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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dueling  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post-Brexit friction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man armed with a bow and arrows killed five people and wounded two others on Wednesday in southeastern Norway, police said, adding that they had arrested the suspect. 

The motive for the attack, which took place in several locations in the center of Kongsberg, was not yet known, but police said terrorism could not be ruled out. 

Local police official Oyvind Aas confirmed that five people were dead. The two wounded were in critical care units in the hospital but their lives did not appear to be in danger, he told a news conference. 

One of the wounded was an off-duty police officer who had been in a store, one of the several places attacked. 

The suspect “has been arrested by the police and, according to our information, there is only one person involved,” Aas told the news conference.

He said that “given how events unfolded, it is natural to assess whether this is a terrorist attack.” 

“The arrested man has not been interviewed and it is too early to say anything about his motives,” he said, adding that “all possibilities were open.” 

Norway’s intelligence service PST had been alerted, spokesman Martin Bernsen told AFP. 

“It is all conjecture at the moment,” he said when asked about the possibility of a terrorist motive. 

Police said the suspect had been taken to a police station in the nearby town of Drammen but gave no other details about the man, including whether he had previously been known to the authorities. 

Police were informed of the attack at 6:13 p.m. local time (1613 GMT) in the town of 25,000 people, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of the capital Oslo. The suspect was arrested at 6:47 p.m. 

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Twitter that he was “shocked and saddened” by the tragedy.

“These events shake us,” said Prime Minister Erna Solberg on her last day in office. 

On Thursday she will hand over the prime ministership to Jonas Gahr Store, whose Labour Party won parliamentary elections on September 13. 

The scene of the attack was blocked off by police, an AFP correspondent said. 

Police urged the public to stay at home and several neighborhoods were cordoned off, with television footage showing ambulances and armed police in the area.

Police in the Scandinavian country are not normally armed, but after the attack the National Police Directorate ordered that officers be armed nationwide. 

A helicopter and bomb disposal team were also sent to the scene. 

The website of public broadcaster NRK published an image sent by a witness of a black arrow sticking out of a wall.

In other pictures from the scene, what looked like competition-grade arrows could be seen on the ground. 

Norway suffered one of history’s worst mass shootings on in July 22, 2011, when right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people. 

Breivik first set off a bomb in Oslo next to the building that housed the office of the prime minister, then went on a shooting spree at a summer camp for left-wing youths on the island of Utoya. 

In another right-wing attack, self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Philip Manshaus opened fire into a mosque on the outskirts of Oslo in August 2019 before being overpowered by worshippers, with no one being seriously injured.

However, he had earlier shot dead his step-sister, who had been adopted from China, in what prosecutors termed a “racist act.” 

Several planned jihadi attacks have also been foiled by security services. 

 
…

The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the coronavirus. 

The recognition from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came more than a decade after the publication of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot’s book about the discrimination in health care faced by Black Americans, the life-saving innovations made possible by Lacks’ cells and her family’s legal fight over their unauthorized use. 

“What happened to Henrietta was wrong,” Tedros said during a special ceremony at WHO Geneva headquarters before handing the Director-General’s Award for Henrietta Lacks to her 87-year-old son Lawrence Lacks as several of her other descendants looked on.

Reproduced infinitely ever since, HeLa cells have become a cornerstone of modern medicine, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines. 

Tedros noted that Lacks lived at a time when racial discrimination was legal in the United States and that it remains widespread, even if no longer legal in most countries.

“Henrietta Lacks was exploited. She is one of many women of color whose bodies have been misused by science,” he said. “She placed her trust in the health system so she could receive treatment. But the system took something from her without her knowledge or consent.” 

“The medical technologies that were developed from this injustice have been used to perpetuate further injustice because they have not been shared equitably around the world,” Tedros added.

The HeLa cell line — a name derived from the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks’ first and last names — was a scientific breakthrough. Tedros said the cells were “foundational” in the development of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, which can eliminate the cancer that took her life.

As of last year, WHO said, less than 25% of the world’s low-income countries and fewer than 30% of lower-middle-income countries had access to HPV vaccines through national immunization programs, compared to over 85% of high-income countries. 

“Many people have benefited from those cells. Fortunes have been made. Science has advanced. Nobel Prizes have been won, and most importantly, many lives have been saved,” Tedros said. “No doubt Henrietta would have been pleased that her suffering has saved others. But the end doesn’t justify the means.”

WHO said more than 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells have been distributed around the world and used in more than 75,000 studies. 

Last week, Lacks’ estate sued a U.S. biotechnology company, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from her without her knowledge or consent as part of “a racially unjust medical system.” 

“We stand in solidarity with marginalized patients and communities all over the world who are not consulted, engaged or empowered in their own care,” Tedros said. 

“We are firm that in medicine and in science, Black lives matter,” he added. “Henrietta Lacks’ life mattered — and still matters. Today is also an opportunity to recognize those women of color who have made incredible but often unseen contributions to medical science.”
…

Turkey’s president has brushed aside criticism of the country’s press freedom record, telling a U.S. broadcaster the country is “incomparably free.”

But his comments on CBS came in the same month that several journalists were fighting lawsuits.

One of those — journalist and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) representative Erol Onderoglu– was back in court on September 30 for a trial related to his role in a 2016 solidarity campaign with Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem.

“Turkey is still one of the countries with the harshest conditions for arresting journalists in Europe, if not in the world,” Onderoglu told VOA.

As well as arrests, often on accusations of supporting or producing propaganda for terrorist organizations, Onderoglu said that opposition journalists have problems in obtaining press cards; critical TV channels are arbitrarily fined by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) regulator; and opposition newspapers have lost government advertising revenue. 

But during his interview, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that U.S. President Joe Biden has not raised Turkey’s treatment of journalists during private conversations between the two leaders and that Erdogan does not accept the findings of media rights groups that have documented mass arrests.

“We don’t have any problems of that nature in terms of freedoms. Turkey is incomparably free,” Erdogan told CBS.

Turkey’s communication directorate did not respond to VOA’s request for comment. RTUK directed VOA to fill out a form providing personal information such as address, date of birth and identity card number.

Media watchdogs including RSF and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists have documented hundreds of arrests or lawsuits filed against the media in the past five years.

Because of that, Onderoglu said, “Our view cannot be similar to Mr. Erdogan’s understanding of media freedom and his view of critical and alternative media in Turkey. We see severe problems in the field.”

Gorkem Kinaci, of Turkish daily Evrensel, also believes that arrests and lawsuits counter Erdogan’s view. 

“The trials of journalists, fines handed to newspapers, and censorship laws reveal the government’s record on freedom of the press very clearly,” Kinaci told VOA via email. 

Kinaci holds the title of responsible news editor at Evrensel, a unique role that makes him legally responsible for the content his outlet produces.  

Others, however, said that Turkey’s record needs to be viewed in the context of an attempted coup in 2016. 

Hilal Kaplan, a columnist at the Sabah newspaper and its English edition Daily Sabah, told VOA, “It is necessary to look at the unique conditions in Turkey” following the coup attempt, which resulted in the deaths of more than 250 people. 

Legal threats

Kinaci, from Evrensel, is one of the many journalists in Turkey facing legal action. He and his paper are fighting a civil defamation suit filed last month over its reporting on allegations of corruption directed at the deputy health minister, Selahattin Aydin. 

The paper later published a rebuttal from the deputy minister, as ordered by the court, but Aydin is still seeking thousands of lira in damages.   

VOA emailed Aydin and the Ministry of Health for comment but did not receive a reply.

Evrensel’s lawyer Devrim Avci called the case a violation of press freedom and said the case is just one example of dozens made against the outlet.

“Honestly, it can be challenging to catch up with all of them sometimes,” Avci told VOA.

Evrensel “has always paid the consequences of being an opposition newspaper,” but this has increased after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, Avci said.

Beside the defamation case, Avci said the outlet has been accused of insulting the president and inciting hatred and enmity among the public.

The lawyer said she believes the government is trying to silence Evrensel by punishing it financially. As well as legal cases that can result in fines or damages, Turkey’s Press Advertising Agency (BIK) banned the paper from receiving an allocation of government ad revenue in September 2019.   

Overseen by the presidency’s directorate of communication, the BIK is responsible for distributing official announcements that provide a regular source of revenue for newspapers. 

The government body has power to impose public advertisement bans on newspapers deemed to have violated press ethics.  

Media freedom advocates have said the BIK is using bans to stifle critical media and is not being transparent about the distribution of public money. 

BIK ended the practice of sharing its annual reports with the public when Turkey transitioned to a new presidential system in 2018.

Details of how the body works however, were revealed in May when the Turkish service of Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle published details from an internal report it had obtained. 

DW reported that in 2020, pro-government newspapers received around 78% of public funds paid for official announcements, while

97% of advertisement bans were issued against five opposition outlets including Cumhuriyet, Evrensel, and BirGun. 

When VOA sent an email to BIK requesting comment it was directed to fill out a form requesting personal information.

Coup investigation

The number of journalists jailed in Turkey rose sharply in 2016 as authorities arrested those it said were connected to the coup attempt. Data from the end of that year by CPJ, which covers media workers imprisoned as a direct result of their work, showed 86 journalists in custody.

Media watchdogs have accused Ankara of using the coup attempt as an excuse to silence critical or opposition voices.

Kaplan, who contributes to outlets that are part of the Turkuvaz Media Group, a company widely described as pro-government, believes some people used their profession as a cover during that time.

“In Turkey, there are people who serve the terrorist organization with their journalistic identity,” Kaplan said, referring to the Gulen movement which Turkey blamed for the coup attempt. The group is led by Fethullah Gulen, a cleric whom President Erdogan says masterminded the failed coup. The cleric, who lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S., denies involvement.

As well as Gulenists, supporters of groups including the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front use their journalism as a cover, Kaplan said. 

Both groups are designated as terrorist organizations by Turkey and the United States.

This distinction, Kaplan said, is not taken into account when watchdogs condemn Turkey for jailing journalists.

“Therefore, considering all these, I think that a correct assessment, file by file, should be done. But unfortunately, without taking this into account, there is a biased view that calls anyone who says they are just a journalist, a journalist, and does not seek any credibility, in this sense,” Kaplan said.

RSF’s Onderoglu, who has documented and advocated for hundreds of journalists detained or facing legal charges for their work, says media repression is ongoing.

“The enmity to the critical press and the environment in which the critical, independent media are wanted to be brought to their knees did not end,” Onderoglu said.

 
…

Syrian government forces backed by Russia have recently ramped up attacks against Idlib, the last rebel enclave. A Turkish military force stands in the way of Syrian troops that are poised to seize Idlib, a move Ankara fears could result in millions of refugees fleeing to Turkey. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul
…

Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk said Tuesday it had started to divert vessels away from Britain’s biggest container port because of congestion, the latest fallout from multiple crises hitting the United Kingdom. 

The country is suffering runaway energy prices, shortages of goods, fuel delivery issues and a worsening long-term shortage of lorry drivers, with post-Brexit immigration controls and the pandemic among the causes cited by experts.   

Felixstowe in eastern England has been particularly hard hit, prompting Maersk to divert one ship each week out of the usual two or three that call there. 

A company spokeswoman said the ships, each carrying thousands of containers, were being redirected to continental ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp.   

Cargo would then be loaded onto smaller vessels to dock at other British ports or at Felixstowe when space opens up. 

The spokeswoman said the firm was committed to getting goods to Britain for Black Friday and Christmas.   

Maersk official Lars Mikael Jensen said the driver shortage had slowed down container movements at Felixstowe, which deals with just over one-third of U.K. freight container volumes.   

“We are having to deviate some of the bigger ships away from Felixstowe and relay some of the smaller ships for the cargo,” he said. 

“We did it for a little while over the summer, and now we’re starting to do it again.” 
…

Friends and colleagues of Jonathan Mirsky, an American journalist known as one of the sharpest observers of China, are reflecting fondly on his legacy ahead of his funeral in London Wednesday, one month short of his 89th birthday.

Mirsky, who died in September, was a prolific writer, with hundreds of bylines inked in major publications in both Britain and the United States. In the end, the story of his life, how he changed from a self-professed “Mao [Zedong] fan” to one of the “sternest and most knowledgeable” critics of Beijing, as one obituary writer put it, was as much a story as any he covered in a career that spanned six decades.

The year 1989 was an eventful one for China, and for Mirsky. He almost lost his life while reporting on the pro-democracy movement that ended with a massacre directed by Chinese authorities. Mirsky watched students die in Tiananmen Square “right under the Mao portrait” before soldiers started beating him up.

Several teeth were knocked out and an arm was fractured, but he survived, thanks to a fellow journalist who rushed to the rescue. The next day, he would witness more people being killed as they tried to recover loved ones who had been injured or killed the night before.

Among those shot in the square were some of the medical staff from the Beijing Union Hospital, where Mirsky’s father, an established molecular biologist, had visited and worked in the 1930s.

Such bloody scenes were a far cry from the Beijing Mirsky had envisioned 20 years earlier, when, as a young college professor teaching Chinese culture and history at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, he stepped into a boat, along with five other American “peace activists,” and set sail to the shores of the People’s Republic.

Their goal was to break through the lack of contact between the Chinese and the American people since the Communist victory in 1949, as he recounted in a 1969 article for The New York Review of Books, under the title Report from the China Sea.

“Four days out of Nagasaki and seventeen miles from China we were intercepted by a Chinese Coast Guard vessel. After five days of discussion and entreaties we finally got the point: no Americans can visit China, no matter how friendly they seem,” Mirsky wrote.

It did not help, he wrote, to tell the Coast Guard officials, “We do not represent our government. We are private citizens who oppose American foreign policy regarding China.” The Chinese response, he said, was, “Chairman Mao does not agree to your coming. He wishes you to go away.”

The group had no choice but to abandon their mission of “friendship and goodwill,” and sailed back.

Mirsky, however, was undeterred by the setback. His wish to step on the soil of a Chinese “socialist paradise” — in contrast to a “greedy, imperialist America” — was fulfilled three years later. In March 1972, shortly after Nixon’s historic visit, Mirsky embarked on a six-week tour of the People’s Republic with a group of young American academics openly supportive of Beijing.

On that journey, he wrote later, he learned two lessons: the way workers and their families lived in China differed drastically from the prototype shown by officials, and secondly, the authorities really didn’t like anyone deviating from the script, including a spontaneous morning walk out of the hotel. Above all, he was touched by the honesty and bravery of ordinary Chinese people who didn’t hide their true living conditions when they were not monitored by government officials.

These lessons from 1972 would resurface, over and over, in the ensuing years as Mirsky became a foreign affairs writer focused on China, first for The Observer, then The Times of London, later The New York Review of Books, among others.

In 1989, the tension between “state” and “society” was laid bare in images seen around the world showing citizens of Beijing spontaneously organizing themselves in large groups and forming walls to stop the People’s Liberation Army from entering the city.

“That spontaneity spread from Inner Mongolia to Guangzhou. In Beijing, instead of the usual greeting between acquaintances, ‘Have you eaten yet?’ people asked, ‘Have you demonstrated yet?’” Mirsky wrote in a 25th anniversary piece about what happened in 1989.

He also recalled that “the staff of the Party’s newspapers appeared in the square holding high a banner bearing the words, ‘We don’t want to lie anymore.’”

Two years after Tiananmen, Beijing banned Mirsky, an erstwhile guest of the state who had been received in the 1970s by the likes of Zhou Enlai, from entering territories controlled by China. That didn’t stop him from continuing to observe the gap between the state and the society. Recounting a conversation he held with one of China’s leading dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, shortly after the latter had been let out of jail and sent into exile, Mirsky described Wei’s reaction to the sight of the Chinese embassy in London.

“As we drove past the Chinese embassy in Portland Place I said to Wei, ‘That’s your embassy.’ He burst out laughing. ‘I don’t know whose it is. It’s certainly not mine.’”

Upon hearing of Mirsky’s death, Wei issued a statement saying his straightforwardness had left a deep impression.

“When I first arrived in the West, in 1998, I was a celebrity, not many people would challenge me in my face, but Mr. Mirsky was different. He did praise me, too, but thought nothing of challenging me the next second,” said Wei, who described his encounter with Mirsky as being “as refreshing as taking a bite of ice cream.”

Perry Link, a well-known specialist of contemporary Chinese language and culture, met Mirsky in 1971 at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he was teaching when Mirsky came to visit a friend. “He was drawn to the pretty ideals that the CCP was touting in the 1960s and early 1970s, but when he could see, on closer inspection, that the words were a fraud, he changed his views,” he said in an email exchange with VOA.

Link considers Mirsky “one of those extraordinary human beings” who place moral values above material ones and are ready to act on their conviction. “Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, recently, comes to mind as well,” he added. Lai is a media tycoon and the jailed publisher of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper that closed following police raids and the arrests of several executives. He is awaiting trial on national security charges.

Steven I. Levine, who taught Chinese history and politics at the University of Montana, had read Mirsky’s reviews of books on China in The New York Review of Books for decades before meeting him in person about 10 years ago. He says the two formed a “late in life friendship” cherished by both. 

Among the qualities that made Mirsky special, Levine told VOA in a phone interview, was that “he not only saw imperfections in his own government, he also didn’t, just because of that, idealize other governments.”

Mirsky initially had that tendency, “but quickly became disabused of that false notion” and turned his sympathy toward the Chinese people, especially those who dared to insist on a vision for a democratic China, and never looked back, Levine said.

After the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in November 2010, Mirsky explained his support for dissidents like Liu in an interview with VOA. Liu later died of cancer while under Chinese custody, his request to seek treatment abroad was denied.

“I mean how do they do it, guys like that? And keep doing it? It’s amazing.” He said. “You can’t have inspiring people like these Chinese and not have a response to that.” 

Mirsky was concerned that Western governments were settling into a position of accepting China as is and avoid any moral concerns.

He pointed out that some politicians were getting into a habit of saying, “We’ve got to start by understanding that China is an ancient civilization with a long and proud history.

“That the Chinese Communist Party has turned its back on that ancient culture appears unknown” to the politicians who make such statements, he wrote in an essay published in 2013.

“In any event, Syria and Iran, with equally long histories,” but are not treated with equal respect, he noted.

Deborah Glass, who met Mirsky in Hong Kong soon after he arrived to take up the post as The Times’ East Asia editor in 1993 and later married him, said Mirsky always loved swimming and was particularly fond of cold water, “Maine and the north of Scotland being two of his favorite swimming spots.”

In 1969, when the Chinese coast guard refused to allow his group’s boat to enter Chinese waters, Mirsky jumped into the China Sea in an attempt to reach those he had envisioned to be bosom friends. He was quickly turned away.

In the years since, one could say he kept swimming, valiantly, in search of what lies behind the ancient Chinese saying, “Within the Four Seas, all men are brothers.”

On October 1st 2014, a month before his 82nd birthday, Mirsky stepped out of his home in London’s Holland Park, a neighborhood adjacent to the better-known Notting Hill, to join demonstrators in front of the Chinese embassy in support of Hong Kong’s voting rights protests known as the Umbrella Movement.

“I want to tell you that I am fully supportive of what you do, and there are many others like me all over the world!” he told the crowd of about 3,000 people, according to a report by The Epoch Times newspaper.

“I feel sad Jonathan is no longer with us. He had a long life, was widely respected, had contacts all over the world, and he had the right friends and the right enemies as well. So, I think that was a life well lived, well spent.”

Mirsky, Levine said, was “crystal clear in what he wrote and thought.” Underneath that clarity was “an unmatched perceptiveness and acuity on the subjects he wrote about,” and a dedication to his trade.

“As long as I’m around, I’ll remember him and cherish his memory, and think how lucky I was to know him.”

Levine said there has been “an enormous outpouring of appreciation” from the community of China watchers, journalists and academics alike, serving as a testament to the positive impact Mirsky had on others.

“In certain African cultures, they say that the passing of an old and wise person is like a library burning down,” Robert Thomson said in a phone interview with VOA from his office in New York.

Thomson, now the chief executive at News Corp., the parent company to Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, among others, was the Financial Times correspondent in Beijing whom Mirsky credited with coming to his rescue and leading him off the square “at great risk to himself” in 1989.

“Losing someone with Jonathan’s expertise and understanding – it really is a library burning down,” he said.

Mirsky’s funeral Wednesday happens to fall on the eve of a Chinese folk festival known as the Double Ninth, i.e., the ninth day of the ninth month on the lunar calendar. In the 8th century at the height of the Tang Dynasty, one of the most celebrated poet-painters composed a verse marking the day as an occasion for remembrances:

Alone in foreign land a foreign guest I am 

Memories of loved ones rise on days of festivities 

Far away, brothers of old are set to climb the mountain again

In their midst is one missing
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Members of the G-20 group of industrialized nations have pledged billions of dollars in aid to prevent a catastrophe in Afghanistan, following an emergency meeting Tuesday. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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European Union leaders met Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, pledging to strengthen ties and support the eastern European nation, particularly on the issue of Russia and energy security.

Zelenskiy hosted EU Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for the 23rd EU-Ukraine summit, a meeting held annually to enhance political and economic relations. 

The energy issue was high on the agenda. The Ukrainian leader has expressed strong opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which will link Russia to Germany, bypassing his country and, Zelenskiy says, increasing Europe’s energy reliance on Russia.

Ukraine, in conflict with Russia since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, wants to ensure it will remain a key transit country even after gas begins flowing through the pipeline. 

Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Zelenskiy said, “Energy security is also a guarantee of Ukraine’s independence and national sovereignty. The completion of the Nord Stream 2 [pipeline] opens up new challenges for Ukraine in addition to the existing ones.” 

Von der Leyen said the EU understands his concerns and pledged to work with Ukrainian experts “to secure sufficient supply for Ukraine.” 

During the meeting, the EU and Ukraine signed an “open skies” agreement to facilitate air travel between Ukraine and EU member states, by opening the market to low-cost airlines. 

Von der Leyen and Michel commended Zelenskiy on progress the nation has made, but added Ukraine needs to continue “staying focused on implementing reforms” in order to take their “partnership to the next level,” referring to possible EU membership. 

Zelenskiy expressed frustration at the lack of a firm timeline for that goal. He said, “It is already clear that we are following the same path, but where is the finish line on this path?” 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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It was late last Christmas Eve when the European Union and Britain finally clinched a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to seal their divorce.

There was hope that now-separated Britain and the 27-nation bloc would sail their relationship toward calmer waters.

With Christmas closing in again one thing is clear — it wasn’t to be.

Britain’s Brexit minister on Tuesday accused the EU of wishing failure on its former member and of badmouthing the U.K. as a country that can’t be trusted. David Frost said during a speech in Lisbon that the EU “doesn’t always look like it wants us to succeed” or “get back to constructive working together.”

He said a fundamental rewrite of the mutually agreed divorce deal was the only way to fix the exes’ “fractious relationship.” And he warned that Britain could push an emergency override button on the deal if it didn’t get its way.

“We constantly face generalized accusations that we can’t be trusted and that we aren’t a reasonable international actor,” Frost added — a response to EU claims that the U.K. is seeking to renege on the legally binding treaty that it negotiated and signed.

Post-Brexit tensions have crystalized into a worsening fight over Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. to share a land border with an EU country, which is Ireland. Under the most delicate and contentious part of the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains inside the EU’s single market for trade in goods, in order to avoid a hard border with EU member Ireland.

That means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods going to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K., despite the fact they are part of the same country. The regulations are intended to prevent goods from Britain entering the EU’s tariff-free single market while keeping an open border on the island of Ireland — a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The U.K. government soon complained the arrangements weren’t working, saying the rules impose burdensome red tape on businesses. Never short of a belligerent metaphor, 2021 has already brought a “sausage war,” with Britain asking the EU to drop a ban on processed British meat products such as sausages entering Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland’s British Unionist community, meanwhile, says the Brexit deal undermines the 1998 Good Friday peace accord — which sought to protect the rights of both Unionist and Irish Nationalist communities — by weakening Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the U.K.

The bloc has agreed to look at changes to the Protocol, and is due to present proposals on Wednesday. Before that move, Britain raised the stakes again, with Frost demanding sweeping changes to the way the agreement is governed.

In his speech in the Portuguese capital, Frost said the Protocol “is not working.”

“It has completely lost consent in one community in Northern Ireland,” he said. “It is not doing the thing it was set up to do – protect the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. In fact it is doing the opposite. It has to change.”

Most contentiously, he said the EU must also remove the European Court of Justice as the ultimate arbiter of disputes concerning trade in Northern Ireland and instead agree to international arbitration. He said the role of the EU court “means the EU can make laws which apply in Northern Ireland without any kind of democratic scrutiny or discussion.”

The EU is highly unlikely to agree to the change. The bloc’s highest court is seen as the pinnacle of the free trade single market, and Brussels has vowed not to undermine its own order.

Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, said Britain’s demand was “very hard to accept.”

“I don’t think we could ever have a situation where we had another court deciding what the rules of the single market are,” he said.

Some EU observers say Britain’s demand to remove the court’s oversight shows it isn’t serious about making the Brexit deal work.

Frost repeated the U.K.’s threat to invoke Article 16, a clause allowing either side to suspend the agreement in exceptional circumstances. That would send already testy relations into a deep chill and could lead to a trade war between Britain and the bloc — one that would hurt the U.K. economy more than its much larger neighbor.

The economically tiny but symbolically charged subject of fish, which held up a trade deal to the final minute last year, is also stoking divisions now.

France wants its EU partners to act as one if London wouldn’t grant more licenses for small French fishing boats to roam close to the U.K. crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey, just off France’s Normandy coast.

In France’s parliament last week, Prime Minister Jean Castex accused Britain of reneging on its promise over fishing.

“We see in the clearest way possible that Great Britain does not respect its own signature,” he said.

In a relationship where both sides often fall back on cliches about the other, Castex was harking back to the centuries-old French insult of “Perfidious Albion,” a nation that can never be trusted.

Across the English Channel, U.K. Brexit supporters often depict a conniving EU, hurt by Britain’s departure, doing its utmost to make Brexit less than a success by throwing up bureaucratic impediments.

“The EU and we have got into a low equilibrium, (a) somewhat fractious relationship,” Frost conceded. “(It) need not always be like that, but … it takes two to fix it.”
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A report produced by the British parliament says a state of “groupthink” among government officials led to a costly delay in ordering a nationwide lockdown in the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The 151-page report from the joint science and health committees in the House of Commons says Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Cabinet deliberately engaged in a “slow and gradualist approach” in the first few months of 2020 as officials sought to manage instead of suppress the spread of the virus. 

The joint inquiry says the virus was able to take hold across Britain because of that “fatalistic” strategy, which was finally abandoned as the country’s National Health Service risked being overwhelmed by the rapidly rising number of cases. 

The report also criticized Johnson’s government for its “slow, uncertain and often chaotic” testing and tracing system, while noting a failure between national and local governments and other public bodies to share data. 

The lawmakers concluded the government’s response to the pandemic was “one of the most important health failures” in Britain’s history.

In an interview with Sky News, Stephen Barclay, Johnson’s Minister for the Cabinet Office, repeatedly declined to apologize for the government’s actions. 

“We followed, throughout, the scientific advice,” he said. “We got the vaccine deployed extremely quickly, we protected our [National Health Service] from the surge of cases.”

“Of course, if there are lessons to learn we’re keen to do so,” he added. 

The final report was compiled from hours of testimony given by more than 50 witnesses, including former health secretary Matt Hancock and Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s former special adviser, who has emerged as a vocal critic of Johnson’s handling of the pandemic.

In France, officials have released a new study that shows people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 are far less likely to die or be hospitalized, even in the presence of the delta variant.

Researchers compared the outcomes of 11 million vaccinated people against an equal number of unvaccinated people beginning in December 2020. The study found the risk of someone contracting the coronavirus was reduced by 90% about 14 days after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccines. The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not included in the study, since it was authorized much later in France.

The study says the vaccines are nearly as effective against the delta variant, with 92% protection for people between 50 and 75 years old, and 84% for people 75 years old and older. It also says the vaccines maintained their high level of effectiveness during the five months the study was conducted.

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

 
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The German city of Cologne says it will start allowing mosques to broadcast the call to prayer, or azan, over loudspeakers. 

The city said Monday the call to prayer could be broadcast on Friday afternoons for up to five minutes.

Mosques will need to apply for a permit to broadcast and must comply with volume limits. The permit will last for two years.

“Permitting the call of the muezzin is a sign of respect,” Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker tweeted last week. 

She said those who arrive at the city’s main train station are greeted by the sound of church bells from the cathedral. She said adding the Muslim call to prayer shows the city is one of religious freedom and diversity. 

Christian church bells ring out daily in many German cities and towns. 

In Muslim countries, the call to prayer is routinely broadcast five times a day. 

Cologne, a city of 1 million, has about 35 mosques and is home to one of Germany’s largest Muslim communities. 

 
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