Russian planes to patrol in Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico
Russia has said its air force will conduct regular air patrols from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Serbian Prime Minister clashes with Albania
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic (right) became visibly angry at a press conference with his Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, when the latter called on Belgrade to recognise the "irreversible reality" of Kosovo's 2008 independence.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic openly clashed with his Albanian counterpart Edi Rama over Kosovo during a fence-building visit Monday, the first to Belgrade in 68 years by an Albanian leader.Vucic visibly got angry at a press conference after Rama called on Serbia to recognise the "irreversible reality" of Kosovo's independence.
Belgrade refuses to recognise the breakaway former Serbian province populated mostly by Albanians, which formally declared its independence in 2008.
"I had not expected a provocation from Mr Rama, that he would talk about Kosovo, because I don't know what he has to do with Kosovo," a visibly upset Vucic said.
"I have to reply to him because I will not allow anybody to humiliate Serbia in Belgrade. Kosovo is part of Serbia under the constitution and it has nothing to do with Albania nor will it ever have," Vucic said, obviously trying to keep his anger under control.
Having repeated that "it is my job to say that nobody will humiliate Serbia", Vucic underlined that Kosovo was not on the agenda of the talks, nor was it discussed during the leaders' one-to-one meeting before the press conference.
Rama had told reporters that the two sides had different positions over Kosovo "but there is only one reality -- independent Kosovo is recognised by 108 states in the world."
"This is a reality that is irreversible and this reality should be respected," Rama said.
"The independence of Kosovo made the Balkans more stable and peaceful," he added, also calling for the rights of the 60,000-strong ethnic Albanian minority in southern Serbia's Presevo valley to be respected.
Following Vucic's fierce reaction, Rama denied his comments were a provocation "because Kosovo is a reality and the sooner we recognise it the faster we can move on."
Relations between Serbia and Albania have been tense over Kosovo and the ethnic Albanian minority living in southern Serbia.
Britain having memorial for WW1
Every November members of the public in Britain (and many Commonwealth countries) pin paper poppies to their lapels in memory of the victims of a war fought a century ago.
British expatriates, like me, get strange looks at this time of year. Why would anyone want to wear a red paper flower as a symbol of wartime sacrifice?There isn’t a simple answer. Poppies are worn for many –– usually not nationalistic or militaristic –– reasons. And there are also those who don’t like the tradition at all, and see it as unnecessarily “obligatory”.
Indeed, they are such a ubiquitous sight in the UK that a politician or public personality appearing on TV without a poppy in the week before November 11 can make front page headlines.
In purely practical terms, each poppy represents a small cash donation to the Royal British Legion, a charity that looks after the welfare of former servicemen and women.
The last survivors of the 1914-1918 war, who came home wearing the poppies that flourished in the battered Flanders countryside, may be dead and buried. But Britain's wars continued, and the Legion still has work to do.
‘Missing, presumed dead’
There are emotive reasons too.
The breathtakingly vast new memorial at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, due to be inaugurated on November 11, lists the names of 580,000 men of all nationalities who died in the northern French Pas-de-Calais region during the First World War.
It is a stark reminder of the horrific scale of a conflict that left few French, British or German families untouched.
But sadly the list of names at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is incomplete, for the simple reason that many of the men killed in the Pas-de-Calais are commemorated elsewhere.
One of the men missing from the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette memorial is Rifleman Albert Charles Todd, my great uncle.
Albert, who died in the Pas-de-Calais, is commemorated at the nearby Thiepval Memorial to the 75,000 (British and South African) victims of the 1916 Battle of the Somme whose bodies were never found and have no grave. Thiepval is in the Somme region.
A colossal blood-letting
Albert’s story is fairly typical. At the outbreak of war the teenager lied about his age and was enthusiastically welcomed into the British Army (conscription was not introduced until 1916 in the UK).
By June 1916 and now 18 years old, the young man from the English seaside town of Hastings found himself in northern France serving with the 12th Battalion (The Rangers) of the London Regiment.
Their objective on the first day of the Battle of the Somme – July 1, 1916 – was Gommecourt, a heavily fortified German-held village at the far northern flank of the Somme battle front.
It was a diversionary attack designed to keep pressure off the main assault to the south. But it was a colossal blood-letting that mirrored the tragic failure of the larger offensive.
July 1, 1916 remains the bloodiest 24 hours in the history of the British Army, which suffered 57,400 casualties – including 20,000 dead – in one day.
The battle would grind on until November and claim more than 300,000 French, British and German lives, with little territorial gain for the Western Allies.
The Rangers Battalion of the London Regiment lost two-thirds of its strength on July 1, and Albert was one of the men who didn’t answer his name at roll-call that evening.
His body, like so many others, was never recovered.
The lingering consequences
Albert’s parents were informed their son was “missing, presumed dead”.
It was of course a devastating shock for the family, not least for Albert’s ten-year-old brother Bill – my grandfather – for whom the pain of losing his big brother would last a lifetime.
Bill’s sons – my father and my uncle – grew up hugely conscious of this family tragedy, and this awareness remains in the third (and fourth) generation.
The story of 18-year-old Albert’s death, and the impact it had on the family, is what I think about when I buy a poppy and pin it to my jacket on November 11.
It isn’t a jingoistic celebration of Britain’s wartime exploits, nor is it a symbol of national or even family pride.
It's more a reminder that the human cost of war extends well beyond the battlefields – a lasting and painful legacy for the families and loved-ones of those who are killed or suffer the often devastating psychological consequences.
Wounds heal and pain recedes over generations, but the brutal, destructive and lingering consequences of war should never be forgotten.
Russia crossing into the Ukraine
Ukraine said on Wednesday it was redeploying troops in the east because of fears separatists will launch a new military offensive, despite Russia’s denials it has sent troops to reinforce the rebels.
A ceasefire agreed by the pro-Russian rebels and government forces more than two months ago is now all but dead, and Western fears of a return to all-out conflict are growing.US General Philip Breedlove, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said the alliance had seen Russian troops and tanks entering Ukraine in the past few days, confirming reports by international observers.
“There is no question any more about Russia’s direct military involvement in Ukraine,” Breedlove said in Bulgaria.
A Russian Defence Ministry official, General-Major Igor Konashenkov, said in Moscow “there were and are no facts” behind such statements and Russia had given up paying attention to such accusations by NATO.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak left no doubt that Kiev was also no longer paying attention to Moscow’s denials of providing the rebels with direct military support in the worst diplomatic standoff with the West since the Cold War.
“We are repositioning our armed forces to respond to the actions of the (rebel) fighters,” Poltorak told a government meeting in Kiev. “I see my main task is to prepare for military action.”
He gave no details of the troop movements.
The Sept. 5 ceasefire followed weeks of fierce fighting between government forces and separatists who rebelled in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine against the rule of Kiev’s Western-looking government eight months ago.
The truce has been violated daily, and increasingly since the rebels held what the West and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said were illegitimate leadership elections on Nov. 2. The death toll has passed 4,000 since the truce was agreed, with Kiev accusing Moscow of sending more troops last week.
Threat to peace
“Russia’s actions represent a clear decision by Moscow to reject the international principles that have shaped international security for over 25 years, the foundation for a Europe that is a whole free and at peace,” Breedlove said.
President Vladimir Putin has bit back by accusing the West of instigating the coup that ousted a Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February after months of street protests, and of trying to use the crisis to prevent Russia’s rise as a global power.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told US Secretary of State John Kerry by phone that the ceasefire deal must be upheld, rejecting accusations that Moscow is to blame for its collapse.
A Reuters reporter, however, saw unidentified military trucks in the centre of Donetsk on Wednesday, with soldiers in green uniform without insignia standing nearby. Russian soldiers spotted by local residents have often worn no insignia.
Kiev’s fear is that Putin, who annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in March, now wants to expand the territory controlled by the separatists with another military push like one that turned the tide in the rebels’ favour in August.
Russia denied sending in troops and armour in August but said some Russians may have been there as volunteers during their holidays, and a large number of Russian soldiers are among the dead in the conflict.
The prospect of all-out war returning to eastern Ukraine has piled pressure on the country’s struggling economy, sending the hryvnia currency plummeting.
The cost of insuring exposure to Ukraine’s debt hit five-year highs on Wednesday, while its dollar bonds also sold off heavily.
Russia is also suffering an economic downturn aggravated by Western economic sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, with the rouble falling nearly 30 percent against the US dollar this year.
But Putin has shown no sign of changing policy on Ukraine and the EU has signalled it will not ease sanctions on Russia when it meets to discuss them next week.
Berlin marks 25 years since the fall of the Wall
Germany on Sunday marked 25 years since the night that the Berlin Wall came down, a watershed moment in the collapse of communism that started many former Soviet countries on the path to independence.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke Sunday at the opening of a refurbished museum at the site – home to one of the few surviving sections of the Wall.
“The fall of the Berlin Wall showed us that dreams can come true – and that nothing has to stay the way it is, no matter how high the hurdles might seem to be,” said Merkel, 60, who has led a reunited Germany since 2005.
“It showed that we have the power to shape our destiny and make things better,” she said, noting that people in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere around the world should feel emboldened by the Wall’s sudden demise.
“It was a victory of freedom over bondage and it’s a message of faith for today’s, and future, generations that can tear down the walls – the walls of dictators, of violence and ideologies,” she said.
A 15-kilometre (9-mile) row of 8,000 lighted balloons had been erected along the former divide between East and West Germany in what organisers called the "Border of Lights".
The balloons were released into the air one by one on Sunday evening to mark the moment on November 9, 1989, that a senior communist official told a televised news conference that the border would no longer be enforced – a statement that set off a chain of events that brought down one of the Cold War’s most potent symbols.
In his remarks to the televised conference, the ruling Politburo’s spokesman, Guenter Schabowski, said the border restrictions would be lifted and that East Germans would be allowed to travel to West Germany and West Berlin. Pressed on when the new policy would take effect, Schabowski seemed uncertain, but said: “To my knowledge, this is immediately, without delay.”
Soon, Western media were reporting that East Germany had opened the border and East Berliners were flooding the first crossing on their way West.
Border guards had received no orders to let anyone cross, but they soon gave up trying to hold back the crowds. By midnight, all the border crossings in the city were open.
East Germany’s then-leader, Egon Krenz, later said that the plan had been to allow free travel starting the next morning so citizens could line up properly to get exit visas. But with the leadership’s control over the border already well and truly lost, Germany was soon on the road to reunification, which happened less than a year later on October 3, 1990.
The collapse of the Wall, which had divided the city for 28 years, was “a point of no return ... from there, things headed toward a whole new world order”, said Axel Klausmeier, the director of the city’s main Berlin Wall memorial.
An open-air exhibition entitled "100 Wall Stories" will consist of 100 informational exhibits along the lighted installation and will look at the construction of the Wall in 1961, escape attempts, deaths at the Wall, everyday life in the divided city and the peaceful revolution of 1989.
Final frontier
The opening of East Germany’s heavily fortified frontier was the climax of months of fomenting rebellion across the Soviet bloc that had ushered in Poland’s first post-communist prime minister and saw Hungary cut open its own border fence. The hardline leadership in East Berlin was facing mounting pressure from protests and an exodus of citizens via other communist countries.
Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, was a physicist at the time and later entered politics as communism crumbled. In remarks last week she recalled the feeling of being irrevocably stuck behind East Germany’s border.
“Even today when I walk through the Brandenburg Gate, there’s a residual feeling that this wasn’t possible for many years of my life, and that I had to wait 35 years to have this feeling of freedom,” Merkel said. “That changed my life.”
The future chancellor was among the thousands who poured westward as the Wall was crumbling.
Since then, some €1.5 to €2 trillion ($1.9 to $2.5 trillion) has gone into rebuilding the once-dilapidated east. Much has changed beyond recognition, though some inequalities persist. Wages and pensions remain lower, and unemployment higher, in Germany's east than in the west. Many eastern areas saw their populations drop as people headed west for jobs, something that is only now showing signs of turning around.
There are cultural differences too: a higher proportion of children are in daycare in the east, a legacy of communist times, and support for the opposition Left Party – partly descended from East Germany’s communist rulers – remains strongest in the east.
But the progress toward true unity is seen in Germany’s top leadership. Not only is Merkel from the east, but so is the nation’s president, Joachim Gauck, a former Protestant pastor and pro-democracy activist.
Germans today can be grateful to have lives and opportunities, Gauck has said, “that endless numbers of people in the world can only desire and dream of”.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)
Top EU court backs limits on benefits for migrants
Top EU court backs limits on benefits for migrants
Latest update : 2014-11-11
The European Court of Justice said Tuesday that Germany was within its rights to refuse unemployment benefits to a Romanian immigrant who had not looked for work, a ruling that comes amid concern over welfare abuse by migrants from poor EU nations.
A European Union court ruled Tuesday that Germany was within its rights to refuse jobless benefits to an immigrant from Romania who made no effort to seek work in Germany, a decision that comes amid concern over perceived welfare abuse by migrants from poorer EU nations.
German judges sought a ruling from the European Court of Justice after a Romanian woman who arrived in Germany in 2010 sued a job center for refusing to grant her and her young son benefits intended primarily for the long-term unemployed and their children.
The EU court pointed to safeguards in EU rules which it said aim to “prevent economically inactive Union citizens from using the host member state’s welfare system to fund their means of subsistence.”
Philae sends first picture after historic comet landing
European spacecraft Philae sent its first photograph Thursday, hours after a historic but flawed comet landing.
The black-and-white photograph was sent hours after Philae landed, failing to anchor to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
In an interview with the Europe 1 TV station on Thursday, Jean-Yves Le Gall, head of the French space agency CNES, said the robot probe is now stable.
According to Le Gall, Philae spent the night on the comet and its solar power supply was working, which makes it possible that Philae will transmit data in the future.
The European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday released the first picture taken by Philae, which shows a rocky surface with one of the lander's three feet.
Harpoons meant to anchor the lander to the surface failed to work properly, causing Philae to bounce twice.
But ESA says the lander is stable. Gerhard Schwehm, a scientist on the Rosetta mission, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it may still be possible to fire the harpoons but in any case the lander is "very healthy.''
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Why do France and Germany keep breaking EU rules?
As the Continent's two largest economies find themselves in trouble for very different reasons, is it time they finally get punished?
French parliament to vote on Palestinian state
PARIS (AP) - France's National Assembly will vote this month on a largely symbolic resolution in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state, hoping it could help end the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, officials said Wednesday.
Approval by the lower and more powerful chamber of parliament would send a signal to President Francois Hollande's Socialist government, which has the final say. Hollande supported "international recognition" of a Palestinian state on the campaign trail two years ago, and parliamentary leaders have recently consulted Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on the matter.
The National Assembly will vote on the resolution Nov. 28.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Sale of French Warships to Russia on hold
France said on Thursday that the conditions were not yet met to deliver the first of two controversial Mistral warships to Russia, contradicting reports that Russia had received an invitation to take delivery next month.
British drones carry out first first strikes against Isil in Iraq
Ministry of Defence says RAF Reaper drone fires missile at Isil forces laying homemade bombs north of Baghdad
Britain has launched its first drone strikes against Isil fighters in Iraq.
The Ministry of Defence said an RAF Reaper drone had fired a Hellfire missile at Isil forces laying homemade bombs north of Baghdad.
The air strike near Bayji over the weekend came as RAF Tornado jets based at Akrotiri in southern Cyprus also continued to hit targets belonging to Isil, who are also known as Isis or Islamic State.
A pair of Tornado GR4s flying near Al Anbar, west of Baghdad on Sunday fired a Brimstone missile at a “shipping container used by the terrorists to store equipment to support extortion and control of the local population”.
Russia's 'close military encounters' with Europe documented
Russia's actions in Ukraine and Nato's response has led to an escalation of military tension across Europe
The growing strains between Russia and the West prompted by the Ukraine crisis are now sending ripples of military tension across Europe.
Nato has responded to Russia's incursions into Ukraine by stepping up its ties with Kiev and bolstering air patrols and exercises with its eastern and central European members.
Russia in turn has decided to pursue a more active, many might say a more aggressive, military policy of its own, returning to the sorts of flights and activities from the Cold War years that were used to regularly test out Nato defences.
The European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, has produced a detailed study of this more assertive Russian activity.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
East Ukraine Artillery Fire
Intense artillery fire broke out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk early on Sunday, in what was the worst fighting the region has seen since a fragile ceasefire agreement came into effect in September.
Catalans Symbolic Vote
Hundreds of thousands of Catalans are expected to back independence from Spain on Sunday in a symbolic referendum on secession being held across the northeastern region, despite opposition from Madrid.
The “consultation of citizens” follows a legal block by the central government against a more formal, albeit still non-binding ballot which regional leaders had been pushing for.Pro-independence organisations have campaigned vigorously for a big turnout from the wealthy region’s 7.5 million people, and more than 40,000 volunteers will help set up informal voting stations on Sunday.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Ukrainian Rebel President
Pro-Russian rebels elected a separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine on Sunday in a vote President Petro Poroshenko called “a farce”.
Mining electrician-turned-rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko won over 81 percent of the vote, according to the exit polls of an election that has worsened a standoff between Russia and the West.The United States and European Union have already denounced it as illegitimate, but Russia has said it would recognise the result, deepening a crisis that began with the popular overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in February.
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