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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crew had dedocked from the ISS three hours earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As dozens of African migrants traversed the Mediterranean Sea on a flimsy white rubber boat, a small aircraft circling 1,000 feet above closely monitored their attempt to reach Europe.

The twin-engine Seabird, owned by the German non-governmental organization Sea-Watch, is tasked with documenting human rights violations committed against migrants at sea and relaying distress cases to nearby ships and authorities who have increasingly ignored their pleas.

On this cloudy October afternoon, an approaching thunderstorm heightened the dangers for the overcrowded boat. Nearly 23,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe since 2014, according to the United Nations’ migration agency.

“Nour 2, Nour 2, this is aircraft Seabird, aircraft Seabird,” the aircraft’s tactical coordinator, Eike Bretschneider, communicated via radio with the only vessel nearby. The captain of the Nour 2 agreed to change course and check up on the flimsy boat. But after seeing the boat had a Libyan flag, the people refused its assistance, the captain reported back on the crackling radio.

“They say they only have 20 liters of fuel left,” the captain, who did not identify himself by name, told the Seabird. “They want to continue on their journey.”

The small boat’s destination was the Italian island of Lampedusa, where tourists sitting in outdoor cafés sipped on Aperol Spritz, oblivious to what was unfolding some 111 kilometers south of them on the Mediterranean Sea.

Bretschneider, a 30-year-old social worker, made some quick calculations and concluded the migrants must have departed Libya approximately 20 hours ago and still had some 15 hours ahead of them before they reached Lampedusa. That was if their boat did not fall apart or capsize along the way.

Despite the risks, many migrants and refugees say they’d rather die trying to cross to Europe than be returned to Libya where, upon disembarkation, they are placed in detention centers and often subjected to relentless abuse.

Bretschneider sent the rubber boat’s coordinates to the air liaison officer sitting in Berlin, who then relayed the position (inside the Maltese Search and Rescue zone) to both Malta and Italy. Unsurprisingly to them, they received no response.

Running low on fuel, the Seabird had to leave the scene.

“We can only hope the people will reach the shore at some moment or will get rescued by a European coast guard vessel,” Bretschneider told AP as they made their way back.

The activists have grown used to having their distress calls go unanswered.

For years human rights groups and international law experts have denounced that European countries are increasingly ignoring their international obligations to rescue migrants at sea. Instead, they’ve outsourced rescues to the Libyan Coast Guard, which has a track record of reckless interceptions as well as ties to human traffickers and militias.

“I’m sorry, we don’t speak with NGOs,” a man answering the phone of the Maltese Rescue and Coordination Center told a member of Sea-Watch inquiring about a boat in distress this past June. In a separate call to the Rescue and Coordination Center in Rome, another Sea-Watch member was told: “We have no information to report to you.”

Maltese and Italian authorities did not respond to questions sent by AP.

Trying to get in touch with the Libyan rescue and coordination center is an even greater challenge. On the rare occasion that someone does pick up, the person on the other side of the line often doesn’t speak English.

More than 49,000 migrants have reached Italian shores so far this year according to the Italian Ministry of Interior, nearly double the number of people who crossed in the same time period last year.

Although it is illegal for European vessels to take rescued migrants back to Libya themselves, information shared by the EU’s surveillance drones and planes have allowed the Libyan Coast Guard to considerably increase its ability to stop migrants from reaching Europe. So far this year, it has intercepted roughly half of those who have attempted to leave, returning more than 26,000 men, women and children to Libya.

Sea-Watch has relied on millions of euros from individual donations over several years to expand its air monitoring capabilities as well. It now has two small aircraft that, with a bird’s-eye view, can find boats in distress much faster than ships can.

Taking off from Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than Italy, the planes can reach a distress case relatively quickly if its position is known. But when there are no exact coordinates, they must fly a search pattern, sometimes for hours, and scan the sea with the help of binoculars.

Even when flying low, finding a tiny boat in the vast Mediterranean can strain the most experienced eyes. The three- to four-person crew of volunteers reports every little dot on the horizon that could potentially be people in distress.

“Target at 10 o’clock,” the Seabird’s photographer sitting in the back alerted on a recent flight.

The pilot veered left to inspect it.

“Fishing boat, disregard,” Bretschneider, the tactical coordinator, replied.

In rough seas, breaking waves can play tricks and for brief moments resemble wobbly boats in the distance. Frequently, the “targets” turn out to be nothing at all, and the Seabird returns to land hours later without any new information.

But finding boats in distress is only the first challenge. Getting them rescued is just as difficult, if not harder.

With the absence of state rescue vessels and NGO ships getting increasingly blocked from leaving port, Sea-Watch often relies on the good will of merchant vessels navigating the area. But many are also reluctant to get involved after several commercial ships found themselves stuck at sea for days as they waited for Italy’s or Malta’s permission to disembark rescued migrants. Others have taken them back to Libya in violation of maritime and refugee conventions.

This week, a court in Naples convicted the captain of an Italian commercial ship for returning 101 migrants to Libya in 2018.

Without any state authority, the Seabird can only remind captains of their duty to rescue persons in distress. In this way, Bretschneider recently got an Italian supply vessel to save 65 people from a drifting migrant boat, just moments before the Libyan Coast Guard arrived.

On another mission a few days later, the Seabird returned from its flight without knowing what would happen to the people they had seen on the white rubber boat.

Bretschneider checked his phone at dinner that night, hoping for good news. On the other side of the Mediterranean, 17 bodies had washed up in Western Libya, apparently from a different boat.

The next day the Seabird took off to look for the white rubber boat again, in vain. On their way back, they got a message from land.

The white rubber boat had reached waters near Lampedusa and was picked up by the Italian Coast Guard. The people had made it. 

 
…

A British member of Parliament died Friday after being stabbed several times at a church in what police said Saturday was a terrorist attack.

David Amess, 69, was a member of the Conservative Party and represented Southend West in Essex, England. He was attacked Friday while visiting constituents in his home district in southeastern Britain, officials said.

In a statement Saturday, the Metropolitan Police said that while their investigation was in its early stages, it “has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Amess one of the “kindest, nicest and most gentle people in politics” and noted his efforts to end cruelty to animals. “All our hearts are full of shock and sadness today at the loss of Sir David Amess,” Johnson said.

Police have identified a 25-year-old suspect, Ali Harbi Ali, who is in custody. The man, of Somali heritage, had previously been referred to Prevent, the BBC reported. Prevent is a counterterror program in the U.K. designed to deradicalize those at risk of being recruited by extremist groups [[ ]]. It is unclear how long Ali was in the program.

Amess, who had been a member of Parliament since 1983, was married and had five children.

Amess is the second member of Parliament to be killed in five years. Jo Cox was murdered by one of her constituents, a far-right extremist, five years ago.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday condemned as “inexcusable” a deadly crackdown by Paris police on a 1961 protest by Algerians whose scale was covered up for decades, disappointing activists who hoped for an even stronger recognition of responsibility.

Macron told relatives of victims on the 60th anniversary of the bloodshed that crimes were committed on the night of Oct. 17, 1961, under the command of the notorious Paris police chief Maurice Papon.

He acknowledged that several dozen protesters had been killed, “their bodies thrown into the River Seine,” and he paid tribute to their memory.

The precise number of victims has never been made clear, and some activists fear several hundred could have been killed.

Macron “recognized the facts: that the crimes committed that night under Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic,” the Elysee said.

“This tragedy was long hushed-up, denied or concealed,” it added in a statement.

Algerian President Abdelmadjidn Tebboune said there was “strong concern for treating issues of history and memory without complacency or compromising principles, and with a sharp sense of responsibility,” free from “the dominance of arrogant colonialist thought,” his office said in a statement.

The deadly 1961 crackdown revealed the horror of “massacres and crimes against humanity that will remain engraved in the collective memory,” the statement, released by his office, continued.

“There were bodies on all sides, I was very afraid,” recalled Bachir Ben-Aissa Saadi, who took part in the rally and was 14 years old at the time.

The rally was called in the final year of France’s increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign targeting mainland France by pro-independence militants.

In the 1980s, Papon was revealed to have been a collaborator with the occupying Nazis in World War II and complicit in the deportation of Jews. He was convicted of crimes against humanity but later released.

Macron, the first French president to attend a memorial ceremony for those killed, observed a minute of silence in their memory at the Bezons bridge over the Seine on the outskirts of Paris where the protest started.

His comments that crimes were committed went further than predecessor Francois Hollande, who acknowledged in 2012 that the protesting Algerians had been “killed during a bloody repression.”

The president, France’s first leader born after the colonial era, has made a priority of historical reconciliation and forging a modern relationship with former colonies.

But Macron, who is expected to seek reelection next year, is wary about provoking a backlash from political opponents.

His far-right electoral opponents, nationalists Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are outspoken critics of efforts to acknowledge or show repentance for past crimes.

Historian Emmanuel Blanchard told AFP that Macron’s comments represented progress and had gone much further than those made by Hollande in 2012.

But he took issue with the decision to pin responsibility on Papon alone, saying that then Prime Minister Michel Debre and President Charles de Gaulle had not been held to account over the ensuing cover-up or the fact Papon would remain Paris police chief until 1967.

The statement by Macron “is progress but not complete. We hoped for more,” Mimouna Hadjam of the Africa93 anti-racism association told AFP.

“Papon did not act alone. People were tortured, massacred in the heart of Paris and those high up knew,” Hadjam added.

Domonique Sopo, the head of SOS Racism, said while the comments were welcome, Macron was showing a tendency of taking “small steps” on such issues by reducing responsibility to Papon alone.

The 1961 protests were called in response to a strict curfew imposed on Algerians to prevent the underground FLN resistance movement from collecting funds following a spate of deadly attacks on French police officers.

A report commissioned by the president from historian Benjamin Stora earlier this year urged a truth commission over the Algerian war, but Macron ruled out issuing any official apology. 
…

When Vaclav Havel nearly died of a ruptured intestine as Czech president in 1998, doctors provided daily updates on his condition.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, a Czech president is again hospitalized but the public has not been told what is wrong with him.

President Milos Zeman was taken into intensive care in hospital on October 10. Since then, his spokesperson and doctors have not provided a diagnosis or said how long he will need to recover.

Politicians and members of the public are now asking whether the 77-year-old president is fit to carry out his duties in the central European country, where communists held power for over four decades until the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

It is all the more worrying, they say, because the Czech Republic has just held an election and it is the president’s duty to appoint the next prime minister.

“We are beginning to look like the Soviet Union or North Korea,” said Michael Zantovsky, a spokesperson for Havel in the early 1990s who now runs the Vaclav Havel Library, drawing comparisons with the secretive communist era.

The president’s spokesperson has said Zeman has been communicating and following developments in the country. Being in the hospital has not gotten in the way of the president’s constitutional duties, he said.

The spokesperson did not respond on Saturday to a request for comment on Zeman’s condition.

Two groups that were in opposition won a majority in the lower house of parliament in the October 8-9 election. Under the constitution, it is Zeman’s duty to accept the government’s resignation and appoint a prime minister after the new parliament convenes for its first session on November 8.

The upper house requested information about the president’s prognosis in a letter to Zeman’s office on Monday. It had received no response as of Saturday, a spokesperson for the chamber said.

‘Not in good hands’

Speaker Milos Vystrcil said on Friday the Senate could enact a constitutional clause to relieve Zeman of his duties after the lower house convenes if the situation does not change.

He questioned whether Zeman was aware of what his office was doing, telling reporters: “The president is not in good hands.”

The Czech president is directly elected. The government has most of the executive powers but the president is the chief commander of the armed forces, appoints key personnel including judges and central bank board members, and can issue amnesties.

If the president were stripped of his powers on the grounds of incapacitation, his duties would be divided, mostly between the lower house speaker — who would appoint the new prime minister — and the prime minister.

Zeman’s spokesperson said on Twitter the constitutional clause was meant for situations such as when the president is in a coma or abducted.

“If grossly abused against a person who normally communicates and thinks, the president would become a de facto state prisoner,” the spokesperson said.

Citing a lack of clearance from Zeman, the hospital has said only that the president had complications related to an undisclosed chronic illness.

Zeman’s wife said on Thursday his recovery would “take time” but gave no details.

Lower house head Radek Vondracek visited Zeman on Thursday and said the president felt better.

The hospital rebuked Vondracek for visiting without doctors’ knowledge, distanced itself from his comments on Zeman’s health and asked police to enforce a ban on visits without doctors’ consent.

Zeman, a smoker, has previously battled diabetes and neuropathy — nerve damage or dysfunction — in his legs, and he has started using a wheelchair.

He spent eight days in hospital in September, when his office said no life-threatening problems were discovered.
…

Norway on Saturday announced it will hold an independent investigation into the actions of police and security agencies following a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and injured three others. Police have been criticized for reacting too slowly to contain the massacre, acknowledging that the five deaths took place after police first encountered the attacker.

Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, known by the acronym PST, said it decided to seek the review after consulting with the country’s national and regional police commanders about the attack Wednesday night in the southern town of Kongsberg. A 37-year-old local resident, who police said has admitted to the killings, has been detained and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

“Given the seriousness of the matter, it is very important that learning points and any weaknesses and errors are identified quickly in order to be able to implement measures immediately,” PST said in a statement.

Norwegian media have questioned how long it took officers to apprehend suspect Espen Andersen Braathen after the regional police department received reports about a man shooting arrows at a supermarket. According to a police timeline, the first information on the attack was logged at 6:13 p.m. and Andersen Braathen was caught at 6:47 p.m. 

Authorities haven’t revealed what precisely happened within that 34-minute period.

In general, police officials say the first officers on the scene observed the suspect but took cover and called for reinforcements when arrows were fired at them. The officials have acknowledged the armed suspect got away and then likely killed the five victims between the ages of 52 and 78 both outdoors and inside some apartments.  

Norway is one of the few dozen countries in the world where law enforcement officers don’t automatically carry guns though they have a rapid access to guns and other weapons, depending on the situation. Authorities in a statement said police were unarmed during their first encounter and armed during later encounters with Andersen Braathen.

Authorities said one of the wounded was an off-duty police officer struck inside the supermarket, and that all the wounded have been released from the hospital. 

The alleged attacker was known to police before the deadly attack. Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported that PST security officials received information about Andersen Braathen in 2015 and agents interviewed him in 2017 to determine if he posed a threat. The following year, the agency contacted Norwegian health authorities about him and concluded that he suffered from a serious mental illness, NRK said.

The VG newspaper also reported the agency thought Andersen Braathen might carry out a “low-scale attack with simple means in Norway.” PST did not comment on that report.

Police said Saturday that their suspicion that the suspect’s apparent mental illness caused the attack had strengthened further, while Andersen Braathen’s statement of being a convert to Islam had become a less important investigation line.

“He himself has said that he has converted to Islam. It’s a hypothesis but is also a hypothesis that he hasn’t done so. The investigation so far shows that he hasn’t done this [converting] seriously,” police inspector Per Thomas Omholt told a news conference Saturday. 

Omholt said Friday that three weapons, including the bow and arrow, were used in the attack, but declined to identify the weapons further or reveal how the five victims were killed due to the ongoing investigation. 

A spokesman for Norway’s Muslim community told NRK that it was irresponsible for the police to publish the suspect’s self-acclaimed conversion to Islam, as they did Thursday. 

“It hurts, it’s very painful,” Waqar Dar told NRK. “There are a lot of young Muslims who write to me and say they have a nasty feeling. They love Norway but feel they are not loved back.”

Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl, who assumed the post on Thursday along with the rest of Norway’s new center-left government, has so far not commented on the police handling of the attack. 

“Now it is important that the police get a review and investigate the matter thoroughly,” she told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT.

Norwegian police on Saturday identified the four female victims as Andrea Meyer, 52; Hanne Englund, 56; Liv Berit Borge, 75; and Gun Marith Madsen, 78. The male victim was identified as Gunnar Erling Sauve, 75. 

Several of them were part of Kongsberg’s thriving artists’ community, Norwegian media reported. NRK described Englund as a much-respected potter and artist who ran a gallery and lived in Kongsberg. Madsen was a self-taught painter and Borge held board positions in local nonprofit art organizations. 

Sauve had a long career as a local judge and earlier worked for Norway’s environment ministry. He was Borge’s partner, NRK said. Meyer had moved to Norway from her native Germany several years ago.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette Marit will visit Kongsberg on Sunday and attend a memorial service for the victims at the town’s main church.
…

An Iranian appeals court has upheld a verdict sentencing an Iranian-British woman long held in Tehran to another year in prison, her lawyer said Saturday.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has already served a five-year prison sentence in the Islamic Republic. Her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, told the Associated Press that the appeals court upheld a verdict issued earlier this year sentencing her to another year.

The verdict additionally includes a one-year travel ban abroad, meaning she cannot leave Iran to join her family for nearly two years.

In April, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced for allegedly spreading “propaganda against the system” when she participated in a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.

Kermani said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “concerned” when he informed her about the appeals court decision. He said his client is in touch with her family.

State media in Iran did not immediately acknowledge the ruling, apparently issued after a closed-door hearing.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny. While employed at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, she was taken into custody at the Tehran airport in April 2016 as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family.

Rights groups accuse Iran of holding dual-nationals as bargaining chips for money or influence in negotiations with the West, something Tehran denies. Iran does not recognize dual nationalities, so detainees like Zaghari-Ratcliffe cannot receive consular assistance.

Authorities furloughed Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison because of the surging coronavirus pandemic and she has been restricted to her parents’ Tehran home since.
…

Britain’s interior minister has ordered an immediate review of the security arrangements for the country’s lawmakers following the slaying Friday of Conservative Member of Parliament David Amess, who was stabbed multiple times in a suspected Islamist terror attack while meeting with constituents east of London.

The 69-year-old Amess is the second British MP to have been killed in the past five years, and his death has prompted nationwide horror and outrage, with politicians across political divides praising him as a hard-working “gentleman MP,” one who eschewed a ministerial career in favor of focusing on the needs of his constituents.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, who chaired a meeting overnight of the country’s security and law-enforcement agencies, on Saturday ordered all police forces to review security arrangements for MPs, according to a spokesperson.

Speaker of the House of Commons Lindsay Hoyle has also said he wants to “examine” parliamentary safety measures for lawmakers following Amess’ killing inside a church hall in the town of Leigh-on-Sea, an hour’s drive east from the British capital.

Patel said questions are “rightly being asked about the safety of our country’s elected representatives.” She said the MP’s death was “a senseless attack on democracy itself.”

Friday’s stabbing attack by a lone assailant bore striking similarities to the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016. Cox was about to hold meetings with constituents when she was shot and stabbed by a subsequently convicted far-right militant.  

Paramedics battled for nearly two hours to save Amess, one of the British parliament’s longest-serving lawmakers, a devout Catholic and father of five, as he lay on the floor of the hall of Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, in the county of Essex.

Ben-Julian Harrington, chief constable of Essex police, said Amess had “suffered multiple injuries.” Local media reported Amess had been stabbed more than a dozen times and that a Roman Catholic priest who offered to administer the last rites was turned away by police because it might interrupt the work of the paramedics.

Police arrested a suspect, whom they identified as a 25-year-old British citizen of Somali descent, on suspicion of murder. The suspect is being questioned by counter-terrorism officers, who are examining possible ties to Islamist extremists.

In a statement, Britain’s Metropolitan Police said, “Senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, formally declared the incident as terrorism. The early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.”

The suspect’s computers and cellphone have been seized, and police have been searching two homes in London linked to the alleged attacker, officials said. 

A local Conservative party official, John Lamb, told reporters near where the attack occurred that constituents were “waiting to see him [Amess], and one of them literally got a knife out and just began stabbing him.” Lamb said Amess was accompanied by two female members of his staff.

“They are devastated. I’ve no idea of the motive. He had no known enemies. I’m told the man was waiting calmly to be seen. It’s horrendous. So awful,” Lamb told The Sun newspaper.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was clearly stunned by the attack, described Amess as “one of the kindest, nicest, most gentle people in politics” with an “outstanding record of passing laws to help the most vulnerable.” He declined to speculate about the motives of the assailant when asked by British broadcasters, saying, “I think what we need to do now is let the police get on with the investigation.”

Politicians, including all of Britain’s living former prime ministers, and the lawmaker’s constituents were quick to praise Amess, with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby describing the murder as “a deep blow” to Britain and to democracy. 

Keir Starmer, the leader of the main opposition Labour Party said, “This is a dark and shocking day. The whole country will feel it acutely, perhaps the more so because we have, heartbreakingly, been here before.”

Johnson, Starmer and Hoyle were among lawmakers who traveled Saturday to the church in Leigh-on-Sea to pay tribute to Amess.

Local residents also laid floral tributes, with a note on one reading “David Amess. RIP. Such a Gentleman XXX.”

“He’s very well thought of in our area — he fights for good causes and sticks up for people around here,” electrician Anthony Finch told reporters.

Amess was first elected in 1983 and built a reputation as an independent-minded and sometimes quirky Conservative. He was a leading Brexiter and opposed same-sex marriage and abortion in most circumstances, placing him on the hard right of Britain’s ruling Conservatives.

But he was also a fervent campaigner for animal rights, an advocacy that didn’t please the fox hunters among his Conservative colleagues. He also co-sponsored energy conservation legislation.

Among his many campaigns, Amess advocated for years for a memorial to be erected in London to honor Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary. The statue was eventually unveiled outside a synagogue in central London in 1997.

Amess’ slaying will revive a debate about the mounting dangers British lawmakers appear to be facing, not only when working in the British parliament, but also when going about their business in their constituencies and seeing voters. British politicians have long prided themselves on the accessibility offered to constituents.

After the killing of Labour MP Cox, there were security reviews and MPs were advised to take more precautions. The amount of money spent protecting lawmakers surged following her death.

Amess himself feared that in the aftermath of Cox’s killing the nature of the relationship between British lawmakers and constituents had altered. In an autobiography published last year, he wrote that MPs had been forced to add additional security precautions, like being “more careful when accepting appointments” and “to never see people alone.” He lamented tightened security had “rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians.”

Former Conservative minister Tobias Ellwood on Saturday urged his fellow lawmakers to pause meeting voters in person and to use video conferencing instead. 

Ellwood, who tried to save the life of a police officer in the 2017 Westminster terror attack, said, “Until the Home Secretary’s review of MP security is complete, I would recommend a temporary pause in face-to-face meetings.”

But Speaker of the House of Commons Hoyle warned against any knee-jerk reactions. While promising a parliamentary security review, he told Sky News, “We’ve got to protect MPs and allow them to carry out their duties. The duties that the electorate put them there for — to speak, to meet and to make sure that their views are conveyed to parliament.”

“What we can’t do is give in to these people, people who don’t believe in our values, don’t believe in what we do,” Hoyle added.

 
…

A British member of Parliament died Friday after being stabbed several times at a church in what police said Saturday was a terrorist attack. 

David Amess, 69, was a member of the Conservative Party and represented Southend West in Essex, England. He was attacked Friday while visiting constituents in his home district in southeastern Britain, officials said.

In a statement Saturday, the Metropolitan Police said that while their investigation was in its early stages, it “has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.” 

Police have not identified a 25-year-old suspect, who is in custody. 

“All our hearts are full of shock and sadness today at the loss of Sir David Amess,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who called Amess one of the “kindest, nicest and most gentle people in politics” and noted his efforts to end cruelty to animals. 

Amess, who had been a member of Parliament since 1983, was married and had five children.

Amess is the second member of Parliament to be killed in five years. Jo Cox was murdered by one of her constituents, a far-right extremist, five years ago.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

 
…

At an emergency conference this week, the European Union pledged more than 1 billion dollars in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and neighboring countries, as the United Nations warns millions of Afghans are facing famine. But the United States has been cautious, saying it is sending humanitarian aid, but cannot provide funds directly to the Taliban-led government until they start respecting human rights and women’s rights. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is heading to Europe this weekend to meet with leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Romania and to participate in a NATO defense ministers meeting in Belgium. 

“The Department of Defense steadfastly supports its European Allies and partners in the face of Russia’s destabilizing actions in the critical Black Sea region, and the Secretary looks forward to meeting with his counterparts and other senior officials to reinforce the United States’ commitment to a safe, stable, and prosperous Europe,” the Pentagon said in a statement. 

In Georgia, Austin will meet with Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and Minister of Defense Juansher Burchuladze to discuss bilateral relations and regional security. 

In Ukraine, the secretary will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Minister of Defense Andriy Taran to discuss “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” as well as the country’s defense industry reforms. 

In Romania, Austin will meet President Klaus Iohannis and Minister of National Defense Nicolae-Ionel Ciuca to discuss bilateral relations. He also will visit U.S. forces at Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base. 

In Belgium, Austin will attend a meeting of his NATO counterparts and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to ensure the alliance “is prepared for the challenges of the future.” 

 
…

Eighteen journalists, nearly all of whom work for Kurdish media outlets, stood trial at hearings across Turkey this week. 

Lawyers and media rights groups say the trials show how Turkey’s laws on terrorism and protests can be used to detain or harass journalists. 

Nearly all those in court this week face accusations of belonging to or creating propaganda for a terrorist organization—often a reference to the militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Others face charges of defying Law 2911, which regulates public meetings and demonstrations, according to the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), a Turkey-based group that offers legal support to journalists.

Media who cover protests can sometimes be accused of organizing an illegal gathering. And in April, Turkey’s Interior Ministry issued an order requiring journalists to have permits for covering approved protests. 

Some rights lawyers have said the ruling appears designed to silence journalists.

“The order is problematic because it only recognizes journalists who are given permits by the government to cover protests,” said Erselan Aktan, an Istanbul-based lawyer who has represented dozens of journalists in recent years. 

“It doesn’t consider freelance journalists and those who work for opposition media outlets as journalists and this is against the core of the freedom of expression,” he told VOA.   

One of those in court this week on charges of defying the law on protests was freelance journalist Rusen Takva. 

The journalist, who contributes to the pro-opposition Arti TV, was charged in connection with his coverage of a protest calling for Kurdish rights, in the eastern Turkish city of Van in January. 

A prosecutor had recommended that Takva be sentenced to 18 years in prison. But at a hearing on Tuesday, a new prosecutor dropped the charges, citing a lack of evidence. 

“It was clear from the beginning that this case was not holding,” Takva said. “I was merely doing my job as a journalist. When the original prosecutor was replaced, the new prosecutor concluded that there was no evidence to support the charges against me.”

Others on trial have cases going back more than four years, like journalist Hayri Demir, who worked for outlets including the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency. 

In 2017, authorities charged Demir with belonging to and creating propaganda for the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington.  

The journalist’s case has received media attention because evidence presented in the indictment included photographs from a memory stick that was stolen from Demir’s home in Ankara. 

The images were taken by Demir while he was on assignment in northeast Syria in 2015. 

“Six months after that robbery, the pictures on that card came out in the court as evidence in my case file for my conviction,” Demir told VOA.

“My previous telephone conversations with Selahattin Demirtas were also included in my court file as a crime.” 

Demirtas, a former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has been in prison since 2016 on terror charges.  

The journalist had his ninth hearing Tuesday, but the case remains open with the hearing adjourned. If Demir is convicted, he could face up to 22 years in prison.    

Turkey’s Interior Ministry and Ankara’s High Criminal Court didn’t respond to VOA requests for comment.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month that Turkish media is “incomparably free,” and that he does not accept the findings of media rights groups that show mass arrests.

“We don’t have any problems of that nature in terms of freedoms,” Erdogan told U.S. broadcaster CBS.

But media lawyer Aktan, who coordinates with the MLSA, said that arrests and trials are common. 

In September alone, 65 journalists had hearings across Turkey, mostly on terror-related charges, defying the protest law or insulting the head of state, Aktan said.  

The country’s media came under pressure following a failed attempted coup in 2016, after which Ankara arrested dozens of journalists it accused of supporting or being sympathetic to the coup.

As of August, data by the Stockholm Center for Freedom, an advocacy groups that documents human rights abuses with a special focus on Turkey, showed 174 journalists either detained pending trial or serving sentences and a further 167 accused of a crime but who are in exile or at large.

Turkey also ranks poorly on the World Press Freedom Index, coming in at 153 out of 180 countries, where 1 is the freest, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.
…

A British member of parliament died Friday after being stabbed several times at a church, while he was visiting constituents in his home district in southeastern Britain, officials said.

David Amess, 69, was a member of the Conservative Party and represents Southend West in Essex, England.

Police said a 25-year-old suspect is in custody.

“We are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident and do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the wider public,” Essex Police said in a statement.

Amess, who had been a member of parliament since 1983, was married and had five children.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed some information in this report.
…

The suspect in a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and wounded three in a quiet Norwegian town this week is facing a custody hearing Friday. He won’t appear in court because he has confessed to the killings and has agreed to being held in custody.

Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen was arrested Wednesday night, 30 minutes after the deadly rampage targeting random people. Police have described the attack as an act of terror.

On a central square in Kongsberg, a town of 26,000 people surrounded by mountains and woods some 66 kilometers southwest of Oslo, people were laying flowers and lighting candles Friday.

“This a a small community so almost everybody knows each other, so it s a very strange and very sad experience for us,” said teacher Ingeborg Spangelo, who brought her students to the impromptu memorial. “It’s almost surreal or unreal.”

Andersen Braathen was handled over to medical authorities, Norwegian news media reported Friday, saying he will be observed and assessed by two experts who will try to clarify whether he was sane at the time of the attack. If they conclude he was not sane, he cannot be punished for the acts but can be sentenced to compulsory mental health care.

Regional prosecutor Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the decision for his move was an assessment of his health situation. She didn’t elaborate.

Officials said Andersen Braathen used a bow and arrow and possibly other weapons to randomly target people at a supermarket and other locations in Kongsberg, where he lived.

Four women and a man, all between the ages of 50 and 70, were killed, and three other people were wounded, police said.

Police said they believe he acted alone. Norway’s domestic security service PST said the attack “appears to be an act of terror,” but didn’t elaborate. It added that Andersen Braathen was known to the PST, but, again, declined to elaborate.

The suspect has been described by police as a Muslim convert and said there “earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalized,” but they did not elaborate or say why he was previously flagged or what authorities did in response.

According to Norwegian media, Andersen Braathen has a conviction for burglary and drug possession, and last year a court granted a restraining order for him to stay away from his parents for six months after threatening to kill one of them. 

 
…

The United States and Greece upgraded an existing Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement on Thursday, a move seen as elevating bilateral ties in defense and overall relations.

The amendment to the MDCA was signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and visiting Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in Washington as part of the third round of the U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue. The talks were launched in 2018 by then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Greek counterpart.

Blinken described the dialogue as “a signal of our shared commitment to deepen our partnership” through which the two countries will become “an even more powerful force for peace, prosperity and human dignity.”

The amendment will enable U.S. forces in Greece “to train and operate from additional locations,” Blinken told a Thursday news conference.

Dendias described the amendment as one that safeguards Greek interests and enables collaboration beyond defense issues.

“It also creates a shell [framework] that allows the United States to invest in Greece, not only for the improvement of our country’s defense facilities, but to do so in a broader framework of cooperation that is being established and improved,” he said.

The agreement comes as tension appears to be rising in the eastern Mediterranean, where Greece and its neighbor Turkey have recently accused each other of aggressive actions that threaten an escalation of territorial disputes.

Reliable ally

Congressman Ted Deutch, a senior member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, also met with Dendias this week. In written response to VOA’s request for comment, Deutch, chairman of the Middle East, North Africa, and Global Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said Greece is a reliable ally in the eastern Mediterranean region.

“The U.S.-Greece relationship is vital to U.S. national interests and to the security and stability of the Eastern Mediterranean region. Greece has consistently proven itself to be a reliable ally in the region, and the United States must continue to support its efforts to modernize its armed forces and strengthen our nations’ strategic partnership,” Deutch said.

Deutch said the importance of this partnership is behind his decision to sponsor, with Representative Gus Bilirakis, the United States-Greece Defense and Interparliamentary Partnership Act of 2021.

The bill, he said, is designed to foster interparliamentary engagement among Greece, Cyprus and Israel, known as the “3+1 process,” in addition to supporting Greece’s military modernization.

“Encouraging continued security cooperation among our allies and partners, including Greece, will help us ensure stability throughout the region and bolster global security,” Deutch told VOA in a written statement.

Stephen J. Blank, a senior fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told VOA in a phone interview that while the strengthening of defense ties with Athens sends a signal that the U.S. will support Greece, Washington’s overriding concern is ensuring that the “two NATO allies that have a long history of mutual enmity dating back to Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, don’t start a war.”

China

China’s influence in Greece, particularly its purchase of a majority stake in the largest and strategically located port in Greece, the Port of Piraeus, is another factor in the background of talks between Washington and Athens.

China Ocean Shipping Company purchased a 51% stake in the Piraeus Port Authority in 2016 and signed a deal to obtain an additional 16% stake last month, despite having delivered only a third of agreed-to investments under the initial agreement.

Eric Brown, who studies China’s strategic designs at the Hudson Institute in Washington, told VOA that the Port of Piraeus “has featured prominently in the [People’s Republic of China’s] imagining of the new world system that it is striving to build,” as a key component to China’s maritime Silk Road Initiative.

Even though Beijing’s control of a key Greek and European strategic asset may put a question mark in the minds of policymakers in Washington and Brussels, the fact that China is situated in a different part of the world limits its potential as a guarantor of security for countries like Greece, Brown said.

“Geography matters,” he said.

Chinese ownership of a key port at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa nonetheless poses significant security concerns, U.S. analysts say.

“They own it now, they can use for economic, military, intelligence purposes, whatever they want,” Blank said.

David Stilwell, a former Pentagon and State Department official who served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said deals Beijing has managed to strike may not always last, pointing to recent reports that the 99-year lease between a Chinese state-backed entity and the Australian Port of Darwin may either be scrapped or subjected to additional scrutiny on security grounds.

In Stilwell’s view, the more distance democratic countries put between themselves and Beijing, the better. He considers Lithuania’s recent decision to withdraw from a multilateral forum designed to increase collaboration between China and Central and Eastern European countries as a model that other countries can learn from. 
…

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin heads to Europe next week for talks with allies concerned about Russia and what the NATO military alliance will focus on now that the withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports.
…

Turkey hosted leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban government for the first time Thursday, repeating its advice to the Islamist group on the need to form an inclusive government in the war-torn South Asian nation and to ensure Afghan female participation in education as well as public life. 

After Thursday’s meeting with the visitors, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a televised news conference in Ankara that the Taliban asked for humanitarian aid and the continuation of Turkish investment in Afghanistan.

Taliban acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and his delegation arrived in Turkey for the talks following meetings in Qatar this week with envoys from the United States and European diplomats. In those discussions, Muttaqi warned that attempts to pressure his government through sanctions would undermine the security of not only Afghanistan but the world in general and spark an exodus of Afghan economic migrants.

“We have told the international community about the importance of engagement with the Taliban administration. In fact, recognition and engagement are two different things,” Cavusoglu said. 

The Taliban have been seeking international legitimacy for their male-only Cabinet in Kabul since returning to power two months ago after waging an insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government for 20 years. Several members of the Taliban Cabinet have been blacklisted by the United Nations. 

Cavusoglu said that in talks with the Taliban delegates, the Turkish side underscored the importance of Afghan girls’ education and women’s employment in business life. 

While boys were allowed last month to return to secondary school, the hardline movement has not permitted girls at the same level to resume their education, insisting that it must put in place a “safe learning environment” before female students could return. 

Taliban acting Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi wrote on his Twitter feed that the wide-ranging discussions with officials in Ankara covered bilateral diplomatic ties, humanitarian aid, Afghan refugees and resumption of Turkish commercial flights to Afghanistan.

Washington has frozen nearly $10 billion in Afghan assets — parked mainly in the U.S. Federal Reserve — since the Taliban took over the country. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also halted financial assistance and lending programs for Kabul, citing human rights concerns under the Taliban rule. 

The U.S. and other Western countries have been pressing the Taliban to keep their promises to form an inclusive Afghan government, protect human rights (especially those of women), fight terrorism and not restrict freedom of expression. 

However, critics say freezing Afghan assets could trigger an economic meltdown that could worsen the growing humanitarian crisis facing the country.

The United Nations has warned that about 1 million Afghan children are at risk of starvation and more than 18 million people need urgent humanitarian assistance. A deepening drought and the approaching harsh winter are only going to make matters worse, the U.N. says. 

U.N. officials told reporters in New York on Thursday that they are working to scale up assistance to reach Afghans in need. 

The World Food Program last month reached 4 million people with food and nutrition assistance across all 34 Afghan provinces, three times the number it reached in August, said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric 

The head of WFP, David Beasley, stressed that if international aid did not flow as soon as possible, it would be catastrophic, and that this was a war on hunger. 

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

 
…

A 4.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Spanish island of La Palma overnight Thursday, officials said, the strongest recorded since the island’s Cumbre Vieja volcano began erupting last month. 

Spain’s National Geographic Institute reports the earthquake was one of as many as 100 that shook the island in the past 24 hours. Earthquakes have been a regular feature of the volcanic eruption that began on the island September 19 and shows no signs of stopping soon. 

Meanwhile, the Canary Islands Security and Emergencies Department has ordered 300 more residents to evacuate from Tazacorte and La Laguna as the lava flow advances closer to those towns. 

The eruption has forced more than 6,000 to abandon their homes on the island. 

More than 1,500 buildings and more than 600 hectares of land on the western side of the island have been destroyed by lava flows

The La Palma government said the flow from three rivers of molten rock has broadened to more than 1.7 kilometers. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited the Island Wednesday and said the government is considering additional aid for the island residents and its industries, which have been disrupted if not devastated by the eruption. 

The government has already approved about $250 million in assistance. 

La Palma is part of the Canary Islands archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

Russian health officials Thursday reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths – 986 – for the third consecutive day, while also reporting a record 31,299 new confirmed infections.

The number of new cases breaks a record set last December, and marks the first time Russia has officially reported more than 30,000 cases in a single day. The nation has repeatedly set records for deaths while new infections have surged for much of the past month.

Russian officials have blamed the rise in infections on the nation’s sluggish vaccination program.

The Health Ministry reports this week that barely one-third of Russia’s population of 146 million has been fully inoculated, despite the fact the nation was quick to roll out its Sputnik vaccine early this year.

According to the Reuters news agency, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged newly elected lawmakers to actively support efforts to vaccinate more of the population. The government, however, has been reluctant to impose vaccine mandates.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday it was up to regional authorities to establish such rules.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden plans to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican later this month, the White House said Thursday. 

“They will discuss working together on efforts grounded in respect for fundamental human dignity, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling the climate crisis, and caring for the poor,” the White House said in a statement. The statement said first lady Jill Biden will also take part in the audience with the pope. 

The meeting on Oct. 29 comes on the eve of a two-day summit of G20 leaders in Rome. Biden hopes to reach agreement at the meeting on a global minimum corporate income tax rate of 15% to help ensure businesses don’t continue to avoid taxation, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited a White House official.

Biden will then attend the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1-2, when the official said the president would announce “key actions.” 

Biden, the second Roman Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, meets with the pope as some Catholic bishops in the U.S. have admonished Biden for his support of abortion rights. 

Biden’s pending visit to Europe will mark the second foreign trip of his presidency. Biden attended a European Union summit in Brussels in June and later met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Police in Norway Thursday said a bow-and-arrow attack that claimed the lives of five people in the town of Kongsberg appears to be an act of terror.

At news conference, regional Police Chief Ole Bredrup Saeverud told reporters the attack was carried out by a 37-year-old Danish national and Muslim convert who was known to local police over fears he had been “radicalized.”

Authorities say the Kongsberg resident, whose name has not been released, acted alone, admitted to the attack and was cooperating but had not entered a plea.

Norway’s domestic security agency said the investigation will clarify in more detail what motivated the incident.

The attack took place Wednesday over “a large area” of the southeastern town of 26,000 people, located nearly 70 kilometers outside the capital, Oslo. Police say two other people were wounded, including an off-duty police officer. The suspect was arrested about a half hour after the attacks began.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a tweet he was “shocked and saddened” by the news and that his thoughts “are with the victims’ loved ones and all the people of Norway at this very difficult moment.”

The incident was the deadliest attack in Norway since 2011, when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, most of them teenagers. at a youth camp.

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

France has threatened to retaliate against Britain in yet another post-Brexit dispute, this time over fishing rights in what the British call the English Channel and the French refer to as La Manche, the narrow arm of the Atlantic Ocean separating England’s southern coast from the northern shores of France.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said Wednesday retaliation could begin by the end of next week.

France is fuming at the British government’s refusal to allow more French boats to fish in its territorial waters near Britain’s Channel Isles. Britain has issued 325 fishing licenses but declined 125 applications from French fishermen who say they also have been trawling those waters in recent years. Under the terms of the trade deal struck last year by Britain with the European Union as it exited the bloc, they should be granted access too, the fishermen say.

An exasperated French government has threatened a dramatic escalation in the dispute and warned it is considering cutting or reducing electricity supplies to the Channel Islands and the British mainland, which gets 7% of its power from France.

The dispute over French trawlers accessing waters off Britain’s Channel Islands prompted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this year to dispatch Royal Navy vessels to patrol the area with France responding by sending patrol ships to protect French trawlers.

On Tuesday French Prime Minister Jean Castex said his government was ready to review all bilateral cooperation with Britain, and French President Emmanuel Macron has been pressing the EU to consider wider reprisals.

Speaking in France’s National Assembly Castex called on the EU to get tougher with Britain and said Brussels should “do more.” He added, “We will refer the matter to the arbitration panel of the agreement to lead the British to respect their word [and] we will question all the conditions for the more global implementation of the agreements concluded under the aegis of the European Union, but also, if necessary, the bilateral cooperation that we have with the United Kingdom,” he said.

But Brussels appears reluctant to get deeply involved in the fishing dispute, although officially it is backing Paris and has berated the British.

Dueling  

France’s Europe Minister Clément Beaune has outlined some possible reprisals, including slapping tariffs on British fish exports. “Britons need us to sell their products, including from fishing, they need us for their energy, for their financial services and for their research centres,” Beaune said last week. “All of this gives us pressure points. We have the means to modulate the degree of our cooperation, to reduce it, if Britain does not implement the agreement,” he added.

In the grander scheme of things, a dispute over 125 fishing licenses would seem a minor matter that should not derail relations between European neighbors, but the two governments have been dueling angrily for months and the clash over post-Brexit fishing is adding venom to an already poisonous relationship.

Diplomats on both sides describe Anglo-French relations as “dreadful” and acknowledge they have never been as bad in their professional lifetimes. They say for a comparison you would have to go back to the 1960s. That was when French President Gen. Charles de Gaulle kept slamming the door on British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s efforts to get France’s backing for Britain to join the then-European Community. Macmillan was reduced to tears of frustration after one meeting with De Gaulle.

But at least the two statesmen met face-to-face. The British say they have been trying to arrange sit-down talks for months between Johnson and Macron. Their French counterparts say they doubt a sit-down between the two leaders would accomplish anything.

Other historians cite as a comparison the 1890s when Britain and France were locked in rivalry in a scramble for African colonies. That competition eventually ended when the two signed in 1904 the Entente Cordiale, a set of agreements that marked a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations.

But there are few prospects of a new Entente Cordiale. Some former British diplomats agree there is little point in a Johnson-Macron face-to-face. “The bilateral rows are more numerous and more public than at any time since the major rift over Iraq in 2003. Some level of trust has to be rebuilt before a summit would be worthwhile,” tweeted Peter Rickets, a retired senior diplomat and former chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee under Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Post-Brexit friction

Since formally departing the EU more than year ago — and in the years of ill-tempered negotiations between Brussels and London leading up to Brexit — hardly a week has gone by without the British and French sniping at each other, a squabbling that has been amplified by Britain’s notoriously Francophobe tabloid press and France’s equally patriotic media.

In his New Year address in January, Macron assured Britain that France would remain a “friend and ally” despite Brexit, but he slammed the British decision to leave the bloc as one born from “lies and false promises.”

This year alone the two countries have clashed cross-Channel migration with London accusing French authorities of not doing enough to stop migrants and asylum-seekers — more than 10,000 this year so far — crossing La Manche in dinghies and small boats. The French have accused Britain of not having paid money it promised to help French authorities police their coastline to prevent migrants from trying to cross the Channel.

The countries have clashed also over supplies of the COVID vaccine made by AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish company, with the French left fuming at the Johnson government’s frequent readiness to compare the speed of the vaccine rollout earlier in the year in Britain with the much slower inoculation programs in France and the rest of Europe.

British ministers this week accused France of having stolen – earlier this year – five million coronavirus vaccine doses manufactured in Holland but destined for Britain. They say Macron worked with EU chiefs to divert the large batch of Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs to France. British government officials told Britain’s The Sun newspaper that the diversion was “outrageous” and could have cost lives, if Britain had not managed to secure Pfizer vaccines.

And the two governments have bickered over Australia’s decision last month to abandon a $66 billion deal to buy 12 French diesel-electric submarines and to purchase instead at least eight much more sophisticated nuclear-powered attack boats from Britain and America.

France’s defense minister cancelled scheduled talks with her British counterpart as the submarine row reverberated and amid accusations from Paris that Britain had been “opportunistic” and underhanded. Johnson responded blithely by saying in Franglais, “I just think it’s time for some of our dearest friends around the world to prenez un grip [get a grip] about all this and donnez-moi un break [give me a break].”

With next year’s French presidential election looming and the British prime minister under mounting economic pressure, both Macron and Johnson have domestic political reasons to prolong the duel, fear some political commentators. “French President Emmanuel Macron faces a tough and unpredictable election in six months’ time, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is looking for distractions and scapegoats as reality starts to contradict his cheerful bluster about a plucky, triumphant, stand-alone Brexit Britain,” John Lichfield, a former foreign editor of Britain’s Independent newspaper, noted in a commentary for the Politico.eu news site.

“Both countries are obsessed with each other, for different reasons, and often with silly outcomes,” tweeted Jonathan Eyal, an associate director of the Royal United Services Institute, a London defense think tank.

Ten EU member states including Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium have joined the French in signing a joint statement that calls on Britain to abide by the terms of the Brexit trade agreement and to ensure “continuity” for French fishing fleets. But the joint statement also called for a negotiated solution and avoided any mention of retaliation.

Privately, EU officials say they are determined to ensure the Anglo-French fishing dispute does not escalate and are playing down the prospect of the bloc as a whole agreeing to retaliatory action. Their priority is on resolving a bigger dispute between the EU and Britain over Northern Ireland.
…