Five Japanese fishing vessels were seized Wednesday by Russia in the country’s far east — the latest in a series of incidents over fishing rights that lay bare a larger Russo-Japanese territorial dispute dating back to the end of World War II.  The Japanese ships were fishing for octopus when they were overtaken by Russian border patrol investigating claims of illegal poaching in Russian waters, said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga in comments on Wednesday.FILE – Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, speaks during a press conference at the prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo, Sept. 11, 2019.”This is unacceptable,” added Suga in a press conference in Tokyo. “The government is strongly demanding, from a humanitarian perspective, the early release of the crew and ships.”Back in Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova confirmed the incident had taken place a day earlier and insisted Japan had repeatedly — and once again —  violated maritime law concerning natural resources.”Unfortunately, what you say, happened,” said Zakharova in addressing the issue when pressed by journalists.   She also insisted the Japanese fishermen were being given all necessary food, clothing, and medical aid while in custody.  Past is prologueAt the real heart of the issue: a lingering dispute over four small islands the Soviet Union seized from Japan at the end of World War II, which have kept Moscow and Tokyo — formally, at least — at war all these years.Japan insists the four Russian-held islands, which it calls the Northern Territories, must be returned.  FILE – A Russian vessel is seen off the coast of the Southern Kuril island of Shikotan, Sept. 14, 2015. The Southern Kurils are referred to in Japan as the Northern Territories.Russia, which refers to the islands as the Southern Kurils, insists the islands are legitimate spoils of war back from the days when Japan was part the World War II Axis powers, along with Nazi Germany.  Despite decades of negotiations, increased cultural exchanges, and occasional hints at a breakthrough, the island dispute has kept any peace treaty from ever being signed.Both sides insist the islands are theirs. So, too, do their populations.  New century, new bargain?  The latest push for a compromise came from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who unexpectedly announced at a Far Eastern economic forum in 2018 that he was eager to sign a deal “without preconditions” within a matter of months.  The gesture set off a new flurry of diplomatic activity by both sides that ultimately stalled on a key Russian demand: that Japan recognize Russia’s right to the territory before Russia would gift back to Japan two of the smaller islands.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attend a news conference at the G-20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. Equally vexing are Russia’s concerns over post-war Japan’s longstanding alliance with the United States. Despite Japanese assurances, the Kremlin has called the mere possibility of an American military on the islands a non-starter for negotiations.  Then there is public opinion. A 2018 Russian poll by the respected Levada Center found 74% of Russians were against handing over any of the territory.Yet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has indicated he sees a deal on the islands as central to his political legacy as the country’s longest-serving leader.   Also of interest, say observers, are the generational ambitions at play.  Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, also had come tantalizingly close to reaching a deal with the Soviets over the island issue during his own tenure as prime minister from 1957-60.Despite the continued impasse, both Moscow and Tokyo insist discussions will continue.   Indeed, even as the news spread of Russia’s seizure of the Japanese ships, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi was in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that begin Thursday.     Their primary topic of discussion? A peace deal long awaited, and — if history is a lesson — perhaps out of reach for a bit longer.  
 
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Bryan Russell has Down syndrome and does daily speech exercises, putting pens and corks in his mouth to help build up low muscle tone there. He is also waging a long-shot bid to become a national Peruvian lawmaker, going door to door in Lima to ask for votes.Russell, 27, wants to use his campaign to raise awareness about people with developmental disabilities and he says he represents an alternative to the scourge of corruption in Peru that has brought down presidents and weakened democratic institutions.”I’m someone clean, honest, transparent,” Russell said in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke while sitting next to Amor, a pet dog he rescued from the street.The purpose of politicking, he said, is to “break the paradigm” that people with Down syndrome can’t be independent.FILE – Congressional candidate Bryan Russell, right, kisses his mother Gladys Mujica at his home, in Lima, Peru, Dec. 13, 2019.Russell may be the first person with Down syndrome to run for public office anywhere, according to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.”We are thrilled that Bryan Russell is running for Congress in Peru,” said Michelle Sie Whitten, president and CEO of the foundation. “As far as we know, he is the first professional who has Down syndrome running for a publicly elected office, and he is showing the world that we need diversity in all areas of society including in our governments.”In 2013, Angela Bachiller, who has Down syndrome, became a city councilor in Valladolid, Spain. But she didn’t run for election, instead taking over the post after her predecessor resigned because of corruption allegations.Down syndrome is a genetic abnormality that causes developmental delays and medical conditions such as heart defects and respiratory and hearing problems.Russell is a candidate for Peru-Nacion, a center-right party that is not widely known and has fared poorly in past elections. However, Russell’s bold campaign ahead of the Jan. 26 parliamentary elections is getting attention. He was invited to speak at a leftist forum where he asked people to fight for people like him, regardless of political leanings.”I want people with my condition to have a voice,” said Russell, who studied communications at the Peruvian San Ignacio de Loyola University and said his parents encouraged him to find his own way.”I learned how to read and write, walk, run and eat, basically to respect myself,” the candidate has written.FILE – Congressional candidate Bryan Russell campaigns at San Martin Plaza in Lima, Peru, Dec. 13, 2019.”Well this is really impressive, because Bryan is changing the history and that is the most important thing,” said Gladys Mujica, Russell’s mother.Mujica, an English teacher, described her son as a “symbol.”‘Give him a chance’Some Peruvians are open to Russell’s campaigning, which consists on a normal day of handing out leaflets while carrying a sign with an image of his face.”He’s looking to do his best. The ‘normal’ people try to steal from the country. That’s a very big difference,” said Carlos Maza, a retired man who said he would vote for Russell.”We have to give him a chance,” said Elena Saavedra, a secretary who shook the candidate’s hand.About 3 million Peruvians have some kind of disability in a country of more than 30 million, according to official figures. There is no data for the number of Peruvians with Down syndrome, though historian Liliana Penaherrera, founder of the Peruvian Society for Down Syndrome, estimates there could be up to 25,000 people with the condition.PrejudicesPeople with Down syndrome struggle to overcome prejudices, including a perception that they are basically big children and can’t make their own decisions, said psychologist Patricia Andrade.As a result, many with Down syndrome live on the margins of society because employers prefer to hire people with other kinds of disabilities, filling a quota of 3% and 5% in workplaces of more than 50 people.Last year, Peru changed its laws to allow people described as disabled to exercise their rights without the intervention of a representative on their behalf. Previously, they needed a guardian to marry, vote, sign a work contract, acquire a credit card and do other things.Penaherrera welcomed Russell’s political candidacy, saying it draws attention to people who struggle against discrimination and the invisibility that society forces upon them.Still, she said, Russell should be held to the same standards as “any other politician” if he gets elected.
 
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A minibus carrying a family to a holiday beach getaway in Mexico crashed into a lumber truck on Wednesday and caught fire, killing 14 people, including five children, authorities said. 
 
Many of the victims were trapped inside the burning minibus, whose charred chassis could be seen impaled on the back of the truck. The accident occurred in Jalisco state, on the highway that runs from the family’s native Guanajuato state to the Pacific beach resort of Puerto Vallarta. 
 
Twelve more people were injured in the pre-dawn crash. Two were in serious condition and were airlifted to a hospital in the state capital, Guadalajara, said state emergency authorities. 
 
Officials said the truck had stopped on the side of the road when the minibus crashed into it. 
 
“It was a tourism service hired by a family” traveling to Puerto Vallarta for the holidays, said Samuel Flores of the Jalisco state civil protection service. 
 
Deadly accidents occur frequently during the Christmas season in Mexico as roads fill with vacationers and revelers. 
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French government and union representatives launched negotiations Wednesday to resolve differences over a pension reform bill that has triggered nationwide transportation strikes and widespread street protests.French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed unifying the country’s 42 pension schemes into a single plan, which critics say could force millions of employees to work beyond the official retirement age of 62.French newly appointed junior minister for pensions, Laurent Pietraszewski leaves the Elysee Palace after the weekly cabinet meeting, Dec.18, 2019 in Paris.At Macron’s request, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe began talks with union leaders, but a deal with hard-left unions does not appear to be imminent.CGT union leader Philippe Martinez said after the talks that “deep disagreement” remains between the two sides.A close aide to Macron said the president is “willing to improve” the proposed law but won’t “abandon” it.Sources close to Macron said he hopes to strike a deal with more moderate unions, resulting in the weakening of the protest movement.The general strike, which has crippled public transportation and hurt businesses, entered its 14th day on Wednesday.Protests show no signs of abating, as more than 600,000 people demonstrated Tuesday throughout the country.Unions have called for another mass protest on Thursday and balked at the possibility of a Christmas truce.
 
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The European Parliament on Wednesday blasted Poland for creating zones “free from any LGBTI ideology” and suggested closer attention should be paid as a result to EU grants destined for Warsaw.Brussels has already criticized Poland’s conservative government over plans to revamp its judicial system with court reforms which EU authorities fear will leave judges subject to political interference.The EU assembly on Wednesday voted through by 463 votes to 107 a motion calling on Warsaw to “revoke all resolutions” by dozens of municipal authorities targeting gay, lesbian and transgender people.Although the resolutions concerned are not legally binding, they call on local authorities to “abstain from any action encouraging tolerance of LGBTI persons and not to provide any financial assistance to NGOs working for equal rights,” the assembly noted.EU lawmakers also called on the European Union to “control use of all EU funds as a reminder … that such funds should not be used for discriminatory ends.”Looking further afield, the assembly said it was “deeply concerned at the growing number of attacks on lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexuals in the EU by states, officials, national and local governments as well as politicians.”Lawmakers pointed to examples of homophobic language in recent electoral campaigns in Romania, Estonia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary and also Poland.
 
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Prosecutors in Bolivia’s capital issued an arrest warrant against ousted President Evo Morales on Wednesday, accusing him of sedition and terrorism.Interior Minister Arturo Murillo recently brought charges against Morales, alleging he promoted violent clashes that led to 35 deaths during disturbances before and after he left office.Officials say he ordered supporters to blockade cities in order to force the ouster of interim President Jeanine Anez, who took over when Morales resigned on Nov. 10 after a wave of protests and under pressure from the police and military.Morales, who first flew to Mexico and now is based in Argentina, has repeatedly denied the charges as a setup.Morales said Tuesday that he would campaign for the presidential candidate of his party in elections expected within the next several months, though a date has not been set. The candidate from Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party is yet to be chosen, and the former president cannot run in the new elections.Bolivia’s first indigenous president has described the movement that pressured him to leave as a coup d’etat.Fraud allegationsCritics of the long-ruling leader had accused him of using fraud to win a fourth straight term in office in an Oct. 20 vote. An audit by the Organization of American States backed up the allegations, saying it found evidence of vote-rigging.Morales retains a strong following in Bolivia and has an ally in the government of Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, who took office two days before the former Bolivian leader arrived in the country.Bolivia’s interim government has expressed concern that Morales could use Buenos Aires as a campaign headquarters and might plot his return home.
 
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Immigrants convicted of illegally reentering the U.S., driving drunk or committing domestic violence will be barred from claiming asylum under a proposed regulation announced Wednesday by the Trump administration.The proposal, which must go through a public comment period before it is finalized, lists seven criminal areas, including some low-level crimes, that would bar migrants from claiming asylum in addition to federal restrictions already in place. It also would remove a requirement for immigration judges to reconsider some asylum denials.It’s another push to restrict asylum by President Donald Trump’s administration, which claims migrants are gaming the system so they can spend years in the U.S. despite their ineligibility, in part because of a lower bar for initial screenings. Most of the people who claim asylum are fleeing violence, poverty and corruption in their home countries.Immigrant advocates and humanitarian groups have criticized Trump’s hard-line policies as inhumane and have said the U.S. is abdicating its role as a safe haven for refugees.But an immigration court backlog has reached more than 1 million cases, and border agencies were overwhelmed this year by hundreds of thousands of Central American families that require more care-giving and are not easily returned over the U.S.-Mexico border.In an effort to stop the flow of migrants, the Department of Homeland Security, which manages immigration, has sent more than 50,000 migrants back over the border to wait out asylum claims. The migrants often are victimized in violent parts of Mexico and sickened by unsanitary conditions in what have become large refugee camps. Homeland Security officials also have signed agreements with Guatemala and other Central American nations to send asylum seekers there. The first families have already been sent to Guatemala.The Justice Department also has taken aim at so-called sanctuary cities, like New York and Chicago, which do not assist Homeland Security agents with immigration-related requests. New York officials, for example, say they do not believe immigrants should be deported for minor offenses and won’t notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they have an immigrant in their custody. Attorney General William Barr and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf complained about such policies.“I think what we are doing is playing politics with public safety,” Wolf said recently in a Fox News Channel interview on New York laws. “That is really concerning from protecting the homeland perspective, making sure that DHS law enforcement officers have the data and the tools that they need to protect their communities.”The proposed new rules would make asylum seekers ineligible if they were convicted of a felony or if they were arrested repeatedly on domestic violence charges. Other crimes include: low-level convictions for false identification or unlawful receipt of public benefits. Plus: smuggling or harboring immigrants, illegal reentry, a federal crime involving street gang activity or driving while under the influence of an intoxicant.These crimes are in addition to other bars already in place  through federal asylum laws.The changes were made so that the departments “will be able to devote more resources to the adjudication of asylum cases filed by non-criminal aliens,” according to a joint release Wednesday by the Justice Department and Homeland Security.For the budget year 2018, there were about 105,500 asylum applications by those who came to the U.S. and were not in deportation proceedings first. The figure decreased by 25% from the previous budget year.During the same period, the number of asylum applications by migrants who were already in court for deportation proceedings increased about 12%, to 159,473, mostly from Central America and Mexico.According to Homeland Security data, the total number of people granted asylum increased 46%, to 38,687, in 2018. The top countries were China, Venezuela and El Salvador.
 
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European Union nations say the fish catch quotas they agreed upon for next year means they have made more headway in securing sustainable fishing in their waters — but environmentalists are strongly disputing that claim.EU fisheries Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said Wednesday after two days of negotiations that almost 100% of EU fish landings from the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea will come from sustainable sources.After having overfished both regions for years, the EU claims that 2020 will bring in a new era for fisheries.”Next year, the EU member states fleet will fish at the level that will not hinder the regeneration of the stocks,” Sinkevicius said.Environmental groups strongly disagree with that claim. They say EU nations have again put the interests of their fishing industry ahead of the health of their waters. Some cod quotas for next year were cut but fishing for several other species can increase.”The limits agreed by ministers suggest that progress to end overfishing has stalled or even reversed, a disappointing outcome for the year. Overfishing was supposed to become a thing of the past,” said Andrew Clayton of The Pew Charitable Trusts. 
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When the Honduran boy complained of a toothache, Dr. Psyche Calderon asked the obvious question: “When did the pain start?”The answer broke her heart.”When La Mara broke all my teeth and killed all my family,” the 14-year-old said.He said little else about the attack by the infamous Central American gang, La Mara Salvatrucha. Just: “I was the only one that survived.”Calderon is not a therapist, nor a lawyer or a dentist. She is a general practitioner volunteering her time to provide care for Central Americans stuck in Mexico while they try to obtain asylum in the United States. There was little she could do for this teenager.”So I gave him an antibiotic, then went home and cried,” she said.Calderon is part of a movement of health professionals and medical students from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border that is quietly battling to keep asylum seekers healthy and safe while their lives remain in flux.They try desperately to tend to a need left largely unmet by the governments of both countries. It has thrust volunteer doctors into new and unusual roles where they often have to improvise while working with limited donated medications and equipment and dealing with non-medical issues. Besides giving patients a pill for pain relief, the doctors might need to direct them to legal help for their cases while offering a listening ear as a kind of therapist to a population suffering deep trauma from violence that forced them to flee their homelands.With little training or preparation for this type of medical work, doctors like Calderon are trying to come up with guidelines to better treat migrants with emotional trauma.Tens of thousands of people are stuck in Mexican border cities as their asylum cases wind their way through the U.S. court system under a Trump administration policy that returns them across the border to wait out a decision, rather than allowing them to stay with relatives or sponsors in the United States. Thousands of others wait for their numbers to be called so they can start their claim in a process that meters the number of asylum requests that are submitted to U.S. officials.Many in Tijuana have lived for months at crowded shelters, sleeping on floors, with little access to public health clinics.Along Mexico’s border with Texas, hundreds are living outside in tents made out of garbage bags. Families sleep near piles of human feces and bathe in the Rio Grande, known to be contaminated with E. coli and other bacteria.In the Mexican city of Matamoros, the nonprofit Global Response Management bought flu vaccines from a local pharmacy at roughly $50 a dose to administer. Its volunteers set up sidewalk clinics to treat asylum seekers.The health crisis spans both sides of the border. In the past year, at least three children, detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents, have died from the flu while being held. They include a 16-year-old boy who was seen on security footage writhing in agony on the floor in a U.S. Border Patrol holding cell.Doctors recently protested outside a detention facility in San Diego to pressure the U.S. government to allow them to administer the flu vaccine to migrants for free, but so far Customs and Border Protection has refused, saying it is not equipped to run a vaccination program.Meanwhile, in Tijuana, volunteers like Calderon have been going out to gritty, far-flung neighborhoods to set up pop-up clinics on the weekends at shelters that are rarely visited by Mexico’s public health doctors, if at all.”I shouldn’t be doing this,” Calderon said. “They need to be in another place to be safe. That other place should be taking care of them, or the Mexican government should be taking care of these refugees.”The 34-year-old Tijuana doctor treats addictions in her day job. Her private practice caters to Americans seeking lower-cost medical care across the border who pay in dollars, allowing her to be able to volunteer. She found her new calling in 2018 when thousands of Central Americans poured into Tijuana after crossing Mexico in a caravan.Calderon, who slips in and out of English and Spanish seamlessly in a single sentence, grew up in Tijuana watching the border walls go up. At 11, she participated with her family in protests against California’s Proposition 187 that denied public education and health care to people in the United States illegally. At the age of 17, she shadowed doctors treating Mexicans deported to Tijuana from the U.S.So when the caravan arrived, she reflexively went to the sprawling soccer field where they camped and start treating people. There she met other volunteers, including an emergency room physician from Los Angeles and a medical student from San Diego.When the Mexican government closed down the festering soccer field camp, the volunteers realized the health crisis was not going away. So they joined forces under the Refugee Health Alliance, one of a handful of such groups along the 1,954-mile border.Advocating for what they call “border-less medicine,” they started by organizing pop-up clinics at the shelters on Saturdays and attracting volunteers by word of mouth and through social media postings.A year later, the Refugee Health Alliance has hosted 800 volunteers who have seen more than 9,000 patients; in addition to treatment, they document signs of torture and abuse for asylum cases. Volunteers also see asylum seekers during the week at a clinical space shared with a Mexican nonprofit that treats sex workers and drug addicts.Each Saturday at 9 a.m., the volunteers gather less than a block from the towering border wall in Tijuana.They improvise to overcome barriers. On a Saturday in October, a Chicago doctor who did not know Spanish used Google translate on his iPhone to tell a Guatemalan man and his family that he needed to go to the hospital because he likely had appendicitis. On the other side of the curtain, a Mexican midwife gave a Honduran woman who was eight months pregnant an ultrasound while talking over the mechanical iPhone voice conveying the urgent news about the man’s appendix.The Refugee Health Alliance hopes to open its own clinic next year.On the group’s 52nd consecutive Saturday at the shelters, a 24-year-old San Diego woman who moved to Tijuana to help coordinate the efforts gives volunteers a brief orientation.Celeste Pain, who crosses back to San Diego daily to work at an outlet store, rattles off instructions: Don’t ask about people’s backgrounds, which could trigger traumatic memories, or take photographs. Fill out medical forms that ask for a person’s medical history, their court date and their number in line of those waiting to ask for asylum. Determine when the client will be crossing the border; they likely will be held in U.S. immigration detention centers, which could disrupt their care.The volunteers also are given labels and told to put them on any medication they give to the asylum seekers so U.S. immigration officials will not take the pills away — though they often do, anyway.They head out to the first stop, at the bottom of “Scorpion Canyon.”There they meet Calderon traipsing past barking pit bulls, crowing roosters and pigs, lugging a massive duffel bag down a muddy, trash-strewn road. Two University of Arizona medical students jump in to help.Calderon leads the dozen or so volunteers into a cavernous Christian church that first sheltered Haitians who flocked by the thousands to this border city in 2016. Now the church is filled with scores of tents housing Central Americans.The two dozen volunteers include two pediatricians, a university professor who also practices medicine, medical students from Phoenix and San Francisco, a Stanford University psychology doctorate student who worked with children at refugee camps in Iran, and two sisters from Los Angeles who have relatives in Tijuana.They unfold tables and metal chairs in the congregation hall to set up makeshift examining spaces as giggling children run by. They unpack a half-dozen duffel bags and suitcases bursting with plastic bags filled with asthma inhalers, antibiotics and other prescription drugs. Some medications were brought in by volunteers, including the two sisters who said they were stopped by Mexican customs officials and had to pay up to $100 before being allowed into the country.Calderon works between the church where she sees mostly Central Americans and a neighboring cluster of rooms built out of discarded doors and crates housing several dozen Haitians.”Tenemos tongue depressors?” she asks one of the bilingual volunteers.She sees a woman with a badly healed broken wrist, a girl’s belly covered with scabies, an undernourished pregnant woman, a baby with a cold, a toddler who is underweight, a woman with a swollen check and infected tooth, another with a red, swollen eye.With a warm smile and a pink stethoscope around her neck, she sees patient after patient. She calls dentists, ophthalmologists and other specialists she knows to see if they are willing to see the patients she cannot treat.Meanwhile she teaches the U.S. volunteers how to make do with the limited supplies and traditional equipment, like a non-digital blood pressure monitor. With no scale, she has learned to calculate weight by lifting babies under their arms. She scurries to a cinder-block room abutting a row of outhouses to find privacy to do a breast exam on a Honduran woman.Eight months have passed since that day she saw the boy with the broken teeth. She still thinks of him. She never saw him again nor learned of his fate.The experience made her a better doctor, she said. Now when Calderon asks about migrants’ pain, she treads carefully: A hurt neck, might be from getting a head smashed in by thieves. A case of acid reflux might stem from anxiety about not being in a safe place.”When you see someone who comes to you with insomnia, with no hope, it’s really hard on us too. What do we say? What do we treat? Is this an illness?” she asks.What’s more, how do doctors treat patients they are unlikely to see more than once?”That’s why we’re trying to write the protocol for mental health, and trying to get experts for refugee medicine to help us out with these questions,” she said.Five hours into this Saturday’s work, Calderon takes a sip from her thermos of water, which bears a sticker of a dog exclaiming: “This is fine.” It’s a stark contrast to what she feels. She always wishes she could do more.But in some ways, it’s a reminder to herself as much as a reassurance to her patients: This is fine, even though it’s not, but it’s what she has to accept given the limitations, the barriers that have created these conditions of mothers, fathers and children living for months as campers using outhouses, water from buckets and spigots and sleeping on cement floors side by side.Calderon learned to accept those limitations after treating the boy with the toothache. She took time off and sought therapy for herself, feeling overwhelmed. Then she took a course to learn how to treat patients who have endured tragedies.”I need to be OK that I did something,” she said. “It’s a thing that all doctors come to understand at some point, right? I hope. We do what we can.” 
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The daughter of jailed Uighur rights activist Ilham Tohti accepted a European Parliament prize on his behalf on Wednesday, urging lawmakers in an address not to be “complicit in the Chinese persecution of the Uighur people.”China has come under increasing international scrutiny for cracking down on the Muslim Uighur minority in its northwesterly Xinjiang region.Tohti, an economist, was jailed for life in China in 2014 on separatism charges that were widely denounced in Western capitals.His daughter, Jewher Ilham, urged politicians, academics and students on Wednesday to protest against the treatment of the Uighurs as she accepted her father’s Sakharov Prize for defense of human rights at the parliament in Strasbourg.Independent German researcher Adrian Zenz, an expert on China’s ethnic policies, estimated in March that 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been or were being detained in so-called re-education centers in Xinjiang.After Tohti’s prize was announced in October, China said he was “a criminal who was sentenced in accordance with the law by a Chinese court,” and urged that “all sides respect China’s internal affairs and judicial sovereignty and not inflate the arrogance of terrorists.”China has said Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants and separatists. It denies mistreatment or mass internment, saying it is simply seeking to end extremism and violence through education.The 50,000 euro ($55,000) Sakharov Prize has been awarded annually since 1988 to individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.Two weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives gave initial approval to a bill that would require the U.S. administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown.In Strasbourg, European Parliament president David Sassoli said: “By awarding this prize, we strongly urge the Chinese government to release Tohti and we call for the respect of minority rights in China.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Guatemala’s outgoing president Jimmy Morales at the White House Tuesday, where the two discussed immigration and trade.Trump called the relationship with Guatemala “tremendous” and praised Morales on the immigration deal where Guatemala agrees to accept migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.”The relationship is very good, it’s a very important country from the standpoint of the border and trade,”  Trump added.In July the Trump administration reached an agreement with the Morales government that will allow U.S. immigration officials to send migrants requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border to Guatemala.The U.S. has signed similar agreements with El Salvador and Honduras, requiring migrants on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in those countries first. U.S. immigration authorities may send migrants back to those countries if they fail to do so, effectively making it almost impossible for migrants from the Northern Triangle countries to seek asylum.The Trump administration has sent the first migrants back to Guatemala in November. According to the Guatemalan government, a total of 24 people have been sent to the country under the program.President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 26, 2019. Trump announced that Guatemala is signing an agreement to restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America.”Now they have to take them back, and they take them back with open arms,” said Trump.That may not be the case as Guatemala’s president-elect Alejandro Giammattei who will take office in January has balked at accepting the agreement reached by his predecessor.In August Giammattei said that Guatemala will not be able to hold up its side of the agreement and serve as a “safe third country” for asylum seekers as the country  “does not fulfill the requirements” to be one.The incoming government will have to weigh their options as the Trump administration has made it clear that Guatemala must agree to accept asylum-seekers in order to benefit from a U.S-sponsored regional economic development plan.In October, Mauricio Claver-Carone, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the White House National Security Council said that Guatemala must embrace the safe third country agreement if it hopes to benefit from the economic development plan for Mexico and Central America known as America Crece.Although Giammattei has been critical of the ACA (Asylum Cooperative Agreements), “the prospect of governing a country without U.S. aid may deter him from following through with revoking its implementation,” said Cristobal Ramon, senior policy analyst with the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Immigration ProjectRamon said that Giammattei could always threaten to revoke the agreement unless the U.S. agrees to make more aid investments in the country or receive other benefits for Guatemalan nationals like receiving a second package of H-2A visas for Guatemalan farm workers.It’s too early to know if Giammattei would take this route “and if Trump could make these concessions in the face of these threats”  but it’s something that Giammettei could potentially do to bolster the gains Guatemala gets from implementing this agreement, Ramon added.Trump dismissed VOA’s questioning on whether he would withhold aid from the country should Giammattei continue to reject the agreement.”Guatemala is terrific. Guatemala has been terrific,” Trump said.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out Tuesday at Western nations for their lack of support for his so-called Operation Peace Spring, which he launched in October in Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria. Speaking at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Erdogan described the difficulties encountered by the millions of refugees forced to flee war and persecution, and the need for universal solidarity to support them.  The Turkish president, who said his country has welcomed more than 5 million displaced individuals — 3.7 million of them Syrian refugees, criticized the European Union for its lack of financial support and the member nations’ unwillingness to share the burden of welcoming refugees inside their own borders.FILE – Thousands of Syrian refugees cross into Turkey, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, June 14, 2015.Erdogan also criticized Western leaders, whom he said have failed to support his military offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. He has accused the Kurds of being allied with PKK terrorists in Turkey, and said his reason for launching Operation Peace Spring was to clear a 120-kilometer area in Syria of what he called a terrorist presence.”Let us declare these areas as safe zones,” Erdogan said through an interpreter. “Let us implement resettlement and housing projects altogether. Let us have hospitals. Let us have schools there and let the refugees go back to their motherland peacefully and in a dignified fashion. But nobody seems to be inclined to help us. Why? Because oil is a much more needed commodity.”  President Donald Trump announced in November his decision to post U.S. soldiers in Syria to guard oil fields. The Trump administration previously had been criticized by allies for allowing Turkey’s military assault to go forward by withdrawing U.S. troops allied with the Kurds in the region. The Kurds have called the move a betrayal.Erdogan said he will go ahead with his plans to resettle about 1 million Syrian refugees in this so-called peace zone in northern Syria, despite international criticism. “The YPG and PKK terrorist organizations are attacking civilians, but despite that fact, these areas are now the safest and most stable zones of Syria, which are inhabitable,” Erdogan said. “The Syrian refugees should go back on a voluntary basis, but we know what powers around the world would be disturbed by their resettlement peacefully and in a dignified fashion.”  Western powers and humanitarian organizations have expressed alarm at Turkey’s insistence on relocating the refugees across the border into the area once controlled by the Syrian Kurds. They warn this will lead to enduring ethnic tensions between the two groups, leading to permanent instability in the region.
 
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African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo’s restive northeast.”Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.”The challenge is if refugees feel they’re not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis.”Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn’t realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world’s displaced people.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the UNHCR – Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 2019.Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees’ opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.”African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.”While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten.”Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world’s refugees.It’s coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugees and Returnees.“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.”We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said. 
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The U.S. this week deported a German man convicted in the high-profile killings of his girlfriend’s parents 35 years ago, in a crime that stunned a Virginia community and prompted decades of media obsession.Jens Soering, 53, flew from a Washington, D.C.-area airport to Frankfurt on Monday, according to FILE – Elizabeth Haysom is seen in an undated photo provided by the Virginia Department of Corrections.He served two life sentences for the first-degree murders in 1985 of Nancy and Derek Haysom, whose daughter Elizabeth attended the University of Virginia with Soering at the time. Both were found nearly decapitated in their Virginia home.The young couple led police on an international chase after the killings and were arrested in London in 1986. Soering fought extradition on the grounds that the U.S. allowed for the death penalty in certain cases, but in 1990, capitulated to authorities.Virginia authorities released him last month, on the condition that he be taken into immigration custody immediately.Soering, the son of a German diplomat, told a reporter in 2011 that Elizabeth Haysom committed the double murder; but he “decided to lie and to cover (…) up” the crime by taking the blame, thinking that if he were returned to Germany, he would only spend a decade in prison at the most. “I loved Elizabeth and I believed that the only way I could save her life from the electric chair was for me to take the blame, and that I personally really faced no more than a few years in a German prison,” Soering testified at the time.He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1990.Elizabeth Haysom pleaded guilty to being an accessory in her parents’ stabbing deaths. She remains in prison in Virginia and must be released by 2032, if she is not paroled before.Motives given at varying times during the trial and in the years since included disapproval of the young couple’s relationship by the Haysom family, and allegations of abuse against Elizabeth.
 
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At midday on Dec. 17, 2014, the sound of church bells echoed in Havana as presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced that the United States and Cuba would reestablish diplomatic relations and end nearly 60 decades of hostility.Five years later, it feels almost as if that historic moment never happened, Cubans said in interviews in the capital Tuesday.President Donald Trump has spent roughly as much time undoing detente as Obama spent constructing it, and relations between the two countries are at one of their lowest points since the end of the Cold War.Trump has cut back U.S. visits to Cuba — barring cruise ships, flights to most cities and unguided educational travel — the most popular form of American trip to Cuba.The U.S. Embassy in Havana has been reduced to skeleton staffing after diplomats reported a string of health problems whose source remains a mystery. The closure of the embassy’s visa section, and end of special five-year visas for Cubans this year, means travel to the U.S. has become near-impossible for many Cubans who used to fly regularly to South Florida to see family and buy supplies for businesses.The Cuban economy is stagnant, with tourism numbers flat and aid from Venezuela far below its historic peak as Cuba’s oil-rich chief ally fights through its own long crisis.U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Cuban President Raul Castro shake hands before a bilateral meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Sept. 29, 2015.In 2014, Obama and Castro’s announcement felt like the end of a dark era for Cuba and the start of something positive and new, people said in Havana. Now, the two years of detente under Obama feel like a temporary break in a long history of tension and struggle that has no end in sight, they said.“There was hope, thinking that there would be an opening with Obama,” said Alfredo Pinera, a 37-year-old construction worker. “And with Trump, it’s like a child’s dream, gone up in smoke.”Pinera works in Mexico, and returns to Cuba regularly to see his wife and sons, ages 16, 11, and 9. He said he hoped that the end of hostilities with the U.S. would bring a better life for him, his family and the entire country.“I felt good,” he said. “There was hope for improvement, for change in this country, economically, politically, socially.”He said he and his family were surviving in the hard times, which were far from the depths of the post-Soviet “Special Period” of the 1990s. But he said the optimism they felt five years ago had suffered a heavy blow.“All of those hopes that so many Cubans went crashing to the round,” said Pinera as he sat on a curb connecting his phone to a public WiFi access point outside the baseball stadium where Obama and Castro watched an exhibition game during the U.S. president’s historic 2016 visit to Havana.The Cuban government celebrated Tuesday as the anniversary of the return of three of five Cuban agents arrested as they carried out infiltration of anti-Castro emigre groups. The swap of the agents for U.S. contractor Alan Gross and a jailed spy was an essential precursor to the re-establishment of relations, but the larger context was barely mentioned in Cuban state media on Tuesday.President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benitez in the Oval Office of the White House, Dec. 13, 2019, in Washington.The Trump administration says it is trying to cut off the flow of cash and oil to the Cuban economy in order to force the communist government to end its support for Venezuela.Carlos Fernández de Cossio, the director of U.S. affairs for the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said some influential interests in the United States were working to end diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, and the island’s government was prepared.“I don’t think there will be a break-off in relations, frankly I don’t know if that will happen. I do know that there’s a group of powerful people that have that intention,” he said. “Cuba can’t be taken by surprise by that reality if it occurs.”Elizabeth Alfonso, 21, left school after she got pregnant at 14. She has spent the last six years raising her son and working as a waitress in a state cafeteria and maid in other Cubans’ homes.Still a child herself when Obama and Castro made their announcement, she has only vague memories of the two years of improved relations, but she knows things felt better.“I thought things would get better. That’s what everybody thought,” said Alfonso, who sat in a park near the U.S. Embassy, waiting to start her shift as a maid in a nearby home.She said she planned to return to school next year to get the equivalent of a high-school diploma, but had few hopes for improvement in Cuba. Many of her friends and relatives want to leave the country, she said, but that had become far more difficult due to Obama’s ending of near-automatic residency for Cuban immigrants and Trump’s increased deportations of people who once were guaranteed entry at the border.Alfonso said she was waiting for the return of a cousin who crossed Mexico to get to the southern U.S. border but was detained and is awaiting deportation.Antoin Ugartez, a 42-year-old father of three who rents a three-wheeled covered scooter known as a Cocotaxi from a state-run agency, said the post-Trump decline in tourism had hit him hard.Detente, he said, “was a great step forward for Cuban society. Things developed and you started to see different perspectives, a different vision of economic improvement for your family, the conditions you live in.”Now, he said, “I barely make enough to put food on the table.”
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Victims of a 2018 shooting rampage in Toronto that left two dead and 13 injured are suing the American maker of the pistol used in the attack, holding it responsible for not making guns safer.The class action, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by AFP, alleges that Smith and Wesson knew that its M&P 40 handgun “was an ultra-hazardous product.”And it should have known that the weapon might end up being stolen and used to harm or kill innocent people, the suit claims.Yet the company chose not to incorporate safety features such as fingerprint recognition to prevent unauthorized users, it alleges.The class action, which must still be certified, is seeking Can$150 million (US$115 million) in damages.FILE – Handguns are displayed at the Smith & Wesson booth at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 19, 2016.Lead plaintiffs Samantha Price and Skye McLeod said in a statement of claim that they’d gone out for ice cream with friends on the evening of July 22, 2018, when they were confronted by a man opening fire on Toronto’s bustling Danforth Avenue.Price was struck by a bullet, but survived. McLeod was injured while fleeing. Their friend Reese Fallon, 18, and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis were shot dead.After an exchange of gunfire with police, the shooter took his own life.Police still don’t know how he obtained the gun, which had been reported stolen from a Saskatchewan shop in 2015.But the lawsuit notes that Smith and Wesson was aware that “more than 200,000 firearms” like the one used in the Danforth shooting “were stolen from their owners every year in the United States.”The company had agreed in 2000 to incorporate smart gun technologies in new models by March 2003 to address this.The deal, however, collapsed after the United States passed a law in 2005 shielding gun manufacturers and dealers from liability when crimes are committed with their products.The shield does not apply in Canada.Remington, Smith and Wesson lawsuitsIn March, a Connecticut court ruled that U.S. gunmaker Remington can be sued over the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school in which one of its weapons was used to kill 20 children and six staffers.That lawsuit alleges that Remington is culpable because it knowingly marketed a military grade weapon that is “grossly unsuited” for civilian use yet had become the gun most used in mass shootings.In the Canadian case, the plaintiffs say Smith and Wesson should have included safety technology in its .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, which was made available for sale in Canada starting in 2013, “so as to avoid, prevent or deter substantial and foreseeable harm.”Manufacturers have claimed that the technology is expensive and impractical.Patrick McLeod, the father of one of the Danforth victims and a former police officer, disagrees.”I can look at my iPhone and it unlocks. Meanwhile, we’re selling semi-automatic handguns that have no safety devices on them at all,” he told the Globe and Mail.
 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation this week increasing fines and penalties against so-called “foreign agents” working in mass media — part of a broader spate of Russian laws that have targeted foreign media, NGOs, and other perceived enemies at home.  The latest measure strengthens a controversial law signed earlier this month that expanded the foreign agent label beyond media outlets to individuals — making journalists, bloggers and online news consumers potential new targets. The laws have been criticized by human rights groups as a government weapon to restrict free speech, but are lauded by Kremlin loyalists as essential to protecting Russian sovereignty in the face of what they argue is routine foreign interference. The foreign agent media law now requires those who work for suspect media outlets to label any published materials as “made by a foreign agent,” and personally submit to regular audits and inspections of their work and finances.Less clear, until now, were the penalties for violations.FILE – Law enforcement officers detain a local Reuters journalist during an opposition rally, in Moscow, Russia, July 27, 2019.Under the new terms approved by Putin, a series of graduated fines takes hold against media companies and their employees. Initial violations would now mean up to $800 in fines for individuals; $1,600 for management and officials; and up to $16,000 in fines for media companies. Repeat offenders over the course of a year face even stiffer penalties, including $1,600 in fines or up to 15 days in prison for individuals; $3,200 for management; and $80,000 docked from media companies pending compliance.  With Putin’s signature, the law goes into effect Feb. 1, 2020. The new restrictions appear aimed primarily at journalists and individuals working for media organizations officially designated as foreign agents by Russia’s Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry.    In practice, the law appears to target employees of a small handful of U.S. government-funded media, including Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and jointly produced projects such as Current Time TV, which was added to the foreign agents registry in 2017.The blacklist of foreign agents, seen here in a screenshot from the Russian Justice Ministry’s website, shows Voice of America (1), Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe (7) and Current Time (5) among others.At the time, Russian officials said the move was merely a response to the inclusion of the Kremlin’s RT America Network on a U.S. foreign agent registry earlier that same year.   Yet critics of the new laws say their concerns go beyond targeting of U.S. media.   Observers note that the law’s vague wording puts average Russian citizens who share suspect content online and receive any income from foreign sources at risk of being snared.  The law will “become a strong tool to silence opposition voices,” wrote Human Rights Watch in an article expressing concern over the measure in advance of its passage.  “Bloggers have an important role in informing public opinion in Russia, and this is an attempt to control this inconvenient source of information.”In recent months, the Russian government has levied a spate of spiraling fines against NGOs and opposition activists under the foreign agent designation. While some organizations have collapsed from the financial pressure, others have successfully turned to crowdsourcing to pay off fines and continue work.  
 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Libya as Ankara prepares for the possible deployment of soldiers to the war-torn country.
  
Moscow sought to put a positive spin on Tuesday’s telephone call, the second on Libya in a week. “Russia supports all efforts by individual countries in terms of finding a solution to the [Libyan] crisis,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.Ankara appears to have taken Moscow by surprise when Erdogan last month signed a security agreement with Libya’s head of the Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez al-Sarraj, in Istanbul.FILE – Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj leaves after an international conference on Libya at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 29, 2018.Under the agreement, the Tripoli-based government can invite Turkish forces to deploy in Libya. According to local media reports, Ankara is preparing a rapid action force for possible deployment. Erdogan repeatedly said this month he is ready to consider any Libyan request for military assistance.Erdogan said he was reacting to the presence of “Russian Wagner mercenaries,” a private security force run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close links to the Kremlin.”I wish that the matter of [General Khalifa] Haftar would not create a new Syria in our relations with Russia,” Erdogan said in a television interview earlier this month.Haftar is the de facto leader of eastern Libya and is seeking to overthrow the GNA.FILE – Khalifa Haftar, center, the military commander who dominates eastern Libya, leaves after an international conference on Libya at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 29, 2018.Despite differences Ankara and Moscow have about Libya, analysts suggest Putin and Erdogan are experienced in managing conflicting agendas. While Turkey and Russia back rival sides in the Syrian civil war, the two countries continue to cooperate in Syria.”We have to make a distinction between Turkish-Russian relations, and Turkish-Russian relations in the Middle East,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.”In the Middle East, Turkish-Russian relations will remain conflictual with different views. Bilaterally it will not be a problem. But in the long run, it will be a problem, and this compartmentalizing is not sustainable as their interests don’t converge.”Turkey, GNA dealOn Monday, Turkey’s foreign affairs parliamentary committee ratified the deal with the GNA, allowing it to move to a full parliamentary vote.The main opposition CHP strongly opposes the idea of sending forces to Libya. “What are we in Libya for? For what were we in the Syrian marsh? The government has to take lessons from what happened in the Syrian marsh,” the CHP leader, Kemal Kilicadaroglu, said in an interview with the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper published Monday.Turkish forces currently are deployed in Syria, fighting a Syrian Kurdish militia, and some analysts question whether the Turkish forces could become overextended.Libya, however, has become strategically important to Ankara. Along with a security agreement with GNA, a second memorandum of understanding was signed that gave Turkey control over a large swathe of the eastern Mediterranean around Libya.FILE – A Turkish drilling vessel is escorted by Turkish Navy frigate TCG Gemlik in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off Cyprus, Aug. 6, 2019.”With this move, Turkey took the board in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey showed that it was a playmaker in the region,” said Turkey’s special envoy to Libya, Emrullah Isler. He called the security agreement a “game-changer,” adding, “this is a step we have taken against those who were unfair to Turkey.”Ankara is currently competing with several Mediterranean countries in a scramble for the vast energy reserves that are believed to be there. Greece, Cyprus and France have criticized Turkey’s Libya agreements.Concern over Turkish forcesAnalysts warn Turkey is facing a precarious situation in Libya. “In Libya, we have three different governments recognized by different countries. But the government that Turkey is backing is facing defeat by General Haftar, which will change many things,” said Bagci.Several Middle Eastern countries involved in Libya are voicing concern over the prospect of Turkish forces deploying to the war-torn country. But former Turkish ambassador Mithat Rende says such concerns are likely to be dismissed by Ankara.”Egypt is totally engaged, and is supporting one side. The Saudis and Emirates supporting one of the sides, and so many others, so everyone can support their side in Libya, but if Turkey supports a side, it’s hell. Ankara has an agreement with the legitimate government,” Rende said.Some analysts caution that Ankara’s hand could well be forced in Libya, with Haftar announcing last week his intention to overrun Tripoli and oust the GNA.   “Troops would be ready to protect democracy and popular will against attempts to establish a [Haftar] military dictatorship,” said Turkey’s special envoy Isler.
 
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The first woman to be elected mayor of Colombia’s capital city has married her partner in a private civil ceremony before taking office.Claudia Lopez announced her wedding to Angelica Lozano Monday evening by sharing an enthusiastic message and several photographs on social media.”On my way to the happiest moment of my life!” Lopez wrote on Twitter.The incoming mayor of Bogota, who takes office in January, thanked her bride for “loving me always” and promised “to honor and love” her the rest of their days. Photographs show the pair dressed in white, holding a simple bouquet of flowers and smiling.The couple’s union has become a rallying cause among supporters promoting LGBT rights in the traditionally conservative, Catholic country – though Colombia has permitted gay marriage since a landmark Constitutional Court ruling in 2016.Lozano told Colombia’s BLU Radio that the couple has tried to marry previously but their schedules made organizing a wedding complicated.”We told ourselves, `We have to do it now or another four years will pass by,” Lozano said. “Because Claudia’s priority the next four years will be her job.”When she is sworn into office, Lopez will become the first openly lesbian mayor of a capital city in Latin America, a region slowly advancing in improving LGBT rights but where long-standing cultural biases and inequality remain barriers.Lopez has been making waves in Colombia for years, starting from her days as an analyst shedding light on corruption in the highest echelons of power. In her personal life, she’s been equally upfront and transparent, sharing a passionate kiss with Lozano as the election results came in during the October vote for Bogota mayor.Few details about the ceremony were released, but Lopez said their white pant suits were crafted by Colombian designer Angel Yanez.”Thank you life for this marvelous year!” Lopez hailed on social media. “I graduated with my doctorate, won mayoral office and married the love of my life!” 
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Netflix is seeing rapid subscriber growth in regions including Asia and Latin America as it girds for tougher competition in the streaming market, newly detailed figures show.In a regulatory filing this week, Netflix offered the first detailed look at its finances from various regions around the world.The figures showed nearly 14.5 million subscribers in the Asia-Pacific region at the end of September, representing growth of more than 50 percent over the previous 12 months.The region including Europe, the Middle East and Africa had some 47 million paid subscribers, up 40 percent year-over-year, in the largest segment outside North America.Latin America included some 29 million subscribers, a rise of 22 percent over the past year, Netflix said in the filing.North America is the largest market for Netflix with some 67 million subscribers but growth over the past year was just 6.5 percent.Netflix is the leader in streaming television, operating in some 190 countries, but it is facing new offerings from deep-pocketed rivals including Disney, Apple, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and AT&T’s WarnerMedia. 
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Turkish authorities have arrested a mayor from Turkey’s main opposition party over his alleged links to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, the state-run news agency reported Tuesday. Separately, c lose to 200 people were detained in other police operations.Anadolu Agency said Burak Oguz, the mayor of the Aegean coastal town of Urla, was arrested late Monday for alleged ties to Fethullah Gulen’s network. Gulen is blamed by Ankara for a failed coup attempt in 2016.Oguz, who was elected in local elections in March, is the first mayor from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, to be arrested on terror charges. At least 14 elected mayors belonging to Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party have previously been detained for alleged ties to outlawed Kurdish rebels. The party denies terror charges and says the arrests are politically motivated aimed at weakening its hold in Turkey’s southeast.The CHP condemned Oguz’s arrest and denied the accusation of links to Gulen, saying the network had no “chance of serving within the CHP.””We condemn the use of the justice [system] to remove those who were elected,” said CHP provincial head, Deniz Yucel.FILE – Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies involvement in the coup attempt.Separately, authorities detained 171 people on suspicion of links to Gulen’s network in simultaneous raids in the capital, Ankara, Anadolu reported. Those detained are suspected of using a messaging app that Turkey says was used by coup plotters to communicate with each other. Meanwhile, prosecutors issued detention warrants for 18 Health Ministry personnel, including 10 doctors, the agency reported. At least 10 of the suspects were detained Tuesday.On July 15, 2016, a group of officers attempted a coup to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some 250 people were killed and more than 2,000 were injured during the failed attempt.Some 77,000 people have been arrested and around 130,000 others, including military personnel, have been dismissed from state jobs in an ongoing government crackdown on Gulen’s network since the coup.Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies involvement in the coup attempt. 
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Spanish police retrieved a body from a boat off the southern coast on Tuesday, the eighth migrant killed at sea in a 24-hour period while trying to reach the country.The boat was spotted in the western Mediterranean off the coast of the southern region of Andalusia before dawn and 47 survivors — 30 men and 17 men — were taken to the port of Motril, a spokesman for Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said.A Moroccan coastguard vessel had earlier retrieved seven bodies and rescued 70 migrants after they got into difficulty in the Alboran Sea in the western Mediterranean, a Moroccan military source said.The survivors, including 10 women and a baby, were found in a “very poor state” and were taken for medical treatment in Nador in northern Morocco, the source added.The boat capsized carrying around 100 migrants headed towards Spain, according to Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which added that 24 people were still missing. Over 98,000 people have reached Europe by sea this year, including around 25,000 who arrived in Spain, according to the International Organization for Migration.More than 1,200 migrants have died or are missing at sea after attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year, UN figures show.
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A three-day summit on tackling the world’s refugee crisis got under way Monday in Geneva, Switzerland. Thousands of delegates — including around 100 government ministers — are attending the United Nations’ Global Refugee Forum to discuss how to help the tens of millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes, many through conflict. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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They keep on coming — fleeing the killing fields of war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa, escaping the random violence of vicious drug gangs in Central America, and running from repressive regimes in Asia.A world in crisis means more refugees, and the trend lines are not promising.There are now more than 70 million refugees and displaced people around the world — nearly 26 million outside the borders of their own countries, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.Speaking ahead of the UNHCR’s first Global Refugee Forum, which formally started Monday in Geneva, U.N. officials say they expect those numbers will climb when they have concluded the final troubling tally for 2019.FILE – Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, speaks during a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, Oct. 6, 2018.Opening the forum, Filippo Grandi, UNHCR’s top official, said the three-day meeting needs to see “very concrete commitments” made by governments, businesses and relief organizations.”The purpose of this meeting, this conference, is not just to talk but to rally international support for countries hosting refugees in a spirit and with the objective of sharing the burden more equitably,” Grandi said.Organized in cooperation with Switzerland, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Germany, Pakistan and Turkey, the forum’s goal is to strengthen international support for refugees by dividing up responsibility between nations to ease pressures on so-called “front-line countries” — those who are receiving the greatest numbers of refugees — and to outline clear markers for what should be expected in terms of improving access to education and jobs, and providing protection for the displaced until they can return safely to their homes.’Solutions and opportunities’The organizers have promised bold new measures, including ways of enhancing refugee self-reliance and a sense of inclusion. The UNCHR hopes additional countries and other international agencies and charities, as well as faith organizations and private sector businesses, will declare their commitment to improve the plight of refugees. And U.N. officials hope to start engineering legal and diplomatic adjustments that will help refugees integrate better in their temporary homes.The forum comes a year after the U.N. General Assembly agreed that governments need to establish a more predictable and equitable approach to the treatment of refugees. Some hope the Geneva gathering will later be seen as an inflection point, thanks to the pooling together of ideas by heads of state, government ministers, business leaders, humanitarians and refugees themselves.FILE – Kelly Clements, UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner, speaks during a session at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Center at the Dead Sea, May 20, 2017.”We are at the end of a decade that has been more than tumultuous in terms of levels of displacement,” U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements told AFP in an interview. “We see the need for states, for international organizations, for the private sector (to help explore) how the international community can better help to respond.”On Monday, representatives from Zambia showcased some of their innovative approaches to help refugees find work or resume their education by having their previous education attainment and qualifications recognized. UNESCO is drawing on the Zambian experience to develop an international qualifications passport.”This will help people who possess the knowledge but don’t possess the papers,” said Muhammed, a Syrian refugee living in Germany who spoke Monday at the forum. “There is a lot of potential amongst refugees that is being unused. There are brilliant minds available that these passports can unlock.”Similar pilot projects to Zambia’s are set to be rolled out in 2020 in Iraq and Colombia.Also at the forum on Monday, which attracted around 3,000 participants, seven African countries showcased their regional and coordinated efforts to find long-term solutions to ease the plight of refugees in the Horn of Africa.”It may be a region of great displacement, but (it) has also become a region of solutions and opportunities,” Grandi said.Detention campsBut following a decade in which the number of refugees and the displaced have reached unprecedented proportions, overcoming donor fatigue could be difficult. Pledges may well be made, but the money and aid may not necessarily be forthcoming, warn some analysts.A bigger challenge will come with the idea of greater burden-sharing between countries. The forum coincides with another flare-up between European Union countries over the sharing of responsibility for the continent’s refugee influx, with Greece announcing controversial plans to build closed detention camps for migrants and refugees to cope with a new surge of asylum-seekers.FILE – Refugees and migrants arrive at the port of Thessaloniki, northern Greece, Sept. 2, 2019.Humanitarian organizations have denounced the planned camps as “prisons,” saying they go in the opposite direction from the Geneva forum with its emphasis on fostering inclusion for asylum-seekers.”I made it clear to the (Greek) government that UNHCR policy is against detaining asylum-seekers … seeking asylum is not a crime,” Grandi told Greek officials during a visit to Athens last month.Since coming into office in July, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has mounted a series of appeals to EU member states to demonstrate greater solidarity with the front-line states of southern Europe.Most disturbing for Athens is that the latest surge is not slowing, despite stormy winter weather. Rickety boats laden with refugees seeking safety or a better economic life are continuing to land on Greek shores.In September, 10,551 newcomers arrived in Greece, the highest in a single month since the EU struck a deal with Turkey to curb migrant flows at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2016.Now, Greece’s center-right government, which was elected on a tough law-and-order platform, is under domestic pressure to make good on its electoral promise to pursue a deterrence and deportation approach toward asylum-seekers.Last week, Mitsotakis told top EU officials that his country had “reached its limits.””This is not a Greek-Turkish problem,” he told officials during a visit to Athens. “It’s an issue that affects the European Union as a whole, and we are looking forward to your help, as well as a firm European policy, to address it.”Burden-sharingEU countries have struggled for years to agree to a firm policy on burden-sharing, with stiff resistance to every plan coming from the Visegrád countries of Central Europe, led by Hungary.The countries have adamantly declined to take in asylum-seekers who landed in Italy, Greece or Spain. Part of the issue is a continuing dispute about who should be considered a refugee, and who should be counted as an economic migrant.FILE – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban talks to the media in Budapest, Hungary, Oct. 13, 2019.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban argues that by welcoming asylum-seekers, Europe acts as a magnet for them, and the continent risks being swamped and its security compromised.  Orban and other opponents of burden-sharing also maintain that previous international treaties stipulate that war refugees should seek sanctuary in the first safe third country they reach, and that the responsibility lies with front-line states.Forum organizers are determined to keep major policy differences in the background in Geneva. That may be difficult, especially with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acting as one of the co-hosts of the forum.Turkey hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees, and Erdogan has been accused of “weaponizing” refugees for political and economic purposes with his plans to resettle them in Kurdish areas of northern Syria.Speaking before his arrival in Geneva, a combative Erdogan warned that Turkey “can no longer carry this burden alone.”He complained that Turkey had only received half of the $6 billion in aid the EU promised in 2016 for Turkish efforts to stanch the influx of Mideast refugees into Europe.”Whenever we meet, they say that it is about to come. But nothing has come yet,” Erdogan said.
 
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