Russian officials say Wednesday’s attack on a school in Crimea in which at least 19 students were killed was not a terrorist attack, but a case of mass murder. They say video footage captured by a closed-caption camera shows a former student armed with a rifle enter the technical college in the Black Sea city of Kerch. Zlatica Hoke reports the suspect in the school shooting also was killed.
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Legendary Turkish photographer Ara Guler, famed for iconic images of Istanbul that captured almost three-quarters of a century of the city’s history, has died at age 90, state media said.

Guler passed away after being rushed to hospital in Istanbul for emergency treatment for heart failure, state-run Anadolu news agency said.

He won fame with extraordinary images of Istanbul in black and white that admirers believe captured the soul of the city more than any other photographer.

His work included images of the city’s best known mosques and landmarks, pictures of workers going about their daily lives to rare pictures of Istanbul covered in a blanket of snow.

Preserving a city

In a city that is now changing at a frenetic pace, Guler’s work preserved facets of Istanbul that have now become irrevocably lost.

Celebrated Turkish writer and Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk famously used Guler’s images in his book “Istanbul: Memories and the City” in which the smoky and misty photos provided the perfect accompaniment to the text.

For many, the work of Guler was infused with the spirit of huzun, the Turkish word for melancholy, which is seen as a particular Istanbul characteristic.

But in a wide-ranging career, he also photographed famous personalities including Salvador Dali, Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill. Another famous subject was the artist Picasso.

​Born in Istanbul

Born to an Armenian family in Istanbul, Guler attended an Armenian school there and began working as a photographer on Turkish newspaper Yeni.

He got his first big international chance as a photographer in 1958 when US magazine Time-Life opened a Turkey office.

He then met the likes of Marc Riboud and Henri Cartier-Bresson who signed him up to join the celebrated photo agency Magnum.

Fans liked to call Guler the “Eye of Istanbul,” but he insisted he was more.

“People call me an Istanbul photographer. But I am a citizen of the world. I am a world photographer,” he said once.

Worked around the world

His work took him around the world to Africa and Afghanistan as well as his native Turkey and resulted in numerous books, which remain a favorite of Istanbul souvenir-hunters to this day.

Guler was a well-known face in Istanbul and even in his last months could regularly be seen at the outside tables of the cafe he owned, Ara Café, in central Istanbul, which is adorned with his pictures.

In August, a photography museum in Istanbul opened in his name.
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Time is up for sexual predators in the aid sector, Britain’s development minister said on Thursday, as she announced new measures to clamp down on sexual abuse and exploitation after a series of scandals.

Penny Mordaunt said it was a “pivotal moment” for the aid industry ahead of an international summit on the issue where the British government will announced details of a joint initiative with Interpol to stop sexual predators from getting jobs.

“This a moment to say: ‘No more’. We have to give the people that we are here to help the protection that they need,” she said in a statement.

Revelations earlier this year that Oxfam staff used prostitutes in Haiti snowballed into widespread reports of misconduct in the aid sector, plunging it into the global spotlight.

Organizations have since pledged to do more to flush out offenders, but Britain’s charity watchdog said on Wednesday it believed a significant number of incidents still went unreported.

Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) said on Thursday it would work with Interpol on a 10 million pound ($13.14 million) pilot project to strengthen the vetting of aid workers through an online platform.

Aid agencies could require future employees to be checked against national criminal records and Interpol databases under the scheme, named Operation Soteria after the Greek goddess of safety.

“Our message to sexual predators using the sector as a cover for their crimes is ‘Your time is up’,” said Mordaunt. An August survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found aid agencies expected reports of sexual misconduct to rise as they cracked down on staff offenses and improved safeguarding mechanisms.

An earlier poll had found more than 120 staff from 21 leading global charities were fired or lost their jobs in 2017 over sexual misconduct.

Operation Soteria is to be led by Interpol, with help from Britain’s criminal records office (ACRO). Save the Children will coordinate the participating charities.

A team of up to nine detectives will also be deployed in two regional hubs in Africa and Asia to help poorer countries improve their criminal records systems, DFID said. It was not immediately clear when the project – set to last five years – would start and what the terms of participation of other nations were. Britain said it was to commit 2 million pounds for the scheme’s first year.

“A critical part of Interpol’s mission is to protect the most vulnerable members of society from the most dangerous,” Interpol secretary general Jurgen Stock said in a statement. “This is all the more important when sexual predators attempt to exploit the very people, be it men, women or children – they are supposed to be safeguarding from harm.”

 
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Russian investigators say a 22-year-old student was responsible a bomb attack that killed 18 people and wounded at least 50 others Wednesday at a technical college in Crimea.

Investigators and the college’s director said following the explosion a gunman went through the building shooting anyone he saw at the school in the city of Kerch.

The top Russian official in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said the student committed suicide following the attack.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Vladimir Putin ordered a thorough investigation of what is being called a terrorist attack and offered condolences to the victims’ families.

A local ombudswoman told Tass news agency most of the victims were students.

Images of the scene of the blast provided by local media outlet Kerch.FM showed ground floor windows of the two-story building had been blown out and debris from the building on the ground outside.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine four years ago, a development that resulted in the West imposing sanctions against Russia.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May goes before European Union leaders Wednesday as the two sides faced stalled talks in the negotiations over Britain’s exit from the bloc.

Months of talks have produced agreements on many parts of how to unravel the relationship, but some key hurdles remain, including how to handle the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland.

After May addresses the group, the other 27 leaders will have dinner on their own to discuss the Brexit negotiations.

EU Council President Donald Tusk said ahead of Wednesday’s meetings he planned to ask May “whether she has concrete proposals on how to break the impasse.”

Tusk said that will determine if it is possible to resolve the differences and proceed toward the orderly breakup planned for March of next year.

He also warned that EU leaders need to discuss how to prepare for a so-called “no-deal Brexit,” under which Britain would exit the EU without any formal measures in place resolving issues such as trade and freedom of movement.

​EU leaders will decide whether to hold a special summit in November, but Tusk said there needs to be reason to believe the two sides are close to a breakthrough.

The European Union wants Northern Ireland, regardless of whether there’s a subsequent trade deal with Britain, to remain inside the bloc’s customs union so as to avoid the necessity of border controls between the British province and the Irish Republic. Brussels is backed in this demand by the Irish government, which wants Northern Ireland to remain closely tied to European regulations on goods and services, including customs arrangements, after Britain leaves the bloc.

May says treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of Britain would mean, in effect, that there would have to be “a border in the Irish Sea,” separating two parts of Britain. 

The EU proposal on how to handle the Northern Ireland border “threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she told British lawmakers Monday in bruising exchanges in the House of Commons. But Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, says a backstop is essential. 
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The White House has announced plans to negotiate separate trade deals with Britain, the European Union and Japan.

“We are committed to concluding these negotiations with timely and substantive results for American workers, farmers, ranchers and businesses,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Tuesday.

He added that the White House wanted to “address both tariff and non-tariff barriers and to achieve fairer and more balanced trade.”

As required by law, Lighthizer sent three separate letters to Congress announcing the intention to open trade talks.

He wrote that the negotiations with Britain would begin “as soon as it’s ready” after Britain’s expected exit from the European Union on March 29.

Lighthizer called the economic partnership between the U.S. and EU the “largest and most complex”in the world, noting the U.S. has a $151 billion trade deficit with the EU

Writing about Japan, Lighthizer said it is “an important but still often underperforming market for U.S. exporters of goods,” noting that Washington also has a large trade deficit with Tokyo.

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, cautioned the administration against making what he called “quick, partial deals.” 

“The administration must take the time to tackle trade barriers comprehensively, including using this opportunity to set a high bar in areas like labor rights, environmental protection and digital trade,” he said.

President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports earlier this year and has threatened more tariffs on cars as a reaction to what he said were unfair deals that put the U.S. at a disadvantage.
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Cologne police are investigating whether extremism was the motivation behind a bloody hostage-taking at the city’s main train station, but so far have found no ties to the Islamic State group, authorities said Tuesday.

Criminal police investigation leader Klaus-Stephan Becker told reporters the man has been identified as a 55-year-old Syrian refugee who came to Germany in early 2015 and was granted asylum.

Witnesses to the Monday attack in the crowded train station reported to police that the suspect, whose name wasn’t released, said he was acting in the name of the Islamic State group. But Becker said they found nothing in the man’s Cologne apartment to support that.

Police found Arabic phrases like “Muhammad is my prophet” written in the apartment but no concrete evidence of Islamic extremism, Becker said.

The suspect was shot several times after police stormed the pharmacy in the train station where he held a woman hostage for two hours. He is no longer in a life-threatening condition but remains in a coma.

The attack started when the man entered a McDonald’s restaurant in the train station and lit fire to a gasoline bomb, injuring two people. One, a 14-year-old girl, was being operated on Tuesday for severe burns and the other was treated for smoke inhalation at the scene.

He then moved to the nearby pharmacy and took a worker hostage, armed with what turned out to be an airgun. 

The man threatened the woman when police stormed the pharmacy. In the pharmacy’s back room police found gas canisters like the type used for camp stoves. 

It would have been difficult for the man to have ignited the gas canisters with the material he had but had he managed to, they could have caused a large explosion, Becker said.

“What his plan was I can only speculate, but what we have seen makes clear that he wanted to harm many people,” Becker said. 

Authorities believe the suspect may have had psychological problems, but are still investigating, Becker said. He had been investigated by police 13 times in the past for what Becker characterized as small to medium-level crimes, including possession of a small amount of marijuana, theft, disturbing the peace and fraud. 

The suspect’s son and brother also live in Germany. Police have questioned the former and are planning on talking with the latter. His wife still lives in Syria, Becker said. 

The suspect is being investigated on charges of attempted murder, bodily harm and hostage taking. The federal prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism and national security cases in Germany, will likely take over the investigation because it appears to have “particular significance,” representative Markus Schmitt said.

The hostage was injured during the incident but was being released from a hospital Tuesday. 

Police are trying to determine whether the suspect came to the train station alone and are calling for any witnesses with video of him to upload it for analysis.

More than a million migrants, mostly Muslims from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered Germany since 2015, leading to a backlash in parts of the country and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. 

The incident again brings a focus on Cologne, which has seen several criminal incidents relating to migrants in recent years. 

On New Year’s Eve in 2015, festivities in Cologne were overshadowed when hundreds of women complained of being groped and robbed, mostly by groups of migrants. 

Since early 2016, migration has diminished significantly.
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U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is urging Saudi Arabia and Turkey to reveal everything they know about the disappearance and possible extrajudicial killing of a prominent Saudi journalist. Jamal Khashoggi was last seen entering, but not exiting, the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.

While Khashoggi disappeared October 2, it was not until Monday, October 15 that Turkish forensic investigators were allowed to search the Saudi consulate.

Bachelet has welcomed this move, but says more is needed. She is urging both Saudi Arabia and Turkey to conduct a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance.

The U.N. Rights chief says she wants the diplomatic immunity that was bestowed by the 1963 Vienna Convention to be waived for all Saudi officials. The commissioner’s spokesman, Rupert Colville, tells VOA that Bachelet wants to make sure a full unimpeded forensic investigation can go forward.

“We hope the lifting of immunity is absolute, so they can investigate everything they wish to and everything they feel they need to, both in the consulate, in the consul general’s premises, in the vehicles that were shown on the CCTV footage, and so on,” said Colville. “So, basically the investigators need to be able to investigate everything they wish to.”

Colville says there seems to be clear evidence that Khashoggi entered the consulate and has not been seen since. Therefore, he says the onus for revealing what happened to the journalist is on the Saudi authorities.

International pressure is mounting on Saudi Arabia to come up with answers.  More firms are pulling out of a big investment conference scheduled to take place next week in Saudi Arabia. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Riyadh Tuesday to discuss the crisis with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

U.S. media reports say Saudi Arabia was edging toward acknowledging that Khashoggi was killed after he entered the consulate, blaming his death on an interrogation gone wrong. Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince in columns written for The Washington Post, had been living in the United States in self-imposed exile. Saudi Arabia has previously denied Khashoggi was killed, saying he left the consulate on his own.

 

 
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From Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough, the border separating the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland snakes for about 500 kilometers through peaceful countryside.

Most of the time nowadays, travelers only know they have crossed from one side to the other of the partitioned island because of the difference in the color of the mailboxes or because road signs in the south use kilometers, while in the north they’re indicated in miles.

Border posts and checkpoints are a thing of a troubled past.

 

But that might change, if Britain leaves the European Union without an exit deal. The quiet, bucolic border separating the island of Ireland could well be both the victim and the cause of a sharp rupture between London and Brussels that would impact jobs and disrupt businesses on both sides of the English Channel.

European Council President Donald Tusk warned Monday that Britain is barreling toward a “no-deal Brexit,” which, aside from hardline Brexiters in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s ruling Conservative party, no one on either side of the English Channel wants. A no-deal Brexit is “more likely than ever before,” Tusk said just hours ahead of a summit of European leaders in Brussels that EU officials have billed as the “moment of truth” for Brexit.

 

Britain’s May will face EU leaders Wednesday to make what some believe could well amount to a final bid to persuade them to agree on more concessions and to rescue Brexit talks that have ground to a halt over how to avoid “hardening” the border in Ireland, which would involve the imposition of customs and immigration checks.

Britain agreed to remove checkpoints along the border in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – a deal struck among London, Dublin and most political parties and armed factions in Northern Ireland that brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades of deadly violence known locally as “the Troubles.”

Hopes of a breakthrough had been raised last week. British and EU officials thought they were close to an agreement about the Irish border, but on Sunday that all fell apart when it became clear Prime Minister May didn’t have the full support of her Cabinet and that several key ministers were on the brink of resigning. Britain’s Brexit minister, Dominic Raab, made an unscheduled trip to Brussels to say the deal, known as the backstop, an EU backup plan to avoid a hard Irish border, was off.

The EU wants Northern Ireland, regardless of whether there’s a subsequent trade deal with Britain, to remain inside the bloc’s customs union so as to avoid the necessity of border controls between the British province and the Irish Republic. Brussels is backed in this demand by the Irish government, which wants Northern Ireland to remain closely tied to European regulations on goods and services, including customs arrangements, after Britain leaves the bloc.

 

May says treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of Britain would mean, in effect, that there would have to be “a border in the Irish Sea,” separating two parts of Britain.  

The EU proposal on how to handle the Northern Ireland border “threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she told British lawmakers Monday in bruising exchanges in the House of Commons. But Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, says a backstop is essential.

“No one wants to trigger the backstop, but it needs to be there as an insurance mechanism to calm nerves that we are not going to see physically a border infrastructure emerging on the island of Ireland,” he said.

Britain has counter-proposed a different “backstop” instead, which would keep all of Britain in a customs union with the bloc temporarily, while a trade deal is negotiated with the EU. May told British lawmakers she believes an overall deal with the EU down the road is still achievable so that keeping Britain in a customs union to avoid a “hard” Irish border is merely a defensive position that would never actually be used.  

Complicating the position for the British prime minister – and the EU – is that she heads a minority government and has to contend with a large, rebellious Conservative faction, led by former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and aristocratic lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, which wants Britain to break sharply from the EU. At least three members of May’s Cabinet are aligned with the rebels.

The rebel faction, which possibly numbers more than 60 Conservative lawmakers, opposes Britain remaining for any length of time in a customs union with the EU as that would limit Britain’s power to strike trade deals around the world. The faction also fears a temporary customs union membership would turn into a permanent arrangement.

Even if a border deal with the EU is struck, the chances are high that May won’t get parliamentary backing for it, because of opposition from the Conservative rebels and from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, or DUP, whose 10 lawmakers in the House of Commons are needed by May to get legislation passed.

The DUP, a right-wing party opposed to reunification with the Republic of Ireland, says it won’t accept any deal that treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of Britain. The party says it’s all a trick to thwart Britain exiting the EU. The party’s leader in the House of Commons, Nigel Dodds, says Britain should leave the EU “together with no part hived off either in the single market or customs union differences.”

The overall head of the DUP, Arlene Foster, says she’s ready to scupper any deal she dislikes by collapsing May’s government. She believes Britain is now likely to leave without a deal and had a “difficult and hostile” exchange with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, last week.

“I don’t see how she can get the votes to get this through. I think we have reached a breaking point,” said Hugh Bennett, news editor at Guido Fawkes, a Conservative blog site.

Meanwhile, positions are hardening among British lawmakers who either don’t want Britain to leave the EU or want to maintain close ties with Europe. More of them are supporting a call for another referendum on EU membership, on the grounds that parliament, as well as the ruling party, are hopelessly divided.

 
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