The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is holding a first-ever forum in an effort to drum up international support for tens of millions of people displaced by war, poverty, repression and other woes. The Global Refugee Forum, taking place December 16-18 in Geneva, will seek to gather leaders from governments, business and civil society to work together to find solutions for the unprecedented number of people — more than 70 million, according to the U.N. — displaced in their home countries or abroad. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Human remains discovered last month at a farm outside the city of Guadalajara have been confirmed as belonging to at least 50 people, authorities in Mexico’s west-central state of Jalisco reported.Jalisco state prosecutors said recovery work at the farm in Tlajomulco de Zuniga, which began Nov. 22 after the initial discovery, concluded Friday as experts determined there was no more evidence to be gathered from the scene.The office said in a Saturday statement that there was a “preliminary” indication that the remains corresponded to 50 individuals.Prosecutors said they had identified 13 people so far — 12 male and one female, all of whom were previously listed as missing.The state forensic sciences institute will seek to determine the sex of the rest and cause of death.The investigation continues, with the goal of identifying more victims as well as “those responsible for this crime which gravely harms society,” the statement said.The state is home to Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s bloodiest and most ruthless drug cartels.In July, Jalisco prosecutors announced 21 bodies had been found in excavations in the yard of a house near Guadalajara. In May, authorities discovered the remains of at least 34 people at two separate properties in the state.Such clandestine burial sites are frequently used by criminals to dispose of bodies.At least 40,000 people have disappeared since Mexico’s drug war began in 2006. 
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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday threatened to close two strategic military bases used by the United States in Turkey, after Washington warned of sanctions over Ankara buying Russian arms.”If necessary, we can close Incirlik and we can close Kurecik,” Erdogan on the pro-government A Haber television channel. The two bases sit on Turkey’s southwest coast, near the border with Syria.Erdogan has regularly raised this possibility in the past, at times of tension between the two countries.The U.S. Air Force uses the airbase at Incirlik for raids on positions held by the  so-called Islamic State group in Syria. The Kurecik base houses a major NATO radar station.FILE – U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter jets (foreground) are pictured at Incirlik Air Base, near Adana, Turkey, Dec. 11, 2015.Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu raised the issue of the bases last week. Responding to the U.S. threat of fresh sanctions, he warned that their closure could be “put on the table”.Turkey faces U.S. sanctions over its decision to buy the Russian S-400 missile defense system, despite warnings from Washington.And on Friday, Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador after the U.S. Senate followed the lower house and voted to recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide. The bill has yet to be signed by President Donald Trump.Armenia claims 1.5 million died in the killings. Turkey says the number of deaths was far lower and Turks also died, blaming the killings on the World War I.
 
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Chinese state television pulled the scheduled live broadcast of a football (soccer) game following one of the players’ comments online criticizing the government’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority.China’s CCTV was scheduled to broadcast the football game between Arsenal and Manchester United, but instead decided to show a taped game between Tottenham Hotspur and the Wolverhampton Wanderers.Arsenal footballer Mesut Ozil posted on Twitter Friday comments condemning China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the Western region, while also criticizing other Muslim countries for not speaking up against abuses.”Korans are being burnt… Mosques are being shut down… Muslim schools are being banned… Religious scholars are being killed one by one… Brothers are forcefully being sent to camps,” Ozil wrote in Turkish on his Twitter account Friday.#HayırlıCumalarDoğuTürkistan ?? pic.twitter.com/dJgeK4KSIk— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) December 13, 2019The U.S., the United Nations and various human rights groups have accused China of detaining an estimated one million ethnic Muslims in so-called “re-education camps” in the remote Western province of Xinjiang in an attempt to force them to renounce their religion and heritage.Chia’s state-run Global Times said on its Twitter account Sunday that CCTV made the decision to pull the game after Ozil’s comments had “disappointed fans and football governing authorities”.Arsenal posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that the the content Ozil shared was “entirely Ozil’s personal opinion”. The team has not posted a response on Twitter or released and official statement.  
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Hours before the official result was complete for Britain’s general election, U.S. Democrats on the other side of the Atlantic were taking to social-media sites to draw quick conclusions on what Labour’s catastrophic defeat might mean for them and the electoral challenge they face with the 2020 White House contest.Forewarned by an exit poll, which suggested Britain’s storied Labour Party was heading for its worst election rebuff since 1935, one of the first Democrats to hit the send button was Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama.He tweeted: “There are a lot of factors that went into this massive defeat, but progressives have to learn from them to do better on both sides of the Atlantic.”But that begs the crucial question: what lessons?Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is seen near his home in London, Britain, December 14, 2019. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleOn the British side of the Atlantic, Labour politicians can’t agree about what went wrong for them in what’s likely to be seen as the most consequential British election for a quarter-of-a-century, with some, including defeated party leader Jeremy Corbyn, insisting that the radical socialist policies he advocated, including the nationalization of a swathe of the British economy, were individually popular and that the blame should go on Brexit.A key Corbyn ally, Len McCluskey, the leader of the powerful Unite trade union, said the policies in the party’s manifesto were “very popular,” but “we very evidently didn’t win the argument over Brexit” and the party’s policy of holding a second referendum on European Union membership. McCluskey said the party’s “biggest mistake” was “perhaps underestimating the desire for people who had voted Leave to leave the European Union.”But many Labour moderates believe Brexit-favoring working-class voters who deserted the party in droves would have overlooked the issue of Europe, if Labour had had a more popular and centrist leader and a manifesto shorn of leftwing dogma. In a post-election opinion poll, only 17 percent of Labour defectors cited Brexit as the reason for their switch to the Conservatives.”Jeremy Corbyn was destined to lead the Labour Party to a catastrophic defeat,” according to Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman magazine, Britain’s leading leftwing weekly. “If he believed that the British would vote for the most radical socialist manifesto in our history, he was sadly deluded. The party has learned nothing from past defeats: the more it moves to the left, the more people are alienated,” he added in a post-mortem assessment for Britain’s The Times newspaper.Cowley says Labour has lost touch with Britain’s working-class and the party’s defeat Thursday is a parable of what can go wrong when a party rejects pragmatism for “ideological purity.”Some Democrats in the U.S.  worry that might be the case with their own party and say the British election should be seen as window on the 2020 presidential race.Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Nashua, N.H., Dec. 8, 2019.Former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, the current front-runner to win the Democratic nomination to take on Trump, has said that the British election should be taken as a warning against Democrats moving too far to the radical left ahead of the 2020 White House race.Speaking to supporters in San Francisco, Biden argued that the radicalism of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ultimately contributed to Boris Johnson’s landslide victory last week.Others on the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, too, fear that Labour’s defeat may foreshadow trouble for their bid to vanquish Trump, especially if the Democrats pick a progressive nominee like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as their champion in the 2020 presidential election.Political trends on one side of the Atlantic have often presaged trends on the other, although often with time lags because of misaligned elections. Both countries were moderately conservative in the 1950s and Republican and Conservative governments accepted the welfare systems established by their predecessors in office and ideological rivals, Franklin Roosevelt and Britain’s Clement Attlee.In the 1960s both countries trended left, although were divided over the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, free-market conservatives — Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — reshaped their nations’ politics.FILE – Tony Blair and Bill Clinton hold hands during an event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 10, 2018.And in the 1990s “Third Way” Democrats, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, marched almost in lockstep to refashion their parties as market-friendly, seeking to blend center-right economics with center-left social policies. The 2016 Brexit referendum was seen by many, including Donald Trump’s then strategist Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief of staff, as foreshadowing Trump’s upset a few months later of Hillary Clinton, who saw her candidacy rebuffed in the fading towns of the “rust belt” states much like Corbyn was rejected in the post-industrial north of England.Nationalist conservatives rule the roost now in Washington and London, prioritizing the nation state over multilateralism and favoring tough immigration restrictions. The skirmishing by Democrats over the British election result is enmeshing with the fight over who should get the party’s presidential nomination.Democrats favoring a progressive candidate maintain there are no real lessons to draw from Johnson’s election win, echoing Corbyn supporters on the other side of the Atlantic by arguing Labour lost the election because of Brexit. “This UK election was ultimately an election about Brexit, and Brexit won. There’s no clean analogue to that in the U.S,” says Kate Aronoff, a senior fellow at Data for Progress, a progressive U.S. think tank.”The UK election was undeniably bad for Labour, but it doesn’t at all vindicate centrists saying the U.S. should make one of them the Democratic nominee. Left policies are popular,” she tweeted.Aronoff, like other U.S. progressives maintain that the kind of centrist politics espoused by establishment Democrats also got rebuffed by British voters in an election that dashed the hopes of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, who presented themselves as a respectable alternative between the Conservatives and Labour. Their leader Jo Swinson even failed to get reelected as a lawmaker.People stand behind a banner supporting the results of the general election, in London, Britain, Dec. 13, 2019.Some commentators who’ve chronicled the rise of populist nationalism say neither moderates nor progressives have the grasped the full scale of the realignment of Western politics that’s underway. The UK vote wasn’t just any election, says Matthew Goodwin, an academic at Britain’s Kent University and co-author of the book “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.” “The old left versus right economic divide continues to make way for a new cultural divide.”He says Brexit was just one factor prompting working-class voters to trade left for right, with other driving issues coming down to promises of immigration reform and prioritizing national independence. Conservative nationalists have hit on a winning formula by leaning left on economics, with promises of increased government spending, and right on culture when it comes to identity politics and pledges to get tough on crime.Goodwin believes it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on questions of national identity which are worrying socially conservative working-class voters.  
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Climate activist Greta Thunberg and Germany’s national railway company created a tweetstorm Sunday after she posted a photo of herself sitting on the floor of a train surrounded by lots of bags.The image has drawn plenty of comment online about the performance of German railways.Thunberg posted the tweet late Saturday with the comment “traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home!”Traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home! pic.twitter.com/ssfLCPsR8o
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 14, 2019But German railway company Deutsche Bahn suggested that Thunberg may not have spent the whole time sitting on the floor. And the 16-year-old Swedish activist later sought to draw a line under the matter by tweeting that she eventually got a seat and that overcrowded trains are a good thing.Some Twitter users expressed pity for Thunberg for not being able to get a proper seat on the train for the long ride home from Madrid, where she was attending the U.N. climate change conference. Others wished her a safe trip home after months of traveling by trains and boats to different climate events in Europe and the United States.Thunberg doesn’t fly on planes because it’s considered harmful to the climate. Last week, she was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for her efforts to prod government and others to take faster actions in fighting climate change.Deutsche Bahn, which used to be famous for its punctuality, has come under fire in recent years for delays, last-minute train cancellations and expensive ticket fares.In Deutsche Bahn’s first reply to the teenager’s initial tweet, the company wished her a good trip back home and adding that “we continue working hard on getting more trains, connections and seats.”Later, however, the railway company wrote in a statement to the media that Thunberg had a seat in first class between Kassel and Hamburg and that other members of her team were already sitting in first class from Frankfurt onwards.In the photo on Twitter, Thunberg is sitting on the floor at the end of a rail car with her back leaning against a suitcase, staring out of a window. There’s an empty food box next to her and more suitcases and backpacks piled up by her side.Later on Sunday, Deutsche Bahn tweeted twice more in regard to Thunberg’s train travels through Germany.
In the first tweet, the company thanks the teenager for supporting Deutsche Bahn’s battle against climate change and pointed out that the train she used had been running 100% on eco-friendly electricity.In the second tweet, however, Deutsche Bahn seemed to suggest that Thunberg hadn’t spent the entire train ride sitting on the floor.The company pointed out to the teenager that “it would have been even nicer if you had also reported how friendly and competently our team served you at your seat in first class.”Thunberg later tweeted that the fact she didn’t first sit in a seat wasn’t meant as a knock against Deutsche Bahn.She wrote that “this is no problem of course and I never said it was. Overcrowded trains is a great sign because it means the demand for train travel is high!” 
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Britain’s main opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn apologized Sunday for waging a disastrous campaign that handed Prime Minister Boris Johnson a mandate to take the UK out of the EU next month.But the veteran socialist defended his far-left platform and blamed the media for helping relegate his century-old party to its worst performance since before World War II.”I will make no bones about it. The election result on Thursday was a body blow for everyone who so desperately needs real change in our country,” Corbyn wrote in the Sunday Mirror newspaper.”I wanted to unite the country that I love but I’m sorry that we came up short and I take my responsibility for it.”Thursday’s snap general election turned into a re-run of the 2016 EU membership referendum in which Johnson championed the Brexit cause.Johnson now commands an 80-vote majority in the 650-seat House of Commons  — a margin last enjoyed by the late Tory icon Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.A sombre but combative Corbyn said Friday that he will step aside once Labour completes a period of “reflection” about its mistakes.The party is expected to have a new leader in place before England votes yet again in local polls in May.Yet the 70-year-old has no clear successor after a year of infighting between a protectionist old guard backed by the unions and more metropolitan members with pro-European views.Corbyn tried to find a balance between the two camps by taking a neutral position on Brexit — a decision that Labour finance spokesman John McDonnell proved to be fatal.”What we tried to do is bring both sides together and we failed,” McDonnell told the BBC.Labour’s campaign was also dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism that forced a handful of senior lawmakers to resign.Corbyn tried to shift the campaign’s focus on bread-and-butter social issues important to Labour voters.”But despite our best efforts, this election was ultimately about Brexit,” Corbyn admitted in his letter.”The Tory campaign, amplified by most of the media, managed to persuade many that only Boris Johnson could ‘get Brexit done’,” he said in reference to Johnson’s campaign slogan.”We will learn the lessons of this defeat.”Soul-searchingThe soul-searching and recriminations have been accompanied by questions in other Western countries about how far left traditionally liberal voters are prepared to go.”Look what happens when the Labour party moves so, so far to the left,” U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden warned Friday.Yet Corbyn signaled Sunday that he wanted to leave behind a radical legacy that keeps Labour’s focus on vast social spending and redistribution of wealth.He came under intense criticism from more moderate supporters Sunday for claiming that his platform ultimately proved right.”I am proud that on austerity, on corporate power, on inequality and on the climate emergency we have won the arguments and rewritten the terms of political debate,” he wrote in a separate column in The Observer newspaper.Several prominent Labour members who are viewed as potential leaders sharply disagreed.”It’s time to try something different, rather than re-enacting old battles,” lawmaker Jess Phillips wrote in The Observer.”Everywhere I campaign, I heard the same thing. It was less about Brexit and more about belief. In these places of generations of Labour voting, they did not believe a Labour government would or could deliver for them.”Labour parliamentarian Lisa Nandy agreed that the party had “lost touch with the day-to-day… experience of many of the people we want to represent”.”If we are going to represent the country, we need to understand it, to see it as it really is, not how we might imagine it to be,” she wrote in The Observer.    
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Little piggies go to market, but in Germany they also go to court.In a legal first, animal rights activists have asked Germany’s top court to ban the practice of castrating young male pigs without anesthetic – with the piglets themselves listed as the plaintiffs.The painful procedure has become increasingly controversial in Europe and has been banned in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.Farmers argue that the castration of piglets a few days after birth is necessary to prevent “boar taint”, the occasional occurrence of a foul smell when cooking pork from male pigs past puberty.The German parliament outlawed castration without pain relief in 2013 but it offered farmers a five-year transition period to help them adapt to the change – a timeline that was extended last year until 2021.Outraged by the inaction, the PETA campaign group filed a lawsuit with Germany’s Constitutional Court in November on behalf of the baby pigs.The group wants judges to recognize that pigs have rights similar to human rights and that these are being violated by the “cruel act” of castration without pain relief.”Non-human entities like companies and associations have legal personhood. So why not animals too?” said lawyer Cornelia Ziehm, who is supporting PETA in representing the piglets in court.’Little chance of succeeding’PETA argues that under German law, animals cannot be harmed without reasonable explanation.”The castration of piglets – with or without anesthesia – is in clear violation of this, giving Germany’s male piglets only one option: to sue for the enforcement of their rights in court,” the group said in a statement.The crux of the case is their argument that in Germany “everyone” (jedermann) can file a constitutional complaint if they believe their basic rights have been violated – even a pig.But Jens Buelte, a law professor at Mannheim university, doubted whether the judges in Karlsruhe would see it the same way.”Animals do not have their own rights under German law,” he said, giving PETA’s lawsuit “little chance of succeeding”.Monkey selfieIt is not the first time campaign groups have filed a case on behalf of animals.PETA made global headlines in 2015 when it asked an American court to grant a macaque the copyright to a selfie it snapped on a wildlife photographer’s camera.The picture of the broadly grinning monkey went viral but the court eventually ruled that animals cannot bring copyright infringement suits.PETA condemned the verdict, saying the monkey was “discriminated against simply because he’s a nonhuman animal”.However, in Argentina in 2016 a judge ordered Cecilia the chimpanzee to be released from Mendoza Zoo after agreeing with activists that she was entitled to basic rights and her solitary confinement was unlawful.AlternativesGerman farmers, who remove testicles from roughly 20 million piglets each year, have long resisted the push to end castration without anesthesia.They say there is a lack of workable alternatives to tackle boar taint, in an industry already struggling with fierce foreign competition.Local anesthesia and gene editing are not yet viable or too expensive, they say, and would raise the cost of pork in a country famous for its love of schnitzel and sausage.The government agreed in late 2018 to give the farmers a final two-year extension before the ban takes effect – a decision decried by the opposition Greens and far-left Die Linke, who argued it put the interests of the meat industry above animal protection.Some German pork producers are pinning their hopes on a vaccine that requires just two injections to prevent boar taint – already a popular alternative abroad.A pilot project involving 100,000 German piglets is currently ongoing, though critics say the vaccines are costly too.A similar debate is raging in France, where agriculture minister Didier Guillaume recently said castration of piglets without pain relief should be banned by the end of 2021.
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Albanian prosecutors have issued a series of arrest warrants on charges including murder and abuse of office over the deaths of 51 people killed when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake toppled dozens of buildings last month, police said on Saturday.Police and prosecutors said initial investigations showed “the loss of life in the collapsed buildings came also because their builders, engineers and owners had failed to observe the rules, norms and standards of safe constructions.”Prosecutors issued 17 warrants in total, police said. Two of the nine people detained on Saturday on murder charges were the owners of two hotels that collapsed, killing four people in Durres, Albania’s second-biggest city and main port.A third was the manager of a police vacation hotel where a high-ranking police officer was killed under the rubble.During the three decades since toppling communism in 1990, many Albanians have moved nearer cities, squatting on land and building with little supervision by authorities.Many of the buildings have been legalized since then by governments eager to get votes but also seeking to urbanize such areas by putting in sewage systems and roads.Both hotels on the 10-mile long beach on the Adriatic Sea south of Durres port were built illegally, police said, and the second had also been legalized illegally.Police said that some of the 17 people being sought by prosecutors had fled after the Nov. 26 quake.The high-rises built during the post-Communist boom along the beach are mostly apartments and hotels catering to both Albanians and foreigners, including ethnic Albanians from the Balkans and the Diaspora. Most suffered no damage.Albania has yet to calculate the cost of rebuilding housing for the 14,000 people left homeless by the quake.
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Green activists dumped horse manure and staged a mock hanging outside the venue of a U.N. climate summit in Madrid on Saturday, airing their frustration at the failure of world leaders to take meaningful action against global warming.Led by grass-roots group Extinction Rebellion, the actions were timed to coincide with the closing of the COP25 summit, where negotiators have been unable to agree on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate agreement.”Just like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, this COP’s fiddling of carbon accounting and negotiating of Article 6 is not commensurate to the planetary emergency we face,” Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.Twelve members of the group stood on melting blocks of ice, nooses drawn tight around their necks to symbolize the 12 months remaining until the next summit, when the Paris deal enters a make-or-break implementation phase.Attached to the pile of manure was a short message to leaders saying, “The horses— stops here.”In contrast to a protest held last weekend, in which hundreds of demonstrators blocked one of Madrid’s central shopping streets for a mass disco dance, the mood at the gathering was subdued.’Nothing has really changed'”Even if they reach an agreement, it’s still not enough. This is the 25th COP they’ve had and nothing has really changed,” protester Emma Deane told Reuters from her perch atop an ice block, holding her young daughter in her arms. “She’s going to grow up in a world where there’s no food on the shelves, and that breaks my heart.”Still, Extinction Rebellion spokesman Ronan McNern stressed the importance of humor in the face of the climate crisis.”Out of s— comes the best roses. We hope that the international community comes together to create a beautiful future,” McNern said.
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Just days after agreement on a pact to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico objected Saturday to legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress as part of an eventual ratification of the deal. Jesus Seade, the Mexican Foreign Relations Department’s undersecretary and chief trade negotiator for North America, said most of the bill is in line with the typical process of ratification, but it also adds the designation of up to five U.S. labor attaches in Mexico tasked with monitoring the implementation of the labor reform that is under way in our country.'' Seade said that was not part of the agreement signed December 10 in Mexico City by Mexico, the United States and Canada to replace NAFTA, but was rather the product ofpolitical decisions by the Congress and administration of the United States.” Mexico should have been consulted but was not, Seade said, and, of course, we are not in agreement.'' Mexico said that it resisted having foreign inspectors on its soil out of sovereignty principles, and that the agreement provided for panels to resolve disputes pertaining to labor and other areas. The three-person panels would comprise a person chosen by the United States, one by Mexico and a third-country person agreed upon by both countries. Seade called the designation of labor attachesunnecessary and redundant” and said the presence of foreign officials must be authorized by the host country. “U.S. officials accredited at their embassy and consulates in Mexico, as a labor attache could be, may not in any case have inspection powers under Mexican law,” he added. Sunday trip to WashingtonSeade said that he sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressing Mexico’s surprise and concern'' over the matter and that he would travel to Washington on Sunday to convey the message personally to Lighthizer and U.S. lawmakers. The elements of House Resolution 5430 in questiondisplay a regrettable mistrust” in the treaty, which was negotiated in the spirit of good faith,'' the letter read. We reserve the right to review the scope and effects of these provisions, which our government and people will no doubt clearly see as unnecessary,” it continued. “Additionally, I advise you that Mexico will evaluate not only the measures proposed in the [bill] … but the establishment of reciprocal mechanisms in defense of our country’s interests.” Mexico’s Senate approved the modifications to the agreement Thursday evening 107-1. 
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Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about.Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London.In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K.In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K.SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party’s “emphatic” victory showed that “the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is different to that chosen by the rest of the U.K.”The SNP has campaigned for decades to make Scotland independent and almost succeeded in 2014, when Scotland held a referendum on seceding from the U.K. The “remain” side won 55% to 45%.At the time, the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. But the SNP argues that Brexit has changed everything because Scotland now faces being dragged out of the EU against its will.Sturgeon said Friday that Johnson “has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the EU” and Scotland must be able to decide its future in a new independence referendum.Johnson insists he will not approve a referendum during the current term of Parliament, which is due to last until 2024. Johnson’s office said the prime minister told the Scottish leader on Friday that “the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected.”The Scotsman newspaper summed up the showdown Saturday with front page face-to-face images of Sturgeon and Johnson: “Two landslides. One collision course.””What we’ve got now is pretty close to a perfect storm,” said historian Tom Devine, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He said the U.K. is facing an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” as Johnson’s refusal to approve a referendum fuels growing momentum for Scottish independence.Politically and legally, it’s a stalemate. Without the approval of the U.K. government, a referendum would not be legally binding. London could simply ignore the result, as the Spanish government did when Catalonia held an unauthorized independence vote in 2017.Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based political analyst, said Sturgeon “has said that she doesn’t want a Catalonia-style referendum. She wants to do this properly.”There’s no clear legal route to a second referendum if Johnson refuses, though Sturgeon can apply political and moral pressure. Diffley said the size of the SNP’s win allows Sturgeon to argue that a new referendum is “the will of the people.”Sturgeon said that next week she will lay out a “detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”Devine said the administrations in Edinburgh and London “are in a completely uncompromising condition” and that will only make the crisis worse.”The longer Johnson refuses to concede a referendum, the greater will the pro-independence momentum in Scotland accelerate,” he said. “By refusing to concede it, Johnson has ironically become a recruiting sergeant for increased militant nationalism.”Northern Ireland has its own set of political parties and structures largely split along British unionist/Irish nationalist lines. There, too, people feel cast adrift by Brexit, and the political plates are shifting.For the first time this week, Northern Ireland elected more lawmakers who favor union with Ireland than want to remain part of the U.K.The island of Ireland, which holds the U.K.’s only land border with the EU, has proved the most difficult issue in Brexit negotiations. Any customs checks or other obstacles along the currently invisible frontier between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland would undermine both the local economy and Northern Ireland’s peace process.The divorce deal struck between Johnson and the EU seeks to avoid a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules, which means new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.”Once you put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s going to be part of a united Ireland for economic purposes,” Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, told the BBC. “That will increase the tendency toward a united Ireland for political reasons, too.”I think there is a good chance there will be a united Ireland within 10 years.”In Scotland, Devine also thinks the days of the Union may be numbered.”Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think it’s more likely than not that the U.K. will come to an end over the next 20 to 30 years.
 
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UN investigators accused Chile’s police and army of indiscriminate violence and gross violations, including torture and rape, in crushing recent mass protests over social and economic grievances.An investigative team from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a 30-page report expressing alarm at the excessive use of force by security agents.     It said Chile’s violent crackdown on protesters resulted in the reported deaths of dozens of people, a high number of injuries, and the arbitrary detentions of thousands of demonstrators.Chile’s Office of the Public Prosecutor says it is investigating 26 deaths.   The report holds state agents responsible for many of these deaths, noting that live ammunition was used in some cases.  The Chilean Ministry of Justice reports that nearly 5,000 people, more than half of whom were police officers, have been injured during the protests.  UN sources say the number of injured is higher than that cited by government officials.  They accuse state agents of unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons, such as anti-riot shotguns, during peaceful demonstrations.Imma Guerras-Delgado headed the mission to Chile, which took place in the first three weeks of November.  She said the demonstrations that have been occurring since mid-October were triggered by multiple causes, including social and economic inequality.”The majority of those who have exercised the right to assembly during this period have done so in a peaceful manner,” Guerras-Delgado said. “We have found that the overall management of assemblies by the police was carried out in a fundamentally repressive manner.”  Guerras-Delgado said the mission is particularly concerned by the use of pellets containing lead.  She said hundreds of people suffered eye injuries, causing blindness in a number of cases, and condemned the brutal suppression of peaceful nationwide protests by the police and army.”Human rights violations documented by OHCHR [Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] include the excessive or unnecessary use of force that led to unlawful killings and injuries, arbitrary detentions and torture and ill treatment,” she said.   Among its recommendations, the report urges Chile to immediately end the indiscriminate use of anti-riot shotguns to control demonstrations.  It also calls on the government to make sure security forces adopt measures to guarantee accountability for human rights violations and to prevent the recurrence of similar events.
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Britain “deserves a break from wrangling, a break from politics and a permanent break from talking about Brexit,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday, after his Conservative Party won what Johnson described as an “extraordinary” election.””Let the healing begin,” the prime minister said.Johnson focused his campaigning efforts on the slogan –  “Get Brexit Done.”  He said the parliamentary majority for his Conservative Party will allow him to push through a previously rejected divorce deal with the European Union and carry out Brexit by January 31, 2020.He thanked Labour Party supporters who voted for the Conservative Party for the first time and promised a “One Nation Conservative government.”  “I say thank you for the trust you have placed in us and in me and we will work round the clock to repay your trust and to deliver on your priorities with a Parliament that works for you,” Johnson said.The British leader, who accepted the Queen’s offer earlier Friday to form a government, said there is no one definition for one nation conservatism, “but broadly it refers to the idea the Conservative Party should act for everybody in the UK. That means policies that work for people from different economic backgrounds, from different regions and from the different nations of the UK.”The win gives the Conservatives their biggest margin in parliament since the 1980s.
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Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped to the highest level for the month of November since record-keeping began in 2015, according to preliminary government data published Friday.Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest totaled 563 square km (217.38 square miles) in November, 103% more than in the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency INPE.That would bring total deforestation for the period from January to November to 8,934 square km, 83% more than in the same period in 2018 and an area almost the size of Puerto Rico.The data released by INPE was collected through the DETER database, a system that publishes alerts on fires and other types of developments affecting the rainforest. The DETER numbers are not considered official deforestation data. That comes from a different system called PRODES, also managed by INPE.PRODES numbers released last month showed deforestation rose to its highest in more than a decade this year, jumping 30% from 2018 to 9,762 square km. Deforestation usually slows around November and December during the Amazon region’s rainy season. The number for last month was unusually high.Researchers and environmentalists blame right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for emboldening ranchers and loggers by calling for the Amazon to be developed and for weakening the environmental agency Ibama.Bolsonaro and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles have said previous governments played a role in deforestation’s increase, saying policies including budget cuts at agencies like Ibama were in place well before the new government took office on Jan. 1.Brazil’s Environment Ministry had no immediate comment Friday on the DETER data for November.
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Growing up along the U.S.-Mexico border, hotel clerk Joe Luis Rubio never thought he’d be trying to communicate in Portuguese on a daily basis.But with hundreds of Brazilians crossing from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, each week, the Motel 6 by the airport has become a stepping stone for thousands of the Portuguese speakers on a 6,000-mile (9,500 km) journey from Brazil to El Paso to America’s East Coast.“Thank God for Google Translate or we’d be lost,” says Rubio.The quiet migration of around 17,000 Brazilians through a single U.S. city in the past year reveals a new frontier in the Trump administration’s effort to shut down the legal immigration pathway for people claiming fear of persecution.Like hundreds of thousands of families from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, Brazilians have been crossing the border here and applying for asylum. They now make up a quarter of immigrants apprehended in El Paso, the most commonly apprehended migrants after Mexicans.Nationwide, some 18,000 Brazilians were apprehended in the fiscal year ending in October, a 600% increase from the previous high in 2016. Brazilians crossing in the El Paso Sector, which covers southern New Mexico and west Texas, accounted for 95% of the apprehensions nationwide, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.On Monday, acting CBP chief Mark Morgan vowed to try to shut down asylum for migrants from outside Spanish-speaking Central America and South America.“We’re seeing, again, individuals from extraterritorial countries, extra-continental, come in from Brazil, Haiti, Africans,” said Morgan.He pledged to implement rules to bar migrants from those countries “with the same level of commitment that we came up with initiatives to address the issue with the Northern Triangle families.”Those initiatives included making families wait in often dangerous Mexican border towns for months to apply for asylum, returning them to Mexico to await court hearings and a recent rule that effectively rejects nearly all asylum claims regardless of merit . The result has been a mishmash of pseudo deportations to countries where migrants have never lived and where they face barriers to work or access to basic social services.Brazilian families are not held indefinitely in detention but instead released to Annunciation House, a network of shelters, where they can stay for a few days while they arrange flights to other cities in the U.S.They’re often taken to the airport in a minivan driven by Phil Porter.“It takes a lot for somebody to pack up and leave their country, especially when they’re family oriented,” says Porter, 72, who estimates he’s ferried around 200 Brazilians. “These are economic refugees.”Brazil plunged into its worst-ever recession in 2015 and 2016 and is headed toward its third consecutive year of roughly 1% growth. The economy’s persistent failure to gain steam means joblessness has remained stubbornly in the double-digits, with the most recent reading at 11.6%. Adding underemployment, the figure more than doubles to almost one quarter of the work force, or 27 million people.Massachusetts officials and community leaders say they’ve felt the surge in Brazilian migrants this past year, with more families seeking immigration services and enrolling their children in public school. The state has the second largest population of Brazilians in the U.S. after Florida, according to 2015 U.S. Census data.Recent immigrant Helison Alvarenga says he started working the day after arriving in Massachusetts. The 26-year-old from the state of Minas Gerais arrived in August with his wife and young son after crossing into El Paso. They now live in Brockton, an old factory city 20 miles south of Boston. Already, he says, he’s earning three times more than what he earned as a mechanic in Brazil.“Things are in pretty bad shape in Brazil right now. The only way to have a better life in Brazil is to go to college, but college is very expensive,” said Alvarenga, speaking in Portuguese through a translator.The New England winter has also been tougher than he expected, he admits.“It makes me homesick. I miss the warmth and the sun,” he said. “If I won enough on a scratch ticket, I’d go back tomorrow.”Many coming from Brazil are petitioning for asylum, citing the country’s high unemployment and persistent corruption and violence, says Luciano Park, an immigration lawyer in Waltham who came from Brazil to attend law school in Boston.But Brazilian asylum seekers face an uphill climb. Simply seeking to escape Brazil’s chronic, gang-related violence often isn’t enough to claim asylum, Park said.Women citing domestic violence reasons are also less likely to win their cases under tougher asylum rules imposed by the Trump administration.“Before these were good cases,” Park said. “But it’s just become tougher to argue.”Tourist and student visas have been more difficult for Brazilians to get as more clamored for them in the recent economic downturn, says Francis Brink, an immigration lawyer in Orlando, Florida.He has taken a few clients who were persecuted by the government because they were police officers or military officials resisting corruption. But he turns most asylum seekers away, not wanting to give them false hope.Many single adult Brazilian migrants are being held in immigration detention while their asylum claims are processed. Others have tried to dodge detention by pretending to be a parent or a minor, often using IDs fraudulently obtained in Brazil. Homeland Security Investigations agents have been filing allegations of so-called “family fraud” by Brazilians at least a few times per month.On a recent Tuesday, the Motel 6 is half empty, with only two Brazilian families staying there.In room 127, a 42-year-old mother from the northeastern state of Maranhão is in bed watching TV. She’s waiting with her 16-year old son for a flight to Philadelphia, where they have family.She said they spent four days in a Border Patrol tent detention camp before being released.“It was miserable,” she said.While stays at the Motel 6 are down, more migrants are staying for longer at Annunciation House, according to the shelter’s director, Ruben Garcia.“One of the things that may have changed is we have Brazilians that don’t have some of the financial resources that some of the Brazilians did a while back,” Garcia said.
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Central American countries are teaming up to conserve the region’s five great forests as part of a regional climate action plan released at U.N. climate talks in Madrid this week, the alliance behind the effort said.The coalition of governments, indigenous people, green groups and others announced a plan to protect 10 million hectares of forests and degraded land inside those forests — an area roughly the size of Guatemala — by 2030.In the last 15 years, three of the forests have been reduced by almost one-quarter in size, with illegal cattle ranching responsible for more than 90% of recent deforestation, it said.Measures planned to safeguard the forests include bolstering agencies that look after protected areas, tracing beef to verify it has been legally produced, cracking down on cross-border cattle trafficking, helping ranchers find other ways to earn a living, and reforesting land where trees have been cut down.Jeremy Radachowsky, regional director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a partner in the project, said financing would come from multiple sources, including Central American countries, donor governments and a dedicated fund that will be created for indigenous and community forests.The five forests, spanning from Mexico to Colombia, are key to curbing climate change as they sequester carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels that would otherwise heat up the planet.”Nearly 50% of the carbon in Mesoamerica is stored in the five great forests,” said Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Costa Rica’s environment minister, adding he hoped they would not be fragmented by deforestation.The forests also provide habitat for wildlife such as the jaguar and scarlet macaw, the alliance said. The initiative aims to ensure no species go extinct.The forests include the Maya Forest in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize; the Moskitia in Nicaragua and Honduras; the Indio Maiz-Tortuguero in Nicaragua and Costa Rica; the Talamanca region in Costa Rica and Panama; and the Darien in Panama and Colombia.They provide water, clean air, food security and other natural resources to 5 million people, the alliance said, noting that indigenous and local communities manage nearly half of the forest area.Candido Mezua  of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, said it was sad to see the forests of the Amazon burning — and the impact that was having on indigenous people.“In Mesoamerica, we have our five forests. They still exist. We can still protect them, and even expand them,” he said in a statement.Amazon summit Amazon indigenous leaders, meanwhile, said this week they would host a world summit in Ecuador next August aimed at protecting the Amazon rainforest and other ecosystems in “response to the environmental crisis in the basin and abroad”.Leaders representing 20 indigenous groups from Ecuador and Peru also called for global support to stop oil drilling and mining in the Amazon “Sacred Headwaters” region, an ecosystem rich in biodiversity that spans 30 million hectares in the two countries.Deforestation in Brazil’s huge tract of Amazon rainforest rose to its highest level in over a decade this year, government data showed in November.The data confirmed a sharp increase in deforestation under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which is considering permitting commercial agriculture and mining on native reserves.Risks to Brazil’s forests drew global concern in August when fires raged through the Amazon.Scientists link the fires to deforestation, with people and companies cutting down the forest for timber and then setting fire to the remains to clear the land for ranching or farming.Gregorio Mirabal, general coordinator of COICA, the biggest indigenous federation in the Amazon, said new ways were needed of dealing with threats to the Amazon, including the “devastating effects” of climate change.At the U.N. climate conference, states “are making decisions for companies and not for the people”, he said.”The inability of our governments to solve this (climate) crisis is calling us to do this ourselves, hand in hand with the youth and any others in goodwill who want to join,” he added.Many indigenous groups are opposed to credits for forest protection being included in carbon trading markets, arguing it would damage their sacred lands and livelihoods, as governments haggle over new rules for those markets at the Madrid talks.”We do not allow the commodification of nature or that it has a price. For us nature is of value as itself. It is our Mother Earth,” Mirabal said.According to the Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative, which works on forest issues, up to 65% of the world’s land is communally held by indigenous peoples and local communities and contains 80% of the world’s biodiversity.But only 10% of those groups’ land rights have been legally recognized, it said.“The local cultures and indigenous peoples are the ones that have best preserved nature, and we do not believe that solutions can exist without us,” said Mirabal.Indigenous groups — officially represented at the U.N. conference for the first time — have pushed for language on protecting their rights to be included in the text on carbon market rules that is under negotiation in Madrid.But it is not in the latest draft as the talks near an end.Indonesian indigenous activist Ghazali Ohorella said the rules should ensure safeguards for forest people’s land and rights, as well as a complaints mechanism and opportunities for them to participate in decisions on carbon offsetting schemes. “If not, it will create so much trouble further down the line,” he told journalists at the talks.
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Serbian opposition activists have blockaded the entrance of the building hosting the state Radio and Television service (RTS) in Belgrade to protest what they say are deteriorating media freedoms in the Balkan country under populist President Aleksandar Vucic.
Members of the Alliance of Serbia (SzS), an opposition umbrella group, began the eight-hour blockade at noon in the capital on December 13, holding a banner reading “EU, It’s Your Choice: Vucic Or Democracy” in both English and Serbian.WATCH: video report
Serbian independent media have repeatedly complained of being pressured by officials and have accused the government of fueling an atmosphere of intolerance toward journalists.
Vucic, who vowed to lead Serbia toward European Union membership, has been accused of curbing media freedoms and democracy, accusations he has denied.
The activists called on RTS to “perform its role and inform the public on all issues that matter.”
Vuk Jeremic, the leader of the People’s Party and the SzS chairman, said the protesters had no intention of entering the building and that they were not seeking personnel changes.
Jeremic told a news conference that “members of SzS organizations, activists, and citizens” blocked the entrance because the RTS, as he put it, “has been blocking the truth for the past eight years.”
Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party ascended to power in 2012. Vucic has been president since 2017 and his government has strengthened relations with traditional Slavic ally Russia.
Jeremic also said that the move was a “warning” to RTS journalists that they “should do their job professionally.”
He said that while the blockade was peaceful, participants were concerned about possible provocateurs “sent by Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party.”
Police refused to sanction the protest because the request was not filed at least five days in advance, Jeremic said.
The rally came a day after a few dozen Serbian journalists staged a protest in Belgrade against what they said were deteriorating media freedoms under Vucic.
Members of the Independent Journalists’ Association said there have been more than 100 cases of pressure and attacks on the media in the past year alone.
The protest also marked a year since the house of journalist Milan Jovanovic was torched outside Belgrade. Jovanovic was investigating alleged local government corruption. He escaped the fire, but his home burned to the ground.
The suspected arsonists are currently on trial. A senior official in Vucic’s ruling party has been accused of ordering the attack, which he has denied.With reporting by AP
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Canada’s opposition Conservative leader said Thursday he will resign as party leader after weeks of infighting and a disappointing performance in parliamentary elections.Andrew Scheer, 40, called resigning “one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made.” He will stay on until a new leader is elected.”Serving as the leader of the party that I love so much has been the opportunity and the challenge of a lifetime,” Scheer said on the floor of Parliament.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a second term in Canada’s October elections despite losing the majority in Parliament. It was an unexpectedly strong result for Trudeau following a series of scandals that had tarnished his image as a liberal icon.The vote led several Conservative officials to call for Scheer to step aside.Even members of his own party said Scheer is bland. They once touted it as a virtue, the antidote to Trudeau’s flash and star power. In the words of Canada’s former Conservative foreign minister, John Baird: “He’s not the sizzle, he’s the steak.”But Scheer was criticized during the campaign for embellishing his resume by saying he had worked as an insurance broker when, in fact, he was never licensed.He also took heat for holding dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship — something he and his party had blasted other Canadian political figures for and never mentioned until the Globe and Mail newspaper revealed it during the election campaign.He stumbled at several points in the campaign. He was widely panned after a debate when Trudeau grilled Scheer about his stance on abortion and the Conservative refused to answer.In 2005, he gave a speech in Parliament attacking same-sex marriage and his social conservative beliefs hurt him in Eastern Canada.Following the resignation, Trudeau said in Parliament, “I want to thank him deeply for his service to Canada on behalf of all Canadians.”Scheer plans to stay on as the member of Parliament for the Saskatchewan district he has represented since he was first elected in 2004 when he was 25. The Conservative caucus chair Tom Kmiec later announced Conservative Party Members of Parliament voted unanimously for Scheer to remain as leader until a new leader is elected.Political careerHe has spent most of his adult life in politics. At age 32, he became the youngest speaker of the House of Commons, a non-partisan role overseeing debate in Parliament.Scheer became Conservative leader in 2017 after other prominent Conservatives decided not to run because they thought Trudeau could not be beaten in the 2019 election.Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties are now expected to win at the first opportunity.”If they don’t, the knives are out,” Wiseman said. “Scheer could see the writing on the wall; he would have almost certainly failed to win a majority at his party convention’s scheduled review of his leadership in April.”Antonia Maioni, McGill University’s dean of arts, said Scheer’s party recognized that he and his social conservative beliefs were not a winning strategy for forming a government in Canada.Dustin van Vugt, the executive director of the Conservative Party, issued a statement that appeared to dismiss suggestions the resignation could be tied to reports that party funds were used to subsidize private school education for Scheer’s five children.”Shortly after Mr. Scheer was elected leader, we had a meeting where I made a standard offer to cover costs associated with moving his family from Regina to Ottawa. This includes a differential in schooling costs between Regina and Ottawa. All proper procedures were followed and signed off on by the appropriate people,” van Vugt said.
 
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Britons woke Friday to an utterly transformed political landscape following an electoral earthquake that has ripped up modern British politics, and whose tremors will be felt for years to come.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s emphatic win in the country’s third general election in four years — giving the Conservatives, also known as Tories, their biggest parliamentary majority in more than a quarter of a century — marks a decisive turn in the country’s fortunes following the instability triggered by the 2016 Brexit referendum, say analysts.Armed with an 80-seat majority, the biggest at a general election since Margaret Thatcher’s in 1987, Johnson’s government now will be able to end the deadlock in Britain’s Parliament and deliver on the Conservative promise to “get Brexit done” without further delay. Britain will almost certainly exit the European Union by the end of January, triggering a second and likely trickier stage of negotiations with Brussels over the country’s future political and trade relations with the European continent.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a statement at Downing Street after winning the general election, in London, Britain, Dec. 13, 2019.Speaking from the steps of No. 10 Downing Street, Johnson said Thursday’s election results show the “irrefutable” decision of the British people is to leave the EU and to end the “miserable threats” of a second Brexit referendum, a rerun plebiscite backed by Britain’s main opposition party, Labor, and the centrist Liberal Democrats.The huge victory, which saw the country’s main opposition Labor Party record its worst electoral performance since 1935, is a vindication of Johnson’s decision, say analysts, to focus the election campaigning on Brexit and not to be drawn in too much by Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn’s effort to make the poll about the crumbling state of Britain’s public services. Johnson’s strategy was posited on the idea that Britons, even those who would prefer to remain in the EU, have become sick and tired of the long-running Brexit mess and want the saga to end.’Red wall’Johnson also had his fair share of luck, “the biggest piece of which was Jeremy Corbyn,” according to Daniel Finkelstein, a onetime adviser to former Conservative leader David Cameron and now a columnist with The Times. “Corbyn kept more moderate Conservatives voting Tory even when they had doubts about Boris Johnson. He neither united the liberal left and center behind a policy of stopping Brexit nor the traditional Labor vote behind a populist manifesto,” he said.Britain’s opposition Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves Islington Town Hall through the backdoor after a meeting following the results of the general election in London, Britain, Dec. 13, 2019.In the final days of the campaign, Johnson focused on Labor’s so-called “red wall” of constituencies searching for cracks to widen in former mining towns and farming villages crucial to the Conservatives’ hopes of winning Thursday’s election, warning voters they face a “great Brexit betrayal,” if they voted for an increasingly metropolitan and far-left Labor Party.On Thursday, Johnson managed not just to breach what was once considered an impregnable wall, but he bulldozed through it by persuading traditional working-class voters who favor Brexit in the north of England to ditch their lifetime habit of voting Labor. Constituencies that have been synonymous with Labor for decades fell like dominoes — seats like Workington in the northwest English county of Cumbria, which has been held by Labor for 97 out of the last 100 years.
Johnson’s Landslide Victory Sets Britain On Course for January Brexit video player.
Liberal Democrats candidate Jo Swinson speaks after losing her seat in East Dunbartonshire constituency, at a counting center for Britain’s general election in Bishopbriggs, Britain, Dec. 13, 2019.Labor moderates want him to go immediately, and they fear he wants to oversee the choice of his successor, which his internal party opponents see as a sign that he and the left wing of the party will not easily relinquish control.  Left-wingers attribute the party’s failure to Brexit and say it has nothing to do with Corbyn or his ideology. Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, tweeted that this had been a “Brexit election.” “Johnson must continue to be fought with radical alternatives, not triangulation, that challenge the Tories head-on,” he added.But moderate Labor candidates say that on the doorsteps while campaigning, they found the main problem for the party wasn’t Brexit but deep distrust for the Labor leader. They note that while Labor did worse in seats that voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, they also fared badly in constituencies that voted to remain in the EU.One Labor candidate, Phil Wilson, who failed to keep what had been a safe Labor seat in the north, said it was “mendacious nonsense” for Corbyn loyalists to blame the result on Brexit. “Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was a bigger problem,” he said. “To say otherwise is delusional.”Scotland, Northern IrelandDespite their huge win, the victorious Conservatives will face challenges of their own, say analysts, both when it comes to Brexit and in terms of London’s relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland.Johnson’s victory may have seen a remaking of the Conservatives, a party now more working-class than it has ever been, but it may have come at the cost of unmaking Great Britain. North of the English border, in Scotland, the pro-EU Scottish Nationalists, or SNP, also pulled off a landslide win, heralding a coming battle over Scottish independence and setting London and Edinburgh on course for a possible constitutional showdown that risks being fraught as the current clash in Spain between Catalan separatists and Madrid.Scottish National Party (SNP) leader and Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks in Edinburgh, Dec. 13, 2019.The nationalists gained a dozen seats as the Tories, Labor and the Liberal Democrats were wiped out north of the border with the SNP winning 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats, up from the 35 it won in 2017. The SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, vowed Friday to formally request a second independence referendum before the end of the year, saying that the election results north and south of the border showed “the divergent paths” Scotland and the rest of the UK are on.”Boris Johnson has a mandate to take England out of the EU, but he must accept that I have a mandate to give Scotland a choice for an alternative future,” Sturgeon told the BBC. Johnson repeatedly has promised to reject any demand for another independence ballot, saying that if there is any formal demand, “we will mark that letter return to sender and be done with it.”Nationalists enjoyed success, too, in British-run Northern Ireland. For the first time, nationalists, who favor reunification with the Irish Republic, now hold a majority of seats in the province, which voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum.Brexit debateOn Brexit, Johnson likely will continue to face internal Conservative party disputes, say analysts, with half his Cabinet favoring a so-called soft Brexit, entailing a close trading and political relationship with the EU. Johnson is aiming to conclude a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020, but EU leaders have warned the timetable is unrealistic and the complicated negotiations will be daunting and take years.  European Council President Charles Michel speaks during a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 13, 2019.The new president of the European Council, Charles Michel, warned that Brussels won’t agree to a free trade deal that does excludes Britain agreeing to abide by EU regulatory rules and product standards. “The EU is ready for the next phase,” he said. “We will negotiate a future trade deal, which ensures a true level playing field,” he added.EU officials formally welcomed Johnson’s victory but added they hope the prime minister will negotiate a “close as possible future relationship.” Some European officials say the Conservatives’ big parliamentary majority should give Johnson political space to maneuver and override the objections of those Tories who want a “clean break” with the EU.Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, which failed to win any parliamentary seats Thursday, says he fears Johnson will pivot now that he has a large majority and will eventually conclude a closer relationship with the EU than hard-line Brexiters would like.
 
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Britain looks certain to leave the European Union by the end of January after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson secured a big majority of 78 seats in Thursday’s general election. His Conservative Party seized control of dozens of constituencies that had voted to leave in the 2016 referendum, vindicating Johnson’s decision to call an election. However,  as Henry Ridgwell reports, the country remains deeply divided – and the prime minister will face big challenges early on in his new term.
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Russia said on Friday it was alarmed after the United States tested a ground-launched ballistic missile that would have been prohibited under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the RIA news agency reported.The United States carried out the test on Thursday. Washington formally withdrew from the 1987 INF pact with Russia in August after determining that Moscow was violating the treaty, an accusation the Kremlin has denied.”It alarms us. Of course we will take this into account,” said Vladimir Ermakov, head of the foreign ministry’s arms control and non-proliferation department.It was the second test by the United States that would have been prohibited under the INF treaty and too place as the future of another major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States is under question.New START, the last remaining major nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries, is due to expire in February 2021 and Moscow has warned there is already not enough time left to negotiate a full-fledged replacement.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a solid majority of seats in Britain’s Parliament — a decisive outcome to a Brexit-dominated election that should allow Johnson to fulfill his plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union next month.With just over 600 of the 650 seats declared, the Conservatives reached the 326 mark, guaranteeing their majority.Johnson said it looked like the Conservatives had “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done.”The victory will likely make Johnson the most electorally successful Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher, another politician who was loved and loathed in almost equal measure. It was a disaster for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation even as the results rolled in. The party looked set to gain around 200 seats.Corbyn called the result “very disappointing” for his party and said he would not lead Labour into another election, though he resisted calls to quit immediately,Results poured in early Friday showing a substantial shift in support to the Conservatives from Labour. In the last election in 2017, the Conservatives won 318 seats and Labour 262.The result this time looked set to be the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher’s 1980s’ heyday, and Labour’s lowest number of seats since 1935.The Scottish National Party appeared set to take about 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats — a big increase — with a lackluster dozen or so for the centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson lost her own Scottish seat.The Conservatives took a swathe of seats in post-industrial northern England towns that were long Labour strongholds. Labour’s vote held up better in London, where the party managed to grab the Putney seat from the Conservatives.The decisive Conservative showing vindicates Johnson’s decision to press for Thursday’s early election, which was held nearly two years ahead of schedule. He said that if the Conservatives won a majority, he would get Parliament to ratify his Brexit divorce deal and take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.Speaking at the election count in his Uxbridge constituency in suburban London, Johnson said the “historic” election “gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people to change this country for the better and to unleash the potential of the entire people of this country.”That message appears to have had strong appeal for Brexit-supporting voters, who turned away from Labour in the party’s traditional heartlands and embraced Johnson’s promise that the Conservatives would “get Brexit done.”“I think Brexit has dominated, it has dominated everything by the looks of it,” said Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell. “We thought other issues could cut through and there would be a wider debate, from this evidence there clearly wasn’t.”The prospect of Brexit finally happening more than three years after Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU marks a momentous shift for both the U.K. and the bloc. No country has ever left the union, which was created in the decades after World War II to bring unity to a shattered continent.But a decisive Conservative victory would also provide some relief to the EU, which has grown tired of Britain’s Brexit indecision.Britain’s departure will start a new phase of negotiations on future relations between Britain and the 27 remaining EU members.EU Council President Charles Michel promised that EU leaders meeting Friday would send a “strong message” to the next British government and parliament about next steps.“We are ready to negotiate,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.The pound surged when an exit poll forecast the Tory win, jumping over two cents against the dollar, to $1.3445, the highest in more than a year and a half. Many Investors hope a Conservative win would speed up the Brexit process and ease, at least in the short term, some of the uncertainty that has corroded business confidence since the 2016 vote.Many voters casting ballots on Thursday hoped the election might finally find a way out of the Brexit stalemate in this deeply divided nation. Three and a half years after the U.K. voted by 52%-48% to leave the EU, Britons remain split over whether to leave the 28-nation bloc, and lawmakers have proved incapable of agreeing on departure terms.On a dank, gray day with outbreaks of blustery rain, voters went to polling stations in schools, community centers, pubs and town halls after a bad-tempered five-week campaign rife with mudslinging and misinformation.Opinion polls had given the Conservatives a steady lead, but the result was considered hard to predict, because the issue of Brexit cuts across traditional party loyalties.Johnson campaigned relentlessly on a promise to “Get Brexit done” by getting Parliament to ratify his “oven-ready” divorce deal with the EU and take Britain out of the bloc as scheduled on Jan. 31.The Conservatives focused much of their energy on trying to win in a “red wall” of working-class towns in central and northern England that have elected Labour lawmakers for decades but also voted strongly in 2016 to leave the EU. That effort got a boost when the Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage decided at the last minute not to contest 317 Conservative-held seats to avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote.Labour, which is largely but ambiguously pro-EU, faced competition for anti-Brexit voters from the centrist Liberal Democrats, Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties, and the Greens.But on the whole Labour tried to focus the campaign away from Brexit and onto its radical domestic agenda, vowing to tax the rich, nationalize industries such as railroads and water companies and give everyone in the country free internet access. It campaigned heavily on the future of the National Health Service, a deeply respected institution that has struggled to meet rising demand after nine years of austerity under Conservative-led governments.It appears that wasn’t enough to boost Labour’s fortunes. Defeat will likely spell the end for Corbyn, a veteran socialist who moved his party sharply to the left after taking the helm in 2015, but who now looks to have led his left-of-center party to two electoral defeats since 2017. The 70-year-old left-winger was also accused of allowing anti-Semitism to spread within the party.“It’s Corbyn,” said former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Johnson, when asked about the poor result. “We knew he was incapable of leading, we knew he was worse than useless at all the qualities you need to lead a political party.”For many voters, the election offered an unpalatable choice. Both Johnson and Corbyn have personal approval ratings in negative territory, and both have been dogged by questions about their character.Johnson has been confronted with past broken promises, untruths and offensive statements, from calling the children of single mothers “ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” to comparing Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”Yet, his energy and determination proved persuasive to many voters.“It’s a big relief, looking at the exit polls as they are now, we’ve finally got that majority a working majority that we have not had for 3 1/2 years,” said Conservative-supporting writer Jack Rydeheard. “We’ve got the opportunity to get Brexit done and get everything else that we promised as well. That’s investment in the NHS, schools, hospitals you name it — it’s finally a chance to break that deadlock in Parliament.”
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Chilean authorities announced Thursday that rescue workers had found debris and human remains from the military transport plane that went missing on a regular flight to Antarctica.The head of the Chilean air force, General Arturo Merino, told reporters that based on the condition of the remains, it would be “practically impossible’ that any survivors would be found.”Remains of human beings that are most likely the passengers have been found among several pieces of the plane,” Merino said. “I feel immense pain for this loss of lives.”The C-130 Hercules was carrying 17 crew members and 21 passengers, including members of the Chilean air force, army and three civilians.  The wreckage was found 30 kilometers from the plane’s last-known position.
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