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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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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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Britain has confirmed yet another spike in new COVID-19 infections, with close to 4,200 cases identified across the country Friday, the highest daily number in two months. Seventy five percent of the new cases in Britain are believed to be infections with the so-called Indian variant, first detected in India, which is more transmissible than the previously dominant variant.Also Friday, Britain approved a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. It is the fourth COVID-19 vaccine approved in the country, after inoculations made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.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.Pfizer-BioNTech Pledges 2 Billion Doses to Poor Nations US, German partners to deliver half this year and half next year The commission made the announcement Friday after the European Union’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency, Friday recommended the use of the vaccine in children ages 12 to 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 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.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 United Nations-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.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.
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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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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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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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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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President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has threatened to retaliate for any European Union sanctions imposed on him for detaining two opposition activists after forcing their plane to land in Minsk earlier this week.Hours before a scheduled meeting in the Russian seaside resort of Sochi with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, his only major international ally, the Belarusian leader warned he would allow migrants and drugs to pour into western Europe. The 66-year-old said, “We stopped drugs and migrants. Now you will eat them and catch them yourselves.”In a show of support for Lukashenko, Russia has been refusing permission for some European passenger jets to enter its airspace after airlines, following EU guidance, ordered their planes to alter their usual flight paths and bypass Belarus, depriving the Belarusian government of millions of dollars in flyover fees.Austria Thursday condemned Moscow’s decision to cancel the Vienna-Moscow service as “absolutely incomprehensible.”“It is in the interests of both Austria and Russia that all flights to and via Russia can continue to be carried out without any problems,” the Austrian foreign ministry said in a statement. Lukashenko also sought Thursday to play down the impact of any possible EU economic sanctions, saying, “We’ll substitute Europe, which is growing mercilessly old, for rapidly growing Asia.” He continued to maintain that Belarus diverted Sunday’s Ryanair’s Athens-Vilnius flight because of a bomb threat against the flight by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.Belarus Opposition Leader Alleges Journalist from Diverted Plane Beaten in DetentionOpposition blogger Raman Pratasevich was arrested Sunday after a Belarussian fighter jet forced a passenger plane in which he was traveling to land in MinskThe claim is dismissed by Hamas, and by Western governments, which say the forced landing of the Ryanair plane amounted to “state-sponsored hijacking.” Opposition activists 26-year-old Roman Pratasevich, a blogger, and 23-year-old Sofia Sapega, a law student and Russian national, were taken from the plane and arrested when it landed in the Belarusian capital. Both are accused of a variety of offenses, including inciting rallies against Lukashenko in the wake of last August’s presidential election, which was widely denounced by Western powers as rigged and fraudulent.European leaders have expressed outrage at the diversion of the Ryanair flight between two EU capitals and on Monday EU leaders discussed the incident at a summit, with European Council President Charles Michel saying in a statement the Belarus action “will not remain without consequences.” During an informal meeting in Lisbon Thursday, EU foreign ministers planned the steps to take in addition to the ban on EU-based airlines using Belarusian airspace. The proposals being discussed focus on economic and sector-specific sanctions, EU officials told VOA.“We will continue to look at what consequences [sanctions] will have in Belarus, whether Lukashenko will give in. And if this is not the case, we have to assume that this will be only the beginning of a big and long spiral of sanctions,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. Maas said sanctions must be made “effective” by targeting business sectors that are important to Belarus’ economy. He cited the potassium and phosphate sectors.“There is also the question to what extent Belarus should still be allowed to issue government bonds by the Belarusian state or by the Central Bank in Europe in the future,” he added. He said Lukashenko’s behavior was “so unacceptable,” the EU should not be satisfied with small steps.Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters Thursday, “We could talk about [sanctions on] the oil production sector.” Foreign ministers of the G-7 countries have separately called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Protasevich and Sapega “as well as all other journalists and political prisoners held in Belarus.” “We will enhance our efforts, including through further sanctions as appropriate, to promote accountability for the actions of the Belarusian authorities,” the G-7 group said in a statement.There are splits among Western governments about how severe sanctions should be, though, with some arguing that a balance must be struck between punishing the Belarusian authorities while avoiding driving the country deeper into the arms of  Putin, who Lukashenko is economically and militarily heavily reliant on.  Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has publicly advocated moderation, fearing deep and wide sanctions risk harming ordinary Belarusians without deterring Lukashenko.“We must also be careful that we do not hit people in Belarus,” he said. Estonia’s foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, appeared to echo those sentiments, telling reporters in Lisbon she hopes sanctions can be focused on “companies which are close to the Belarusian regime.”Some Western analysts say fears of driving Lukashenko further into the Russian fold are misplaced. The diversion of the Ryanair flight, said Keir Giles of Britain’s Chatham House, “could be no clearer statement that President Lukashenko has turned his back on the West and abandoned any restraint or concern for international censure.”“Four years ago,” he added, “Belarus was still ostensibly nurturing a fragile form of independence, maintaining a degree of willfulness in its independent foreign policy from Russia, trying to quietly grow ties with the West while not alienating President Putin, and resisting Moscow’s attempts to take over the military defense of Belarusian territory.” Now, however, Giles said he believes “Lukashenko has placed all his bets on Moscow and Russia.”Russian officials have backed Lukashenko but initially did so softly, possibly because, some Western diplomats suspect, the Kremlin was trying to take stock of what the implications could be for the just-agreed summit meeting next month between U.S. President Joe Biden and Putin, the first face-to-face encounter between the pair since Biden was elected president.Biden, Putin Agree to June 16 Summit in GenevaWhite House says it hopes US, Russia will ‘restore predictability and stability’ to their relationshipThe editor-in-chief of state-controlled Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, said, at the start of the week, that Lukashenko “played it beautifully,” but top Kremlin officials were less forthcoming initially, with Putin’s spokesman declining press requests to comment, until Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterized Lukashenko’s actions “absolutely reasonable.” Lavrov called on other countries “to soberly assess the situation.” Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin has long been a fitful one, with the two frequently falling out. Lukashenko has relied on financial subsidies and oil supplies from Russia. A senior Russian diplomat based in Minsk once described to VOA a “shouting match” he overheard during a phone conversation between them.  The dispute was over the Belarusian leader’s resistance to Putin’s goal of closer integration between Russia and its onetime Soviet satellite, he said.  Analysts say Putin’s major Belarus objective is to ensure — much as his goal is with Ukraine — that it doesn’t end up as a pro-Western enclave on Russia’s borders. The Belarusian leader has long played the West against Russia and vice versa. He observed a neutral stance over Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.Western diplomats say it is irrelevant whether Russia is full-throated in backing Lukashenko or more vocally restrained. Either way Lukashenko has no one else to turn to now for support. They note since the August election, and the mass protests of his continued rule, he has been keener for closer cooperation between his military and Russia’s. That has seen the establishment of joint military training centers and planning for a massive joint military exercise in September, known as Zapad-2021.
 
Before departing Friday for Sochi, Lukashenko said he would be discussing with Putin restoring commercial air services between Russia and Belarus suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. Kremlin officials said discussions would focus on forming closer economic ties between the two countries.
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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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Germany for the first time on Friday recognized it had committed genocide in Namibia during its colonial occupation, with Berlin promising financial support worth more than one billion euros to aid projects in the African nation.Namibia on Friday welcomed Germany’s acknowledgment it had committed genocide in the southwestern African country during its 20th century colonial occupation.”The acceptance on the part of Germany that a genocide was committed is the first step in the right direction,” President Hage Geingob’s spokesperson Alfredo Hengari told AFP.German colonial settlers killed tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people in 1904-08 massacres — labelled the first genocide of the 20th century by historians — poisoning relations between Namibia and Germany for years.While Berlin had previously acknowledged that atrocities occurred at the hands of its colonial authorities, they have repeatedly refused to pay direct reparations.”We will now officially refer to these events as what they are from today’s perspective: genocide,” said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in a statement.He hailed the agreement after more than five years of negotiations with Namibia over events in the territory held by Berlin from 1884-1915.”In light of the historical and moral responsibility of Germany, we will ask forgiveness from Namibia and the victims’ descendants” for the “atrocities” committed, Maas said.In a “gesture to recognize the immense suffering inflicted on the victims”, the country will support the “reconstruction and the development” of Namibia via a financial program of $1.34 billion, he said.The sum will be paid over 30 years, according to sources close to the negotiations, and must primarily benefit the descendants of the Herero and Nama.However, he specified that the payment does not open the way to any “legal request for compensation.”Rebellion, reprisalsNamibia was called German South West Africa during Berlin’s 1884-1915 rule, and then fell under South African rule for 75 years, before finally gaining independence in 1990.Tensions boiled over in 1904 when the Herero — deprived of their livestock and land — rose up, followed shortly after by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.In the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904 around 80,000 Herero, including women and children, fled and were pursued by German troops across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 survived.German General Lothar von Trotha, sent to put down the rebellion, ordered the peoples’ extermination.At least 60,000 Hereros and around 10,000 Namas were killed between 1904 and 1908.Colonial soldiers carried out mass executions; exiled men, women, and children to the desert where thousands died of thirst; and established infamous concentration camps, such as the one on Shark Island.’Overcome the past’The atrocities committed during colonization have poisoned relations between Berlin and Windhoek for years.In 2015, the two countries started negotiating an agreement that would combine an official apology by Germany as well as development aid.But in August last year, Namibia said that Germany’s offered reparations were unacceptable. No details of the offer were provided at the time.President Hage Geingob had noted Berlin declined to accept the term “reparations,” as that word was also avoided during the country’s negotiations with Israel after the Holocaust.But in an effort to ease reconciliation, in 2018 Germany returned the bones of members of the Herero and Nama tribes, with the then foreign minister Michelle Muentefering asking for “forgiveness from the bottom of my heart.”
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Federal prosecutors are investigating whether current and former Ukrainian officials unlawfully interfered in the U.S. presidential election, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.The criminal investigation includes examining whether the Ukrainian officials used Rudolph Giuliani, then personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump, to spread misleading claims about current President Joe Biden, The New York Times reported.The inquiry, which began during the final months of the Trump administration, is being handled by federal prosecutors in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the newspaper reported, and is separate from an ongoing criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine.Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York are investigating whether the Ukrainian officials tried to influence the Nov. 3 election by spreading claims of corruption about Biden through a number of channels, including Giuliani, the newspaper reported. Biden has denied any wrongdoing.One of the officials being investigated is a Ukrainian member of parliament named Andriy Derkach, the newspaper reported.The U.S. Treasury Department previously sanctioned Derkach, identifying him as an “active Russian agent for over a decade.”Giuliani, who The New York Times said has not been accused of wrongdoing in this investigation, has previously denied representing any Ukrainians.The U.S. Attorney’s Office and Arthur Aidala, a lawyer for Giuliani, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukrainian oligarchs while he was working as Trump’s lawyer are the subject of a probe by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Federal agents searched his home and office in April, seizing phones and computers.Giuliani has denied allegations in that probe, and his lawyers have suggested the investigation is politically motivated. 
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