Статті

Greece is beefing up land patrols to stem a rising tide of illegal migrants trickling in from neighboring Turkey. With tensions between the two NATO allies at their highest in years, Athens fears Ankara may move to weaponize refugees, sparking a fresh migration crisis on top of a lingering energy dispute. Greek authorities say they are mobilizing scores of special border guards to scour sprawling fields and marshland along the Evros region that divides Greece and Turkey.Hundreds more will also be deployed on Greece’s Aegean islands to stop illegal sea crossings.United Nations statistics show that illegal land entries into Greece from Turkey, have doubled in the last month alone, stoking concerns of a new migration crisis as tensions between the feuding countries have flared over energy rights in eastern Mediterranean Sea.Migration Minister Notis Mitarachis explains the Greek position.”We want Turkey to conform to agreements it has signed to stem the flow of illegal immigration,” he said. “Any attempt to weaponize the suffering of refugees for geopolitical interests will not be tolerated.” FILE – Migrants walk in Edirne at the Turkish-Greek border, Monday, March 9, 2020.Greece fended off a major migration push from Turkey earlier this year after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan temporarily lifted his country’s border controls, allowing refugees and migrants to make their way freely into Europe. Greece claimed to have thwarted what it called “an enemy invasion” of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers into the country earlier this year and has kept its defenses on alert in the Evros region since then.The border reinforcement also comes amid a flurry of media reports saying that Turkey was withdrawing 40 tanks from Syria, moving them instead to the Greek-Turkish border.Turkey has not explained the deployment but Kostas Lavdas, a professor of international relations at Panteon University in Athens, says Greece must be ready for war.It may be a simple rotation of forces, he said, because Turkey has several military fronts open. Regardless the reason, he said, Turkey has repeatedly shown that it wants to be ready for all scenarios relating to Greece, including war.Greece, he said, may want to avoid that but it also needs to be prepared for it.FILE – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks with Turkish drilling ship, Fatih, in background, in Istanbul, Aug. 21, 2020.Relations between the two countries have deteriorated dangerously in the past month as Turkey has sent an exploration ship near a cluster of Greek islands, to hunt for undersea oil and gas in a patch of the eastern Mediterranean which Athens says only it has the right to survey.Turkey rejects the claims, saying islands are not entitled to what is known as an exclusive economic zone …. Ankara instead believes it has the right to explore the oil and mineral rich East Mediterranean seabed after a recent maritime agreement it concluded with Libya.Erdogan has agreed to engage in talks with Greece to over decades-old differences over air and sea rights but said this weekend he would do anything to defend his country’s interests.He said, either Athens will heed to diplomacy or it will re-live bitter memories of war.Greece has sought recourse with the United Nations, submitting what it called a bulky dossier of alleged violations by Turkey in recent weeks. The United Nations has made no response. 
…

Protesters once again took to the streets of Belarus Sunday, the latest in nearly a month of demonstrations following disupted elections that left longtime president Alexander Lukashenko in power. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Minsk Sunday in numbers comparable to previous weekends, waving red and white opposition flags and chanting slogans. Human rights groups have said at least 70 protesters were detained Sunday. A police barricade with two water cannons is set blocking a street during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 6, 2020.Lukashenko, in power since 1994, claimed victory in elections August 9. Opposition parties, along with the United States and the European Union, say the poll was heavily rigged.     More than 7,000 protesters have been arrested, and widespread evidence of abuse and torture has been reported. At least four people were reported to have died during the demonstrations.  FILE – Belurus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya takes part in an U.N. General Assembly online debate from Vilnius, Lithuania, Sept. 4, 2020.Belarus’ main opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has been in Lithuania since the election for what she says is her own safety. In an interview with VOA, Tsikhanouskaya said she is working to organize new elections despite Lukashenko’s refusal to do so. “Our plan is absolutely clear. It’s organization of new elections, fair and transparent,” she said. 
…

An experimental, reusable Chinese spacecraft returned to its designated landing site Sunday after two days in orbit, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.The agency described the flight as successful, adding that it “marked the country’s important breakthrough in reusable spacecraft research” that could offer low-cost round trips to space for peaceful purposes.Chinese state media have not yet published images or video footage of the launch or landing of the spacecraft. They have not provided details on the technologies tested, either.Chinese social media and some commentators have compared the craft to the U.S. Air Force X-37B, an autonomous, Boeing spaceplane that can stay in orbit for long periods of time before returning to Earth on its own.The Chinese spacecraft was launched into orbit Friday from the northwestern Jiuquan Satellite Center with a Long March 2F, the type of rocket that has been used to put crewed and uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft into orbit.   
…

A strict coronavirus lockdown in the Australian city of Melbourne is being extended by two weeks. The Victoria state capital has been at the center of a second wave of infections. Authorities have said the restrictions will be eased in the months ahead if rates of new infections continue to fall.Melbourne is living through Australia’s toughest coronavirus lockdown. It was reimposed in July and is being extended because the number of new COVID-19 cases has not dropped enough. The lockdown will stay in place until the end of the month.Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews warned that without these strict measures the state risks a “third wave” of infections.He said a cautious approach is the only way forward.“We cannot run out of lockdown,” he said. “We have to take steady and safe steps to find that COVID-normal and make sure that in opening up, we can stay open.”There will be some minor easing of regulations in Melbourne, a city of 5 million.A nighttime curfew will start an hour later, playgrounds will reopen, and more outdoor exercise will be allowed. Bigger changes will only come in the months ahead if the number of new daily COVID-19 cases continues to fall. Officials say if they drop to below five by October 26, the curfew would be ended.Outside Melbourne, the rest of Victoria state will have restrictions eased slightly more quickly.Dozens of people were arrested Saturday at anti-lockdown protests in Australia’s major cities. The demonstrations were driven largely by fringe groups promoting virus-related conspiracy theories.Their actions have been described by the authorities as “selfish.” The Victoria government says obeying the restrictions is “the only option” to ultimately bringing the lockdown to an end.Victoria is at the center of Australia’s coronavirus crisis, accounting for three-quarters of total infections and 90% of all fatalities.The pandemic, and the closure of many businesses during lockdowns across the country, has sent the Australian economy into recession for the first time since 1991. Unemployment is rising, and the authorities are warning that the recovery could take years.Australia has recorded about 26,000 COVID-19 cases, and more than 750 deaths.  
…

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Jerusalem again Saturday demanding the prime minister’s resignation.The protesters convened outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence, decrying alleged corruption and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.”I came here in order to make Bibi Netanyahu go away,” said Shlomit Cohen, a protester from the Galilee, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We are tired; that’s enough. We don’t want him anymore.”The demonstrations against Netanyahu have continued for more than a month, and Saturday’s rally came as Israel is dealing with record numbers of coronavirus infections.“Now here it’s a protest against the government, and a lot of people are coming here for different reasons,” said protester Reut Peretz, 23. “Some people are coming here to protest the police violence, some people are coming here to protest the corruption, Bibi corruption. But the thing that unites everyone is the government — that everyone wants the government to change because there is a lot of unemployment in the country and because of the handling of the coronavirus.”Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and has dismissed the protesters as “leftists” and “anarchists,” accusing Israeli media of encouraging them.Police intervened to clear the protesters near the official residence of the prime minister and arrested at least a dozen of them, including a man who police said “was dressed up as a woman in a provocative way.”According to Johns Hopkins University data, Israel has more than 129,000 coronavirus cases and more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths. The country, with a population of 9 million people, is in a recession and unemployment has spiked to above 20%.
…

New York’s attorney general on Saturday moved to form a grand jury to investigate the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died earlier this year after Rochester police placed a hood over his head and held him down.“The Prude family and the Rochester community have been through great pain and anguish,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement about Prude’s death, which has sparked nightly protests and calls for reform. She said the grand jury would be part of an “exhaustive investigation.”Prude’s death after his brother called for help for his erratic behavior in March has roiled New York’s third-largest city since video of the encounter was made public earlier this week, with protesters demanding more accountability for how it happened and legislation to change how authorities respond to mental health emergencies.“This is just the beginning,” Ashley Gantt, a protest organizer, said by email after James’ announcement. “We will not be stopped in our quest for truth and justice.”Protesters gathered Saturday for a fourth night on the street where Prude, naked and handcuffed, was held face-down as snow fell. Policy body camera video shows officers covering Prude’s head with a “spit hood,” designed to protect police from bodily fluids, then pressing his face into the pavement for two minutes.Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support.Demonstrators clash with police officers a block from the Public Safety Building in Rochester, N.Y., Sept. 4, 2020, after a rally and march protesting the death of Daniel Prude.The Monroe County medical examiner listed the manner of death as homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” Excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, were contributing factors, the report said.A police internal affairs investigation cleared the officers involved of any wrongdoing, concluding in April that their “actions and conduct displayed when dealing with Prude appear to be appropriate and consistent with their training.”James’ office opened its investigation the same month. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general’s office, rather than handled by local officials.Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this week called on James to expedite the probe.“Today, I applaud Attorney General Tish James for taking swift, decisive action in empaneling a grand jury,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Justice delayed is justice denied and the people of New York deserve the truth.”Advocates say Prude’s death and the actions of the seven now-suspended Rochester police officers demonstrate how police are ill-equipped to deal with people suffering mental problems.Having police respond can be a “recipe for disaster,” The National Alliance on Mental Illness said in a statement Friday.Prude’s death “is yet another harrowing tragedy, but a story not unfamiliar to us,” the advocacy group said. “People in crisis deserve help, not handcuffs.”Stanley Martin, an organizer of Free the People Rochester, told reporters: “We do not need violent workers with guns to respond to mental health crises.”Activists have marched nightly in the city of 210,000 on Lake Ontario since the police body camera footage of the encounter with Prude were released by his family Wednesday.Friday night’s protest resulted in 11 arrests, police said. As they had the night before, officers doused activists at police headquarters with a chemical spray to drive them from barricades around the building.As the night wore on, demonstrators were pushed further back, as police fired what appeared to be pepper balls. Fireworks were shot off and a bus stop was set on fire.Prude’s family has said he appeared to be spiraling into crisis in the hours before his encounter with police.“You’re trying to kill me!” the 41-year-old man is heard saying.A police union has defended the officers involved in the encounter, saying they were strictly following department training and protocols, including using the mesh hood. 
…

More than 410,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, by January 1, 2021, according to the latest model by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.The United States reported more than 188,500 deaths as of Saturday and more than 6,200,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. If the IHME model, released Friday, is correct, that would mean an estimated 222,000 more deaths over the next 3½ months.“We expect the daily death rate in the United States, because of seasonality and declining vigilance of the public, to reach nearly 3,000 a day in December,” the institute, which bills itself as an independent research center, said in an update of its periodic forecasts.It previously projected 317,697 deaths by December 1.FILE – Kellie Dick, left, a University of Oklahoma senior from Shawnee, and Abhi Nath, a senior from Norman, voice concerns about OU’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during a demonstration, Sept. 3, 2020, in Norman, Okla.However, the researchers at IHME said, if the use of face masks became nearly universal, the predicted 222,000 deaths could be reduced by half. Conversely, if restrictions are eased, the toll could be much higher by New Year’s.“Increasing mask use to the levels seen in Singapore would decrease the cumulative death toll to 288,000, or 122,000 lives saved compared to the reference scenario,” it said.”If a herd immunity strategy is pursued, meaning no further government intervention is taken from now to Jan. 1st, the death toll could increase to 620,000,” according to IHME’s briefing.Other predictionsThe IHME model is one of the more aggressive of the 35 models used to forecast COVID-19 deaths. The ensemble forecast by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which came out Thursday, predicted 211,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19 by September 26.The model’s outlook for the world was even more dire, with deaths projected to triple to 2.8 million by January 1, 2021.FILE – A man trims his beard while others bathe in the Hooghly River in Kolkata, India, Sept. 3, 2020. India has been reporting the highest single-day coronavirus caseload in the world every day for more than three weeks.India reported 86,432 new COVID-19 cases Saturday, taking its total infections to 4,023,179, according to Johns Hopkins University.The U.S. and Brazil are the only countries that have more cases than India.The U.S. leads the world in COVID infections with 6,243,849, while Brazil has 4,092,832, according to Johns Hopkins.The coronavirus has brutalized some locations in Mexico so badly that local governments have run out of death certificates.Mexican officials say a million new forms have been printed.Mexico has recorded 66,851 COVID-19 deaths, placing it only behind the U.S, Brazil and India in the number of pandemic deaths on the Johns Hopkins listing.The U.S. has recorded 188,507 deaths, Brazil has 125,521 and India has 69,561, Johns Hopkins said.FILE – A city health worker takes a resident’s blood sample, part of a program that aims to administer 20,000 COVID-19 tests in Rio de Janeiro’s poor neighborhoods, at Morro da Providencia favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 3, 2020.Toll on health workersAmnesty International said this week that 1,320 health workers in Mexico had died from the coronavirus pandemic, the worst in any country in the world.Amnesty’s report highlighted the deadly toll COVID-19 has had on frontline workers. Overall, at least 7,000 health workers have died of the virus.According to a Reuters analysis of data from the Mexican government, health care workers in that country are four times more likely to die than that sector’s workers in the U.S.New cases continue to pop up in South Korea, which at one time had seemed to quash the virus. Authorities said Saturday that 115 of the 168 new cases were in metropolitan Seoul.New Zealand said Saturday that it had recorded its 24th COVID-19 death. Joseph Williams, a doctor and the former prime minister of the Cook Islands, was the 24th victim.
…

Afghanistan’s warring factions are set to begin their first direct peace talks early next week in Qatar amid U.S.-led international calls for them to seize the “historic opportunity” to end the country’s long war.The U.S.-brokered dialogue, known as intra-Afghan negotiations, will bring to the table in Doha representatives of the Afghan state and the Taliban insurgency, which runs its political office in the capital of the Gulf nation.The Taliban announced on Saturday the names of their 21-member negotiating team, led by Mawlavi Abdul Hakim, a hardline insurgent cleric and a close confidant of the Taliban’s reclusive chief, Hibatullah Akhundzada. Hakim has been heading the Islamist group’s own judicial system enforced in Taliban-held Afghan areas.“We have formed a strong and inclusive team for intra-Afghan negotiations. It mostly comprises members of the Rehbari Shoura [Taliban leadership council], and the Islamic Emirate’s [Taliban] chief justice has been appointed as the team leader,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA.Officials said the negotiating teams would try to agree on a permanent cease-fire and a political power-sharing arrangement to govern Afghanistan.The peace process stems from a February agreement Washington sealed with the Taliban to extricate American troops from the country and close the longest U.S. war. The landmark accord was negotiated and signed in Doha on February 29.Afghan Minister of Economy Mustafa Mastoor told an online forum Saturday evening that Kabul’s negotiating team was “fully ready” to depart to Doha “most probably tomorrow [Sunday].”Cease-fireAn insurgent cease-fire is a priority for Kabul, but it may not come up in the inaugural interaction with the Taliban, the minister told the forum organized by the Pakistan-based Jinnah Institute think tank.”The first meeting definitely is to break the ice and just to meet each other and then start with the easier issues and going towards the difficult ones,” Mastoor said.FILE – Stefano Pontecorvo talks to The Associated Press in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 4, 2019.Stefano Pontecorvo, NATO’s civilian representative to Afghanistan, in his address to the forum cautioned that the dialogue would not be easy and that both sides would need to show “flexibility, good faith and determination” to end the deadly conflict.”First and foremost, a significant reduction in violence must top the negotiation agenda to give people confidence in the process and its outcome. Popular support is essential for a durable outcome,” Pontecorvo said.“This moment for peace is unique, and the stakes are high. The Afghan people and the world are watching. They will not forget or forgive whoever loses this occasion,” the NATO envoy warned.’Political disunity’Pontecorvo noted with concern that political differences among leaders in Kabul could undermine the work of the state negotiating team.”There is no doubt whatsoever that the perceived political disunity of Afghan leadership is a concern for all of us, for NATO and for the international community, as it also impacts on the cohesiveness of the team,” he said.Meanwhile, U.S. peace envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who signed the deal with the Taliban, was traveling to Doha to advance ongoing efforts to promote the immediate start of the negotiations.FILE – Washington peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad attends the inauguration ceremony for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 9, 2020.“The Afghan people are ready for a sustainable reduction in violence and a political settlement that will end the war. Afghan leaders must seize this historic opportunity for peace. … Now is the time to start,” said a pre-visit State Department announcement.Began after 9/11The war in Afghanistan began with the U.S.-led military invasion of the country to punish and remove the Taliban from power days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America that al-Qaida leaders plotted from sanctuaries in Afghanistan.Since then, more than 150,000 people, including Afghan civilians and local as well as foreign military troops, are estimated to have been killed and millions left homeless in the poverty-stricken country.The U.S.-Taliban deal requires Washington to withdraw all American and allied troops from Afghanistan by July 2021 in return for insurgent counterterrorism assurances. The Taliban have also pledged to seek political reconciliation with other Afghan factions to end decades of hostilities in the country.The U.S. has reduced the number of its troops in the country from around 13,000 to 8,600 since signing the deal with the Taliban. President Donald Trump said last month that the number of troops would be reduced to between “4,000 and 5,000″ by the November U.S. Election Day.The intra-Afghan talks were originally scheduled for March 10, but months of delays over a prisoner swap between the Taliban and the Kabul government, as stipulated in the deal, hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to kick-start the dialogue.
…