Four men suspected of hanging an effigy of Real Madrid player Vinícius Júnior off a highway bridge in Madrid in January have been arrested, Spanish police said Tuesday.

The arrests come two days after the latest case of racial abuse against the Brazil forward in a Spanish league game against Valencia.

The effigy was hanged by the neck the morning of a derby between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid in the Copa del Rey. Along with it was a banner with the words “Madrid hates Real.”

The perpetrators used a black figure with Vinícius’ name on it, tied a rope around its neck and hanged it from an overpass while still dark in the Spanish capital.

Police said three of those arrested belonged to one of Atletico’s fan groups, and the other was a follower of the group. Some had prior bookings with police for other crimes.

The hate message on the banner is often used by Atletico’s ultras, though at the time they denied being responsible for the display.

The men arrested are between the ages of 19 and 24. Authorities said some were previously identified during matches considered at high risk of violence. Police showed images of them arriving in handcuffs and escorted by agents on Tuesday.

Spanish media said police had used security cameras to identify the perpetrators but no action had been taken until now. Police did not say if the timing of the arrests had to do with the widespread attention being received by the latest abuse against Vinícius on Sunday.

Spain has been criticized worldwide for its lack of action in racism cases in soccer. Brazilian government officials, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had publicly expressed their concerns.

Vinícius, who is Black, has been subjected to repeated racist taunts in Spain, especially this season after he began celebrating his goals by dancing.

The match against Valencia was temporarily stopped after Vinícius said a fan behind one of the goals called him a monkey and made monkey gestures toward him. Vinícius considered leaving the field but eventually continued playing.

The Brazilian received support from officials and athletes around the world and heavily criticized Spanish soccer for not doing more to stop racism.

The lights at the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro were turned off Monday night in a show of solidarity for Vinícius.

“It’s an action of solidarity that is moving,” Vinícius said on Twitter. “But more than everything, what I want is to inspire and bring more light to our fight.”

Vinícius thanked all the support he has received in the last months in Brazil and abroad.

“I know who you are,” he said. “Count on me, because the good ones are the majority and I’m not going to give up. I have a purpose in life, and if I have to keep suffering so that future generations won’t have to go through these types of situations, I’m ready and prepared.”

Valencia banned for life a fan identified of insulting Vinícius during the game. Real Madrid took the case to prosecutors as a hate crime.

The Spanish league has filed nine criminal complaints of cases of racial abuse against Vinícius in the last two seasons, with most of them being shelved by prosecutors.

The league said Tuesday it will seek to increase its authority to issue sanctions in cases of hate crimes during games. It had been saying it can only detect and denounce incidents to authorities and the country’s soccer federation.

Supporters have been fined and banned from stadiums for their abuse against Vinícius, but so far only a Mallorca fan may end up going on trial for allegedly racially insulting the Brazilian during a game.

The first trial against a fan accused of racial abuse in Spanish professional soccer is expected to happen at some point this year; the case involved Athletic Bilbao forward Iñaki Williams, who was insulted by an Espanyol supporter in a match in 2020.
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Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that criminal police have detained three more suspected far-right extremists who are linked to an alleged plot by the Reichsbuerger, or Reich Citizens, movement to topple the country’s government. 

The three suspects, who were only identified as Johanna F.-J., Hans-Joachim H. and Steffen W. in line with German privacy rules, were detained Monday evening in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. 

The defendants are suspected of membership in a terrorist organization, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. 

In December, German police detained 25 people including a self-styled prince, a retired paratrooper and a former judge who are accused of plotting the violent overthrow of the government. 

Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government. 

Authorities say the three people who were arrested Monday evening were linked in different ways to the suspects of the alleged coup attempt. 

Johanna F.J. is suspected of having been active in the association since May 2022, participating in several meetings with members of the leadership, during which the goals and organization of the group were discussed. In addition, she allegedly sought contact with a Russian consul general and subsequently met with him twice. The talks were intended to obtain support for the association’s actions, prosecutors say. 

Hans-Joachim H. is suspected of having been active for the group from the very beginning, providing it with financial contributions totaling more than $151,000. In addition, he allegedly actively participated in conspiratorial meetings, in events to recruit new members and in so-called sponsor meetings. 

Steffen W. is suspected of having joined the association no later than July 2022 and to have assumed a leading role in a so-called homeland security company, in which he assumed the function of a military officer. The defendant allegedly participated in several coordination meetings. His task was to recruit personnel for his area of responsibility and to train them militarily, prosecutors said. 

German security agencies have disrupted several plots in recent years by small groups linked to the Reich Citizens movement accused of planning attacks on critical infrastructure, government officials and even the national parliament. While it is unclear how far advanced such plans were, authorities have expressed alarm that the alleged plotters had acquired weapons and included people who aren’t usually on the radar of security agencies, such as judges and police officers. 

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency warned of a rise in anti-government extremism. 

Thomas Haldenwang told the AP that coup plots such as those disrupted last year likely won’t be the last as some “are again talking about a ‘Day X’ when certain things are meant to happen.” 

“We are monitoring such efforts very intensively, very carefully, and I’m certain that we will be able to intervene in time together with other security agencies,” he said. “But I can’t completely rule out that groups will forms under the radar of the security agencies.” 
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Interpol, the international police organization founded in 1923 to facilitate cooperation among law enforcement agencies, has transformed into a formidable crime fighting force in recent years. 

However, recent controversies over the misuse of its alert system have cast a shadow over its reputation as an indispensable tool for global law enforcement cooperation.  

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, speaking on Monday at a Justice Department event marking Interpol’s centennial, praised the organization’s role in fighting pressing global threats, from terrorism to cybercrime and human trafficking.   

“Over the past 100 years, Interpol has evolved to meet each one of those threats, and in doing so has made the world a safer place,” Monaco told the attendees.   

The ceremony in the Justice Department’s famed Great Hall featured presentations by a pipes and drums band and a local police department honor guard. Top Interpol officials as well as senior officials from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, the two agencies that co-manage Interpol’s U.S. National Central Bureau, were in attendance. 

As part of its mission, Interpol publishes so-called red notices, which are requests for police forces worldwide to locate and arrest a suspect pending extradition. 

Only Interpol’s 195 member countries can request a red notice as long as it complies with Interpol’s rules.  

Interpol says a task force of lawyers and police officers, established in 2017, conducts a thorough review of all red notice requests received. 

In addition, Interpol has an independent body, known as Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files, that removes disputed red notices and other alerts from its system. The commission is an additional oversight body whose members are mostly lawyers. 

Despite the agency’s efforts to ensure compliance, however, countries such as Russia and China have in recent years been accused of misusing Interpol’s alert system for political purposes.  

Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock defended his agency’s “robust” review system during the Justice Department ceremony.  

“When repeated non-compliance occurs, preventive and corrective measures are applied to those member countries to protect the integrity of our channels,” Stock said. 

In 2021, Interpol published nearly 24,000 red notices and wanted persons alerts and rejected nearly 1,300 for non-compliance. 

Monaco lauded Interpol’s increased scrutiny of alert requests in order “to ensure that Interpol isn’t misused in furtherance of transnational repression” by autocratic regimes. 

But critics say authoritarian regimes continue to abuse the system.   

In 2021, Uyghur activist Idris Hasan was arrested in Morocco based on a red notice issued by Interpol at China’s request.  

Though Interpol classified the red notice as “noncompliant” after Hasan’s arrest and release, the case highlights “the inherent dangers of an international policing organization cooperating with non-rule of law countries prone to abuse such instruments for persecution that run counter to Interpol’s constitution,” human rights non-profit Safeguard Defenders wrote in a report.  

Other critics have leveled similar criticism at China. 

“In recent years, China has increasingly used the Interpol red notice system to stifle dissent,” Human Rights Watch wrote in a 2022 report.  

Critics say Russia is another chronic abuser of Interpol. 

In 2018, Bill Browder, an American human rights activist and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in Spain on an Interpol red notice requested by Russia.  The notice was later rescinded, and Bowder was released.  

Ted Bromund, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Interpol operates on the presumption that its member states act in good faith.   

“As a result, there continues to be a lot of Interpol abuse through notices, through diffusions and through other mechanisms,” Bromund said in an interview. Diffusions are alerts sent by a member country to other member countries.  

Bromund said that Interpol’s own data suggests that its review task force is failing to prevent questionable red notices filed by countries such as China and Russia. 

The number of notices deleted by the Commission for the Control of Interpol Files remains “historically high,” he noted.  

“If the Notices and Diffusions Task Force were actually preventing all abuse, the commission … should not have to keep on deleting so many red notices,” he said. 

Both China and Russia have denied abusing Interpol.  

Despite the criticisms, Interpol retains an essential role in global law enforcement cooperation.  Its role in fighting crime has grown in recent years, as criminals increasingly operate across borders and online.   

Interpol says police departments worldwide query its databases more than 20 million times a day, or roughly 250 searches per second. 
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Pope Francis will travel to Portugal for World Youth Day in the first week of August and include a stop at the popular Marian shrine in Fatima, the Vatican said Monday.

The August 2-6 visit is longer than originally expected and covers almost the entire week of the big Catholic rally that St. John Paul II inaugurated to try to invigorate young people in their faith.

Francis is staying in Lisbon for the length of the visit but will make a day trip to Fatima on August 5. Francis previously traveled there in 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of one of the most unique events of the 20th century Catholic Church: the visions of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children and the “secrets” she told them.

Francis’ visit this time around comes as war is raging in Ukraine, providing a comparison to when the original visions were reported when Europe was in the throes of World War I.

The visit comes as the Portuguese Catholic Church is reckoning with its legacy of clergy sexual abuse. Earlier this year, an independent report found that more than 4,800 people may have been victims starting in 1950. Previously, senior Portuguese church officials had claimed only a handful of cases had occurred.

There was no word on whether Francis would meet with victims, as he has done on several occasions elsewhere.

The Portuguese Bishops Conference expressed “huge joy” at the Vatican announcement of Francis’ visit and said hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world are expected in Lisbon. The rally was originally scheduled for 2022 but was postponed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic; the last international World Youth Day was held in 2019 in Panama.

“We hope that the presence of Pope Francis among us, and which includes a significant pilgrimage to the Fatima shrine, will provide a powerful sense of renewal and grace for the church in Portugal,” the Bishops Conference said in a statement.

Francis’ other travel this year is expected to include a quick trip to Marseille, France, on September 23 to address a meeting of Mediterranean bishops. Also under study is a proposed visit to Mongolia starting in late August.
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Ray Stevenson, who played the villainous British governor in “RRR,” an Asgardian warrior in the “Thor” films, and a member of the 13th Legion in HBO’s “Rome,” has died. He was 58.  

Representatives for Stevenson told The Associated Press that he died Sunday but had no other details to share Monday.  

Stevenson was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1964. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and years of working in British television, he made his film debut in Paul Greengrass’s 1998 film “The Theory of Flight.” In 2004, he appeared in Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” as a knight of the round table and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation “Punisher: War Zone.” 

Though “Punisher” was not the best-reviewed film, he’d get another taste of Marvel in the first three “Thor” films, in which he played Volstagg. Other prominent film roles included the “Divergent” trilogy, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “The Transporter: Refueled.” 

A looming presence at 6-foot-4, Stevenson, who played his share of soldiers past and present, once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.” 

On the small screen, he was the roguish Titus Pullo in “Rome,” a role that really got his career going in the United States and got him a SAG card, at the age of 44. The popular series ran from 2005 to 2007. 

“That was one of the major years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It made me sit down in my own skin and say, just do the job. The job’s enough.” 

In the Variety review of “Rome,” Brian Lowery wrote that “the imposing Stevenson certainly stands out as a brawling, whoring and none-too-bright warrior — a force of nature who, despite his excesses, somehow keeps landing on his feet.” 

He was Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails,” Commander Jack Swinburne in the German television series “Das Boot,” and Othere in “Vikings.” 

Stevenson also did voice work in “Star Wars Rebels” and “The Clone Wars,” as Gar Saxon, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars live-action series “Ahsoka,” in which he plays a bad guy, Baylan Skoll. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August. 

In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said his acting idols were, “The likes of Lee Marvin (and) Gene Hackman.” 

“Never a bad performance, and brave and fearless within that caliber,” Stevenson said. “It was never the young, hot leading man; it was men who I could identify with.” 

Stevenson has three sons with Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, who he met while working on “Rome.” 
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Portuguese police have said they will resume searching for Madeleine McCann, the British toddler who disappeared in the country’s Algarve region in 2007, in the next few days.

Portugal’s Judicial Police released a statement confirming local media reports that they would conduct the search at the request of the German authorities and in the presence of British officials.

Early Monday, police were seen erecting tents and cordons in an area by the Arade dam, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Praia da Luz, where the 3-year-old was last seen alive.

British, Portuguese and German police are still piecing together what happened when the toddler disappeared from her bed in the southern Portuguese resort May 3, 2007. She was in the same room as her 2-year-old twin brother and sister while her parents had dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant.

In mid-2020, Germany’s police identified Christian Brueckner, a 45-year-old German citizen who was in the Algarve in 2007, as a suspect in the case. Brueckner has denied any involvement.

The suspect is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case but hasn’t been charged. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.

Prosecutors in the northern German city of Braunschweig in October have charged Brueckner in several separate cases involving sexual offenses allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

Braunschweig prosecutor Christian Wolter said Monday his office would release a statement about the case Tuesday morning.

Madeleine’s disappearance stirred worldwide interest, with public claims of having spotted her stretching as far away as Australia, along with a slew of books and television documentaries about the case.

Rewards for finding Madeleine reached several million dollars.
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The European Union on Monday imposed an asset freeze on the investment arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, over Tehran’s brutal crackdown on protests over the death of Mahsa Amini. 

The latest round of sanctions — the eighth imposed by the EU over the repression — came after Iran hanged three more men convicted in relation to the demonstrations.

The 27-nation bloc added the IRGC Cooperative Foundation, which handles the Guards’ investments, to an EU asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for “funneling money into the regime’s brutal repression.”

The economic conglomerate, accused of serving as a slush fund for the paramilitary armed wing of Tehran’s Islamic revolution, was sanctioned by the United States in January. 

The EU also blacklisted the Student Basij Organization, which it said acts as enforcers for the Revolutionary Guards on university campuses.

Five regime figures, including three senior police commanders, a top cyber official and a regional prosecutor were also added to the list. 

The Iranian authorities brutally cracked down on protests that sprang up after the death in custody on September 16 of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested in Tehran for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress rules for women.

The latest three men to be hanged were convicted on charges of killing security force members at a demonstration in the city of Isfahan in November.

Their executions on Friday brought to seven the number of Iranians executed in connection with the protests.

Brussels’ latest blacklistings bring to about 160 the number of individuals, companies and agencies targeted by EU asset freezes and travel bans over the crackdown.

Some EU capitals have pushed to list the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group.

European officials say it is proving complicated to demonstrate the legal basis for such a blanket designation. 
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The European Union fined Meta a record $1.3 billion on Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. digital snooping fears.

The privacy fine of 1.2 billion euros from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is the biggest since the EU’s strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon’s 746 million euro penalty in 2021 for data protection violations.

The Irish watchdog is Meta’s lead privacy regulator in the 27-nation bloc because the Silicon Valley tech giant’s European headquarters is based in Dublin.

Meta, which had previously warned that services for its users in Europe could be cut off, vowed to appeal and ask courts to immediately put the decision on hold.

“There is no immediate disruption to Facebook in Europe,” the company said.

“This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and U.S.,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global and affairs, and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.

It’s another twist in a legal battle that began in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems filed a complaint about Facebook’s handling of his data following former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. digital snooping.

The saga has highlighted the clash between Washington and Brussels over the differences between Europe’s strict view on data privacy and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law.

An agreement covering EU-U.S. data transfers known as the Privacy Shield was struck down in 2020 by the EU’s top court, which said it didn’t do enough to protect residents from the U.S. government’s electronic prying.

That left another tool to govern data transfers — stock legal contracts. Irish regulators initially ruled that Meta didn’t need to be fined because it was acting in good faith in using them to move data across the Atlantic. But it was overruled by the EU’s top panel of data privacy authorities last month, a decision that the Irish watchdog confirmed Monday.

Meanwhile, Brussels and Washington signed an agreement last year on a reworked Privacy Shield that Meta could use, but the pact is awaiting a decision from European officials on whether it adequately protects data privacy.

EU institutions have been reviewing the agreement, and the bloc’s lawmakers this month called for improvements, saying the safeguards aren’t strong enough.

Meta warned in its latest earnings report that without a legal basis for data transfers, it will be forced to stop offering its products and services in Europe, “which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”

The social media company might have to carry out a costly and complex revamp of its operations if it’s forced to stop shipping user data across the Atlantic. Meta has a fleet of 21 data centers, according to its website, but 17 of them are in the United States. Three others are in the European nations of Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. Another is in Singapore.

Other social media giants are facing pressure over their data practices. TikTok has tried to soothe Western fears about the Chinese-owned short video sharing app’s potential cybersecurity risks with a $1.5 billion project to store U.S. user data on Oracle servers.
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Spanish soccer has a racism problem, football federation chief Luis Rubiales said on Monday, after Real Madrid lodged a complaint following alleged insults hurled at their Brazilian star Vinicius Jr. 

The top-flight LaLiga is under pressure to do more to combat racism after the Brazilian president, FIFA and fellow stars such as Kylian Mbappe voiced support for Vinicius, even as LaLiga President Javier Tebas wrote on Twitter that it is doing enough and Vinicius should inform himself “before you criticize and slander LaLiga”.  

“The first thing is to recognize that we have a problem in our country,” Rubiales said at a press conference in Madrid on Monday. It is “a serious problem that also stains an entire team, an entire fan base, an entire club, an entire country.” 

A match at the Mestalla stadium in Valencia was stopped for 10 minutes after the 22-year-old forward, Real Madrid’s second top scorer this season (23) behind Karim Benzema (29), pointed out fans who were allegedly hurling racist comments at him.  

Videos posted on social media and verified by Reuters showed hundreds of Valencia fans singing “Vinicius is a monkey” as the Real Madrid bus arrived at the stadium before the match.  

“I am sorry for those Spaniards who disagree but today, in Brazil, Spain is known as a country of racists,” Vinicius Jr wrote on Twitter after the game. 

Rubiales criticized Tebas’s comments, describing them as “irresponsible behavior.” 

“Probably Vinicius is more right than we think and we all need to do more about racism,” Rubiales said. 

Real Madrid said on Monday they have lodged a hate crime complaint following the incident in Valencia. It is the 10th episode of alleged racism against Vinicius that has been reported to prosecutors this season, according to LaLiga. 

Spanish police are also investigating a possible hate crime against Vinicius Jr after a mannequin wearing his number 20 shirt was hung from a bridge outside Real Madrid’s training ground in January ahead of the club’s derby match with Atletico Madrid. 

Prosecutors dropped a complaint filed for racist chants aimed at the player in September during another game against Atletico Madrid.  

The prosecutor archived the case because the chants of “monkey” were only said a couple of times and “only lasted a few seconds,” highlighting how Spain’s penal code makes it difficult to prosecute racist incidents at football games. 

Spanish prosecutors officially investigated just three cases of racist acts during the 2021-22 season, according to the Interior Ministry. Under current rules, people found guilty of racist behavior can be fined up to $4,403 and banned from stadiums for a year. 

There is growing momentum for Spain to do more to tackle the problem. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on FIFA and LaLiga to “take real action” while FIFA President Gianni Infantino offered his “full solidarity” and called for LaLiga to enforce a rule that penalizes clubs with points deductions if racist chants persist.
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Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose conservative party scored a landslide election Sunday but without the seats in parliament to win outright, indicated Sunday he will seek a second election in a bid to consolidate victory without need of a coalition partner. 

Mitsotakis’ New Democracy party was a full 20 percentage points ahead of its main rival, the left-wing Syriza party, nearly complete results showed. But a new electoral system of proportional representation meant his 40% vote share still was not enough to secure a majority of the 300 seats in parliament. To form a government, he would either have to seek a coalition partner from a smaller party or head to a second election. 

The prime minister said he would “follow all constitutional procedures” but maintained his view that the current electoral system that created the need for coalition was akin to “party horse-trading.” 

“Without a doubt, the political earthquake that occurred today calls on us all to speed up the process for a definitive government solution so our country can have an experienced hand at its helm as soon as possible.” 

Jubilant New Democracy supporters massed outside party headquarters in Athens, cheering and waving party flags. 

A second election, likely to be held in late June or early July, would be conducted under a new electoral law that gives bonus seats to the winning party, making it easier for it to form a government on its own. 

Sunday’s election was Greece’s first since its economy ceased being under strict supervision by international lenders who had provided bailout funds during the country’s nearly decadelong financial crisis. 

Syriza head Alexis Tsipras, 48, served as prime minister during some of the most tumultuous years of the crisis, and has struggled to regain the wide support he enjoyed when he was swept to power in 2015 on a promise of reversing bailout-imposed austerity measures. 

He called Mitsotakis on Sunday night to congratulate him on his victory. 

“The result is exceptionally negative for Syriza,” Tsipras said in initial statements after his party’s dramatic defeat became clear. “Fights have winners and losers.” 

Tsipras said his party would gather to examine the results and how they came about. “However, the electoral cycle is not yet over,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of time. We must immediately carry out all the changes that are needed so we can fight the next crucial and final electoral battle with the best terms possible.” 

As the massive gap between the first two parties became apparent, Syriza supporters expressed dismay. 

“I am very sorry about the terrible state of these people (who voted for New Democracy),” said Syriza supporter Georgi Koulouri, standing near a Syriza campaign kiosk in central Athens. “People who understand their position — the poverty and the misery that they have been put into — and still vote for them, they deserve what they get.” 

Mitsotakis, a 55-year-old Harvard-educated former banking executive, won elections in 2019 on a promise of business-oriented reforms and has vowed to continue tax cuts, boost investments and bolster middle class employment. 

A steady lead he had enjoyed in opinion polls in the runup to the election slid following a February 28 rail disaster that killed 57 people. Authorities said an intercity passenger train was accidentally put on the same rail line as an oncoming freight train, and it later was revealed that train stations were poorly staffed and safety infrastructure broken and outdated. 

The government also was battered by a surveillance scandal in which journalists and prominent Greek politicians discovered spyware on their phones. The revelations deepened mistrust among the country’s political parties. 

Syriza’s campaign focused heavily on both the wiretapping scandal and the train crash. 

Greece’s once-dominant Pasok party, overtaken by Syriza during Greece’s 2009-2018 financial crisis, also fared well in Sunday’s vote, garnering just over 11 percent. Its leader, Nikos Androulakis, 44, was at the center of the wiretapping scandal in which his phone was targeted for surveillance. 

Androulakis’ poor relationship with Mitsotakis, whom he accuses of covering up the wiretapping scandal, mean a potential coalition deal with the conservatives would be difficult. His relationship with Tsipras is also poor after he accused him of trying to poach Pasok voters. 

Since coming to power in 2019, Mitsotakis has delivered unexpectedly high growth, a steep drop in unemployment and a country on the brink of returning to investment grade on the global bond market for the first time since it lost market access in 2010 at the outset of the financial crisis. 

Debts to the International Monetary Fund were paid off early. European governments and the IMF pumped $300 billion into the Greek economy in emergency loans between 2010 and 2018 to prevent the eurozone member from bankruptcy. In return, they demanded punishing cost-cutting measures and reforms that saw the country’s economy shrink by a quarter. 
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Tens of thousands of Moldovans rallied in the capital Chisinau on Sunday to support their pro-Western government’s drive toward Europe amid what officials have said are Russian efforts to destabilize their country. 

Moldova has been badly hit by the impact of Moscow’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which Chisinau has repeatedly condemned, and applied to join the European Union. 

President Maia Sandu has accused Russia of seeking to sabotage its European integration by fueling anti-government protests and propaganda. Moscow denies meddling in Moldova’s affairs. 

“Moldova does not want to be blackmailed by the Kremlin,” Sandu said at the rally, which was organized by her government and packed a central square. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by Ricardo Marquina

Police said more than 75,000 demonstrators were present. 

“We don’t want to be on the outskirts of Europe anymore,” she said, pledging that Moldova would become an EU member by 2030. 

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, on a visit to Chisinau, also addressed the rally, saying Europe would welcome Moldova “with open arms and open hearts.” 

“This is about the both of us: You will bring a piece of Moldova to Europe, and you will make Europe stronger,” she said. 

Demonstrators called on Moldova’s political leaders to amend the constitution to specifically mention the country’s European orientation. 

“I believe in a European Moldova and want for my country a future with advanced economic and socio-political development,” said 18-year-old attendee Alexandrina Miron. “Right now, we are a little behind, but we will slowly catch up and stand on par with Europe.” 

The leader of the pro-Russian opposition Shor party, exiled businessman Ilan Shor, told his supporters at rival protests in several cities via video link that he would seek a referendum on Moldova’s foreign policy. 

Shor, sanctioned by the U.S. as an agent of Russian influence in Moldova, was handed a 15-year jail sentence in absentia last month for his role in the 2014 theft of $1 billion from Moldovan banks. 
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The floods that sent rivers of mud tearing through towns in Italy’s northeast are another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes, something that has been happening around the globe, scientists say.

The coastal region of Emilia-Romagna was struck twice, first by heavy rain two weeks ago on drought-parched ground that could not absorb it, causing rivers to overflow overnight, followed by this week’s deluge that killed 14 and caused damages estimated in the billions of euros.

In a changing climate, more rain is coming, but it’s falling on fewer days in less useful and more dangerous downpours.

The hard-hit Emilia-Romagna region was particularly vulnerable. Its location between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic Sea trapped the weather system this week that dumped half the average annual amount of rain in 36 hours.

“These are events that developed with persistence and are classified as rare,” Fabrizio Curcio, the head of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, told reporters.

Authorities on Friday said that 43 towns were impacted by flooding and landslides, and that more than 500 roads had been closed or destroyed.

Antonello Pasini, a climate scientist at Italy’s National Research Council, said a trend had been establishing itself: “An increase in rainfall overall per year, for example, but a decrease in the number of rainy days and an increase in the intensity of the rain in those few days when it rains,” he said.

Italy’s north has been parched by two years of drought, thanks to less-than-average snowfall during the winter months. Melting snow from the Alps, Dolomites and Apennines normally provides the steady runoff through spring and summer that fills Italy’s lakes, irrigates the agricultural heartland and keeps the Po and other key rivers and tributaries flowing.

Without that normal snowfall in the mountains, plains have gone dry and riverbeds, lakes and reservoirs have receded. They cannot recover even when it rains because the ground is essentially “impermeable” and the rain just washes over the topsoil and out to the sea, Pasini said.

“So the drought is not necessarily compensated for by these extreme rains,” he said, “Because in northern Italy, the drought depends more on snow being stored in the Alps than on rain. And in the last two years, we have had very little snow.”

Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci said the new normal of extreme weather events in the Mediterranean requires Italians to adapt and Italy to rethink its flood protections nationwide. He cited a fierce storm-triggered landslide last fall on the southern island of Ischia, off Naples, that left 12 dead.

“We can’t just pretend that nothing is happening,” he said Thursday. “Everything must change: the programming in hydraulic infrastructures must change, the engineering approach must change.”

He said those changes were necessary to prevent the types of floods that have left entire towns swamped with mud after two dozen rivers burst their banks.

The key going forward is prevention, he said, acknowledging that’s not an easy sell due to costs.

“We are not a nation inclined to prevention. We like to rebuild more than to prevent,” he told Sky TG24.

Italy is far from alone in lurching from dry to deluge. California and the United States West sloshed their way from a record-setting megadrought to at least a dozen atmospheric rivers dousing the region with so much rain that a long-dormant lake reappeared.

Scientists say flash floods of the kind seen in Germany and Belgium two years ago, which killed more than 220 people and caused billions of euros in damage, will become more likely as the planet warms.

“The rainiest events seem to be in many places getting rainier,” Princeton University climate scientist Gabe Vecchi said Thursday.

In 2021, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific panel said it was “established fact” that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions had made for more frequent and intense weather extremes. The panel called heat waves the most obvious but said heavy precipitation events had also likely increased over most of the world.

The U.N. report said, “There is robust evidence” that record rainfall and one-in-five, one-in-10 and one-in-20-year-type rainfall “became more common since the 1950s.”
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Seven young activists protesting against climate change climbed into the Trevi Fountain in Rome on Sunday and poured diluted charcoal into the water to turn it black.

The protesters from the “Ultima Generazione” (“Last Generation”) group held up banners saying “We won’t pay for fossil [fuels],” and shouted “our country is dying.”

Uniformed police waded into the water to take away the activists, with many tourists filming the stunt and a few of the onlookers shouting insults at the protesters, video footage showed.

In a statement, Ultima Generazione called for an end to public subsidies for fossil fuels and linked the protests to deadly floods in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna in recent days. The group said one in four houses in Italy are at risk from flooding.

Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri condemned the protest, the latest in a series of acts targeting works of art in Italy.

“Enough of these absurd attacks on our artistic heritage,” he wrote on Twitter.

The tradition is for visitors to toss coins into the famous 18th century Trevi Fountain to ensure that they will return to Rome one day.

 
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German police are investigating the possible poisoning of exiled Russians after a journalist and an activist reported health problems following a Berlin meeting of dissidents, a spokesman for the force said on Sunday.

The probe is being handled by the state security unit, a specialized team that examines cases related to terrorism or politically motivated crimes, a Berlin police spokesman told AFP.

“An investigation has been opened. The probe is ongoing,” he said, declining to provide further details.

Russian investigative media outlet Agentstvo this week published a report saying two participants who attended a April 29-30 meeting of Russian dissidents in Berlin experienced health problems.

The Berlin meeting was organized by exiled former oligarch turned Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

One participant, identified as a journalist who had recently left Russia, experienced unspecified symptoms during the event. They said the symptoms may have started earlier.

The report added that the journalist went to the Charite University Hospital in Berlin — where Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was treated after being poisoned in August 2020.

The second participant mentioned was Natalia Arno, director of the NGO Free Russia Foundation in the United States, where she has lived for 10 years since having had to leave Russia.

Arno had attended the Berlin meeting of dissidents before travelling to Prague, where she experienced symptoms and discovered that her hotel room had been opened, Agentstvo reported.

Leaving the next day for the United States, she contacted a hospital there as well as the authorities.

Arno detailed her problems — “sharp pain” and “numbness” — on Facebook this week, saying the first “strange symptoms” appeared before she arrived in Prague. She said that she still had symptoms but felt better.

Contacted by AFP, Czech authorities said they did not have information on the case.

‘Inconclusive tests’

The Agentstvo report also said former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, suffered from poisoning symptoms a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Atlantic Council think tank confirmed Herbst showed symptoms that could be those of poisoning in April 2021 but medical tests were inconclusive.

It added that it worked with US federal investigators who took a blood sample but the lab results had failed to detect toxic compounds.

Herbst has since recovered to full health, it said.

Several poison attacks have been carried out abroad and in Russia against Kremlin opponents in recent years.

Moscow denies its secret services were responsible.

But European laboratories confirmed Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-made nerve agent.

The nerve agent was also used in an attempted murder in 2018 of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.

The Skripal case further exacerbated already dire relations between London and Moscow since the 2006 radiation poisoning death in the British capital of former spy Alexander Litvinenko.
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Ukrainian military forces have successfully established positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, according to a new analysis, giving rise to speculation Sunday that the advances could be an early sign of Kyiv’s long-awaited spring counteroffensive.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, reported late Saturday that geolocated footage from pro-Kremlin military bloggers indicated that Ukrainian troops had established a foothold near the town of Oleshky, along with “stable supply lines” to their positions.

Analysts widely believe that if Ukraine goes ahead with a spring counteroffensive, a major goal would be to break through the land corridor between Russia and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, which would necessitate crossing the Dnipro River in the country’s south.

Responding to Ukrainian media reports proclaiming that the establishment of such positions indicated the counteroffensive had begun, Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Operational Command South, called for patience.

While neither confirming nor denying the ISW report, she said only that details of military operations in the Dnipro delta couldn’t be disclosed for operational and security reasons.

Speaking on Ukrainian television, Humeniuk added that it was “very difficult work” when “it’s necessary to overcome an obstacle such as the Dnipro, when the front line passes through a wide and powerful river.”

The Kremlin-installed head of the Kherson region, one of four parts of Ukraine that Russia said it was illegally annexing in September, denied on Sunday that Ukrainian forces have established a foothold on the east bank of the Dnipro.

In a Telegram update, Vladimir Saldo said that Russian forces are “in full control” of the area, and speculated that the images referenced by the ISW may have depicted Ukrainian sabotage units that “managed to take a selfie” across the Dnipro before being forced back.

After more than a year since the Russian invasion, recent fighting has become a war of attrition, with neither side able to gain momentum.

But Ukraine has recently received sophisticated weapons from its Western allies, and new troops freshly trained in the West, giving rise to growing anticipation of a counteroffensive.

American-made Patriot missiles arrived in Ukraine last week and military spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said Sunday on Ukrainian television that some have already gone into battlefield service.

The United States agreed in October to send the surface-to-air systems, which can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles such as those that Russia has used to bombard residential areas and the Ukrainian power grid.

The fiercest battles have been in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia is struggling to encircle the city of Bakhmut in the face of dogged Ukrainian defense.

On Sunday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed Moscow’s forces had captured two more neighborhoods in the western part of Bakhmut, without providing further details or clarifying what areas were still in Ukrainian hands.

In the south, the Dnipro has for months marked the contact line in the Kherson region, where its namesake capital is regularly pummeled by shelling from Russian forces stationed across the river.

In addition to having established a foothold near the town of Oleshky, across the Dnipro delta from Kherson, the ISW said that Ukrainian troops were also approaching the nearby village of Dachi, citing data from Russian military bloggers.

In Telegram posts on Thursday and Saturday, the ISW said the bloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces had maintained these positions for weeks and established stable supply lines to them, indicating a lack of Russian control over the area.

The Associated Press confirmed the posts from the bloggers, but it wasn’t immediately possible to independently verify the data they shared.

Russia is also expected to launch more intensive attacks in the spring, but ISW reported that top Russian defense figures are showing signs that they may be pushing for a consolidation of existing gains in Ukraine, rather than costly new operations, as Moscow struggles with both material and manpower.

The ISW cited comments from financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group — a private Russian military company whose fighters have spearheaded the offensive on Bakhmut.

On Saturday, Prigozhin’s press service posted comments he made on its official Telegram channel in which he argued that Russian forces need to “anchor (themselves) in such a way that it is only possible to tear them out with (the) opponent’s claws.”

The interview was published shortly after Western leaders meeting at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany pledged to train more Ukrainian personnel and keep up their military support for Kyiv.

As Moscow seeks to bolster its troop numbers, the U.K. Ministry of Defense noted Sunday in an intelligence briefing that Russian authorities had mounted a large-scale military recruitment campaign using social media, billboards and state television.

It said Russian officials are “almost certainly seeking to delay any new, overt mandatory mobilization for as long as possible to minimize domestic dissent,” while assessing that this latest effort would likely fail to meet the defense ministry’s stated goal of recruiting 400,000 new volunteers.

In attacks overnight, local authorities in eastern Ukraine reported that Russian forces had launched at least five S-300 missiles at Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and the surrounding region.

The missiles damaged an industrial facility and private homes but caused no casualties, according to Oleh Syniehubov, the Kharkiv regional governor.

In Kherson, one civilian was killed and two were wounded as Russian troops used artillery, drones and warplanes to launch a total of 54 strikes on the province, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram on Sunday morning.

Russian forces on Saturday and overnight also dropped five guided aerial bombs over the Kherson region, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said in a Facebook post Sunday. According to the post, the bombs were launched from drones and aircraft and damaged multiple residential buildings but caused no casualties.

Also in the Kherson region, two women, ages 85 and 57, were hospitalized after being wounded in a Russian artillery attack that damaged a local school and about 25 residential buildings in the village of Kizomys, Prokudin said in a Telegram post.

In the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, Russian shelling wounded a 56-year-old man in Stepnohirsk, a town on the banks of the Dnipro river, local Gov. Yurii Malashko wrote on Telegram.
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Russia said Sunday that the United States has denied visas to journalists who wanted to cover Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s trip to New York, and Lavrov suggested that Moscow would take strong retaliatory measures.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. State Department about the claim of refused visas. “The United States takes seriously its obligations as host country of the U.N. under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, including with respect to visa issuance,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The journalists aimed to cover Lavrov’s appearance at the United Nations to mark Russia’s chairmanship of the Security Council.

“A country that calls itself the strongest, smartest, free and fair country has chickened out and done something stupid by showing what its sworn assurances about protecting freedom of speech and access to information are really worth,” Lavrov said before leaving Moscow on Sunday.

“Be sure that we will not forget and will not forgive,” he said.

“I emphasize that we will find ways to respond to this, so that the Americans will remember for a long time not to do this,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

The dispute comes in the wake of high tensions with Washington over the arrest last month of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Russia accuses of espionage. The United States has declared him to be “wrongfully detained.”

Many Western journalists stationed in Moscow left the country after Russia sent troops into Ukraine. Russia currently requires foreign journalists to renew their visas and accreditation every three months, compared to once a year before the fighting began.
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