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Right-wing protesters hit the streets of Madrid on Sunday to denounce controversial Spanish government plans to offer pardons to the jailed Catalan separatists behind the failed 2017 independence bid.The mass protest, which is scheduled to start at midday (1000 GMT), will up pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who has called for understanding over the planned gesture that has dominated political debate for weeks and reactivated the controversy over Catalan separatism.”I understand there may be people who could have objections over this decision that the government may take, given what happened in 2017,” he said on Wednesday during an official visit to Argentina.”But I ask for your trust. I ask for understanding and for magnanimity because the challenge facing all of us — to promote coexistence — is worth it.”Although Sanchez’s left-wing government has not said anything concrete on the matter, all indications suggest the pardons will be granted before the summer break.But the proposal has generated a huge backlash from the right-wing opposition, which has accused the minority government of caving in to pressure from separatist parties, on whose support it partially depends.”Sanchez is planning pardons to legitimize an ongoing crime… (in) a historic error that won’t solve anything, only to keep his government from going under,” said opposition leader Pablo Casado, head of the right-wing Popular Party (PP).Spain’s Supreme Court has also opposed the move to offer clemency to those convicted over their role in an illegal referendum and a short-lived declaration of independence, saying it saw “no evidence or indication of remorse” from the prisoners to justify any such pardon.The Supreme Court convicted 12 Catalan separatists for their role in the crisis, with nine of them handed jail terms of between nine and 13 years in October 2019.Junqueras’ letterThe prisoner serving the longest sentence of 13 years is Oriol Junqueras, head of the ERC (the Republican Left of Catalonia) which is a key parliamentary ally for Sanchez’s government.In a letter published on Monday, Junqueras signaled support for the idea of a pardon from Madrid after previously rejecting the idea out of hand, also admitting that the separatists had made errors back in 2017.”We must be mindful of the fact that our response was also not seen as fully legitimate by part of society,” he wrote.He also expressed support for a Scottish-style referendum carried out in agreement with Spain — an option which Madrid is not willing to discuss.”All separatist leaders are aware this will be a very costly decision for the Socialists because most Catalans are in favor of the pardons but most Spaniards are against,” said Ana Sofia Cardenal, a political scientist at Catalonia’s Open University.But hardline separatists, among them the JxCat party of ex-Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont who fled Spain to avoid prosecution after the 2017 independence bid, have not given up on unilateralism, and have repeatedly demanded an amnesty for the prisoners — which is not on the table.At Sunday’s gathering, Spain’s right-wing opposition will seek to rally those who still feel infuriated by the crisis of 2017 under a huge Spanish flag in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon (Colombus Square).It was here that thousands of people gathered in February 2019, two days before the start of the separatists’ trial.Although the organizers have said no political leaders will be allowed up to the podium on Sunday, Cardenal believes it would be a mistake for opposition leader Casado to even attend the rally.”If this decision to grant pardons manages to really steer (the Catalan crisis) towards dialogue, it could benefit Sanchez and harm Casado, who has aligned himself with Vox on this issue,” he said, referring to the ultra-right-wing faction led by Santiago Abascal.
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A Greek court on Saturday sentenced four Afghan asylum-seekers convicted of starting fires that burnt down Europe’s largest migrant camp last year to 10 years in prison each.The court in Chios found the defendants guilty of arson while their lawyers denounced a “lack of sense of fairness.”No one died in the fires.The lawyers told AFP they had immediately filed for an appeal after the sentence was handed down.The young Afghans were taken to the court handcuffed and were expected to return to the Avlona jail outside Athens, where they were held before the trial.In March, two other Afghan youths were detained in the same facility for five years in connection with the case.The Moria camp on the Aegean island of Lesbos housed more than 10,000 people before it was destroyed by two fires in September 2020.Media were not allowed inside the courtroom at the end of the trial due to coronavirus precautions.Around 20 people, mainly members of foreign solidarity groups, gathered outside the court meanwhile to call for the defendants to be freed.Defense lawyers said the Afghans did not get a fair trial.They said three had documents showing they were under 18 at the time of arrest but were not recognized as minors.The prosecution is based in large part on the testimony of another Afghan asylum-seeker who identified the six as the perpetrators.But according to defense lawyers, the witness was not in court Friday and did not appear for the trial in March as he could not be located.The defendants claim they were targeted by the witness, an ethnic Pashtun, as all six are Hazara, a persecuted minority in Afghanistan.Other witnesses for the prosecution were police officers, firefighters called to the scene in September 2020 and staff from the European Asylum Service and nongovernmental groups who worked at the camp.Built in 2013 to hold up to 3,000 people, the Moria camp was overwhelmed in 2015 as a huge wave of people began arriving on small boats from nearby Turkey.The camp — home to asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia seeking a better life in the European Union — quickly became a byword for squalor and violence.The two fires broke out on Sept. 8 and 9 as tensions soared amid the coronavirus pandemic.Witnesses told AFP a dispute had broken out as 200 migrants refused to quarantine after either testing positive for COVID-19 or coming into contact with someone infected.Around 13,000 asylum-seekers, among them families with children, pregnant women and people with disabilities, had to sleep in the open for a week after the camp was destroyed.Authorities have since built a temporary camp on Lesbos that hosts about 6,000 people.The EU has allocated $336 million to build a new permanent camp on Lesbos, and for similar facilities on the islands of Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.Around 10,000 asylum-seekers are currently living on these five Aegean islands, the vast majority of them hoping to settle elsewhere in the EU.                     
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European Union negotiators said international talks that resumed Saturday on the Iran nuclear agreement were on track to revive the deal, which crumbled after the United States withdrew in 2018.Senior diplomats from China, Germany, France, Russia and Britain concluded a 90-minute meeting with Iranian representatives at a hotel in the Austrian capital.”We are making progress, but the negotiations are intense and a number of issues [remain], including on how steps are to be implemented,” EU representative Alain Matton told reporters in Vienna.The United States is not formally part of meetings that launched in Vienna this year. But the administration of President Joe Biden has signaled willingness to rejoin the deal under terms that would broadly see the U.S. scale back sanctions on Tehran and Iran return to abiding by the limits on its nuclear activity contained in the 2015 agreement.”The EU will continue with the talks with all the participants … and separately with the United States to find ways to get very close to a final agreement in the coming days,” Matton said.Complicating factorsDiplomats say complicating factors have included the sequence of the proposed measures, dealing with advances in Iran’s nuclear processing capability since the United States withdrew, and the presidential election in Iran next week.Officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 deal provided Iran vital sanctions relief in exchange for a commitment to allow extensive international monitoring as it dismantled much of its nuclear program.Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018, arguing that it handed Tehran too many concessions while failing to curb its aggression in the region and ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. U.S. sanctions that were re-imposed and intensified under Trump tipped Iran into a severe recession and enrichment of more uranium than permitted under the deal.Iranian officials have balked at the suggestion that some terms agreed to in 2015 would have to be updated, insisting that it would return to nuclear compliance as soon as Washington restored its pre-Trump sanctions policy.
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Moscow’s mayor on Saturday ordered a week off for some workplaces and imposed restrictions on many businesses to fight coronavirus infections that have more than doubled in the past week.The national coronavirus task force reported 6,701 new confirmed cases in Moscow, compared with 2,936 on June 6. Nationally, the daily tally has spiked by nearly half over the past week, to 13,510.After several weeks of lockdown as the pandemic spread in the spring of 2020, the Russian capital eased restrictions and did not reimpose any during subsequent case increases. But because of the recent sharp rise, “it is impossible not to react to such a situation,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.He ordered enterprises that do not normally work on weekends to remain closed for the next week while continuing to pay employees. Food courts and children’s play areas in shopping centers also are to close for a week beginning Sunday, and restaurants and bars must limit their service.People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus ride a subway car in Moscow, Russia, June 10, 2021.Mask, glove enforcementEarlier in the week, city authorities said enforcement of mask- and glove-wearing requirements on mass transit, in stores and in other public places would be strengthened and that violators could face fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($70).Although Russia was the first country to deploy a coronavirus vaccine, its use has been relatively low; many Russians are reluctant to get vaccinated.President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said 18 million Russians had received the vaccine — about 12% of the population.For the entire pandemic period, the task force has reported nearly 5.2 million infections in the country of about 146 million people and 126,000 deaths. However, a report from Russian state statistics agency Rosstat on Friday found more than 144,000 virus-related deaths last year alone.The statistics agency, unlike the task force, counts fatalities in which coronavirus infection was present or suspected but was not the main cause of death.The agency’s report found about 340,000 more people died in 2020 than in 2019; it did not give details of the causes of the higher year-on-year death toll.The higher death toll and a lower number of births combined to make an overall population decline of 702,000, about twice the decline in 2019, Rosstat said.
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Several hundred mourners joined a public funeral Saturday of a Canadian Muslim family run over and killed by a pickup driver in an attack police said was driven by hate.The four members of the Afzaal family, spanning three generations, were killed last Sunday when Nathaniel Veltman, 20, ran into them while they were out for an evening walk near their home in London, Ontario, authorities said. A fifth family member, a 9-year-old boy, is recovering from his injuries in the hospital.Police have said the attack was premeditated and allege the family was targeted because of their Islamic faith.The hourlong ceremony started after the four coffins draped in Canadian flags rolled into the compound of the Islamic Center of Southwest Ontario and ended with prayers and condolences offered by religious and community leaders. Burial later was private.”The very fact their coffins are draped in the beautiful Canadian flag is an apt testimony of the fact that the entire Canadian nation stands with them,” Raza Bashir, Tarar High Commissioner for Pakistan to Canada, told the gathering.The family moved to Canada from Pakistan 14 years ago.The attack sparked outrage across Canada, with politicians from all sides condemning the crime, spurring growing calls to take action to curb hate crime and Islamophobia. London, 200 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of Toronto, has seen an outpouring of support in the aftermath of the attack.Veltman, who returns to court on Monday, faces four charges of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the killings a “terrorist attack” and vowed to clamp down on far-right groups and online hate.”I think we’re emotionally exhausted,” Imam Aarij Anwer told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. before the ceremony. “We’re looking forward to having some closure on Saturday.” 
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Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen was taken to a hospital Saturday after collapsing on the field during a match at the European Championship, leading to the game being suspended for more than 90 minutes. The governing body of European soccer said Eriksen has been stabilized and the Danish soccer federation said he was awake. “Christian Eriksen is awake and is undergoing further examinations at Rigshospitalet,” the Danish federation wrote on Twitter. The Euro 2020 match between Denmark and Finland had been halted in the 43rd minute with the score 0-0 but was to resume at 8:30 p.m. local time. UEFA said both teams had held an emergency meeting before deciding to continue playing. The players came back out onto the field at around 7:15 p.m. to a huge ovation as they started warming up for a second time. Eriksen was given urgent medical attention on the field for about 10 minutes after collapsing near the end of the first half. He was then carried off on a stretcher. UEFA then announced the game had been suspended “due to a medical emergency.” Eriksen had just played a short pass when he fell face-forward onto the ground. His teammates immediately gestured for help and medics rushed onto the field. Eriksen was given chest compressions as his Denmark teammates stood around him in a shielding wall for privacy. Eriksen’s partner, Sabrina Kvist Jensen, went onto the field and was comforted by Denmark captain Simon Kjaer and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel. The Finland players huddled by their bench and eventually walked off the field while the Inter Milan midfielder was still getting treatment, as did the referees. Eriksen was eventually carried off to a loud ovation, with his teammates walking next to the stretcher. Inter Milan team physician Piero Volpi told The Associated Press that the Italian club was in contact with the Danish soccer federation. “We’re in contact with the Danish federation, the team manager, the team physician. But we still don’t know anything yet,” Volpi said. “We heard what UEFA said and we’re all happy that he’s been stabilized. But that’s all we know.” Volpi added that Eriksen never contracted COVID-19, has no medical conditions that he’s aware of and has passed every medical exam without problem since joining Inter in January 2020 from Tottenham. “But we’ll talk about that when the time is right,” Volpi added of Eriksen’s medical history. “Right now, the important thing is that he recovers.” Eriksen is one of Denmark’s biggest stars and the incident brought an instant sense of shock to the Parken Stadium, where about 15,000 fans fell into hushed silence. Some supporters could be seen crying and hugging in the stands. As the fans in the stadium were waiting for updates, Finland supporters started chanting “Christian,” which was then answered by the Danish fans shouting “Eriksen.” A huge roar then went up from all supporters when the stadium announcer said Eriksen was “stable and awake.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time in Geneva Wednesday amid deteriorating relations between the world powers.The meeting takes place in the final hours of Biden’s first trip abroad as president that also has him attending the 47th G7 summit in the English city of Cornwall.In an interview with NBC News, portions of which aired Friday, Putin said U.S.-Russia ties had deteriorated to their “lowest point in recent years.”The White House said Saturday only Biden would speak to the media after the meeting, denying the media and other observers the chance to compare Wednesday’s post-meeting developments with those of Trump and Putin together following their 2018 summit in Helsinki.During their post summit news conference, Trump agreed with Putin, instead of his own intelligence agencies, that Russia did not meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the intent of helping Trump win.“A solo press conference is the appropriate format to clearly communicate with the free press the topics that were raised in the meeting — both in terms of areas where we may agree and in areas where we have significant concerns,” a White House official said.The White House also said it expects the Biden-Putin meeting “to be candid and straightforward” and that Biden will bring up ransomware attacks originating in Russia, the Kremlin’s aggression toward Ukraine, the imprisonment of dissidents and other issues. The two leaders are also expected to cover strategic nuclear stability and souring relations between Russia and the West.
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The Taliban warned Saturday that it would be “unacceptable” to them and a “mistake” on the part of any nation to retain a military presence in Afghanistan to guard airports or other installations after the departure of U.S.-led NATO troops from the warn-torn country.
 
The insurgent group’s warning raises questions for Washington, other world countries, and aid groups with missions in Kabul about how to safely evacuate their personnel from the landlocked South Asian nation should fighting intensify and engulf the Afghan capital once all international forces withdraw by a September 11 deadline.  
 
Turkey, with about 500 soldiers still in Afghanistan, has offered its services to guard and run Kabul’s international airport beyond the withdrawal deadline set by U.S. President Joe Biden. Ankara reportedly floated the proposal at a NATO meeting last month.
 
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that talks between different allies, including Turkey, were underway on exactly how to ensure security and safe administration of the Kabul international airport.  NATO Chief Admits Afghan Withdrawal ‘Entails Risks’Despite ‘lot of uncertainty,’ Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance will continue to support the Afghan government, even when the last of its troops have left the country 
But the Taliban vowed to resist deployment of any foreign military in the country after all international forces leave.
 
“The presence of foreign forces under whatever name or by whichever country in our homeland is unacceptable for the Afghan people and the Islamic Emirate [the name of the Taliban’s ex-government in Kabul],” the insurgent group cautioned Saturday in a policy statement sent to journalists.
 
The Taliban insisted that security of airports, foreign embassies and diplomatic offices is the responsibility of Afghans, saying that  “no one should hold out hope of keeping military or security presence” in Afghanistan.   
 
“If anyone does make such a mistake, the Afghan people and the Islamic Emirate shall view them as occupiers and shall take a stance against them as they have taken against invaders throughout history,” the statement said.
 
Stoltenberg said the security of the Kabul airport and other “critical” infrastructure” would be discussed at Monday’s NATO summit in Brussels.
 
“Because this is important not only for NATO but … for the whole international community, for a diplomatic presence of all countries, and of course, also for development aid and different aid organizations. So, NATO allies are addressing these issues as we speak.”  
 
While the Taliban regularly attacked U.S. and allied troops during their nearly two-decade long stay in Afghanistan, Turkish forces remain unharmed.  
 
Turkey is the only Islamic country serving under NATO’s non-combatant Resolute Support mission, which is mandated to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces battling the insurgents.
 
The U.S.-led military drawdown is an outcome of the February 2020 agreement Washington signed with the Taliban in return for counterterrorism guarantees and pledges the group would negotiate a political settlement to the war with the Afghan government.  
 
But the so-called intra-Afghan dialogue, which started last September in Qatar, has met with little success and mostly has been stalled, with each side blaming the other for the deadlock.  
 
Afghan battlefield hostilities have particularly intensified since the foreign forces formally began pulling out from the country on May 1.  
 
The Taliban has captured at least 15 new districts in recent days, while hundreds of combatants on both sides and Afghan civilians have been killed.  
 
Meanwhile, Islamic State militants have stepped up attacks, targeting Afghan forces and civilians, mainly those from the minority Hazara Shi’ite community.
 
Officials said Saturday bomb blasts struck two buses in the western part of Kabul, killing at least seven people. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.  
 
The surge in violence has raised concerns Afghanistan will see more bloodshed in coming months, which could plunge the country into another round of civil war once all international forces leave.
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G-7 leaders appear to be split on U.S. President Joe Biden’s call to take more aggressive action against China, including on its forced labor practices, unwillingness to play by international trade rules and problematic global infrastructure financing mechanism.  
 
“There were some interesting discussions and a little bit of a differentiation of opinion,” said a senior Biden administration official while briefing reporters following G-7 plenary sessions in Cornwall, England. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.  
 
G-7 leaders agreed the threat of an increasingly assertive China is real but differ on how aggressive the response should be, the official said. Italy, Germany, and the European Union appear reluctant to take as tough a stance on China, and instead would rather focus on the “cooperative nature of the relationship.”
 
The U.S., Britain, Canada, and France, on the other hand, want to be more “action-oriented” to different degrees. Japan appears to be the most ambivalent of the group. US to Offer Alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative Biden to push G-7 countries to take ‘action against Chinese forced labor’  Build Back Better World  
 
Biden and this year’s G-7 Summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are anxious to announce an infrastructure financing mechanism for low- and middle-income countries, designed to rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative—the global infrastructure development investment strategy in dozens of countries that is central to Beijing’s foreign policy.  
 
The initiative, called “Build Back Better World,” or “B3W,” aims to mobilize existing development finance mechanisms and the private sector to narrow the gap in infrastructure financing needs in the developing world, while meeting labor, environmental and transparency standards.  
 
The administration says B3W will “collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure.” The timeline, structure, and scope of the financing to be committed by the U.S., though, is still unclear.   
 
“It’s fair to ask whether this is going to be actually new funding, new capacity to build infrastructure in the region, or is this a repurposing and repackaging of resources that are also available,” said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.  
 
To expand its sphere of influence, Beijing is known to give BRI loans to countries for projects that are not considered creditworthy by established international lenders.   
 
“That raises the question of whether this new program is going to be less risk averse,” Daly said, noting that if these projects were bankable, lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank would have funded them already.  
 Xinjiang forced labor  
 
Sino-U.S. tensions are set to be raised further as Biden lobbies G-7 partners to come out with a strong statement and concrete action against Chinese forced labor practices targeting the Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang and other ethnic minorities.  Human Rights Watch Calls Out China’s ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Toward Uyghurs Group calls for coordinated international action against those responsible  
Since 2018, humanitarian organizations have documented evidence of Beijing implementing a mass detention and forced labor program. The program includes transferring Uyghur and other Chinese minorities from Xinjiang, forcing them to work under harsh conditions in factories across the country, many of which are in the supply chains of global brands.
 
Biden characterizes the practices as “an affront to human dignity and an egregious example of China’s unfair, economic competition,” according to an administration official. The president wants the G-7 to speak out forcefully in a unified voice against Beijing’s forced labor practices but it is uncertain whether he will have the necessary support to include it in the final G-7 communique to be released Sunday.
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For many Belarusians, a typical day began with Tut.by. Founded in 2000, the web portal quickly became one of the country’s leading independent news services, with over 1.8 million unique visitors daily.Today, the news organization’s website is shut down by government order, although its staff continue to distribute news as best they are able on other platforms.The success of the Minsk-based outlet, founded by the late businessman and philanthropist Yuri Zisser, was based on its independence.”It was the media market’s standard-bearer,” said Nikolai Khalezin, a journalist and the co-founder of the London-based Belarus Free Theater, which produces shows on social justice and human rights. ”This was in large part because Yuri Zisser was successful in maintaining a political balance without taking any one side.”As a result, Khalezin said, Tut.by became the country’s biggest internet-based platform, offering news, email service, sales listings for real estate and more. “All of this made it a market darling,” Khalezin said.”Tut.by would have been the equivalent of, say, The New York Times,” said Uladzimir Matskevich, a former journalist and renowned Belarusian philosopher and methodologist. “(But) with content easily accessible and free to all.”All that changed in August last year, when mass protests spilled across Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in a contested election. Members of the opposition were jailed or forced into exile, protesters violently suppressed, and media targeted.Tut.by, which has had previous run-ins with Lukashenko’s government, has not been spared. Its offices have been raided; its reporters detained. The Ministry of Information stripped the outlet of its official media status in December, and last month it blocked access to Tut.by’s news website, claiming it was in violation of the country’s mass media law.Even as the pressure increased last year, Tut.by’s journalists remained committed to reporting on rights violations.One of those was Katerina Borisevich, whose reporting on Roman Bondarenko, an activist who died in November in police custody, countered the official account.Up to that point, the state had claimed Bondarenko was drunk and involved in a street fight.But Borisevich reported that details from his medical records showed that Bondarenko had no alcohol in his system. Witnesses and friends of the activist had also said that men believed to be plainclothes police officers had beaten Bondarenko unconscious in the courtyard of his apartment building.Borisevich’s coverage on Tut.by did not go unnoticed.”The evening of November 19, I left home to go to the store, and I never returned,” Borisevich told VOA. “Or, more accurately, I returned with seven strangers, and my home was searched while my 17-year-old daughter watched. I had no illusions. From the time of the first questioning, I knew that I would be convicted.”A court in March sentenced Borisevich to six months in prison for divulging medical secrets. The doctor who provided the medical records was handed a suspended sentence.Borisevich was released on May 19. But her news outlet’s troubles were far from over.In late May, security forces raided the home of Yulia Chernyavskaya, the widow of Tut.by’s founder, and searched the news outlet’s offices.Authorities say the company is under investigation for mass tax evasion.Belarusian authorities detained more than a dozen journalists, confiscated computers and searched homes. They questioned and detained at least four employees before releasing them under nondisclosure agreements. They placed Chernyavskaya under house arrest, froze her daughter’s bank accounts and blocked access to the news website.Retaliatory actionsIt comes as no small irony to Khalezin that Tut.by’s death blow came in the form of criminal tax-evasion charges.The company was based in Minsk’s High-Tech Park, an economic zone set up by Lukashenko in 2005 that is sometimes called the Belarusian Silicon Valley. Companies based there are exempt from value-added tax and real estate and corporate taxes.”It was the government that originally allowed Tut.by to be part of High-Tech Park and to take advantage of various tax breaks, and now it’s the government accusing it of tax evasion,” Khalezin said.Analysts believe the government’s harassment of Tut.by and other independent news outlets is in retaliation for their coverage of the months of unrest and violent suppression after the elections.At a May 21 briefing, Natalia Belikova, project coordinator for Press Club Belarus, described the raid as “a purging of the Belarusian media space.””With so many other information resources blocked, Tut.by served as a window to the world,” Matskevich, the philosopher, told VOA. “But now that window has been slammed shut.”Tut.by co-founder Kirill Voloshin also believes the legal cases are driven by retaliation.”The cause of the crackdown is our conscientious and honest coverage of events related to what the majority of the electorate believed was election fraud, as well as the ensuing violence and endless arrests,” Voloshin said.”We covered everything in an uncompromising, honest and efficient manner. When there were different interpretations of the same event, we always gave the other side an opportunity to have its say. But even this approach did not satisfy the powers that be.”Voloshin says Lukashenko’s “assassination of the portal” is made evident by those targeted in the tax-evasion case that put it out of operation: reporters, editors, programmers, the founder’s wife, and Sergei Povalishev, director of Hoster.by, which hosted Tut.by.”It’s unfathomable that these people are somehow being accused of tax evasion,” Voloshin said, adding that Tut.by was vigilant about submitting business plans and financial documentation to remain eligible for its High-Tech Park exemptions.Under attackTut.by’s experiences reflect the wider troubling climate for media since the elections. Hundreds of media workers have been arrested, with around 30 still detained, and more than 60 cases of violence against the press were recorded by the Belarusian Association of Journalists.The government has blocked access to more than 50 websites in Belarus, and many outlets and their staff have been forced into exile.Media outlets and bloggers with big followings have been singled out, including Raman Pratasevich, who ran the popular Telegram channel Nexta. On May 23, Belarus ordered a passenger plane in its airspace to divert to Minsk so it could arrest Pratasevich.According to Matskevich, the Nexta Telegram channel was of major concern to Lukashenko. When the country’s internet was shut down and hundreds of protesters were beaten, it was Nexta — whose office is based in Poland — that provided timely information on what was happening through videos and photos sent in by people on the streets.It acted as a news crowdsourcing project which, by the speed of its distribution, outflanked other media outlets in the process.While Matskevich does not see a direct link between the Tut.by crackdown and the Pratasevich arrest, he calls it all part of a “widespread crackdown on all information services.”After the arrest of Pratasevich, Lukashenko signed into law a decree that allows the shutdown of the internet if national security is threatened.While the decree conveys a sense of adjudication and finality, some, including Khalezin, refuse to believe Lukashenko holds the winning hand.”He has gambled and lost,” he told VOA. “Diplomatic relations with Latvia are severed; airspace over Belarus is shut down.”Latvia completely froze relations with Belarus over the flight diversion.Tut.by is facing huge pressure, but it has no plans to stop.Before the May raids, the outlet’s Telegram channel had close to 300,000 subscribers. It now has more than half a million.The editors plan to continue — at least on social media. Its co-founder Voloshin said he plans to ask the Belarusian Ministry of Information which articles allegedly violated a law, in a bid to eventually have the site restored.  But he doubts Tut.by will be permitted a comeback.”We don’t have any access to the servers,” he said. “For me, at least, the future won’t seem bright until democracy reaches our shores.”Still, Voloshin maintains the team has no regrets.”Our job was to carry forward the mission first advanced by Yuri Zisser: that of transparent, multifaceted and timely coverage of events taking place in our country,” he said. “Tut.by has never abandoned that mission and doesn’t intend to now. We should not regret that we told people the truth.”
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Several thousand people joined an interfaith march Friday evening honoring the four members of a Muslim family who were killed in an attack that has shocked Canada.The procession started at the site where three generations of a family out for a Sunday evening stroll — 46-year-old Salman Afzaal; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna Salman; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal — were killed in London, southern Ontario, as they were waiting to cross the street.The couple’s 9-year-old son, Fayez, suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries.The march against racism and Islamophobia culminated at London’s mosque, about 7 kilometers away.The demonstrators, who included families with children, banged on drums while others sang John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.”They held posters with messages like “Hate kills” and “We’re all human.”After a moment of silence marking the time of the tragedy, representatives from several religions gave speeches denouncing hatred and saluting the outpouring of support for London’s 30,000-strong Muslim community.Other rallies or vigils in Canada on Friday took place in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, where a shooting in a mosque left six dead in 2017.The Afzaal family’s funeral is scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Nathaniel Veltman, 20, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in the truck attack. If found guilty he faces life in prison.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the assault — in which Veltman’s truck mounted a curb and struck the Afzaal family — a “terrorist attack.”Detective Superintendent Paul Waight, who is leading the investigation, has said there was evidence “that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Washington on July 15 in what will likely be her farewell visit to the United States after almost 16 years at the helm of Europe’s largest economy.The announcement was made Friday on the first day of the Group of Seven summit in England. Biden has hosted two other world leaders since taking office, Japan and South Korea.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden and Merkel “will discuss their commitment to close cooperation on a range of common challenges, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing the threat of climate change, and promoting economic prosperity and international security based on our shared democratic values.”A standoff over the completion of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline piping Russian gas to Europe has strained ties at a time when Berlin and Washington are eager to rebuild relations after former U.S. President Donald Trump’s term.The United States waived sanctions last month on the company behind the pipeline, Russian state energy firm Gazprom, giving Berlin and Washington three more months to resolve the dispute.It will probably be Merkel’s farewell visit to the United States since she plans to step down after a September national election, regardless of how her Christian Democrats fare in the polls.The trip is scheduled just days after a July 10 deadline for Europe and the United States to settle a nearly 17-year-old dispute over government subsidies to Airbus and Boeing.U.S. and European Union officials are upbeat about reaching an agreement before currently suspended tariffs go back into effect on July 11.Stormy-Annika Mildner, executive director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, said two leaders would likely focus on shared goals, such as ending the coronavirus pandemic and combating climate change, as well as digitalization and trade.China and a proposed waiver of intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization – a move backed by Washington but opposed by Berlin – would also be on the agenda, she said.The trip will underscore the importance of the transatlantic and German-U.S. relationship at a time when many Germans remain on edge after the tumult of the Trump administration, she said.”Merkel will be sending a message in both directions – towards the United States … and toward us here in Germany – that this is a window of opportunity,” she said.“There’s still a lot of mistrust in the German population towards the United States. There is the fear that after Biden, there might be another Trump. And even with regard to Biden that he will not be able deliver because of internal restrictions, and the very small majorities that Democrats have in Congress.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced hope Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden would be less impulsive than his predecessor, Donald Trump, ahead of his first summit with the new U.S. leader. In an interview with NBC News, Putin described Biden as a “career man” who spent his life in politics.  “It is my great hope that, yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting U.S. president,” he said, according to a translation by NBC News. Biden plans to raise a range of U.S. complaints, including over purported Russian election interference and hacking, in the summit with Putin on Wednesday in Geneva at the end of Biden’s first foreign trip. Putin had openly admitted that during the 2016 vote he supported Trump, who expressed admiration for the Russian leader and who, at their first summit, appeared to accept his denials of election interference. Biden has said he is under no illusions about Putin, whom he described as “a killer” in light of a series of high-profile deaths, including that of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov. Asked if he is “a killer,” Putin said the term was part of “macho behavior” common in Hollywood. Such discourse “is part of U.S. political culture, where it’s considered normal. By the way, not here. It is not considered normal here,” he said. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is set to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a NATO meeting Monday, with some observers questioning whether Turkey can still be viewed as a trusted NATO ally and security partner. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Britain’s COVID-19 vaccines minister urged caution Friday regarding the planned full reopening of the nation later this month, speaking the same day the number of new cases spiked in the nation — 90 percent of which were the highly transmissible delta variant.According to the COVID-19 road map laid out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, all pandemic-related restrictions are scheduled to be lifted June 21, one week from Monday.FILE – Britain’s COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi appears on BBC TV’s The Andrew Marr Show in London, Britain, May 30, 2021.But in an interview Friday, England’s COVID-19 vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, told Times Radio the nation must be very careful about the opening given the dominance of the delta variant, originally identified in India. His comments came as the government reported 8,125 new COVID-19 cases, the highest daily total since February, and that daily transmission rates also were higher.Zahawi said the government should examine the data from this coming weekend very carefully and share it with the nation, and then decide about reopening. Chicago reopensMeanwhile, Chicago on Friday became the largest U.S. city to fully reopen. During a news conference formally announcing the reopening, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters that for more than a year, Chicago residents have endured so much, but they did their part every step of the way.”You masked up, you got vaxxed up, and now it’s time for you to get up, get out of the house this summer, and fully and safely enjoy the events of the best city on the planet, our beloved city of Chicago,” Lightfoot said.Earlier Friday, leaders from the G-7 nations announced they would donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and medium-income nations. The U.S. will donate 500 million shots, while Britain will donate 100 million doses.  G-7 Will Donate 1 Billion COVID Vaccines to WorldUS shots will begin shipment in August President Biden says; Britain will donate 100 million jabsOther vaccinesThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report Thursday focusing on 10 jurisdictions, and it found that between March and May of 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a marked decline in routine childhood vaccinations compared with the same period in 2018 and 2019.The study said the decline placed “U.S. children and adolescents at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” such as measles and polio.The CDC study also found the vaccination rate increased from June to September 2020, but “this increase was not sufficient to achieve catch-up coverage.”The CDC recommended health care providers “assess the vaccination status of all pediatric patients, including adolescents, and contact those who are behind schedule to ensure that all children and adolescents are fully vaccinated” to avoid disease outbreaks.
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NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg, fresh from a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, told reporters Friday he expects next week’s summit of NATO leaders in Brussel to be a pivotal moment for the alliance and its collective security.
During a briefing at alliance headquarters in Brussels, Stoltenberg noted he had a very good meeting with Biden Monday at the White House and said all NATO alliance members were glad to hear the U.S. president’s strong commitment to reinvigorating the trans-Atlantic bond.
Stoltenberg said he was confident all the leaders at the summit will demonstrate their commitment to that alliance “not only in words, but also in deeds.”
He laid out a busy agenda for the meeting, topped by dealings with Russia and China, which he said were “pushing back against the rules-based international order.” He said the recent high-profile cyberattacks which have been traced to Russia, have left relations between the alliance and the country at their lowest point since the cold war.
He emphasized NATO needs to develop its next strategy for dealing with Russia and said he has reached out to the country to convene a new meeting the NATO-Russia Council. The council was created in 2002 in an effort to improve communications between the alliance and its primary adversary, but the group has not met since 2019.
Stoltenberg said Russia has “not responded positively” to the idea but the dialogue continues.
The NATO chief said the summit also will focus on ensuring the alliance’s technical capabilities to defend against cyberattacks, and he expects the allies will agree on a new cyber-defense policy.
Stoltenberg said outer space will also be a priority, underscoring that domain is as essential as any other the alliance defends. He said it is critical that NATO can gather intelligence, navigate, and be able to detect missile launches, among other space-related issues.
  
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The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to give two-year terms on the powerful 15-nation Security Council to five countries.    Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates all ran unopposed for available seats in their regional groups, and each secured the necessary two-thirds majority required of the secret ballots cast.They will begin their terms on Jan. 1, 2022.The council deals with issues of international peace and security.  It has the power to deploy peacekeepers to trouble spots and to sanction bad actors.  New members bring different experiences, perspectives and national interests to the council and can subtly affect dynamics among its members.The council currently has several Middle Eastern crises on its agenda, including the Israeli-Palestinian situation and conflicts in Libya, Syria and Yemen.Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group and a long-time U.N. watcher, says the United Arab Emirates may play a role in those areas and elsewhere.“The UAE has a lot of influence not only in the Middle East but in the Horn of Africa, and other council members will hope the Emiratis will use their influence to help stabilize countries like Sudan and Ethiopia,” Gowan said.Gowan notes that Albania is a country that has “seen the U.N. fail awfully in its region in the past.”The U.N. failed to stop the Balkan war of the early 1990s, leading to NATO bombing in 1995. Then in 1999, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians fought Serbs to gain independence.“Albania’s main interest on the U.N. agenda is of course still Kosovo, but the Security Council only has very limited influence there now,” Gowan told VOA. UAE Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh noted that the council’s work does not end when resolutions are adopted.“The UAE will be part of the coalition that speaks to strengthen the results-oriented nature of the council as much as possible,” she said, adding that the council is most effective when it is united.But in recent years, diverging views, particularly among its permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — have stymied action on urgent issues. “The Security Council’s record on recent crises has been pathetic,” Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA.    “Whether it involves war crimes in Gaza, massive human rights abuses in Myanmar, or atrocities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the most you can usually expect is the occasional statement of concern — and that’s if you’re lucky,” he said.  The countries elected Friday will replace exiting members Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam on Jan. 1.    They will join the five other current non-permanent members: India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway, and the five veto-wielding permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.   
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PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND – The G-7 Summit begins Friday in Cornwall, England, where leaders of seven wealthy democracies are meeting with the goal of leading the global fight against the pandemic and to “build back better” toward a greener, more prosperous and equitable future. The summit is hosted by Britain and attended by leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Representatives from the European Union also are attending, along with other guests – the heads of Australia, South Africa and South Korea. India’s prime minister is joining via video link.“This is a meeting that genuinely needs to happen,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this year’s host as he opened the plenary session of leaders. “We need to make sure that we learn the lessons from the pandemic, we need to make sure that we don’t repeat some of the errors that we doubtless made in the course of the last 18 months or so.” Johnson said that he wants the G-7 to be “building back better, building back greener, building back fairer, and building back more equal and in a Leaders of the G7 pose for a group photo on overlooking the beach at the Carbis Bay Hotel in Carbis Bay, St. Ives, Cornwall, England, June 11, 2021.While past G-7 meetings were marked with lavish banquets, massive delegations and media entourages, this year’s sessions are severely restricted. Masks, daily COVID-19 testing and other health protocols are stark reminders the coronavirus crisis is far from over.   “The world will look to the G-7 to apply our shared values and diplomatic might, to the challenge of defeating the pandemic and leading a global recovery,” said Johnson.This year’s @G7 Summit will be all about how we #BuildBackBetterpic.twitter.com/2XpSbhB3VC— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) June 11, 2021The pandemic caused leaders to skip last year’s summit. The last time the G-7 met in-person was in Biarritz, France 2018.  G-7 pandemic plan Johnson said the G-7 will announce a plan to donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries, including 100 million doses from Britain.Johnson’s announcement on Thursday came after U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier in the day that his administration is donating 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, half of the G-7 vaccine trove. 
Biden is eager to play his role in a successful G-7, to show the U.S. is back as a strong and dependable ally, after four years of unpredictability under Donald Trump. It’s the first official day of the G7 Summit here in the United Kingdom. I’m looking forward to reinforcing our commitment to multilateralism and working with our allies and partners to build a more fair and inclusive global economy.Let’s get to work.— President Biden (@POTUS) U.S. President Joe Biden and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson attend a session during the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, Britain, June 11, 2021.The G-7 countries are close allies and major trading partners, with similar views on security and trade cooperation. Collectively the group accounts for about half of the global economy. The G-7 summit ends Sunday. Biden and first lady Jill Biden will continue their tour and attend the European Union Summit, the NATO Summit and his highly anticipated meeting Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The first match of soccer’s European championship gets underway Friday at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, with Turkey taking on Italy.The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship was postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic that brought many of the world’s activities to a halt.It is notable that Friday’s opening match will be played in Italy, the first country outside of Asia to get hit by the pandemic and the world’s first to impose a nationwide lockdown.Euro 2020 was suspended last March as countries worked to contain virus outbreaks that have killed more than 1 million Europeans, including 127,000 Italians.Organizers of the tournament, the Union of European Football Associations, hope to allay concerns that it is still unsafe for tens of thousands of fans to gather in stadiums across Europe by undertaking several safety measures. They include crowd limitations, staggered fan arrival times, social distancing and hand sanitizer.Fans attending the match in Rome are required to show documentation they have been vaccinated, tested negative in the 48 hours before the match, or previously have had the coronavirus.Euro 2020, the 16th UEFA championship, is scheduled through July 11. For the first time, matches will be played across Europe. The host cities are Rome, London, Saint Petersburg, Baku, Munich, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow and Seville. 
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On Thursday, before the opening Friday of the G-7 Summit in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the group is set to donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries.Johnson’s announcement came after U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier in the day that his administration is donating 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, half of the G-7 vaccine trove.”We’re going to help lead the world out of this pandemic working alongside our global partners,” Biden said.Britain will donate 100 million shots.“As a result of the success of the U.K.’s vaccine program, we are now in a position to share some of our surplus doses with those who need them,” Johnson said. “In doing so, we will take a massive step towards beating this pandemic for good.”The U.S. shots will begin shipment in August “as quickly as they roll off the manufacturing line,” Biden said in Cornwall on Thursday, adding that 200 million doses will be delivered by the end of this year and 300 million in the first half of 2022.Biden said the donation will be made with no strings attached.“Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives, to end this pandemic,” he said.Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, joined Biden for the announcement.“We are testing our vaccines response to newly arising variants,” Bourla said, noting that so far not a single variant has escaped the protection provided by the vaccine.With the pledge, the U.S. also aims to liberate itself from the uncomfortable reputation of being a vaccine hoarder.The move is a signal that the U.S. “isn’t as intensely parochial and inward focused,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at Chatham House. That has been a deep concern globally, said Vinjamuri, during former President Donald Trump’s administration as well as in the early months of the Biden administration, when Washington was not sharing doses despite a massive oversupply.COVAXThe doses, delivered by the U.S. through COVAX, the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism, are in addition to the 80 million already committed by the U.S. to be delivered by the end of June. In addition, the U.S. has given $2 billion to COVAX.The U.S. initially pledged an additional $2 billion for COVAX but is now redirecting the money to help pay for the 500 million donated doses, which has an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.Humanitarian organizations applauded the move.Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign, an organization that works to end poverty and preventable diseases, said in a statement, “This action sends an incredibly powerful message about America’s commitment to helping the world fight this pandemic and the immense power of U.S. global leadership.”However, it is unclear just how much G-7 countries can help. The member countries are at different stages of vaccinating their own populations. Japan and Canada, which have vaccination rates of under 10%, are not in a position to be as generous.Aside from donating vaccines, the G-7 is also under pressure to waive vaccine patents. The U.S. has supported waiving intellectual property rights on vaccines, the so-called TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The European Union, however, is pushing for a different proposal, compulsory licensing to scale up vaccine production.White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA that the different approaches will not be a point of contention at the G-7.“I anticipate convergence, because we’re all converging around the idea that we need to boost vaccine supply in a number of ways,” said Sullivan.The Biden administration knows that Europe will likely hold firm on not supporting the waiver, said Vinjamuri of Chatham House, adding that getting all members of the WTO to agree on a waiver is a long and challenging process, and it’s simply easier to donate vaccines rather than allow countries to produce them without fear of being sued.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA the U.S. will continue WTO negotiations but would not provide details on whether Biden will put his diplomatic weight behind it at the G-7.Biden-Johnson summitPrior to his vaccine announcement, Biden met Thursday with Johnson, with whom he has had disagreements in the past. Biden had once called Johnson a clone of Trump.The leaders agreed on a new Atlantic Charter, modeled on statement made by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to promote democracy and free trade, that was instrumental in shaping the world order after World War II.The 2021 Atlantic Charter underscores that, with similar values and combined strength, the two countries will work together to face the enormous challenges facing the planet – from COVID and climate change to maintaining global security.Biden, who is of Irish descent, is also concerned that Brexit could undermine the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 deal facilitated by the United States that brought peace to Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.Under the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains party to the EU’s single market, yet is no longer part of the union, which means a customs border must be implemented. The Biden administration wants to ensure that nothing in Brexit could endanger prospects for peace.Biden’s support for the Good Friday Agreement is “rock-solid,” Sullivan told VOA.“That agreement must be protected, and any steps that imperil or undermine it will not be welcomed by the United States,” said Sullivan. He would not say whether Johnson is undermining the agreement.Despite these tensions, Biden is very committed to anchoring the G-7 in the U.S.-U.K. partnership, said Vinjamuri. “Really using America’s deep and historic relationship with Britain to affirm the values of democracy, of liberalism, of freedom.”Johnson’s government has just concluded an integrated review of its foreign policy strategy, which included a reaffirmation of the special relationship between the two allies.  
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Almost all of Italy’s political parties rallied behind Mario Draghi when he became prime minister — but the public seems to be falling for his biggest critic, the far-right leader Georgia Meloni.A straight-talking conservative who has embraced the fascist-era slogan of “God, Homeland and Family,”Meloni and her Brothers of Italy (FDI) are close to overtaking Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration League as the most popular party in opinion polls.Her success — recent surveys put her party at around 20% — raises the prospect that the next elections will produce the most right-wing government in Italy’s postwar history, with FDI in the driving seat.The next general election is not due until 2023, and technocrat Draghi is still the country’s most popular politician, but Meloni has made no secret of her ambitions.”I am not afraid, in the sense of being ready to do what the Italians are asking me to do,” she told RAI television last month.No ‘cult of fascism’FDI has benefitted from being the only major party opposed to Draghi’s national unity government, which stretches from left to right of the political spectrum, including the League.”As the sole opposition party, you get more airtime and above all, you can say things that parties in the coalition cannot,” Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of the Teneo political consultancy, told AFP.Meloni, 44, has led criticism of coronavirus restrictions, which she sees as excessive, and has lambasted the government’s failure to stop migrants landing in Italy from North Africa.According to Piccoli, she is mostly picking up votes from the League, whose leader Salvini can no longer ride on anti-establishment sentiment since his party gained a place in the Cabinet.The FDI, which takes its name from the opening lines of the Italian national anthem, has surged past the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party, and is a couple of points off the League.Meloni portrays herself as a champion of patriotism and traditional Christian values, which she sees endangered by “globalist” elites and the gay rights movement, and an enemy of political correctness.She is media-savvy and recently published a best-selling autobiography, I am Giorgia, in which she opens up on a series of personal traumas, including growing up without a father who left her mother before she was born.Meloni wrote that she “does not belong to the cult of fascism,” yet expressed sympathy for all the neo-Fascists who were killed in the political violence that wracked Italy in the 1970s.Her book — whose title nods to a Meloni speech that went viral after it was remixed into an unlikely dance anthem — has earned her huge publicity, also through controversy over her alleged fascist allegiances.In Rome, a leftist bookshop refused to stock it, while a Venice university professor caused an uproar by tweeting a picture of its front cover upside down — an apparent reference to the hanging of Benito Mussolini’s upside-down body after his death in 1945.’Bit of cleaning up’Meloni grew up in the left-wing working-class Roman neighborhood of Garbatella, and joined as a teen the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a now-defunct party founded by diehard Mussolini fans after World War II.She remains a polarizing figure, but according to Marco Tarchi, a political science professor from Florence university with a distant past in far-right politics, that is no obstacle to her popularity.People like “the radical nature of some of her positions, for example on immigration and the traditional family, and like the way in which she expresses them,” Tarchi told AFP.”She knows she cannot appeal to all Italians,” he said, but “she speaks quite clearly” to right-wing voters who he believes are in the majority.Tarchi added: “She’s a woman, moreover still relatively young, and in an age where feminism and youthfulness are dominant, this helps.”Meloni also has past government experience — she served as a minister under prime minister Silvio Berlusconi between 2008 and 2011.In Europe, she is allied with far right or nationalist forces such as Vox in Spain and Poland’s governing Law and Justice party and is a fan of former U.S. president Donald Trump.Despite intensive media speculation that Meloni could become Italy’s first female premier, experts urge caution.Piccoli warned that the FDI still needed “a bit of cleaning up” from its post-fascist roots, and warned she had no credible team behind her.  “In Italy, we have seen that political fortunes can turn very quickly,” he said.  
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The Keystone XL is dead after a 12-year attempt to build the oil pipeline, yet the fight over Canadian crude rages on as emboldened environmentalists target other projects and pressure President Joe Biden to intervene — all while oil imports from the north keep rising.Biden dealt the fatal blow to the partially built $9 billion Keystone XL in January when he revoked its border-crossing permit issued by former President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, sponsors TC Energy and the province of Alberta gave up and declared the line “terminated.”Activists and many scientists had warned that the pipeline would open a new spigot on Canada’s oil sands crude — and that burning the heavily polluting fuel would lock in climate change. As the fight escalated into a national debate over fossil fuels, Canadian crude exports to the U.S. steadily increased, driven largely by production from Alberta’s oil sands region.Even before the cancellation, environmentalists had turned their attention to other projects, including the proposal by energy delivery company Enbridge to expand and rebuild its Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, the target of protests this week that led to the arrest of some 250 activists.”Don’t expect these fights to go away anytime soon,” said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at Resources for the Future, an energy and environmental think tank in Washington. “This is going to encourage environmental advocates to do more of the same.”Bill McKibben, an author who was arrested outside the White House while protesting the Keystone XL in 2011, said its defeat provides a template to kill other pipelines, including Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field.Describing Keystone XL as “a carbon bomb,” McKibben said Line 3 is the same size and “carries the same stuff. How on earth could anyone with a straight face say Line 3 passes the climate test?”Enbridge said the cancellation of Keystone XL will not affect its projects, describing them as “designed to meet current energy demand safely and in ways that better protect the environment.”A second TC Energy pipeline network, known simply as Keystone, has been delivering crude from Canada’s oil sands region since 2010. The company says the line that runs from Alberta to Illinois, Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast has moved more than 3 billion barrels of oil.Canada is by far the biggest foreign crude supplier to the U.S., which imported about 3.5 million barrels a day from its neighbor in 2020 — 61% of all U.S. oil imports.The flow dropped slightly during the coronavirus pandemic but has largely rebounded. Import volumes have almost doubled since the Keystone XL was first proposed in 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said Thursday that it expects no immediate effect on production from Keystone XL’s cancellation, but the group predicted more oil would be moved to the U.S. by rail.A series of fiery accidents occurred in the U.S. and Canada after rail shipments of crude increased during an oil boom on the Northern Plains, including a 2013 incident in which 47 people were killed after a runaway train derailed in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic.The dispute over Keystone XL and other lines raised diplomatic tensions between the two countries, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau adopted a conciliatory tone with Biden, who canceled the pipeline on his first day in the White House.Canada uses much less oil than it produces, making it a huge exporter, and 98% of those exports go to the U.S., according to the Natural Resources Canada.Trudeau raised Keystone XL as a top priority with Biden while acknowledging that the president had promised in his campaign to cancel the line.Both leaders have taken heat at home over Keystone, with Republicans slamming Biden for shutting it down while construction was under way, costing hundreds of jobs. The project was meant to expand oil exports for Canada, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and provincial officials in Alberta wanted Trudeau to do more to save it.The White House declined to comment on the cancellation. Spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to say if Biden plans to address increased crude exports from Canada or intervene in other pipeline disputes.His action on Keystone “signals at least some appetite to get involved,” but pipelines that have operated for years would be tougher targets, Raimi said.Winona LaDuke, executive director of the Indigenous-based environmental group Honor the Earth, called on Biden to withdraw an Army Corps of Engineers permit for Line 3 and to order a new study.”He could stop the project,” she said. “Don’t ask us to be nice to Enbridge. They’re all over our land. They’re hurting us.”The Biden administration has been “disturbingly quiet” on Line 3 and the Dakota Access line, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. He urged the administration to declare both unacceptable.Fiercely opposed by Native Americans, the Dakota Access pipeline was the impetus for protests that were quashed by law enforcement. The Biden administration has not sought to stop the line, and it’s still in court after a judge revoked its permit but allowed oil to keep flowing.Alberta sank more than $1 billion into Keystone XL last year to kick-start construction. Officials in the province are considering a trade action against the U.S. to seek compensation.Keystone XL’s price tag ballooned as the project languished, increasing from $5.4 billion to $9 billion.Another question: What to do with pipe already in place at the U.S.-Canada border and other infrastructure along its route.Jane Kleeb, a pipeline opponent in Nebraska, said state regulators should revoke the permit they approved for a route through the state. Otherwise, she said, TC Energy might try to sell the easements to another company.Until the state acts, farmers and ranchers will continue to face TC Energy attorneys in court, “protecting their property from an eminent domain land grab by a foreign corporation,” she said. 
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Two passengers on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19.Cruise operator Royal Caribbean said Thursday the two guests on the Celebrity Millennium ship tested positive during required end-of-cruise testing.Royal Caribbean said the two passengers who shared a room are asymptomatic, in isolation and are being monitored by a medical team.”We are conducting contact tracing, expediting testing for all close contacts and closely monitoring the situation,” Royal Caribbean said in a statement.The cruise operator said the “comprehensive protocols” that the Celebrity Millennium had observed had exceeded “CDC guidelines to protect the health and safety of our guests.”Celebrity Millennium set sail Saturday from St. Maarten and has made several stops around the Caribbean.Royal Caribbean said its crew was fully vaccinated. Passengers were required to show proof of vaccination and negative results from a COVID test conducted within 72 hours of departure. Children too young for vaccination also were required to have negative COVID test results.
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On Thursday, the eve of the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, U.S. President Joe Biden formally announced what had been disclosed a day earlier — that his administration would donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries. Here’s the latest from White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara, who is traveling with the president.
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