The news that matter in Europe
The news that matter in Europe
… , AP
Macron decries ‘Islamic separatism,’ defends blasphemy
PARIS … criticized Friday what he called “Islamic separatism” in his country … of violence by the Islamic State group in Europe.
Macron’s centrist … population, the largest in western Europe.
MADRID (AP) — A mix of worry and resignation is discernible behind the masks of parents picking up school textbooks in a working class Spanish neighborhood with a steady rise in new coronavirus infections.
Authorities in Madrid, the European capital experiencing the worst second-wave outbreak, are introducing new curbs on social gatherings starting Monday. The restrictions coincide with the opening of most schools, which is perceived as a potential tipping point in the battle against the virus.
The focus is especially on areas like San Diego, a culturally diverse neighborhood of narrow streets and small apartments where many residents continued commuting to work over the summer, often to do manual labor and unstable jobs.
“The south of Madrid is where the north’s cheap labor crams into small apartments,” said Simona Filip, 44, a migrant from Romania whose 6-year-old son is set to go back to school on Tuesday.
Her son struggled with online learning ever since Spain went into lockdown in mid-March and a non-profit organization gave the family an electronic tablet for the boy to use.
“The kid needs proper studies because I can’t help him and my husband needs to work,” Filip told The Associated Press this week. “We have no other choice but to hope that the school will keep him safe.”
In the past two weeks, Spain has had a cumulative incidence of nearly 217 confirmed virus cases for every 100,000 residents, four times the European average. But in the southern Vallecas district with San Diego at its center, that index closely watched by pandemic experts rose to 1,300 last week and remained on Friday above 1,000 cases.
Jorge Nacarino, president of the local neighbors’ association, said that poverty and years of inadequate investments for the area are behind the spike. Tiny, cheap apartments built five to eight decades ago have not been replaced and now house extended families or groups of migrants who can’t afford real estate price hikes in other neighborhoods.
As happened during the first wave, social distancing is again difficult in the apartments, and many of those who had contact with people already infected with the coronavirus can’t afford to quarantine and miss work, Nacarino said.
“We need a serious plan of public investment in the area, from health centers and sports facilities to social programs,” he said. “It’s been through decades of neglect that San Diego has fallen behind the development seen in surrounding areas.”
With Spanish unemployment on the rise in the wake of virus-induced lockdowns, “narcoflats,” or vacant apartments taken over by gangs as drug distribution and consumption dens, are likely to spread, Nacarino said. So are gambling parlors, which are seen as a source of social problems in the area, with at least seven establishments operating along a short stretch of one of San Diego’s main streets.
Since most of new recent infections have been tied to gatherings in private homes, the regional government on Friday extended to indoor meetings a ban on outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people. Attendance to funerals, burials, weddings or religious celebrations, as well as group visits to museums or guided tourism will also be restricted starting on Monday, authorities said.
That comes on the heels of a crackdown on nightlife entertainment, early closure for the city’s parks to prevent youth from drinking alcohol and partying in large groups, and a ban on outdoor smoking, all of them measures announced in response to Madrid’s spiral of new cases since mid-July.
The Spanish capital, home to 6.6 million and a magnet for workers from around the country, accounted last week for one-third of Spain’s new virus infections. At least 16% of beds in Madrid’s hospitals are currently occupied by patients with COVID-19, the highest rate of all Spanish regions.
The situation “has nothing to do with what we went through a couple of months ago,” on Friday said the region’s health chief, Enrique Ruíz Escudero, referring to the peak of the pandemic in April, when makeshift hospitals had to be built and intensive-care-units expanded to cope with the influx of COVID-19 patients.
“The pandemic in the Madrid community is stable and is controlled,” the official said at a press briefing, arguing that some of the effects of recent measures are starting to have an effect. “We are worried … but we are not alarmed.”
Madrid is also expanding the number of contact tracers, one of the weakest links in dealing with the new wave of outbreaks, and purchasing two million kits of rapid coronavirus tests.
Spain, which is edging to a half-million confirmed cases since February, is leading the pandemic’s second wave in Europe. At least 29,418 people have died in Spain during the pandemic, including 184 reported on Friday. But the real death toll is believed to be higher because many who died during the March and April peak of the outbreak were never tested.
The northern region of Navarra was Spain’s first to launch a new school year on Friday, with masks mandatory for all students aged 6 or above and social distancing measures in schools.
Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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.- Catholic bishops across Europe have expressed support for an archbishop who was refused entry to his homeland of Belarus.
In a Sept. 3 statement, the presidency of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) said it hoped that Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz would be allowed to return home immediately.
“While ensuring their own prayers for the beloved pastor and for the whole Belarusian community, they hope for an immediate return home for the Archbishop of Minsk and a resumption of his episcopal ministry,” the statement on behalf of bishops from 45 European countries said.
The archbishop of Minsk-Mohilev was turned back by border guards when he attempted to return to Belarus Aug. 31 following a trip to Poland. He told CNA Sept. 1 that he was “very much surprised” and had demanded an official explanation.
The incident occurred amid ongoing demonstrations in Belarus following a disputed presidential election Aug. 9. The incumbent, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed victory with 80% of the vote. His challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was detained after she complained to the electoral committee, then fled to Lithuania.
The decision to stop Kondrusiewicz, a Belarusian citizen, from returning home has provoked international concern. Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, urged the Belarusian authorities Sept. 1 to readmit Kondrusiewicz to the country.
Belarusian authorities should allow the re-entry of Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, so he can tend to his flock during the ongoing protests. He and all Belarusian people must be allowed to exercise their fundamental freedoms, including freedom to worship. https://t.co/S5Gyiq7SdB
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) September 1, 2020
The archbishop had spoken out in defense of protesters following the election.
He demanded an investigation last week into reports that riot police blocked the doors of a Catholic church in Minsk while clearing away protesters from a nearby square.
He prayed outside of a prison Aug. 19 where detained protesters were reported to have been tortured.
Kondrusiewicz met with Interior Minister Yuri Karaev Aug. 21 to express his concerns about the government’s heavy-handed response to the protests.
He told CNA that he feared the country was heading towards civil war.
“The situation is very, very difficult, very critical,” he said.
Catholics in Belarus will hold a day of prayer Sept. 7 for the archbishop’s swift return to the country.
The CCEE statement was issued by its secretariat in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The organization, which was officially established in 1971, has 39 members, comprising 33 bishops’ conferences, the Archbishops of Luxembourg, the Principality of Monaco, the Maronite archbishop of Cyprus, the bishop of Chişinău, Moldova, the eparchial bishop of Mukachevo, and the apostolic administrator of Estonia.
The group’s statement said: “The CCEE Presidency expresses the closeness of the entire European Episcopate to Msgr. Kondrusiewicz and to the Church in Belarus in this delicate matter and makes their own the appeal of Pope Francis ‘to dialogue, the rejection of violence and respect for justice and law.’ And, together with the Pope, entrust ‘all Belarusians to the protection of Our Lady, Queen of Peace.’”
The CCEE concluded by saying that Europe’s bishops “encourage everyone to commit themselves to peacefully resolve the conflict and to pursue, with confidence, the path of dialogue for the good of man and of society as a whole.”
A “unique” discovery at Hadrian’s Wall is offering a tantalising glimpse into early Christianity in Britain.
Archaeologists found “incredibly rare” fragments of a chalice buried in the rubble of a former 6th century church at Vindolanda, a ruined Roman fort that lies just south of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The 14 fragments date back to the 5th and 6th centuries, and form the only surviving partial chalice from this period in Britain.
The find is in “very poor condition” as a result of being close to the surface of the ground. Despite this, the Vindolanda Trust said the etchings on the surface of the fragments make the chalice “one of the most important of its type to come from early Christianity in Western Europe“.
It is also the only artefact of its kind to be found in a fort on Hadrian’s Wall.
The fragments are etched with symbols, each of them representing “different forms of Christian iconography from the time”.
Although the symbols have faded with time, making them hard to see with the naked eye, they have been brought to light by specialist photography.
They include well known symbols from the early church, including ships, crosses, the Chi Rho christogram, fish, a whale, “a happy bishop” and angels.
The marks can be found on the outside and inside of the cup, and appear to have been added by the same artist.
The chalice forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the Vindolanda Museum highlighting Christianity and the last periods of occupation at the fort.
Ongoing academic analysis of the artefact is being overseen by post-Roman specialist Dr David Petts, of Durham University.
“This is a really exciting find from a poorly understood period in the history of Britain,” he said.
“Its apparent connections with the early Christian church are incredibly important, and this curious vessel is unique in a British context.
“It is clear that further work on this discovery will tell us much about the development of early Christianity in beginning of the medieval period.”
Vindolanda was a Roman fort housing infintry and cavalry, and was in occupation from around 85 AD to 370 AD.
Vindolanda’s Director of Excavations and CEO, Andrew Birley, said: “We are used to ‘firsts’ and the ‘wow factor’ from our impressive Roman remains at Vindolanda, with artefacts such as the ink tablets, boxing gloves, boots and shoes, but to have an object like the chalice survive into the post-Roman landscape is just as significant.
“Its discovery helps us appreciate how the site of Vindolanda and its community survived beyond the fall of Rome and yet remained connected to a spiritual successor in the form of Christianity which in many ways was just as wide reaching and transformative as what had come before it.
“I am delighted that we can now start to share our news about this discovery and shed some light on an often-overlooked period of our heritage and past.”
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Members of the European Parliament are calling for the bloc to impose sanctions over the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and to push for an international investigation.
In a letter addressed to the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell and the Council Presidency, currently held by Germany, more than 100 MEPs call for the EU to “work towards an international investigation” to be conducted “within structures of the United Nations and Council of Europe with possible support of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons”.
“We remain extremely sceptical that Russian authorities are fit and willing to investigate the real background of this crime. We all look back at a long history of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin opponents and independent journalists attacked and/or murdered and Russian authorities failing to bring to justice the real perpetrators,” they added.
German authorities announced earlier this week that there was “unequivocal proof” that Navalny had been attacked with a Novichok nerve agent and that they would work with the EU and other international partners on “an appropriate joint reaction”.
MEPs said the Navalny case reaffirmed “the necessity by the EU to swiftly establish the EU Human Rights Violations Sanction Mechanism, so we can hold accountable the people who are behind those attacks against oppositions figures and journalists”.
“We cannot stand by and watch while opposition in Russia is systematically subjected to poison attacks,” they went on.
Navalny fell ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20 and his staff immediately suspected foul play. Doctors in Omsk, the Siberian city where he was initially treated before being transferred to Berlin’s Charité Hospital, said however that Navalny suffered from “chronic pancreatitis” which had caused a glycemic imbalance.
He remains in intensive care.
Borrell said in a statement issued on Thursday evening that the EU “condemns in the strongest possible terms the assassination attempt on Alexei Navalny”.
“The European Union calls for a joint international response and reserves the right to take appropriate action, including through restrictive measures,” he went on, adding that the bloc also “calls on the Russian Federation to fully cooperate with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to ensure and impartial international investigation”.
In a statement released earlier this week, the Russian embassy in Berlin said it had not yet received “any fact-based documents” from German authorities regarding the results of their investigation.
“We call on our partners to avoid any politicisation of this incident and to rely solely on credible facts, which we hope will be delivered as soon as possible,” it added.
Born near the middle of the sixth century into a noble Roman family, Gregory received a classical education in liberal arts and the law. He also had strong religious formation from his devout family, particularly from his mother, Silvia, also a canonized saint. By around age 30, Gregory had
advanced to high political office in Rome, during what was nevertheless a period of marked decline for the city.
Some time after becoming the prefect of the former imperial capital, Gregory chose to leave the civil administration to become a monk during the rise of the Benedictine order. In reality, however, the new monk’s great career in public life was yet to come.
After three years of strict monastic life, he was called personally by the Pope to assume the office of a deacon in Rome. From Rome, he was dispatched to Constantinople, to seek aid from the emperor for Rome’s civic troubles, and to aid in resolving the Eastern church’s theological controversies. He returned to Rome in 586, after six years of service as the Papal representative to the eastern Church and empire.
Rome faced a series of disasters caused by flooding in 589, followed by the death of Pope Pelagius II the next year. Gregory, then serving as abbot in a monastery, reluctantly accepted his election to replace him as the Bishop of Rome.
Despite this initial reluctance, however, Pope Gregory began working tirelessly to reform and solidify the Roman liturgy, the disciplines of the Church, the military and economic security of Rome, and the Church’s spreading influence in western Europe.
As Pope, Gregory brought his political experience at Rome and Constantinople to bear, in the task of preventing the Catholic Church from becoming subservient to any of the various groups struggling for control of the former imperial capital. As the former abbot of a monastery, he strongly supported the Benedictine movement as a bedrock of the western Church. He sent missionaries to England, and is given much of the credit for the nation’s conversion.
In undertaking these works, Pope Gregory saw himself as the “servant of the servants of God.” He was the first of the Bishops of Rome to popularize the now-traditional Papal title, which referred to Christ’s command that those in the highest position of leadership should be “the last of all and the servant of all.”
Even as he undertook to consolidate Papal power and shore up the crumbling Roman west, St. Gregory the Great maintained a humble sense of his mission as a servant and pastor of souls, from the time of his election until his death in 604.
As the number of displaced people seeking to enter the European Union, primarily via Greece and its Balkan and Mediterranean neighbors, continued to rise in 2015, the Dublin Regulation should have determined which countries would process their applications for asylum. The EU law designates that duty to the member state through which applicants enter the bloc. For the hundreds of thousands of people coming west to the European Union after being displaced by the civil war in Syria, that country was generally Greece.
On August 21, 2015, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees suspended the Dublin Regulation for Syrian nationals allowing displaced people who could reach the borders to apply for asylum within Germany. Domestic opponents of immigration said suspending the rule would encourage more Syrians to make the country their destination. However, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the old regulations were “obsolete” given the scope of the problem. “We can do this,” she told Germans. Before long, the rule was reinstated — and remains in force today.
Read more: ‘The EU’s halfhearted asylum policy has become apparent,’ a DW editor wrote in 2019
There still exists no comprehensive mechanism for distributing displaced people throughout the European Union. It was a missed chance for member states to “learn from the crisis and create systems to act with more solidarity,” Damian Boeselager, a German member of the European Parliament from the blocwide Volt party, which advocates for EU federalism, told DW. “But, no,” he said, “the interior ministers of the member states were not capable of sitting at the same table.”
The EU’s failures are visible in the sprawling Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos
The current system does not need an overhaul, said Catherine Woollard, the director of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), an alliance of more than 100 NGOs with the mission of protecting and advancing the rights of displaced people: It would suffice for member states to adhere to the existing rules. “A lot could be done with the current legal framework,” she said. “So we argue for compliance — not reform. Rather than putting efforts into reforms that would reduce protection for refugees, the EU’s focus should be on ensuring compliance with the law that is in place.”
Read more: ‘I would be out of a job’ with Merkel’s migration policy, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said in 2018
Hungary and Poland have refused to implement measures agreed to in 2015, and, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have ignored rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that compelled them to take in displaced people. And, after the brief early suspension of the Dublin rules, Germany and certain countries on the Balkan route to the European Union placed restrictions on their borders: Some tried to make them impenetrable. Thomas de Maiziere, Germany’s interior minister at the time, said it was important to regain the “control that had been lost.”
Read more: Refugee policy is EU’s ‘biggest inadequacy,’ German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas says
Greece had already built a high fence on its border with Turkey in 2012. There is also a fence along part of Bulgaria’s border with Turkey.
In summer 2015, Hungary started building a fence on its border with Serbia in order to seal the EU’s external border. There were only a few points at which displaced people could enter Hungary to submit their asylum applications. Though the European Commission and the ECJ criticized this model, Hungarian officials were satisfied with the results: The number of people transiting the country en route to more prosperous EU member states dropped significantly.
Woollard said the past five years had shown that countries such as Hungary and Poland could dictate policy with their noncompliance. “One of the lessons that was learned is that certain member states don’t believe in asylum,” she said. “They don’t believe in offering protection to refugees. That means the temporary solidarity mechanism has to be based on a coalition of the willing member states.”
In 2015, displaced people gathered at EU borders, including Croatia, hoping to enter
By the beginning of 2016, a transit camp at Idomeni in northern Greece, close to the border with Macedonia, was extremely overcrowded. A deal struck in March 2016 between the European Union and Turkey led to a considerable decrease in the number of displaced people who made it to the European Union via Greece. Turkey’s government agreed to take back displaced people who had arrived in the European Union via Turkey but had bypassed the asylum process en route. In return, the EU agreed to accept displaced Syrians who had settled in Turkey. The idea was that they should arrive by plane and be resettled across the European Union. The EU also agreed to give Turkey €6 billion in aid. The deal remains in place today.
In 2016, the European Union also introduced its Hotspot Approach to process asylum applications at the point of entry to the EU in reception centers in Greece or Italy. In April 2016, Merkel said the procedure should take three to six weeks, with displaced people who did not meet EU asylum requirements deported to Turkey.
Read more: ‘Europe without Angela Merkel is possible’
“The idea of hotspots, of processing asylum applications on the Greek islands, has failed,” Boeselager said. “People are being treated inhumanely” at the Moria asylum center on the island of Lesbos, which he has visited and where there are some 15,000 people living in cramped conditions as they wait for months, sometimes years, for their applications to go through.
EU border agency Frontex accompanied 91 displaced Algerians to the Spanish coast
In 2016, the European Commission proposed changes to the Dublin Regulation and EU migration policy that would have more equitably distributed asylum applicants among member states. That plan was rejected by countries in the bloc’s north and east and has been ever since. “Even though there were positive efforts to respond in 2015, including Angela Merkel’s decision, that more positive collective approach was later abandoned in favor of a strategy that we call externalization: strategies with the objective of keeping people out,” Woollard said. She added that Turkey, Libya, Lebanon and Jordan had taken in the displaced people kept from the European Union.
Read more: Are Germany and the EU prepared for a new influx of displaced people?
The European Union has almost put an end to its patrol operations on the Mediterranean, relying heavily now on Libya’s coast guard to prevent people from departing from the North African country’s shores and arriving at EU borders by sea. Still, hundreds of people attempt the crossing each week. According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, 514 people have died attempting the crossing so far in 2020. The governments of Italy, Malta, France and Spain are reluctant to open their ports to nongovernmental rescue ships that carry people who have been saved from drowning — doing so only on a case-by-case basis.
From a high of 1.3 million in 2015, the number of first-time asylum applicants in the European Union fell to 670,000 in 2019.
The European Commission is vigorously pursuing its attack on low-tax countries, despite the slap-down it received when the EU’s second-highest court quashed its €14.3 billion lawsuit against Apple on July 16.
The Commission argued that Apple was receiving unfair state aid, under the terms of the Treaty that founded the EU. The court, however, said that the EU did not prove its case.
At that time, the Commission said that it would “reflect on future steps.”
But the Commission did not take long to reflect. On 31 August 2020, the Commission published the opening of the official procedure laid down in Article 108(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (state aid), against Belgium related to a series of regimes benefiting more than 20 multinational companies.
“We have every reason to believe that despite the Apple debacle, the Commission will continue its aggressive effort against the schemes of Member States offering preferential tax regimes to multinationals under the state aid legislation which gives to it the full executive power to pursue without needing the legislative approval of the Member States,” comments Antigoni Pafiti, an associate with the Elias Neocleous law firm in Brussels.
“But the publication of the official procedure in Belgium — post Apple — demonstrates that the Commission, after some eventual adjustments, sticks to its strategy. One should remember that the Commission has won some of the cases against Member States on this basis, having cut deals with multinationals on taxation,” Pafiti points out.
The Commission had already notified Belgium of its decision to initiate the procedure laid down in Article 108(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union with a letter dated 16 September 2019 (i.e. before the Apple Judgment).
The press release accompanying the letter addresses the issue of “excess profit” tax rulings issued by Belgium between 2005 and 2014 in favour of Belgian companies belonging to multinational groups. Most of these multinational groups are headquartered in Europe.
Belgian company tax rules require companies, as a starting point, to be taxed based on profit actually recorded from activities in Belgium. However, the Belgian “excess profit” tax rulings, relying on the Belgian income tax code (Article 185 §2, b of the ‘Code des Impôts sur les Revenus/Wetboek Inkomstenbelastingen’), allowed multinational entities in Belgium to reduce their corporate tax liability by so-called “excess profits” that allegedly result from the advantage of being part of a multinational group.
“The Commission argues that the excess profit measures provide for a reduction of a company’s taxable base, although there is no legal basis to do so in Belgian tax law. The “excess profit” measures therefore favour them as compared to all other corporate taxpayers in Belgium, who are taxed, as a starting point and notwithstanding possible adjustments provided by law, on their accounting profit,” Pafiti explains.
“On the other hand, even if Article 185(2)(b) BITC could be said to provide a basis to exempt profit allegedly derived from synergies and economies of scale, which the Commission contests, the Commission provisionally considers the measures to discriminate in favour of them, since the ‘excess profit’ exemption is not available to all corporate taxpayers that generate what Belgium deems to constitute ‘excess profit,” Pafiti adds.
So one should understand the Commission’s strategy as an effort to try the limits of the state aid tool in the Court. “Every inch that the Commission gains in this way is considered to be pure benefit, given the very limited competence the Treaties give to the Commission on corporate taxation,” she adds.
The Commission is trying to address a serious challenge. Jurisdiction shopping to get the best tax rate has become endemic among major corporates. In the UK, more than 50 per cent of the subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies reported no taxable profits, according to a 2019 study by Oxford university research fellow Katarzyna Bilicka, the Financial Times reports. In the US, 91 companies on the Fortune 500 index, including Amazon, Chevron, and IBM, paid an effective federal tax rate of zero in 2018.
This year’s Arctic Circle wildfires, still ablaze, have already surpassed the record set in 2019 for CO2 emissions, adding to the carbon pollution humanity needs to curtail, the European Union’s Earth observation programme said yesterday. Uncontrolled forest fires across one of the planet’s coldest regions has sent a quarter of a billion tonnes of CO2 spiralling into the atmosphere since January this year, topping by more than a third the total for 2019, according to satellite data. Almost all of the fires are in Russia, the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts jointly reported.
Source: Reuters
The European Union’s (EU) top diplomat and France called on Thursday for Washington to reverse its sanctions on International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another member of the ICC, calling the measures “unacceptable and unprecedented”.
The U.S. blacklisted Bensouda on Wednesday over her investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, under sanctions authorised by President Donald Trump in June that allow for asset freezes and travel bans.
Sanctions were also imposed on Phakiso Mochochoko, the Head of the Hague-based ICC Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division.
““The sanctions … are unacceptable and unprecedented measures that attempt to obstruct the court’s investigations and judicial proceedings,” Josep Borrell said in a statement.
Washington should “reconsider its position and reverse the measures it has taken,” he added.
The U.S. sanctions reflect the Trump administration’s view that the tribunal threatens to infringe on U.S. national sovereignty.
They are the latest move by Washington to go against the stance of long-standing European allies, which have largely supported American policy and whose trade and security ties are intertwined with the U.S.
The EU condemned Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organisation in April and said the U.S.’ withdrawal from other treaties and accords undermined Western priorities.
Similarly, France called on the U.S. to withdraw sanctions on ICC prosecutor Bensouda.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that the measures announced were “a grave attack against the court … and put into question multilateralism and the independence of the judiciary.”
Le Drian pledged France’s unwavering support for the court and its staff.
BRUSSELS: The European Union will defend the International Criminal Court against attempts to undermine it, a spokesman for the bloc said on Thursday after Washington slapped sanctions on the Hague-based tribunal’s top prosecutor.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced sanctions against ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another senior court official, Phakiso Mochochoko, over a war crimes probe into US military personnel in Afghanistan.
Washington has long rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction over US citizens, but the court’s investigation into allegations of atrocities in Afghanistan has seen President Donald Trump’s administration turn low-level opposition into a concerted campaign against the institution. “The International Criminal Court is facing persistent external challenges and the European Union stands firm against all attempts to undermine the international system of criminal justice by hindering the work of its core institutions,” Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, told reporters.
“We are committed to strengthen our support to the ICC because this is key factor in fighting against impunity. We are standing by the ICC and we are not happy to see steps which are going against the activities of the ICC.
“Pompeo has dismissed the ICC as a “kangaroo court” and the US insists it has its own procedures for investigating allegations against its troops.
The European Union has added lithium, used in batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), to a list of critical materials as part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on imports.
The group of 27 nations will need about 60 times more lithium and 15 times more cobalt for EV batteries and energy storage by 2050, analysts estimate. The EU’s demand for rare earths, used in high-tech devices and military applications, is predicted to increase 10-fold over the same period.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic had highlighted the world’s increasing reliance on electronics and technology for remote work, education and communication.
As a result, shortages of the key elements needed to manufacture those items threaten to undermine critical industries and expose the bloc to supply squeezes from China and other resource-rich countries, the Commission said.
“We have to drastically change our approach,” vice-president Maros Sefcovic said in a statement. “We cannot allow to replace current reliance on fossil fuels with dependency on critical raw materials.”
The E.U. imports around 98% of rare earths from China. Turkey supplies 98% of its borate and Chile meets 78% of Europe’s lithium needs. South Africa provides 71% of its platinum, and Brazil supplies 85% of its niobium, a crucial part of steel alloys used in jet engines, girders and oil pipelines.
“We cannot afford to rely entirely on third countries,” European industry commissioner Thierry Breton said. “By diversifying the supply from third countries and developing the EU’s own capacity for extraction, processing, recycling, refining and separation of rare earths, we can become more resilient and sustainable.”
The Belgium-based body, which first drew up an inventory of critical raw materials in 2011, in response to soaring commodity prices, also added bauxite and titanium — used in aerospace and for orthopaedic implants — and strontium — an ingredient for EV magnets — to the list. The body also eliminated helium from the group of 30 materials.
As part of the strategy unveiled on Sept. 3, the European Commission vowed to create a raw-materials alliance by year-end.
The coalition will include industry members, investors, the European Investment Bank, E.U. countries and others that can help secure raw mineral supply chains.
The Commission also plans to promote the recycling of vital elements, particularly rare earths. It said that while recycling works well in Europe, less than 1% of products containing the components are actually recovered.
The activity would drive investment and innovation within Europe, it noted.
The commission also said it wants to start a partnership with Canada and interested African countries next year.
— This article first appeared in MINING.com.
, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20200706IPR82739/
, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20200827IPR85807/
, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20200827STO85804/
In the Church of Sweden, part of the Lutheran communion, there is no issue about having female priests with women outnumbering men in the role.
It is a different story in the Roman Catholic Church though and the matter has not yet been fully debated.
The archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse, has called for an open debate on the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, America, the Jesuit Review reported.
“One has to be permitted to think about and discuss the issues,” the German archbishop said on Aug. 19.
He argued that document “Ordinatio sacerdotalis,” St. John Paul II’s 1994 letter that stated the church cannot ordain women as priests, was positioned as a response to those who considered women’s ordination “open to debate.”
In it he affirmed the male-only priesthood “in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance.”
Archbishop Hesse said new arguments had emerged in the conversation around women’s ordination that needed to be addressed. “The historical perspective is one thing—but it isn’t everything,” he said.
The news agency AFP meanwhile reported on Aug. 28 the Church of Sweden may be the world’s first to have more female priests than male ones, according to estimations shared by the World Council of Churches.
Female priests outnumbered males in Sweden 50.1% to 49.9% in July, and there are already more women in the country studying to become priests than men.
The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran church with 6,1 million members and it has a female archbishop, German-born Antje Jackelén in a country of some 10.3 million people. There are 3,500 churches in Sweden, with 13 dioceses.
The tally of women priests comes 62 years after women were allowed to be ordained in the Swedish Lutheran Church and over a hundred years after Anna Howard Shaw, an American Methodist suffragist pastor, first preached in Sweden, in 1911.
‘HERE TO STAY’
In the Church of Sweden women “are here to stay”, said Rev. Sandra Signarsdotter.
She was ordained in 2014; in the same year Jackelén became the principal bishop of Sweden.
Despite changes in the church’s demographics, Signarsdotter noted that women “have not yet achieved equality” in the Swedish church.
They earn on average 213 euros ($334) less a month than their male counterparts, according to the specialist church newspaper Kyrkans Tidning.
Also, women hold fewer top jobs than men. Only four bishoprics are led by women of 13 in total.
“The way is still long,” Signarsdotter said “One day, a colleague told me ‘You have a beautiful butt'”.
“Even being a priest, I am first seen as a body,” she regretted, as she hoped the church would one day rid itself of “the patriarchal structures of society”.
The Guardian newspaper did some comparison between the Lutheran church in Sweden and its Anglican counterpart in Britain, the Church of England
“From a historical perspective, this parity happened faster than we earlier imagined,” said Cristina Grenholm, the secretary for the Church of Sweden, when the former State church announced that 50.1% of its priests are female.
A report in 1990 had estimated that women would not make up half the total clergy until 2090.
The UK newspaper report also focused on the male-female wage gap noting the differences cited by Kyrkans Tidning.
Grenholm said this was due to more men being in more senior positions.
The Church of Sweden allowed female priests from 1958 and first ordained three women in 1960.
In 1982, Swedish legislators scrapped a “conscience clause” allowing members of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with a female colleague.
Now, many parishes have both a man and a woman presiding over Sunday services, said Grenholm.
“Since we believe that God created human beings, both men and women, in God’s image, it is essential that we do not only speak about it, but that it is also shown.”
In 2017, the church urged clergy to use gender-neutral language, saying God was “beyond our gender determinations”.
Church of Sweden is the largest Lutheran group in Europe. But church membership, especially among young Swedes, has sharply declined in recent years.
The church separated from the State 20 years ago.
The Guardian report says that one in three active priests in the Church of England is female, although 51% of deacons ordained last year were women.
The church’s general synod, its ruling body, voted to allow female priests in 1992.
VATICAN CITY — In reporting historical and recent abuse of minors, the media should broaden its focus to include portrayals of survivors as active agents of reform, one survivor said.
Interviewing survivors about their abuse and the emotional impact of it brings an important “human face” to the crimes, said Mark Vincent Healy, an advocate in Ireland for safe spaces, care and services for survivors of child sexual abuse.
But reporters also should be asking them “the bigger questions” about ongoing injustices, unnecessary hurdles and the kind of response and care that would truly help, he said.
In some media portrayals, “your whole life can be frozen in time” to that specific span of events in the past, he said; such treatment casts survivors “in a pretty tight narrative.”
“They don’t have to just be victims. They can contribute, be given ownership as participants and instigators of change, (as) people who are building something out of their pain,” he told Catholic News Service by Skype in late August.
Healy has used his skills and experience to push for justice and redress decades after his own abuse as a young student at a Spiritan-run school in Dublin. He works with other survivors and advocates for more effective and broader changes, designed to promote greater accountability and care by all sectors, including government and the European Parliament, to help all victims of child sexual abuse.
“I found catharsis” in working with other survivors, he said, and by dedicating himself to advocacy work, “everything that seemed a negative made me even more positive.”
Highlighting more of the inspiring aspect of survivors’ lives is something Healy and Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a safeguarding expert, would like to see explored more deeply by the media.
Media could be more proactive in reaching out to survivors to know what they have been doing, what they found helpful, where justice was done and what made them feel safe, respected and “dignified,” Father Zollner, who is a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, told CNS.
Healy said that by asking survivors, “What do you want” and need, people also would see a totally “different world” from the “battlefield” they face in litigation, lawsuits and struggles for compensation and care.
The way out of that “nightmare,” he said, would be a world of immediate and ongoing “charitable therapeutic support” in which people acknowledge that survivors, too, have “a dream like everyone else has, to function and attain independence.”
By being a space where survivors air current concerns and propose solutions, the media “could change the game, change the focus” of how the church responds in general, he said.
Healy said the church has to “stop pretending they’re doing it right by saying, ‘Meet us in court.’ This is not an option if the outcome is so damaging.”
The church must recognize its purpose is not to worsen the state and situation of people who were harmed, he said; “Behave as Jesus Christ would. Care for them. Don’t bring them to this arena (of litigation); it is ungodly and not the place of Christ.”
It is not about inviting survivors back to Mass, he said.
“It is a mission. There is real work to do, a new order to go out to meet with survivors, children of the faith who have been scattered, who have either grown in anger or resentment or indifference toward the representatives of the Catholic faith, with but a few who clung on, needing not to lose a faith community despite the challenges of doing so,” said Healy, who was one of six survivors invited to meet privately with Pope Francis in 2014.
The work that needs doing is to help to bring reconciliation and alleviate the pain and distress in victims, in their families and in their community, he said.
Father Zollner said the church “could reach out actively and invite survivors to come forward” to a safe space to talk about their experience; however, it hasn’t been easy to make that work.
For example, the bishops in the Netherlands made that kind of invitation in 2002, right after the huge media coverage of widespread abuse and negligence in the Archdiocese of Boston.
But only few people came forward, Father Zollner said, and it wasn’t until there was a second wave of allegations hitting central Europe in 2010 when “many more victims of abuse came forward in the Netherlands.”
One of many reasons for the delay in coming forward, he said, was people “first need to feel that they are really being listened to, that they are really respected, and that this is not some kind of ‘deal’” or manipulation where they can come forward but are then expected to keep quiet.
Survivors need to feel it is safe to tell the truth about what they experienced, and “they speak out once they come to know you and they come to trust you,” which can be very difficult after their trust has been so shattered, he added.
“People in the church, across all countries, need to listen to the voices of survivors toward developing a ministry with survivors and for survivors. The ‘with’ is important. You cannot, as a church that has harmed these people pretend that you knew (then) and know now what to do. This has to be found out with a group of survivors; survivors — without question — must be instrumental to healing the church,” he said.
The church also should recognize the many skills and the potential survivors have, not just in safeguarding, the Jesuit said; they also should be encouraged to be active participants in everything from parish life to schools and social ministry, even be advisers to bishops and other church leaders.
“They have truly carried the cross; their stories and witness can help priests, seminarians, religious and laypeople who may be associated with the scandal in the church. Many survivors yearn to pass on their faith; the church would be a better church if there were more opportunities for survivors to be part of the evangelization that Pope Francis calls for,” he added.
The measure for knowing whether systems and responses are working, Healy said, is asking, “Are survivors better off? Are there less stressors?”
The redress and rehabilitation they need must cover “all aspects,” like assistance with education, employment and ongoing therapy and support.
“We’re not just here to survive. Your life needs to be made fruitful; there is in you a fruitful, purposeful life to live and this is part of the responsibility of those who caused the abuse to help restore,” said Healy.
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The European Federation on Freedom of Belief, chaired by Mr. Alessandro Amicarelli, reported the following:
On July 9, 2020, the Swiss anti-cult associations JW Opfer Hilfe (Aid to the Victims of Jehovah’s Witnesses) and Fachstelle infoSekta (Center for Information on Cults) issued a press release, announcing that a 2019 decision of the District Court of Zurich had become final, which acquitted Dr. Regina Ruth Spiess, a former employee of infoSekta and current representative of JW Opfer Hilfe, from criminal charges of defamation brought by the Swiss Jehovah’s Witnesses, (JW Opfer Hilfe and Fachstelle infoSekta 2020).
On July 17, 2020—the two events are not related but, as we will see, they came to interact with each other—the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) published a document on the anti-cult ideology (USCIRF 2020). The USCIRF is a bipartisan commission of the U.S. government, whose members are appointed by the President and designated by the congressional leaders of both political parties, Democrat and Republican. The document focuses on anti-cultism in Russia, but goes beyond it, to identify the anti-cult ideology in general as one of the most serious threats to religious freedom internationally. Parenthetically, we would emphasize that the German word “Sekte” should not be translated into English as “sect” (a neutral word, without derogatory implications in the English language) but as “cult.” Similarly, “anti-sekten” should be translated as “anti-cult,” and vice versa.
On July 23, 2020, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, answered during her periodic briefing the USCIRF Report, which was highly critical of Russia and, in particular, of the Russian’s decision to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist organization.” She confused two different documents—the annual yearly report of the USCIRF and the USCIRF document on anti-cultism of July 17—but she intended in fact to answer the latter.
Zakharova stated that, “Regarding the Jehovah’s Witnesses—perhaps the United States is simply unaware of this, so I would like to enlighten our partners about a court decision recently enforced in Switzerland, one originally issued in July 2019. The court recognized some of the methods used by the local group of Jehovah’s Witnesses as violating fundamental human rights. Don’t you know this? I am referring to the practice where persons who choose to leave the sect or who fail to follow its instructions, are boycotted by their families and friends, children are boycotted, and psychological and social pressure is put on dissidents using various manipulative methods to influence consciousness, punishments, as well as unpunished cases of sexual violence. The sect’s members are actually denied the right to freedom of opinion and conscience, and this is what warranted the attention of Swiss justice” (Zakharova 2020).
There are two problems with Zakharova’s statement… (continued)
Download the full Jehovah Witnesses’ White Paper “The New Gnomes of Zurich”
The Jehovah Witnesses’ White Paper “The New Gnomes of Zurich” can also be downloaded from the CESNUR website.
Mr. Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption activist, remains in a coma two weeks after falling violently ill during a flight from the town of Tomsk, in Siberia, to Moscow. He was later airlifted to Berlin for treatment, after Russian authorities allowed him to be moved.
The German government reported on Wednesday that toxicology tests conducted by a special military laboratory revealed he had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
“Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, any poisoning of an individual through the use of a nerve agent is considered a use of chemical weapons. Such an allegation is a matter of grave concern,” said OPCW chief Fernando Arias in a statement responding to the announcement.
“States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention deem the use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances as reprehensible and wholly contrary to the legal norms established by the international community.”
UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric was also asked about the German report during his regular press briefing on Wednesday, replying, “we’ve said and previously mentioned that, if warranted, the issue should be investigated by relevant authorities.”
Novichok is the name of a group of seven toxic chemical agents developed by the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
Two years ago, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were victims of a chemical agent attack in Salisbury, England.
The United Kingdom alleged that novichok was used in that incident. An OPCW investigating team later confirmed the UK’s findings, though the organization did not specifically name the substance used.