Turkish agents have captured a nephew of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen in an overseas operation and have brought him to Turkey where he faces prosecution, Turkey’s state-run news agency said Monday.Selahaddin Gulen, who was wanted in Turkey on charges of membership in a terror organization, was seized in an operation by Turkey’s national spy agency MIT, the Anadolu agency reported.  The report did not say where he was seized or when he was returned to Turkey. Gulen’s nephew, however, was believed to be residing in Kenya.His case is the latest in a series of forced repatriation of people affiliated with Gulen’s movement, which the Turkish government blames for a failed coup attempt in 2016.  Gulen, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who now lives in exile in Pennsylvania, has rejected the accusations of involvement in the coup attempt.Turkey has designated his network a terrorist group, which it has named the Fethullahist Terror Organization, or FETO.Erdogan announced earlier in May that a prominent member of Gulen’s network had been captured but did not provide details.On July 15, 2016, factions within the Turkish military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters in an attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Fighter jets bombed parliament and other spots in Turkey’s capital. Heeding a call by the president, thousands took to the streets to stop the coup.A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed. 
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The Turkish government is facing accusations of arming and funding jihadists in Syria. The allegations are just the latest by an exiled mafia boss in a weekly YouTube broadcast that are putting the Turkish president in an increasingly tight spot.  
 
Among the many allegations being spread by Sedat Peker on YouTube is one that allegedly implicates the Turkish government of arming and buying oil from Syrian jihadists. In one of his broadcasts Peker explains in detail how key aides of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ran the scheme.  
 
Peker, who analysts say once enjoyed close ties to Turkey’s rulers, started broadcasting weekly Sunday videos on a YouTube channel, alleging government misdeeds after he was forced to flee the country.  
 
Analyst Atilla Yesilada says the mafia boss has a growing audience.  
 
“It is huge. He is easily attracting audiences in excess of four and five million per video. And everything he says is scrutinized in the opposition channels. So, I would say everyone knows about what he is saying. Obviously, the most damaging is him opening the 1990s file, the extrajudicial killings,” Yesilada said.
Peker alleges former interior minister Mehmet Agar was the head of a shadowy organization known as the “deep state,” which is said to have been responsible for a series of assassinations of prominent journalists dating back to the 1990s. Agar is closely linked to Erdogan, and his son Tolga is a parliamentary deputy for the ruling AKP, Turkey’s ruling party.  FILE – A photo taken May 26, 2021, in Istanbul, Turkey, shows a YouTube broadcast by exiled mob boss Sedat Peker on a mobile phone.Agar has denied the allegations. Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders says there is a need for government transparency.
 
“This should be part of a parliamentary investigation first, but I think that it will never be possible without the Turkish government naming some state actors in this period. So, transparency today should calm public opinion today and show respect to victims’ families,” Onderoglu said.
 
But Erdogan is dismissing the allegations.
 
Speaking to his party’s deputies, the Turkish president claimed the accusations are part of an international conspiracy to oust him.  
 
But Peker’s allegations continue, accusing the son of Erdogan’s close confidant, former prime minister Binali Yildirim, of cocaine smuggling, and turning Turkey into one of the biggest hubs for importing and distributing drugs into Europe. Yildirim dismissed the allegations.  
 
Analysts point out Erdogan is experienced at weathering political storms. But analyst Yesilada says, unlike in the past, Turkey is in the midst of an economic crisis and record-low opinion poll ratings for Erdogan.
 
“These are all unmistakable signs of Armageddon for Erdogan approaching. It will really take a miracle to repair the reputational damage that is caused by the Peker videos. The picture that emerges is that this is a government set for personal benefit and for the benefit of cronies and [one that] has completely lost interest in the voters,” Yesilada said.
 
Peker is promising more YouTube videos that he says will share more intimate secrets he claims he learned from spending two decades in the inner circles of the ruling party.
 
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Russian online news site Newsru announced on Monday it was closing for economic reasons, saying that advertisers were steering clear of it because its story selection did not follow pro-Kremlin state media.
 
Russia’s TV media landscape is dominated by pro-Kremlin state outlets. There’s a bit more variety online and in print, though moves are afoot to label outlets critical of the Kremlin with foreign funding as “foreign agents,” a step that deters advertisers and readers alike.
 
Newsru, which has functioned primarily as a news aggregator in recent years, said it was not economical for it to continue. “We are stopping work for economic reasons, but they are provoked by the political situation in the country,” Newsru said in a farewell note to its readers on its website.
 
The outlet, set up in 2000 when President Vladimir Putin was starting his first term in the Kremlin, pointed to 2014 as a turning point when Russian foreign policy and the structure of the domestic economy changed dramatically.
 
That was the year that Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, prompting a surge in patriotic sentiment domestically and sending relations with the West to post-Cold War lows.
 
“Our picture of the day became so different from the picture favored by state (media) resources that major advertisers stopped cooperating with us after the events of 2014, while others began to be particularly wary this year,” Newsru said.
 
The Kremlin denies cracking down on independent media. It has said the online news media landscape is vibrant and that people have many sources to choose from and that outlets open and close for various reasons.
 
Russia’s ties with the West this year are acutely strained over its jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and a bout of saber rattling over neighboring Ukraine.
 
Newsru also complained of regulations requiring media in Russia to label anyone the state regards as “extremists” or “foreign agents” when referencing them in their articles.
 
Russia has declared several media outlets “foreign agents” including U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Meduza media portal and the VTimes news site.
A court is also considering a call to declare Navalny’s movement “extremist”.
 
“We have increasingly had to write about the passing of restrictive laws that could affect us ourselves any day now,” said Newsru. “We had to label as foreign agents and extremists more and more respected people and sources of truthful information,” it said.
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The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighboring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.
 
The findings are the result of a 2015 internal investigation in the Danish Defense Intelligence Service into NSA’s role in the partnership, DR said, citing nine unnamed sources with access to the investigation.
 
According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbruck.
 
Asked for comment on the DR report, a spokesperson for the German chancellery said it only became aware of the allegations when asked about them by journalists and declined to comment further.
 
Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen declined to comment on “speculation” about intelligence matters in the media. “I can more generally say that this government has the same attitude as the former Prime Minister expressed in 2013 and 2014 – systematic wiretapping of close allies is unacceptable,” Bramsen told Reuters in a statement.
 
In Washington, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Danish Defense Intelligence Service also declined to comment.
 
Denmark, a close ally of the United States, hosts several key landing stations for subsea internet cables to and from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland and Britain.
 
Through targeted retrievals and the use of NSA-developed analysis software known as Xkeyscore, NSA intercepted both calls, texts and chat messages to and from telephones of officials in the neighboring countries, sources told DR.
 
The internal investigation in the Danish Defense Intelligence Service was launched in 2014 following concerns about former NSA employee Edward Snowden’s leaks the previous year revealing how the NSA works, according to DR.
 
Snowden fled the United States after leaking secret NSA files in 2013 and was given asylum in Russia.
 
Following DR’s report, Snowden posted a cryptic Danish-language comment on Twitter saying: “If only there had been some reason to investigate many years ago. Oh why didn’t anyone warn us?”
 
Steinbruck told German broadcaster ARD he thought it was “grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives” of other countries.
 
“Politically I consider it a scandal,” he said.  
 
Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish SVT broadcaster that he “demanded full information”. Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told broadcaster NRK that he took the allegations seriously.
 
In Paris, French Minister for European Affairs Clement Beaune told France Info radio that the DR report needed to be checked and that, if confirmed, it would be a “serious” matter.
 
“These potential facts, they are serious, they must be checked,” he said, adding there could be “some diplomatic protests.”
 
A decision in August last year to suspend the head of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service and three other officials following criticism and accusations of serious wrongdoings from an independent board overseeing the agency centered on the 2015 investigation, according to DR.
 
Denmark said last year it would initiate an investigation into the case based on information from a whistleblower report.
 
That investigation is expected to be concluded later this year.
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The far-right ELAM party and a centrist splinter group made big gains in Cyprus’ parliamentary election on Sunday as a sizeable chunk of supporters appeared to have turned their back on the top three parties amid voter disenchantment with traditional power centers.With 100% of votes counted, ELAM garnered 6.78% of the vote — a 3% increase from the previous election in 2016 — to edge out the socialist EDEK party by the razor-thin margin of around 200 votes.The centrist DIPA — made up of key figures from the center-right DIKO party which has traditionally been the third biggest party — gained 6.1% of the vote.The center-right DISY emerged in first place with 27.77% of the vote, 5.4% more than second-place, communist-rooted AKEL. But the parties respectively lost 2.9% and 3.3% of their support from the previous election.“The result isn’t what we expected,” AKEL General-Secretary Andros Kyprianou told a party rally. “We respect it and we’ll examine it carefully to draw conclusions, but we can now say that we failed to convince (our supporters).”Analyst Christoforos Christoforou said the results indicate a “very big failure” on the part of both DISY and AKEL to rally more supporters by convincing them of the benefits of their policies. A last-ditch appeal by the DISY leadership limited a projected 5% voter loss to 3%.Christoforou said the real winners were ELAM with its strident anti-migration platform and hardline nationalist policies and DIPA whose top echelons still have connections to the centers of political power as former ministers and lawmakers.He said that the high electoral threshold of 3.6% means that 15,000 voters who cast ballots for smaller parties who didn’t win any seats are left without a voice in parliament.Opinion polls in the weeks preceding the vote indicated that both DISY and AKEL would hemorrhage support as disappointed voters seek out alternatives among smaller parties.The election won’t affect the running of the government on the divided Mediterranean island nation, as executive power rests in the hands of the president, who is elected separately.About 65.73% of nearly 558,000 eligible voters cast ballots for the 56 Greek Cypriot seats in parliament. Voter turnout was 1% less than the previous poll.Among the key campaign issues were the country’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hoped-for economic reboot as the country ramps up vaccinations. Migration has also been an issue as the Cypriot government insists it has exceeded its limits and can no longer receive more migrants.Smaller parties have appealed to voters to turn their backs on DISY, which they said is burdened by a legacy of corruption.An independent investigation into Cyprus’ now-defunct investment-for-citizenship program found that the government unlawfully granted passports to thousands of relatives of wealthy investors, some with shady pasts. DISY bore the brunt of the criticism because it backs the policies of Anastasiades, the party’s former leader.Christoforou said there are questions as to whether the government has breached rules by using state funds to campaign for DISY.
 
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Georgia’s main opposition party on Sunday announced the end of a months-long parliamentary boycott that has plunged the Caucasus nation into a spiraling political crisis, following disputed elections last year.Georgia’s opposition parties have denounced massive fraud in the October 31 parliamentary elections, which were won narrowly by the ruling Georgian Dream party.In the months since, they have staged numerous mass protests, demanding snap polls and refused to assume their seats in the newly elected parliament.The boycott that has left around 40 seats vacant in the 150-seat legislature weighed heavily on Georgian Dream’s political legitimacy.On Sunday, Georgia’s main opposition force — the United National Movement (UNM) founded by exiled ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili — said it had taken the decision to end the boycott.”We will enter parliament to liberate the Georgian state captured by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili,” UNM chairman Nika Melia told journalists.He was referring to the billionaire founder of the ruling party, who is widely believed to be the man in charge in Georgia, despite having no official political role.The post-electoral stalemate worsened in February after police arrested Melia in a violent raid on his party headquarters, leading to the prime minister’s resignation and prompting swift condemnation from the West.Melia was released from pre-trial detention in May, on bail posted by the European Union.The move was part of an agreement Georgian Dream and the opposition signed in April under the European Council President Charles Michel’s mediation.The deal commits opposition parties to enter parliament, while Georgian Dream has promised sweeping political, electoral and judicial reforms.In power since 2012, Georgian Dream and its founder Ivanishvili — Georgia’s richest man — have faced mounting criticism from the West over the country’s worsening democratic record.Critics accuse Ivanishvili of persecuting political opponents and creating a corrupt system where private interests permeate politics.
 
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The chief editor of a popular internet news site in one of Belarus’ largest cities was detained Sunday on suspicion of extremism. The arrest Sunday of Hrodna.life editor Aliaksei Shota comes amid a crackdown on independent journalists and opponents of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The publication focuses on Belarus’ fifth-largest city, Grodno. City police said the website “posted information products that were duly recognized as extremist,” but didn’t give details. It wasn’t immediately clear if Shota had been formally charged with extremism, which can carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years. Shota had collaborated with the country’s most popular internet portal Tut.by, which authorities closed this month after arresting 15 employees. Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich stands in an airport bus in the international airport outside Minsk, Belarus, May 23, 2021, in this photo released by Telegram Chanel t.me/motolkohelp. He was arrested shortly thereafter.Belarus’ crackdown escalated a week ago with the arrest of dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend who were aboard a commercial flight that was diverted to the Minsk airport because of an alleged bomb threat. The flight was flying over Belarus en route from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania. The move sparked wide denunciation in the West as an act of hijacking and demands for Pratasevich’s release. The European Union banned flights from Belarus. Pratasevich is charged with organizing riots, a charge that carries a potential sentence of 15 years. The day after his arrest, authorities released a brief video in which Pratasevich said he was confessing, but observers said the statement appeared to be forced. The Belarusian human rights group Viasna said Sunday that Pratasevich had received a package from his sister but that an unspecified book had been taken from it. Large protests broke out last August after a presidential election that officials said overwhelmingly gave a sixth term in office to Lukashenko, who has consistently repressed opposition since coming to power in 1994. Police detained more than 30,000 people in the course of the protests, which persisted for months. Although protests died down during the winter, authorities have continued strong actions against opposition supporters and independent journalists.  
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The Ukrainian ambassador to Thailand collapsed and died on Sunday while on a resort island with his family, authorities said.Andrii Beshta, 44, was declared dead on Lipe Island in southern Satun province, Gov. Ekkarat Leesen told The Associated Press.Police quoted his teenage son, who was staying in the same hotel room, as saying his father vomited and fainted early Sunday. He said he was feeling fine before. Police said they suspect he may have suffered a heart failure.Leesen said the body was sent to the police hospital for an autopsy.Beshta had assumed the post of ambassador in January 2016. He is survived by his wife, daughter and two sons, according to a bio on the embassy’s website.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson married his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, in a secret ceremony at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday, The Sun and Mail on Sunday newspapers reported.A spokeswoman for Johnson’s Downing Street office declined to comment on the reports.Both newspapers said that guests were invited at the last minute to the central London ceremony, and that even senior members of Johnson’s office were unaware of the wedding plans.Weddings in England are currently limited to 30 people because of COVID-19 restrictions.The Catholic cathedral was suddenly locked down at 1:30 p.m. (1230 GMT) and Symonds, 33, arrived 30 minutes later in a limo, in a long white dress with no veil, both reports said.Johnson, 56, and Symonds, 33, have been living together in Downing Street since Johnson became prime minister in 2019.Last year they announced they were engaged and that they were expecting a child, and their son, Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, was born in April 2020.Earlier this month the Sun had reported that wedding invitations had been sent to friends and family for July 2022.Johnson has a complicated private life. He was once sacked from the Conservative Party’s policy team while in opposition for lying about an extramarital affair. He has been divorced twice and refuses to say how many children he has fathered.Johnson’s last marriage was to Marina Wheeler, a lawyer. They had four children together but announced in September 2018 that they had separated.
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France reported Saturday that the number of people in intensive care units with COVID-19 had fallen by 76 to 3,028, while the overall number of people in hospital with the disease had fallen by 425 to 16,847.Both numbers have been on a downward trend in recent weeks.While reporting 10,675 new cases, the health ministry also announced 68 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals and said there had been 487,309 COVID-19 vaccine injections over the past 24 hours.
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Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in the southern Russian town of Sochi continued into a second day on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
 
Lukashenko flew into Russia on Friday for talks with Putin amid an uproar in Europe over the grounding of a passenger plane in Minsk and the arrest of a dissident blogger.
 
“Discussion between the two presidents continue today,” Peskov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency. 
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Medics concerned about the effects on public health of environmental degradation marched Saturday on the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, demanding health authorities make climate change and biodiversity loss their top priorities.White-clad activists from the group Doctors for Extinction Rebellion marched from Geneva’s Place des Nations to WHO headquarters where they were met by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus, and Maria Neira, director of environment, climate change and health.”The pandemic will end, but there is no vaccine for climate change,” Tedros said as he welcomed the activists outside the building. “We have to act now, in solidarity, to prevent and prepare before it is too late.”
 
Professor Valerie D’Acremont, an infectious disease specialist and co-founder of Doctors For Extinction Rebellion, called on the WHO “to be the driving force and guarantor of public policies that respect the health of all and preserve life.”
 
The activists handed Tedros a letter and a large hourglass, the symbol of Extinction Rebellion which wants to prompt a wider revolt to avert the worst scenarios of devastation outlined by scientists studying climate change.
 
Tedros later retweeted a message from the WHO stating both bodies were “standing in solidarity & urging global action” to end the climate crisis and protect health everywhere. “These are inextricably intertwined.”
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As French cultural institutions reopen after months of coronavirus restrictions, a spectacular new museum has made its debut in Paris, housing the contemporary art collection of French billionaire Francois Pinault, including a number of prominent Black artists.A wax replica of The Rape of the Sabine Women by 16th century artist Giambologna at the Pinault Collection. (L. Bryant/VOA)A chandelier shaped like a basketball net, by American artist David Hammons, a slow-burning wax replica of a 16th century sculpture aimed to melt completely in six months, the works of Chinese-born painter Xinyi Cheng and British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye — the Pinault Collection is an eclectic mix of contemporary art.A crystal chandelier shaped as a basketball net by Black American artist David Hammons. (L. Bryant/VOA)”It’s giving different kind of offers to a general public in Paris, but being more of today, so to speak,” said Curator Caroline Bourgeois. “We are focused on today’s question. Even David Hammons is 70s years old, but he speaks a lot of today.”Bourgeois says the private Pinault Collection complements the raft of other Paris museums, offering completely contemporary works focusing on young artists. This opening exhibit is just a taste of the 10,000 artworks 84-year-old Francois Pinault has collected over the years.A wax replica of The Rape of the Sabine Women by 16th century artist Giambologna at the Pinault Collection. (L. Bryant/VOA)A number of them include a number Black artists like Hammons — a friend of Pinault’s, with this show including about 30 of his works. But Bougeois says showcasing race or gender is not the point. “We don’t want to put them ghettos, to show them just as women artists. This is unfair,” Bourgeois said. “Or to show the Black artists as Black artists only. This is also unfair. For us, it’s important that they can dialogue — the dialogues between the generations, the origin…”The Pinault Collection includes works by a number of prominent Black artists, including British painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. (L. Bryant/VOA)This Pars museum embodies a years-long goal by Pinault, a self-made billionaire from humble origins in Brittany. As other European museums struggle to stay afloat after months of coronavirus closures, this one sank nearly $200 million into redeveloping a former Paris grain exchange to house it.It’s an amazing space — rented for 50 years from the city of Paris. The building’s circular shape is inspired by Roman monuments. The top offers views of Paris—including the Pompidou Center, which also offers contemporary as well as earlier, modern art.A view of Paris from the Pinault museum, including the Pompidou center, which also exhibits contemporary but also modern art. (L. Bryant/VOA)Restored 19th-century frescoes flank the ceiling, depicting colonial-era trade. It’s a sharp and studied contrast with this collection. Frescoes on the ceiling of Bourse de Commerce, housing the Pinault Collection, depict colonial-era trade. (L. Bryant/VOA)Outside, there’s a long line to get in, even on a weekday afternoon. For those lucky enough to get tickets these first days, it’s a discovery.Francoise, who didn’t want to give her last name, says she knows some of Pinault’s collection from his museums in Venice. This one is luminous, she says, and beautiful.It’s like reliving after months of lockdown, her friend Jocelyne adds. You can’t imagine what it’s like to see art everywhere.Curator Bourgeois says she’s been moved by the many visitors who thank her.Crowds pack the Pinault Collection days after its opening. (L. Bryant/VOA).”The most beautiful compliment I had about this first show is that it’s made for everyone. And I had that a few times,” said Bourgeois. “That everyone can recognize themselves.”She won’t say when or what the next exhibit will be. This one is called “Ouvert” or “open” — a word that suggests many things.   
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The United States on Friday announced punitive measures against Belarus targeting the regime of strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, who met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin amid a global outcry over the forced diversion of a European plane.White House press secretary Jen Psaki called for “a credible international investigation into the events of May 23,” which she called “a direct affront to international norms.”Belarus scrambled a military jet to divert a Ryanair plane and arrested 26-year-old opposition blogger and activist Roman Protasevich who was onboard, triggering a global outcry.The White House announced it was working with the European Union on a list of targeted sanctions against key members of Lukashenko’s regime.Meanwhile, economic sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises, reimposed by Washington in April following a crackdown on pro-democracy protests, will come into effect on June 3.Further U.S. moves on Belarus could target “those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy,” Psaki said.The White House also issued a “Do Not Travel” warning for Belarus to U.S. citizens, and warned American passenger planes to “exercise extreme caution” if considering flying over Belarusian airspace.The European Union has also urged EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace.However, President Vladimir Putin celebrated Russia’s close ties with Belarus on Friday as he hosted Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.With observers closely watching the talks to see how far the Kremlin would go to support the regime, the Russian leader said he was “very glad” to see Lukashenko and agreed with him the Western reaction was an “outburst of emotion.”‘Rock the boat’Lukashenko complained the West was seeking to stir unrest in Belarus.”An attempt is underway to rock the boat to reach the level of last August,” he said, referring to anti-regime protests following a disputed election.”It’s clear what these Western friends want from us.”The Belarus strongman, who arrived with a briefcase, said he wanted to show Putin “some documents” related to the Ryanair incident and thanked him for his support in the latest standoff with the West.The talks lasted for more than five hours but their results were not announced.Over the past years Lukashenko has had a volatile relationship with Moscow, playing it off against the West and ruling out outright unification with Russia.But after the Ryanair plane incident his options appear to be limited.Putin and the Belarus leader have met regularly since August, when historic protests broke out against Lukashenko’s nearly three-decade rule.The 66-year-old waged a ruthless crackdown on his opponents and has leaned increasingly on the Russian president amid condemnation from the West.Several people died during the unrest in Belarus, thousands were detained, and hundreds reported torture in prison.Sunday’s plane diversion was a dramatic escalation, with EU leaders accusing Minsk of essentially hijacking a European flight to arrest Protasevich.Technical reasonsThe overflight ban has led to several cancellations of air journeys between Russia and Europe, after Russian authorities rejected planes that would have skipped Belarusian airspace.Russia insists the cancellations are purely “technical,” but they have raised concerns that Moscow could be systematically refusing to let European airlines land if they avoid Belarus.The Kremlin criticized the flight ban as politically motivated and dangerous, with foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova calling it “completely irresponsible.”EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was monitoring whether this was a broader policy from Russia, but Moscow insisted the disruptions were in no way political.Belarus authorities claimed to have received a bomb threat against the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius carrying the dissident.Minsk said it demanded the flight land in the Belarus capital based on the message it said was sent from a ProtonMail address by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.Protasevich, who helped organize the demonstrations against Lukashenko’s rule last year, was arrested along with Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 23, after the plane landed in the city.’Braver’Borrell has said proposals are “on the table” to target key sectors of the Belarusian economy including its oil products and potash sectors.Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Friday urged the EU to be “braver” and impose more sanctions against the Minsk regime.After meeting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague, Tikhanovskaya said measures being discussed by EU countries did not go far enough.EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday warned Lukashenko that “it is time to change course.””No amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime,” she said.The European Commission president also wrote to the opposition offering a 3-billion-euro package to support “a democratic Belarus” if Lukashenko steps down.
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The European Commission has authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12, widening the pool of those eligible to be inoculated, following similar approvals in the United States and Canada.The commission made the announcement Friday after the European Union’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency, recommended Friday the use of the vaccine in children ages 12-15, saying that data show it is safe and effective.”Extending the protection of a safe and effective vaccine in this younger population is an important step forward in the fight against this pandemic,” said Marco Cavaleri, the EMA’s head of health threats and vaccines strategy.It is now up to individual EU states to decide whether and when to offer the vaccine to young adolescents.Germany and Italy have already said they are preparing to extend their vaccination campaign to youths ages 12-15.Also Friday, Britain approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. It is the fourth COVID-19 vaccine approved in the country, after inoculations made by Pfizer and BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.French President Emmanuel Macron pledged Friday to help provide South Africa and other African countries with vaccine doses. During a visit to Pretoria, Macron said France would donate more than 30 million doses this year to the U.N.-backed COVAX global vaccine initiative.According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, South Africa has so far vaccinated roughly 700,000 people out of its population of 40 million.In Australia, Melbourne went back under lockdown on Friday, as health authorities said a cluster of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases had increased to 39.Health officials have ordered residents to stay home for seven days to prevent the infection from spreading and allow time to investigate how the virus was transmitted from a man being quarantined at a hotel.The outbreak has been traced to an overseas traveler who was found to be infected with an Indian variant of the coronavirus.The acting premier of Australia’s southern state of Victoria, James Merlino, told reporters in Melbourne that the new outbreak is the result of “a highly infectious strain of the virus, a variant of concern, which is running faster than we have ever recorded.”Stores are closed during a lockdown to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in downtown Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, May 28, 2021.During the lockdown, residents will be allowed to leave their homes only for essential work, school, shopping, caregiving, exercise and medical reasons, including receiving their scheduled coronavirus vaccinations.The new lockdown is the fourth one imposed on Victoria state since the start of the pandemic. The most severe period occurred in mid-2020 and lasted more than three months as Victoria was in the grip of a wave of COVID-19 infections that killed more than 800 people.Merlino had already imposed a new set of restrictions for Australia’s second most populous state, including limiting the size of public gatherings and making mask wearing mandatory in restaurants, hotels and other indoor venues until June 4.In other developments Friday, India reported 186,364 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, its lowest daily rise since April 14. Deaths rose from the previous day to 3,660.In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children at summer camp who are not vaccinated do not have to wear masks outside unless they are in crowds or in sustained close contact with others. The new guidance comes as millions of children are set to resume summer camp this summer after the closure of many camps last year due to the virus.Americans are celebrating the start of the Memorial Day weekend by hitting the roads and skies as they seek to cast off more than a year of pandemic restrictions and try to resume a sense of normalcy.U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urged Americans to be patient this weekend at busy airports.”People will see lines because there’s going to be a tremendous amount of people traveling this weekend,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday.More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports on Thursday, and that number is expected to rise over the weekend.Also in the United States, Facebook said it will no longer remove statements that COVID-19 was created by humans or manufactured “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts.”A man in a protective suit stands next to the burning pyre of a person who died of COVID-19, at a crematorium in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, May 28, 2021.Since the beginning of the pandemic outbreak, Facebook has changed its policy several times on what is and is not allowed on the topic. Another claim banned from discussion on the platform is the notion that vaccines are toxic or not effective.The American Civil Liberties Union requested Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “provide immediate vaccine access to the more than 22,100 people in ICE custody.””Over the course of the pandemic, ICE detention facilities have been some of the worst hotspots for the spread of COVID-19, with positivity rates five times greater than prisons and 20 times greater than the general U.S. population,” said the ACLU’s Eunice Cho.
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An increasingly influential Polish Catholic legal institute on Friday inaugurated a university in Warsaw that aims to educate a new generation of conservative lawyers in central Europe who it hopes will also shape wider European culture.The institute, Ordo Iuris, works to promote conservative causes, including restrictions on abortion and opposition to same-sex legal unions as it seeks to support traditional family structures. It successfully lobbied for the recent restriction of abortion rights in Poland and is spearheading efforts aimed at persuading countries not to ratify the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty against domestic violence, due to objections over how the treaty depicts gender relations in the family.Jerzy Kwasniewski, a Warsaw lawyer who heads Ordo Iuris, said that the university, Collegium Intermarium, is meant to be a space of free academic inquiry at a time of perceived censorship in traditional academic settings that he argued overwhelmingly targets and silences conservative thinkers.Kwasniewski also described the college as a counterweight to existing institutions, including the Central European University, which was founded by the liberal Hungarian American investor George Soros and which recently relocated from Budapest to Vienna under pressure from Hungary’s nationalist conservative government.”We all hope that Collegium Intermarium will bring change to the academic sphere of central Europe,” he said.A larger ambitionIntermarium (Latin for “between the seas”) is a historical term that refers to a swath of central Europe between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas. It’s a region of ex-communist countries that are largely more conservative than those in Western Europe, and it’s where nationalist parties have seen their support grow in recent years.The name points to a larger ambition, with Kwasniewski saying he also hopes the institution will allow conservatives from central Europe to one day shape the more secular culture dominant in the European Union.”We don’t follow the French way of a division between church and state. We rather follow the more American way of an alliance of the spiritual with the republic,” Kwasniewski told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the university’s inauguration conference. “We are not able to follow the motto of the European Union, ‘United in diversity,’ without acknowledging the diversity of different cultural spheres of Europe.”The Polish culture and education ministers praised the university as a place that will nurture Europe’s traditional Christian and classical traditions, while a letter was read out from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, underscoring the conservative government’s support for the new institution. Representatives of the Hungarian government also voiced their support.The former Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, spoke about his support for strengthening nation states in the face of an EU which he accused of eroding freedoms. He also denounced the cultural changes in the West since the liberal revolution of the 1960s, saying that since then, “generations were born who do not understand the meaning of our civilizational, cultural and ethical heritage and are deprived of a moral compass guiding their behavior.”Viewed with suspicionOrdo Iuris is viewed with suspicion by LGBT and women’s rights groups, which accuse the Catholic group of being part of an international network seeking to erode the rights they have gained in recent decades.Ordo Iuris successfully backed a successful effort to restrict abortion rights in Poland. It provided legal arguments to the constitutional court, which ruled last year that abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities are not constitutional. The result is that Polish women are now required to carry very sick or even unviable fetuses to term — a ruling that in practice drives more women to have abortions abroad. The ruling sparked weeks of mass protests in the country, which already had one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.The institute has worked across the region, for instance assisting a Romanian group that successfully lobbied to block the legalization of same-sex unions.Neil Datta, the head of the Brussels-based European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights who has extensively researched Ordo Iuris, says he believes the university will become a center for training “a new cadre of elites that basically can transform and whitewash far-right thinking so it appears professional and acceptable in a certain political discourse.”He said the plan reminds him of what happened in the United States, where the Christian right years ago began funding universities that over time produced new elites with influence at think tanks and in politics.”This is a first step in the same thing,” Datta said.Ordo Iuris members say the group is unfairly portrayed by activists and the media.Kwasniewski told the AP that the group is not against women, arguing that the institute includes many women and that its anti-abortion position is a human rights position.”Abortion is not about women’s rights. Abortion is also performed on girls in the prenatal stage of development. It’s just about the violation of the right to life,” he said.The university will offer accredited degrees at the master’s level in law, with the curriculum to include related subjects such as philosophy. It plans to offer a doctorate program in four to five years. It will be privately funded at first but plans to seek public funding in the future, Kwasniewski said.
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Russia refused to allow two EU-based airlines to land flights in the country to avoid Belarusian airspace days after Belarus scrambled a fighter jet and used a false bomb alert to divert an Irish passenger jet to Minsk and arrest a dissident Belarusian journalist.  Russia’s decision, an apparent show of support for Belarus, forced the cancellation of an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna and an Air France flight from Paris, the airlines said. European Union foreign policy head Josep Borrell said before an EU defense ministers meeting Friday in Lisbon that the EU had yet to determine if the refusals were isolated incidents or if Russia was systematically refusing to allow European airlines to land if they avoided Belarus. “We don’t know if it is case-by-case, specific cases, or is a general norm from the Russian authorities in order to make the European planes overfly Belarus,” Borrell said. Russia’s federal aviation agency has told airlines that route changes from Europe to Russia were due to political disputes involving Belarus and that they may cause longer clearance times. The Kremlin described Friday’s issues as “technical.” 
 
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French President Emmanuel Macron arrived Friday in South Africa for a lightning trip to discuss COVID vaccine access for Africa, aides said. Macron arrived from a historic visit to Rwanda where he acknowledged French responsibility in the 1994 genocide. Landing in Johannesburg, he headed for the capital Pretoria where he was to be welcomed by Cyril Ramaphosa at Union Buildings, the seat of government.  The pair will launch a program at the University of Pretoria to support African vaccine production, a project backed by the European Union, United States and World Bank. The leaders, say Ramaphosa’s office, are also expected to discuss a temporary waiver of World Trade Organization (WTO) property rights over coronavirus vaccine. The idea is being pushed by South Africa and India, which say the waiver will spur vaccine production in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world with vaccination — less than two percent of its population has been immunized six months after the campaign started. FILE- Health care workers await doses to start vaccinating people with Pfizer vaccines at the Bertha Gxowa Hospital in Germiston, South Africa, May 17, 2021.Ramaphosa this month sounded the alarm about what he called “vaccine apartheid” between rich countries and poor ones. Pharma companies oppose the waiver, saying it could sap incentives for future research and development. They also point out that manufacturing a vaccine requires know-how and technical resources — something that cannot be acquired at the flip of a switch. Macron’s approach is to push for a transfer of technology to enable production sites in poorer countries. The industry “is highly concentrated in the United States, Europe, Asia and a little bit in Latin America,” a Macron aide said. “Africa today produces very few anti-COVID productions, and most notably no vaccine at the present time.” COVID-19 hit South Africa is the continent’s most industrialized economy, but also its worst-hit by COVID. The country has recorded more than 1.6 million cases of Africa’s 4.7 million infections and accounts for more than 40 percent of its nearly 130,000 fatalities. FILE – Health care workers look through a window during the rollout of the first batch of Johnson & Johnson vaccines in the country, at a hospital in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa, Feb, 17 2021.But just one percent of its population of 59 million have been vaccinated — most of them health workers and people aged 60 or above. The immunization effort got off to a stuttering start when South Africa purchased AstraZeneca vaccines earlier this year and then sold them to other African countries following fears that they would be less effective. Then, after it started inoculating health workers, using Johnson & Johnson jabs, it had to pause for two weeks mid-April to vet risks over blood clots that had been reported in the US. Delayed trip Macron’s trip was scheduled to have taken place more than a year ago but was postponed as the pandemic shifted into higher gear. His push for the visit stems from the fact that South Africa “is a major partner on the continent, a member of the G20, it’s regularly invited to the G-7 — it’s essential in the approach to multilateralism,” one of his aides said before the trip. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, right, and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron talk during a welcoming ceremony at the government’s Union Buildings, in Pretoria, May 28, 2021.Macron will also make a pitch for French business in South Africa, especially in climate-friendly sectors. The two will also discuss the security crisis in northern Mozambique, where a bloody jihadist insurgency is now in its fourth year. The French energy giant Total last month suspended work on a massive $20 billion gas project in Cabo Delgado province after jihadists attacked the nearby town of Palma. Before flying home Saturday, Macron will talk to members of the French community and, like many VIPs before him, visit the Nelson Mandela Foundation. 
 
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Morocco’s ambassador to Spain has threatened more reprisals against Madrid over its decision to allow a Western Sahara independence leader to be treated in a Spanish hospital.  
 
Karima Benyaich said elements in the Spanish government did not take the interests of Morocco into account, despite assurances from Madrid that Spain wants to move on from the crisis that led to thousands of migrants flooding into Spain’s North African enclave, Ceuta, last week.  
 
Morocco is suspected of opening the borders to the would-be migrants.   
 
Analysts have suggested the threatened further reprisals could mean Rabat will not cooperate in anti-terrorist operations.  
Thursday a Spanish court jailed three men of Moroccan origin for up to 53 years for playing a part in the 2017 Barcelona terrorist attacks which killed 16 people.    
 
Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali will appear before a Spanish court on June 1 to answer torture charges brought by a Western Sahara dissident group.  The front represents the Sahrawi people who are native to the Western Sahara territory.
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The Biden administration informed Russia on Thursday that it will not rejoin a key arms control pact, even as the two sides prepare for a summit next month between their leaders, the State Department said.U.S. officials said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Russians that the administration had decided not to reenter the Open Skies Treaty, which had allowed surveillance flights over military facilities in both countries before President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact. As a presidential candidate, Biden had criticized Trump’s withdrawal as “short-sighted.”Thursday’s decision means only one major arms control treaty between the nuclear powers — the New START treaty — will remain in place. Trump had done nothing to extend New START, which would have expired earlier this year, but after taking office, the Biden administration moved quickly to extend it for five years and opened a review into Trump’s Open Skies Treaty withdrawal.The officials said that the review had been completed and that Sherman had informed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov of the U.S. decision not to return to the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The State Department later announced the move.“The United States regrets that the Treaty on Open Skies has been undermined by Russia’s violations,” the department said. “In concluding its review of the treaty, the United States therefore does not intend to seek to rejoin it, given Russia’s failure to take any actions to return to compliance. Further, Russia’s behavior, including its recent actions with respect to Ukraine, is not that of a partner committed to confidence-building.”June meeting in GenevaThe announcement comes ahead of a meeting between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 in Geneva, Switzerland. They will try to find common ground amid a sharp deterioration in ties that have sunk relations to their lowest point in decades. Yet, Biden, who had supported the treaty as a senator, had been highly critical of Trump’s pullout.“In announcing the intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, President Trump has doubled down on his short-sighted policy of going it alone and abandoning American leadership,” then-candidate Biden said in May 2020.The Open Skies Treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accord’s more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each other’s territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty since it took effect in 2002, aimed at fostering transparency and allowing for the monitoring of arms control and other agreements.The Trump administration announced the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty last year, and the lower house of Russia’s parliament voted last week to follow suit. But until Thursday, the two sides had said the treaty could still be salvaged. Russian officials said they were willing to reconsider their withdrawal if the U.S. did the same.The upper house of Russia’s parliament, the Federation Council, was expected to approve the withdrawal bill on June 2, and once Putin signed the measure, it would take six months for the Russian exit to take effect.A trust-building measureThursday’s notification, however, appears to mark the end of the treaty, which was broadly supported by U.S. allies in Europe and Democrats in Congress as a trust-building measure between the former Cold War adversaries.In pulling out of the pact, Trump argued that Russian violations made it untenable for Washington to remain a party to the agreement. Washington completed its withdrawal from the treaty in November, but the Biden administration had said it was not opposed to rejoining it.The officials stressed the Biden administration’s willingness to cooperate with Russia on issues of mutual concern and noted the extension of New START, which was initially signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The pact limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.However, the officials said that despite appeals for Russia to abide by the Open Skies Treaty, there was no practical way for the U.S. to reverse the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw. One official said that since Biden had taken office, Russia had demonstrated a “complete absence of progress” in taking steps to return to compliance.The officials said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior American officials had warned their Russian counterparts in the past week that a decision on Open Skies was imminent. Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Iceland last week, and Sullivan spoke with Putin’s national security adviser, Nikolay Patrushev, on Monday.Moscow had deplored the U.S. pullout, warning that it would erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid heightened Russia-West tensions over myriad issues, including Ukraine, cyber malfeasance and the treatment of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and his supporters.Leading congressional Democrats and members of the European Union had urged the U.S. to reconsider its exit and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland.Russia had insisted the restrictions on observation flights it imposed in the past were permissible under the treaty and noted that the U.S. imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska.As a condition for staying in the pact after the U.S. pullout, Moscow had unsuccessfully pushed for guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldn’t hand over the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the U.S.
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