Greece is pushing back against Turkish demands that it demilitarize 16 Aegean islands. The Turkish government maintains it is defending Turkey’s rights and remains committed to negotiation, but analysts warn Turkey’s increasingly “robust diplomacy” threatens to isolate Ankara and escalate regional tensions.  “Greece does not provoke, does not violate the sovereign rights of others, but it doesn’t like to see its own rights violated,” said Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos Saturday.FILE – In this June 26, 2019 file photo, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, center left, arrives to NATO headquarters in Brussels.Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Wednesday accused Greece of keeping troops on the islands in violation of the 1936 Treaty of Lausanne, which governs the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.  The dispute dates to 1974 when Athens started to militarize the islands off the Turkish coast in response to Turkey’s invasion of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus after a pro-Greek coup.Akar’s focus on the dispute is widely seen as part of a broader policy. “Turkey is asking today for the islands’ demilitarization, when there [is] an incredible historical increase of Turkish jets violating Greek airspace,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar of the University of Athens.”It’s a message Turkey is an aggressive force in the eastern Mediterranean, and Turkey gives the impression it wants a hot conflict with its neighbor, Greece.”Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his ruling party’s legislators, in Ankara, Jan. 14, 2020.Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan further ratcheted up tensions, announcing that Turkish research ships will be deployed in contested Cypriot waters to search for hydrocarbons.  The discovery of large natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean by Israel and Cyprus has unleashed a scramble by regional countries for the fossil fuel.  Ankara accuses Greece and other regional countries of seeking to shut it out of the believed bounty of vast energy reserves.”We won’t let anyone violate our rights in any way. This is not a threat,” said Akar Wednesday, adding, “It’s not a weakness to say that we want good relations with our neighbor.””The strategy that Turkey is following is it should protect its legitimate rights in the Mediterranean,” said former Turkish Ambassador Mithat Rende. “The strategy is to have an equitable solution to the matter. And Turkey has made it clear it’s ready to talk.”The policy of diplomacy, backed by strength, however, appears to be backfiring. Athens is looking to its European Union partners to push back against Ankara.FILE – German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a weekly cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 18, 2019.On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks in Istanbul with Erdogan in a bid to shore up Turkey’s commitment to the migrant deal.Given the EU’s limited ability to rein in Turkey, which has the largest navy and air force in the region, analysts predict further muscle-flexing.”When you enter a policy of confrontation, you can’t step back; you are trapped; otherwise, you look weak,” said Aktar.But the Turkish government could well be calculating, that whatever the outcome of its policy, it will be a win.”I don’t think there will be a military clash,” said Sezer. “But, it’s a risk. It’s a dangerous situation, the longer it goes on. But this would be an opportunity for the government because it will prove to the people all those countries in the region are real threats to Turkey,” he added.
 
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Ale Roque wanders the untamed orchard in Rio de Janeiro, pushing aside leaves to point out what she helped plant last year. “This is cacao, developing well … Look at this lime tree, it’s full … Lots and lots of tomato … That one’s acai …,” she says. It seems there’s always more. “Ginger… Avocado… Pineapple… Sweet potato.”She crouches toward a plump yam, and stops to make a mental note to pick it with the children she’s teaching to garden here and in several other spots in the community. In addition to providing free produce to residents, there’s another benefit: it’s markedly cooler in this blessed shade — a rarity in this part of the city, far from the sea breeze of Copacabana and Ipanema.
The scarce scrap of vacant land is just outside downtown on the slope of Providencia, Rio’s first favela, where working-class homes cram up against one another at slipshod angles and bullet holes attest to the presence of drug traffickers.This Jan.6, 2020 photo, shows an area where trees and plants were gardened by Ale Roque in Rio’s first favela Morro da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.It’s one of dozens of places where people are starting projects to create a greener version of a tree-starved urban landscape that contrasts with the verdant rainforest looming over the city. The activist group Catalytic Communities has mapped sustainable projects across the city, and is trying to foster a support network.
“There seems to be now, all of a sudden, in the last six months even, a growth in interest,” said Theresa Williamson, the group’s executive director.
Roque argues that if kids spend their waking days exposed only to alleys, bullets, empty drug capsules and trash, they’ll struggle to contribute good to the world. They need places to play and pick flowers.
“How are you going teach kids about Mother Nature if they don’t have contact with it?” says Roque, 49. “This could be happening in places all over the world, in other favelas, other little areas.”
Rio is famed for magnificent views of its coastal rainforest’s wild topography. Look outside the postcard, though, and there’s a picture of urban dystopia after decades of slapdash sprawl and government neglect. It’s said even the Christ the Redeemer statue, perched atop a jungle peak near the coast, has his back turned to most of the metropolis.
Whole neighborhoods have severed connections with the forest and, during Rio’s summer, residents feel the lack of greenery in their flesh.
The sun beats with discrimination, sparing leafy neighborhoods that tend to be affluent while punishing expanses of aluminum and asbestos roofs. Rio’s dense neighborhoods have among the least vegetation in Brazil; 80 of them have less than 1% tree cover, most in the industrial North Zone. Without shade or evapotranspiration, so-called “heat islands” make summer even more brutal.
This month, the city’s top temperatures breached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), but people focus instead on “apparent temperature,” a measure that includes wind and humidity — “sensacao” — that spiked as high as 131 degrees (54.8 degrees C) on Jan. 11, just shy of the record.
In Rio’s North Zone, the Arara Park favela is so packed that a string of one-room shops were built over an open sewage canal. They’re brick kilns under the baking sun. Inside one, a beauty salon, Ingrid Rocha, 20, slouches beneath a whirring ceiling fan with another on the floor. Her air conditioning unit does nothing to cut the heat, so clients only show up after 4 p.m. That means Rocha, who’s pregnant, needs to work more than 12-hour days to hit her targets.
Deeper inside the favela, Luis Cassiano is sitting in a garden atop his home’s roof. As more and more houses cropped up over the last three decades, he felt the temperature rise to a point that became unbearable. The sun would set behind the far-off rainforest, but his home’s interior wouldn’t cool until after midnight.
Online research for a solution led him to install a green roof  — with bromeliads, succulents and a small, flowering quaresmeira tree — and he wants to do the same for neighbors. There’s an aesthetic bonus, too; the favela needs to mix some calming green into the scenery, he says, to offset the angry red of the homes’ bricks and the melancholic grey of their roofs.
So far he’s had few takers, but “if God wills, people will understand that it’s necessary and urgent and it will be a job that will be really useful,” he said, sitting in his rooftop garden just after midday. “I think people will, one day, really wind up joining. We’ll need it. Just look at the heat of all those roofs together!”
The nascent greening from such projects is a break with Rio’s recent past, according to Washington Fajardo, a visiting housing policy researcher at Harvard University. A Paris-inspired policy to plant shade trees fell by the wayside as modernism became Brazil’s reigning aesthetic. Lately, public works have resorted to palm trees that are resilient, but do little to reduce temperatures.
 
“To get a tree to grow in an urban environment requires irrigation, because pollution makes it much harder for a sapling to reach adulthood,”  Fajardo, the prior mayor’s special advisor on urban issues, said by phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We knew how to do that better at the start of the 20th century than we do today, strangely.”
Rio’s public policy for green spaces trails far behind other cities including Seoul, Lisbon, Durban and Medellin, and even Brazilian state capitals like Recife and Belo Horizonte, according to Cecilia Herzog, president of Inverde, an organization that researches green infrastructure and urban ecology. So people are taking matters into their own hands, she added.
The city has begun paying attention. Rio this month started planting native tree species to create 25 “fresh islands” in the city’s West Zone.
Meantime, it’s only getting hotter in Brazil, as in the rest of the world. Its southeast region — where Rio is located — has recorded three of its steamiest five years on record since 2014.
The heat can be felt at a plaza in the Providencia favela, where, though it’s still morning and there’s hilltop wind, Ale Roque uses a towel to dab sweat from her forehead, upper lip and chin. The passion fruit and acelora trees she planted are starting to gain stature. Those and other saplings now receive water from a rudimentary irrigation system.
Later that day, it’ll grow even hotter as she teaches preteens to compost, which will entail lugging more than 10 loads of old soil up two flights of stairs to a home’s back patio.
Why does Roque endure the labor and the heat?
“I want to make the world green!” she says and laughs, then collects herself. “It’s because someone has to do it, truthfully that’s it. Someone has to do it.”    
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ELAZIG, TURKEY — Turkey called off rescue operations on Monday in eastern areas hit by Friday’s earthquake after emergency workers recovered the body of a final person they were searching for in a collapsed building, bringing the death toll to 41, authorities said.The magnitude 6.8 quake caused 37 deaths in Elazig province, about 550 km (340 miles) east of Ankara, and four in neighboring Malatya. More than 1,600 others were hurt, including 86 still being treated in hospitals, though none were in serious condition, the government said.Forty-five people had been rescued from under ruined buildings, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Authority (AFAD) said.Authorities have warned residents not to enter damaged buildings because of the danger of collapse and further aftershocks, leaving many without a home in a region where temperatures fell to -6C (21F) on Monday morning.Addressing reporters in Elazig, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the government would provide financial support to those whose homes were damaged. Some 1,000 temporary homes would be built, and some schools and mosques were now being used as shelters, he added.Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said authorities had started demolishing 22 damaged buildings in Elazig. Construction of some 2,000 new houses in the province was expected to be completed by year end, he added.Turkey has a history of powerful earthquakes. More than 17,000 people were killed in August 1999 when a 7.6 magnitude quake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul. In 2011, a quake in the eastern city of Van killed more than 500. 
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France hopes “good sense” will prevail and the United States will not slash support for French military operations in West Africa, where groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State are expanding their foothold.Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian made the appeal as Defense Minister Florence Parly was due to meet U.S. counterparts on Monday to discuss the crisis in the Sahel, a band of scrubland south of the Sahara.
The Pentagon announced plans last year to withdraw hundreds of military personnel from Africa as it redirects resources to address challenges from China and Russia after two decades focused on counter-terrorism operations. Those cuts could deepen following an ongoing global troop review spearheaded by Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The possibility has alarmed France, which relies on U.S. intelligence and logistics for its 4,500-strong mission in the Sahel. The deaths of 13 French soldiers in a helicopter crash during a combat mission in Mali in November increased France’s determination to secure more support in the zone.
France believes it is time to increase, not ease, pressure on militants to prevent “Islamic State from rebuilding in the Sahel,” a senior French Defense Ministry official told Reuters.
Parly will put her case on Monday to Esper and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
“I hope they will be rational to keep this partnership … and that good sense will prevail,” le Drian told reporters.
The U.S. currently has 6,000 military personnel in Africa.
Although some experts say a repositioning of forces is overdue, many U.S. officials share French concerns about relieving pressure on militants in Africa.
“Any withdrawal or reduction would likely result in a surge in violent extremist attacks on the continent and beyond,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons wrote in a letter to Esper this month.
Former colonial power France intervened in 2013 to drive back militants who had seized northern Mali the previous year.
Fighters have since regrouped and spread. Over the past year, militants have stepped up attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Although groups in the Sahel are believed to have the intent to carry out attacks against the United States, they are not currently believed to have the capacity to do so, officials say.Scrambling drones
General Francois Lecointre, chief of staff of the French armed forces, told Reuters that the loss of U.S. intelligence from intercepted communications would be the “biggest setback.”
“I’m doing my utmost to prevent this from happening,” he said, adding that French drone-based spying systems would not be operational until year-end.
France said this month it would deploy 220 additional troops to the region, despite rising anti-French sentiment in some countries and criticism at home that its forces are bogged down.
Parly recently visited the Sahel with counterparts from Portugal, Sweden and Estonia to press European allies to do more, especially by contributing special forces to a new French-led unit due to be set up this year.
One of the main aims of the outfit, officials said, is to improve coordination between regional troops and French planes able to carry out air strikes.
So far, take-up has been limited with only Estonia committing 40 troops, while discussions continue with eight nations. Germany has refused to take part.
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Consider the places that best prepare their students for the future and what comes to mind are nations such as Finland and South Korea, which are famous the world over for their education systems. However these are also fairly high income nations. What happens when educational performance is adjusted for different income levels? Then developing nations like in Southeast Asia do very well on international rankings, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The findings suggest that although these nations have less money, they extract more value from every dollar spent on education than many of their rich peers.The 2019 Worldwide Educating for the Future Index analyzes education based on three criteria: state policy, teaching conditions, and the general socioeconomic context. For the second year running, Finland led the top 10 nations, which also included Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore. However the places shift when national income is taken into consideration.Poorer Nations can Establish Good Schools“The results are striking,” said the report released this month.“When scores are adjusted, half of the original top 10 relinquish their places to middle- and low-income countries — the Philippines, Ghana, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia. It suggests that the latter are putting their more limited resources to good use in advancing a future skills agenda.”Rich Nations still leadIf governments had unlimited money, they probably could improve education systems. But they don’t, so the index findings are significant because they offer hope that education can be improved through other means.However the role of money was unavoidable. Just as rich students can afford tutors and other advantages, the EIU said rich nations tended to perform better on the index, saying, “the wealthier an economy, the more likely it is to rank in the upper half.”Myanmar for instance is one of the newer emerging economies. Kyaw Moe Tun, founder and executive director of the Parami Institute of Liberal Arts in Yangon, said the nation wants “a world-class higher education system.”Efforts “are going to take a lot of time, and we don’t have enough resources to implement them,” he said in the report.  Doing more with  LessFor those with more limited resources there are other means to improve education, said the EIU, a research division of the Economist Group. It said “the need to develop future skills like critical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurship, and analysis is more vital than ever given the continuing advances in technology and artificial intelligence.”Those future skills should be incorporated into national education strategies, the report said.Brazil and other nations, for instance, make these skills an official priority in their education policies and conduct regularly scheduled reviews of the policies to ensure they keep up with the times.Changing Education GoalsOther recommendations include promoting classroom access to technology, career counselors, extracurricular learning options, and the principle of lifelong learning, that people will have to keep adapting their skills long after they graduate.Microsoft vice president of worldwide education Anthony Salcito said it’s good that government and school officials are talking, but it’s not enough.“There’s a misunderstanding that what we need to do is get students technology skills, whereas what we need are students who understand how to unleash their human skills in a world of technology,” he said in the report.The benefits go beyond education and jobs, Georgia McCafferty, EIU managing editor for thought leadership, said.She suggested education promotes global values, such as respect for civil liberties and tolerance of religious diversity.”The recent rise of nativism and populism in some quarters of the world, along with a rejection of globalization,” she said, “makes the need for students [to] develop future-oriented skills like critical thinking and analysis even more urgent.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump has warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of “serious consequences” if he allows the Chinese telecom giant Huawei a role in building Britain’s 5G phone network, according to officials on both sides of the Atlantic.The warning follows months of lobbying of Downing Street by top U.S. officials who aim to persuade the British government to shut out the Chinese company on security grounds.Trump told Johnson Friday that giving Huawei, which has ties to Chinese intelligence agencies, the go-ahead will cause a major rift in transatlantic relations and jeopardize intelligence-sharing between Washington and London, according to U.S. officials. They say the decision, expected Tuesday, will also likely impact the prospects for a post-Brexit transatlantic trade deal eagerly sought by Britain to compensate for likely diminished trade with the European Union.U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Saturday dubbed the Huawei deal a threat to “critical” infrastructure. But he indicated that if Downing Street falls into line, the U.S. will “dedicate a lot of resources” to getting a trade deal negotiated and signed by the end of the year.
The Huawei decision is also being watched closely on Capitol Hill.In an unprecedented move, three Republican senators — Tom Cotton, John Cornyn and Marco Rubio — sent a letter to Britain’s National Security Council urging Huawei to be excluded from 5G development. “The company’s actions show a clear record of predatory and problematic behavior,” the senators said, adding it would “in the best interest of the United Kingdom, the US-UK special relationship, and the health and wellbeing of a well-functioning market for 5G technologies to exclude Huawei.”FILE – Signage is seen at the Huawei offices in Reading, Britain, May 2, 2019.US sees Trojan horseFor a year, the Trump administration has been urging Britain to ban the Chinese company from participating in the development of Britain’s fifth-generation wireless network. U.S. officials say there’s a significant risk that the Chinese telecoms giant will act as a Trojan horse for Beijing’s espionage agencies, planting ‘backdoors’ into any equipment supplied to Britain, enabling data to be swept up and intelligence gathered. The U.S. imposed its own trade restrictions on Huawei last year.Huawei vehemently denies that it could be used by Beijing for intelligence purposes, saying that U.S. allegations are “baseless speculation.” The Chinese government says Huawei is a private company and poses no security risk to the West.But Beijing has also made ill-disguised threats, suggesting a decision to ban Huawei could result in Britain being punished when it comes to Chinese trade and investment. Similar warnings have been issued to other Western countries, all of which have been urged by U.S. officials to shun Huawei on security grounds.U.S. lobbying has been especially fierce among members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing pact — the U.S.-led Anglophone intelligence arrangement linking Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain. Australia and New Zealand, although as yet not Canada, have banned Huawei from any role in developing their 5G networks. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is due to make a last effort to dissuade Johnson during a visit to London this week.In Germany, the Huawei issue has sparked a major division between Chancellor Angel Merkel, who fears Chinese retaliation if Huawei is excluded, and her coalition partners, the Social Democrats, who are opposed to offering Huawei any 5G role. Merkel’s ministries are also deeply split, with the trade and finance ministers backing Huawei’s involvement and foreign and intelligence officials highly skeptical that the risks are worth it.Both the White House and Downing Street have sought to play down talk of a transatlantic rift. In a bland statement Friday, the White House said Trump and Johnson “discussed important regional and bilateral issues, including working together to ensure the security of our telecommunications networks.”FILE – People attend a Huawei Mate20 smartphone series launch event in London, Britain, Oct. 16, 2018.’Next Chinese virus’A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “The prime minister spoke to president Trump. They discussed a range of issues, including cooperation to ensure the security of our telecommunications networks.”But behind the scenes, the lobbying has been furious and the issue risks splitting the British cabinet, with several ministers determined to block Huawei, fearing the damage that could be done to Britain’s so-called special relationship with the U.S.The crescendo of the U.S. anti-Huawei campaign has been mirrored in London as it emerged last week that Johnson appeared set to give Huawei the green light, discounting U.S. alarm and prompting growing unease among his own Conservative lawmakers. Some have likened the political damage Huawei is causing to the coronavirus epidemic threatening to spread to the West, saying it is the “next Chinese virus.”If Johnson does give the go-ahead, it would confirm a ‘provisional’ decision made by his predecessor in Downing Street, Theresa May. Last year, she said Huawei should be allowed to build some so-called ‘non-core’ parts of Britain’s future 5G data network.U.S. intelligence officials and their counterparts at Britain’s GCHQ, the eavesdropping spy agency and the country’s largest intelligence service, say restricting Huawei to the non-core ‘edges’ of the new network would make little difference to the security risk.Johnson has come under pressure from British telecom providers and mobile phone companies, which have already been installing Huawei technology to start setting up the new network. They have warned that Huawei offers more advanced, better integrated and cheaper equipment than its commercial rivals, and banning the company would delay the rollout of 5G, costing the British economy billions of pounds. 
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New reports from Transparency International and the Russian Academy of Sciences on education highlight a pervasive culture of corruption in Russia that persists despite efforts by the government and opposition activists.The country scored 137th out of 180 countries in the FILE – Students walk outside the main building of Moscow State University, in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 10, 2015.According to FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) speaks during an annual televised call-in show in Moscow, Russia, June 20, 2019.”Where does the money go? To public revenue, to be sure,” Putin added when asked about common bribes. “Of course, officials, and representatives of law enforcement in particular,” he added.While corruption’s full economic effects are difficult to calculate, conservative government estimates put the cost of corruption at $2.5 billion from 2014 to 2017.Entrepreneur’s Rights Commissioner Boris Titov has labeled the issue the “biggest problem” facing Russian entrepreneurial growth.Yet Putin has insisted harsher punishments and “uncompromising efforts” are changing the tide.Among Putin measures lauded by outside experts are e-governance efforts and a public blacklist of government officials fired over a “loss of confidence.”State media portray Putin as something of an anti-corruption folk hero, seemingly alone trying to rein in Russia’s vast network of amoral civil servants.FILE – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny gestures as a security officer guards an entrance of his Anti-Corruption Foundation during a raid of its offices, in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 26, 2019.”A real fight against corruption is impossible under Putin. His whole system is built around it,” the organization’s spokesperson Lyubov Sobol told VOA. “Every attempt to really take on corrupt officials has ended in nothing,” she said.Secret European villas, wealthy relatives, and private planes ferrying pet corgies to international dog shows have all been subjects of the foundation’s video investigations in recent years. Another alleges to have uncovered the secret wealth of former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and garnered over 33 million YouTube views.The revelations set off a series of nationwide protests last year and may have played a role in Medvedev’s dismissal in Putin’s Kremlin shakeup last week.FBK was also quick to note that Medvedev replacement Mikhail Mishustin has family holdings that far outstrip his past government salary as Russia’s chief tax officer.Meanwhile, the Kremlin has launched raids and criminal investigations against FBK, moves widely seen as revenge for the organization’s investigations and calls for democratic change.A poll last year by the independent Levada Center found most Russians view anti-corruption crackdowns as aimed at settling political scores.Sobol said the solution is independent judges and a reformed police force, but added, “for that you need political will.”
 
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Right-wing opposition leader Matteo Salvini is telling Italians who are voting in two regions to use their ballots to help his anti-migrant party return to national power.
Voting began Sunday morning in Emilia-Romagna, a northern region where the left-wing has held power for decades, and in Calabria, in the south, an area Salvini’s League party once disparaged as unproductive but where it now wants to expand a foothold .
Results, expected early Monday, of the voting for governor and regional legislatures could rock Italy’s squabbling central government in Rome.
Salvini is demanding an early election to end Premier Giuseppe Conte’s coalition government, whose junior partner is the center-left Democrats. If the Democratic Party’s incumbent governor in Emilia-Romagna loses to the League’s candidate on Sunday, the bickering among Conte’s coalition partners could worsen and jeopardize the nearly 5-month-old government’s survival.
The senior party in Conte’s government is the populist 5-Star Movement, which itself is so plagued by infighting and defections that its political leader resigned his post last week.
Salvini in a Facebook post urged Italians as they headed to vote Sunday to “liberate these splendid regions” from the Democrats and “Let’s free the entire country.”
Salvini, who in Conte’s previous government took a hard line against immigration, lost his role as deputy premier and interior minister last year and his right-wing party lost its place in government when he yanked his support from Conte in a failed bid for an early election that Salvini had hoped with make him premier.
Conte then formed a new government with the Democrats, who set aside their deep rivalries with the 5-Stars to replace the League in the national coalition.
Voters could be forgiven if they had the impression Salvini himself was running to be governor of Emilia-Romagna. The League leader campaigned practically daily in the region, especially in the countryside and small towns, considered ripe for a shift toward the right. With his “Italians first” mantra, Salvini dashed from rally to rally, sampling local agricultural products in the region, which is one of Italy’s wealthiest and most productive. He boasted of how, when he was interior minister, fewer migrants, trafficked by Libya-based smugglers, arrived in Italy aboard charity rescue boats.
Opinion polls during the campaign indicated the race for governorship was neck-to-neck.
The League’s candidate is Lucia Borgonzoni, a League politician who as undersecretary for culture in Conte’s first government distinguished herself mainly for complaining that the Louvre in Paris was getting too many loans of Leonardo da Vinci’s artworks for an exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the Italian Renaissance master’s death.
The Democrats’ candidate is Gov. Stefano Bonacconi, under whose leadership the region’s reputation for a well-run health care system and other local services was reinforced.
But Salvini is banking on voters in Emilia-Romagna viewing Sunday’s ballot as a referendum on Conte’s government and a chance to boost his League’s fortunes. The right-wing League has consistently scored as Italy’s most popular party nationwide in recent opinion polls.
Conte says the outcome of Sunday’s votes won’t affect his determination to continue governing until the next election for Parliament is due in 2023.
Until recent years, the League’s profile was as a northern-based political power, with its leaders depicting the underdeveloped south as a parasitic drain on taxpayers’ money.
But Salvini revamped the image of the League, which had long been called the Northern League, into a nationwide force with rhetoric that blames migrants for crime and the European Union for what he says is infringement on Italy’s sovereignty.
His chief ally, the Brothers of Italy, has its roots in neo-fascism and is growing quickly in popularity.  
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Hundreds of former prisoners will return to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz Monday to mark the 75th anniversary of its liberation by Soviet troops, alongside several world leaders. At least 1.1 million people – mostly Jews – were murdered at Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi death camps, between 1940 and 1945. VOA’s Henry Ridgwell traveled to Poland to speak with one survivor as he prepared to return to what many call ‘the gates of hell’.
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Rescue teams working through the night pulled 45 people from collapsed buildings, Turkey’s disaster authority said on Sunday, as the death toll from a powerful earthquake in the country’s east rose to 35.Rescuers operating in sub-zero temperatures used drills, mechanical diggers and their bare hands to continue the search for survivors at three sites in Elazig province, where the magnitude 6.8 quake struck on Friday evening.It killed 31 people there and four in the neighboring province of Malatya, and was followed by more than 700 aftershocks, Disaster and Emergency Authority AFAD said on Sunday. More than 1,600 sustained injuries.Broadcast footage showed a 35-year-old woman and her infant daughter emerging from rubble in the Mustafa Pasa district of Elazig, some 550 km (340 miles) east of the capital Ankara.Rescuers who heard their screams took several hours to reach them in temperatures as low as -4 degrees Celsius (24.8°F), state media said. The woman’s husband was among those who died.AFAD said search and rescue operations were still underway at three different sites in Elazig.Other provinces sent thousands of emergency workers to support rescue efforts, which were also supplemented by hundreds of volunteers, officials said. Tents, beds and blankets were provided to shelter those displaced by the quake.AFAD urged residents not to return to damaged buildings because of the potential risk of collapse. It said officials had identified 645 heavily damaged and 76 collapsed buildings in the two provinces.President Tayyip Erdogan said steel-framed houses would be rapidly built in the region to provide housing for displaced residents. Speaking on Saturday during a visit to Elazig and Malatya, he called the quake a test for Turkey.The country has a history of powerful earthquakes. More than 17,000 people were killed in August 1999 when a 7.6 magnitude quake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul.
 
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Two days of heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in southeast Brazil that have killed at least 30 people, authorities said Saturday. Civil Defense officials said 17 people were listed as missing and 2,600 were evacuated from their houses in Minas Gerais state, which had been buffeted by 48 hours of torrential rains. Deaths were reported in the capital of Belo Horizonte and in the state’s interior. On Friday, Belo Horizonte received the greatest quantity of rain ever registered in 24 hours in the city. A view of flooded houses caused by heavy rains in Sabara municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Jan. 24, 2020. The rains led to flooding and landslides that killed dozens, authorities said Jan. 25.State Governor Romeu Zema will fly over the affected areas on Sunday to evaluate damages. More rain is expected in Minas Gerais as well as other parts of Brazil, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The announcement of the deaths came the same day as mourners elsewhere in Minas Gerais observed the first anniversary of a deadly mining dam collapse. 
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Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido joined thousands of supporters at a demonstration in Madrid on Saturday after arriving in Spain on the last leg of a European tour. Speaking in a central square packed with supporters holding signs calling for “democracy,” Guaido emphasized the importance of international support in unseating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “We need the support of the world to fight against the groups operating in Venezuela. We have the opportunity to get Venezuela back because we are together. We can heal Venezuela,” he told a crowd of people waving Venezuelan flags and chanting, “Yes, we can.” “It is the struggle of a whole country in favor of democracy,” he said. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez did not meet Guaido, a decision that angered right-wing opposition parties but was welcomed by Unidas Podemos, the far-left coalition partners of Sanchez’s Socialists. Podemos members have voiced support for Venezuela’s leftist ruling party in the past. Instead, Guaido met Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya as well as Madrid’s mayor and regional president, both from the conservative People’s Party (PP). Guaido’s visit coincided with a political spat in Spain over reports that Transport Minister Jose Luis Abalos secretly met a senior Maduro aide who is subject to a European Union travel ban at Madrid’s Barajas airport on Monday. PP leader Pablo Casado criticized Sanchez for not meeting Guaido and called on him to dismiss Abalos. Sanchez told reporters earlier in the day that Spain’s government wanted elections in Venezuela “as soon as possible,” but he criticized Spanish opposition parties for using the crisis in Venezuela “against the government.” He also voiced his backing for Abalos, saying “he put all his efforts into avoiding a diplomatic crisis and succeeded.” Guaido has defied a travel ban to seek support in Europe, where he has spoken at the European Parliament, attended the World Economic Forum in Davos and met with leaders including Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson. 
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The death toll from a strong earthquake that rocked eastern Turkey climbed to 29 on Saturday night as rescue crews searched for people who remained trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, officials said. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said at a news conference earlier in the day that 18 people had been killed in Elazig province, where Friday night’s quake was centered, and four in neighboring Malatya. The national disaster agency later updated the total with seven more casualties. Rescue workers search on a collapsed building after an earthquake in Elazig, Turkey, January 25, 2020. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,243 people had been injured, with 34 of them in intensive care but not in critical condition. On Saturday afternoon, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the hardest-hit areas and attended the funeral of a mother and son killed in the quake. He warned people against repeating negative'' hearsay about the country being unprepared for earthquakes. Turkish officials and police try to keep warm at the scene of a collapsed building following a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Elazig, eastern Turkey, Jan. 24, 2020.Emergency workers and security forces distributed tents, beds and blankets as overnight temperatures dropped below freezing in the affected areas. Mosques, schools, sports halls and student dormitories were opened for hundreds who left their homes after the quake. The earthquake was very severe. We desperately ran out [of our home],” Emre Gocer told the state-run Anadolu news agency as he sheltered with his family at a sports hall in Sivrice. We don't have a safe place to stay right now.'' While visiting Sivrice and the city of Elazig, the provincial capital 565 kilometers (350 miles) east of Ankara, Erdogan promised state support for those affected by the disaster. We will not leave anyone in the open,” the Turkish leader said. Earlier, a prosecutor in Ankara announced an investigation into provocative'' social media posts. Anadolu reported that Turkey's broadcasting authority was also reviewing media coverage of the quake. At least five buildings in Sivrice and 25 in Malatya province were destroyed in the disaster, Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said. Hundreds of other structures were damaged and made unsafe. Ramazan Emek surveys the damage in Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, where the quake struck just before 9 p.m. Friday local time. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)AFAD reported that 42 people had been rescued as search teams combed wrecked apartment buildings. Television footage showed emergency workers removing a woman from the wreckage of a collapsed building 19 hours after the main earthquake struck. A prison in Adiyaman, 110 kilometers (70 miles) southwest of the epicenter, was evacuated because of damage, and its more than 800 prisoners were transferred to nearby jails. AFAD said 28 rescue teams had been working around the clock. More than 2,600 personnel from 39 of Turkey's 81 provinces were sent to the disaster site. Unmanned drones were used to survey damaged neighborhoods and coordinate rescue efforts. Our biggest hope is that the death toll does not rise,” Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop said. A calf stands next to its mother, which has a broken leg, in the village of Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, Elazig, Turkey, Jan. 25, 2020. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)Communication companies announced free telephone and internet services for residents in the quake-hit region. Neighboring Greece, which is at odds with Turkey over maritime boundaries and gas exploration rights, offered to send rescue crews to assist the Turkish teams. Erdogan appeared to reject the offer of outside assistance during his visit to the city of Elazig, telling reporters, “Our state does not need anything.” Turkey sits on top of two major fault lines, and earthquakes are frequent. Two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey in 1999, killing around 18,000 people. A magnitude 6.0 earthquake killed 51 people in Elazig in 2010. 
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Hundreds of former prisoners will return Monday to the Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, alongside several world leaders, to mark the 75th anniversary of its liberation by Soviet troops.  At least 1.1 million people – mostly Jews – were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi death camps, between 1940 and 1945. Stanislaw Zalewski, 94, is among the former prisoners who will return for the anniversary. He says he keeps his memories locked away – “occasionally letting them out to share the horrors of the past.” Zalewski was 18 when he was arrested for painting Polish resistance symbols on walls in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. After a brutal interrogation, he was imprisoned in Waraw’s Pawiak prison. “About 37,000 of these prisoners were killed and about 60,000 were taken from Pawiak prison to concentration camps,” Zalewski told VOA in a recent interview. “I was among these 60,000. I was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 6, 1943.” Sorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – Stanislaw Zalewski, pictured at Auschwitz-Birkenau a year ago, is president of the Polish Union of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps. Seventy-five years on, he still struggles to reconcile what happened.As Soviet soldiers began to approach from the east, the Nazis transferred hundreds of thousands of prisoners to other camps on so-called “death marches” or in railroad cattle trucks. Tens of thousands died on the journey. Zalewski was taken to the Mauthausen-Guzen camp in Austria. In May 1945, rumors spread of the Allied advance — and German guards fled. “On May 5, American military vehicles arrived,” Zalewski says, tears welling in his eyes. “Two American soldiers got off. One of them knew some Polish and shouted, ‘You are free!’ It took me 78 days to get from Nuremberg to Warsaw. I arrived in Warsaw on July 22, 1945, wearing USA Army fatigues.” Zalewski is now president of the Polish Union of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps. Seventy-five years on, he still struggles to reconcile what happened. Sorry, but your player cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />Copy“When I say the Lord’s Prayer, there is a phrase: ‘Give us our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’ I face a dilemma at this point. Can I forgive those who had an inscription that read, ‘God is with us,’ on their belt buckles, who killed people with cold premeditation?” “I put my memories of Auschwitz into a box, I tied it with a string, and threw it into the water,” Zalewski says. “I worked, I started a family, I have a son and grandchildren. When I visit the camp or when we are talking like we are today, I pull out this box, I present its contents to you, and afterwards, I throw it back into the water. There are moments, however, when these memories break into my psyche, causing reflections and questions with no answers. ‘World has not learned’“I am sad because of what is happening in other parts of the world, where people for their own purposes commit armed, violent acts that take the lives of thousands of innocent people. The world has not learned the lesson of what had happened. The world has come full circle, so to speak. This history, this circularity, is powered by people who do not respect the dignity of another human being.”     Zalewski and about 200 fellow survivors will return to the so-called “gates of hell” for the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, still determined to teach the world the lessons of Auschwitz. 
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The death toll from a strong earthquake that rocked eastern Turkey climbed to 22 on Saturday as rescue crews searched for people who remained trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, officials said.Speaking at a televised news conference near the epicenter of the quake in Elazig province, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 18 people were killed in Elazig and four in neighboring Malatya.Rescue workers search on a collapsed building after an earthquake in Elazig, Turkey, January 25, 2020. Some 1,103 people were injured, with 34 of them in intensive care but not in critical condition, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the funeral of a mother and son killed in the quake while visiting the hardest-hit areas. He warned people against repeating “negative” hearsay about the country being unprepared for earthquakes.“Do not listen to rumors, do not listen to anyone’s negative, contrary propaganda, and know that we are your servants,” Erdogan said.Turkish officials and police try to keep warm at the scene of a collapsed building following a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Elazig, eastern Turkey, Jan. 24, 2020.Earlier, a prosecutor in the capital Ankara announced an investigation into “provocative” social media posts. The Anadolu news agency reported that Turkey’s broadcasting authority was also reviewing media coverage of the quake.At least five buildings in Sivrice and 25 in Malatya province were destroyed in the disaster, Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said. Hundreds of other structures were damaged and made unsafe.AFAD reported that 42 people had been rescued as search teams combed wrecked apartment buildings.Television footage showed emergency workers removing a woman from the wreckage of a collapsed building 19 hours after the main earthquake struck.A prison in Adiyaman, 110 kilometers (70 miles) southwest of the epicenter, was evacuated due to damage its more than 800 prisoners transferred to nearby jails.AFAD said 28 rescue teams had been working around the clock. More than 2,600 personnel from 39 of Turkey’s 81 provinces were sent to the disaster site. Unmanned drones were used to survey damaged neighborhoods and coordinate rescue efforts.“Our biggest hope is that the death toll does not rise,” Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop said.Ramazan Emek surveys the damage in Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, where the quake struck just before 9 p.m. Friday local time. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)“Everybody is in the street, it was very powerful, very scary,” said Zekeriya Gunes, 68, from Elazig city, after the quakes caused a building to collapse on her street.“It lasted quite long, maybe 30 seconds,” added Ferda, 39. “I panicked and was undecided whether to go out in this cold or remain inside.”Greece offers aidThe U.S. Geological Survey assessed the magnitude as 6.7, slightly lower than AFAD, adding that it struck near the East Anatolian Fault in an area that has suffered no documented large ruptures since an earthquake in 1875.“My wholehearted sympathy to President @RTErdogan and the Turkish people following the devastating earthquake that has hit Turkey. Our search and rescue teams stand ready to assist,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.In Athens, the Greek premier’s office said later that Mitsotakis had spoken by phone to Erdogan.“The Turkish president … said Turkish teams had the situation under control for now and that it would be re-evaluated in the morning,” his office added.A calf stands next to its mother, which has a broken leg, in the village of Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, Elazig, Turkey, Jan. 25, 2020. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)Quake-prone TurkeyCommunication companies announced free telephone and internet services for residents in the quake-hit region.Neighboring Greece, which is at odds with Turkey over maritime boundaries and gas exploration rights, offered to send rescue crews to assist the Turkish teams.Erdogan appeared to reject the offer of outside assistance during his visit to the city of Elazig, telling reporters, “Our state does not need anything.”Turkey sits on top of two major fault lines and earthquakes are frequent. Two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey in 1999, killing around 18,000 people.A magnitude 6 earthquake killed 51 people in Elazig in 2010.
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ELAZIG, TURKEY — A powerful earthquake has killed at least 20 people and injured more than 1,000 in eastern Turkey, as rescue teams searched through the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors Saturday.At least 30 people were missing following the magnitude 6.8 quake Friday night, which had its epicenter in the small lakeside town of Sivrice in the eastern province of Elazig.“It was very scary, furniture fell on top of us. We rushed outside,” 47-year-old Melahat Can, who lives in the provincial capital of Elazig, told AFP.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said all steps were being taken to aid people affected by the quake, which caused widespread fear.“We stand by our people,” Erdogan said on Twitter.Turkish officials and police try to keep warm at the scene of a collapsed building following a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Elazig, eastern Turkey, Jan. 24, 2020.Emergency staff and people waiting at the scene lit fires in the streets to stay warm in freezing temperatures.Sports centers, schools and guest houses had been opened to accommodate quake victims in Malatya.Sivrice, a town with a population of about 4,000 people, is situated south of Elazig city on the shores of Hazar lake, one of the most popular tourist spots in the region and the source of the Tigris River.The lake is home to a sunken city with archaeological traces dating back 4,000 years in its waters.The tremor was felt in several parts of eastern Turkey near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, the Turkish broadcaster NTV reported, adding that neighboring cities had mobilized rescue teams for the quake area.Ramazan Emek surveys the damage in Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, where the quake struck just before 9 p.m. Friday local time. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)“Everybody is in the street, it was very powerful, very scary,” said Zekeriya Gunes, 68, from Elazig city, after the quakes caused a building to collapse on her street.“It lasted quite long, maybe 30 seconds,” added Ferda, 39. “I panicked and was undecided whether to go out in this cold or remain inside.”Greece offers aidThe U.S. Geological Survey assessed the magnitude as 6.7, slightly lower than AFAD, adding that it struck near the East Anatolian Fault in an area that has suffered no documented large ruptures since an earthquake in 1875.“My wholehearted sympathy to President @RTErdogan and the Turkish people following the devastating earthquake that has hit Turkey. Our search and rescue teams stand ready to assist,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.In Athens, the Greek premier’s office said later that Mitsotakis had spoken by phone to Erdogan.“The Turkish president … said Turkish teams had the situation under control for now and that it would be re-evaluated in the morning,” his office added.A calf stands next to its mother, which has a broken leg, in the village of Cevrimtas, near Sivrice, Elazig, Turkey, Jan. 25, 2020. (Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA Turkish)Quake-prone TurkeyIn 1999, a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit Izmit in western Turkey, leaving more than 17,000 people dead including about 1,000 in the country’s largest city Istanbul.Last September, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Istanbul, causing residents to flee buildings.Experts have long warned a large quake could devastate the city of 15 million people, which has allowed widespread building without safety precautions.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cursed at a National Public Radio reporter and repeatedly “used the F-word” in a shouted diatribe after she questioned him about Ukraine and the ousted American ambassador to Kiev in an interview on Friday, the reporter said.Mary Louise Kelly conducted a testy interview lasting about nine minutes with Pompeo for NPR’s “All Things Considered” program, asking him about Iran and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was ousted by President Donald Trump last May. Yovanovitch’s removal was a key event in the actions that prompted Trump’s impeachment in the House of Representatives last month.“Afterwards, Pompeo proceeded to shout his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine. He used repeated expletives, according to Kelly,” NPR said in a statement.“He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence and many others,” Kelly said in an interview of her own with NPR later Friday.The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Kelly said Pompeo shouted at her “for about the same amount of time as the interview itself.” Pompeo then had aides bring a blank map of the world and asked Kelly to show Ukraine.“People will hear about this,” Pompeo said after Kelly pointed at Ukraine on the map, she said.Questions on UkraineWhen Kelly turned her questioning to Ukraine in the latter part of the interview with Pompeo, he said he had agreed to discuss only Iran.Kelly said she had informed Pompeo’s aides that she would ask also about Ukraine, and posed several questions, including whether Pompeo owed an apology to Yovanovitch, who testified last year in the House impeachment inquiry about her ouster. The incident also has figured in Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.“I have defended every State Department official. … I’ve defended every single person on this team,” Pompeo replied.In November, Pompeo declined to defend Yovanovitch after Trump attacked her on Twitter.Yovanovitch was removed by Trump following a negative campaign against her by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others. Giuliani at the time was pushing to have Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing Libyan militia leader General Khalifa Haftar of violating a cease-fire agreement. Despite deploying Turkish forces to back the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), though, Erdogan seems to be increasingly looking to diplomacy rather than force. “He [Haftar] says he agreed to a cease-fire, but two days subsequent, he bombed the [Tripoli] airport. So how can we trust him?” Erdogan said Friday in Istanbul with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Haftar’s forces control most of Libya in their war against the U.N.-recognized GNA. Merkel on Sunday hosted an international summit in Berlin aimed at resolving the Libyan civil war. A 55-article road map to end the conflict was drawn up at the meeting, which Erdogan attended. Erdogan challenged Merkel at the news conference, however, to confirm whether Haftar had signed the Berlin agreement. A visibly uncomfortable Merkel confirmed he only orally agreed to it, noting that officials were still waiting for his signature. FILE – Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj leaves after an international conference on Libya at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 29, 2018.Support for SarrajDespite the Berlin agreement’s reaffirmation of the Libyan international arms embargo, the Turkish president said he would continue supporting the GNA’s prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj. “We sent them a [military] delegation and continue to do so. We won’t abandon Sarraj. We will give the support we can,” Erdogan said. “Our soldiers are there to assist in the training [of GNA forces]. We have a history of 500 years, and we have an invitation [from the GNA] that gives us our right,” he added. But Erdogan, several times during the news conference, said the forces were purely for training. Earlier this week, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Aktar also stressed the training purpose of the Libyan deployment. The Turkish force reportedly still only numbers in the dozens. The downplaying of the military deployment contrasts with Erdogan’s recent sharp rhetoric. Last week, the Turkish president, while announcing to Parliament soldiers’ deployment, said Ankara would not hesitate about “teaching a lesson” to Haftar if his forces continued attacking. Fears of wider warSuch language reportedly has set off alarm bells in the region over fears that Turkish forces in Libya could end up triggering a wider regional conflict with Haftar’s military backers, including Egypt. Given that Libya is 2,000 kilometers from Turkey, though, a military expert questioned whether Ankara was capable of sustaining a hot conflict. “The logistic challenge is enormous, and these challenges, as they look now, are insurmountable. It’s far away. It’s not like Syria is just across the border,” said former Turkish General Haldun Solmazturk, a veteran of cross-border military operations. “If fighting gets tough, casualties would be inevitable. Returning dead persons and wounded would also be a major challenge. Apart from the fuel, the ammunition, spare parts, there are thousands of items needed to be provided in such an environment,” added Solmazturk, who heads the 21st Century Turkey Institute, an Ankara-based research organization. FILE – Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who dominates eastern Libya, arrives at an international conference on Libya at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 29, 2018.Turkish forces are already stretched, being deployed in Iraq and Syria, while analysts point out Haftar is in a strong military position. “At the moment the situation seems to be working on the side of Haftar. He has better weapons. He has jet fighters. He has superiority of the air and in the field,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. Further complicating Ankara’s situation is its international isolation over Libya’s military deployment. Erdogan’s shuttle diplomacy this month drew a blank, failing to win backing from Libya’s neighbors, Algeria and Tunisia. Erdogan also reportedly failed at the Berlin summit to secure backing for an international peacekeeping force, including the Turkish military, to be deployed to enforce a cease-fire in Libya. Military challenges for TurkeyAnalysts suggest Ankara’s isolation only compounds the military challenges it faces in Libya. “The Mediterranean, in terms of naval transportation, is controlled by not too friendly forces. And neighboring countries Tunisia, Algeria and Italy are less than willing to help or to provide any logistic bases or any other logistic support. They seem determined to stay out of this,” said Solmazturk. FILE – Turkish lawmakers vote on a bill that allows troop deployment to Libya, at the Parliament in Ankara, Jan. 2, 2020.”Libya threatens to be another Syria, where countless lives and many treasures will be wasted to defend a very ill-defined ‘national objective,’ ” warned analyst Atilla Yesilada of GlobalSource Partners, an economic and security research group based in New York. Erdogan appears increasingly to be looking to diplomacy in a bid to isolate Haftar. In a speech Thursday in the presence of Merkel, the Turkish president called for “pressure” to put on Haftar. Erdogan challenged the international community over its courting of Haftar, despite the general’s failure so far to sign on to a cease-fire. “It doesn’t make sense such support is continued,” he said at Friday’s news conference with Merkel, “if such a person is constantly so spoiled.” Migrant issueThe Turkish president also is seeking to play the migrant card against Europe, warning of “chaos” if Haftar remains unchecked. Some analysts are warning, however, that Ankara needs to face the reality that the region has little appetite for a Turkish role in Libya. “The region wants neither Turkey nor Russia seeking to extend its hegemony to Libya and the wider region. This is the reality,” said Bagci. But for now, Ankara is likely figuring on having a limited military presence in Libya while continuing to push for international deliberations on a resolution to Libya’s civil war and its future. 
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While Washington obsesses about tensions with Iran and the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a pair of high-ranking administration officials has been crisscrossing Europe and the Western Balkans in pursuit of a solution to a dispute that most Americans have barely noticed. The high-level focus on the quarrel between Serbia and its former province of Kosovo has left some analysts struggling to explain how the issue fits into a Trump administration foreign policy driven by crises in North Korea and Iran and defined by the slogan “America First.”Trump himself has demonstrated a personal interest in the issue, tweeting approvingly on the eve of the impeachment trial’s opening about the establishment of direct flights between the two countries:Everyone said it couldn’t be done. But for the first time in a generation, there will be direct flights between Serbia and Kosovo. Another win. Thanks to FILE – U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell is pictured in Berlin, Germany, May 8, 2018.“The tariffs must be dropped. That is unacceptable, and I also bring the same request here, which is the de-recognition campaign must stop,” he said in Belgrade, after a meeting Friday with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. “What we’ll do is continue moving in this direction of concentrating on the economy, concentrating on growing jobs.” Neither the White House nor State Department responded to requests for comment on the thinking behind the high-level engagement. Ripe for resolutionAnalysts contacted by VOA see little strategic value for the United States in throwing so much diplomatic muscle at the issue. But they suggest the problem is ripe for a resolution and could provide the administration with an easy foreign policy success. “So far as I can tell, the administration is beating the bushes for a success somewhere in the world. There is no real strategic interest,” said Daniel Serwer of Johns Hopkins University in an email exchange with VOA’s Albanian service. Damon Wilson, a vice president at the Atlantic Council, a global affairs research group in Washington, offered VOA’s Serbian service a similar analysis, noting the frustrating lack of progress on some of the administration’s biggest foreign policy concerns, including Iran and North Korea. “You don’t get easy wins in the Western Balkans, either, and yet in the Western Balkans we are dealing with democratic states that want to be part of the strategic West, that have a shared vision of the future of the region as a prosperous part of Europe,” he said. “This gives us something to work with, and while it might look hard, it actually looks relatively easy when you compare it to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela.” FILE – People protest after Kosovo’s decision to raise tariffs on Serbian and Bosnian goods, in the village of Rudare near Mitrovica, Kosovo, Nov. 23, 2018.Wilson added that the issue gives the United States a chance to show that “we are going to be engaged, we are not leaving a vacuum in the Western Balkans, we’ve got a role to play, we want to play that role and we are going to do it.” James Hooper, a former U.S. diplomat and executive director of the Washington-based Balkan Action Council, said a breakthrough on the issue would allow Trump to show he is not distracted by the impeachment drama and give him an achievement to highlight as he seeks re-election in November. But Wilson warned against attaching too much significance to the initiative as an election boon, saying, “It’s not exactly a vote-getter out there in Iowa,” where Republicans and Democrats will cast the first votes to select their presidential candidates early next month. Chance for progressRegardless of the motive, Hooper sees an opportunity to make real progress on a dispute that has held back progress in both countries. “This is a real opportunity because Washington is paying attention and Grenell is a serious person and he has a lot of influence in the White House,” he said. Alon Ben-Meir, a professor at New York University, said both Kosovo and Serbia would be wise to take advantage of that opportunity. “They are neighbors. They have to deal with one another. There is interdispersement of population. Many Serbs live in Kosovo. It is time for them to recognize certain facts on the ground that they cannot change,” he said. So far, however, there is little indication they will do so. Serbia immediately rejected Grenell’s proposals while Pristina has yet to deliver a clear response. “I don’t accept to draw an equality mark between the tariffs and the revoking of the campaign against recognition,” said Vucic, the Serbian president.  “America and Pristina … want Kosovo’s independence recognized. We do not. So it is logical that we have differing positions.” Ivana Konstantinovic from VOA’s Serbian service contributed to this report. 
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Turkey’s emergency management agency says an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 has shaken the country’s east.The earthquake struck Friday at 1755 GMT, 8:55 p.m. local time, near the town of Sivrice in eastern Elazig province, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said there were no reports deaths in Sivrice or other affected areas. However, 4-5 buildings collapsed in Sivrice, where two people were hurt, he said. Soylu was at a meeting on earthquake preparedness when the quake struck.
Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters that there were no reports of any casualties in Sivrice but said the quake may have caused casualties in rural areas outside the town. He said troops were on standby to help is they are needed.
The Kandilli seismology center in Istanbul said the quake measured 6.5.
The U.S. Geological Survey gave the preliminary magnitude as 6.7, with the quake affecting not only Turkey but also Syria, Georgia and Armenia.
Turkish media said the earthquake sent people running outdoors for safety. 
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From the roadside stand where his family sells mole, barbecue and chicken stew, Miguel Ángel Vázquez has seen all the caravans of Central American migrants and asylum seekers stream past his front door in recent years, throngs of people driven to flee poverty and violence in hopes of a better life in the United States.After watching armored National Guard troops and immigration agents break up the latest one right on his doorstep, loading men, women and wailing children onto buses and hauling them off to a detention center in the nearby city of Tapachula, he’s sure of one thing.Mexican National Guards block a highway in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico after a group of Central American migrants crossed the nearby border from Guatemala to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.“I can see that these caravans are no longer going to pass,” said Vásquez, 56.On Friday morning, life was back to normal at the river border between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tecun Uman, Guatemala.Carmelino Sánchez Cumes, 54, left his home in Champerico Guatemala at 4 a.m. to come buy medicine for two elderly aunts that’s not available back home.The partial closure of river crossings “was tough” on people accustomed to doing so as part of daily life, he said.The international bridge reopened at 5 a.m. and cars and motorcycles were crossing freely.National guard troops stood watch in groups of about a half dozen, visibly fewer than before, and said privately that the tension of recent days had vanished.One said it’s easy to distinguish local Guatemalans who cross for ordinary workaday reasons for their manner of speaking, and they’re welcome “because they’re neighbors.”Where the first caravans were allowed to pass through Mexican territory and even given humanitarian aid or transportation by many communities and some officials, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration changed that beginning last year in response to steep trade tariffs threatened by Washington.The result was on display Thursday on a rural highway in the far-southern Mexican city of Frontera Hidalgo, just across the river border between Mexico and Guatemala that the hundreds of migrants, mostly Hondurans, crossed before dawn.The migrants walked for hours before stopping at the crossroads where Vázquez’s stand lies, taking advantage of the copious shade on a road otherwise largely exposed to the beating tropical sun. They bought all the food the family and refreshments the family had and behaved respectfully, according to Karen Daniela Vázquez Robledo, his daughter.Then hundreds of national guard troops advanced their lines to within 100 yards (meters) of the migrants. A brief negotiation stalled, and the migrants knelt to the ground in prayer and began to chant “we want to pass.”National guardsmen advanced banging their plastic shields with batons and engaged the migrants. There was shoving and pepper spray as migrants were rounded up.Many of the people allowed themselves to be escorted to the buses without resistance. Women cradling small children or holding kids’ hands wept as they walked toward the buses. In all, 800 migrants were detained, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.Others resisted and were subdued. One man dragged by three guardsmen and a migration agent shouted “they killed my brother, I don’t want to die,” presumably in reference to the possibility of being returned to his country.A paramedic attended to an injured woman lying on the highway shoulder.The road was left littered with water bottles, plastic bags and clothing. An irate man in a blue shirt yelled at the agents “this is a war against the Hondurans.”On Friday, López Obrador said he had been briefed about the operation and commended military commanders for not resorting to force, without explaining what he considered to be force.“I have information that the National Guard has acted well,” said López Obrador, who said he was briefed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. “He told us there had not been injured, had not been wounded, that the problem has been resolved well.”López Obrador went on, as he has before, to describe the migrants as being “tricked” by unscrupulous organizers in Honduras who lead them to believe they will pass without problems. He added that his political adversaries, “the conservatives,” had hoped it would go badly for the Mexican government.“Clearly there is a need,” López Obrador said. “But there’s a management, we’ll say political. Fortunately, human rights have been respected.”Thursday’s confrontation was a sudden climax after the day had seemed to be winding down.Central American migrants cross the Suchiate River from Tecun Uman, Guatemala, to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.The migrant caravan had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican National Guardsmen posted along the Suchiate River, which forms the border here.The national guardsmen intercepted the caravan on the edge of the community of Frontera Hidalgo, near Ciudad Hidalgo where the migrants crossed the river at dawn.In previous caravans, Mexican authorities have allowed caravans to walk for awhile, seemingly to tire them out, and then closed their path.Mexico and Guatemala have returned hundreds of migrants from the caravan to their home countries since the caravan set out last week, mostly to Honduras.Back at the roadside food stall in the southern state of Chiapas, Karen Vázquez, 26, was dismayed by what she saw unfold — the pepper spray, children running and crying.“It was something very unpleasant, seeing how the people are taken away, and us hiding as well so they don’t take us away,” she said. “It makes us sad because they don’t take them in the right way. In truth, they take them very badly.”
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The European Union’s top diplomat said Friday that more time is required to unravel a dispute between countries involved in the Iran nuclear agreement, as the Europeans struggle to keep alive a deal hampered by U.S. sanctions.On Jan. 15, Britain, France and Germany reluctantly triggered the accord’s dispute resolution mechanism to force Iran into discussions on possible violations of the deal. That started a process that could result in the resumption of U.N. and EU sanctions on Iran if no solution is found.But EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is coordinating the effort to resolve the standoff, said the three European powers involved in the 2015 deal limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic incentives agree “that more time is needed due to the complexity of the issues involved.”“The timeline is therefore extended,” Borrell said in a statement. The dispute mechanism provides for a period of about one month, which can be prolonged if all parties agree, to resolve any disagreement. But Borrell has declined to confirm that the one-month clock has actually started ticking.Borrell also underlined that during his consultations in recent days all parties that continue to adhere to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, “reconfirmed their determination to preserve the agreement which is in the interest of all.”The accord, which Iran signed with the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, China and Russia, has been unraveling since President Donald Trump pulled Washington out in 2018 and reinstated sanctions designed to cripple the Islamic Republic under what the U.S. called a “maximum pressure” campaign.Borrell said the so-called joint commission on the deal will meet again in February , without providing a precise date. He noted that beyond the dispute over Iran’s alleged violations, participants are also trying to address “the wider impacts of the withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA and its re-imposition of sanctions.”Iran announced early this month what it said was its fifth and final step in violating the deal, saying it would no longer abide by any limitation to its enrichment activities following the U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.But the International Atomic Energy Agency, which officially monitors whether Tehran is respecting the deal, has not signaled any new violations since then.
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Authorities in Spain say the death toll from a storm that devastated the eastern part of the country this week has risen to at least 12 with rescuers searching for several missing persons.
    
Emergencies services for the northeastern Catalonia region said late Thursday that a fourth death caused by storm Gloria in the region had been confirmed. That took the national count to at least 12.
    
Rescuers were still searching Friday for three missing people in the Balearic Islands and for a fishing boat with six on board that has gone missing off Spain’s southern coast.
    
A British man and a Spaniard are feared to have been swept away by high waves on the island of Ibiza, authorities said. Another Spaniard is missing on the nearby island of Mallorca.
    
Government official Lucrecio Fernandez said an overnight search by Spanish rescuers for the missing fishing boat is continuing with the assistance of a Moroccan frigate.
    
The storm has lasted for six days, accompanied by heavy winds, snow and hail. Weather authorities said the worst of it had passed on Wednesday, although some areas of southern Spain are under a weather warning for rain and winds.
    
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is meeting with his Cabinet on Friday to discuss aid for the hardest-hit regions.
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