The growing rift between the United States and China and Russia was clearly evident on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly Thursday, threatening to overshadow international cooperation on the coronavirus response.This year’s assembly has been held online because of the pandemic, and its focus has been on confronting COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, through effective multilateral action.At a side event in the Security Council meant to complement that theme, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the pandemic is unfolding against a backdrop of “high geopolitical tensions.”“The pandemic is a clear test of international cooperation, a test we have essentially failed,” Guterres told the videoconference of the U.N.’s most powerful body. Those tensions were on display in the council, as the foreign ministers of China and Russia referenced their divisions with the United States.Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is seen on a computer monitor at U.N. headquarters as he speaks during a virtual Security Council meeting during the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 24, 2020.“In such a challenging moment, major countries are even more duty-bound to put the future of humankind first, discard Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and come together in the spirit of partnership to tide over the difficulties,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.His Russian counterpart said differences between some nations have been reignited and heightened by the impact of the virus.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is seen on a computer monitor at U.N. headquarters as he speaks during the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 24, 2020.“A number of countries are increasingly tempted to look abroad to find those who are responsible for their problems at home,” Sergey Lavrov said. “There are obvious attempts by individual states to use the current situation to promote self-serving and fleeting interests and to settle scores with unwanted governments or geopolitical rivals.”Some U.S. allies were also seemingly critical of the United States and the Trump administration.Potential for cooperation“We need to refocus on the positive potential of cooperation instead of on putting our own countries first,” said German State Minister Niels Annen. “If one of us fails, all of us fail.”U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft was blunt in return, telling the entire council, “Shame on each of you” for focusing on “political grudges.” She zeroed in on China and reiterated President Donald Trump’s strong stance that Beijing should be held accountable as the source of the pandemic.U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft is seen on a computer monitor at U.N. headquarters as she speaks during the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 24, 2020.“The actions of the Chinese Communist Party prove that not all member states are equally committed to public health, transparency and their international obligations,” she said. “This fact should deeply trouble all of the responsible nations of the world who are working in good faith to defeat COVID-19 and keep future pandemics from emerging.”China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun fired back, telling Craft, “Enough is enough.” Acknowledging that his country was the first “to be hit” by the virus, he said it had made a great contribution to the global response.He noted the U.S. has nearly 7 million of the world’s almost 32 million confirmed virus cases, and 200,000 deaths.“The U.S. should understand that its failure in handling COVID-19 is totally its own fault,” Zhang said.Rising tensions between Washington and Beijing have been evident this week, in both the speeches of their leaders to the General Assembly and on the sidelines.China targeted on virusOn Tuesday, Trump told the assembly that Beijing should be “held accountable” for having a domestic lockdown in the earliest days of the virus but allowing air travel from China to continue “and infect the world.”U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also took aim at China this week, saying the administration is in the process of determining how to label Beijing’s repression of Uighur Muslims — as “crimes against humanity” or “genocide.” Such terms carry enormous weight in international law and relations.In remarks directed at Washington, China’s President Xi Jinping denounced efforts to politicize or stigmatize the virus.
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Sweden’s prime minister said Thursday that he would keep a ban on large gatherings after the nation recorded its largest spike in new daily COVID-19 cases since July.Sweden’s approach to the pandemic has been controversial in that it never implemented a mandatory national lockdown. Instead, it called for personal responsibility, social distancing, masks and good hygiene to slow, rather than eradicate, the virus.The results have been mixed. Sweden’s COVID-19 caseload has been much lower than those of many other European countries, with 90,289. But its number of deaths — 5,878 as of Thursday — is significantly higher than those of its Nordic neighbors Finland and Norway, but low compared with figures from countries like Spain, Italy or Britain.Sweden has recorded a gradual rise in new COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, and 533 new cases were reported Thursday, the highest daily number since early July.FILE – Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven leaves the European Council building at the end of an EU summit in Brussels, July 21, 2020.Too relaxedAt a news briefing Thursday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Swedes had become too relaxed about heeding anti-COVID-19 guidelines, and while they plan to lift a ban on visits to elder care homes, he said the government would not hesitate to implement further restrictions if new cases continued to rise.Lofven blamed the recent spike in cases on people letting their guard down. He said, “The caution that existed in the spring has more and more been replaced by hugs, parties,” and for many, an attempt to return to “normal life.”At a separate news conference Thursday, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, told reporters he believed the country has not seen the rapid spread and resurgence of the virus that other European countries have seen because the restrictions it did implement were left in place. Other countries, like Spain, locked down completely, then reopened.Tegnell said it was also possible Sweden could experience the same type of surge in a few weeks.
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Helsinki Airport is getting creative when it comes to operating safely in the age of COVID-19. Beginning this week, travelers arriving at Finland’s busiest international airport will have the opportunity to take a voluntary coronavirus test that takes 10 seconds and is entirely painless — but it’s not the test that is unusual, rather, it’s who is conducting it.The new state-funded pilot program uses coronavirus-sniffing canines to detect the presence of the virus within 10 seconds with shocking accuracy. Preliminary results from the trial show that the dogs, who have been used previously to detect illnesses such as cancer and malaria, were able to identify the virus with nearly 100% accuracy.FILE – Sniffer dog Miina, being trained to detect the coronavirus from the arriving passengers’ samples, works in Helsinki Airport in Vantaa, Finland, Sept. 15, 2020.Many of the dogs were able to detect the coronavirus long before a patient developed symptoms, something even laboratory tests fail to do.After passengers arrive at Helsinki from abroad and have collected their luggage, they are invited to wipe their necks with a cloth to collect sweat samples that are then placed into an intake box. In a separate booth, a dog handler places the box alongside several cans containing various scents and the canine goes to work.Researchers have yet to identify what it is exactly the dogs sniff when they detect the virus, but a preliminary study published in June found there was “very high evidence” that the sweat odors of a COVID-19-positive person were different from those who do not have the virus. This is key, as dogs are able to detect the difference thanks to their sharp sense of smell.If the dog flags the sample as positive, the passenger is directed to the airport’s health center for a free PCR virus test.While there have been instances that an animal contracts the coronavirus, dogs do not seem to be easily infected. There is no evidence that dogs can pass the virus on to people or other animals.Sniffer dogs Valo, left, and E.T., who are trained to detect the coronavirus disease from the arriving passengers’ samples, sit next to their trainers at Helsinki Airport in Vantaa, Finland, Sept. 22, 2020.Scientists in other countries, such as France, Germany and Britain, are engaging in similar research, but Finland is the first country in Europe to put dogs to work to sniff out the coronavirus.Finnish researchers say that if the pilot program proves to be effective, dogs could be used to quickly and efficiently screen visitors in spaces such as retirement homes or hospitals to help avoid unnecessary quarantines for health care workers.Representatives from the University of Helsinki, who are conducting the trial, said Finland would need between 700 and 1,000 specially trained coronavirus-sniffing dogs in order to cover schools, malls and retirement homes. For broader coverage, even more trained animals— and their trainers— would be required.  
 
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Sir Harold Evans, the charismatic publisher, author and muckraker who was a bold-faced name for decades for exposing wrongdoing in 1960s London to publishing such 1990s best-sellers as “Primary Colors,” has died, his wife said Thursday. He was 92.
His wife, fellow author-publisher Tina Brown, said he died Wednesday in New York of congestive heart failure.  
A vision of British erudition and sass, Evans was a high-profile go-getter, starting in the 1960s as an editor of the Northern Echo and the Sunday Times of London and continuing into the 1990s as president of Random House. Married since 1981 to Brown, their union was a paradigm of media clout and A-list access.  
A defender of literature and print journalism well into the digital age, Evans was one of the all-time newspaper editors, startling British society with revelations of espionage, corporate wrongdoing and government scandal. In the U.S., he published such attention-getters as the mysterious political novel “Primary Colors” and memoirs by such unlikely authors as Manuel Noriega and Marlon Brando.  
He was knighted by his native Britain in 2004 for his contributions to journalism.  
He held his own, and more, with the world’s elite, but was mindful of his working class background: a locomotive driver’s son, born in Lancashire, English, on June 28, 1928. As a teen, he was evacuated to Wales during World War II. After serving in the Royal Air Force, he studied politics and economics at Durham University and received a master’s in foreign policy.
His drive to report and expose dated back to his teens, when he discovered that newspapers had wildly romanticized the Battle of Dunkirk between German and British soldiers.
 “A newspaper is an argument on the way to a deadline,” he once wrote. He was just 16 when he got his first journalism job, at a local newspaper in Lancashire, and after graduating from college he became an assistant editor at the Manchester Evening News. In his early 30s, he was hired to edit the Daily Echo and began attracting national attention with crusades such as government funding for cancer smear tests for women.
He had yet to turn 40 when he became editor of the Sunday Times, where he reigned and rebelled for 14 years until he was pushed out by a new boss, Rupert Murdoch. Notable stories included publishing the diaries of former Labour Minister Richard Crossman; taking on the manufacturers of the drug Thalidomide, which caused birth defects in children; and revealing that Britain’s Kim Philby was a Soviet spy.
“There have been many times when I have found that what was presented as truth did not square with what I discovered as a reporter, or later as an editor, learned from good shoe-leather reporters,” he observed in “My Paper Chase,” published in 2009. “We all understand in an age of terrorism that refraining from exposing a lie may be necessary for the protection of innocents. But ‘national interest’ is an elastic concept that if stretched can snap with a sting.”
Meanwhile, the then-married Evans became infatuated with an irreverent blonde just out of Oxford, Tina Brown, and soon began a long-distance correspondence — he in London, she in New York — that grew intimate enough for Evans to “fall in love by post.” They were married in East Hampton, New York, in 1981. The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee was best man, Nora Ephron was among the guests.  
With Brown, Evans had two children, adding to the two children he had with his first wife.
Their garden apartment on Manhattan’s exclusive Sutton Place became a mini-media dynasty: He the champion of justice, rogues and belles lettres, she the award-winning provocateur and chronicler of the famous — as head of Tatler in England, then Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and as author of a best-selling book about Princess Diana.
Evans emigrated to the U.S. in 1984, initially serving as editorial director of U.S. News & World Report, and was hired six years later by Random House. He published William Styron’s best-selling account of his near-suicidal depression, “Darkness Visible,” and winked at Washington with “Primary Colors,” a roman a clef about then-candidate Bill Clinton that was published anonymously and set off a capitol guessing game, ended when The Washington Post unmasked magazine correspondent Joe Klein.
Evans had a friendly synergist at The New Yorker, where Brown serialized works by Monica Crowley, Edward Jay Epstein and other Random House authors. A special beneficiary was Jeffrey Toobin, a court reporter for The New Yorker who received a Random House deal for a book on the O.J. Simpson trial that was duly excerpted in Brown’s magazine.  
Evans took on memoirs by the respected — Colin Powell — as well as the disgraced: Clinton advisor and alleged call girl client Dick Morris. He visited Noriega’s jail cell in pursuit of a memoir by the deposed Panamanian dictator. In 1994, he risked $40,000 for a book by a community organizer and law school graduate, a bargain for what became former President Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”
Evan’s more notable follies included a disparaged, Random House-generated list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century, for which judges acknowledged they had no ideal how the books were ranked, and Brando’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me.”  
As Evans recalled in “My Paper Chase,” he met with Brando in California, first for dinner at a restaurant where the ever-suspicious actor accused Evans of working for the CIA. Then they were back at Brando’s Beverly Hills mansion, where Brando advocated for Native Americans and intimated that he had sex with Jacqueline Kennedy at the White House.
After a follow-up meeting the next afternoon — they played chess, Brando recited Shakespeare — the actor signed on, wrote what Evans found a “highly readable” memoir. He then subverted it by kissing CNN’s Larry King on the lips, “stopping the book dead in its tracks,” Evans recalled.
Evans left Random House in 1997 to take over as editorial director and vice president of Morton B. Zuckerman’s many publications, including U.S. News & World Report and The Atlantic, but stepped down in 2000 to devote more time to speeches and books.  
More recently, he served as a contributing editor to U.S. News and editor at large for the magazine The Week. In 2011, he became an editor-at-large for Reuters. His guidebook for writers, “Do I Make Myself Clear?”, was published in 2017.
“I wrote the book because I thought I had to speak up for clarity,” he told The Daily Beast at the time. “When I go into a cafe in the morning for breakfast and I’m reading the paper, I’m editing. I can’t help it. I can’t stop. I still go through the paper and mark it up as I read. It’s a compulsion, actually.”
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Swiss health authorities have ordered a quarantine for a staggering 2,500 students at a prestigious hospitality management school in the city of Lausanne after “significant outbreaks” of the coronavirus that are a suspected byproduct of off-campus partying.  
 
Authorities in Switzerland’s Vaud canton, or region, said all undergraduates at the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, known as the Lausanne Hospitality Management University in English, have been ordered to quarantine both on- and off-campus because the number of COVID-19 outbreaks because targeted closures were not possible.
 
The World Health Organization, national health authorities and others have cautioned that young people, who tend to have milder COVID-19 symptoms than older demographic groups, have been a key driver for the continued spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks, particularly in Europe.  
 
“Significant outbreaks of infection have appeared at several levels of training, making a more targeted closure impossible that that involving the 2,500 students affected,” the Vaud regional office said in a statement. “Until Sept. 28, the students must stay home. For some, that means not leaving their housing on the hospitality school site.”
 
It noted that an early investigation showed that “one or more parties was at the origin of these many outbreaks of infection,” and reiterated authorities previous call for a “responsible attitude” among party-goers such as by wearing masks, tracing their contacts, keeping alert for symptoms, and “social distancing.”  
 
School administrators were taking “all necessary measures” to ensure that classes were continuing online, the statement said.
 
University spokesman Sherif Mamdouh said Thursday that the situation was “not ideal” but that the university took precautions in recent months. He said that 11 students had tested positive for the coronavirus and none required hospitalization.  
 
Mamdouh said the quarantine affects 2,500 undergraduates. The university has a total student body of about 3,500, including people pursuing advanced degrees. He said hundreds of students living in on-campus dormitories on campus will be subject to the quarantine.
 
Switzerland is not alone. The latest government figures in neighboring France show that 22% of the country’s currently active virus clusters emerged at schools are universities. The United States has also seen clusters linked to college students.  
 
World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris said that while it is “unfair to just put it on the young people,” it’s also unsurprising that teenagers and young adults might assume they don’t need to worry about succumbing to the virus.
 
“Perceptions do indicate that they don’t feel they are as at-risk as older groups” Harris said, particularly in the wake of data showing younger people typically have less-severe cases of COVID-19.
 
“The message they have heard is: ‘You are out of jail, go out and play,'” she said. “We don’t want to be the fun police, but we want people to have fun safely.
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Britain became the latest European country to impose restrictions on socializing Wednesday following a sharp rise in coronavirus transmission rates. The number of new cases is roughly doubling every week – and the Chief Medical Officer has warned of 50,000 new infections daily if the pattern continues. Britain has suffered the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe, with over 41,000 fatalities. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Five years after Europe’s migrant crisis, the European Union is unveiling a long-awaited migration plan Wednesday that stresses mandatory burden sharing — but also sending illegal migrants back to their home countries.The new so-called migration and asylum pact is the latest effort by the EU’s executive arm to create a comprehensive plan for managing migration — and to get all 27 member states behind it.Backed by Germany, the bloc’s most powerful member and the EU’s current rotating president, it includes mandatory rules for sharing the migration burden, whether that means hosting asylum seekers or sponsoring returns of failed applicants.It also aims to strengthen control of Europe’s external borders, with new plans to screen all migrants and fast track those unlikely to get asylum, crack down on human trafficking— and increasing support for countries of origin and transit to give people reasons to stay home.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the plan strikes a fair balance between responsibility and solidarity among member states.“It is not a question of whether member states should support with solidarity and contributions but how they should support,” said von der Leyen.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gives a statement at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Sept. 23, 2020.The commission’s plan needs to be approved by the 27 member states, and some European leaders were sounding concerns before its details were even announced.Migration is a deeply divisive issue in the EU. Countries on the front lines of the migrant influx, like Greece, Spain and Italy, want much more burden sharing and other support. Others, like Hungary and Austria, object to taking in new migrants.Backdropping the commission’s pact was the recent fire at Europe’s largest migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. While Germany has agreed to welcome more than 1,500 of the migrants, other countries are taking in far fewer, or none.Marie De Somer heads the migration program at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre research group.“The fire in Lesbos was horrible, but one thing that it did do is to showcase to the wider public the urgency and importance of coming to a European solution,” she said.Migrants flee from the Moria refugee camp during a second fire, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 9, 2020.Even though Europe’s migration influx has dropped sizably from the million-plus arrivals in 2015 to just 140,000 last year, seven European countries, including EU members Hungary and Croatia, top a new Gallup poll as the world’s least accepting countries for migrants.Analyst Stefan Lehne of Carnegie Europe says, migration promises to be a longstanding issue for Europe.“The question is how to replace illegal migration — getting into boats and crossing the Mediterranean — by more legal forms of migration. I think this is probably one of the biggest challenges Europe will face in the next 20 to 30 years. There is no silver bullet,” said Lehne.The European Commission says it will unveil proposals on legal migration next year, as well as on Europe’s open border Schengen system. 
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Germany’s health ministry Wednesday said its coronavirus smartphone app has been downloaded more than 18 million times and transmitted 1.2 million test results from labs to users during the first 100 days of use.Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters in Berlin that while the “Corona Warn App” is far from perfect, it should be considered a success. He said almost 5,000 users have activated the app to warn their contacts and called it a key tool in the country’s effort to contain the spread of the virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.He said, “This shows that the corona tracing app works, it is in demand…it helps to prevent infections and it is one of the most successful apps worldwide.”Spahn noted in particular the fact that most users can get their test results sent directly to their smartphones, without having to wait for their doctor to inform them.German Health Minister Jens Spahn attends a news conference to give an update on a smartphone app that allows users to evaluate their risk of being exposed to the coronavirus in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 23, 2020.Germany’s strict privacy rules mean that the app stores all data on phones and not on a central server. Observers, however, say there is no precise data on the number of people alerted about possible exposure.Should an app user get a positive test result, the app has a button the person can press to warn his or her contacts. Spahn says one problem is not everyone is doing that. “Only about half of the app users who get a positive result inform their contacts afterwards.”Spahn says the app is not a cure-all, but one of a number of important tools the government is using to control the spread of the virus.German tech company Deutsche Telekom, working with software company SAP, developed the app. Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Tim Hoettges said more than 90% of labs in Germany are now connected to it.Hoettges said efforts are under way to establish a European “gateway” that will allow the German app to communicate with those in 10 other European countries, including Italy, Poland and Spain, that use the same decentralized, Bluetooth-based system.
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Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny has been discharged from the Berlin hospital where he was being treated for what Germany has said is a case of poisoning with a nerve agent from the Soviet-era Novichok group.The 44-year-old posted on social media a picture of himself sitting on a park bench in the German capital after being released, adding that while he still doesn’t have full use of his left hand, he has started learning how to regain his balance by standing on one leg.Navalny fell violently ill aboard a Moscow-bound flight on August 20 originating in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was carrying out his latest investigation into state corruption. Days later, he was airlifted to Berlin for treatment.“The first time they put me in front of a mirror after 24 days in intensive care (of which 16 were in a coma), a character from the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’ looked back at me and I can tell you, it was not an elf at all,” Navalny said in the post.“I was terribly upset: I thought that I would never be discharged. But the doctors continued to do their miracle,” he added.Navalny said he will continue to do physiotherapy, while doctors from the Charite hospital in Berlin said in a statement on September 23 that based on his “progress and current condition,” physicians believe that a “complete recovery is possible.””However, it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” the statement cautioned.German authorities have said tests in Germany, France, and Sweden have determined Navalny was poisoned with a chemical agent from the Novichok group.French President Emmanuel Macron on September 22 demanded a “swift and flawless” explanation from Moscow for the poisoning during his speech to the 75th-annual United Nations General Assembly.Several other countries in the West have also demanded an explanation from Russia, but Moscow has declined to open an investigation so far, saying it has yet to see evidence of a crime.The Kremlin, which also has denied any involvement in the attack, said on September 23 that the anti-corruption crusader “is free” to return to Russia whenever he pleases.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also addressed a recent article in the French newspaper Le Monde, saying the report that President Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in a recent conversation that perhaps Navalny had poisoned himself had many inaccuracies.He did, however, confirm that the Navalny case was discussed between the two leaders.Navalny was medically airlifted to Germany at the request of his wife following a medical tussle with Russian doctors who said he was too sick to travel.He emerged earlier this month from a medically induced coma as his condition slowly improved.German doctors say the military-grade nerve agent Novichok was found both inside his body and on his skin.Navalny said in a post on his website on September 21 that the 30-day deadline for Russian police to conduct their “pre-investigative check” into what he called his attempted murder by poisoning has expired. He demanded that the Russian side return articles of clothing taken when he was hospitalized there.Experts say the clothes he had on could help any investigation into the poisoning.Russian officials have questioned German officials’ findings and their statements since Navalny arrived there for treatment.Russian police must either launch an investigation or close a case within 30 days of a pre-investigative check.However, police in Omsk have said they are continuing their investigation.Navalny’s team has said a water bottle removed from his hotel room in the city of Tomsk after he fell ill had been taken to Germany and found to contain traces of the nerve agent.Peskov has said suggestions that Navalny ingested the nerve agent via a water bottle in Siberia are “absurd.”In a statement issued via his Instagram account on September 19, Navalny called his road to recovery “a clear path now, albeit long.”Navalny was attacked with a green dye by unknown assailants in Russia in 2017, leaving him with permanent damage to his vision.Two years later, he suddenly fell ill while in Russian detention with what Russian doctors said was a severe allergic reaction but which he and his team insisted was an intentional poisoning. That case still has not been solved. 
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Leaked documents allege that some of the world’s biggest banks have allowed $2 trillion  worth of suspicious or fraudulent activity to take place – including money laundering for criminal gangs and terrorists. The so-called “FinCEN files” consist of more than two thousand Suspicious Activity Reports or SARs sent by banks to the U.S. Treasury, alerting the authorities to possible criminal activity, from 1999 and 2017. The files were leaked to Buzzfeed and shared with a network of journalists. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Italy’s fragile coalition government breathed a collective sigh of relief Tuesday after voters denied the country’s populist leader Matteo Salvini the major electoral breakthrough he was seeking in hotly contested regional elections.  The center-left Democratic Party, PD, managed a comfortable victory in Tuscany, a region the left has ruled without interruption since regional governments were first elected in 1970, frustrating Salvini in taking the biggest prize in the elections for the governments of seven regions and a thousand towns and cities the length and breadth of Italy.Tuscany is the buckle of the left’s so-called “red belt” and was targeted by Salvini’s populist Lega party. Salvini himself campaigned tirelessly in Tuscany in the run-up to the polls, predicting his party could win the wealthy region behind his handpicked candidate for the governorship, the telegenic 33-year-old Susanna Ceccardi, a former mayor.With the regional counts still to be finalized Tuesday, the Democrats looked sure to hold three regions it ruled before. Along with Tuscany, incumbent PD governors were on course to win re-election in the southern regions of Campania and Apulia.  The leaders of the key government parties of Prime Minister’s Giuseppe Conte’s coalition government, which is made up of the Democratic Party and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, M5S, along with some other smaller groups, were quick to celebrate Tuesday.Democratic Party leader Nicola Zingaretti talks to the media during a press conference, in Rome, Sept. 21, 2020.PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said, “We are very satisfied.” He said the result would facilitate further reforms and cooperation within the government.And Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s foreign minister and a prominent member of M5S, said at a press conference: “Those that tried to transform this referendum into a vote against the government received a boomerang.” Eugenio Giani, the PD’s gubernatorial candidates in Tuscany, hailed his win an “extraordinary victory.”But for all of the center-left’s jubilation, the PD lost a fourth region, Marche, where the far-right Brothers of Italy, part of a Lega-led center-right alliance, won the vote. And the contest in Apulia in the heel of Italy was close. The Lega-led center-right alliance held easily the three regions it was defending, including Veneto in the northeast, where incumbent Luca Zaia secured election as governor for the third time with an emphatically large majority. The size of his victory — he won 75% of the vote, largely due commentators say to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic — has prompted speculation that he might seek to challenge Salvini in the future for the leadership of the Lega. Zaia denies he has any plans to do so.Jacopo Morrone, a Lega lawmaker, claimed the results overall are a victory for the populists, saying it was always going to be difficult to win Tuscany or Apulia “but to put them [the PD] in difficulty is a good result.”The fact, though, that the Lega-led center-right opposition failed to land a knockout blow in the regional elections by winning the prize of Tuscany is being widely seen by analysts as strengthening Prime Minister Conte’s shaky coalition government — at least in the short term.Longer term, this week’s regional elections have confirmed that the Lega has managed to maintain a shift in the regional power balance further to the right nationally. Fourteen of the country’s 20  regions now are ruled by the Lega or its allies. A 15th could be added to the Lega tally. The votes of elections this week in the French-speaking Val d’Aosta, a tiny region in the north-east, remain to be counted, but exit polls suggest Lega-allies are likely to win there.Pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco told reporters that this week’s regional elections should be considered a tie. “The PD had done a lot of expectation management, so that [the results] seem almost a victory, even if it is more of a draw,” he said. Other analysts say Salvini made a PR mistake with his pre-election forecasts that Lega would manage a victory in Tuscany.
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A spokesman for European Council President Charles Michel says a summit of European Union leaders scheduled for Thursday and Friday has been postponed, after Michel was forced to go into COVID-19 quarantine following contact with an infected security guard.  EU council spokesman Barend Leyts tweeted that Michel learned on Tuesday that a security officer, with whom he was in close contact early last week, tested positive for COVID-19. The @eucopresident has decided to postpone the special European Council meeting that was planned for 24 and 25 September to 1 and 2 October #EUCO— Barend Leyts (@BarendLeyts) September 22, 2020Leyts said the EU council president is tested regularly, and as recently as Monday tested negative for COVID-19. But Michel plans to follow Belgium’s COVID-19 regulations and is going into isolation. The EU is headquartered in Brussels. The summit, now scheduled for Oct. 1-2, will focus on a variety of issues ranging from Brexit negotiations, to climate change, to the tensions between Greece and Turkey over energy rights on the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus. Final approval for sanctions against Belarus regarding the crackdown following the country’s contested election last month is also set to be a focus. Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, spent much of the past week in shuttle diplomacy over the Turkey issue, including trips to Cyprus, the Greek island of Lesbos and Athens. 
 
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Turkey is in the midst of a major naval construction program, seeking to restore regional maritime influence lost since the collapse of the Ottoman empire, and the project is already generating regional tensions.”Turkey will get back its fair share in the Mediterranean, Aegean and the Black Sea,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared last month. “If we say we will do something, we will do it, and we will pay the price.”Turkey’s imperial legacy looms large in the fabric of Turkish society. An imposing statue of the 16th century Ottoman Admiral, Hayreddin – or Barbarossa – dominates a square adjacent to Istanbul’s Bosphorus waterway.A statue of the 16th century Ottoman Admiral, Hayreddin – or Barbarossa – dominates a square adjacent to Istanbul’s Bosphorus waterway. (Dorian Jones/VOA)Many European historians portray Barbarossa as a pirate and slave trader. However, in modern Turkey, he is still revered for his naval victories that asserted Ottoman control of the Mediterranean Sea.Since 1923, when the Turkish Republic was founded on the Ottoman Empire’s ashes, Turkey’s military power was primarily land-based, with its naval forces limited to coastal patrols.Under the mantra of “Blue Homeland,” Erdogan is vowing to restore Turkey’s naval prowess and he seeks to extend its power beyond the horizon.Government videos depict images of past Ottoman Empire glories, promising to extend Turkish influence across the Mediterranean and beyond. (Courtesy: Presidency of the Republic of Turkey Communication Directorate)”Turkey is becoming a maritime state, like England, like France, like the United States,” said Retired Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, author of the “Blue Homeland” doctrine.”In order to protect Turkey’s rights and interests, in overseas areas like in [the], Persian Gulf, like in [the] Red Sea, the Arabian sea and whatever need arise, the Turkish navy, Turkey’s maritime signature should be there,” Gurdeniz told VOA.Turkey’s efforts to restore its navy to blue water power include plans for an assault aircraft carrier.GreeceThe country has given a glimpse of its longer-term goals already by challenging Greece, its neighbor, with claims on waters that Greece considers its own and that are believed to have vast energy reserves.Athens, citing international law, claims much of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean between the two countries, confining Turkey to its coastal waters.Retired admiral Cem Gurdeniz is the architect of the “Blue Homeland” doctrine, which calls for Turkey to reassert itself as a maritime power. (Dorian Jones/VOA)”The main implication [of the Blue Homeland doctrine], first of all Greece should understand they’re not the owners of the Eastern Mediterranean or the Aegean Sea,” said Gurdeniz.”Yes, they might think in their fantasy world that all the seas surrounding them are belonging to Greece, but that dream is over.”An arms race could be looming.”The time has come to strengthen the armed forces as a legacy for the security of the country,” said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in announcing  Athens’ own naval construction program this month.Also this month, French President Emmanuel Macron met with six Mediterranean leaders to counter Ankara’s assertiveness.”We must be tough with the Turkish government,” said Macron ahead of the summit.Erdogan pushed back, warning Macron “not to mess” with Turkey.Faceoff with EuropeOn Thursday, European Union leaders are due to discuss sanctions against Turkey to support Greece, an EU member.”We are at a watershed moment in Turkish-EU relations,” warned EU foreign affairs chief Jospeh Borrell last week.Under the threat of sanctions, Turkey stepped back, withdrawing a research ship that had been operating in waters claimed by Greece.FILE – Turkey’s exploratory vessel, the Oruc Reis, is seen anchored in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Antalya, Turkey, July 24, 2020.”Let’s give diplomacy a chance, let’s put forth a positive approach for diplomacy,” Erdogan said Friday. “Greece should also positively meet this approach of ours, and let’s take a step accordingly,” he said.Greek and Turkish officials are already holding technical talks under NATO’s auspices to introduce measures to avoid an accidental confrontation. The two NATO members are regularly holding live-fire naval exercises in close proximity.But tensions over Turkey’s naval aspirations are not limited to Greece.In July, France accused a Turkish frigate of threatening one of its naval ships seeking to enforce an arms embargo on Libya. The two countries back rival sides in the Libyan civil war.NATO is refusing to publish a report on the incident, citing the “sensitivity” of the issue.”It would be a disaster if two NATO countries started shooting at one another it would be the end of the alliance,” said Turkish presidential advisor Mesut Casin, who is also a professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University.The true purpose?But domestic political considerations rather than broader strategic goals may be the real driving force behind Turkey’s naval expansion.Recent opinion polls reveal Erdogan’s popularity on the wane, with the already weak Turkish economy hit hard hit by the COVID-19 epidemic. Analysts say restoring past maritime power could the door to untapped electoral support.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks in a televised address in Ankara, Sept. 21, 2020.”Domestically owning or embracing this very nationalistic idea, very sovereignty- orientated idea you know, has improved or has expanded his support base,” said International Relations Professor Serhat Guvenc of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.”He is getting support from circles which would normally would not want to do anything with Tayyip Erdogan,” Guvenc told VOA.Government videos depict images of past Ottoman Empire glories, and promises to extend Turkish influence across the Mediterranean and beyond.With the price tag of the ambitious naval program running into the billions of dollars, economic realities could yet stymie Erdogan’s aspirations. 
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For the first time in its 75-year history, leaders of the United Nations’ 193 member states will deliver their annual speeches on the opening day of the world body’s General Assembly on videotape instead of in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Tuesday’s session will commence with a pre-taped message from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in keeping with a decades-long tradition first established in the 1940s,   followed by U.S. President Donald Trump, as leader of the U.N. host country.  Other prominent world leaders whose pre-recorded messages will be shown Tuesday will be Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, China’s Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin of Russia and France’s Emmanuel Macron.   The only attendees in the cavernous General Assembly Hall to watch the videotaped speeches will be a single masked envoy representing each member nation, plus the European Union, the Holy See and the non-member Observer State of Palestine, in order to maintain social distancing.  Hand sanitizer stations have been placed in the side aisles of the Hall and delegates will be obliged to wear face coverings, but not to undergo temperature checks.   The U.N. marked its 75th anniversary Monday amid the grip of the global coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 960,000 people and sickened more than 31.2 million globally, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.      “The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the world’s fragilities. We can only address them together,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, referencing the disease caused by the coronavirus. “Today, we have a surplus of multilateral challenges and a deficit of multilateral solutions.”WATCH: UN 75th AnniversarySorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
A member of the Irish delegation works on his computer in the main lobby of the United Nations headquarters, Sept. 21, 2020. In 2020, which marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.But the Trump administration has been critical of the world body, withdrawing funding and cooperation from several of its agencies, including the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council.  Chalet said the organization has for too long been resistant to real reform and lacks transparency.    “The 75th anniversary of the U.N. is the right time to ask questions about the institution’s strengths and weaknesses, review and learn from its failures, and celebrate its accomplishments,” she said.   The United Nations is using its anniversary year as a moment for reflection. More than one million people in 80 countries have provided feedback to a global survey about the organization and its work.   Nearly 90% said global cooperation is crucial to deal with today’s challenges, and that the pandemic has made international cooperation more urgent. Nearly three-quarters said the U.N. is “essential” for tackling global challenges, but they also want the organization to change and innovate.   The General Assembly adopted a declaration for the anniversary, which in part, says, “There is no other global organization with the legitimacy, convening power and normative impact of the United Nations. No other global organization gives hope to so many people.” 
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The United Nations marked the 75th anniversary of its founding on Monday, amid a global pandemic and other serious challenges that the U.N. secretary-general said highlight the urgency for stronger international cooperation. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer has more.Produced by: Jesusemen Oni   
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Britain’s health minister went before parliament Monday to discuss the government’s response to a surge in positive COVID-19 cases in the nation.Matt Hancock acknowledged what the government’s top medical and science advisers had said earlier in the day – that COVID-19 has been surging across age groups throughout much of Britain.Among the steps the government plans to take, Hancock said, is encouraging self-isolation by those who have been infected or exposed to the virus. The government will also offer a single support payment of about $640 for low-income people for whom self-isolation would be an economic hardship.A woman wears a face mask as she stands in front of a statue of The Beatles following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Liverpool, Britain, Sept. 21, 2020.Hancock said those asked to self-isolate who refuse to do so could face fines of nearly $13,000 for serious breaches or repeat offenders.The health minister told British lawmakers that demand for testing has dropped slightly since last week, taking a little pressure off the system. Nonetheless, the demand for tests remains high enough that the government must prioritize who receives them.Hancock said acute care cases are the top priority for testing, followed by people in care homes, National Health Service targeted testing for outbreak management and surveillance studies, teaching staff with symptoms, and the general public.He said the government continues working on further measures to address the COVID-19 surge, and the prime minister will update parliament Tuesday on further measures.Earlier Monday, the government’s chief medical adviser reported the latest figures show new cases in Britain totaled more than 6,000 per day. Chris Witty said if nothing changes, at the current rate of infection, new cases could reach 50,000 a day by this time next month. 
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Turkey is embarking on a major naval construction program to restore the regional maritime influence it lost after the Ottoman empire’s collapse. But the policy is already generating regional tensions – in particular – with its neighbor, Greece. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
Camera: Berke Bas    Producer: Jon Spier
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny demanded Monday that Russia return the clothes he was wearing when he fell ill last month, saying the items are important evidence in the investigation of his poisoning.Navalny became sick while flying to Moscow on Aug. 20 and was taken to a hospital in Omsk. He wrote in his blog Monday that before being sent to Germany for treatment two days later, his clothes were taken from him.”Considering Novichok was found on my body, and that infection through contact is very likely, my clothes are a very important piece of evidence,” he said.A German military lab determined Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, a substance Western governments have accused Russia of using in the past, including against a former spy in Britain in 2018.Russia has not opened an investigation into the incident involving Navalny, saying its labs have found no indications he was poisoned. The Kremlin has also denied any involvement.Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, not seen in photo, on a stretcher is transferred into an ambulance before being driven to an airport, at the Omsk Ambulance Hospital, in Omsk, Russia, Aug. 22, 2020.Germany has threatened economic sanctions against Russia in response to what Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called a “serious crime,” while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the use of a chemical agent “outrageous.”The Trump administration has said it is working with allies “to hold those in Russia accountable.”Doctors in Germany put Navalny under an induced coma for more than a week as part of his treatment. After waking up, Navalny has reported his condition improving, including regaining more of his mental and physical abilities.Navalny has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and worked on anti-corruption efforts in Russia. He has been jailed numerous times on charges that he and his supporters said were politically motivated. 
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Western European states are scrambling to curb a second coronavirus wave of infections by re-imposing pandemic restrictions lifted just weeks or months ago. But their governments say they are determined to avoid further stressing their stricken economics by re-introducing national lockdowns.  The big question is whether this will be possible. From Britain, which has banned social gatherings of more than six and is threatening punitive fines for transgressors, to Spain, where Madrid is now under lockdown, authorities are struggling to contain alarming second-wave surges while keeping schools open and encouraging people still to head to work.  A woman holds a sign reading ‘Public school: sustainable, free, active, in defense of children” as teachers and students take part in a protest calling for a ‘safe education’ in Malaga, Spain, Sept. 18, 2020.Officials in European capitals say it will ultimately be in the hands of public, if lockdowns are necessary. They hope better adherence to social distancing rules and more conscientious mask-wearing will help reverse infection surges — or at least slow them.  “If we want to avoid national measures and more action we can, but we can only do that if everybody follows the rules,” Britain’s health minister Matt Hancock said.  A national lockdown could be prevented if the “significant minority” of rule-breakers changed behavior. He urged people to report anyone breaching isolation orders or the rule of six, warning police would “come down hard on people who do the wrong thing.”  The snitching appeal has prompted an outcry from some quarters with critics saying it would turn Britain into a nation of score-settling busybodies. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of the devolved government, said last week, “No-one wants to see another full-scale lockdown. And above all we want to keep schools and childcare open because we know how important that is to the education and to the broader wellbeing of children and young people.”  But she added: “The bottom line here is this virus is on the rise again. Cases are rising quite rapidly.” The government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said at a Downing Street news conference Monday that Britain was fast approaching a tipping point, warning that without tough measures the country could be seeing 50,000 new cases a day.  Customers eat sunday lunches at tables outside restaurants in Soho, in London. Sept. 20, 2020.England’s chief medical officer, Christopher Whitty outlined the dilemma the British government is facing, much as European neighbors. “If we do too little this virus will get out of control. If we go too far it will impact and damage the economy.” He urged everyone to observe the regulations just a day after thousands ignored the rules and crowded the seaside resort town of Blackpool. “You cannot in an epidemic just take your own risk, unfortunately you are taking a risk on behalf of everybody else, it’s important we see this as something we do collectively,” Whitty said. New infection highs  Britain is seeing daily infections rise to four-month highs, and cases might be doubling every day, according to health officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to make a nationwide television address Tuesday to announce a further tightening of restrictions on ordinary life. The British government is set to introduce fines of up to $13,000 for people who breach self-isolation rules.  Commuters walk across the London Bridge during the morning rush hour, in London, Britain, Sept. 21, 2020.The government’s scientific advisers have been advising Johnson to act more quickly than he did in March and have been urging an immediate two-week “circuit breaker” of a national lockdown just to help interrupt the pandemic and reduce hospital admissions.  But Johnson has come under pressure from finance ministers and business to ignore the circuit-breaker idea. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, reportedly has warned Johnson that a further national shutdown of the hospitality and leisure industry would be devastating to the economy.FILE – A sign promoting social distancing is hung on a post near the Crown and Anchor pub following a spike in cases of COVID-19 to visitors of the pub in Stone, Britain, July 30, 2020.Pub and restaurant owners say the hospitality industry is now in existential crisis, with almost a million jobs at risk. A nighttime curfew aimed at discouraging partying is among the options Johnson is considering, a Downing Street official confirmed to VOA.  Opponents of stringent new measures include much of the British press. Most newspapers say the country cannot afford a second national lockdown.“The one thing that we cannot afford to do is to shut up shop again,” according to the influential newspaper The Times. It says targeted measures have an important role to play. “When the government introduced national restrictions in March, it did not have a system in place for dealing with smaller flare-ups. Now that it does, it should do as much as it can locally and regionally,” the paper concluded. But a simultaneous series of regional lockdowns could soon mean the country is itself locked down in all but name, say some commentators. More than ten million people are under lockdowns in parts of northern England already — and London might have to be put under a lockdown within days or weeks, according to the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan. France French officials, too, are struggling with how to balance public health needs without further crippling the country’s damaged economy.People eat lunch at a deserted Le Petit Chatelet restaurant in the Quartier Latin as the country battles to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) while ensuring that economic and social activities can continue, in Paris, Sept. 18, 2020.A regional and local approach is also being adopted. In Nice, officials have banned gatherings of more than 10 people in public spaces and reduced opening hours for bars. New restrictions have also been imposed in the cities of Bordeaux and Marseilles.  A woman wearing a protective face mask walks past a sign showing the area where wearing a protective mask is mandatory, in Bordeaux, southwestern France, Sept. 16, 2020.France reported 13,498 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Saturday, setting another record in daily additional infections since the start of the epidemic in March. The new cases pushed the cumulative total to 442,194 as the seven-day moving average of daily new infections rose to more than 9,700, compared with a low of 272 at the end of May, two weeks after the lockdown was lifted. As with most of their western European counterparts, French officials say a sharp increase in the number of tests being conducted is partly behind the surge in numbers, but they add the virus is circulating much faster, too.  FILE – Municipal police officers wearing face masks talk to a woman, at the Promenade des Anglais, as they check that safety restrictions are being practiced, after France reopened its beaches to the public in Nice, May 22, 2020.Most of the recent surge was seen among younger people but the spikes are now being seen among the middle-aged and elderly — a pattern France’s neighbors are seeing. Hope  Some officials are hopeful the second wave of the coronavirus is likely to be less deadly as the first. Treatments have been refined and there is more understanding of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. People are more wary, despite rule-breakers, and the elderly are aware they need to shield at home. Governments in most western European states are also now more vigilant about nursing homes and have been increasing testing in them. Some infectious disease experts argue mutant strains are more contagious, but causing less serious illnesses. The chief of a French research hospital, microbiologist Didier Raoult, the director of IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseilles, told French senators last week: “They are less severe, so something is happening with this virus, which makes it different. The mutations we have a rather degraded version of the initial form. At least that is our impression.” FILE – French medicine professor Didier Raoult wears a disposable face mask as he stands before a Senate commission on the management of the COVID19 pandemic by French State institutions on Sept. 5, 2020 in Paris.Other infectious disease experts disagree with Raoult, who was immersed in controversy earlier this year when he claimed hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, could be used to cure COVID-19.  He was widely criticized for insisting that a small trial he conducted of the drug proved its effectiveness.  Raoult is not alone in arguing the coronavirus has changed and is less deadly. The Italian doctor who oversaw the treatment of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during his recent hospitalization in Milan for COVID-19 has also expressed a similar view about the changing nature and less aggressive of the virus. But Italy’s public health officials say there’s little supporting evidence to show that is the case. German officials are watching nervously the pandemic developments unfolding in neighboring countries. Germany has seen a rise in cases, recording 2,297 new infections of coronavirus on Saturday, according to the Robert Koch Institute, the country’s disease control and prevention agency. That’s the highest number of new daily infections since the end of April. FILE – A protestor with a social distancing barrier, takes part in a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, in Berlin, Sept. 1, 20202. Sign reads ‘Corona Hygiene Concept for everyday life.’But the surge is not on the same scale as other Western European countries. German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Monday that Germany will sooner or later see imported cases from Spain, Austria and the Netherlands. Countries like Spain have infection dynamics that are out of control, Spahn told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.  
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Several global banks moved large sums of allegedly illicit funds over a period of nearly two decades, despite red flags about the origins of the money, BuzzFeed and other media reported Sunday, citing confidential documents submitted by banks to the U.S. government.The media reports were based on leaked suspicious activity reports (SARs), filed by banks and other financial firms with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).  The SARs, which the reports said numbered more than 2,100, were obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations.In all, the ICIJ reported that the files contained information about more than $2 trillion worth of transactions between 1999 and 2017, which were flagged by internal compliance departments of financial institutions as suspicious. The SARs are in themselves not necessarily proof of wrongdoing, and the ICIJ reported the leaked documents were a tiny fraction of the reports filed with FinCEN.Five global banks appeared most often in the documents — HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered Plc and Bank of New York Mellon Corp, the ICIJ reported.The SARs provide key intelligence in global efforts to stop money laundering and other crimes. The media reports on Sunday painted a picture of a system that is both under-resourced and overwhelmed, allowing vast amounts of illicit funds to move through the banking system.A bank has a maximum of 60 days to file SARs after the date of initial detection of a reportable transaction, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The ICIJ report said in some cases the banks failed to report suspect transactions until years after they had processed them.The SARs also showed that banks often moved funds for companies that were registered in offshore havens, such as the British Virgin Islands, and did not know the ultimate owner of the account, the report said.Among the types of transactions highlighted by the report: funds processed by JPMorgan for potentially corrupt individuals and companies in Venezuela, Ukraine and Malaysia; money from a Ponzi scheme moving through HSBC; and money linked to a Ukrainian billionaire processed by Deutsche Bank.”I hope these findings spur urgent action from policymakers to enact needed reforms,” said Tim Adams, chief executive of the trade group Institute of International Finance, in a statement. “As noted in today’s reports, the impacts of financial crime are felt beyond just the financial sector – it poses grave threats to society as a whole.”In a statement to Reuters, HSBC said “all of the information provided by the ICIJ is historical.” The bank said as of 2012, “HSBC embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime across more than 60 jurisdictions.”Standard Chartered said in a statement to Reuters, “We take our responsibility to fight financial crime extremely seriously and have invested substantially in our compliance programs.”BNY Mellon told Reuters it could not comment on specific SARs. “We fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations, and assist authorities in the important work they do,” the bank said.JPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment but said in a statement to BuzzFeed that “thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars are devoted to helping support law enforcement and national security efforts.”In a statement on Sunday, Deutsche Bank said the ICIJ had “reported on a number of historic issues.” “We have devoted significant resources to strengthening our controls and we are very focused on meeting our responsibilities and obligations,” the bank said.FinCEN said in a statement on its website on Sept. 1 that it was aware that various media outlets intended to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed SARs, as well as other documents, and said that the “unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States.”Representatives for the U.S. Treasury did not immediately respond to an email for comment on Sunday. 
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A fire broke out Sunday evening in the reception and identification center for asylum-seekers on the Greek island of Samos but is now “under control,” according to police and firefighter sources.”The fire is under control but two or three containers were destroyed without causing any injuries,” a police source said. Refugees stay in containers.  According to the fire department press office, “three containers were removed as a precaution when the fire broke out.”  “The firefighters are there, there is no risk of the fire spreading,” an official with the firefighters’ press service told AFP.UN: Rehousing of Moria Fire Victims on Lesbos Island Proceeding Smoothly A police operation to transfer the asylum seekers to the new site has been proceeding smoothly with no use of force or incidence of violence    This disaster, which broke out around 8:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. GMT), comes 10 days after two large fires ravaged the large camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos, known for its overpopulation and sordid living conditions.  On the streets for several days, most of the asylum-seekers expelled from Moria, about 10,000 people according to the authorities, were installed in a camp hastily set up by the government near the port of Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos.The Samos reception and identification center is one of five centers set up during the 2015 migration crisis on five Greek islands in the Aegean Sea (Lesbos, Samos, Kos , Leros, Chios) to stem the number of migrants arriving in Greece from neighboring Turkey.The living conditions in the Samos camp — which is smaller than that of Moria, with nearly 6,000 people despite its initial capacity for 650 asylum-seekers — are also very difficult, including inadequate hygienic conditions.The camps for asylum-seekers in Greece have been isolated since mid-March because of COVID-19, while the rest of the country returned to normal in early May.  According to authorities, 21 cases of COVID-19 have been detected in the Samos camp so far.
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Syrian opposition sources said Russian jets bombed rebel-held northwestern Syria on Sunday in the most extensive strikes since a Turkish-Russian deal halted major fighting with a cease-fire nearly six months ago.   Witnesses said the warplanes struck the western outskirts of Idlib city and that there was heavy artillery shelling in the mountainous Jabal al-Zawya region in southern Idlib from nearby Syrian army outposts. There were no immediate reports of casualties.   “These thirty raids are by far the heaviest strikes so far since the cease-fire deal,” said Mohammed Rasheed, a former rebel official and a volunteer plane spotter whose network covers the Russian air base in the western coastal province of Latakia.   Other tracking centers said Russian Sukhoi jets hit the Horsh area and Arab Said town, west of the city of Idlib. Unidentified drones also hit two rebel-held towns in the Sahel al-Ghab plain, west of Hama province.   There has been no wide-scale aerial bombing since a March agreement ended a Russian-backed bombing campaign that displaced over a million people in the region which borders Turkey after months of fighting.   There was no immediate comment from Moscow or the Syrian army, who have long accused militant groups who hold sway in the last opposition redoubt of wrecking the ceasefire deal and attacking army-held areas.   The deal between Turkish President and Russian President Vladimir Putin also defused a military confrontation between them after Ankara poured thousands of troops in Idlib province to hold back Russian-backed forces from new advances.   Western diplomats tracking Syria say Moscow piled pressure on Ankara in the latest round of talks on Wednesday to scale down its extensive military presence in Idlib. Turkey has more than ten thousand troops stationed in dozens of bases there, according to opposition sources in touch with Turkish military.   Witnesses say there has been a spike in sporadic shelling from Syrian army outposts against Turkish bases in the last two weeks. Rebels say the Syrian army and its allied militias were amassing troops on front lines.  
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For Rahaf al Mohammed, the Moria refugee center was a living hell, but now, after militant arsonists last week razed what has been frequently described as the worst in Europe, she refuses relocation to a new, fenced encampment 10 kilometers south.“Not good,” the 29-year-old Syrian mother said, “It is like [a] prison. Terrible prison.”“We went [there] but left [the] next day because [there was] no food, no electricity, no water, and no bottom [to] our tent,” she said, pushing a baby carriage back to Moria. “We slept on dirt and rocks. My babies [are] now sick.”Independent verification of the conditions at the new, heavily guarded Kare Tepe camp was not possible.Many of the 12,500 migrants and refugees left homeless after the ferocious blaze, though, attest to the same conditions, forcing most of them to return to Moria, seeking shelter in its chaotic, and now razed, sprawl of tarpaulin tents, crooked prefab structures and the acrid smell of burnt plastic.An aerial view of destroyed shelters following a fire at the Moria camp for refugees and migrants on the Island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 9, 2020.Under a scorching Greek sun this week, teams of bedraggled Afghan migrants were seen prying out mangled rods to erect flimsy tents. Others, mainly young men, used a broken irrigation pipe deep in an adjacent olive grove to shower in the open.“At least here,” said Mohammed Amir, 17, “we are at peace. Small aid groups come and help us. They give us food that we can eat three times a day.“Inside Kara Tepe,” the Afghan said, “food comes only once, and it is rotten.“There is no way, I am not going back there,” he said. His four sisters, in colorful head scarves and green plastic face masks, nodded in agreement.The stakes, though, are high. With more than 13,000 asylum seekers on the island, Lesbos remains a dangerous bottleneck in Europe’s migrant crisis.Worse yet, the troubled Kara Tepe transfer complicates government efforts to manage the country’s worst humanitarian crisis in five years, when more than 1 million refugees, mainly from Syria, flooded Europe in the biggest migration push since World War II.Government officials warn they may use force to round up and rehouse all migrants.Greek officials wearing personal protective equipment arrive in an area where refugees and migrants from the destroyed Moria camp are sheltered on the island of Lesbos, Sept. 18, 2020.In recent days, some 70 female officers in protective white suits and masks were deployed to help move women and children to Kara Tepe.More than 8,000 were checked in to the new sprawl of crisp white tents by the weekend. It remained unclear, however, whether the camp’s new residents would remain.“There are many Afghan men going around warning women and children not to resettle because they will burn this camp, also,” Abdirahman Chama, a 38-year-old migrant from Somalia said.“More importantly,” he said, “if you are out and have a chance to escape this island and go to the West, why go back in?“I will try to go Germany, but anywhere else will also be good.”Only recognized refugees can move to another EU member state, a status, together with its documentation, the government has told Lesbos’ homeless asylum seekers they can only obtain as residents of the new camp.Earlier this week, Germany agreed to take in 1,553 people from 408 families whose protected status has been confirmed by Greek authorities. Belgium and France are expected to follow suit, with the government vowing to empty Lesbos of its refugees by Easter.A woman with a baby holds a document before entering the new temporary refugee camp in Kara Tepe, on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Sept. 18, 2020.Until then, though, locals remain vigilant.“You think we would be relieved seeing this camp in our backyards destroyed,” said Stelios Panagopoulos, a coffee shop owner in the town of Moria, about a kilometer and a half north of the dreaded refugee camp.“We are now more scared than ever because militant migrants remain at large, and they are out there hiding in the fields and surrounding mountains, taking revenge on us, slaughtering our livestock and destroying our properties,” he said.Earlier this year, a farmer from Moria was barred from leaving the country and ordered to pay about $6,000 in fines for firing a warning shot at a migrant intruder. He has since been released and the migrant was detained.Last week, and after fleeing detention during the camp fire, the migrant returned, allegedly setting fire to the farmer’s barn.Authorities contacted by VOA suspect he was among the ringleaders of the Moria blaze.At least seven refugees, including two minors, have been arrested in connection with the fire.“There is one solution,” al Mohammed, the Syrian mother said, “we [must] all leave. It will be better for all.” 
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Facebook has told Ireland’s High Court it cannot see how its services could operate in the European Union if regulators freeze its data transfer mechanism, the Sunday Business Post reported, citing court documents seen by the paper.The U.S. social media giant last week said that the Irish Data Protection Commission, its lead EU regulator, had made a preliminary decision that the mechanism it uses to transfer data from the EU to the United States “cannot in practice be used.”Facebook requested and secured a temporary freeze on the order and a court review in the Irish High Court, which is due to consider the issue in November. In an affidavit submitted to the court to request that the order be frozen, Yvonne Cunnane, Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, said it was not clear how the company could continue providing services in the EU if the Irish order is enforced, the Sunday Business Post reported.”It is not clear to (Facebook) how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” the newspaper quoted the affidavit as saying.The affidavit has not been made public, a High Court spokesman said, and a Facebook spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.In a Sept. 9 blog post that first confirmed the investigation by the Irish regulator, Facebook said it “relied on the mechanism in question – under what are known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs) – to transfer data to countries outside the EU and that a ban would have “a far reaching effect on businesses that rely on SCCs.”The Irish investigation follows a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in July on when SCCs can be used legally.The ruling was in response to EU concerns that the surveillance regime in the United States might not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens when their personal data is sent to the United States for commercial use. 
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