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They keep on coming — fleeing the killing fields of war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa, escaping the random violence of vicious drug gangs in Central America, and running from repressive regimes in Asia.A world in crisis means more refugees, and the trend lines are not promising.There are now more than 70 million refugees and displaced people around the world — nearly 26 million outside the borders of their own countries, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.Speaking ahead of the UNHCR’s first Global Refugee Forum, which formally started Monday in Geneva, U.N. officials say they expect those numbers will climb when they have concluded the final troubling tally for 2019.FILE – Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, speaks during a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, Oct. 6, 2018.Opening the forum, Filippo Grandi, UNHCR’s top official, said the three-day meeting needs to see “very concrete commitments” made by governments, businesses and relief organizations.”The purpose of this meeting, this conference, is not just to talk but to rally international support for countries hosting refugees in a spirit and with the objective of sharing the burden more equitably,” Grandi said.Organized in cooperation with Switzerland, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Germany, Pakistan and Turkey, the forum’s goal is to strengthen international support for refugees by dividing up responsibility between nations to ease pressures on so-called “front-line countries” — those who are receiving the greatest numbers of refugees — and to outline clear markers for what should be expected in terms of improving access to education and jobs, and providing protection for the displaced until they can return safely to their homes.’Solutions and opportunities’The organizers have promised bold new measures, including ways of enhancing refugee self-reliance and a sense of inclusion. The UNCHR hopes additional countries and other international agencies and charities, as well as faith organizations and private sector businesses, will declare their commitment to improve the plight of refugees. And U.N. officials hope to start engineering legal and diplomatic adjustments that will help refugees integrate better in their temporary homes.The forum comes a year after the U.N. General Assembly agreed that governments need to establish a more predictable and equitable approach to the treatment of refugees. Some hope the Geneva gathering will later be seen as an inflection point, thanks to the pooling together of ideas by heads of state, government ministers, business leaders, humanitarians and refugees themselves.FILE – Kelly Clements, UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner, speaks during a session at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Center at the Dead Sea, May 20, 2017.”We are at the end of a decade that has been more than tumultuous in terms of levels of displacement,” U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements told AFP in an interview. “We see the need for states, for international organizations, for the private sector (to help explore) how the international community can better help to respond.”On Monday, representatives from Zambia showcased some of their innovative approaches to help refugees find work or resume their education by having their previous education attainment and qualifications recognized. UNESCO is drawing on the Zambian experience to develop an international qualifications passport.”This will help people who possess the knowledge but don’t possess the papers,” said Muhammed, a Syrian refugee living in Germany who spoke Monday at the forum. “There is a lot of potential amongst refugees that is being unused. There are brilliant minds available that these passports can unlock.”Similar pilot projects to Zambia’s are set to be rolled out in 2020 in Iraq and Colombia.Also at the forum on Monday, which attracted around 3,000 participants, seven African countries showcased their regional and coordinated efforts to find long-term solutions to ease the plight of refugees in the Horn of Africa.”It may be a region of great displacement, but (it) has also become a region of solutions and opportunities,” Grandi said.Detention campsBut following a decade in which the number of refugees and the displaced have reached unprecedented proportions, overcoming donor fatigue could be difficult. Pledges may well be made, but the money and aid may not necessarily be forthcoming, warn some analysts.A bigger challenge will come with the idea of greater burden-sharing between countries. The forum coincides with another flare-up between European Union countries over the sharing of responsibility for the continent’s refugee influx, with Greece announcing controversial plans to build closed detention camps for migrants and refugees to cope with a new surge of asylum-seekers.FILE – Refugees and migrants arrive at the port of Thessaloniki, northern Greece, Sept. 2, 2019.Humanitarian organizations have denounced the planned camps as “prisons,” saying they go in the opposite direction from the Geneva forum with its emphasis on fostering inclusion for asylum-seekers.”I made it clear to the (Greek) government that UNHCR policy is against detaining asylum-seekers … seeking asylum is not a crime,” Grandi told Greek officials during a visit to Athens last month.Since coming into office in July, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has mounted a series of appeals to EU member states to demonstrate greater solidarity with the front-line states of southern Europe.Most disturbing for Athens is that the latest surge is not slowing, despite stormy winter weather. Rickety boats laden with refugees seeking safety or a better economic life are continuing to land on Greek shores.In September, 10,551 newcomers arrived in Greece, the highest in a single month since the EU struck a deal with Turkey to curb migrant flows at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2016.Now, Greece’s center-right government, which was elected on a tough law-and-order platform, is under domestic pressure to make good on its electoral promise to pursue a deterrence and deportation approach toward asylum-seekers.Last week, Mitsotakis told top EU officials that his country had “reached its limits.””This is not a Greek-Turkish problem,” he told officials during a visit to Athens. “It’s an issue that affects the European Union as a whole, and we are looking forward to your help, as well as a firm European policy, to address it.”Burden-sharingEU countries have struggled for years to agree to a firm policy on burden-sharing, with stiff resistance to every plan coming from the Visegrád countries of Central Europe, led by Hungary.The countries have adamantly declined to take in asylum-seekers who landed in Italy, Greece or Spain. Part of the issue is a continuing dispute about who should be considered a refugee, and who should be counted as an economic migrant.FILE – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban talks to the media in Budapest, Hungary, Oct. 13, 2019.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban argues that by welcoming asylum-seekers, Europe acts as a magnet for them, and the continent risks being swamped and its security compromised.  Orban and other opponents of burden-sharing also maintain that previous international treaties stipulate that war refugees should seek sanctuary in the first safe third country they reach, and that the responsibility lies with front-line states.Forum organizers are determined to keep major policy differences in the background in Geneva. That may be difficult, especially with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acting as one of the co-hosts of the forum.Turkey hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees, and Erdogan has been accused of “weaponizing” refugees for political and economic purposes with his plans to resettle them in Kurdish areas of northern Syria.Speaking before his arrival in Geneva, a combative Erdogan warned that Turkey “can no longer carry this burden alone.”He complained that Turkey had only received half of the $6 billion in aid the EU promised in 2016 for Turkish efforts to stanch the influx of Mideast refugees into Europe.”Whenever we meet, they say that it is about to come. But nothing has come yet,” Erdogan said.
 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 16 signed amendments to the Administrative Violations Code that allow hefty fines for violating the controversial law on “foreign agents,” which critics say is used to muzzle dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas and a free press.According to the changes, individuals who violate the law more than twice in a 12-month period will have to pay a fine of up to 10,000 rubles ($159) for the first violation, and up to 100,000 rubles ($1,590) or 15 days in jail for repeat violations.Organizations will be obliged to pay a penalty of up to 1 million rubles ($15,900) for the first violation, and up to 5 million rubles ($79,500) for subsequent violations of the law.The amendments were approved by lawmakers earlier this month.Two weeks earlier, Putin signed into law a bill that gives authorities the power to label reporters who work for organizations officially listed as foreign agents as foreign agents themselves.The tag will be applied to individuals who collaborate with foreign media outlets and receive financial or other material support from them.Russia passed the original foreign agent law — which requires all NGOs receiving foreign funding to register — in 2012 following a major wave of anti-government protests. Putin blamed Western influence and money for those protests.Critics of the law say it stigmatizes organizations with the designation and would do the same to journalists if they are labeled as foreign agents.RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said on December 4 that the law ratchets up pressure on hundreds of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) correspondents in Russia who provide one of the few remaining alternatives to Kremlin-controlled news.Last month, Russia’s Justice Ministry listed RFE/RL’s Sever.Realii website as a “foreign agent,” saying the decision was based on conclusions made by the parliamentary committee on an investigation into meddling in the country’s internal affairs.In December 2017, the Justice Ministry listed Current Time TV, several RFE/RL services and projects, such as its Russian Service, Tatar-Bashkir Service, Sibir.Realii, Idel.Realii, Factograph, Kavkaz Realii, and Krym.Realii, as well as the Voice of America, as “foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent.”Russian officials have said the law is a “symmetrical response” after Russia’s state-funded channel RT — which U.S. authorities accuse of spreading propaganda — was required to register its U.S. operating unit under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).U.S. officials have said the action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its “foreign agent” legislation to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based rights group, in 2017 called the law “devastating” for local NGOs, saying more than a dozen had been forced to close their doors.With reporting by TASS and Meduza.
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Sharing the cockpit of a helicopter on sizzling tarmac, French and British air force chiefs vowed to pursue the joint fight against jihadists in the heart of the Sahel even as the shadow of Brexit looms over their countries.”We’ve got a long, fabulous history of working alongside each other, and I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon,” Royal Air Force (RAF) Chief of Air Staff Mike Wigston told AFP on a visit to the city of Gao with French counterpart Philippe Lavigne.”If anything, we are going to work stronger together,” he said.Backed by 100 British personnel, France has a 4,500-strong Sahel force supporting national armies struggling with a seven-year-old jihadist revolt.Thousands of civilians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.The two generals this weekend visited Mali, Niger and Chad, which with Burkina Faso and Mauritania form the so-called G5 Sahel, an anti-terror force.Wigston said Mali and its neighbors were “the front line of instability.”The priority of the Sahel deployment “is to stamp out the violent extremism which is making people’s lives a misery,” he said.”But there is a wider security issue here which affects Europe and the potential for this instability and the conflict in this region to spill into Europe… so we are also here to protect Europe.”What next?Britain is set to leave the European Union by January 31 following a general election that gave the pro-Brexit Conservative party a large majority.France sent troops into Mali in 2013 to help drive back Islamist insurgents who had seized the north of the country.But attacks have continued since then, and the conflict has since spread to the country’s center as well as to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.France’s Operation Barkhane remains in place to train and support poorly equipped local forces, but at a hefty cost that France’s EU allies have only partially eased.Britain and France signed a defense cooperation pact in London in 2010 — and both sides have repeatedly said it will not be affected by Brexit.FILE – A Royal Air Force Chinook flies over London during the Service of Commemoration – Afghanistan, at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, March 13, 2015.Since July 2018, London has contributed three heavy-lift Chinook helicopters to France’s Sahel fight. They have clocked up some 1,600 hours of flying time to date, transporting about 11,000 personnel and 800 tonnes of freight.The twin-rotor helicopters can haul nearly four tonnes of supplies and more than 30 troops at a time — a vital contribution in a region where road access to frontline troops is long and dangerous, with a high risk of mines and militia attacks.The helicopter support “allows us to devote ourselves to air combat missions while our British comrades provide logistics, refuelling and troop transport,” said Loic, who heads France’s Barkhane air combat group in Mali.In line with French military security protocol, the colonel can be identified only by his first name.Without the British help, he said, “we would be forced to assign other helicopters or resort to slower, riskier, road convoys.”‘With or without Brexit’Fighters on the ground say the Chinooks have been invaluable.French President Emmanuel Macron pays his respect in front of the flag-draped coffins of the thirteen French soldiers killed in Mali, during a ceremony at the Hotel National des Invalides in Paris, Dec. 2, 2019.They were deployed to help out last month when two French army helicopters crashed in Mali, killing all 13 on board and bringing to 41 the number of French troops killed in the Sahel region since 2013.”For us, it would be a real plus if this [Chinook] capacity remained beyond the summer of 2020,” the current deadline for the British deployment, Colonel Loic said.For his part, Wigston said: “I absolutely understand how vital this asset is to Barkhane, I will transmit (the message) to the political authorities in London.”Aside from Barkhane, London has announced the deployment of 250 troops to the Sahel for three years from 2020 as part of the United Nations’ MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali.Lavigne insisted that broader military cooperation would continue “with or without Brexit”.”Our air forces are quite similar, they have the same operating capacities and expertise, and tomorrow we will continue to work together to bring security,” he said.       
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A U.N. tribunal will hear arguments in March in the appeal of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, convicted of genocide and war crimes committed in Bosnia’s 1990s civil war.Mladic, once dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, was sentenced to life behind bars in November 2017 for his role in the Balkans war, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre — Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.About 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million others displaced in the 1992-95 war, which erupted as communal rivalries tore Yugoslavia apart after the fall of communism.Both prosecution and defense have appealed against the verdict, which found 77-year-old Mladic guilty on 10 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and deportation.Judges at the U.N.’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague ordered that the hearings would take place on March 17-18.In one of its final judgments, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) acquitted the brazen ex-commander of genocide in certain municipalities, a fact which now forms the bulk of the prosecution’s appeal.Judges had said “ruthless” Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command carried out “mass executions” and showed “little or no respect for human life or dignity”.The crimes were “amongst the most heinous known to humankind”, the judge said when handing down the sentence.At Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces overran UN peacekeepers before slaughtering almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys and dumping their bodies into mass graves.Mladic was among the top leaders to face international justice over the Balkans wars — along with former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.They were accused of forming a “joint criminal enterprise” to create a Greater Serbia by ridding the territory of Bosnian Muslims and non-Serbs.Milosevic died in his cell in The Hague in March 2006, suffering a heart attack before his trial had finished.Karadzic was convicted of genocide in 2016 for the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities during the war and sentenced to 40 years.After an appeal, judges increased his sentence to life, saying the initial term had underestimated the “sheer scale and systematic cruelty” of his crimes. 
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government intends to present a bill to parliament on Friday to enable Britain to leave the European Union next month, his spokesman said on Monday.”We plan to start the process before Christmas and will do so in the proper constitutional way in discussion with the speaker [of the House of Commons],” Johnson’s spokesman told reporters.The announcement came as Johnson begins a new week with a fresh mandate to fulfill his promise to push through his election promise to “Get Brexit Done” on January 31.His gamble to call an early election to give him a majority in parliament to get approval of his divorce deal paid off spectacularly last week.His governing Conservative party won 365 seats — a majority of 80 — at the expense of the main opposition Labour party, which was offering a second referendum on continued membership.The smaller Liberal Democrats, which wanted to scrap Brexit altogether, also saw its number of MPs fall.FILE – The Houses of Parliament in Westminster, central London.Johnson’s spokesman indicated the presentation of the bill could involve a vote by MPs but that would ultimately depend on the speaker.”We will present a bill which will ensure we get Brexit done before the end of January. It will reflect the agreements made with the EU on our withdrawal,” he added.Britain will enter talks with the bloc from February to thrash out a new trade deal before a formal end to the transition period at the end of December next year.Brussels has indicated that a comprehensive agreement may not be possible in such a short time-frame.Johnson’s spokesman reiterated that the prime minister wanted to pursue a “Canada-style free trade agreement”.   
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The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is holding a first-ever forum in an effort to drum up international support for tens of millions of people displaced by war, poverty, repression and other woes. The Global Refugee Forum, taking place December 16-18 in Geneva, will seek to gather leaders from governments, business and civil society to work together to find solutions for the unprecedented number of people — more than 70 million, according to the U.N. — displaced in their home countries or abroad. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday threatened to close two strategic military bases used by the United States in Turkey, after Washington warned of sanctions over Ankara buying Russian arms.”If necessary, we can close Incirlik and we can close Kurecik,” Erdogan on the pro-government A Haber television channel. The two bases sit on Turkey’s southwest coast, near the border with Syria.Erdogan has regularly raised this possibility in the past, at times of tension between the two countries.The U.S. Air Force uses the airbase at Incirlik for raids on positions held by the  so-called Islamic State group in Syria. The Kurecik base houses a major NATO radar station.FILE – U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter jets (foreground) are pictured at Incirlik Air Base, near Adana, Turkey, Dec. 11, 2015.Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu raised the issue of the bases last week. Responding to the U.S. threat of fresh sanctions, he warned that their closure could be “put on the table”.Turkey faces U.S. sanctions over its decision to buy the Russian S-400 missile defense system, despite warnings from Washington.And on Friday, Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador after the U.S. Senate followed the lower house and voted to recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide. The bill has yet to be signed by President Donald Trump.Armenia claims 1.5 million died in the killings. Turkey says the number of deaths was far lower and Turks also died, blaming the killings on the World War I.
 
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Chinese state television pulled the scheduled live broadcast of a football (soccer) game following one of the players’ comments online criticizing the government’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority.China’s CCTV was scheduled to broadcast the football game between Arsenal and Manchester United, but instead decided to show a taped game between Tottenham Hotspur and the Wolverhampton Wanderers.Arsenal footballer Mesut Ozil posted on Twitter Friday comments condemning China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the Western region, while also criticizing other Muslim countries for not speaking up against abuses.”Korans are being burnt… Mosques are being shut down… Muslim schools are being banned… Religious scholars are being killed one by one… Brothers are forcefully being sent to camps,” Ozil wrote in Turkish on his Twitter account Friday.#HayırlıCumalarDoğuTürkistan ?? pic.twitter.com/dJgeK4KSIk— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) December 13, 2019The U.S., the United Nations and various human rights groups have accused China of detaining an estimated one million ethnic Muslims in so-called “re-education camps” in the remote Western province of Xinjiang in an attempt to force them to renounce their religion and heritage.Chia’s state-run Global Times said on its Twitter account Sunday that CCTV made the decision to pull the game after Ozil’s comments had “disappointed fans and football governing authorities”.Arsenal posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that the the content Ozil shared was “entirely Ozil’s personal opinion”. The team has not posted a response on Twitter or released and official statement.  
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Hours before the official result was complete for Britain’s general election, U.S. Democrats on the other side of the Atlantic were taking to social-media sites to draw quick conclusions on what Labour’s catastrophic defeat might mean for them and the electoral challenge they face with the 2020 White House contest.Forewarned by an exit poll, which suggested Britain’s storied Labour Party was heading for its worst election rebuff since 1935, one of the first Democrats to hit the send button was Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama.He tweeted: “There are a lot of factors that went into this massive defeat, but progressives have to learn from them to do better on both sides of the Atlantic.”But that begs the crucial question: what lessons?Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is seen near his home in London, Britain, December 14, 2019. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleOn the British side of the Atlantic, Labour politicians can’t agree about what went wrong for them in what’s likely to be seen as the most consequential British election for a quarter-of-a-century, with some, including defeated party leader Jeremy Corbyn, insisting that the radical socialist policies he advocated, including the nationalization of a swathe of the British economy, were individually popular and that the blame should go on Brexit.A key Corbyn ally, Len McCluskey, the leader of the powerful Unite trade union, said the policies in the party’s manifesto were “very popular,” but “we very evidently didn’t win the argument over Brexit” and the party’s policy of holding a second referendum on European Union membership. McCluskey said the party’s “biggest mistake” was “perhaps underestimating the desire for people who had voted Leave to leave the European Union.”But many Labour moderates believe Brexit-favoring working-class voters who deserted the party in droves would have overlooked the issue of Europe, if Labour had had a more popular and centrist leader and a manifesto shorn of leftwing dogma. In a post-election opinion poll, only 17 percent of Labour defectors cited Brexit as the reason for their switch to the Conservatives.”Jeremy Corbyn was destined to lead the Labour Party to a catastrophic defeat,” according to Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman magazine, Britain’s leading leftwing weekly. “If he believed that the British would vote for the most radical socialist manifesto in our history, he was sadly deluded. The party has learned nothing from past defeats: the more it moves to the left, the more people are alienated,” he added in a post-mortem assessment for Britain’s The Times newspaper.Cowley says Labour has lost touch with Britain’s working-class and the party’s defeat Thursday is a parable of what can go wrong when a party rejects pragmatism for “ideological purity.”Some Democrats in the U.S.  worry that might be the case with their own party and say the British election should be seen as window on the 2020 presidential race.Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Nashua, N.H., Dec. 8, 2019.Former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, the current front-runner to win the Democratic nomination to take on Trump, has said that the British election should be taken as a warning against Democrats moving too far to the radical left ahead of the 2020 White House race.Speaking to supporters in San Francisco, Biden argued that the radicalism of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ultimately contributed to Boris Johnson’s landslide victory last week.Others on the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, too, fear that Labour’s defeat may foreshadow trouble for their bid to vanquish Trump, especially if the Democrats pick a progressive nominee like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as their champion in the 2020 presidential election.Political trends on one side of the Atlantic have often presaged trends on the other, although often with time lags because of misaligned elections. Both countries were moderately conservative in the 1950s and Republican and Conservative governments accepted the welfare systems established by their predecessors in office and ideological rivals, Franklin Roosevelt and Britain’s Clement Attlee.In the 1960s both countries trended left, although were divided over the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, free-market conservatives — Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — reshaped their nations’ politics.FILE – Tony Blair and Bill Clinton hold hands during an event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 10, 2018.And in the 1990s “Third Way” Democrats, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, marched almost in lockstep to refashion their parties as market-friendly, seeking to blend center-right economics with center-left social policies. The 2016 Brexit referendum was seen by many, including Donald Trump’s then strategist Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief of staff, as foreshadowing Trump’s upset a few months later of Hillary Clinton, who saw her candidacy rebuffed in the fading towns of the “rust belt” states much like Corbyn was rejected in the post-industrial north of England.Nationalist conservatives rule the roost now in Washington and London, prioritizing the nation state over multilateralism and favoring tough immigration restrictions. The skirmishing by Democrats over the British election result is enmeshing with the fight over who should get the party’s presidential nomination.Democrats favoring a progressive candidate maintain there are no real lessons to draw from Johnson’s election win, echoing Corbyn supporters on the other side of the Atlantic by arguing Labour lost the election because of Brexit. “This UK election was ultimately an election about Brexit, and Brexit won. There’s no clean analogue to that in the U.S,” says Kate Aronoff, a senior fellow at Data for Progress, a progressive U.S. think tank.”The UK election was undeniably bad for Labour, but it doesn’t at all vindicate centrists saying the U.S. should make one of them the Democratic nominee. Left policies are popular,” she tweeted.Aronoff, like other U.S. progressives maintain that the kind of centrist politics espoused by establishment Democrats also got rebuffed by British voters in an election that dashed the hopes of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, who presented themselves as a respectable alternative between the Conservatives and Labour. Their leader Jo Swinson even failed to get reelected as a lawmaker.People stand behind a banner supporting the results of the general election, in London, Britain, Dec. 13, 2019.Some commentators who’ve chronicled the rise of populist nationalism say neither moderates nor progressives have the grasped the full scale of the realignment of Western politics that’s underway. The UK vote wasn’t just any election, says Matthew Goodwin, an academic at Britain’s Kent University and co-author of the book “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.” “The old left versus right economic divide continues to make way for a new cultural divide.”He says Brexit was just one factor prompting working-class voters to trade left for right, with other driving issues coming down to promises of immigration reform and prioritizing national independence. Conservative nationalists have hit on a winning formula by leaning left on economics, with promises of increased government spending, and right on culture when it comes to identity politics and pledges to get tough on crime.Goodwin believes it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on questions of national identity which are worrying socially conservative working-class voters.  
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A U.N. climate summit ground towards a delayed close on Sunday with a handful of major states resisting pressure to ramp up efforts to combat global warming, prompting sharp criticism from smaller countries and environmental activists.The Madrid talks were viewed as a test of governments’ collective will to heed the advice of scientists to cut greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly in order to prevent rising global temperatures from hitting irreversible tipping points.But the conference was expected to endorse only a modest declaration on the “urgent need” to close the gap between existing emissions pledges and the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.Many developing countries and campaigners had wanted to see much more explicit language spelling out the importance of countries submitting bolder pledges on emissions as the Paris process enters a crucial implementation phase next year.”These talks reflect how disconnected country leaders are from the urgency of the science and the demands of their citizens in the streets,” said Helen Mountford, Vice President for Climate and Economics, at the World Resources Institute think-tank. “They need to wake up in 2020.”Brazil, China, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the United States had led resistance to bolder action, delegates said, as the summit — known as COP25 — began wrapping up.It had been due to finish at the two-week mark on Friday but has run on for two extra days – a long delay even by the standards of often torturous climate summits.Earlier, talks president Chile triggered outrage after drafting a version of the text that campaigners complained was so weak it betrayed the spirit of the 2015 Paris Agreement.The process set out in that deal hinges on countries ratcheting up emissions cuts next year.The final draft did acknowledge the “significant gap” between existing pledges and the temperature goals adopted in 2015.Nevertheless, it was still seen as a weak response to the sense of urgency felt by communities around the world afflicted by floods, droughts, wildfires and cyclones that scientists say have become more intense as the Earth rapidly warms.”COP25 demonstrated the collective ambition fatigue of the world’s largest (greenhouse gas) emitters,” said Greenpeace East Asia policy advisor Li Shuo.The Madrid talks became mired in disputes over the rules that should govern international carbon trading, favored by wealthier countries to reduce the cost of cutting emissions.Brazil and Australia were among the main holdouts, delegates said, and the summit seemed all but certain to defer big decisions on carbon markets for later.”As many others have expressed, we are disappointed that we once again failed to find agreement,” Felipe De Leon, a climate official speaking on behalf of Costa Rica. “We engaged actively, we delivered our homework, and yet we did not quite get there.”Smaller nations had also hoped to win guarantees of financial aid to cope with climate change. The Pacific island of Tuvalu accused the United States, which began withdrawing from the Paris process last month, of blocking progress.”There are millions of people all around the world who are already suffering from the impacts of climate change,” Ian Fry, Tuvalu’s representative, told delegates. “Denying this fact could be interpreted by some to be a crime against humanity.”  
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Little piggies go to market, but in Germany they also go to court.In a legal first, animal rights activists have asked Germany’s top court to ban the practice of castrating young male pigs without anesthetic – with the piglets themselves listed as the plaintiffs.The painful procedure has become increasingly controversial in Europe and has been banned in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.Farmers argue that the castration of piglets a few days after birth is necessary to prevent “boar taint”, the occasional occurrence of a foul smell when cooking pork from male pigs past puberty.The German parliament outlawed castration without pain relief in 2013 but it offered farmers a five-year transition period to help them adapt to the change – a timeline that was extended last year until 2021.Outraged by the inaction, the PETA campaign group filed a lawsuit with Germany’s Constitutional Court in November on behalf of the baby pigs.The group wants judges to recognize that pigs have rights similar to human rights and that these are being violated by the “cruel act” of castration without pain relief.”Non-human entities like companies and associations have legal personhood. So why not animals too?” said lawyer Cornelia Ziehm, who is supporting PETA in representing the piglets in court.’Little chance of succeeding’PETA argues that under German law, animals cannot be harmed without reasonable explanation.”The castration of piglets – with or without anesthesia – is in clear violation of this, giving Germany’s male piglets only one option: to sue for the enforcement of their rights in court,” the group said in a statement.The crux of the case is their argument that in Germany “everyone” (jedermann) can file a constitutional complaint if they believe their basic rights have been violated – even a pig.But Jens Buelte, a law professor at Mannheim university, doubted whether the judges in Karlsruhe would see it the same way.”Animals do not have their own rights under German law,” he said, giving PETA’s lawsuit “little chance of succeeding”.Monkey selfieIt is not the first time campaign groups have filed a case on behalf of animals.PETA made global headlines in 2015 when it asked an American court to grant a macaque the copyright to a selfie it snapped on a wildlife photographer’s camera.The picture of the broadly grinning monkey went viral but the court eventually ruled that animals cannot bring copyright infringement suits.PETA condemned the verdict, saying the monkey was “discriminated against simply because he’s a nonhuman animal”.However, in Argentina in 2016 a judge ordered Cecilia the chimpanzee to be released from Mendoza Zoo after agreeing with activists that she was entitled to basic rights and her solitary confinement was unlawful.AlternativesGerman farmers, who remove testicles from roughly 20 million piglets each year, have long resisted the push to end castration without anesthesia.They say there is a lack of workable alternatives to tackle boar taint, in an industry already struggling with fierce foreign competition.Local anesthesia and gene editing are not yet viable or too expensive, they say, and would raise the cost of pork in a country famous for its love of schnitzel and sausage.The government agreed in late 2018 to give the farmers a final two-year extension before the ban takes effect – a decision decried by the opposition Greens and far-left Die Linke, who argued it put the interests of the meat industry above animal protection.Some German pork producers are pinning their hopes on a vaccine that requires just two injections to prevent boar taint – already a popular alternative abroad.A pilot project involving 100,000 German piglets is currently ongoing, though critics say the vaccines are costly too.A similar debate is raging in France, where agriculture minister Didier Guillaume recently said castration of piglets without pain relief should be banned by the end of 2021.
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Albanian prosecutors have issued a series of arrest warrants on charges including murder and abuse of office over the deaths of 51 people killed when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake toppled dozens of buildings last month, police said on Saturday.Police and prosecutors said initial investigations showed “the loss of life in the collapsed buildings came also because their builders, engineers and owners had failed to observe the rules, norms and standards of safe constructions.”Prosecutors issued 17 warrants in total, police said. Two of the nine people detained on Saturday on murder charges were the owners of two hotels that collapsed, killing four people in Durres, Albania’s second-biggest city and main port.A third was the manager of a police vacation hotel where a high-ranking police officer was killed under the rubble.During the three decades since toppling communism in 1990, many Albanians have moved nearer cities, squatting on land and building with little supervision by authorities.Many of the buildings have been legalized since then by governments eager to get votes but also seeking to urbanize such areas by putting in sewage systems and roads.Both hotels on the 10-mile long beach on the Adriatic Sea south of Durres port were built illegally, police said, and the second had also been legalized illegally.Police said that some of the 17 people being sought by prosecutors had fled after the Nov. 26 quake.The high-rises built during the post-Communist boom along the beach are mostly apartments and hotels catering to both Albanians and foreigners, including ethnic Albanians from the Balkans and the Diaspora. Most suffered no damage.Albania has yet to calculate the cost of rebuilding housing for the 14,000 people left homeless by the quake.
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Queen Elizabeth on Thursday will set out Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s legislative agenda following his election victory, including a pledge to bring the EU Withdrawal Agreement bill back to Parliament before Christmas, his office said Saturday.Johnson led his Conservative Party on Thursday to its biggest national election win since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory of 1987, trouncing his socialist Labour Party opponent Jeremy Corbyn by winning 365 parliamentary seats and securing an overall majority of 80. Johnson fought the election on the slogan “Get Brexit done.”The so-called Queen’s Speech is used to detail all the bills the government plans to enact over the coming year. It is written by the government and is delivered by the monarch from a throne in Parliament’s gilded House of Lords debating chamber.Thursday’s speech to Parliament will be the 93-year-old queen’s second in as many months. She made one on October 14, shortly before the election was called following a prolonged deadlock in Parliament over the government’s Brexit plans.The October speech laid out 22 new bills, including several covering tougher treatment for foreign criminals and sex offenders, and new protection for victims of domestic abuse.Some additionsJohnson’s office said Thursday’s speech was expected to provide continuity with what the queen outlined in October, with some additions to strengthen the justice system and enshrine in law a multiyear funding settlement for Britain’s state-funded National Health Service.The new government’s top priority, however, will be to finally secure parliamentary approval for the bill to take Britain out of the European Union. Johnson said on Friday that Britain would leave the EU on January 31, “no ifs, no buts, no maybes.”The Queen’s Speech will also detail plans to provide a better service for rail commuters, provide greater protection for people who rent their homes, and stop local authorities boycotting products from other countries such as Israel.The restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland after a nearly three-year hiatus and “a strong United Kingdom” will also be objectives of Johnson’s government, his office said.Earlier on Saturday, Johnson visited former strongholds of his Labour opponents in northern England and pledged to repay their trust for helping to deliver his stunning election victory.He has previously promised to spend more money on health, education and the police, and to build more infrastructure, especially in northern England and the Midlands.
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