A powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck southern Mexico late Tuesday near the beach resort of Acapulco, in Guerrero state, leaving at least one person dead. Guerrero state governor Hector Astudillo told a local television a man was struck by a falling utility pole in the nearby city of Coyuca de Benitez. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered 17 kilometers northeast of the resort city of Acapulco, in Guerrero state. In a video message, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said there were no reports of major damages in Guerrero, or elsewhere in the region, including Oaxaca, and Mexico City, where people were running into the streets when buildings began to sway. Mexico’s National Civil Defense said it was conducting reviews in 10 states, but had not received reports of victims nor serious damage.    One of the deadliest earthquakes to strike Mexico occurred off the Michoacán coast on September 19, 1985, killing 10,000 and causing catastrophic damage in the region, including Mexico City. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
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At least 17 patients died after floods swept through a hospital in central Mexico, disrupting the power supply and oxygen therapy, authorities said Tuesday.   The facility in the town of Tula in Hidalgo state was inundated after a river overflowed following heavy rain, the government said on Twitter.   “In this honorable job there are good, very good, bad and very bad days; today is one of the latter days,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador tweeted. “I am very saddened by the death of 17 hospital patients,” he added.   The hospital was flooded in a matter of minutes, and a power cut disrupted oxygen treatment, said Zoe Robledo, general director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security, which operates the facility. The rest of the 56 patients were reported to have been taken to other hospitals.   According to Mexican media, the victims included COVID-19 patients who needed oxygen therapy to stay alive. Images showed medical personnel pushing patients’ stretchers through the water.   The government deployed the military as well as water and electricity board workers to deal with the fallout in Tula, which bore the brunt of heavy rains that have drenched swathes of Mexico. Two people died in Ecatepec, a suburb of Mexico City where flooding turned streets into rivers, officials said. “A lot of water has fallen throughout the Valley of Mexico (where the capital is located) and it will continue to rain,” Lopez Obrador warned. “People living in low-lying areas, for now, move to shelters or high places with family or friends,” he said. 
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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro got a rousing reception from tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital Tuesday in an Independence Day show of support for the right-wing leader embroiled in a feud with the country’s Supreme Court. Bolsonaro, in an address inaudible to many in the crowd far from the loudspeakers, lashed out at the high court and said the nation can no longer accept what he characterized as political imprisonments — a reference to arrests ordered by Justice Alexandre de Moraes.  He warned that the court could “suffer what we don’t want.” The crowd began chanting, “Alexandre out!” His speech followed a helicopter flyover, with those on the ground seized with euphoria at the sight. They shouted, “Legend!” and “I authorize!” — a slogan widely understood as blanket approval of his methods. Some carried banners calling for military intervention to secure Bolsonaro’s hold on power. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro delivers a speech during a demonstration in his support in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2021, on Brazil’s Independence Day. – Fighting record-low poll numbers, a weakening economy and a judiciary he says is…Bolsonaro has called on the Senate to impeach de Moraes, who has jailed several of the president’s supporters for allegedly financing, organizing or inciting violence or disseminating false information. In Sao Paulo, where the president was scheduled to speak in the afternoon, Bolsonaro supporters crammed into the broad Avenue Paulista downtown for a significantly larger rally than the one in Brasilia, while in Rio de Janeiro, they gathered on the road alongside Copacabana Beach. All three cities also featured smaller protests against the president.  Bolsonaro spent almost two months calling on supporters to take part in rallies across the country on Independence Day that could show his continuing political appeal despite slumping poll ratings and a string of setbacks. Critics feared the demonstrations could take a violent turn. Some said they were afraid Bolsonaro could be preparing a tropical version of the January 6 riot in Washington, where supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol alleging he had been robbed of a reelection victory.  Like Trump, Bolsonaro was elected on a pledge to go after a corrupt, entrenched political class. He has also said he might reject the 2022 election results if he loses. Along Brasilia’s esplanade, there was a festive mood, with cold drinks and the scent of grilled meat.  At least 100 military police with riot shields stood in front of Congress, and several dozen formed two lines behind barricades on the road leading to the Supreme Court. At least twice, groups of demonstrators tried to get past the barriers, but officers repelled them with pepper spray.  About 10,000 officers were scattered around the area for the demonstrations, security officials said. Regina Pontes, 53, stood atop a flatbed that advanced toward the police barriers. She said the Brazilian people have every right to enter the area. “You can’t close the door to keep the owner out,” she said. The world’s second-highest COVID-19 death toll, a drumbeat of accusations of wrongdoing in the government’s handling of the pandemic, and surging inflation have weighed on Bolsonaro’s approval ratings. Polls show his nemesis, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could trounce him in a runoff if he enters the race.  Tuesday’s demonstrations “may show that he has millions of people who are ready to stand up and be with him, even when Brazil’s economy is in a bad situation, inflation near 10%, the pandemic and all that,” said Thomas Traumann, a political analyst. “If Bolsonaro feels he has the support of millions of Brazilians, he will go further in his challenging of the Supreme Court,” Traumann added. Bolsonaro’s clash with the Supreme Court has raised fears among his critics, given his frequently expressed nostalgia for the nation’s past military dictatorship. On the eve of Tuesday’s protest, he signed a provisional measure sharply limiting social media platforms’ ability to remove content, restrict its spread or block accounts. A 69-year-old farmer from Minas Gerais state, Clever Greco, came to Brasilia with a group of more than 1,000 others. He said Brazil’s conservatives back Bolsonaro’s call for the removal of two Supreme Court justices by peaceful means. But Greco also likened his trip to deploying for war. “I don’t know what day I’ll go back. I’m prepared to give my blood, if needed,” Greco said. “We’re no longer asking; the people are ordering.”  The U.S. Embassy in Brasilia last week warned Americans to steer clear of the protests. “The risk (that) we see scenes of violence and an institutional crisis that’s unprecedented in Brazil’s recent history still remains and is considerable,” said Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. 
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El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender Tuesday, but the rollout stumbled in its first hours and President Nayib Bukele said the digital wallet used for transactions was not functioning. For part of the morning, El Salvador’s president became tech support for a nation stepping into the world of cryptocurrency. Bukele marshaled his Twitter account — with more than 2.8 million followers — to walk users through what was happening.  Bukele explained that the digital wallet Chivo had been disconnected while server capacity was increased.  The president said it was a relatively simple problem. “We prefer to correct it before we connect it again,” Bukele said. He encouraged followers to download the app and leave comments about how it was going. Meanwhile, the value of Bitcoin plummeted early Tuesday, dropping from more than $52,000 per coin to $42,000, before recovering about half of that loss — an example of the volatility that worries many. Government employees open the customer service area of a Chivo digital wallet machine, which exchanges cash for Bitcoin cryptocurrency, at Las Americas Square in San Salvador, El Salvador, September 7, 2021.The government has promised to install 200 Chivo automatic tellers and 50 Bitcoin attention centers. The Associated Press visited one of the automatic tellers in San Salvador’s historic center, where attendants waited to help citizens, who initially didn’t show much interest.  Asked if he had downloaded the Chivo app, Emanuel Ceballos said he had not. “I don’t know if I’m going to do it. I still have doubts about using that currency.” José Martín Tenorio said he was interested in Bitcoin but had not downloaded the app, either. “I’m running to work. Maybe at home tonight.” In Santa Tecla, a San Salvador suburb, young attendants were waiting to assist people at a help center. Denis Rivera arrived with a friend because they had been trying to download the digital wallet app without success.  He said he didn’t understand why some people “have been scandalized” by Bitcoin. “We’ve been using debit and credit cards for years, and it’s the same electronic money,” he said. He was in favor of it and planned to use the $30 offered by the government as an incentive to try it out. “I’m going to see how efficient it is and practical it can be, and based on that, decide if I keep using it or not.”  Miguel Menjivar, left, sells bread on a street in San Salvador, El Salvador, before sunrise September 7, 2021, on the day all businesses have to accept payments in Bitcoin, except those lacking the technology to do so.José Luis Hernández, owner of a barbershop in the area, came looking for information. “I have a small business and I want to know how to use the application and how are the rates and all of that,” Hernández said. AP confirmed that at least three international fast food chain restaurants were accepting bitcoin payments through the Chivo digital wallet.  David Gerard, author of “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain,” said Tuesday’s Bitcoin volatility likely had little to nothing to do with El Salvador. “My first guess was shenanigans, because it’s always shenanigans,” Gerard said via email. “Bitcoin basically doesn’t respond to market forces or regulatory announcements,” Gerard said. “That sort of price pattern, where it crashes hugely in minutes then goes back up again, is usually one of the big guys burning the margin traders.” Because Bitcoin is so thinly traded, it could also have been a big holder making a large sale to have cash, thus sending the market for a ride, Gerard said. Three face-to-face public opinion surveys performed recently showed that most Salvadorans did not agree with the government’s decision to make Bitcoin legal currency. Bitcoin joins the U.S. dollar as El Salvador’s official currencies. In June, the Legislative Assembly enacted the Bitcoin law, and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration is providing the government with technical assistance. The law says that Bitcoin can be used for any transaction, and any business with the technological capacity to do so must accept payment in the cryptocurrency. The government will back Bitcoin with a $150 million fund. To incentivize Salvadorans to use it, the government offered $30 worth of credit to those who use Chivo. Critics have warned that the currency’s lack of transparency could attract increased criminal activity to the country, and its wild swings in value could quickly wipe out users’ savings. Opposition groups marched in El Salvador to demand the derogation of the law that allows Bitcoin use.  Bukele has said the cryptocurrency — originally created to operate outside government-controlled financial systems — would help attract investment and save Salvadorans money when they transfer earnings in the United States back home to relatives in El Salvador. But its use would be voluntary. 
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Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional, a major victory for advocates of women’s health and human rights, just as parts of the United States enact tougher laws against the practice.The court ruling in the majority Roman Catholic nation follows moves to decriminalize abortion at the state level, although most of the country still has tough laws in place against women terminating their pregnancy early.”This is a historic step for the rights of women,” said Supreme Court Justice Luis Maria Aguilar.A number of U.S. states have recently taken steps to restrict women’s access to abortion, particularly Texas, which last week enacted the strictest anti-abortion law in the country after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.The Mexican ruling opens the door to the possibility for the release of women incarcerated for having had abortions. It also could lead to U.S. women in states such as Texas deciding to travel south of the border to terminate their pregnancies. In July, the state of Veracruz became just the fourth of Mexico’s 32 regions to decriminalize abortion.
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Twenty people linked to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France are going on trial in Paris Wednesday in proceedings expected to last nine months.  Six defendants are being charged in absentia. Reports say five of the six are presumed dead in Iraq or Syria.  Nine Islamic State terrorists, mostly from France and Belgium, left a trail of horror in a multi-pronged attack at the national stadium, various bars and restaurants and at a concert at the Bataclan Theater. A total of 130 people were killed, 90 of them at the concert hall. At least 490 people were injured.A 10th member of the terror cell and the only one still alive, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Brussels four months after the November 13, 2015, strikes. He is accused of helping the others.”This trial is really an important step for the victims, those who have been wounded or injured, and those who lost members of their families,” Michael Dantinne, professor of criminology at the University of Liege, told France 24.He added that “it is only a step in the recovery process of the victims” and that “it won’t have any magical effect.”The trial will be held in a specially constructed court in Paris and is described as the biggest in France’s modern day legal history.Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and AFP.
 
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New research shows that coronavirus vaccines not only offer protection against infection and serious illness – but may also help prevent so-called ‘long COVID’, where symptoms can last for weeks or months. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.Camera: Henry Ridgwell   
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Four years ago, newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron called for Europe to build “the capacity to act autonomously” in security matters so that the continent would be less dependent on the United States and could decide to act without U.S. backing. Most European leaders derided Macron’s idea as far-fetched. “Illusions of European strategic autonomy must come to an end,” said Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defense minister.But in the wake of the U.S.-led withdrawal from Afghanistan, her position has shifted. It is time to make “the European Union a strategic player to be reckoned with,” she announced last week in a commentary for the Atlantic Council, a New York-based think tank. She isn’t alone in rethinking the future of the transatlantic security arrangement. Europe’s opinion pages have been full of columns from politicians and security advisers advocating for the continent to become more independent militarily and less dependent on Washington. European leaders have been decrying President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as precipitous and complain Washington did not consult sufficiently with NATO allies.  Armin Laschet, a contender to succeed Angela Merkel as Germany’s chancellor, said last month: “We’re standing before an epochal change.”Even traditionally pro-American British politicians like Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, and a key partner for the United States in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, questions the reliability of the U.S. as a defense partner. On Monday he said Britain should strengthen its defense partnership with Europe to combat threats. In the U.S. there is “now an overwhelming political constraint on military interventions,” which represents a serious challenge to Britain and NATO, he said, in a speech to mark the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks that precipitated the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.Strategic autonomyHowever, there is little agreement in Europe about what strategic autonomy should mean and what Europe should do with it.,  The 27 member states of the EU have clashed repeatedly over foreign policy, from relations with Russia to whether China is an adversary or competitor. Central European leaders are especially nervous about loosening any defense ties with Washington and remain unconvinced they could rely on the Western Europeans in a confrontation with Russia.And skeptics question whether Europe is really prepared to spend what it would take to become a serious stand-alone strategic player, especially as they struggle with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
 NATO Calls on Russia to Be Transparent With Military Exercises According to a tally by NATO Review, an allied magazine, Russia deployed between 60,000 and 70,000 troops in Zapad-2017 but only declared 12,700 personnel 
On average, European Union countries spend around 1.2 percent of their GDP on defense. Russia spends 4.3 percent while the U.S. spends 3.4 percent. But in a recent debate in the House of Commons, Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative lawmaker and chair of the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said the lesson he drew from the Afghanistan withdrawal was the need to help reinvigorate Britain’s European NATO partners and “to make sure that we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, but that we can work together.”Changes needed?  
 
Lawrence Freedman, the influential emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, suspects the surge in talk about European strategic autonomy, though, is a knee-jerk reaction to what Armin Laschet has described as the “biggest NATO debacle” since the founding of the alliance.“It is always tempting but usually unwise to draw large geopolitical conclusions from specific events, however dramatic and distressing,” he noted in a commentary for The Times of London this week.The United States’ core strategic alliances in Europe and even Asia have weathered plenty of setbacks and disputes in the past, he said.“These alliances were built up over decades and remain in place. They have survived past disagreements and are unlikely to be set aside because the Biden administration mishandled the final withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan,” he added. “The post-mortems on the withdrawal from Afghanistan will most likely conclude that there is no need to make any fundamental policy changes,” he added.Afghan Pullout Hurt Biden Politically, but for How LongExperts are divided on whether the scenes of chaos in Kabul over the past two weeks will have an impact when the 2022 mid-term elections take place  
European interventions with no or little U.S. military support have not fared well. In July Macron announced that France’s anti-jihadist intervention in the volatile Sahel region, involving over 5,000 troops and launched by his predecessor in office, will end next year. The French leader has for years tried to persuade European allies to help shoulder more of the burden of the anti-terror fight in the Sahel, but to no avail. Britain, Denmark, and Sweden provided helicopter capabilities for air-mobility but little else from other European countries aside from some symbolic deployments emerged. In almost a pre-echo of Biden’s reasons for withdrawing from Afghanistan, Macron said: “We cannot secure certain areas because some states simply refuse to assume their duties. Otherwise, it is an endless task.” He added that the “long-term presence” of French troops “cannot be a substitute” for nation states handling their own affairs.Some diplomats suggest the current surge in talk about strategic autonomy will diminish as the shock of withdrawal wears off. They suggest much of the criticism should be seen as displacement activity, a way of coping with antagonistic urges. “They feel bad about leaving [Afghanistan] but they are also relieved to be out of a forever war they know couldn’t be won,” a European envoy in Brussels suggested to VOA. He asked not to be identified for this story.Other diplomats think the transatlantic security bonds will remain tight, but it will take some time for recovery from what they admit was a disorderly withdrawal.It is going to take quite a long time for the West as a whole — because it is a Western failure, a Western disaster, this is not just the UK and the U.S. — to recover from all this, to recover our reputation,” Kim Darroch, former British ambassador to the U.S. and the EU, told the BBC last month. The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, though, says the withdrawal has offered “an opportunity for us to discuss the European Union as a geopolitical actor,” he said. “But this will require unity, in small things and in big things,” he told reporters in Brussels this week.Oxford University historian Timothy Garton Ash agrees. In an interview Tuesday he told the broadcaster Euronews: “President Joe Biden has made the case for what all Europeans are talking about, namely strategic autonomy and European sovereignty.”However, Ash, an advocate for European strategic autonomy, lamented that European powers missed the chance to show what they could do. “There were 2,500 American troops stabilizing Afghanistan. France and Britain alone have 10,000 troops and a rapid reaction force. Why didn’t we have a European conversation about what we could have done about it?”
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tuesday that Hurricane Larry remains a large, powerful Category 3 storm that could threaten Bermuda later in the week.In its latest report, the hurricane center said Larry is still 1,340 kilometers southeast of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of about 195 km/h and is moving toward the northwest. It is a large storm, with hurricane force winds extending outward up to 110 kms from the center, and tropical storm winds extending outward up to 295 kms.Larry is forecast to approach Bermuda during the next couple of days as a large and powerful hurricane, bringing a risk of strong winds, heavy rainfall and coastal flooding to the island by Thursday. Significant swells from Larry should reach the U.S. east coast and Canada’s Atlantic coast by midweek and continue affecting those shores through the end of the week.  The swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.A U.S. Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft was scheduled to fly into Larry’s well-formed eye early Tuesday, and the forecasters are waiting for that data before solidifying their long-range forecast.Meanwhile, forecasters are watching a tropical system of disorganized thunderstorms in the south-central Gulf of Mexico that is expected to move to the northeast toward the southeastern United States in the next 48 hours. The forecasters say there is a 30% chance of an organized storm forming in the next five days.Hurricane Ida, which came ashore August 29 in Louisiana as one of the most powerful storms in U.S. history, went from a tropical depression to a Category 3 hurricane in just over two days. The remnants of Ida killed more than 50 people when it moved through the northeastern U.S. last week.
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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans Tuesday to fulfill a election promise to grapple with the rocketing cost of the long-term care needed by Britain’s growing older population. To do it, he appears set to break another election vow: not to raise taxes. Johnson is scheduled to tell Parliament how his Conservative government will raise billions to fund the care millions of Britons need in the final years of their lives. That burden currently falls largely on individuals, who often have to deplete their savings or sell their homes to pay for care. One in seven people ends up paying more than 100,000 pounds ($138,000), according to the government, which calls the cost of care “catastrophic and often unpredictable.” Meanwhile, funding care for the poor who can’t afford it is placing a growing burden on overstretched local authorities. Johnson has been tight-lipped about his plans, which are being unveiled to the Cabinet on Tuesday morning before he makes a statement in the House of Commons. But the prime minister said late Monday he would “not duck the tough decisions needed.” He is expected to announce an increase in National Insurance payments made by working-age people to fund care and the broader National Health Service, which has been put under immense strain by the coronavirus pandemic. That would break the firm promise in Johnson’s 2019 election platform not to hike personal taxes. Breaking promises is hardly novel for politicians, but those enshrined in British parties’ election manifestos have long been considered binding on governments. Johnson’s rumored plan has alarmed many Conservative lawmakers — both because it involves breaking a firm election commitment, and because the burden would fall on working-age people and not retirees. Jake Berry, one of a crop of Conservative lawmakers representing northern England seats won from the Labour Party with promises of investment and new jobs, said the proposed plan would help affluent, older voters at the expense of younger, poorer ones. And William Hague, a former Conservative leader, said breaking an election promise would be a “loss of credibility when making future election commitments, a blurring of the distinction between Tory and Labour philosophies, a recruiting cry for fringe parties on the right, and an impression given to the world that the U.K. is heading for higher taxes.” Attempts to reform the care system have stymied British governments. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, campaigned in a 2017 election on a plan to cut benefits to retirees and change the way they pay for long-term care. The idea was quickly dubbed a “dementia tax” by opponents, and May ended up losing her majority in Parliament. 
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Christopher Columbus is getting kicked off Mexico City’s most iconic boulevard. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the Columbus statue on the Paseo de la Reforma, often a focal point for Indigenous rights protests, would be replaced by a statue honoring Indigenous women. “To them we owe … the history of our country, of our fatherland,” she said. She made the announcement on Sunday, which was International Day of the Indigenous Woman. The Columbus statue, donated to the city many years ago, was a significant reference point on the 10-lane boulevard, and the surrounding traffic circle is — so far — named for it. That made it a favorite target of spray-paint-wielding protesters denouncing the European suppression of Mexico’s Indigenous civilizations. FILE – Workers clean the statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, surrounded by metal fencing during Columbus Day, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 12, 2020.It was removed last year supposedly for restoration, shortly before October 12, which Americans know as Columbus Day but Mexicans call “Dia de la Raza,” or “Day of the Race” — the anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas in 1492. When the statue was removed last year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador noted that “it is a date that is very controversial and lends itself to conflicting ideas and political conflicts.” This year is the 700th anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlan — what is now Mexico City — as well as the 500th anniversary of its fall to the Spanish conquistadores, and the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s final independence from Spain. Most Mexicans have some indigenous ancestry and are well aware that millions of Indigenous people died from violence and disease during and after the conquest. Sheinbaum said the new statue, “Tlali,” might be ready near the date of Dia de la Raza this year. The Columbus statue isn’t being discarded, but will be moved to a less prominent location in a small park in the Polanco neighborhood. Sheinbaum referred to Columbus “a great international personage.” 
 
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Swedish police said Monday they had arrested two women linked to Islamic State after they flew back from Syria, as media reported that one was being investigated for war crimes. Stockholm police spokesman Ola Osterling said the prosecutor leading the investigation into the two women had ordered their arrest. “We executed that decision when the plane arrived in Stockholm in the afternoon,” Osterling told AFP. A third woman had been taken in for questioning, he added. A statement Monday from the Prosecution Authority said multiple investigations were underway against men and women returning from areas that had been controlled by Islamic State. “The international crimes that are relevant for people returning from IS-controlled areas are war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,” public prosecutor Reena Devgun said in the statement. “Sweden has an international commitment to investigate and prosecute these crimes,” she added. The Prosecution Authority added that it could not comment on individual cases or the number of investigations underway. But public broadcaster SVT reported that at least one of the women arrested was being investigated for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. SVT also reported that the women who had returned Monday had been staying in camps in northern Syria but were deported after Kurdish authorities decided they did not have enough evidence to prosecute them. 
 
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Britain said Monday it is postponing the start of post-Brexit border checks on goods going to Northern Ireland, as it seeks breathing space in its tense standoff with the European Union over trade rules. Brexit Minister David Frost said the government would continue to trade “on the current basis,” maintaining grace periods that the U.K. gave itself after splitting from the EU’s economic embrace at the end of 2020. He did not set a new end date for the grace periods, some of which had been set to finish on September 30. Frost said the standstill would “provide space for potential further discussions” with the EU over the two sides’ deep differences on the Brexit divorce agreement. U.K.-EU relations have soured over trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal the two sides struck before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.  FILE – Lorries and cars disembark from a ferry arriving from Scotland at the P&O ferry terminal in the port at Larne on the north coast of Northern Ireland, Jan. 1, 2021.The regulations are intended to prevent goods from Britain entering the EU’s tariff-free single market while keeping an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland — a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. But the checks have angered Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say they amount to a border in the Irish Sea and weaken Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the U.K.  One of the deferred measures, which had been set to take effect October 1, would ban chilled meats such as sausages from England, Scotland and Wales from going to Northern Ireland. The “sausage war” has been the highest-profile element of the U.K.-EU dispute, raising fears that Northern Ireland supermarkets may not be able to sell British sausages, a breakfast staple. The trade tensions have destabilized Northern Ireland’s delicate political balance and raised tensions with the EU, which is calling for Britain to implement the deal it agreed to, and with the U.K. government, which says the rules need fundamental reform.  Britain’s Conservative government is seeking to remove most checks, replacing them with a “light touch” system in which only goods at risk of entering the EU would be inspected.  Frost warned last week that the U.K. and the EU risked entering a long period of “cold mistrust” unless issues around the agreement were resolved. The U.K.’s previous unilateral extension of the grace period angered the EU, which responded by launching legal action. The bloc has since put that action on hold, and the two sides have taken tentative steps to cool the situation. Monday’s announcement by Britain was made with the advance knowledge of the bloc. Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he expected the EU would agree to an extension of the grace periods in order to allow for “deep and meaningful” talks with Britain. 
 
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Russian authorities on Monday blocked a website of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny that instructed supporters how to vote out candidates from the ruling party in polls later this month.   In a statement to AFP, state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said that access to the website votesmart.appspot.com had been blocked in Russia “because it is being used to continue the work… of an extremist organization.”   FILE – A woman crosses the road behind election campaign billboards in Moscow, Aug. 27, 2021.Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place on September 17-19, with nearly all vocal Kremlin critics including Navalny’s allies barred from running.   Navalny, 45, has this year seen his organizations declared “extremist” and banned, while his top aides have fled the country.   After barely surviving a poisoning with nerve agent Novichok last summer, Navalny was jailed in February in what supporters say is punishment for seeking to challenge President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade hold on power.   FILE – A still image from CCTV footage published by Life.Ru shows what is said to be jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny speaking with a prison guard at the IK-2 corrective penal colony in Pokrov, Russia, in this image released Apr. 2, 2021.Roskomnadzor earlier barred access to dozens of websites linked to Navalny, including his main site navalny.com.   Last week the media regulator also urged Google and Apple to remove an app dedicated to Navalny’s “Smart Voting” campaign from their app stores, but they have yet to respond.   The “Smart Voting” tactic has led the increasingly unpopular United Russia party, currently polling at less than 30%, to lose a number of seats in recent local elections. 
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Four alleged members of an Irish crime gang and five other defendants went on trial Monday in France accused of trafficking rhino horn and ivory to markets in east Asia. French prosecutors started a probe in 2015 after police discovered several elephant tusks and 32,800 euros ($38,900) in cash in a BMW during a random roadway traffic inspection. Prosecutors say the occupants of the car, who claimed they were antique dealers, were members of the Rathkeale Rovers, an Irish crime gang with roots in the Irish Traveller community. The nine defendants on trial in the town of Rennes, which include alleged traders of Chinese and Vietnamese origin, face up to 10 years in jail and heavy fines, although two of those charged are on the run. “We’re hoping for heavy sentences including fines to dissuade people from taking part in smuggling activities which encourage the cruelty of poaching,” Charlotte Nithart, head of French anti-poaching charity Robin des Bois, told AFP.  Nithart, who was in court as an observer, said that the case files and the first day of hearings underlined how Europe, and European auction houses, played a role in supplying east Asia with horns and tusks. “What you can see in the intercepted telephone records is that the supply comes from lots of different towns in France and around Europe. The networks are well structured,” she added. Many of the objects are old ornaments and antiques, but the seizures by police of several tusks that are less than 20 years old suggest that recently poached animal parts are also being traded. As part of their investigation, French police also found that tusks and rhino horns were being turned into powder, flakes, and other objects on French soil before being exported to Vietnam and China. Vietnamese defendant David Ta, a 51-year-old owner of an export company in the Paris region, denied illegally trafficking protected animals, despite the discovery of 14 tusks on a pallet at his home. “I’m a collector. It’s a passion,” he told the court. Four suspected members of the Rathkeale Rovers — Tom Greene, Richard O’Riley, Edward Gammel, and Daniel MacCarthy — are accused of supplying horns and tusks to exporters in France with links to China and Vietnam. An exceptionally large horn weighing nearly 15 kilos seized from the gang during the investigation would have earned around $15 million once processed at Asian market prices at the time, according to the Robin des Bois group. The organized crime group from the Limerick region of western Ireland “have many activities, but what is of interest to us is their speciality in trading rhino horns,” Nithart said. They have been linked to thefts from museums and private collections. There were suspicions they had been involved in the shocking 2017 killing of a white rhino in Thoiry zoo outside Paris. The animal’s horn was hacked off in a grisly overnight raid. The Rathkeale Rovers were the target of a joint investigation by European police in 2010 that led to 31 people being arrested, including for the theft of rhino horns, according to the Europol police agency’s website. Two members were arrested in the United States in 2010 after paying undercover investigators in Colorado about $17,000 for four black rhino horns. 
 
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A court in Belarus on Monday sentenced two leading opposition activists to lengthy prison terms, the latest move in the relentless crackdown Belarusian authorities have unleashed on dissent in the wake of last year’s anti-government protests.     Maria Kolesnikova, a top member of the opposition Coordination Council, has been in custody since her arrest last September. A court in Minsk found her guilty of conspiring to seize power, creating an extremist organization and calling for actions damaging state security and sentenced her to 11 years in prison.      FILE – Maxim Znak, Belarus’ opposition activist and lawyer of Maria Kolesnikova, attends a court hearing in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 4, 2021.Lawyer Maxim Znak, another leading member of the Coordination Council who faced the same charges, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.      Kolesnikova, who helped coordinate monthslong opposition protests that erupted after an August 2020 presidential vote, resisted authorities’ attempts to force her to leave the country.      Kolesnikova and Znak stood trial behind closed doors, with their families only allowed to be present at the sentencing hearing on Monday.      “For many, Maria has become an example of resilience and the fight between good and evil. I’m proud of her,” Kolesnikova’s father, Alexander, told The Associated Press on Monday. “It’s not a verdict, but rather the revenge of the authorities.” Belarus was shaken by months of protests fueled by President Alexander Lukashenko’s being awarded a sixth term after the August 2020 presidential vote that the opposition and the West denounced as a sham. He responded to the demonstrations with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police. Kolesnikova, 39, has emerged as a key opposition activist, appearing at political rallies and fearlessly walking up to lines of riot police and making her signature gesture – a heart formed by her hands.     Kolesnikova spent years playing flute in the nation’s philharmonic orchestra after graduating from a conservatory in Minsk and studying Baroque music in Germany.     In 2020, she headed the campaign of Viktor Babariko, the head of a Russian-owned bank who made a bid to challenge Lukashenko but was barred from the race after being jailed on money laundering and tax evasion charges that he dismissed as political. Babariko was sentenced to 14 years in prison two months ago.      FILE – Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya speaks during her news conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)Kolesnikova then joined forces with former English teacher Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was running in place of her jailed husband Sergei, an opposition blogger, as the main candidate standing against Lukashenko, and Veronika Tsepkalo, wife of another potential top contender who had fled the country fearing arrest.     The three appeared together at colorful campaign events that were in stark contrast to Lukashenko’s Soviet-style gatherings.      In September 2020, as Belarus was shaken by mass protests, the largest of which drew up to 200,000 people, KGB agents drove Kolesnikova to the border between Belarus and Ukraine in an attempt to expel her from the country. In the neutral zone between the two countries, Kolesnikova managed to rip up her passport, broke out of the car and walked back into Belarus, where she was immediately arrested.      Just before the start of her trial last month, Kolesnikova said in a note from prison that authorities offered to release her from custody if she asks for a pardon and gives a repentant interview to state media. She insisted that she was innocent and rejected the offer. 
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Mexican border agents and police broke up a caravan of hundreds of migrants Sunday who had set out from southernmost Mexico — the fourth such caravan officials have raided in recent days.The group of about 800 — largely Central Americans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans — had spent then night at a basketball court near Huixtla, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) up the road from the border city of Tapachula where they had been kept awaiting processing by Mexican immigration officials.But shortly before dawn, immigration agents backed by police with anti-riot gear went into the crowd, pushing many into trucks.Hundreds of the migrants escaped running toward a river and hid in the vegetation.“They began to hit me all over,” a woman said amid tears, alleging that police also beat her hustband and pulled one of her daughters from her arms.“Until they give me my daughter, I’m not leaving,” she told an Associated Press camera crew. But immigration agents surrounded the woman, her husband nd other child and detained them.The group was at least the fourth to be broken up over the past week after heading out north in a caravan, frustrated by the slow pace of immigration processing and poor conditions in Tapachula, where they are unable to work legally.The government has insisted that excessive force against a Haitian migrant caught on camera the past weekend was an aberration and two immigration agents were suspended.Mexico has faced immigration pressures from the north, south and within its own borders in recent weeks as thousands of migrants have crossed its southern border, the United States has sent thousands more back from the north and a U.S. court has ordered the Biden administration to renew a policy of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for long periods of time.President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday the strategy of containing migrants in the south was untenable on its own and more investment is needed in the region to keep Central Americans from leaving their homes.Thousands of mostly Haitian migrants stuck in Tapachula have increasingly protested in recent weeks. Many have been waiting there for months, some up to a year, for asylum requests to be processed.Mexico’s refugee agency has been overwhelmed. So far this year, more than 77,000 people have applied for protected status in Mexico, 55,000 of those in Tapachula, where shelters are full.Unable to work legally and frustrated by the delay and poor conditions, hundreds have set out north.
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Four years ago, European leaders chided then U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on America’s southern border with Mexico. “We have a history and a tradition that we celebrate when walls are brought down and bridges are built,” admonished Federica Mogherini, then the EU’s foreign policy chief.  
 
But Europe now is accelerating its own wall-building for fear of future migration crises.  Afghan migrants hide from security forces in a tunnel under train tracks after crossing illegally into Turkey from Iran, near Tatvan in Bitlis province, Turkey, Aug. 23, 2021. 
In the near-term European Union governments are worried about an influx of Afghans and are hoping to persuade Afghanistan’s near neighbors to corral those fleeing the Taliban. 
  
The U.N.’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has warned that up to 500,000 Afghans could flee their homeland by the end of the year. EU officials say they are considering spending a billion euros to induce Afghanistan’s neighbors to act as gatekeepers. But Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan appear reluctant and have warned they are only prepared to serve as transit countries for Afghan asylum-seekers. Saturday Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said a potential refugee wave toward Europe must not take place. Recently French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should “anticipate and protect itself from a wave of migrants” from Afghanistan.  
 
That counsel is being heeded by other European national leaders eager to stop Afghan refugees from entering Europe en masse, thereby hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2015-16 migration crisis, when more than a million asylum-seekers from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia entered Europe, roiling European politics and fueling the rise of populist nationalist parties. FILE – Migrants stand in front of a barrier at the border with Hungary near the village of Horgos, Serbia, Sept.15, 2015.Last week at an emergency meeting in Brussels the interior ministers of the 27 EU member-states agreed “to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled, large-scale, illegal migration movements faced in the past.”   The prospects of more Afghan refugees appearing on their borders has acted as a spur for Central European, Baltic and Balkan states to complete planned walls and to erect more razor-wire fences. Greece last month completed a 40-kilometer wall along its land border with Turkey and installed an automated surveillance system to try to prevent asylum seekers from reaching Europe.  FILE – A policeman patrols alongside a steel wall at Evros River, near the village of Poros, at the Greek -Turkish border, Greece, May 21, 2021.“We cannot wait, passively, for the possible impact,” Greece’s citizen protection minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, said announcing the completion of the project. “Our borders will remain safe and inviolable,” he added. Asylum-seekers from Afghanistan have made up 45% of recent arrivals to the Greek Islands this year, according to figures from the U.N. refugee agency. 
  
In an interview Monday with Politico.eu, a news site, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson played down the determination of member states to keep the doors firmly bolted, saying she is convening a high-level resettlement forum later this month where member states, Britain, the U.S. and Canada will discuss commitments to resettle specific numbers of Afghan refugees.  
 
“Of course, it’s voluntary but I expect them to step up,” she said. But several states, including Greece, Austria and Hungary, have already said they won’t.  FILE – Migrants and refugees cross the border between Hungary and Austria, near Nickelsdorf, Austria, Sept. 10, 2015. 
On Saturday, the EU’s migration commissioner, Margaritis Schinas noted the bloc’s external borders are much stronger now than they were when the continent was rocked by the 2015-16 migration influx, prompting a wave of wall building.  EU member states have collectively constructed more than 1,000 kilometers of border walls or barbed-wire fences in recent years.Each day sees more wall building. In the 1990s there were just two  walls built, by 2017 that jumped to 15. Spain, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Lithuania and Poland have all in recent years completed new external walls.  FILE – Bulgarian border police personnel stand next to a barbed wire wall fence erected on the Bulgaria-Turkey border near the town of Lesovo, on Sept. 14, 2016.France, Slovenia and Austria have even built border walls since 2015 along parts of their shared borders with other EU countries.  
 
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have been frantically wall-building and militarizing their borders with Belarus to stop record numbers of migrants, mainly from Iraq, crossing their borders.Poland Could Declare State of Emergency at Belarus Border Poland refuses entry to migrants, claiming Belarus is using them as political weapons They accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating migrant crossings as a form of “hybrid warfare” against the EU for imposing sanctions in the wake of last year’s disputed elections, which were widely seen as rigged. 
  
At a press conference last month, Lukashenko denied Belarus was seeking to blackmail Europe by trying to create a migrant crisis, but said he was reacting to foreign pressure.“We are not blackmailing anyone with illegal immigration,” he told journalists in Minsk’s Independence Palace. “We’re not threatening anyone. But you have put us in such circumstances that we are forced to react. And we’re reacting,” he said. 
  
But it isn’t only the weaponization of migrants by EU foes or the more immediate turmoil in Afghanistan that’s caught the attention of worried EU policymakers and national leaders. A series of recent studies suggest that Europe will see much larger migration challenges in the coming decades.  Migrants wait to disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin, in the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, Sept. 1, 2021. 
In a paper published earlier this year, researchers at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies warned that between now and 2030, climate change and conflict and political dysfunction in the EU’s neighboring regions, alongside massive population growth in Africa, will inevitably lead to a substantial increase in the numbers of people trying to migrate to the EU. 
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Dozens of relatives of the 298 victims of Malaysian Airlines flight 17, shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in 2014, will begin giving testimony on Monday at the murder trial of four fugitive suspects accused of carrying out the attack.The aircraft was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by what international investigators and prosecutors say was a Russian surface-to-air missile.Three Russians and a Ukrainian citizen, all suspected of having key roles in the separatist forces, are on trial for murder. Moscow has refused to extradite those in Russia and denies all responsibility. The Dutch government holds Moscow responsible.The plane crashed in a field in territory held by pro-Russian separatists fighting against Ukrainian forces.The court has scheduled three weeks to hear the relatives speak and will also review around a hundred written statements provided by other family members.Ria van der Steen will be the first of 90 relatives from eight countries who will be allowed to address judges and defense lawyers about the impact of the crash on their lives.After years of collecting evidence, a team of international investigators concluded in May 2018 that the launcher used to fire the missile belonged to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade.The fugitive suspects have been on trial for a year and a half. Only one sent lawyers to represent him so the case is not considered to be entirely tried in absentia under Dutch law.Proceedings moved to a critical stage in June when prosecutors began presenting evidence and will start calling witnesses.
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Hundreds of supporters of two Canadian men being held on what Ottawa says are specious charges marched 7,000 steps through the Canadian capital on Sunday to mark the pair’s 1,000th day of “unjust” detention in China. Similar events in support of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were held elsewhere in Canada and across the world in cities including Brussels, New York, Washington, Seoul and Singapore. “These are unjust detentions,” Kovrig’s wife Vina Nadjibulla told AFP. “These marches are about solidarity with our Michaels, they’re about honoring their strength and resilience and also calling for action to finally break the stalemate, to bring them home and do everything possible to end this injustice,” Nadjibulla said at the start of the rally. The two men were arrested in December 2018 and accused of espionage in what Ottawa has said was retaliation for its detention on a US warrant of a prominent Chinese national, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. A decision is expected in coming months on whether to send Meng to the United States to face fraud charges related to alleged violations of Iran sanctions by the Chinese tech giant.   Spavor, a businessman, and former diplomat Kovrig went on trial in March. Spavor was handed an 11-year jail sentence just as final arguments in Meng’s extradition trial got underway last month. No decision has been announced in Kovrig’s case.   The seemingly tit-for-tat arrests plunged Ottawa-Beijing relations into a deep freeze, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling the charges against the Michaels “trumped up.”   On Sunday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned what he called “arbitrary detentions” by China. “We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Canada and the international community in calling for the PRC to release, immediately and unconditionally, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig,” Blinken said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China. ‘A difficult milestone’ The Ottawa rally was attended by Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau and several opposition MPs, as well as the US ambassador to Ottawa. “This is a difficult milestone,” Nadjibulla, holding back tears, told the crowd. “It’s been 1,000 days — the heartbreak, the pain, the injustice is real. The heaviness, I feel it, we all feel it.”   She said her husband had described his ordeal in letters from prison, adding, “One of the things that he does in his windowless, small cell every day is to pace 7,000 steps.” “He walks in circles, 7,000 steps, often holding a book, reading, reciting songs, prayers — five kilometers of courage and contemplation. And today, he will not be alone in that walk. We will accompany him, all of us,” she said. “He knows that this event is happening,” she added. “He knows that we’re with him. That gives him strength.”   Michael Spavor’s brother Paul told reporters his brother “spends a lot of his time reading, meditating, doing yoga.” “One thousand days is a long time,” he said. “Today is just another day, but it’s another day that goes by without our Michaels being back with us.”   
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Qatar on a trip that will also take him to Germany for talks with important U.S. allies on the situation in Afghanistan. “Departing for Doha, Qatar and Ramstein, Germany where I’ll have the opportunity to thank our Qatari and German friends in-person for the outstanding support they’ve given to safely transit U.S. citizens, Afghans, and other evacuees from Afghanistan,” Blinken tweeted late Sunday. Qatar was a key hub for the massive U.S. airlift out of Kabul and a first point of landing for thousands of Afghan refugees following last month’s Taliban takeover. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is also visiting U.S. allies in the Middle East to thank them for their help in the evacuations from Afghanistan, and with U.S. troops. His stops include Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. “I’m on my way to the Gulf to personally thank our partners there for supporting the Afghanistan evacuation effort. Operation ALLIED REFUGE would not have been possible with our friends in the Gulf. Their support saved lives,” Austin tweeted Sunday.U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives to board an aircraft from Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Sept. 5, 2021, to travel to Doha, Qatar and Ramstein, Germany.Blinken told reporters Friday that while in Germany he will head to Ramstein U.S. Air Force Base to thank the U.S. troops and meet with Afghan refugees.    Blinken also said he will head a virtual 20-nation ministerial meeting on Afghanistan Wednesday alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. He said the 20 countries “all have a stake in helping to relocate and resettle Afghans and in holding the Taliban to their commitments.” The Taliban have promised to grant safe passage to those Afghans and others who want to leave the country, but many Afghans doubt the reliability of their pledges.  In his remarks Friday, Blinken again defended the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, saying a relatively small number of American citizens remain in the country and the State Department is in active contact with all of them.  He said the U.S. remains committed to helping any American who wants to leave and to helping Special Immigrant Visa candidates and other Afghans who have helped the United States.    The Biden administration has come under criticism from Republican lawmakers, human rights groups and others for its handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control in Kabul on August 15. 
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The sole surviving member of the terror cell that massacred 130 people in Paris in November 20 was a pot-smoking party man who dabbled in petty crime before falling in thrall to the Islamic State group. All eyes will be on Salah Abdeslam on Wednesday when he goes on trial in Paris along with 19 others over the worst terror attack in France’s history. But those hoping that the so-called 10th man of the Islamic State attacks will tell all about what drove him to be part of the macabre plot risk being disappointed. Since his arrest after a massive four-month manhunt that ended in a shootout with police in Belgium, Abdeslam has maintained near-total silence on his role in the bloodshed.   Nine other gunmen and suicide bombers died in the carnage, including Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up in a bar.  Like Brahim he was equipped with a suicide belt, but he did not activate the device, which was found in a rubbish bin in southern Paris several days after the killings. The 31-year-old, who has French citizenship but grew up in Belgium, is accused of playing a key logistical role in the attacks. He drove the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France to their destination.  Abdeslam also rented cars and hideouts and drove across Europe in the months before the attacks to collect jihadists who had slipped into the continent unnoticed among masses of migrants. He told police shortly after his arrest that he too had been primed to carry out a suicide attack at Stade de France, one of six venues targeted in the Paris attacks, but that he had backed out at the last minute.   Investigators have cast doubt on that claim, saying they believe he was intent on seeing through his mission but was hamstrung by a faulty explosive belt. Whatever the outcome of the trial he is likely to spend many years behind bars, being just three years into a 20-year sentence for attempted murder over the firefight with Belgian police. One of the world’s most-wanted suspects spent the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks eating fries and chatting with two unsuspecting teenagers in the stairwell of a Paris high-rise while waiting to be driven across the border to Belgium. It was only when his mugshot was released by police days later that the pair realized the man who was looking over their shoulder at a news item about the attacks was one of the chief suspects.  In the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, where he grew up, Abdeslam was known for his bad-boy lifestyle of petty crime, smoking weed and gambling. An inveterate clubber, he also had a reputation as a womanizer.   His multiple brushes with the law included a conviction for attempted robbery in 2010 with a childhood friend, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the coordinator of the Paris attacks who was shot dead by French police in a siege a week later. Abdeslam, who grew up in a family of five children, worked as a technician for the Brussels tram network but was fired for skipping work in 2011. In later years, he spent much of his time hanging out in a cafe run by Brahim. Friends of the brothers say they became hooked on the Islamic State after the Sunni radical group proclaimed a caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014. They say they stopped drinking, showed a new-found interest in Islam and huddled with other would-be jihadists to imbibe IS propaganda.   In February 2015, Belgian police summoned Salah Abdeslam to discuss Abaaoud who had appeared in a gruesome video from Syria, showing him driving a pick-up truck that was dragging mutilated bodies to a mass grave.  “Apart from the jihad, he’s a good guy,” said Abdeslam, who claimed to oppose IS thinking despite having also shown interest in traveling to Syria. His rare public utterances since his arrest have shown he remains wedded to Islamist ideology. At his Belgian trial in 2018 he rejected the court’s legitimacy saying he trusted only “in Allah.” During questioning by a French magistrate in 2018 he justified terror attacks on France saying: “Muslims defend themselves against those who attack them.” An unrepentant Abdeslam is also believed to be the author of a letter found by Belgian police on a computer in 2016, in which he declared he “would have liked to be among the martyrs” and is ready to “finish the job.” His former Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary, was scathing about his client in a newspaper interview in 2016, although this is disputed by his lawyer in the current trial, Olivia Ronen. “He has the intelligence of an empty ashtray. He’s extraordinarily vacuous,” Mary said. “I asked him if he had read the Koran, and he replied that he had researched it on the internet,” Mary said. 
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Brazil’s World Cup qualifying match against Argentina was dramatically suspended shortly after it began Sunday as controversy over COVID-19 protocols erupted.The match at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena between the two giants of South American football came to a halt when a group of Brazilian public health officials came onto the pitch, triggering a melee involving team staff and players.Argentina’s players trudged off the pitch to the locker room as the furor raged. Argentina captain Lionel Messi later re-emerged from the tunnel without his team shirt on as confusion swept around the stadium.The stunning intervention came just hours after Brazil’s health authorities said four players in Argentina’s squad based in England should be placed in “immediate quarantine” for breaching COVID-19 protocols.According to Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), Premier League players Giovani Lo Celso (Tottenham), Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa), Emiliano Buendia (Aston Villa) and Cristian Romero (Tottenham) provided “false information” upon their entry to Brazil.Romero, Lo Celso and Martinez were all in the Argentina starting lineup that kicked off Sunday’s game, triggering the intervention onto the field of officials wearing ANVISA shirts.The four Premier League players were accused of failing to disclose that they had spent time in the United Kingdom in the 14 days prior to their arrival.”We got to this point because everything that ANVISA directed, from the first moment, was not fulfilled,” ANVISA director Antonio Barra Torres said on Brazilian television.”(The four players) were directed to remain isolated while awaiting deportation, but they did not comply. They went to the stadium and they entered the field, in a series of breaches,” the official added.A government order dating from June 23 prohibits the entry into Brazilian territory of any foreign person from the United Kingdom, India or South Africa, to prevent the spread of variants of the coronavirus.”ANVISA considers that this situation represents a serious health risk and recommends that the local health authorities (of Sao Paulo) order the immediate quarantine of the players, who are prohibited from taking part in any activity and from remaining on Brazilian territory,” the agency said in a statement earlier Sunday.ANVISA said Brazil’s Federal Police had been notified so that “the necessary measures are taken immediately.”Brazilian website Globoesporte said the Argentina Football Association (AFA) could request an exceptional authorization from authorities in Sao Paulo to allow the players to take the field against Brazil.The controversy comes after nine Brazilians based in the Premier League failed to travel to South America following objections from their clubs.
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Arriving in a military helicopter, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro was inaugurated in the state’s old capital on Sunday amid clashes between police and protesters who oppose continued Serb influence in the tiny Balkan nation.Hospital officials in the city of Cetinje said at least 60 people were injured, including 30 police officers, in clashes that saw police launch tear gas against the demonstrators, who hurled rocks and bottles at them and fired gunshots into the air. At least 15 people were arrested.Sunday’s inauguration ceremony angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, which declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006. Since Montenegro split from Serbia, pro-independence Montenegrins have advocated for a recognized Orthodox Christian church that is separate from the Serbian one.Evading road blockades set up by the demonstrators, the new head of the Serbian church in Montenegro, Metropolitan Joanikije, arrived in Cetinje by a helicopter along with the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije. TV footage showed the priests being led into the Cetinje monastery by heavily armed riot police holding a bulletproof blanket to shield them.Patriarch Porfirije later wrote on Instagram that he was happy that the inauguration was held but added that he was “horrified by the fact” that someone near the monastery wanted to prevent the ceremony “with a sniper rifle.” The claim could not be immediately independently verified.The demonstrators set up barriers with trash bins, tires and large rocks to try to prevent church and state dignitaries from coming to the inauguration. Chanting, “This is Not Serbia!” and “This is Montenegro!,” many of the protesters spent the night at the barriers amid reports that police were sending reinforcements to break through the blockade. Tires at one blockade were set on fire.Montenegrins remain deeply divided over their country’s ties with neighboring Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is the nation’s dominant religious institution. Around 30% of Montenegro’s 620,000 people consider themselves Serb.Metropolitan Joanikije said after the ceremony that “the divisions have been artificially created and we have done all in our power to help remove them, but that will take a lot of time.”In a clear demonstration of the sharp political divide in Montenegro, President Milo Djukanovic, the architect of the state’s independence from Serbia, visited Cetinje while the current pro-Serb Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic went to Podgorica to welcome the Serbian patriarch.While Krivokapic branded the protests as “an attempted terrorist act,” Djukanovic said the protesters in Cetinje were guarding national interests against the alleged bid by the much larger Serbia to impose its influence in Montenegro through the church.Djukanovic accused the current Montenegrin government of “ruthlessly serving imperial interests of (Serbia) and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is a striking fist of Serbian nationalism, all against Montenegro.”Montenegro’s previous authorities led the country to independence from Serbia and defied Russia to join NATO in 2017. Montenegro also is seeking to become a European Union member.In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic, who has been accused by the opposition in Montenegro of meddling in its internal affairs in conjunction with Russia, congratulated Joanikije on his inauguration and praised the government for going ahead with the ceremony despite the clashes.”Cetinje is a town where some 90% of the people are against the Serbian Orthodox Church, where there is hate towards everyone who is not Montenegrin,” Vucic said in Belgrade. “This is not a real hate, it’s hate that is induced by certain politicians in Montenegro, so it was quite logical to expect what happened there.”The U.S. government urged all sides “to urgently de-escalate the situation.”  “Religious freedom and the freedom of expression, including to peacefully assemble, must be respected,” the U.S. embassy said.Joanikije’s predecessor as church leader in Montenegro, Amfilohije, died in October after contracting COVID-19.
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