journey, rather than turning them back. 
 
Britain’s opposition Labour Party criticised the new approach as putting lives at risk and it said the priority should be to tackle people-smuggling gangs. 
 
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Leaders of the BRICS nations discussed Afghanistan at a virtual summit Thursday, with participants underscoring the importance of preventing terrorists from using Afghan soil to stage attacks on other countries.  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the five-nation group that comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The talks come weeks after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to a geopolitical shift in Asia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro joined Modi for the online summit. Speaking at the opening of the summit, Putin said the withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan “has led to a new crisis” and the “entire international community will have to clear up the mess as a result.” He said the situation stemmed from “irresponsible attempts to impose alien values from outside and this intention to build so-called democracy” without taking into account historical features and traditions resulting in “destabilization and chaos.” In wrapping up the summit, the BRICS nations called for “refraining from violence and settling the situation by peaceful means to ensure stability in the country.”  Afghanistan is of major concern to three of the five countries in the group – Russia, India and China. Putin said the country should not become a threat to its neighbors or a source of terrorism and drug trafficking.  In late August, the U.S. completed a withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan to end a 20-year war.  Observers say China and Russia will use the opportunity to step into the void left by the U.S., although Moscow is wary of the Islamist ideology of the Taliban and the threat posed by foreign militant groups to Central Asia.India’s concern   New Delhi, meanwhile, finds itself isolated with the takeover by the Taliban, which has long been an anti-India group. New Delhi has emphasized that its main concern is about Afghan territory being used by terror groups that target India such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.   The group adopted what it called a Counter Terrorism Action Plan and said in its declaration, “We stress the need to contribute to fostering an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue so as to ensure stability, civil peace, law and order in the country.” The statement also emphasized the need to address the humanitarian situation and to uphold human rights, including those of children, women and minorities.  The summit, held for a second year in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, expressed “regret” at the glaring inequity in access to vaccines, especially for the most vulnerable populations, and highlighted the need for access to affordable shots for the world’s poorest. The declaration also said cooperation on the study of the origins of the coronavirus is an important aspect of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus causes COVID-19. The BRICS group was formed to enhance cooperation among the world’s major emerging economies, which account for 40% of the global population and 25% of global gross domestic product. Their first summit was held in 2009.  
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Teams working on two continents have marked similar milestones in their respective efforts to tap an energy source key to the fight against climate change: They’ve each produced very impressive magnets.  On Thursday, scientists at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France took delivery of the first part of a massive magnet so strong its American manufacturer claims it can lift an aircraft carrier.Almost 20 meters (about 60 feet) tall and more than 4 meters (14 feet) in diameter when fully assembled, the magnet is a crucial component in the attempt by 35 nations to master nuclear fusion.Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists and a private company announced separately this week that they, too, have hit a milestone with the successful test of the world’s strongest high-temperature superconducting magnet that may allow the team to leapfrog ITER in the race to build a “sun on earth.”Unlike existing fission reactors that produce radioactive waste and sometimes catastrophic meltdowns, proponents of fusion say it offers a clean and virtually limitless supply of energy. If, that is, scientists and engineers can figure out how to harness it — they have been working on the problem for nearly a century.Rather than splitting atoms, fusion mimics a process that occurs naturally in stars to meld two hydrogen atoms together and produce a helium atom — as well as a whole lot of energy.Achieving fusion requires unimaginable amounts of heat and pressure. One approach to achieving that is to turn the hydrogen into an electrically charged gas, or plasma, which is then controlled in a donut-shaped vacuum chamber.This is done with the help of powerful superconducting magnets such as the “central solenoid” that General Atomics began shipping from San Diego to France this summer.Scientists say ITER is now 75% complete and they aim to fire up the reactor by early 2026.”Each completion of a major first-of-a-kind component — such as the central solenoid’s first module — increases our confidence that we can complete the complex engineering of the full machine,” said ITER’s spokesman Laban Coblentz.The goal is to produce 10 times more energy by 2035 than is required to heat up the plasma, thereby proving that fusion technology is viable.Among those hoping to beat them to the prize is the team in Massachusetts, which said it has managed to create magnetic field twice that of ITER’s with a magnet about 40 times smaller.The scientists from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems said they may have a device ready for everyday use in the early 2030s.”This was designed to be commercial,” said MIT Vice President Maria Zuber, a prominent physicist. “This was not designed to be a science experiment.”While not designed to produce electricity itself, ITER would also serve as the blueprint for similar but more sophisticated reactors if it is successful.  Proponents of the project argue that even if it fails, the countries involved will have mastered technical skills that can be used in other fields, from particle physics to designing advanced materials capable of withstanding the heat of the sun.All nations contributing to the project — including the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, South Korea and much of Europe — share in the $20 billion cost and benefit jointly from the scientific results and intellectual property generated.The central solenoid is just one of 12 large U.S. contributions to ITER, each of which is built by American companies, with funds allocated by Congress going toward U.S. jobs.”Having the first module safely delivered to the ITER facility is such a triumph because every part of the manufacturing process had to be designed from the ground up,” said John Smith, director of engineering and projects at General Atomics.The company spent years developing new technologies and methods to make and move the magnet parts, including coils weighing 250,000 pounds, across their facility and then around the globe.”The engineering know-how that was established during this period is going to be invaluable for future projects of this scale,” Smith said.”The goal of ITER is to prove that fusion can be a viable and economically practical source of energy, but we are already looking ahead at what comes next,” he added. “That’s going to be key to making fusion work commercially, and we now have a good idea of what needs to happen to get there.”Betting on nuclear energy — first fission and then fusion — is still the world’s best chance to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, said Frederick Bordry, who oversaw the design and construction of another fiendishly complex scientific machine, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.”When we speak about the cost of ITER, it’s peanuts in comparison with the impact of climate change,” he said. “We will have to have the money for it.”
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The next nine months will determine the fate of 20 people on trial for the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. Of the ten-man team believed to have carried out the coordinated assault, just one is still alive. Salah Abdeslam was among the 14 suspects in court on Wednesday, the first day of the trial that could see him imprisoned for life. Six are still wanted.There was tight security as the accused arrived at the Paris courthouse for the start of the nine-month trial.Twenty people are charged in connection with the series of attacks on November 13th, 2015, that left 130 people dead and more than 350 injured.Six are still on the run, or possibly dead, and will be tried in absentia.Fourteen of them are in court – including the man believed to be the sole survivor of the 10-man cell that carried out the attacks.Salah Abdeslam fled to Belgium, abandoning his suicide vest. He was finally arrested there four months later.In court at the start of proceedings Wednesday, when asked to state his name, Abdeslam replied that there was only one god, Allah, and that he had forsaken all to become a fighter for the Islamic State group.ISIS claimed responsibility for planning and carrying out the attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France football stadium, and several cafes and restaurants in eastern Paris.Lawyer Victor Edou, representing eight survivors from the Bataclan, says it was very hard for his clients to hear Abdeslam’s words.“It was very violent, very difficult for them to take,” he said, adding that they know the next nine months will not be easy.But the survivors and families of the victims hope the lengthy proceedings will provide them with some answers.FILE – Medics stand by victims in a Paris restaurant, Nov. 13, 2015.It has taken six years for this case to come to trial.In part because, as ISIS carried out more attacks – in Nice, Brussels, Barcelona and elsewhere – it became clear to investigators that there were links between the different cells. Several of those on trial in Paris also face trial in relation to the deadly bombings in Brussels in March 2016.The sheer scale of this case also meant it took more time to prepare.Some 18,00 people are civil participants in the case – they include the survivors and families of the victims.More than 330 lawyers are involved, and there 542 tomes of legal documents.The high-security courtroom was specially constructed for this trial; and there are severe restrictions on who has access.The proceedings are being filmed for posterity and are transmitted live to several rooms in the courthouse for the overflow of journalists and participants.The accused face a range of charges including murder, attempted murder, providing guns and money, and terrorist conspiracy.They face up to life in prison. 
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Russia’s parliamentary elections in less than two weeks’ time are shaping up to be the least free since Vladimir Putin came to power 21 years ago, warn opposition leaders and independent election observers. Polling data suggests that just 26% of Russians are ready to vote for the ruling United Russia Party in parliamentary elections on September 19 — its lowest rating since 2008. Nonetheless few Putin opponents doubt United Russia will win the elections handsomely, thanks to ballot-rigging, the silencing of Putin critics, the barring of independent candidates, voter intimidation and cash handouts to voters. “The thinly veiled bribery of voters, all sorts of manipulations, mobilizing administrative [resources] and persecution of the critics of the regime — these are the election tactics of Putin and his party in 2021,” according to Fyodor Krashennikov, an opposition political commentator. Krashennikov recently left Russia for Europe, joining an exodus of opposition figures who say they’re being chased out by a crackdown on dissent, which has seen dozens of independent media outlets and civic groups forced to shut after being designated “foreign agents” or extremist organizations in a ramping up of repression up ahead of the elections.  FILE – Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny gestures during a hearing on his charges for defamation in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia, in this photo taken from a footage provided by the Babuskinsky District Court, Feb. 16, 2021.Alexei Navalny, the most well-known Putin critic, has been in jail since January on old fraud charges, which he and some Western governments see as politically motivated. His nationwide political organization, accused by the Kremlin of being extremist, has been dismantled. Other Putin critics have been blocked from standing as candidates for the Russian Duma, including former lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, who fled Russia in June fearing he would face criminal charges if he didn’t.  ‘A hardcore autocracy’ 
  
“Since I left Russia in 2014, it is absolutely shocking how many businesspeople, academics, journalists, politicians, lawyers, NGOs leaders I used to know there who are now dead, in prison, or in exile. Simply shocking,” Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, tweeted Tuesday. “You never know who they are coming for next,” says Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at America’s George Washington University. She argued in a recent podcast discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council, a New York-based think tank, that 2021 will mark the year when Russia shifted into becoming “a hardcore autocracy.” She believes the mounting crackdown on dissent — which has escalated since the near-fatal poisoning last year of Alexei Navalny and protests against his jailing — is a Kremlin reaction to rising unhappiness with Putin’s government.  FILE – Riot police detain a man during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 31, 2021. 
“Discontent runs across the political spectrum and there are way fewer supporters of the regime,” she says. Although she cautions that the anti-Putin opposition is fragmented in terms of political affiliation and shouldn’t be seen automatically as translating into support for liberal democratic ideas.Russians will vote in elections held between September 17-19 for the State Duma — the lower house of the Russian Parliament — as well as for several regional heads and municipal governments. A view of a poster announcing the upcoming Russian parliamentary and local elections in front of the building of the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament, in Moscow on Sept. 8, 2021.State-owned or state-controlled Russian media outlets have been dismissing claims about a rigged poll, saying it is a Western-inspired campaign to discredit Russia’s elections and that fake news will soar as voting day approaches. A group of Kremlin-friendly experts, the Independent Public Monitoring, predicted in a report Wednesday that over the next few days there will be a rise in fake news stories about public-sector workers being compelled or bribed into voting for United Russia. “There will be extensive speculation about allegedly unequal rules of electioneering, as well as the persecution of opposition candidates,” the authors of the report told TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency. “In their opinion, provocations and information attacks will enjoy concerted support from Western journalists, politicians and government officials. When the election campaign is over, the West will refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the new State Duma and make vigorous attempts to trigger protests inside Russia,” TASS reported.But an opinion poll published Wednesday by the state funded VTsIOM pollster suggested 14% of all employees working at industrial plants in Russia have been pressured by their bosses to register to vote and more than half of respondents to the survey said their managers had raised the elections with them.  
 
European Union officials say that the sudden wave of Russia state-owned media reports about a Western conspiracy is a preemptive exercise to try to tarnish any criticism of the Kremlin. “By inventing sinister ‘Western’ plots and provocations, the pro-Kremlin media and pundits willfully ignore and obscure the dark reality on the ground: reprisals against critics and elimination of political opposition with methods that range from cold-blooded to bizarre, censorship and restriction of media freedoms,” according to the EU’s External Action Service.  FILE – A participant takes a selfie in front of a banner during a congress of the political party Yabloko in Moscow, Russia, April 3, 2021. A banner reads: ‘Yabloko is changing.’Bizarre tactics have included running spoiler candidates against the few remaining independent candidates in a bid to sow confusion. In St. Petersburg, Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the liberal opposition Yabloko party and a longtime Kremlin critic, complained Sunday that two of his opponents for a seat in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly have adopted his name and altered their appearance to look like him in order to reduce his votes.“At each election for many years now we say that these were the dirtiest and most dishonest elections ever, and then at the next ones we repeat the same phrase,” Vishnevsky said. Election observers The absence of election monitors is also alarming opposition politicians. Last month, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, announced it will not send observers to Russia’s elections for the first time in nearly three decades because of “major limitations” imposed by Russian authorities on the mission. “We very much regret that our observation of the forthcoming elections in Russia will not be possible,” said Matteo Mecacci of the OSCE in an August statement. “But the ability to independently determine the number of observers necessary for us to observe effectively and credibly is essential to all international observation. The insistence of the Russian authorities on limiting the number of observers we could send without any clear pandemic-related restrictions has unfortunately made today’s step unavoidable,” he added.Russia’s main nationwide vote monitoring group, Golos, was also labeled a month ahead of the parliamentary elections as a ‘foreign agent’ by the Kremlin and although it has vowed to continue its work there are fears it could be prohibited from conducting election monitoring.Vote monitors fear that there will be even more opportunities to rig election results without their presence. They also note that the authorities in six major regions and in Moscow have been encouraging Russians to vote online. Electronic voting in Russia has increased in recent years but in 2020 in a plebiscite on constitutional amendment, serious anomalies emerged in the online voting in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod Oblast with more people voting than were registered, in one precinct by 217%.Residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Moscow-backed breakaway oblasts in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, are also being allowed — and urged — by Russian authorities to vote in these elections.People hold Russia’s national flag and flags of it’s ruling United Russia party, during a rally at war memorial complex Savur-Mohyla, marking the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Donbas region from the Nazi occupation,  outside the rebel-held city of Donetsk, Ukraine, Sept. 8, 2021. More than 600,000 residents of the oblasts hold Russian passports, and they are seen by the Kremlin as “additional reserves of loyal voters,” according to Russian commentator Konstantin Skorkin.It is the first time they will be allowed to vote in Duma elections. Last year, Russian passport-holders in Donetsk and Luhansk were permitted to vote in the plebiscite amending the Russian constitution to allow Putin to run again for two more presidential terms. They were bused over the border and voted in the Russian region of Rostov, but only 14,000 did so. This time they will be able to vote online. 
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Turkey is voicing caution over Afghanistan’s interim government as it continues talks with the Taliban on restarting air traffic at the Kabul airport.Turkey was among the first countries calling for talks and engagement with the Taliban after it swept to power last month. But the Taliban’s announcement of an interim government this week saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip calling for a cautious approach.”As you know, right now, it’s hard to call it permanent, but an interim cabinet has been announced,” Erdogan said Tuesday.  He said, “We don’t know how long this interim cabinet will last. All we have to do is to follow this process carefully.”Those Fleeing Afghanistan Struggle to Survive in TurkeyVOA reporters meet people who say the Taliban are killing government workers and other ‘enemies’ as they take over areas of Afghanistan But Erdogan said talks between the Taliban and Qatar on restarting full operations at the Kabul airport were making progress although he warned key issues remained unresolved. On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Taliban’s insistence on being the one to provide the airport’s security remains a key obstacle.Cavusoglu said, “the Taliban or Afghan forces could ensure security outside the airport. But inside,” he said, “there should be a security company trusted by the international community”. He added that “Otherwise, even if airlines, including Turkish Airlines, are keen to fly there, insurance companies would not allow it.”Despite Turkey’s participation in NATO’s twenty-year-long military presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban reached out to Ankara with calls to put the airport back into operation. Turkey is NATO’s only Muslim member, and it shares historical ties with Afghanistan.  Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow of the European Council, says Ankara says believes hese factors could help Turkey play a key role in Afghanistan.Taliban Tells Turkey Continued Troop Presence in Afghanistan Is ‘Unacceptable’Taliban spokesman tells VOA it will view Turkish troops as invaders and a violation of the deal with US”They will want to see as if they can position Turkey as a diplomatic conduit, as a diplomatic sort of go-between, between western countries and the Taliban,” said Aydintasbas.The reopening of the Kabul airport is key for European countries and the United States in efforts to evacuate their citizens who are still in Afghanistan as well as Afghan nationals who once worked for NATO and western embassies.After meeting his Turkish counterpart, German foreign minister Heiko Maas underlined Turkey’s importance in efforts to reopen the airport, offering to help finance the operation. But retired Turkish ambassador Selim Kuneralp says Ankara must deal delicately with the Taliban.”It seems to me they would be a risk in appearing to be too close to the Taliban to be their protectors, so to speak, in the eyes of the West, not just the United States but the European Union too,” said Kuneralp. “If you appear to be close to them, then you would be painted with the same brush.”Ankara’s cautious approach to the new Afghan government and Turkish calls calling for scrutiny of the Taliban’s treatment of women and ethnic minorities could be signs of a growing awareness of Turkey’s need to remain aligned with its Western allies over Afghanistan.
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Twenty people linked to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France went on trial in Paris Wednesday in proceedings expected to last nine months.Six defendants are being charged in absentia. Reports say five of the six are presumed dead in Iraq or Syria. Nine Islamic State terrorists, mostly from France and Belgium, left a trail of horror in a multi-pronged attack at the national stadium, various bars and restaurants and at a concert at the Bataclan Theater. A total of 130 people were killed, 90 of them at the concert hall. At least 490 people were injured.A 10th member of the terror cell and the only one still alive, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Brussels four months after the November 13, 2015, strikes. He is accused of helping the others.  In his court appearance, Abdeslam, 31, called himself an “Islamic State soldier.” When asked what his profession was, he said, “I gave up my job to become an Islamic State soldier.”This courtroom sketch shows Salah Abdeslam (R), the prime suspect in the November 2015 Paris attacks, and co-defendants Mohamed Amri (L) and Mohamed Abrini (C) on Sept. 8, 2021, the first day of the trial of the November 2015 Paris attacks.Even though most of the alleged perpetrators are dead, some hope the trial will bring closure to the families of the victims.”This trial is really an important step for the victims, those who have been wounded or injured, and those who lost members of their families,” Michael Dantinne, professor of criminology at the University of Liege, told France 24.  He added that “it is only a step in the recovery process of the victims” and that “it won’t have any magical effect.”  The trial is being held in a specially constructed court in Paris and described as the biggest in France’s modern day legal history. Some information in this report comes from the Associated Press, AFP and the Reuters news agency. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas are hosting talks Wednesday with a group of partners and allies to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, including efforts to continue the flow of humanitarian aid to the country after the Taliban’s takeover. A U.S. State Department official said ahead of the ministerial meeting that one theme of the discussion would be seeing if the Taliban lives up to its commitments and the expectations of the international community.U.S. Secretary of State Blinken speaks to members of the U.S. embassy and Mission Afghanistan in Doha, Sep. 7, 2021.Before traveling to Germany, Blinken stressed during a visit to Qatar that the United States and others are calling on the Taliban to follow through on its pledge to allow anyone with valid travel documents to leave Afghanistan if they choose to do so. The issue has been a focus since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of August, ending a two-decade military presence and a final effort to evacuate thousands of people from the country. Many people who wanted to leave Afghanistan were unable to do so before the U.S. withdrawal. The State Department said Wednesday’s meeting would also likely involve discussion of counterterrorism issues and upholding basic human rights in Afghanistan. 
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