Vladimir Putin's Deputy Prime Minister owns a secret £12million apartment just a short walk from Downing Street Sunday August 2nd, 2015 at 12:00 PM
- Get link
- Other Apps
The 5,380 sq ft penthouse at Whitehall Court (pictured), officially owned by a company belonging to the minister, emerged in an investigation by Alexei Navalny, a leading opponent of President Vladimir Putin.
Despite current ice-cold relations between London and Moscow, Igor Shuvalov (pictured with Putin) has held the leasehold to the flat for 12 years, shielding it behind mysterious offshore firms.
The French police have for weeks now simply been looking the other way as the migrants mount their nightly assaults on the British freight haulage industry, writes ANDREW ROBERTS.
Ever since what could be a part from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was found, just about every piece of flotsam on the island has attracted scrutiny.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel intends to detain without trial citizens suspected of political violence against Palestinians, government officials said on Sunday following a lethal West Bank arson attack blamed on Jewish militants.
Russian police in St. Petersburg have briefly detained several LGBT activists, who held pickets in defence of equal rights on a Russian military holiday.
Read the whole story
· ·
A girl has has tragically died today, after bing violently attacked with a knife at Jerusalem's annual LGBT Pride parade, aged just 16. Israeli Shira Banki was taken to hospital following the incident, but passed away whilst being treated by doctors.
Read the whole story
· ·
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 2
The door of a plane has been found washed up on Reunion Island, according to Sky sources.
Country's environment minister says she understands an extradition request has been made for the US dentist, still in hiding amid worldwide outrage over illegal hunt
Read the whole story
· · ·
Division 30, group of US trained moderate rebels in Syria, attacked by al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra, with five killed following abduction of commander
Read the whole story
· · ·
Calais crisis: 'This is a global migration crisis'by Tim Ross, David Barrett, Colin Freeman in Calais and Robert Mendick
Home Secretary Theresa May and her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, call on other countries to help address the problem
Read the whole story
· · ·
Street artists paint Mexican town colourful by Telegraph Reporter
The Mexican government invites street artists to paint a large mural in an effort to reduce violence and the results are stunning
Read the whole story
· ·
Peruvian security forces rescued 54 adults and children, mostly members of the Ashaninka indigenous group, being held captive by Shining Path rebels in a remote jungle region, an official said Saturday.
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 3
Debris described as the door of an airplane has been found on Réunion Island, a local official said, offering potentially another clue to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The White House has received close to 150,000 signatures by Americans demanding the U.S. extradite Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, accused of illegally killing Cecil, a popular lion in Zimbabwe, to that country to stand trial. Zlatica Hoke reports that conservationists are stepping in to demand a ban on importing animal trophies that attract many Americans to big game hunting in Africa and elsewhere.
New Taliban Leader Says Insurgency Will Continueby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The Taliban has released an audio message from new leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, intended to reassure Taliban leaders, elders, clerics and scholars that the Taliban jihad will continue until the Islamic system is brought to Afghanistan. Mansoor said all decisions will be taken in the light of Islamic law, be it war or peace talks, and advised his followers not to pay attention to rumors being spread about the Taliban campaign. He said the Taliban leadership will make all efforts to...
Trotsky House for Sale in Istanbulby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The former Istanbul house of Marxist revolutionary, theorist, Soviet politician, Red Army founder and hero of the 1917 October Revolution, Leon Trotsky, is now listed for sale by a real estate web portal. The Hanifi family, who owns the property, is asking $4.4 million including the land, but with a condition that the buyer agrees to preserve the Trotsky name. The family wanted Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry to buy the house and turn it into a museum. The...
Ukraine Calls on Russia to Negotiate End to War in Eastby webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
Ukraine's foreign minister is calling on Russia to come to “real negotiations” about a cease-fire and stabilization in Ukraine's war-torn east which will require fair elections that are internationally monitored. Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview with The Associated Press that Russian military and special forces are “in full command” in the rebel-controlled eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. He cited Ukraine's capture a few days ago of a large Russian truck filled with...
Researcher Who Studied Cecil Talks About Impact of Lion's Death by webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
When Cecil the lion's carcass was finally found after he was lured out of a Zimbabwe wildlife reserve to be killed by an American hunter, it was a headless, skinless skeleton the vultures had been picking at for about a week. Conservationists decided the most natural thing was to leave the bones where they were for hyenas to finish off, said Brent Stapelkamp, a lion researcher and part of a team that had tracked and studied Cecil for nine years. Stapelkamp darted Cecil and put his...
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 4
US, Egypt Broaden Engagementby webdesk@voanews.com (Pamela Dockins)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Egyptian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri, have launched talks on economic, regional security and other issues, as the two meet in the first U.S. - Egypt strategic dialogue since 2009. The talks in Cairo Sunday, come at a time when Egypt is confronting growing terrorist threats in the Sinai Peninsula, some from militant groups that have claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group. Later Sunday, Kerry will meet with...
Kurd Suicide Bombing Kills 2 Soldiers in Turkeyby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
Kurdish rebels launched a suicide attack Sunday at a military police post in eastern Turkey, killing two soldiers and wounding 24 others. The local governor's office said the attack in Agri province, near the Iranian border, involved an agricultural vehicle packed with two tons of explosives. In a separate attack, one Turkish soldier was killed and four others wounded in the southeastern Mardin province when their military vehicle struck a land mine believed to have been laid by...
Mexican Journalist Found Dead After Receiving Threatsby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
A Mexican photojournalist who went into hiding after being harassed was among five people found dead from gunshot wounds inside a Mexico City apartment. Ruben Espinosa worked for the investigative magazine Proceso, which said his sister identified his body Saturday. He was found with two gunshot wounds along with four women in an apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood of the Mexican capital. Several weeks ago, Espinosa fled from Veracruz in southeastern Mexico following what Proceso...
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Egyptian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri, have launched talks on economic, regional security and other issues, as the two meet in the first U.S. - Egypt strategic dialogue since 2009.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to chair an emergency meeting of his government’s Cobra security committee Friday to discuss how to address the migrant situation in the northern French port of Calais.
The meeting comes the morning after migrants made more than 1,000 attempts to breach fences and enter the Channel Tunnel Thursday night, reports Agence France-Presse.
Some 3,000 asylum seekers mainly from Africa and the Middle East are living in a makeshift camp near the port in Calais. Every night, many who have fled war, poverty and persecution risk serious injury as they attempt to enter the tunnel in search of a better life in the U.K.
France has sent in police reinforcements to guard the entrance of the tunnel and stop migrants climbing over the fences and blocking the roads.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense could be called in to make land available for the thousands of backlogged trucks waiting on the U.K. side of the tunnel, on the M20 highway in the county of Kent, reports the BBC.
Meanwhile, Cameron has come under fire from opposition leaders and the Refugee Council for saying there was a “swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean.”
“He should remember he’s talking about people and not insects,” acting Labour leader Harriet Harman told the BBC.
The U.N. Representative for Internal Migration said there had been a “xenophobic response” from British politicians to the crisis.
Kent social services are struggling to cope with the number of child asylum seekers; numbers have doubled over the past three months.
Egypt to Open New Improved Suez Canal by conalurquhart
Egypt has completed construction of a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Suez Canal that the government says will boost the country’s economy and aid world trade.
The expansion was a massive project completed in just one year after it was initially projected to take three. It adds 35 kilometers of new channels, in addition to 37 kilometers of existing waterways that were dredged to allow larger ships to pass. According to the Suez Canal Authority, 258 million cubic meters of earth were removed from the desert to cut the new channels.
The development will allow more ships to pass through the canal on a given day, reducing wait times for one of the world’s most important shipping channels. The government expects that the project, along with increases in world trade, will increase the daily number of ships from 49 at present to 97 a day by 2023. The project’s total cost is more than $8 billion, but the government claims it will more than double the annual revenue generated by the canal, which is currently around $3 billion.
The canal was completed in 1869 and it allowed ships to get from Europe to South Asia without sailing around Africa. Control of it was considered so important that Britain, France and Israel tried to wrest it away from Egypt in 1956
For Egypt’s military-backed government, the completion of the project at lighting speed offers a chance to project an image of competence, prosperity, and stability after years of unrest following the 2011 uprising that unseated president Hosni Mubarak. The new portions of the canal are set to be inaugurated next week in an elaborate ceremony in which the government is expected tout the new canal as glorious achievement.
The task of portraying Egypt as stable takes on a particular urgency since the Egyptian state is fighting an ongoing battle against insurgents based in the Sinai Peninsula. An upsurge in attacks began in July 2013 after Egypt’s armed forces deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi who had been elected a year earlier. Since June, militants have assassinated Egypt’s chief prosecutor, attacked military positions, and launched a missile at a naval vessel in the Mediterranean.
“If they’re able to carry it out without any compromising security incidents, they’re also going to use this as an opportunity to project a different image of Egypt, an image of Egypt as stable, able to carry out major public works, and defend competently against these jihadi enemies,” said Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation in New York.
The government’s message was clear on the banks of the canal on Wednesday, where officials had installed a billboard saying, “Welcome to safe Egypt and its secure canal.” At a news conference in the city of Ismailia, Suez Canal Authority chairman Vice Admiral Mohab Mamish repeteadly used the word “safe.”
“The whole world uses the Suez Canal. The world and the shipping lines are partners. We are sending them messages. We want to again assure everybody that the Suez Canal is very safe and secure, he said.
“The government is dealing with the whole thing in a very propagandistic manner,” says Amr Adly, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “The way the project was launched was to indicate that the new military-backed regime can do something, and they have proved their capacity to do something.”
Adly said that due to a lack of transparency it was difficult to assess the potential economic impact of the expanded canal. “There is definitely a political element in it,” he says. “It has a potential of course. There is a good chance that it will increase the revenue. But the way it is being dealt with, we don’t have enough information.”
Read the whole story
· · ·
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 5
Russia’s state media watchdog is investigating whether gay-themed emojis on Facebook are in violation of Russian laws against promoting homosexuality.
The probe initiated this week comes as the result of a complaint from Mikhail Marchenko, a senator in Russia’s upper house of parliament, who was the first official to note the potential danger in the cartoon smiley faces of boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls.
In his written appeal to The Federal Service For Supervision of Communication, Information Technology and Mass Media, which is known in Russia as Roskomnadzor, the senator from the region of Bryansk called for an investigation into whether the emojis violate Russia’s controversial 2013 law against “homosexual propaganda” among minors.
“These emojis of non-traditional sexual orientation are seen by all users of the social network, a large portion of whom are minors,” said Senator Marchenko. “But propaganda of homosexuality is banned under the laws and under the pillars of tradition that exist here in our country.”
In response to the senator’s complaint, the federal agency asked the main youth group of President Vladimir Putin’s political party, the Young Guard, to form an “expert opinion” on this matter of “high social significance,” according to the Izvestia daily, whichobtained a copy of the agency’s response to the senator on Wednesday.
In the response, which was written by the deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Maxim Ksenzov, the agency says it is prepared to “take reactive measures” against the emojis if they are found to constitute a threat to Russian children. Under Russian law, the agency is able to block Russians from accessing websites that are found promoting homosexuality among minors. It can also impose fines against those websites for failing to comply with the legislation.
Denis Davydov, the chairman of the coordinating council of Young Guard, which is the youth wing of Putin’s United Russia party, said that his organization would ask professional psychologists to determine “whether there is propaganda or no propaganda” in these emojis.
👨❤️💋👨 Two Men Kissing and 👩❤️💋👩 Two Women Kissing Emojis. New in iOS 8.3.pic.twitter.com/h23uELm9vO— Emoji ⭐ (@GetEmoji) April 8, 2015
In June, the Young Guard’s expert opinion on such matters aided a legal case against a Russian website called Children-404, an online resource in Russia that helps council local teenagers through the process of coming out. The head of that project, Elena Klimova, has faced numerous court appearances and fines for her work, with the most recent fine of 50,000 rubles (about $900) upheld by a Russian court this week.
Facebook’s series of emojis celebrating gay pride first appeared on the network in 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to the cause of marriage equality by overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. The social network has since updated its so-called “Pride” series of emojis, including after last month’s historic Supreme Court decision obliging all U.S. states to allow gay marriage.
Though the Russian probe into emojis will focus specifically on Facebook, users of Twitter and Apple’s new operating system for the iPhone are also able to include rainbow flags and other gay-themed icons in their posts and messages.
Davydov, the Young Guard chairman, said that these services could also become the target of investigations if Russian citizens begin to complain about them. “This is not our first day working with Roskomnadzor,” Davydov noted in an interview with a Moscow radio station. “We have on numerous occasions appealed at various levels against the spread of extremism online, the spread of child pornography and so on,” he said.
Read the whole story
· · ·
WASHINGTON — After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded.
The military campaign has prevented Iraq’s collapse and put the Islamic State under increasing pressure in northern Syria, particularly squeezing its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa. But intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.
The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration’s special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that “ISIS is losing” in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
“We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers,” a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group’s total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August when the airstrikes began.
The Islamic State’s staying power also raises questions about the administration’s approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group’s call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say.
Yet under the Obama administration’s campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing air strikes from the ground, it could take a decade to drive the Islamic State from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant that it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so.
The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies on the ground have made some inroads. The Islamic State has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS. And the military campaign has arrested the sense of momentum and inevitability created by the group’s stunning advances last year, leaving the combination of Sunni religious extremists and former Saddam Hussein loyalists unable to grow its forces or continue its surge.
“In Raqqa, they are being slowly strangled,” said an activist who fled Raqqa earlier this year and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relatives and friends who remain there. “There is no longer a feeling that Raqqa is a safe haven for the group.”
A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group’s structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators.
Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group. In June, the U.S.-backed alliance captured the border town of Tal Abyad, which for more than a year had been the militants’ most vital direct supply route from Turkey. The Kurds also took the town of Ein Issa, a hub for IS movements and supply lines only 35 miles north of Raqqa.
As a result, the militants have had to take a more circuitous smuggling path through a stretch of about 60 miles they still control along the Turkish border. A plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish “safe zone” envisages driving the Islamic State group out of those areas as well, using Syrian rebels backed by airstrikes.
In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group’s positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants’ movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground.
In early July, a wave of strikes in 24 hours destroyed 18 overpasses and a number of roads used by the group in and around Raqqa.
Reflecting IS unease, the group has taken exceptional measures against residents of Raqqa the past two weeks, activists say. It has moved to shut down private Internet access for residents, arrested suspected spies and set up security cameras in the streets. Patrols by its “morals police” have decreased because fighters are needed on the front lines, the activists say.
But American intelligence officials and other experts say that in the big picture, the Islamic State is hanging tough.
“The pressure on Raqqa is significant, and it’s an important thing to watch, but looking at the overall picture, ISIS is mostly in the same place,” said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. “Overall ISIS still retains the ability to plan and execute phased conventional military campaigns and terrorist attacks.”
In Iraq, the Islamic State’s seizure of the strategically important provincial capital of Ramadi has so far stood. Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters.
The group has adjusted its tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said.
Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, the Islamic State is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That’s on top of as much as $1 billion in cash the group seized from banks in its territory.
Although the U.S. has been bombing oil infrastructure, the militants have been adept at rebuilding oil refining, drilling and trading capacity, the defense official said.
“ISIL has plenty of money,” Glaser said last week, more than enough to meet a payroll he estimated at a high of $360 million a year.
Glaser said the U.S. was gradually squeezing the group’s finances through sanctions, military strikes and other means, but he acknowledged it would take time.
Ahmad al-Ahmad, a Syrian journalist in Hama province who heads an opposition media outfit called Syrian Press Center, said he did not expect recent setbacks to seriously alter the group’s fortunes.
“IS moves with a very intelligent strategy which its fighters call the lizard strategy,” he said. “They emerge in one place, then they disappear and pop up in another place.”
Read the whole story
· · · · ·
(KABUL, Afghanistan)—The new leader of the Afghan Taliban vowed to continue his group’s bloody, nearly 14-year insurgency in an audio message released Saturday, urging his fighters to remain unified after the death of their longtime leader.
The audio message purportedly from Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor also included comments about peace talks, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether he supported them or not.
Mansoor took over the Taliban after the group on Thursday confirmed that former leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died and said they elected Mansoor as his successor. Afghan government announced Wednesday that the reclusive mullah had been dead since April 2013.
“We should keep our unity, we must be united, our enemy will be happy in our separation,” Mansoor purportedly said in the message. “This is a big responsibly on us. This is not the work of one, two or three people. This is all our responsibility to carry on jihad until we establish the Islamic state.”
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid sent the audio to journalists and others Saturday. The Associated Press could not independently verify the man speaking in the roughly 30-minute audio clip, though the Taliban spokesman is in charge of all communications for the group.
Mullah Omar was the one-eyed, secretive head of the Taliban, whose group hosted Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He had not been seen in public since fleeing over the border into Pakistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
The new leader of the Taliban is seen as close to Pakistan, which is believed to have sheltered and supported the insurgents through the war. Whether he’ll be keen to sit down for peace talks with the Afghan government remains in question. The Taliban pulled out of talks scheduled for Friday in Pakistan after Mullah Omar’s death became public.
Taliban attacks against Afghan officials and forces have intensified with their annual warm-weather offensive. Local security forces increasingly find themselves under attack as NATO and U.S. troops ended their combat mission in the country at the end of last year.
Inside Calais’s Deadly Migrant Crisis by Naina Bajekal
It was late on Thursday night in the French port city of Calais when the mood shifted. In a field awash with silvery moonlight, some 50 illegal migrants—mainly Syrians—sat down and turned their backs on the 20 French policemen who had formed a barricade across the field to prevent them from returning towards the entrance of the railway terminal linking England and France. There had been scuffles earlier that night when groups of migrants had faced off against the local gendarmerie as they tried to get near to the fencing surrounding the tunnel. But this was something different: a peaceful demonstration against the riot police that had been dispatched to this city to bolster security.
“Let us cross,” a voice in the crowd cried. “We are Syrians. We have a war in our country. Why all of this police just for us? We are just trying to cross for a safe place.”
The voice belonged to a 27-year old man who gave his name only as Adam. He had arrived in Calais four months ago, fleeing the sectarian conflict raging in his hometown of Idlib in northern Syria, part of a civil war that has caused some 4 million Syrians to escape their country. His pleas went unheard – the police continued to usher the migrants away from the railway complex – but Adam gave voice to the anguish felt by the growing number of migrants attempting to cross into the U.K. every night from France, men and women who have traveled thousands of miles in search of safety and prosperity.
2015 has been the year of the migrant in Europe, which has struggled to absorb the 137,000 asylum-seekers who have arrived on its shores in the first half of 2015 alone—an 83% increase from the same period last year. So far that impact has largely been borne by the countries of southern Europe, whose proximity to the Middle East and Africa has made them de facto destinations for migrants attempting to cross into the Mediterranean.
But though Calais’s 3,000 migrants may represent only a fraction of those seeking asylum in Europe, the city – already struggling with an unemployment rate of 13%, well above the national average – says it can no longer cope with the additional economic and security challenges of hosting so many migrants. A sharp surge in violence in the French port has now brought the crisis into the very heart of the continent.
In Calais, the dream of a better future literally shimmers on the horizon. The strait between England and the European continent is at its narrowest here, and on a clear day the white cliffs of Dover can be seen just 21 miles away. For those like Adam, who have left behind everything and traveled thousands of miles to flee conflict and persecution back home, that last distance seems like nothing. Indeed, migrants have been trying to cross into the U.K. from Calais ever since the Kosovo War in the late 1990s. Many speak English or have relatives in the U.K., where they believe jobs are more plentiful than in continental Europe. In the past, migrants often tried to leave by stowing away in lorries that crossed the sea by ferry. With increased security around the port, the focus has shifted recently to the undersea Channel Tunnel, where migrants try to hide on international freight trains and Eurotunnel Shuttles carrying vehicles.
These days, those living in ‘The Jungle’, as the squalid encampments on the edge of Calais are known, come from conflicts that rage beyond Europe’s borders. With the world witnessing the worst refugee crisis since the end of the Second World War, these makeshift camps are a snapshot of a global phenomenon, housing large numbers of Syrians, Sudanese, Eritreans and Afghans who have been forcibly displaced by violence back home.
As the number of migrants has grown, the final leg of the journey to the U.K. has become increasingly perilous. British border controls were effectively moved to Calais as part of deals in 1994 and 2003 with France that meant immigration checkpoints take place before departure (by train or ferry) rather than upon disembarkation. As Cameron noted Thursday, the agreement means Britain’s natural sea border is strengthened by having border controls on the French side – though now senior French politicians are questioning the effectiveness of such a system, which they say places too much of a burden on France.
Ruben Andersson, a migration expert at the London School of Economics, says the increased fortification of land borders in Calais is a “disproportionate” response that fails to acknowledge the negative effects of similar policies at borders in other parts of the world—and which has failed to stop the migrants. “What we’ve seen in Calais over many years is that the more you fortify a border, all you do is displace routes across relatively safe borders to much riskier crossings,” he says.
As the British and French authorities crack down on the more direct routes to reach England, migrants in Calais are trying more dangerous methods. Over the past six weeks, at least nine people have died in attempts to reach England, falling from trains as they tried to hang on, killed by lorries on the motorway, and even drowning in a canal at the tunnel entrance. That compares to a total of 15 migrant deaths for all of 2014.
More than 39,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally were prevented in 2014 to 2015 – more than double the previous year. British Home Secretary Theresa May said that between June 21 and July 11, the French and British authorities successfully blocked over 8,000 attempts by illegal migrants to enter ports in France. Eurotunnel, the company that runs the shuttles through the Channel Tunnel, said that since January it had prevented 37,000 attempts, describing “nightly incursions” of hundreds of migrants trying to storm security forces at once, in the hope that a lucky few will make it to the other side.
On the night of July 28 alone, a few hundred migrants made over 2,000 attempts to breach the entrance of the Channel Tunnel, the railway line that links France and England. One young Sudanese man died, most likely crushed by a truck exiting one of the shuttles.
Later that week, Prime Minister David Cameron promised that Britain would not become a “safe haven” for illegal immigrants, pledging more fencing and sniffer dogs to crack down on illegal border crossings. Accused of being lax by British politicians, France quickly dispatched 150 extra riot police to Calais. As dusk fell on July 30, the police began patrolling the 14-mile perimeter of the Eurotunnel complex, blocking roads previously open to the public.
But the residents of ‘The Jungle’ were unfazed. That evening a steady parade of more than a hundred people could be seen walking across the city’s bridges and fields, silhouetted against the sunset as they headed towards the railway terminal. They told hopeful stories of friends and family who had reached England. Rumors floated in the crowd that in one night recently, as many as 60 migrants had made it to Dover in the U.K. (The British government has acknowledged that some successfully make it across to the U.K., but has declined to confirm exact numbers.) The real possibility of death did little to discourage migrants who had already faced worse.
“Back home, you could wake up in the morning and go to work and die. You could die every day, any day,” says Tahir Dlil, a 26-year-old radiology graduate who fled the turmoil in Sudan a year ago and has been in Calais for more than four months. “Would we have come if there was peace? Why would we want to live like animals in the jungle? No. We just want to live, to work, that’s all.”
While some of his friends have sought asylum in France, Dlil is confident his year-long quest will eventually end in England. He spends his nights making the nine-mile walk from the camp to the railway terminal, displaying cuts from barbed wire and bruises from clashes with the police. When asked how he usually spends his days in Calais, he breaks into a wide smile.
“England,” he grins. “I dream about England all day.”
Read the whole story
· · · · · · · · ·
(LONDON) — Three relatives of the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were among four people killed when a private jet crashed on landing in southern England,
British police confirmed Saturday.
The Hampshire Police force said formal post-mortems were still being conducted, but the victims were believed to be “the mother, sister and brother-in-law of the owner of the aircraft, all of whom are from the bin Laden family.” It said all three were Saudi nationals who were visiting Britain on vacation. The plane’s Jordanian pilot also died.
Arab media and NBC News named the relatives as Osama Bin Laden’s stepmother Rajaa Hashim, his sister Sana bin Laden and her husband Zuhair Hashim.
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain,
“The embassy will follow up on the incident and its circumstances with the concerned British authorities and work on speeding up the handover of the bodies of the victims to the kingdom for prayer and burial,” the ambassador said in a statement tweeted by the
embassy.Police said the Embraer Phenom 300
executive jet crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames while trying to land at Blackbushe Airport in southern England Friday afternoon.
The plane was flying from Malpensa Airport in Milan to
No one on the ground was hurt. Police and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch launched a joint investigation.
Andrew Thomas, who was at a car auction sales center based at the airport, told the BBC that “the plane nosedived into the cars and exploded on impact.” He said he saw the plane and several cars in flames.
The plane’s pilot was Mazen Salem al-Dajah, a Jordanian in his late 50s. His brother Ziad told The Associated Press that al-Dajah’s family had been told of his death by a representative of the bin Laden family’s corporation. He said al-Dajah received his pilot’s license in California about 25 years ago and had been employed by the bin Laden family.
The bin Laden family disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. The al-Qaida leader was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.
The family is a large and wealthy one. Osama bin Laden’s billionaire father Mohammed had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a sprawling construction conglomerate awarded many major building contracts in the Sunni kingdom.
Mohammed bin Laden died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967. One of his sons, Salem, was killed when his ultralight aircraft flew into power lines in San Antonio, Texas, in 1988.
Read the whole story
· ·
When dawn breaks in Calais, France, Nabeel Edris’ hopes are momentarily dampened. Another night has passed, and the 29-year-old Eritrean has still not managed to reach England. As the sun rises, he begins his 3-hour walk back to the dusty scrubland on the outskirts of Calais, to the makeshift camps known as “the Jungle” to its 3,000 residents. Edris has already ended up staying much longer than he imagined, but he refuses to call it home.
A brother, a son, a student, a citizen—Edris had once been many things to many people. But like everyone else in the Jungle, he now holds only the deracinated, dispossessed status of the migrant. “It is not a good life here, it is not good at all,” he says, picking at a yellowing wound on his shin, the souvenir of an attempt to scale the barbed wire fencing that surrounds the port. Edris left his family behind in the Eritrean capital of Asmara nearly a year ago, fleeing the country’s compulsory life-long military service. Eritrea’s repressive government scores lower on political and press freedom rankings than even North Korea. Edris has crossed the sweltering expanse of the Sahara, made a perilous sea journey across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, and arrived in the French port city of Calais in the freezing depths of winter. But more than six months on, his quest is not over.
Edris shares the determination of countless migrants in Calais, who are desperate to escape the squalid conditions of the Jungle. Fueled by the belief that a better life awaits them on the other side of the Channel, they see their situation as temporary. They are drawn to England because they speak the language, have relatives and friends who have settled there or believe the job market will be better than in France.
Others feel differently. Many end up applying for asylum in France, giving themselves a time frame by which they will give up trying to reach England. Some continue to live in the Jungle while they endure the long wait for papers to be processed.
Rob Stothard—Getty Images
As a result, the Jungle is becoming a more permanent fixture in the Calais landscape. It sprung up without approval, but it has evolved into a shanty town of sorts—albeit one that falls far below international humanitarian standards. Though France is the world’s sixth biggest economy, the Jungle on the northern edge of Calais would not pass for a refugee camp in a developing nation. Guidelines from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees recommend a maximum of 20 people using one toilet, but in the Jungle, 300 migrants share a single toilet. Piles of garbage attract rats and flies, and the air is thick with the stench of sewage and rotting food.
However, locals who volunteer in the Jungle say conditions are slowly improving. In January the French government opened the Jules Ferry refugee center, built on a former children’s summer camp, with space for 120 women and children to sleep. In response to criticism from the U.N. and aid groups, the French government has begun a $550,000 project to improve the basic infrastructure in the camp. In the last month, streetlights have gone up and faucets providing cold water have been installed. Volunteers say that the camp is bigger than ever before, but also better organized.
“The government is more present on the ground here in Calais, and works more with the charities now,” said Carolyn Wiggins, 54, a longtime volunteer with the city’s migrant associations over the 11 years she has lived in Calais. In the last 18 months, she and her husband, Michel, have joined about 20 volunteers as part of the French aid organization SALAM. Five days a week, the couple help to serve 2,000 evening meals at the Jules Ferry center, where they have noticed a significant uptick in the number of people requiring food. They also collect supplies from the local foodbank, including vegetables, fruit and bread, and distribute them at the encampments twice a week.
The medical charity Médecins du Monde has also opened a makeshift hospital in wooden sheds where staff volunteers offer upwards of 40 consultations a day. Its director of operations, Jean-François Corty, told TIME that as well as infections caused by the filthy state of the camp, the staff are seeing more and more broken bones as migrants make even riskier attempts to stow away on Britain-bound vehicles.
Rob Stothard—Getty Images
Of course, not all the wounds are visible. In every tent is a story of personal horror, and the psychological effects of the journeys endured by the refugees are all too evident. Mustafa, 27, was training to be a doctor in Khartoum, Sudan before he fled his country’s political turmoil. He is still traumatized by the image of a 15-year-old Syrian girl who died of diabetic shock during their difficult eight-day voyage across the sea from Egypt to Italy. “The boat owner told her father that it was a 5-star boat with a doctor, and so he paid $50,000 for the family to cross,” he said softly, adding that the smuggler made the family throw the girl’s body off the boat when she died. “I still see her, I see her in front of my eyes.”
The women of the Jungle are haunted too, by their vulnerability in a camp where 90% of residents are men. Corty of Médecins du Monde said there has been a sharp increase in women and children in the camp since last summer, but the Jules Ferry center has been full for a long time. Those not lucky enough to get a bed there must sleep in the Jungle. “I am always scared, always scared to sleep,” said a 22-year-old Eritrean woman who gave her name only as Fiyori.
Yet for the most part, people in the Jungle prefer to exchange jokes rather than stories of woe. Many of the migrants wearily accept that they will be in Calais longer than they would like: Bored of borders, reads a sign outside one tent. In the Jungle, you can now get your hair cut, get your bike fixed and even pray in an improvised mosque or church. Some of the more enterprising residents walk to the supermarkets in the center of Calais, stocking up on baguettes, potato chips and canned goods to hawk for a profit back in the Jungle. There are over a dozen pop-up shops, selling everything from cell phone SIM cards and cigarettes to whiskey, Red Bull and Coca-Cola.
Rob Stothard—Getty Images
There are reports of occasional alcohol-fueled scuffles when frustrations spill over but most people in the camp aren’t looking for more trouble. A Nigerian refugee recently set up a makeshift school where volunteers teach French and drawing and play games with the children. At night, people dance to Michael Jackson songs under a disco ball in a makeshift club.
In the Jungle, life goes on even as most of the residents vow to continue their attempts to reach England. Mahmoud, a 22-year-old Sudanese whose entire family was killed by Janjaweed militia, said he will keep trying to cross until he makes it—or dies trying. Friends and family have arrived in England successfully, escaping the squalor that he has endured for 15 months. He refuses to build a more permanent shelter, sleeping under a black plastic tarpaulin propped up by wooden sticks. Scrawled across the outside in white letters are the words: Ceci n’est pas une solution d’hébergement. This is not a housing solution.
Read the whole story
· · · · · · · ·
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 6
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland must boost its monitoring of extremist movements, its interior minister said after a demonstration by the far right turned violent.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thousands of Israelis attended demonstrations across the country on Saturday, two days after an ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed six people at Jerusalem's gay pride parade, leaving one teenager in critical condition.
Read the whole story
· ·
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Four women and a man were found dead in a middle-class neighborhood in the Mexican capital on Friday, a rare occurrence in the city despite drug violence hot spots elsewhere in the country.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Two security force members were killed and 24 were wounded in a suicide bombing attack overnight by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey's eastern province of Agri, the local governor's office said in a statement on Sunday.
Read the whole story
· ·
CAIRO (Reuters) - The United States and Egypt began strategic dialogue talks on Sunday, their first since their relationship was strained by the military ouster of President Mohamed Mursi after mass protests against his rule in 2013.
August 2, the anniversary of the founding of the paratroops in 1935, is traditionally marked with veteran paratroopers parading through public parks in their signature berets and striped T-shirts.
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 7
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Qatar to discuss Iran, Syria, and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
Kurdish militants have been accused of killing two Turkish soldiers and wounding dozens of others in a suicide attack, heightening tensions as Turkish air strikes target the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
A Russian military helicopter has crashed at an air show before thousands of spectators, killing one crew member and injuring another.
AP Interview: Ukraine minister calls on Russia to come to 'real negotiations' on ending war
Kerry in Cairo to talk security with Egypt, then to Gulf for Iran discussions with wary Arabs
Distributors picked for NY medical marijuana program reflect industry's evolution, challenges
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 8
Drones used for surveillance, smuggling and as a weapon, assessment says.
Plane Crash Kills Relatives of Bin Ladenby THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Family members of the former Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were among four people killed in a private jet crash in southern England, a Saudi ambassador said.
Moscow Planning To Block 'Extremist' Propaganda Amid 'Global Fight' On ISby support@pangea-cms.com (Joanna Paraszczuk)
Moscow is planning to step up measures to block "extremist propaganda" on the Internet as part of its fight against Islamic State (IS) recruitment and radicalization.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a major archaeological site in Crimea to be placed under federal control following disagreements over the appointment of the site's director.
Participants at the second World Congress of Crimean Tatars have condemned Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, as the gathering opened in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on August 1.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's parliament does not have authority over the nuclear agreement signed with world powers last month, the Islamic Republic's top nuclear negotiator was quoted as saying on Saturday.
Next Page of Stories
Loading...
Page 9
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - As a rainbow-colored flotilla paraded through Amsterdam's canals for the city's annual Gay Pride festival on Saturday, one float carried a sobering reminder that gay rights do not extend to all in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Turkish President Erdogan claims to be battling the terrorist Islamic State, but in reality he is mainly fighting against Kurds and the PKK. By doing so, he has shown that he is willing to derail the peace process in his country for the sake of clinging to power.
Although raising initial concerns among Jerusalem's Palestinian Christian community, an alleged threat by the Islamic State fell largely on defiant ears.
At least 27 people were killed and dozens more seriously injured after a long-haul truck plowed into a group of worshipers taking part in a Catholic Church procession in the Mexican town of Mazapil, Zacatecas state, on Wednesday evening.
In a SPIEGEL interview, leading Kurdish opposition politician Selahattin Demirtas calls for a cease-fire between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
 Military Times |
From CIA to comics: Former agent makes career splash
Military Times Before being brought on as co-writer of the hit comic book “Grayson,” the latest interpretation of Batman's venerable junior sidekick, King spent seven years as a counterterrorism operations officer in the CIA. These days, his life can still get ... |
- Get link
- Other Apps
Comments
Post a Comment