FBI agents raided homes Thursday in Washington and New York City linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to the Kremlin and to Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

The agents carried boxes out of a mansion in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods, with yellow “CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER” tape across the front yard, and towed away a vehicle. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed the agency was conducting a court-authorized law enforcement activity at the home, which The Washington Post has previously reported was linked to the Russian oligarch.

The specific reason for sealing off and searching the Washington mansion was not immediately clear, and the FBI spokesperson did not provide details. 

A representative for Deripaska said the home, as well as the one in New York, belong to relatives of the oligarch. Reuters could not immediately determine Deripaska’s whereabouts. 

A spokesperson for the FBI’s New York field office confirmed “law enforcement activity” at the home in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood but declined further comment.

Deripaska, 53, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. Washington imposed sanctions on him and other influential Russians because of their ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin after alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Deripaska once employed Manafort, who was convicted in 2018 on tax evasion and bank fraud charges and was among the central figures scrutinized under investigations of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Moscow denies.

Russia used Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help Trump win that election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter released last year. While still president last December, Trump pardoned Manafort.

The Senate report found Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. 

The report also alleged Manafort collaborated with Russians, including Deripaska and a Russian intelligence officer, before, during and after the election. 

Deripaska owns part of Rusal via his stake in the giant aluminum producer’s parent company En+ Group. 

Washington previously dropped sanctions against both companies but kept them on Deripaska. Rusal’s Moscow-listed shares extended losses after the report of the raid on the Washington home, falling 6%. 

The representative for Deripaska, who declined to give their name because of company policy, confirmed the raid on both homes and said they belong to Deripaska’s family rather than the executive himself.

The representative said the searches were carried out on the basis of two court warrants related to the U.S. sanctions but provided no further details. 

 
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says no third country has a veto on Ukraine’s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance. 

“Ukraine…has a right to decide its own future foreign policy, and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference,” Austin said during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, when asked about Russian objections to Ukraine’s entry into NATO.

Tensions have risen between Russia and the U.S.-led alliance, with Moscow announcing on Monday it is suspending its permanent mission to NATO in response to the alliance’s expulsion of eight Russians diplomats earlier this month.

Austin also called Russia an “obstacle” to any peaceful resolution to the war raging in Ukraine’s east.

“We again call on Russia to end its occupation of Crimea, to stop perpetuating the war in eastern Ukraine, to end its destabilizing activities in the Black Sea and along Ukraine’s borders,” Austin said.

“We will continue to do everything we can to support Ukraine’s efforts to develop the capability to defend itself,” he added.

Earlier this year, Russia massed the largest concentration of its troops near the Ukrainian border since it annexed Crimea in 2014. The troops pulled back after conducting exercises near Ukraine’s border.

Austin’s visit to Ukraine is his second stop in Europe this week. He visited Georgia on Monday. 

Bradley Bowman, a defense expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, called the stops in Georgia and Ukraine “an important and positive signal.”

“They’re important partners, and they’re partners that are literally, not metaphorically, literally on the front line against Russian aggression and invasion and continued occupation,” Bowman told VOA.

Russia still occupies about one-fifth of Georgia.

During his press conference Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Austin also urged Moscow to stop its “persistent cyberattacks and other malign activities” against the United States and its partners.

A White House official said last week Russia had taken “some steps” against ransomware groups operating from the country after President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to tackle the groups in June.

Russian hackers were accused of being behind last year’s massive breach of several U.S. federal agencies through exploiting SolarWinds software and a string of ransomware attacks on U.S. infrastructure and businesses, including the Colonial Pipeline attack in May.

On Wednesday, Austin plans to visit Romania ahead of his participation at a NATO defense ministerial in Brussels. 
…

Five hundred years after Hernán Cortés conquered Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, a Spanish mayor is demanding the return of the conquistador’s remains to his birthplace because of what he says are anti-Spanish sentiments in modern-day Mexico. 

Valentin Pozo Torres, mayor of Medellín, the village in western Spain’s Extremadura region where Cortés was born, sent a letter to the Mexican ambassador in Madrid expressing his “deep concern” about the “anti-Spanish drift” of the current Mexican government. 

Pozo, who represents the ruling Socialist Workers Party, said he feared that Cortés’ remains, which lie in Mexico, may be desecrated and demanded “his repatriation to the people who saw him born.”   

Cortés was born in Medellín in 1485 and died in 1547, six years after returning to Spain. His remains were re-buried in Mexico City at his own wish. They lie in a chapel in an ancient hospital – the oldest in the Americas – that he founded and that is not generally accessible to tourists. 

It is the latest chapter of an ongoing dispute between the two countries which revolves around their shared past. 

After the conquest, Spain governed Mexico not as a colony like those held by England or France but as a viceroyalty, or separate kingdom and an overseas territory known as New Spain. Its war for independence began in 1810 and was led by descendants of Spaniards, or criollos. 

Interpretations of history

In 2019, Mexico’s populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is known by the acronym AMLO, demanded that Spain’s King Felipe VI and Pope Francis should apologize for abuses committed during the Spanish conquest. 

Modern historians say that conquest was marked by violence, subjugation, cultural suppression, and plunder. 

Spain rejected this interpretation of history and instead said the conquest “cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations.”

Historical accounts, notably “The True History of the Conquest of New Spain” by Captain Bernal Díaz del Castillo, counter claims of cruelty but are also critical of Cortés campaign. Diaz del Castillo accompanied Cortés and notes that, with a force of 600 Spanish soldiers, defeated the Aztecs only by enlisting thousands of fighters among other indigenous people who were resentful of their Aztec oppressors and eager to cast them off. 

Among their tributaries, the Aztecs were notorious for their brutality, enslaving the populations they conquered and practicing human sacrifice, including of children, as part of their religion, according to historical accounts.  

Spain’s government has refuted Mexico’s demand for an apology for the conquest while praising the support Mexico gave Spanish leftist Republican exiles during and after the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.

“Mexico and Spain have a relationship with a long past, a very rich past which obviously on occasions we cannot agree on. But what we have is an extraordinary future,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in an interview with CNN in June. 

However, conservatives in Spain have been irritated by the Mexican president’s insistence that Madrid apologize for the past. 

Spain’s former conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, who is still an important player in current politics, ridiculed AMLO at a recent party conference.  

“Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Andres for the Aztec part, Manuel for the Mayan part, López is a mixture of Aztecs and Mayans and Obrador from Santander,” he said, referring to López Obrador’s Spanish roots that extend to his maternal grandfather. A biography based on accounts from relatives says José Obrador was born in northern Spain’s Cantabria region and immigrated to Mexico in 1917. 

López Obrador responded to Aznar’s remarks saying “It is an act of humility to offer forgiveness, it is an act that dignifies both the one who offers it and the one who receives it.” 

2021 marks both the 500th anniversary of the Conquest and the 200th anniversary of the end of Mexico’s 11-year war of independence.

As Mexico celebrated the anniversary of the consummation of its independence last month, Pope Francis sent a message to Mexican bishops saying this moment “necessarily includes a process of purifying memory, that is, recognizing the very painful errors committed in the past”. 

However, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the president of Madrid’s regional government and a rising star on the Spanish right, questioned the pope’s words, saying the conquest of Mexico brought the Spanish language and Catholicism that ended human sacrifice and enslavement. Mexico is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country with a population of 130 million compared to Spain’s 47 million. 

Complex relationship

Tomás Pérez Vejo, a professor at the National School for Anthropology and History in Mexico, said the relationship between Spain and Mexico is singularly important because of Mexican claims that it was a nation before the 16th century conquest. 

“The relationship with Mexico is without doubt the most important (among former colonies) because one line of thought is that is was a nation before the Spanish conquest. An alternative argument is that Mexico was born because of the Spanish Conquest. It is an identity civil war which has never been resolved.” he told VOA.

Unlike the British colonies where Native American populations were annihilated and their survivors pushed into reservations, Spanish colonists intermarried with indigenous Mexicans and multiplied. The result is that Mexico’s population today is overwhelmingly mestizo, of mixed Spanish and native North American ancestry and its culture is a hybrid of European and ancient Mexican traditions.

Despite political disputes, analysts say ties between Spain and Mexico run deep. 

Carlos Malamud, an expert in Latin America at the Real Elcano Institute think tank in Madrid, said despite the recent confrontational style of López Obrador, the relationship between Mexico and Spain remained strong. 

“Thousands of Spanish firms have invested in Mexico and there are constant intellectual exchanges between both countries. In the other direction, Mexican companies have invested in Spanish media companies,” he told VOA.

Spanish investment in Mexico over the past six years totaled $5.5 billion, according to the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.  

Mexico is Spain’s top trading partner in Latin America.

The relationship between the two Spanish-speaking nations prompts comparison with that of the US and its former colonial ruler, Britain. 

“The relationships are so different between both sets of countries.  The Atlantic friends have remained in a strong relationship despite the colonial past. In contrast, Spain and Mexico have an uneasy relationship,” Eduardo Garrigas, a former Spanish consul general in Los Angeles and writer, told VOA. 
…

The European Commission is considering potential legal and financial responses after Poland’s constitutional court challenged the supremacy of EU law, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday. 

Speaking during a meeting of EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, von der Leyen said the Polish court’s ruling earlier this month was “a direct challenge to the unity of the EU.” 

“We cannot and we will not allow our common values to be put at risk,” she said. 

The judges for Poland’s highest court ruled that the national constitution had primacy over EU law. 

The increased tensions between Poland the EU fed speculation that Poland, which joined the bloc in 2004, could move toward withdrawing. 

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday that while his country will not be intimidated, it abides by EU treaties and expects a constructive dialogue on the issue. 

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

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who died Monday at age 84, used his decades-long governmental and military career to defend traditional U.S. alliances with European nations, some analysts say.  

Family members say Powell died of COVID-19 complications. Doctors say he also suffered from multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that suppresses the body’s immune response, as well as Parkinson’s, a disease that, among other things, weakens the muscles. 

He first exerted influence over U.S. policy toward Europe as deputy national security advisor and then national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989, and later as the top U.S. military officer under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.  

“He was a key player in helping to shape U.S. policies in the 1980s and the early ’90s, during which we were able to put an end to the Cold War and erase some of the dividing lines across Europe,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Russia, in an interview with VOA’s Russian Service. Vershbow, who later served as NATO deputy secretary general, is an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.  

Some of the policy-making in which Powell was involved in the 1980s and early ’90s included U.S. planning for the defense of U.S. allies in western Europe from a potential land assault by the Soviet Union.  

Charles Ries is a former U.S. ambassador to Greece and an analyst with RAND Corporation, a California-based policy research organization. Ries told VOA in a separate interview that he recalled Powell reflecting upon the U.S. plans for a possible Soviet tank invasion of the Fulda Gap a lowland corridor between then-Soviet-occupied East Germany and U.S.-allied and occupied West Germany. 

“What the planning gave Powell was quite a deep appreciation for what the alliance with the Europeans and NATO was all about,” said Ries, who also served under Powell as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for European Affairs from 2000 to 2004. Powell was appointed Secretary of State by President George W. Bush in 2001 and served in the post until 2005. 

As the top U.S. diplomat, Powell saw U.S. relations with some European allies fray in 2003 when Bush planned and authorized a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq against the advice of leaders in Paris and Berlin. Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld further angered France and Germany in January 2003 by labeling them “old Europe” in contrast to what at the time were new eastern European NATO members from the former Soviet bloc, whom he said were on the side of the U.S.  

“Powell didn’t directly take on that quote in public, but he showed in the way that he engaged with, listened to, operated with [then-]French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin that he wasn’t going to let U.S.-European relations get ruined by this very important disagreement about what to do about [Iraq],” Ries said. 

Bush sought to heal the Iraq war dispute with some of his European allies at a U.S.-EU summit in Ireland in June 2004. “It was clear from the summit that the U.S. still had the respect and engagement of the Europeans, despite a very troubled first year of the war,” Ries said. “I think that is very much a tribute to Powell’s engagement and personal diplomacy,” he added.  

Vershbow, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2001-2005, said Powell faced another challenge as Secretary of State in trying to maintain the momentum of Russian overtures toward NATO in the years after the Soviet Union’s 1991 demise.  

Vladimir Putin, who began his first term as Russian president in May 2000, appeared to extend the overtures in June 2002 when he attended a Rome summit with Bush and other NATO leaders and agreed to the creation of a NATO-Russia Council as a forum for cooperation.  

But Vershbow said the positive signals from Putin’s first term were short-lived, as the Russian leader evolved into one of the U.S.’s chief international adversaries.  

“Secretary Powell, like I did as ambassador to Russia, shared the frustration that the trends in that period were heading in the wrong direction,” Vershbow said. Current U.S.-Russia tensions “reflect some of the missed opportunities which we were trying to seize back at the time when Secretary Powell was the U.S. chief diplomat,” he added.

Vershbow said Powell and the Bush administration “missed opportunities” to cooperate with Putin on missile defense, adapting the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, and preventing terrorism.  

This article originated in VOA’s Russian Service.  
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is warning Russia against distracting European leaders with new talks when it has yet to make good on previous commitments. 

“Russia, which currently occupies 20% of Georgia’s territory, should focus on honoring its 2008 cease-fire commitments before promoting any new discussion platforms,” Austin said Monday during a visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, to meet with the country’s prime minister and defense minister. 

“I’m here to reassure Georgia,” Austin added. “We have many shared interests, and of course, shared values, and we see a number of opportunities for security cooperation.” 

The visit to Georgia is the first stop of a European swing that will also take the U.S. defense secretary to Ukraine and Romania. 

Austin will also travel to Belgium to participate in a NATO defense ministers meeting. 

Russia recently floated the idea of a so-called 3+3 format for talks to resolve lingering issues with Georgia. The format would include Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Iran and Turkey. 

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the idea already has the support of Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey. 

Georgia has been steadily expanding ties with the U.S. and other Western countries, and like Ukraine, it has been seeking to join NATO. 

 
…

Chinese President Xi Jinping aims to bolster relations in Europe, a traditional stronghold of support for the United States, as a buffer against shaky Sino-U.S. ties, analysts believe.

Xi spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last Wednesday and with European Council President Charles Michel on Friday. The council is a policymaking body for the European Union, an economic bloc of 27 nations including Europe’s largest countries.

China hopes to build trade and investment ties with individual European countries as it seeks partnerships that can counter a half decade of acrimony with its superpower rival the United States, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.

Western Europe has been staunchly U.S.-leaning since World War II, though differences do surface — for example, France’s anger over a U.S.-UK-Australia military technology sharing deal (AUKUS) of nuclear-powered submarines reached last month.

“We’re seeing the European Union and Germany converge with the U.S., and that convergence is something that China would like to stop, as soon as possible,” Nagy said.

Convergence could isolate China in the developed world, complicating its global political and economic goals.

Series of sore spots in China-U.S., China-EU relations

Beijing and Washington have disagreed strongly since 2018 on the use of internet technology, the rules of international trade and China’s expansion in Asia including the South China Sea. Washington is especially watching to see whether China attacks Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Chinese leaders call their own.

EU-China relations have deteriorated as well for the past year over Beijing’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority and support for Taiwan’s autonomy among leaders in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. 

On the economic front, movement and discussion toward ratification of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) has been “justifiably been frozen” in May because of China imposing sanctions “on several European individuals and entities,” according to the European Parliament.

France, Germany and the UK further irked China this year by sending military vessels into the South China Sea where they joined Washington in keeping an eye on Beijing’s movements. Four Southeast Asian states and Taiwan call parts of the resource-rich sea their own, but China claims 90% of it.

Multiple countries in Europe now “recoil at the PRC’s illiberal policies at home and overreach abroad”, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York.

Up trend in China’s ties with individual European countries

While China-EU relations have been tense, China is still the EU’s No. 1 trading partner and the source of billions of dollars per year in direct investment, particularly in energy. Its relations vary from one member country to the next, with east-central European peers such as Hungary and Serbia eager to engage while Western European peers more skeptical – though seldom as harshly as the United States.

“Xi Jinping has presumably, and rightly, long seen the European Union as an easy mark and would doubtless be pursuing deeper relations there, whatever the state of Beijing’s ties with Washington,” King said. Beyond politics, he said, “the Communist Party of China surely craves access to European technology, markets, universities and think tanks.

In his video meeting with Merkel, head of Europe’s largest economy, Xi said both sides support trade and “believe that the common interests of China and the EU far outweigh contradictions and differences”, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. 

Beijing has been locked in a trade dispute with the United States since 2018, affecting $550 billion in two-way trade with an especially hard impact on Chinese exports.

China and the EU, “as two important forces in the world, have a responsibility to strengthen cooperation and work together to deal with global problems in the face of increasing global challenges and rising instability and uncertainty,” Xi said.

Xi said to the European Council President, it was “not surprising that competition and differences have emerged” between China and the EU, according to China’s CGTN news website. He suggested that the two sides work together more in technology and that China extend its multi-trillion-dollar, pan-Eurasia Belt and Road infrastructure building initiative.

Chinese leaders could attract European countries with open access to the Chinese market, where middle-class consumers still buy luxury brands from France and Italy, Nagy said. Trade “inducements” would appeal to the EU as it recovers economically from COVID-19, he said.

European nations want more investment in energy and clean technology, while both sides are looking for intellectual property protections, said James Berkeley, managing director of the advisory firm Ellice Consulting in London.

His 8-year-old consultancy does most of its business today with a U.S. focus, but it anticipates new interest in China if Sino-UK ties improve, Berkeley said. Chinese automotive companies, for example, may be able to refine intellectual property in Europe and reapply those rights in their home market, Berkeley said.

“There are Chinese investors that have an international perspective and they’re looking to deploy capital into businesses internationally in which they can build out the intellectual property and then reverse that intellectual property,” he said.

Brisker trade and investment ties won’t sway pro-U.S. European nations toward China politically, experts say. However, China may be able to improve ties with central and Eastern European countries and “split” the EU, Nagy said.

He likened that approach to Southeast Asia. Chinese aid on the Asian subcontinent has won the loyalty of Cambodia and Laos but missed that mark in Vietnam and the Philippines, where citizens have long distrusted China.
…

Witnesses, security camera footage and forensic evidence all point to two men charged in the murder of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, prosecutors said Monday as the trial of the suspects opened in Amsterdam.

De Vries, 64, was gunned down in July in the Dutch capital in a brazen attack that sent shockwaves through the Netherlands.

The suspected gunman is a 21-year-old Dutch man, identified under Dutch privacy rules only as Delano G. A 35-year-old Polish man, Kamiel E., is accused of being the getaway driver.

They both were arrested shortly after De Vries was shot July 6 on an Amsterdam street after making one of his regular appearances on a Dutch television show. He died nine days later.

Prosecutors said police found two weapons in the getaway car when the men were detained on a highway about 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside Amsterdam, a Heckler and Koch machine pistol and, in a Louis Vuitton bag, a blank-firing pistol that had been modified to take 9-millimeter rounds.

Prosecutors said forensic tests showed that a bullet found in De Vries’ head was likely fired by the modified gun.

Both suspects were present in court as the preliminary hearing got underway, along with relatives of De Vries.

Delano G. declined to make a statement in court and has refused to speak to police and prosecutors. Kamiel E., speaking in Polish with an interpreter translating his comments into Dutch, denied involvement in the shooting.

“Your honor, I didn’t kill anybody, I know nothing about the murder, I did not see a weapon,” he said.

The shooting sparked an  outpouring of grief — thousands lined up outside an Amsterdam theater to pay their last respects days after De Vries’ death — and condemnation in the Netherlands.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the shooting an “attack on a courageous journalist and also an attack on the free journalism that is so essential for our democracy, our constitutional state, our society.”

De Vries was the Netherlands’ most famous crime journalist, reporting on and writing a bestselling book about the 1983 kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken and campaigning tirelessly to resolve cold cases and clear the names of wrongfully convicted people.

De Vries recently had been an adviser and confidant for a witness in the trial of the alleged leader and other members of a crime gang that police described as an “oiled killing machine.” A lawyer representing the witness and the witness’ brother also have been murdered.

The suspected gangland leader, Ridouan Taghi, was extradited to the Netherlands from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2019. He remains jailed while standing trial along with 16 other suspects.

Prosecutors said that their investigations into who ordered De Vries’ murder is continuing.
…

The man held for the fatal stabbing last week of a British lawmaker had been referred to the British government’s anti-extremism program, called Prevent, because of his radical Islamist views, but the country’s security services, including MI5 – Britain’s domestic intelligence agency – had not deemed him a serious threat requiring monitoring, confirmed British officials. 
 
Police have not released the name of the suspect, but local media have identified him as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British national of Somali descent. Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that the suspect’s father, Harbi Ali Kullane, a former adviser to Somalia’s prime minister, said British counter-terrorism police had visited him at his home in north London. 
 
“I’m feeling very traumatized. It’s not something that I expected or even dreamed of,” the suspect’s father told the newspaper following the murder Friday of Conservative MP David Amess. 
 
The lawmaker was stabbed multiple times while meeting with constituents at a church hall an hour’s drive east of London. The Metropolitan Police have confirmed early investigations of the slaying suggest “a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism,” but have so far refrained from going into any details publicly. 
 
Ali was born in London. Many members of his wider family live in Somalia, where his aunt is head of a security think tank in Mogadishu. Ali’s uncle is Somalia’s ambassador to China. 
 
Britain’s security and counter-terror agencies have warned cabinet ministers of a possible wave of future attacks by what they term “bedroom radicals,” lone wolf militants radicalized online during pandemic lockdowns. Investigators are trying to establish whether Ali fits that profile and whether his radicalization intensified during the lockdown. 
 
They have so far found no evidence that he traveled overseas to train, a British official told VOA. The Sun newspaper quoted security sources as saying that Ali became increasingly radicalized after watching militant videos on YouTube. 

Amess eulogized 
 
The 69-year-old Amess is the second British MP to have been murdered in the past five years, and his death has prompted nationwide horror and outrage. Politicians across political divides praised him as a hard-working “gentleman MP,” one who eschewed a ministerial career in favor of focusing on the needs of his constituents. An independent-minded Conservative, he was widely known as a campaigner for animal welfare. 
 
Dozens of mourners attended a special church service Sunday in memory of the MP, one of the country’s longest serving lawmakers, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983. Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a rare joint appearance with Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s main opposition party, at the scene of the attack, where both laid flowers. 
 
Johnson described Amess, a father of five and a devout Catholic, as a “fine parliamentarian and a much-moved colleague and friend.” 
 
Amess’s family said in a statement released Sunday: “Our hearts are shattered.” They added, “We are trying to understand why this awful thing has occurred. Nobody should die in that way. Please let some good come from this tragedy. We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man.” 
 
Ali was arrested inside the church hall as paramedics battled to save the life of the MP. He used his phone immediately after the attack, but it is unclear whether he contacted anyone or was filming the scene of the crime. Police sources say he has been cooperating with investigators. He is being held under the Terrorism Act. 

Counter-terror efforts questioned 
 
Security officials told VOA under the condition of anonymity that the attack had been planned over several weeks and Amess’s suspected attacker made an appointment to see the MP, saying he was moving into the area from London. “At the moment there is not a specific reason why Amess was targeted — Ali was geared to attack any lawmaker, it was just he managed to get to Amess first,” said a security official. 
 
The referral by a teacher five years ago of Amess’ alleged killer to the Prevent program has prompted questions over the effectiveness of the de-radicalization scheme, which has been the subject of an ongoing review since January. A former counter-terror commander, Richard Walton, called on the government to “invest more” in the Prevent scheme so it is better equipped to “detect the signs and symptoms of radicalized individuals.” 
 
The security services have raised their fears about a potential wave of attacks by so-called bedroom radicals for weeks. In September the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, publicly cautioned that the pandemic had left many more people at risk of radicalization because militants had exploited the social isolation of lockdowns to recruit and proselytize. 
 
As police investigators question Ali and sift through evidence, the country’s politicians are debating about how to tighten security. Amess’s murder has underlined the potential danger Britain’s lawmakers face. Friday’s stabbing attack by a lone assailant bore striking similarities to the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016. Cox was about to hold meetings with constituents when she was shot and stabbed by a subsequently convicted far right militant.   
 
In 2010 Labour MP Stephen Timms was injured in a stabbing attack by an Islamist when he was holding a regular meeting with constituents. 
 
Some British lawmakers are likely to be offered police protection when meeting voters, Home Secretary Priti Patel acknowledged during several Sunday television appearances. Security officials are drawing up plans for a new minimum package of safety measures all police forces must offer lawmakers when they are away from the House of Commons. 
 
Not all MPs are happy with the idea of having police present during their meetings with local voters and fear it might undermine a tradition they hold dear of constituents having easy access to them. 
 
Britain’s Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, said Monday that online hate towards MPs is “out of control.” “The elephant in the room in all this is the online hate that we all get,” he told broadcaster Sky News. 
 
Raab echoed the fear of security services that the pandemic and lockdowns had not helped the situation. “There is certainly an element of more people who are at-risk and vulnerable because they’ve been spending more time online,” he added. 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crew had dedocked from the ISS three hours earlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pilot veered left to inspect it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not in good hands’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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