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European leaders are handling rising public frustration, economic distress and mounting coronavirus case numbers in different ways, with most showing the strain of dealing with a yearlong pandemic, say analysts and commentators, who add that the leaders seem to be rattled by a third wave of infections sweeping the continent.A defiant French President Emmanuel Macron defended his decision to avoid a lockdown as the infection rate climbed in January, telling reporters last week he had “no remorse” and would not acknowledge any failure for the deepening coronavirus crisis engulfing France.“There won’t be a mea culpa from me,” said Macron.In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel last week apologized to Germans for her initial decision — now rescinded — to lock the country down tight for Easter. She called the idea a mistake and apologized after a hastily arranged videoconference with the country’s 16 state governors.German Chancellor Angela Merkel answers questions from lawmakers at German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, March 24, 2021.But she urged fellow Germans to be more optimistic and stop complaining about restrictions and vaccine delays.“You can’t get anywhere if there’s always a negative,” she said. “It is crucial whether the glass is half full or half empty.”Merkel has likened the third wave of rising coronavirus infections to “living in a new pandemic” and encouraged Germans to test themselves once a week with rapid tests provided by authorities.In France, medical directors from the Paris public health system warned in a statement to Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that soaring infections are overwhelming the capital’s hospitals. As in Bergamo, Italy, a year ago, they say medical staff will soon have to choose which patients to treat.“We’re going straight into the wall,” said Catherine Hill, an epidemiologist in France. “We’re already saturated, and it’s become totally untenable. We can no longer take in non-COVID patients. It is completely mad,” she told French radio.France’s Health Ministry reported 37,014 new coronavirus cases Sunday, bringing the country’s total number of infections to over 4.5 million. Over 94,000 people in the country have died from the virus.Medical staff work in the intensive care unit where COVID-19 patients are treated at Cambrai hospital, France, March 25, 2021.Across Europe, 20,000 people are dying per week, more than a year ago, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has urged governments to get back to basics in their handling of the pandemic. Central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic states are also being hit hard with cases, hospitalizations and deaths — among the highest in the world.Political repercussionsThe pandemic has claimed two political positions, as well. The coalition government in Italy headed by Giuseppe Conte collapsed last month amid a dispute about how to spend European Union recovery funds.On Sunday, embattled Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovič announced his resignation to end a monthlong political crisis sparked by his decision to buy the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine to make up for a shortfall in vaccines distributed by the EU.Prime Minister Igor Matovic, front, announces the resignation of Health Minister Marek Krajci, left, in Bratislava, March 11, 2021.Matovič will switch places with current Finance Minister Eduard Heger, who will become the new prime minister of the fractious four-party coalition government.Under public pressure to get a grip on the crisis, some leaders appear to be increasingly nervous about the possible electoral repercussions from more lockdowns, deaths and likely more months of reduced economic activity, which means more bankruptcies.According to a pan-Europe opinion poll conducted for the International Republican Institute, a U.S.-based NGO in partnership with European parliamentary groups, Europeans, especially in the East and center of the continent, are becoming increasingly gloomy about their economic prospects. Pessimism is especially pronounced among low-income Europeans.More than 40% of respondents from Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, Poland and Spain told pollsters they feel their financial situation will get worse. With the gloom mounting, governments appear to be lashing out, according to some commentators, with efforts being made to find scapegoats for the worsening crisis.A vendor waits outside her stall at a deserted market in Budapest, Hungary, March 25, 2021.British officials argue that the ongoing dispute between Britain and the EU over supplies to Europe of the AstraZeneca vaccine are part of an effort to shift blame. The EU claims it is not getting a fair share of doses, thanks to behind-the-scenes British shenanigans — an accusation London vehemently denies.The British media have also lambasted European leaders for what they say are false accusations, with Macron being seen as largely behind the distraction. “There is now a systematic attempt by his (Macron’s) entourage to blame the unfolding debacle on the British, trying to create a sense that everything would be on track were it not for the U.K.’s refusal to hand over AstraZeneca vaccines,” said British columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.Policy U-turns are coming thick and fast — another sign of political disarray, analysts say.Merkel on Sunday — just days after relenting on a tight Easter lockdown — blamed regional governments for failing to take the crisis seriously enough and for easing restrictions despite rapidly rising infection rates.She threatened to centralize Germany’s pandemic response and override regional powers, a move that would be legally and politically risky and would undermine traditional German federalism. 
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The Vatican banished the former archbishop of Gdansk in Poland on Monday following an investigation into negligence over sex abuse allegations. The announcement came from the Vatican’s embassy in Warsaw. The investigation into Archbishop Leszek Slawoj Glodz, who retired last August, began in November of last year. “Acting on the basis of the provisions of the Code of Canon Law … the Holy See, as a result of formal notifications, conducted proceedings concerning the reported negligence of Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz in cases of sexual abuse committed by some clergy towards minors and other issues related to the management of the archdiocese,” said the apostolic nunciature. A statement from the apostolic nunciature said Glodz may not live in the territory of the archdiocese of Gdansk, nor may he attend religious celebrations or secular meetings there. In addition, Glodz will be paying a “suitable sum” to the Saint Joseph Foundation, an organization that provides assistance to victims of abuse. In 2019, priests in Gdansk accused Glodz of covering up cases of sexual abuse. At the time, Glodz denied any wrongdoing. Glodz was included in a report by people who said they were survivors of abuse. The report identified two dozen current and retired Polish bishops who have been accused of protecting predator priests. The report was delivered to Pope Francis on the evening of his 2019 global abuse prevention summit at the Vatican. Glodz could not be contacted for comment as his whereabouts were not known. The Gdansk archdiocese told Reuters it had received the decision but did not provide any further comment. 
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Officials with the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said Monday the massive container ship that had been blocking the canal has been freed and is making its way down the waterway.Video from the scene shows the 400-meter ship, the Ever Given, moving down the canal, with tugboats on its side and at its stern. Numerous ship horns could be heard blowing, signaling the end of the crisis.  The ship became jammed diagonally across a southern section of the canal in high winds on March 23, halting shipping traffic on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.Suez CanalEgypt was eager to resume traffic along the Suez Canal, which brings in between $5 billion and $6 billion in revenue each year. According to a study by German insurer Allianz, each day of the blockage in the canal could cost global trade between $6 billion and $10 billion.Some maritime firms responded to the delays by deciding to divert ships around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of the African continent.After further dredging and excavation over the weekend, efforts by rescue workers from the SCA and a team from Dutch firm Smit Salvage worked to free the ship using tug boats in the early hours of Monday, two marine and shipping sources said.
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A trial opened in Paris Monday over the 2004 bombing of a French military base in then war-torn Ivory Coast that killed an American soil scientist and nine French soldiers. The defendants are being tried in absentia. Nearly two decades later, the attack—and the French government’s response—raises many questions.Two Ivorian soldiers and a mercenary from Belarus stand accused of the 2004 bombing of the French army base near Bouake—Ivory Coast’s second largest city held by rebels at a time, when the country was in the middle of a civil war. The whereabouts of the three men are unknown—one of the many mysteries surrounding this trial. Relations between Ivory Coast and its former colonial power France were at a low point when the bombing took place. Anti-French sentiment — especially against its Licorne peacekeeping operation there — was high.Paris was accused of aiding rebels fighting then-president, Laurent Gbagbo. France responded to the Bouake attack by destroying Ivory Coast’s tiny air force. Some believe the attack was a blunder by Ivorian authorities. Former French ambassador to Ivory Coast, Jean-Marc Simon, told Radio France International he believed even former President Gbagbo had not been informed of it in advance – but suggested high-level members of Gbagbo’s government must have given the orders. FILE – Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo talks to his members of his legal team at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 6, 2020.Lawyer Lionel Bethune de Moro, representing some of the civil parties in the case, told Agence France-Presse news service he believes the attack was deliberate by Ivorian authorities — as a way to get France to leave Ivory Coast.Still, others suggest the bombing was a plot by France to trigger Gbagbo’s departure. It’s a hypothesis raised by another lawyer of the victims, but dismissed by ambassador Simon as a conspiracy theory. There are also questions about why the three defendants were never caught, and international arrest warrants against them not carried out. France’s former ministers of defense, interior and foreign affairs have been called as witnesses in this trial.Bernadette Delon, sister of one of the victims, told AFP she doesn’t expect this trial to resolve anything. It comes as the International Criminal Court in The Hague rules Wednesday on whether to uphold its earlier acquittal of Gbagbo on charges related to post-electoral violence in Ivory Coast, in 2010. If that happens, reports say, the former president plans to go home. In Abidjan, Willy Neth, coordinator for the International Federation for Human Rights in Ivory Coast, says many Ivorians have turned the page on the traumatic events of 2004.  He expects few will closely follow this Paris trial. Still, Neth says, political opinions remain sharply divided on France. They’re mostly negative when it comes to opposition figures supporting former president Gbagbo, while the current government of President Alassane Ouattara and his supporters consider France a key international partner. 
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A helicopter headed to the U.S. state of Alaska for a skiing trip crashed on Saturday killing the pilot and four others, according to authorities. Among the five people who died in the late Saturday helicopter crash is 56-year-old Czech Republic’s richest man, billionaire Petr Kellner.  Kellner’s company, financial and telecommunications firm PPF Group, confirmed his death Monday. “We announce with the deepest grief that, in a helicopter accident in Alaska mountains on Saturday, March 27, the founder and majority owner of the PPF group, Mr Petr Kellner, died tragically,” PPF said in a statement. Alaska police said Benjamin Larochaix, also of the Czech Republic, and Alaskans Sean McMannany and Zachary Russel were killed in the crash. One other person was hospitalized. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, which happened near Knik Glacier in Alaska’s backcountry. A spokeswoman for Tordrillo Mountain Lodge said that three of the passengers were guests and two were guides. The lodge advertises itself as a base for wilderness adventures, including heli-skiing. 
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Adebi works in the shadows on La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous boulevard. In normal times, she tries to attract tourists or locals who are out for a night out on the city. The 36-year-old has lived in Spain for 10 years but when she arrived in her adopted home from Nigeria, prostitution was hardly what she had in mind. “I wanted to come here and do domestic work, you know, send money back home. It has not been like that,” she told VOA. Adebi, who did not want to use her real name, is like many other women who have been tricked into prostitution by well-organized sex trafficking gangs, who demand that the women pay off a debt by selling themselves for sex. Prostitution has boomed in Spain since decriminalizing the practice in 1995. The country became known as the brothel of Europe after a 2011 United Nations report said it was the third biggest capital of the sex trade after Thailand and Puerto Rico. The sex trade is worth $25 billion per year and about 500,000 people work in unlicensed brothels, according to data from Eurostat, the European Union Statistics agency.  About 80% of these women are victims of sex traffickers, say Spanish National Police officials. New legislation Now, Spain’s leftist coalition government wants to ban prostitution by bringing in a new law that would attempt to penalize anyone profiting from the sex trade. “We are on the right path, which has to end in national legislation against prostitution and trafficking, which says that our sexuality is available to men that we are a commodity which is bought and sold,” said Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo last week. “There is trafficking because there is prostitution; if there is no prostitution there is no trafficking. We are abolitionists.” Prostitution occupies something of a legal limbo in Spain; selling yourself for sex is not illegal but profiting from it is. According to Spanish law, sex trafficking is when one person moves, detains or transports someone else for the purpose of profiting from their prostitution using fraud, force or coercion. Previous attempts to bring in a national law have floundered because political parties could not agree. Calvo has the support of the far-left Unidas Podemos party, the junior partner in the coalition government, but seeks to win over the opposition conservative People’s Party and regional parties. More harm than good? Nacho Pardo, a spokesman for the Committee to Support Sex Workers, CATS, believes banning prostitution will harm the very people it is designed to help. 
“This will not eradicate prostitution. It will not offer people working in prostitution and it will help the mafias in the same way as happened in the US when prohibited alcohol,” he told VOA in a telephone interview.  “I think it will be catastrophic.” CATS helps about 2,000 prostitutes in southeastern Spain each year, of which about 10% were victims of sex trafficking, says Pardo. He said many women, men and transsexuals from Africa and South America, became involved in the sex trade in Spain because sex traffickers insisted they pay off debts.  The traffickers demand payment for the cost of smuggling the sex workers and finding them work, but advocates say the alleged debts in reality amount to swindling and extortion.  Nigerian women form the largest group of Africans who operate in Spain, Pardo said. Romanians form the largest group of foreign prostitutes in Spain, followed by women from the Dominican Republic and Colombia. “Most feel deep shame about being involved in the sex trade,” he said. FILE – Women hold a giant banner reading ‘Abolition of prostitution’ during a demonstration to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Madrid on Nov. 25, 2019.Rocío Mora, who has been campaigning against sex trafficking for three decades, is the director of Apramp, which helps protect, help and reintegration women who are in prostitution. She says her team sees almost 300 women per day who are victims of sex trafficking. “Since 1985 we have been calling for abolition of prostitution. In a country which believes in the state of law, no person should be sold for their body,” she told VOA. “There is now a need for a comprehensive law that criminalizes those who profit from what is a form of violence against women.” Back on the streets of Barcelona, Adebi says all women were forced to have sex with clients, often under threat. She says some Nigerian women were told they had run up debts of up to $60,000 but despite plying their trade for years, they never worked it off. “Women are fined for being late, not looking good, buying cigarettes from a place which is not the sex club they are working in, anything,” she says. “That whole film with Richard Gere was a myth. There is no such thing as Pretty Woman.”  
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An Aladdin’s cave of goods, from IKEA furnishings to tens of thousands of livestock, is stuck in a maritime traffic jam caused by the Suez Canal blockage.  More than 360 vessels have been stranded in the Mediterranean to the north and in the Red Sea to the south as well as in holding zones since giant container ship MV Ever Given was wedged diagonally Tuesday across the Suez, a lifeline for world trade.Industry experts have estimated the total value of goods marooned at sea at between $3 billion and $9.6 billion. Suez Blockage Sets Shipping Rates Racing, Oil And Gas Tankers Diverted Suspension of traffic through narrow channel linking Europe and Asia has deepened problems for shipping lines About 1.74 million barrels of oil a day is normally shipped through the canal, but 80% of Gulf exports to Europe pass through the Sumed pipeline that crosses Egypt, according to Paola Rodriguez Masiu of Rystad Energy.According to MarineTraffic, about 100 ships laden with oil or refined products were in holding areas Sunday.Crude prices shot up Wednesday in response to the Suez blockage before dropping the next day.Sanctions-hit Syria, however, on Saturday announced a new round of fuel rationing after the hold-up delayed a shipment of oil products from ally Iran.Apart from goods, about 130,000 head of livestock on 11 ships sent from Romania have also been held up.”My greatest fear is that animals run out of food and water and they get stuck on the ships because they cannot be unloaded somewhere else for paperwork reasons,” Gerit Weidinger, EU coordinator for NGO Animals International, told British newspaper The Guardian.Egypt, for its part, has sent fodder and three teams of vets to examine livestock stuck at sea, some bound for Jordan.Sweden’s IKEA said it has 110 containers on the stricken Ever Given and other ships in the pileup.”The blockage of the Suez Canal is an additional constraint to an already challenging and volatile situation for global supply chains brought on by the pandemic,” an IKEA spokesperson said.The Van Rees Group, based in Rotterdam, said 80 containers of tea were trapped at sea on 15 vessels and said there could be chaos for the company as supplies dried up.Dave Hinton, owner of a timber company in northwest England, said he had a consignment of French oak stuck on a ship.The oak had been sent from France for reprocessing into veneered flooring in China and was on its way back to a customer in Britain, Hinton said.”I’ve spoken to my customer and told him the bad news that his floor was blocking the Suez Canal. He didn’t believe me, he thought I was pulling his leg,” he told BBC radio Friday.Shipping giants such as Denmark’s Maersk have rerouted ships to the longer journey around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding at least seven days to the travel time.Even if the Ever Given were dislodged, Maersk estimated Saturday it would take between three and six days for the stranded ships to pass through the canal.The company said that 32 Maersk and partner vessels would be directly affected by the end of the weekend, with 15 rerouted, and the numbers could increase unless the canal was reopened.According to Lloyd’s List, up to 90% of the affected cargo is not insured against delays.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says there will be “costs and consequences” for Russia for its allegedly malign activities against the United States.“We will take the steps necessary to defend our interests” at the time of the U.S.’s choosing, Blinken said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday but was taped last week as he completed talks with other NATO diplomats in Brussels.He said there was “a shared commitment” among Western allies to be “clear-eyed” about Moscow’s actions and hold the Kremlin accountable.The top U.S. diplomat said officials “are in the process” of considering what sanctions or actions Washington plans to take against Moscow, and in consultation with other NATO countries.“We are stronger when we can do it in a coordinated way,” he said.While the U.S. and Russia agreed quickly to extend a nuclear arms control deal that was set to expire shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden assumed power, the U.S. is blaming Russia for other actions, including allegedly placing a bounty on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, meddling in the November election that Biden won and hacking into U.S. computer systems.Blinken’s remarks in the CNN interview echoed those of Biden, who has taken a tougher stance against Russia than that of his predecessor, Donald Trump.In an interview on ABC News two weeks ago, Biden said he considers Russian President Vladimir Putin to be a “killer.”Biden said in the interview, “The price he’s going to pay, well, you’ll see shortly,” while adding that he, Biden, wants to be able to “walk and chew gum at the same time, and there are places where it’s in our mutual interest to work together.”“That’s why I renewed the (arms reduction) agreement with them. That occurred while he’s doing this,” he said, apparently referencing Putin’s election interference efforts. “But that’s overwhelming, in the interest of humanity, that we diminish the prospect of a nuclear exchange.” Russia has denied meddling in the U.S. election and orchestrating the cyber hack that used U.S. tech company SolarWinds to penetrate U.S. government networks. In addition, it has rebuffed reports it offered bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan or tried to poison Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. A U.S. intelligence analysis concluded that Putin likely directed a campaign to try to help Trump win a second four-year term in the White House.It is not clear what actions Biden could be considering against Russia; but he could invoke any of several penalties, including freezing the U.S. assets of any entities found to have directly or indirectly interfered in a U.S. election or engaged in “cyber-enabled” activities from abroad that threaten U.S. national security.In addition, a 1991 law allows the U.S. president to bar U.S. banks from lending to a country that used chemical weapons, such as is alleged in the Navalny case.
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