Denmark’s parliament Thursday approved a measure that would allow the nation to relocate asylum seekers to an as yet unnamed third country, most likely outside Europe.The measure, proposed by the Social Democrat-led government, was approved on a 70-24 vote, and would allow the nation to transfer asylum seekers to detention centers in partnering countries, where their cases would then be reviewed from those countries.The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the European Union and several international organizations have criticized the plan, saying it would undermine international cooperation and lacks details on how human rights would be protected.In a statement from Brussels, EU spokesman Adalbert Jahnz said the bloc was carefully analyzing the new law and said it raised concerns about access to protections for refugees and is not possible under EU rules.Speaking to the Associated Press, advocacy and legal aid organization Refugees Welcome spokeswoman Michala Bendixen was more blunt. “This is insane, this is absurd. What it’s all about is that Denmark wants to get rid of refugees. The plan is to scare people away from seeking asylum in Denmark.”The AP reports that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during his election campaign and again in January he envisioned having “zero asylum-seekers” in Denmark.Denmark has yet to reach an agreement with a partner country, but there are negotiations with several candidate countries, mostly likely in Africa. Earlier this year, the government signed a preliminary agreement with Rwanda about immigration and asylum issues.
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The Cannes Film Festival on Thursday unveiled a lineup of films from big-name auteurs — including Wes Anderson, Asghar Farhadi, Mia Hansen-Løve and Sean Penn — for its 74th edition, an in-person, summertime event that aims to make a stirring return in July after being canceled last year because of the pandemic.  Among the films that will be competing for Cannes’ Palme d’Or are the festival opener, “Annette,” by Leox Carax and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard; Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” a film originally set to premiere in Cannes last year with an ensemble cast including Timothée Chalamet; “Red Rocket,” Sean Baker’s follow-up to his acclaimed “The Florida Project”; Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”; and Sean Penn’s “Flag Day,” in which he stars alongside his daughter, Dylan Penn, as a conman.  Pierre Lescure, president of the festival, and Thierry Frémaux, artistic director, announced the Cannes’ lineup at the UGC Normandie theater in Paris in  a live-streamed event that was part press conference and part pep rally for world cinema.  “Cinema is not dead. The extraordinary and triumphant return of the audience to movie theaters in France and around the world was the first good news,” said Fremaux. “I hope the film festival will be the second very good news.”  As cinema’s preeminent global stage, the annual French Riviera extravaganza is hoping to make a triumphant comeback when it runs July 6-17 — two months later than its usual May perch. But many things will be different at this year’s festival. Attendees will be masked inside theaters and required to show proof of full vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test. Cannes’ famed red carpet leading up to the stairs of the Palais des Festivals will resume in full, but with tweaks to the traditional pageantry.  “We’re used to kissing one another at the top of the stairs. We will not kiss one another,” said Fremaux.  Still, there are many questions leading up to a Cannes that will unfold just as France is reopening and loosening restrictions. Audience capacity limitations will be removed just five days before the festival opens. Concern over a new virus strain led France last week to institute a seven-day quarantine for travelers arriving from the United Kingdom — a potential blow to the British film industry that regularly decamps to Cannes.  For such an international festival as Cannes, many other travel regulations could pose complications. Fremaux acknowledged some filmmakers may not be able to attend. The movie market that typical runs in tandem with the festival and draws much of the film industry for a week of frenzied deal-making, will be held virtually in late June.  But the Cannes program, while perhaps lacking a Hollywood title as anticipated as Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (an entry in 2019, when Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” won the Palme), was praised as top-class. It includes former Palme d’Or winners Jacques Audiard (“Paris 13th District”) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Memoria,” starring Tilda Swinton).  Four of the 24 films in competition are directed by women, a low percentage but one that ties the festival’s previous top mark. That includes new films from Mia Hansen-Løve (“Bergman Island,” with Mia Wasikowska, Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps) and Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi.  Cannes has previously refused to play in competition any film that doesn’t have a theatrical release in France, leading to an impasse with Netflix. Though other movie institutions like the Academy Awards have bended theatrical rules during the pandemic, Cannes has not.  Among the standouts playing out of competition, or in Cannes’ new “Cannes Premiere” are: Andrea Arnold’s “Cow”; Todd Haynes’ documentary “The Velvet Underground”; Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater”; and the Oliver Stone documentary “JFK: Through the Looking Glass.”  Spike Lee, who debuted “Do the Right Thing” at Cannes in 1989, will preside over the jury selecting the Palme d’Or winner. He’s the first Black person to ever head the Cannes jury. At the opening ceremony, an honorary Palme will be given to Jodie Foster, who first came to Cannes as a 13-year-old for the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.”Speaking to The Associated Press after the press conference, Fremaux said it will be “the ultimate Cannes.””It will be something special. In five years people will be asking ‘Were you in Cannes in 2021?’ and people would say ‘No I wasn’t.’ ‘Oh you weren’t? That’s a pity. It was really great,'” said Fremaux. “It’s going to be a special Cannes.”
 
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Britain’s Brexit advocates drool at the idea of another European Union member opting to quit the bloc. And they hedge their bets whether it will be France, Italy or one of the so-called “awkward squad” of Central European countries so often at loggerheads with Brussels.At first glance the prospect of another EU member quitting the bloc — of a Frexit or Italexit —strikes seasoned political observers as unlikely. But Brexiters aren’t the only ones who see a likely nasty clash emerging on the horizon between Brussels and Rome.Current opinion surveys have firebrand populist Matteo Salvini’s Lega party and the national-conservative Fratelli d’Italia consistently polling together around 40 to 42%, enough, with the backing of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s more moderate but much diminished Forza Italia party, to form a governing coalition in the not-too-distant future.And that is unnerving EU officials.Early electionsItaly is not due an election until June 2023 at the latest, but plenty of lawmakers and commentators predict an earlier snap poll, either because the fragile government of national unity overseen by current prime minister, the former European central banker Mario Draghi, falls apart.Or because “Super Mario,” as Draghi is popularly nicknamed, decides to run for the presidency of Italy next year when incumbent Sergio Mattarella steps down. After guiding Italy through an especially politically tempestuous six years, complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, Mattarella, the scion of a storied Sicilian family, has decided it is time to retire.Later this month he turns 80. Recently he told children at an elementary school in Rome, “Mine is a demanding job, but in eight months my assignment ends. I will be able to rest. I am old.”Few believe he can be persuaded to change his mind. The Italian daily newspaper La Stampa noted: “In order to convince the current head of state to remain against his intentions, political calamities of such gravity and magnitude would have to occur that no one could wish for them.”Mattarella’s decision has prompted feverish speculation in Rome that Draghi will throw his hat in the ring, setting in motion the circumstances for a likely early parliamentary contest, whether he wins the presidential election or not.Italy’s political parties are already jockeying for position and making electoral calculations, which are especially complicated given the fragmentation of Italian politics. Twenty-one parties contested the last parliamentary elections in 2018 in a contest that broadly pitched two highly unstable and combustible electoral alliances with ever shifting allegiances and sharp personal animosities. Political commentators say the next election could see even more parties competing for seats and elected lawmakers switch party allegiances.A reduction at the next election in the number of lawmakers, from 630 to 400 deputies in the lower house and from 315 to 200 in the Senate, is adding to the complexity. But based on current opinion data Salvini’s Lega and the Fratelli, led by the 44-year-old Giorgia Meloni, will be the most likely to form a governing coalition.“The balance of forces has been gradually moving in the direction of a fully fledged right-wing coalition,” say Valerio Alfonso Bruno, a senior fellow at the Britain-based Center for Analysis of the Radical Right, and Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, a newspaper columnist, in a research note for the public-policy website Social Europe. Andrea Ungari, a politics professor at Rome’s LUISS University, agrees and estimates a rightwing coalition is set to win more than 51% of votes in the next election.EU officials alarmedDraghi was drafted in by Mattarella as a technocratic prime minister in January when a governing coalition mainly supported by the maverick Five Star Movement, M5S, and center-left Partito Democratico collapsed. He’s being urged publicly by center-left political allies in the Italian capital to forgo his presidential ambitions to avoid risking opening the door to Salvini and Meloni.In Brussels, EU officials say they’re alarmed at the prospects of Lega and the Fratelli governing Italy, fearing plenty of disputes between Brussels and Rome on migration policy, border controls, asylum policies, naval blockades of migrant boats, to name a few hot-button issues.Neither Salvini nor Meloni, who’s angling to become Italy’s first female prime minister, favor Italexit. But they are harshly critical of the EU and becoming more so, with Meloni, a former youth minister, forcing the pace, and Salvini trying to keep up. An EU official complained to VOA: “Meloni only sees Europe as a cash cow for Italy — she wants to milk it while ignoring the rules.”Fratelli d’Italia, co-founded by Meloni in 2012, is the main heir of the post-Second World War Movimento Sociale Italiano, formed by Fascist allies of dictator Benito Mussolini. In 2018 it won just 4% of the national vote, but since then has emerged from the fringes with startling speed.That’s largely thanks, say political observers, to Meloni’s decision to keep her party out of Draghi’s government of national unity, making it the main voice of opposition and transforming Meloni into a possible contender for the overall leadership of the right-wing alliance.Salvini chose to take his party into the government of national unity, fearing electoral repercussions if Lega was unable to influence how the Draghi government allocates $240 billion of EU recovery funds it has been allocated by Brussels. But he refrained from securing a cabinet role, giving him opportunities to be critical of the government, especially over its pandemic curbs. But pollsters say it has allowed Meloni to present herself as ideologically pure and consistent.The surge in support for Meloni’s party has been at Lega’s expense, according to pollsters. And Meloni, a mother of one and a former bartender at one of Rome’s most famous nightclubs, has been calling for a renegotiation of all EU treaties.Ernesto Galli della Loggia, an academic and influential columnist for Corriere della Sera, says it is “probable” Meloni’s party “could soon be the majority party of a center-right government and therefore called to lead the nation.” Writing Tuesday in the newspaper, he dismissed the demonizing of the Fratelli as “fascist,” saying the slogan is too easily evoked to “de-legitimize any position that is unwelcome” to the ruling class.His worry is that the Fratelli is not readying itself to govern, doing the hard thinking and forming the kind of relationships with the bureaucracy that it will need to have to effect change.  
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The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on three Bulgarians and 64 companies linked to them over alleged corruption, including an oligarch accused of planning to create a conduit for Russian political leaders to influence the Bulgarian government.The Treasury Department in a statement called the move its single biggest action targeting graft to date.Bulgaria ranks as the European Union’s most corrupt member state, according to the Transparency International advocacy group. The Balkan country has repeatedly been criticized by the European Commission for failing to root out corruption and place a single high-ranking senior official behind bars for graft.Bulgarian interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev said he was informed by U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland by telephone about the move, part of efforts to effectively combat corruption in Bulgaria.”In our relations with our partners and allies, we have unequivocally shared our conviction that the fight against corruption in all its forms should be our unconditional principled and practical priority,” Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.The move comes ahead of a July 11 snap parliamentary election in Bulgaria and after massive anti-corruption protests in 2020.The Treasury Department said it imposed sanctions on businessman and oligarch Vassil Bozhkov, accusing him of planning to create a channel for Russian leaders to influence the Bulgarian government and bribing government officials.Bozhkov, a gambling tycoon and one of Bulgaria’s richest men, fled the country in 2020 to escape criminal charges, including extortion, tax fraud and influence peddling, among others. He denies any wrongdoing and is now based in Dubai.The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on Delyan Peevski, a Bulgarian businessman and former member of Parliament, and on Ilko Zhelyazkov, a government official who the department said was used by Peevski for conducting bribery schemes.Sanctions also were imposed on 64 companies owned or controlled by Bozhkov and Peevski.The sanctions block the people and companies blacklisted from accessing the U.S. financial system, freezing any of their U.S. assets and barring Americans from dealing with them.The U.S. State Department also designated former Bulgarian officials Alexander Manolev, Petar Haralampiev, Krasimir Tomov, as well as Peevski and Zhelyazkov, over their alleged involvement in corruption, barring them and their families from entering the United States.Peevski sold many of his real estate holdings and media in the past year. Critics at home see him as a powerful behind-the-scenes power broker with strong influence on Bulgaria’s judiciary and political elites.The Treasury Department accused him of using “influence peddling and bribes to protect himself from public scrutiny and exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society.”In a statement to the media, Peevski decried his blacklisting. He denied any involvement in corrupt activities and said he plans to take legal action against the sanctions. 
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Oxygen levels have dropped in hundreds of lakes in the United States and Europe over the last four decades, a new study found.
 
And the authors said declining oxygen could lead to increased fish kills, algal blooms and methane emissions.
 
Researchers examined the temperature and dissolved oxygen — the amount of oxygen in the water — in nearly 400 lakes and found that declines were widespread. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found dissolved oxygen fell 5.5 % in surface waters of these lakes and 18.6% in deep waters.
 
The authors said their findings suggest that warming temperatures and decreased water clarity from human activity are causing the oxygen decline.
 
“Oxygen is one of the best indicators of ecosystem health, and changes in this study reflect a pronounced human footprint,” said co-author Craig E. Williamson, a biology professor at Miami University in Ohio.  
 
That footprint includes warming caused by climate change and decreased water clarity caused in part by runoff from sewage, fertilizer, cars and power plants.
 
Dissolved oxygen losses in Earth’s water systems have been reported before. A 2017 study of oxygen levels in the world’s oceans showed a 2% decline since 1960. But less was known about lakes, which lost two to nine times as much oxygen as oceans, the new study’s authors said.
 
Prior to this study, other researchers had reported on oxygen declines in individual lakes over a long period of time. But none have looked at as many lakes around the world, said Samuel B. Fey, a Reed College biology professor who studies lakes and was not involved in this study.
 
“I think one of the really interesting findings here is that the authors were able to show that there’s this pretty pronounced decline in dissolved oxygen concentrations in both the surface and (deep) parts of the lake,” Fey said.  
 
The deep water drop in oxygen levels is critical for aquatic organisms that are more sensitive to temperature increases, such as cold water fish. During summer months, they depend on cooler temperatures found deeper in the water, but if deep waters are low on oxygen, these organisms can’t survive.
 
“Those are the conditions that sometimes lead to fish kills in water bodies,” said study co-author Kevin C. Rose, a professor of biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “It really means that a lot of habitats for cold water fish could become inhospitable.”
 
Other organisms, Rose said, are more tolerant of warmer temperatures found at the surface level and can get enough oxygen by remaining near the surface, where water meets air.
 
About a quarter of the lakes examined actually showed increasing oxygen in surface waters, which Rose says is a bad sign because it’s likely attributable to increased algal blooms — sudden growth of blue green algae.
 
In these lakes, he said, dissolved oxygen was “very low” in deep waters and was unlivable for many species.
 
And the sediment in such oxygen-starved lakes tends to give off methane, a potent greenhouse gas, research shows.
 
Lakes examined in the new study were in the U.S. or Europe, except for one in Japan and a few in New Zealand. The authors said there was insufficient data to include other parts of the world.
 
Rose said lakes outside the study area probably are experiencing drops in dissolved oxygen, too. The reason, he said, is that warmer temperatures from climate change reduce the ability of oxygen to dissolve in water — its solubility.
 
“We know that most or many places around the planet are warming,” he said. “And so, we would expect to see declining solubility.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month the harboring of cyber attackers like those believed to have targeted meatpacking giant JBS, the White House said Wednesday.
 
Press secretary Jen Psaki also told reporters at the White House that Biden “has launched a rapid strategic review” of the attack that affected JBS operations in Australia and North America.
 
Biden will meet with his Russian counterpart in Geneva on June 16 as tensions between the two world powers have escalated over election meddling, human rights and Russian aggression toward Ukraine.Meat Producer JBS Back Online After Cyberattack White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says JBS told administration it received a random ransomware demand from a criminal organization likely based in Russia 
A U.S. subsidiary of the Brazilian meat processor told the U.S. government it received a ransom demand in the cyberattack it believes originated in Russia, deputy White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.  
 
“The White House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” Jean-Pierre said.
 
JBS, meanwhile, says it has made “significant progress” in resolving a cyberattack that affected its operations in North America and Australia.
 
JBS USA’s CEO, Andre Nogueira, said he expected “the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared food plants” to be operational Wednesday.
 
“Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat. We have cybersecurity plans in place to address these types of issues and we are successfully executing those plans,” Nogueira said in a statement.
 
JBS said its Canadian beef facility had already resumed production, and that the attack did not impact its operations in Mexico or Britain.
 
The company also said it was not aware of customer, supplier or employee data being compromised.
 
“I want to personally thank the White House, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Australian and Canadian governments for their assistance over the last two days,” Nogueira said.
 
Australian Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said plants in New South Wales and Victoria states were back operating on a limited basis Wednesday, and that JBS hoped to resume work in Queensland state on Thursday.
 
Littleproud also said Australian officials would be meeting Wednesday with U.S. officials to discuss the situation.
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson each expressed support Wednesday for a strong response against Belarus for its actions in arresting an opposition journalist. Speaking at a joint news conference at the prime minister’s residence, Stoltenberg said forcing the landing of a civilian aircraft and arresting a journalist on the plane, as Belarus did last month, was a violation of international norms and rules. He called for the immediate release of Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend. Stoltenberg said he welcomes sanctions imposed by Britain, the European Union and other allies. Johnson added that the important thing now is to see that those sanctions are fully implemented and perhaps stepped up even further. Johnson called the incident “appalling and outrageous,” adding that it was important the allies stand together in protest. NATO’s 30 allies released a two-paragraph statement on Wednesday but did not include any punitive steps that Baltic allies and Poland had urged. Stoltenberg said the issue is sure to be discussed during a NATO summit scheduled for June 14 in Brussels.  
 
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A massive and long-awaited new translation of Mein Kampf — peppered with scholarly commentary to explain Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s disjointed, hate-filled manifesto — has been released in France. The project has been controversial, but supporters say it could serve as a warning against rising acts of hate and antisemitism today.The book is a recast translation of Mein Kampf,  or My Struggle, Hitler’s 1925 manifesto detailing how he became antisemitic, his ideology and his plans for Germany. The recast is 1,000 pages and costs more than $120. Adolf Hitler’s name and face do not appear on its plain white cover. The new edition by French publisher Fayard — titled Putting Evil in Context: A Critical Edition of Mein Kampf — does not aim to be a bestseller. French bookstores cannot stock copies, which are available by order only. All proceeds will go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.  Historian Christian Ingrao, part of the academic team involved in the Fayard edition, told French radio the book aims to desacralize Hitler’s work that has attracted a kind of fetishism. It aims to offer an unvarnished take on the Nazi leader’s writing, which Ingrao and others say is repetitive, rambling and riddled with mistakes. Translator Olivier Mannoni called Hitler’s manifesto an “incoherent soup.” The translation is accompanied by lengthy historians’ notes and annotations that make up most of the book.  Germany and Poland have published similar scholarly translations in recent years.  In France, the first edition of Mein Kampf came out in 1934, and attempted to improve on Hitler’s writing. By that time he was chancellor of Germany, where his book had become a bestseller. Hitler’s rule saw Europe plunged into World War II — and the Holocaust that killed roughly six million Jews, including more than 70,000 from France.  Today, antisemitism is again on the rise across Europe, watchdog groups say. So is the far right. While printed copies of Mein Kampf have stagnated worldwide, digital editions have surged in recent years, although publishers point to a mix of reasons. Last year, Amazon banned most editions of the book from its site. Ninety-six-year-old Holocaust survivor Ginette Kolinka speaks to French school groups about her memories. She told French radio she never read Mein Kampf — mostly, she says, because she had other books to read. But she says young people need to read everything — good and bad — to form opinions for themselves, and eventually understand tolerance.  The Fayard translation project has been controversial. A few years ago, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon called it “morally unacceptable.” Since then, it has been endorsed by several prominent Jewish figures, including Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.  France’s Grand Rabbi, Haim Korsia, told VOA that Klarsfeld’s support for the translation shaped his own views. His argument: You can’t reproach the world for not having read Hitler’s writings nearly a century ago — which forecast the horror the Nazi leader was preparing — and then tell people today not to read this new translation, which could help prevent hatred, prejudice and antisemitism from reappearing.  
 
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An Istanbul prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday it launched an investigation into the murder of a Turkish Cypriot journalist 25 years ago, after a mob leader said last month the killing was ordered by a former Turkish minister.
 
Convicted gang leader Sedat Peker’s uncorroborated allegations on YouTube of extrajudicial killings in the 1990s have placed the unsolved murders of hundreds of people during that decade back on the agenda in Turkey.
 
In a video viewed by 17 million Turks, Peker said he tasked his brother to kill journalist Kutlu Adali in 1996 upon the orders of a former minister.
 
Peker said his brother Atilla was not able to carry out the killing, although Adali was shot dead shortly afterwards in July 1996.
 
Atilla Peker was briefly detained nine days ago, a few hours after his brother’s video was released.
 
Istanbul Anadolu prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that it had launched a new investigation into Adali’s murder based on an application for the probe by Atilla Peker that “included various claims”.
 
It said efforts were being made to obtain information and documents from Turkish Cypriot judicial authorities regarding the killing, in addition to collecting potential evidence in Turkey.
 
It said a detailed statement would be taken from Atilla Peker.
 
An initial investigation at the time of Adali’s murder did not uncover who was responsible. The European Court of Human Rights fined Turkey in 2005 for a failure to carry out an “adequate and effective investigation into the circumstances surrounding the killing”.
 
Sedat Peker, 49, rose to prominence in the 1990s as a gangland figure and was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2007 for crimes including forming and leading a criminal gang.
 
He has said he is now in Dubai, although Reuters has not been able to verify his whereabouts. The eight videos he has so far uploaded have been viewed more than 70 million times in total.
 
Peker’s accusations against current and former government officials also include rape, drug trafficking and covert arms deliveries.
 
President Tayyip Erdogan and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, one of the people Peker has targeted so far, have strongly rejected the accusations. Soylu said the accusations were a plot against the country. 
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On Tuesday, Italy lifted restrictions on indoor dining, Germany downgraded the coronavirus risk level from very high to high, and Israel lifted almost all pandemic restrictions. More from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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Greece, Germany and five other European Union nations introduced a vaccination certificate system for travelers on Tuesday, weeks ahead of the July 1 rollout of the program across the 27-nation bloc.The other countries starting early were Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia and Poland, according to the European Commission.Greece, which depends heavily on tourism, has been pressing for the commonly recognized certificate that uses a QR code with advanced security features. The certificates are being issued to people who are fully vaccinated, as well as those who have already contracted the virus and developed antibodies, and others who have had a PCR test within the last 72 hours.The documents will have both digital and paper forms. They’ll be free of charge, distributed in the national language plus English and be valid in all the bloc’s countries.”EU citizens are looking forward to traveling again, and they want to do so safely. Having an EU certificate is a crucial step on the way,” EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said.Greece’s digital governance minister, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, said easier travel will open up within the EU as nations adopt the new verification standard.”What will happen is that countries will stop issuing certificates using their own convention and adopt the common convention. That will simplify things considerably, because you can imagine the number of bilateral agreements that would otherwise need to be worked out,” Pierrakakis told private Skai television.Kyriakides said in the next few weeks, all EU nations need to “fully finalize their national systems to issue, store and verify certificates so the system is functioning in time for the holiday season.”Countries will be allowed to add extra vaccines to their individual entry list, including those that have not been formally approved for use across the EU.The EU Commission believes that people who are vaccinated should no longer have to be tested or put into quarantines, regardless of where they are traveling to or from, starting 14 days after receiving their second shot. Member countries, however, have not yet endorsed that recommendation.
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On Tuesday, Italy lifted restrictions on indoor dining, Germany downgraded the coronavirus risk level from very high to high, and Israel lifted almost all pandemic restrictions. More from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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The Belarusian democratic opposition and some Western governments are calling for harsher sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime following the forced diversion in late May of an international airliner to arrest a Belarusian dissident blogger on board. Analysts warn if there is not a strong response, other authoritarian governments around the world might resort to the same tactic to arrest dissidents. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka has more.Produced by: Ihar Tsikhanenka  
 
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European Union government and Parliament negotiators reached a deal Tuesday on rules that will force large multinational companies to disclose how much revenue and tax they pay in the 27-nation bloc and how much they pay in countries considered tax havens by the EU. The new law, proposed by the European Commission in 2016, is part of the EU’s efforts to fight tax avoidance by large international companies at a time when the EU badly needs cash to finance an economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the new law, multinational corporations with a turnover of more than $916 million annually in two consecutive years will have to declare profits, tax and number of employees in EU countries and in countries on the EU list of noncooperative jurisdictions. But data on tax paid in other countries outside the EU and not on the tax havens blacklist will only be given in aggregated form, as EU governments did not want to agree to a more detailed country-by-country breakdown. The Oxfam charity group criticized that, saying many of the world’s tax havens were not on the EU list of noncooperative jurisdictions and therefore would avoid scrutiny. “Transparency for only the 27 EU member states and the 21 currently blacklisted or greylisted jurisdictions means keeping corporate secrecy for over three out of four of the world’s nearly 200 countries,” the Oxfam charity group said. “EU legislators have granted multinational corporations plenty of opportunities to continue dodging taxes in secrecy by shifting their profits to tax havens outside the EU, like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland,” Oxfam’s tax expert Chiara Putaturo said. She said the deal also offered companies a reporting exemption for commercially sensitive information for five years, providing a way to avoid disclosure, and noted the large turnover requirement would exclude up to 90% of multinationals. But some members of the European Parliament who negotiated the deal said it would still help make the tax system fairer. “These tax transparency measures will help to ensure that multinational companies pay their fair share and can bring some fairness to how they operate,” said Ernest Urtasun, Greens MEP of the Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee. According to the Tax Justice Network think tank, EU countries are responsible for 36% of tax lost globally to corporate tax abuse, costing countries worldwide over $154 billion every year as profits are shifted to low tax jurisdictions like Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The text of the agreement must now go through formal adoption in two European Parliament committees and the Parliament’s plenary, and in the Council of EU governments. 
 
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A Belarusian opposition activist stabbed himself in the throat with a pen during a court hearing in Minsk on Tuesday to protest what he claimed were threats from authorities to arrest his family members and friends if he did not plead guilty to organizing protests against the country’s authoritarian ruler, President Alexander Lukashenko.Footage from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty showed Stsiapan Latypau lying limp on a bench in the defendant’s cage after his self-inflicted wounding as guards tended to him.The video showed him being carried unconscious from the courthouse on a stretcher, his neck wrapped in a white cloth, and put into an ambulance.The Viasna human rights center in Belarus said Latypau was put into an induced coma. His lawyer declined to comment on his condition.Before he stabbed himself, Latypau climbed on the bench in the cage and claimed investigators had told him, “If I don’t plead guilty, they will open criminal cases against my family and neighbors.”Latypau has been held since September 2020 on various charges, including accusations that he staged actions violating the public order in last summer’s vast protests against Lukashenko. The street demonstrations occurred after the strongman claimed a sixth presidential election victory with 80% of the vote.If convicted, Latypau faces up to 10 years in prison.Latypau’s apparent attempted suicide is the latest incident with links to protests against Lukashenko. Last week, an opposition politician died in prison under unclear circumstances, while a teenager under investigation for protesting committed suicide by throwing himself from a 16-story building. “This is the result of state terror, repressions, torture in Belarus,” wrote Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, an opposition leader. “We must stop it immediately!” Many governments, except Russia, a close ally of Belarus, condemned Lukashenko last month after he diverted a Ryanair jetliner flying over Belarus and carrying Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian activist who had fled the country in 2019 and had since lived in exile.Pratasevich and his companion, Sofia Sapega, were arrested when the flight landed in Minsk on the purported claim of a bomb aboard the aircraft, although no explosive was found.In response, European countries stopped flying over Belarus, depriving Minsk of overflight revenue, and blocked flights by Belavia, the Belarusian state air carrier, from landing in European cities.Lukashenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin late last week to shore up support with his government’s key foreign ally. On Tuesday, Lukashenko announced Belarus would soon open direct flights with Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Russia annexed in 2014, although Western governments do not recognize Moscow’s claim to the territory. 
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The World Health Organization has granted emergency approval for the use of a Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine for adults 18 and older.
 
The U.N. health agency approved a vaccine Tuesday made by Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese biopharmaceutical company. It was the second time the WHO approved a vaccine made by a Chinese company on an emergency basis.  
 
The WHO said data submitted by Sinovac indicated that two doses of the vaccine prevented symptoms from developing in just over half of those who received vaccinations. The agency also said it could not estimate the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 60 because few people in that age group participated in trials.
 
The WHO’s decision makes another vaccine available for use in poorer countries through COVAX, an international program that distributes vaccines to developing nations, many of them impoverished.
 
But COVAX’s distribution efforts have been slowed after its largest vaccine supplier in India said it was forced to stop supplying vaccines until the end of the year because of sharp rises in infections in the country.
 
Last month, the agency approved for emergency use a vaccine made by Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company. Other vaccines approved on an emergency basis by the WHO were manufactured by AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioNTech.
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Pope Francis on Tuesday issued revisions to the Catholic Church’s criminal code, including punishments for priests and others who use “force, threats or abuse of his authority” to engage in sexual acts.
 
Priests who commit such offenses against minors or adults can be defrocked, while laypeople face losing their jobs or paying fines.
 
The revisions state that bishops and other superiors can be held responsible for failing to properly investigate and sanction priests.
 
A new provision also criminalizes the act of priests “grooming” or inducing a minor to engage in pornography.
 
The changes come after 14 years of study and as the Catholic Church continues to reckon with reports of decades of sexual assault and abuse by priests. 
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Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open on Monday and wrote on Twitter that she would be taking a break from competition, a dramatic turn of events for a four-time Grand Slam champion who said she experiences “huge waves of anxiety” before speaking to the media and revealed she has “suffered long bouts of depression.”pic.twitter.com/LN2ANnoAYD— NaomiOsaka大坂なおみ (@naomiosaka) May 31, 2021Osaka’s agent, Stuart Duguid, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the world’s No. 2-ranked tennis player was pulling out before her second-round match at the clay-court tournament in Paris.
The stunning move came a day after Osaka, a 23-year-old who was born in Japan and moved with her family to the United States at age 3, was fined $15,000 for skipping the postmatch news conference after her first-round victory at the French Open. She also was threatened by all four Grand Slam tournaments with possible additional punishment, including disqualification or suspension, if she continued with her intention — which Osaka revealed last week on Twitter — to not “do any press during Roland Garros.”
She framed the matter as a mental health issue, saying that it can create self-doubt to have to answer questions after a loss.
“First and foremost we are sorry and sad for Naomi Osaka. The outcome of Naomi withdrawing from Roland Garros is unfortunate,” French tennis federation President Gilles Moretton said Monday. “We wish her the best and the quickest possible recovery. And we look forward to having Naomi in our tournament next year.”
Moretton said the four major tournaments, and the professional tennis tours, “remain very committed to all athletes’ well-being and to continually improving every aspect of players’ experience in our tournament, including with the media, like we always have.”
In Monday’s post, Osaka spoke about dealing with depression since the 2018 U.S. Open, which she won by beating Serena Williams in a final filled with controversy.
“I would never trivialize mental health or use the term lightly,” Osaka wrote, explaining that speaking with the media makes her anxious.
“I think now the best thing for the tournament, the other players and my well-being is that I withdraw so that everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris,” Osaka wrote. “I never wanted to be a distraction and I accept that my timing was not ideal and my message could have been clearer.”
She continued: “Anyone that knows me knows I’m introverted, and anyone that has seen me at the tournaments will notice that I’m often wearing headphones as that helps dull my social anxiety. … I am not a natural public speaker and get huge waves of anxiety before I speak to the world’s media.”
Williams was asked about Osaka on Monday after winning her opening match in the first scheduled night session in French Open history.
“I feel for Naomi. I feel like I wish I could give her a hug because I know what it’s like. … I’ve been in those positions,” Williams said. “We have different personalities, and people are different. Not everyone is the same. I’m thick; other people are thin. Everyone is different and everyone handles things differently. You just have to let her handle it the way she wants to, in the best way she thinks she can, and that’s the only thing I can say. I think she’s doing the best that she can.”
Osaka has never been past the third round on the French Open’s red clay. It takes seven victories to win a Grand Slam title, which she has done four times at hard-court tournaments: the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020; the Australian Open in 2019 and this February.
“Here in Paris I was already feeling vulnerable and anxious so I thought it was better to exercise self-care and skip the press conferences,” she wrote.
Tennis players are required to attend news conferences if requested to do so.
The maximum fine of $20,000 is not a big deal to Osaka, the world’s highest-earning female athlete thanks to endorsement contracts totaling tens of millions of dollars.
“Mental health and awareness around it is one of the highest priorities to the WTA,” the women’s tennis tour said in a statement emailed by a spokeswoman.
“We have invested significant resources, staffing and educational tools in this area for the past 20-plus years and continue to develop our mental health support system for the betterment of the athletes and the organization. We remain here to support and assist Naomi in any way possible and we hope to see her back on the court soon.”
Other players, notably 13-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal and No. 1-ranked Ash Barty, have said they respect Osaka’s right to take a stance but explained that they consider speaking to reporters part of the job.
After Osaka’s post Monday, several athletes in tennis and other sports tweeted their support.
Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam champion, wrote: “I am so sad about Naomi Osaka. I truly hope she will be ok. As athletes we are taught to take care of our body, and perhaps the mental & emotional aspect gets short shrift. This is about more than doing or not doing a press conference. Good luck Naomi- we are all pulling for you!”
Two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry wrote that it was “impressive taking the high road when the powers that be don’t protect their own. major respect.”
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As the world begins to travel again, Europe is sending migrants a loud message: Stay away!Greek border police are firing bursts of deafening noise from an armored truck over the frontier into Turkey. Mounted on the vehicle, the long-range acoustic device, or “sound cannon,” is the size of a small TV set but can match the volume of a jet engine.It’s part of a vast array of physical and experimental new digital barriers being installed and tested during the quiet months of the coronavirus pandemic at the 200-kilometer (125-mile) Greek border with Turkey to stop people entering the European Union illegally.A new steel wall, similar to recent construction on the U.S.-Mexico border, blocks commonly used crossing points along the Evros River, which separates the two countries.Police officers patrol alongside a steel wall at Evros river, near the village of Poros, at the Greek -Turkish border, Greece, May 21, 2021.Nearby observation towers are being fitted with long-range cameras, night vision and multiple sensors. The data will be sent to control centers to flag suspicious movement using artificial intelligence analysis.”We will have a clear ‘pre-border’ picture of what’s happening,” Police Maj. Dimosthenis Kamargios, head of the region’s border guard authority, told The Associated Press.The EU has poured 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) into security tech research following the refugee crisis in 2015-16, when more than 1 million people — many escaping wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — fled to Greece and on to other EU countries.The automated surveillance network being built on the Greek-Turkish border is aimed at detecting migrants early and deterring them from crossing, with river and land patrols using searchlights and long-range acoustic devices.Key elements of the network will be launched by the end of the year, Kamargios said. “Our task is to prevent migrants from entering the country illegally. We need modern equipment and tools to do that.”Testing at Greek bordersResearchers at universities around Europe, working with private firms, have developed futuristic surveillance and verification technology, and tested more than a dozen projects at Greek borders.AI-powered lie detectors and virtual border-guard interview bots have been piloted, as well as efforts to integrate satellite data with footage from drones on land, air and sea and underwater. Palm scanners record the unique vein pattern in a person’s hand to use as a biometric identifier, and the makers of live camera reconstruction technology promise to erase foliage virtually, exposing people hiding near border areas.Police officer Dimosthenis Kamargios watches an electronic surveillance tower near the village of Lagyna, at the Greek -Turkish border, Greece, May 21, 2021.Testing has also been conducted in Hungary, Latvia and elsewhere along the eastern EU perimeter.The more aggressive migration strategy has been advanced by European policymakers over the past five years, funding deals with Mediterranean countries outside the bloc to hold migrants back and transforming the EU border protection agency, Frontex, from a coordination mechanism to a full-fledged multinational security force.But regional migration deals have left the EU exposed to political pressure from neighbors.Earlier this month, several thousand migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in a single day, prompting Spain to deploy the army. A similar crisis unfolded on the Greek-Turkish border and lasted three weeks last year.Greece is pressing the EU to let Frontex patrol outside its territorial waters to stop migrants reaching Lesbos and other Greek islands, the most common route in Europe for illegal crossing in recent years.Armed with new tech tools, European law enforcement authorities are leaning further outside borders.Not all the surveillance programs being tested will be included in the new detection system, but human rights groups say the emerging technology will make it even harder for refugees fleeing wars and extreme hardship to find safety.’Everybody should care’Patrick Breyer, a European lawmaker from Germany, has taken an EU research authority to court, demanding that details of the AI-powered lie detection program be made public.”What we are seeing at the borders, and in treating foreign nationals generally, is that it’s often a testing field for technologies that are later used on Europeans as well. And that’s why everybody should care, in their own self-interest,” Breyer of the German Pirates Party told the AP.He urged authorities to allow broad oversight of border surveillance methods to review ethical concerns and prevent the sale of the technology through private partners to authoritarian regimes outside the EU.Ella Jakubowska, of the digital rights group EDRi, argued that EU officials were adopting “techno-solutionism” to sideline moral considerations in dealing with the complex issue of migration.”It is deeply troubling that, time and again, EU funds are poured into expensive technologies which are used in ways that criminalize, experiment with and dehumanize people on the move,” she said.The London-based group Privacy International argued the tougher border policing would provide a political reward to European leaders who have adopted a hard line on migration.”If people migrating are viewed only as a security problem to be deterred and challenged, the inevitable result is that governments will throw technology at controlling them,” said Edin Omanovic, an advocacy director at the group. “It’s not hard to see why: Across Europe we have autocrats looking for power by targeting foreigners, otherwise progressive leaders who have failed to come up with any alternatives to copying their agendas, and a rampant arms industry with vast access to decision-makers.”Migration flows have slowed in many parts of Europe during the pandemic, interrupting an increase recorded over years. In Greece, for example, the number of arrivals dropped from nearly 75,000 in 2019 to 15,700 in 2020, a 78% decrease.But the pressure is sure to return. Between 2000 and 2020, the world’s migrant population rose by more than 80% to reach 272 million, according to United Nations data, fast outpacing international population growth.At the Greek border village of Poros, the breakfast discussion at a cafe was about the recent crisis on the Spanish-Moroccan border.Many of the houses in the area are abandoned and in a gradual state of collapse, and life is adjusting to that reality.Cows use the steel wall as a barrier for the wind and rest nearby.Panagiotis Kyrgiannis, a Poros resident, says the wall and other preventive measures have brought migrant crossings to a dead stop.”We are used to seeing them cross over and come through the village in groups of 80 or a 100,” he said. “We were not afraid. … They don’t want to settle here. All of this that’s happening around us is not about us.” 
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Morocco and Spain traded new accusations on Monday in a diplomatic row triggered by the Western Sahara territorial issue that led this month to a migration crisis in Spain’s enclave in northern Morocco.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described Morocco’s actions in appearing to relax border controls with the enclave of Ceuta as unacceptable and an assault on national borders.Morocco’s Foreign Ministry meanwhile blamed Spain for breaking “mutual trust and respect,” drawing parallels between the issues of Western Sahara and Spain’s Catalonia region, where there is an independence movement.The dispute was sparked by Spain admitting Western Sahara independence movement leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment without informing Rabat.”It is not acceptable for a government to say that we will attack the borders, that we will open up the borders to let in 10,000 migrants in less than 48 hours … because of foreign policy disagreements,” Sanchez said at a news conference.Most migrants who crossed into Ceuta were immediately returned to Morocco, but hundreds of unaccompanied minors, who cannot be deported under Spanish law, remain.The influx was widely seen as retaliation for Spain’s decision to discreetly take in Ghali.Morocco regards Western Sahara as part of its own territory. The Algeria-backed Polisario seeks an independent state in the territory, where Spain was colonial ruler until 1975.Describing Spain as Morocco’s best ally in the European Union, Sanchez said he wanted to convey a constructive attitude toward Rabat but insisted that border security was paramount.”Remember that neighborliness … must be based on respect and confidence,” he said.Morocco’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Spain violated good neighborliness and mutual trust and that migration was not the problem.Rabat added that it has cooperated with Madrid in curbing migrant flows and in countering terrorism, which it said helped foil 82 militant attacks in Spain.The case of Ghali “revealed the hostile attitudes and harmful strategies of Spain regarding the Moroccan Sahara,” the ministry said in a statement.Spain “cannot combat separatism at home and promote it in its neighbor,” it said, noting Rabat’s support for Madrid against the Catalan independence movement.Separately, Ghali, who has been hospitalized with COVID-19 in Logrono in the Rioja region, will attend a Tuesday high court hearing remotely from the hospital, his lawyer’s office said.Morocco, which has withdrawn its ambassador to Madrid, has said it may sever ties with Spain if Ghali left the country the same way he entered without a trial. 
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Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny asked a court Monday to halt the hourly nighttime checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony.  Speaking to the court in a video link from prison, Navalny charged that he has done nothing that would warrant the authorities’ decision to designate him as a flight risk, which has resulted in the checks.  “I just want them to stop coming to me and waking me up at nighttime,” he told the judge in remarks that were broadcast by the independent Dozhd TV. “What did I do: Did I climb the fence? Did I dig up an underpass? Or was I wringing a pistol from someone? Just explain why they named me a flight risk!”He argued that the hourly nighttime checks “effectively amount to torture,” telling the judge that “you would go mad in a week” if subjected to such regular wake-ups.The court later adjourned the hearing until Wednesday.Navalny, the most determined political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — accusations that Russian officials reject.In February, he was handed a 2 1/2-year sentence for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction, which he says was politically motivated.He went on a 24-day hunger strike in prison to protest the lack of medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs, ending it last month after getting the medical attention he demanded.While he still was on hunger strike, Navalny was moved from a penal colony east of Moscow, where he was serving his sentence, to the hospital ward of another prison in Vladimir, a city 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of the capital. He remains at that prison, where he said the nighttime checks continued, although they were less intrusive.With Navalny in prison, prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to designate his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his network of regional offices as extremist groups. A bill, which has sailed quickly through the Kremlin-controlled lower house of Russian parliament, bars members, donors and supporters of extremist groups from seeking public office.The parallel moves have been widely seen as an attempt to keep any of Navalny’s associates from running in September’s parliamentary election. 
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After outlining a fresh chapter in French-African relations, with calls for massive economic support for Africa and visits to Rwanda and South Africa last week, President Emmanuel Macron is back home to confront familiar and thorny problems in France’s former colonies, underscoring the challenges of breaking with the past.At front and center is Mali, buffeted by its fifth coup since independence from Paris in 1960 — and the second in less than a year. To the east, Chad is also unsettled by a controversial political transition, following the April death of longstanding leader Idriss Deby. Both countries are key allies in France’s counter-terrorism operation in the Sahel.Russians and Malian flags are waved by protesters in Bamako, Mali, during a demonstration against French influence in the country on May 27, 2021.Farther south, Paris fears Russia’s growing influence in the Central African Republic — among that of other newer foreign powers — including Moscow’s alleged role in fueling anti-French sentiments.Taken together, some analysts say, these developments, combined with France’s legacy in Africa — and, in some cases, Macron’s own actions — may make it harder to deliver on his promises of change.“Emmanuel Macron is trapped in a contradictory position,” Africa specialist Antoine Glaser told French television station TV5 Monde.“He wants to get out of FrancAfrique by turning to anglophone countries like Rwanda and South Africa,” he said, referring to the tangle web of business and political interests with France’s former colonies, “but he’s bogged down in the francophone countries.”Moving forward, looking backMacron states otherwise, as he looks for new ways and new places to exert French influence on the continent. At a May summit in Paris, he called on richer countries to invest massively in Africa’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and echoed Washington’s call for a patent waiver on COVID-19 vaccines — calls he reiterated during his visit to South Africa on Friday. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the virus.The French leader also organized a special donors’ conference on Sudan — another country outside Paris’ traditional sphere of influence — and announced plans to cancel Khartoum’s $5 billion bilateral debt.Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, left, Chad President Idriss Deby, center, and France President Emmanuel Macron arrive for a picture during the G5 Sahel summit on June 30, 2020, in Nouakchott, Mauritania.The calls fit into Macron’s broader reset of relations with the continent since taking office in 2017. Visiting Burkina Faso later that year, he promised to return plundered artifacts to former colonies, a pledge several other European governments have since echoed.“For sure, colonialization has left a strong imprint,” Macron told the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, in a lengthy interview published Sunday. “But I also told young people in Ouagadougou (in 2017) that today’s problems aren’t linked to colonialism, they’re more caused by bad governance by some, and corruption by others. These are African subjects, and relations with France should not exonerate leaders from their own responsibilities.” Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso.Yet Macron has also gone further than his predecessors in acknowledging France’s blame for past injustices. He set up fact-finding commissions to examine Paris’ role in Algeria’s war of independence and in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. While both reports were critical, Macron ruled out official apologies.Still, he has followed some of the reconciliatory actions recommended by the Algeria commission. And in Kigali on Thursday, he turned the problem around, asking Rwandans instead to forgive France for its role in the mass killings, while saying France had not been an accomplice in them.”His words were something more valuable than an apology. They were the truth,” Rwandan President Paul Kagame said of Macron’s speech, calling it “an act of tremendous courage.”French President Emmanuel Macron, center, and his wife Brigitte Macron, left, welcome Chadian Prime Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke, right, for a dinner with leaders of African states, at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, May 17, 2021.Continuation or break?Yet in Rwanda and elsewhere, Macron’s actions have also drawn controversy—reflecting, some analysts say, a continuation rather than a break with the past. Some question Macron’s visit to Kigali, for example, noting its increasingly authoritarian leader.In Chad, where Macron was the only Western leader to attend Deby’s funeral, Paris appeared to initially endorse the military council that took over after Deby’s death, and which is headed by his son. While the body has promised eventual elections, some opposition activists claim its existence amounts to an effective coup d’etat.Days later, Macron appeared to backtrack, saying France supported a democratic and inclusive transition and not a “succession plan.”“For too long, France’s view remained short-sighted and purely military: Chad was no more than a provider of troops for regional wars,” Chad expert Jerome Tubiana wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.Deby’s death, he added, was a potential game changer Paris should seize.“If France renews with a new junta the same deal it had with Deby — fighters in exchange for political, financial, and military backing — it will miss that long-awaited turning point when democratic change in Chad could actually become a reality,” he added.In Mali, by contrast, France and the European Union have denounced the country’s latest coup as “unacceptable.” Macron warned West African leaders they could not support a country without “democratic legitimacy or transition,” he told Le Journal du Dimanche, threatening to pull French troops from the country if it tipped to “radical Islamism.”The president has long floated an eventual drawdown of France’s 5,100-strong counter-insurgency operation in the Sahel, hoping also to beef up other European forces in the region, to help shoulder the fight.But analyst Glaser believes Mali’s latest military takeover could make it harder, not easier, to fulfill that goal.“This situation puts him in a delicate position,” Glaser said of Macron. “He wants to get out of FrancAfrique and keeps saying … that the solution in Africa is political, not military. So, when Mali faces major problems politically, his whole strategy is undermined.” 
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Turkish agents have captured a nephew of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen in an overseas operation and have brought him to Turkey where he faces prosecution, Turkey’s state-run news agency said Monday.Selahaddin Gulen, who was wanted in Turkey on charges of membership in a terror organization, was seized in an operation by Turkey’s national spy agency MIT, the Anadolu agency reported.  The report did not say where he was seized or when he was returned to Turkey. Gulen’s nephew, however, was believed to be residing in Kenya.His case is the latest in a series of forced repatriation of people affiliated with Gulen’s movement, which the Turkish government blames for a failed coup attempt in 2016.  Gulen, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who now lives in exile in Pennsylvania, has rejected the accusations of involvement in the coup attempt.Turkey has designated his network a terrorist group, which it has named the Fethullahist Terror Organization, or FETO.Erdogan announced earlier in May that a prominent member of Gulen’s network had been captured but did not provide details.On July 15, 2016, factions within the Turkish military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters in an attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Fighter jets bombed parliament and other spots in Turkey’s capital. Heeding a call by the president, thousands took to the streets to stop the coup.A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed. 
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The Turkish government is facing accusations of arming and funding jihadists in Syria. The allegations are just the latest by an exiled mafia boss in a weekly YouTube broadcast that are putting the Turkish president in an increasingly tight spot.  
 
Among the many allegations being spread by Sedat Peker on YouTube is one that allegedly implicates the Turkish government of arming and buying oil from Syrian jihadists. In one of his broadcasts Peker explains in detail how key aides of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ran the scheme.  
 
Peker, who analysts say once enjoyed close ties to Turkey’s rulers, started broadcasting weekly Sunday videos on a YouTube channel, alleging government misdeeds after he was forced to flee the country.  
 
Analyst Atilla Yesilada says the mafia boss has a growing audience.  
 
“It is huge. He is easily attracting audiences in excess of four and five million per video. And everything he says is scrutinized in the opposition channels. So, I would say everyone knows about what he is saying. Obviously, the most damaging is him opening the 1990s file, the extrajudicial killings,” Yesilada said.
Peker alleges former interior minister Mehmet Aga was the head of a shadowy organization known as the “deep state,” which is said to have been responsible for a series of assassinations of prominent journalists dating back to the 1990s. Aga is closely linked to Erdogan, and his son Tolga is a parliamentary deputy for the ruling AKP, Turkey’s ruling party.  FILE – A photo taken May 26, 2021, in Istanbul, Turkey, shows a YouTube broadcast by exiled mob boss Sedat Peker on a mobile phone.Aga has denied the allegations. Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders says there is a need for government transparency.
 
“This should be part of a parliamentary investigation first, but I think that it will never be possible without the Turkish government naming some state actors in this period. So, transparency today should calm public opinion today and show respect to victims’ families,” Onderoglu said.
 
But Erdogan is dismissing the allegations.
 
Speaking to his party’s deputies, the Turkish president claimed the accusations are part of an international conspiracy to oust him.  
 
But Peker’s allegations continue, accusing the son of Erdogan’s close confidant, former prime minister Binali Yildirim, of cocaine smuggling, and turning Turkey into one of the biggest hubs for importing and distributing drugs into Europe. Yildirim dismissed the allegations.  
 
Analysts point out Erdogan is experienced at weathering political storms. But analyst Yesilada says, unlike in the past, Turkey is in the midst of an economic crisis and record-low opinion poll ratings for Erdogan.
 
“These are all unmistakable signs of Armageddon for Erdogan approaching. It will really take a miracle to repair the reputational damage that is caused by the Peker videos. The picture that emerges is that this is a government set for personal benefit and for the benefit of cronies and [one that] has completely lost interest in the voters,” Yesilada said.
 
Peker is promising more YouTube videos that he says will share more intimate secrets he claims he learned from spending two decades in the inner circles of the ruling party.
 
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