Month: April 2019

Italy put itself on a collision course with Britain and much of the EU on Wednesday after threatening to veto the renewal of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

During a visit to Moscow, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s staunchly pro-Moscow deputy prime minister, said that Rome might block the renewal of sanctions that have been in place since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

The sanctions, which include the freezing of assets of individuals, an embargo on the export of weapons and financial restrictions, are due to expire in January.

Mr Salvini described sanctions against Russia “economic, social and cultural madness” and “an absurdity” that had cost Italian businesses “billions of euros”.

“If we are asked to confirm (the sanctions), we will say no,” Mr Salvini told a conference of business leaders in Moscow.

Asked if the coalition government, which came to power in June, might veto the renewal of EU sanctions, Mr Salvini said: “We can only use the trump card of the veto once in Europe.”

That was a reference to the Italian government’s numerous battles with Brussels, from demanding more help with migrants and refugees, to pushing through a controversial budget that revolves around lavish spending on social welfare and generous tax breaks which will cost debt-laden Italy billions of euros.

‘There is the question of the budget, the question of migration,” Mr Salvini said.

“We are counting on the fact that they are intelligent enough in Brussels to understand that they have gone over the top and that you have to return to good relations between the EU, Italy and Russia.”

Italy has been opposed to sanctions against Moscow for years, arguing that they hurt Italian businesses which export hundreds of millions of euros’ worth of luxury goods, furniture, fashion, food and wine to Russians.

Mr Salvini, who is the head of the hard-Right Northern League as well as deputy prime minister and interior minister, is particularly pro-Moscow.

He said sanctions against Russia had resulted in “hundreds of millions of citizens and small and medium businessmen” paying a heavy price economically.

Underlining his affection for President Putin’s Russia, he said: “I feel at home in Russia in a way that I don’t in other European countries.”

In an apparent reference to NATO exercises in countries close to Russia, such as Poland and the Baltic republics, he said: “The problems of 2018 are to be solved sitting at a table – not with tanks at the borders.”

Mr Salvini, who has doubled his party’s support in the last few months with his stridently anti-migrant rhetoric, has previously said that the coalition is “not scared” of using its veto powers at Brussels in order to push the EU into lifting sanctions.

Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, who is due to travel to Moscow next week to meet President Putin, has also criticised EU sanctions. He said they “damaged our companies, as well as Russian society.”

Italy’s soft line towards Russia entails the risk of it being isolated within the EU because Britain and other countries are pushing for punitive measures against Russia for its aggression in eastern Ukraine, alleged interference in elections – most recently in Macedonia – and poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March.

Italy is the only member of the EU that openly resists a new regime of sanctions against Moscow, according to a confidential document seen by Reuters.

Italy’s attempt to weaken measures against Moscow are likely to be opposed by Britain and several Eastern European countries, which want to keep up the pressure on Mr Putin.

Eels are at risk of disappearing from France’s rivers because of an illegal trade spurred on by spiralling prices in Asia.

Sellers in Asia generally look for eels that have been caught before they are fully grown, when they are known as ‘glass eels’ because their bodies are largely transparent.

A prized delicacy in the Far East, where the endangered fish can fetch higher prices than caviar, the baby eels are five to 10 centimetres long and weigh only 0.6 grams.

Organised criminal gangs are believed to have become increasingly involved in the fast-growing trade in recent months, French police believe.

Eels caught in France often transit through several European countries, according to Charlotte Nithart of the French environmental group Robin des Bois (Robin Hood).

“Eels are almost as profitable as cocaine and a lot less risky,” Ms Nithart said. “Glass eels can sell for up to €4,000 (more than £3,500) in Japan or Hong Kong, which is more than some varieties of caviar. If things continue as they are, there will soon be none left in our rivers.”

A 200kg shipment valued at more than £1 million was intercepted at Heathrow Airport in February last year. The 600,000 eels, hidden in a consignment of frozen fish bound for Hong Kong, had arrived from Spain, which has become a hub for transporting glass eels caught in France, according to Ms Nithart.

French police arrested a network of 13 eel traffickers this year after a five-month investigation involving about 100 officers. But only about 10 per cent of illegal glass eel shipments are detected, according to campaigners.

“We want France and other European countries to step up controls to try to stop the traffickers,” Ms Nithart said. “The European eel is an endangered species. This can be compared to the illegal trade in rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks or tiger parts. The survival of the species is at risk.”

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami which hit the east coast of Japan destroyed eel farms, causing a surge in demand and prices. Eels are used in sushi or grilled and served with rice in Japan.

Catching glass eels is not illegal in France, but it is restricted to professionals and only limited quotas are permitted. The EU bans their export.

Europol estimates that eel traffickers earn more than £32 million a year from illegal exports to Asia. “This trade has led to a big decline in numbers, compounded by legal fishing and pollution of rivers with PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls, formerly used in electrical equipment],” Ms Nithart said.

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Barack Obama made duelling election appearances on Sunday night, offering sharply different views on the country’s problems but agreeing on the high stakes for voters in the final 48 hours of a tight campaign.

With opinion polls showing dozens of tight US congressional and gubernatorial races in Tuesday’s election, the current and former presidents said the results would determine what kind of country Americans live in for the next two years.

"This election will decide whether we build on this extraordinary prosperity we have created," Mr Trump told a cheering crowd in Macon, Georgia, warning that Democrats would "take a giant wrecking ball to our economy."

Mr Trump campaigned with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is in a tight race with Democrat Stacey Abrams for the governor’s office.

Mr Obama condemned Mr Trump, without addressing him by name, and Republicans for what he described as their divisive policies and repeated lies. He hammered Mr Trump and Republicans for repeatedly trying to repeal his signature healthcare law while at the same time claiming to support the law’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

"The only check right now on the behaviour of these Republicans is you and your vote," Mr Obama told supporters in Gary, Indiana, during a rally for endangered Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly.

"The character of our country is on the ballot," he said.

He added: “There have got to be consequences when people don’t tell the truth. When words stop meaning anything, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can’t work. Nothing works… Society doesn’t work unless there are consequences.” 

Mr Trump and Mr Obama are the most popular figures in their parties, and their appearances on the campaign trail are designed to stoke enthusiasm among core supporters in the late stages of a midterm congressional election widely seen as a referendum on Mr Trump’s first two years in the White House.

Opinion polls and election forecasters have made Democrats favourites on Tuesday to pick up the 23 seats they need to capture a majority in the US House of Representatives, which would enable them to stymie Mr Trump’s legislative agenda and investigate his administration.

Republicans are favoured to retain their slight majority in the US Senate, currently at two seats, which would let them retain the power to approve US Supreme Court and other judicial nominations on straight party-line votes.

In the midst of a six-day national blitz of rallies ahead of Tuesday’s election, Mr Trump will also appear later on Sunday in Tennessee, which hosts a vital US Senate race.

In the final stages of the campaign, Mr Trump has ramped up his hard-line rhetoric on immigration and cultural issues including warnings about a caravan of migrants headed to the border with Mexico and of liberal "mobs."

He repeated those themes in Georgia, urging voters to "look at what is marching up – that’s an invasion." He said Democrats encouraged chaos at the borders because it was good politics.   

Ronna McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, said on ABC’s "This Week" programme that the media had chosen to focus on Mr Trump’s immigration rhetoric but the president was also emphasising economic and job gains under his presidency.

The House of Representatives – prior to the midterms

The Labor Department on Friday reported sharply better-than-expected job creation in October, with the unemployment rate steady at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent and wages notching their best annual gain in almost a decade.

But in Indiana, Mr Obama said Republicans were taking credit for the economic renewal that started under his presidency. "You hear those Republicans brag about how good the economy is, where do you think that started?" he asked.

Mr Obama also appeared later on Sunday in his old home state of Illinois, which hosts a competitive governor’s race and several tight US House of Representative races. Mr Obama’s appearance on the campaign trail is his second in three days.

US cartogram map – House seat forecasts

In the battle for the Senate, Democrats are defending seats in 10 states that Mr Trump won in the 2016 presidential election, including a handful that he won by double digits.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen, who heads the Democratic Senate campaign arm, said it was "remarkable" that Democrats were even in striking distance of capturing the Senate given the unfavourable map they faced.

"The fact we still have a narrow path to a majority is a sea change from where we were two years ago," he said on ABC. "These are some very close races and they are in states where Trump won big."

As of Sunday morning, almost 34.4 million people had cast ballots early, according to the Election Project at the University of Florida, which tracks turnout. That is up 67.8 percent from the 20.5 million early votes cast in all of 2014, the last federal election when the White House was not at stake.

A Japanese journalist who was held in Syria for more than three years arrived home Thursday evening for a tearful reunion with his family after an ordeal he described as "hell."

Jumpei Yasuda, who was freed earlier this week and taken to Turkey, was reunited with his wife Myu, his parents, and other relatives at Narita Airport just outside Tokyo.

"I apologise for causing such trouble and worry, but thanks to all of you, I was able to come home safely," he said in a brief statement read to media by his wife.

He declined to appear before reporters, but said he would hold a press conference at a later date to discuss his experience.

Earlier, on board his flight to Tokyo, he gave a series of brief interviews to Japanese media and described his nightmarish time in captivity.

"It was hell," he said, sporting a long beard peppered with grey hair.

"Not only physically, but mentally as well. The thought each day that ‘I’m not being released today either’ left me losing control over myself bit by bit."

He spoke calmly, but appeared slightly overwhelmed and tired, if otherwise healthy.

"For about 40 months, I have not spoken a word of Japanese. Words don’t come to my mind easily," he said.

"I am happy that I am returning to Japan. At the same time, I have no idea what will happen now and how I should conduct myself. I am at loss and don’t know what to think."

His wife said he had greeted her at the airport with a shy smile.

"He is now eating rice balls and kimpira (a traditional dish) that his mother brought," she told reporters.

"I felt a strong sense of happiness, of everyday, normal life," she added. "I want him to take a warm bath and sleep in a futon tonight."

Yasuda was kidnapped in Syria in June 2015, and was reportedly initially a hostage of the group previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate.

But the group’s current iteration, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, denied any involvement in his kidnapping in a statement earlier this week.

There was only sporadic news of Yasuda throughout his captivity, including a bizarre video that emerged in August showing him and a man identified as an Italian called Alessandro Sandrini.

Both men appealed for their release, dressed in orange jumpsuits, as masked, armed men stood behind them.

Yasuda gave his name as Omar and described himself as South Korean, but his wife confirmed that it was her husband in the video.

The video did not identify who was holding the men or what their demands were. There has been no word on the fate of Sandrini since.

Yasuda told journalists he believed he was held for all of his captivity in Idlib, a province in northwestern Syria that is one of the last parts of the country still held in part by rebels and jihadists.

The details of how Yasuda was freed have remained murky, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, saying a ransom was paid.

But Japan’s government has denied that.

In 2015, militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) beheaded Japanese war correspondent Kenji Goto and his friend Haruna Yukawa in Syria.

The Japanese government was criticised for what detractors saw as its flat-footed response to the crisis at the time, including apparently missed opportunities to free both men.

But other Japanese hostages who have been freed and made it home safely have faced heavy public criticism for what some have deemed reckless behaviour.

Recep Tayyip Erodgan, Turkey’s president, said Tuesday that the death of Jamal Khashoggi was “a savage murder” planned in advance by Saudi officials, as he rejected Riyadh’s claim that the journalist was killed accidentally by rogue operatives. 

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, responded by summoning Mr Khashoggi’s son to the royal palace for a photo opportunity where he and the king “expressed their condolences” over the journalist’s death. 

In his first major speech since Mr Khashoggi disappeared on October 2, Mr Erdogan said Turkish intelligence indicated the killing was “a planned operation” and called for “those who gave the orders” to be held accountable for the crime. …

South Korea’s supreme court ruled Thursday that moral and religious beliefs are valid reasons to refuse the country’s military service, in a case that has implications for hundreds of conscientious objectors.

Almost 65 years after the end of the Korean War, nearly every able-bodied South Korean man between the ages of 18 and 35 must still complete around two years of military service.

Anyone refusing the call-up has usually ended up in prison for 18 months, and with no alternative community service option around 19,000 conscientious objectors have been jailed since 1950, most of them Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a conscientious objector on Thursday, months after a landmark constitutional court ruling calling for an alternative to military service for conscientious objectors.

In Thursday’s case, a Jehovah’s Witness identified only by his surname Oh was called to military service in 2013 but refused, was found guilty, and lost an initial appeal to the high court.

"Conscientious objection is a valid reason" to refuse conscription, the court said in its ruling, Yonhap news agency reported.

The decision overturned a previous Supreme Court ruling 14 years ago.

According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, more than 900 similar cases are currently pending in the South Korean justice system.