Category: World

BRUSSELS: European leaders gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel a standing ovation on Friday at her latest EU summit after a 16-year reign that helped guide the bloc through great ups and downs.
Merkel has attended a staggering 107 EU summits that saw some of the biggest twists and turns in recent European history, including the eurozone debt crisis, the influx of Syrian refugees, Brexit, and the creation of the historic fund of pandemic recovery of the block.
“You are a monument,” said the host of the summits, the head of the European Council, Charles Michel, at the tribute behind closed doors, according to an official in the room.
An EU summit “without Angela is like Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower,” Michel said.
He handed Merkel a perspective cube with a globe described as an “artist’s impression” of the Europe building where EU summits are held.
Merkel, with a characteristic lack of fanfare, thanked journalists for their long nights at the summits, though she offered a strong warning about the challenges still facing the EU and its German successor.
“I am leaving the European Union, as regards my responsibility as Federal Chancellor, at a time when there are reasons for concern,” he said.
“We have overcome many crises, but we have a number of unsolved problems,” he said, citing disputes over migration, the bloc’s economy and the rule of law in EU countries.
– ‘Compromise machine’ – Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel called Merkel a “compromise machine” that “generally found something to unite us” through marathon negotiations within the EU.
“Europe wants to miss her,” he said.
Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg described her as “without a doubt a great European” and “a haven of peace, if you will, within the European Union.”
His departure, he said, “will leave a hole.”
Their final summit, a two-day affair in Brussels, once again relied on their soft power skills to ease a heated dispute with Poland over its rejection of the EU legal order, something many believed could be the next threat. existential for the European Union. .
On the first day of Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki defended an October 7 ruling of his country’s Constitutional Court saying that EU law applies only in specific and limited areas and that Polish law prevails in all the rest.
Merkel, backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, spent her considerable political capital pushing for dialogue with Poland, warning against a “cascade” of legal struggles if the issue erupted into challenges before the European Union Court of Justice.
The message was received by the European Commission and countries like the Netherlands and Belgium who wanted a stronger slap from Poland, which they accuse of rolling back democratic norms by eliminating judicial independence in national courts.
– ‘Principles on self-interest’ – The dispute between east and west has been a recurring theme in Merkel’s long term.
Their mediating role reflected both Germany’s status as an EU economic power with influence over many of the former Soviet bloc countries, whose membership in the union tipped the political balance away from Paris and toward Berlin.
He also spoke about Merkel’s family background, of German and Polish descent, as well as her tactic of low-key shoving behind the scenes as the warring forces are exhausted, before stepping in with a compromise solution.
In a surprise video posted on Twitter by the EU’s Michel, former US President Barack Obama praised Merkel as one of those rare leaders who put “her principles above any narrow definition of self-interest.”
“It is a testament to his character that he would probably enjoy working in a European Council meeting more than being the center of attention like this,” he added.
Germany is still in the process of putting together a government to replace Merkel’s, after the September elections, she did not object to her conservative CDU party taking a beating.

One of Sweden’s most popular rappers was shot and killed in Stockholm, further fueling public anger over a deadly wave of gang-related violence that has hit the country in recent years.

Einar, 19, whose full name was Nils Kurt Erik Einar Gronberg, was Sweden’s most streamed artist on Spotify in 2019 and released three chart-topping albums, winning multiple Swedish Grammys and other music awards.

He was shot multiple times outside an apartment building in the southern Stockholm suburb of Hammarby Sjöstad, shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday. Police have opened a murder investigation and are looking for at least two suspects.

“We are actively working to find out why it happened and who may be behind it,” Ola Osterling, a spokesman for the Stockholm police, told the national news agency TT.

Swedish public broadcaster SVT cited Anonymous sources who claimed the murder was gang-related and that Einar was due to testify in a case against the so-called Vårby gang next week. He had reportedly received death threats in recent months.

Police said CCTV footage from two surveillance cameras was being analyzed, but declined to comment on the possible motives. the Aftonbladet newspaper said the rapper was shot several times from a distance of about 1.5 meters and hit in the chest.

Einar, whose hit single Katten i trakten (The Cat in the Area) reached number one on the Swedish singles chart when he was 16, often referenced a life of crime, including drugs and guns, in his songs. He had multiple convictions for assault, drug offenses, and driving under the influence.

Last April he was kidnapped, beaten and blackmailed for 3 million SEK (about £ 250,000) by members of the Vårby gang, who had recruited a rival rapper, Haval Khalil, to help him take him to an apartment in the city. Swedish capital.

Weeks earlier, the same gang had tried and failed to abduct Einar from a Stockholm music studio using another rapper, Yasin, the 2020 Swedish artist and hip-hop artist of the year, as bait.

In July of this year a sentenced court Khalil to two and a half years in prison for complicity in a kidnapping. Yasin, 23, whose full name is Yasin Mahamoud, was given a 10-month term for conspiracy to kidnap. They both deny the charges and appeal.

The sentences came as part of a larger case involving the Vårby gang, 27 of whose members were convicted of serious crimes including murder, attempted murder, robbery, extortion, kidnapping, and drug and firearms crimes.

Sweden has seen a wave of gang violence for several years. A. report this year He said it was the only European country where fatal shootings had risen significantly since 2000, going from one of the lowest rates of gun violence on the continent to one of the highest in less than a decade.

Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, speaking in Brussels, where he was attending an EU summit, said he understood that Einar “meant a lot to many young people. It is tragic that another young life has been extinguished. “

Johan Forsell, a law and order spokesman for the main opposition Moderados party, said the “limits of what can be accepted in a civilized country” had been exceeded “a long time ago. We need action, not words, to change course and put Sweden in order. “

Annie Lööf, leader of the Center party, tweeted: “Once again, a young man’s life is extinguished due to gang violence. Once again, parents must bury their own child. There are many of us who are in mourning, who have had enough of the senseless violence, and we want gang crime to be fought. “

WASHINGTON (AP) – Neera Tanden, whose bid to be the White House budget chief was derailed by Republican opposition after her harsh criticism on Twitter, was named White House secretary of staff on Friday, placing her in a key role behind the scenes.
The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was announced during a morning staff call, a White House official said.
The staff secretary position manages paper flow, circulates documents to senior staff for comment as part of the decision-making process, and is often referred to as the “nerve center” of the White House.
It’s a job once held by current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was Republican George W. Bush’s secretary of staff for the White House. Jessica Hertz has held the position in the Biden White House thus far.
Tanden will report to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.
“Neera has more than two decades of experience in politics and administration, which are critical elements of the role. Her experience in domestic, economic and national security politics will be a key asset in this new role,” said the White House official.
Tanden, a former adviser to former US President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had served as president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-wing think tank, until she became President Joe’s senior adviser. Biden in May.
Tanden received criticism from Republicans for her tweets, and her nomination to be director of the White House Office of Budget Management was put in jeopardy after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said he would not vote to pass it in the US Senate. The United States, which is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans.
She had withdrawn her name from consideration for the OMB job in March due to opposition.

A.s someone currently being destroyed by the Squid Game, with whom Netflix has played with our collective anxiety strings as the world’s most gleefully malevolent violinist, I wholeheartedly welcome an epic tale of global takeover by extraterrestrial beings. in which almost nothing, in fact, happens. .

Invasion (Apple TV +) is a balm for my anguished soul. It starts off pretty traditional. A mysterious something falls from the sky and lands with a kerpow! in an isolated part of the world (here, the Arabian desert), witnessed by a lone traveler whose curiosity about this strange event soon proves fatal. Mr Inquisitive comes to an end by being charred and liquefied at the same time. The special effects throughout the 10-part series are intriguingly off-beam and satisfying. Unfortunately, you get roughly one per episode.

And then, well, that’s it. By ages and ages.

We go around the world (the travel costs were presumably where the bulk of the show’s $ 200 million budget was spent) getting to know the characters. There’s a sheriff in Oklahoma (played by Sam Neill) in – yeah! – his last day before retirement, called to locate two men who disappeared around the same time a crop circle and crater appeared in a local cornfield. There is a happily married couple with two children on Long Island whose house is the only one left standing when their neighborhood is destroyed by the reverberations of some invisible impact; a picky schoolboy and his bully in London; A car full of children on a school trip colliding with a quarry during a meteor shower.

Elsewhere, we meet an aerospace engineer in Tokyo, determined to discover how a Japanese shuttle piloted by his lover was destroyed without warning, and an American soldier in Afghanistan, searching for a suddenly missing squad when he encounters the second special effect of the season.

There are power failures and massive nosebleeds. Things shake and rumble. The sands move and churn. Communications go down. There is a pervasive sense of danger so mild that if you’re coming from the Squid Game, or from real life in 2021, it might be strangely relaxing for you. There is definitely something out there, but it comes so slowly that you have time to get your affairs in order first.

The Invasion, although for most of the first half of the series you almost have to trust that that’s what it is, takes second place to the individual characters’ stories. Sheriff Tyson is a man who is still pursuing the case that will give meaning to his very ordinary career. Engineer Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsana) is fighting sexism at work and more prejudice in her private life. The children bound for the quarry quickly take on the Lord of the Flies energy, and it is soon revealed that the happily married couple is, in fact, far from it. The American soldier Trevante (Shamier Anderson, whose fierce energy, along with that of Kutsana, does much to suggest a forward momentum where there is often none) struggles to maintain control of himself and his sanity when his men disappear and they leave you not only bewildered but without anchors.

It is, if you squint enough, a valiant attempt to do something different with an old trope. You may feel creators Simon Kinberg and David Weil eager to draw parallels and find resonance with current issues: the fractured family also actually becomes refugees as they attempt to flee to safety; Trevante is a hostile invader about to feel what life is like on the other side of the equation, and so on. Still, Invasion is a smoldering burn that threatens to simply go slow.

SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in will travel to Europe next week to attend a Group of 20 summit in Rome and the UN climate conference in Scotland, his office said Friday.
The nine-day trip, which begins Thursday, will also include talks Oct. 29 at the Vatican with Pope Francis and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Moon’s spokeswoman said.
Moon will then participate in the two-day meeting of the G20 leaders in Rome from October 30, before moving to Glasgow for the COP26 summit to be held from October 31 to November 12.
He then plans to pay a state visit to Hungary, where he will participate in a summit with the so-called “Visegrad Four” countries, including Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
South Korea is one of the world’s most fossil-fuel-dependent economies, where coal accounts for more than 41% of the country’s electricity mix and renewable energy just over 6%.
Last year, Moon pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050 to create jobs and fuel economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. This month it promised to raise its emissions reduction target to 40% of 2018 levels by 2030 from 26.3% previously.
At the Vatican, both sides want to discuss ways to promote peace on the Korean peninsula and global affairs, Moon’s spokeswoman said.
In July, Seoul’s intelligence chief said he was working on a possible Francis visit to North Korea after Moon relayed a verbal invitation from leader Kim Jong Un during his 2018 meeting with the pontiff.
Officials from the North Korean Embassy in London will join COP26, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Friday, a possible sign that the lonely country could resume diplomacy in person after two years of focusing inside on the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of borders. .

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Reconciliation bill negotiations ‘boil down to four or five issues,’ says Biden

DHAKA: Bangladesh police arrested Iqbal Hossain, the main suspect responsible for keeping Koran in a Durga puja local in Comilla, from Cox’s Bazar on Thursday night, local media reported.
Faruk Ahmed, Comilla (SP) police superintendent, said Iqbal was arrested in the Shugandha beach area around 10:10 pm on Thursday, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
Following his arrest at Cox’s Bazar, Hossain – “the man responsible for keeping a Koran at a Comilla bidding site that sparked attacks against Hindus” – was taken to Comilla Police Lines on Friday.
On Wednesday, Iqbal was identified as the prime suspect after police scrutinized CCTV footage.
According to the Dhaka Tribune, new CCTV footage shows Iqbal Hossain meeting with two caretakers at a local shrine on the night of the incident.
It appears that the trio were reunited and that a Quran, believed to be the same holy book that was later used, was placed in the shrine, the publication said.
Previous reports had suggested that at least three people were killed and 60 were reportedly injured, including journalists, police officers and ordinary people, in communal violence during Durga Puja celebrations in Chandpur’s Hajiganj Upazila.
The events followed community violence that erupted in various locations in Bangladesh after the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran at a site in Durga Puja on the Nanuar Dighi bank was revealed on social media.
Several puja venues were vandalized in the Chandpur, Chittagong, Gazipur, Bandarban, Chapainawabganj and Moulvibazar area, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
The violence that started in Cumilla during Durga Puja had spread elsewhere and previously there were reports of violence, fires and killings in various parts of the country.

Joe Biden has given the strongest indication yet that he is willing to end or reduce Senate filibuster as a means to overcome Republican intransigence and move forward with reforms to voting rights, the debt ceiling and possibly more.

Speaking in Baltimore a day after Senate Republicans once again blocked important legislation designed to ensure access to the polls for all Americans, Biden expressed growing frustration at the filibuster that effectively gives the conservative minority dominance. absolute over large sectors of politics.

“We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter obstructionism,” the president said.

In a CNN Town Hall in Baltimore on Thursday night, Biden considered how far any reform would go. “That remains to be seen,” he said, “in terms of fundamentally altering it or whether or not we end the obstructionism.”

When asked by moderator Anderson Cooper if he would consider ending filibuster on voting rights, Biden replied, “And maybe more.”

Obstructionism has increasingly become the stone on which the ship of the Biden presidency could sink. The Senate mechanism blocks minority rule by allowing only 41 senators out of 100 sitting in the chamber to block the legislation.

The current Senate has a 50:50 split between Democrats and Republicans, although the Democrats have a majority by dint of the casting vote of Kamala Harris, the vice president. However, the Democratic agenda is still blocked in important areas of public policy by obstructionism, which requires the Democratic whips to find 60 votes to pass the legislation.

On Wednesday, the Republican group led by Mitch McConnell applied obstructionism once again to curb the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill would be the most significant reform in U.S. electoral procedures in a generation, countering the wave of voter suppression measures They have been championed by Republicans in every state this year.

Progressive Democrats have been increasingly pressing Biden to be more aggressive in filibustering in order to secure fundamental reforms. But the president is in a difficult situation given resistance to change from within his own ranks.

Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, have said they would oppose limiting filibuster. Given universal Republican opposition to change, it would take a unanimous vote of all 50 Democrats to achieve it.

Biden told CNN city council that entering the filibuster’s hornet’s nest at this point could make it difficult for him to pass other signing laws. “I lose at least three votes right now to achieve what I have to do on the economic side of the equation, the foreign policy side of the equation.”

The president did not specify which three senators he had in mind.

Earlier this month, Democrats began to focus on the idea of ​​removing obstructionism in the critical area of ​​the debt ceiling. Republican opposition brought the nation to the brink of defaulting on its debt, although McConnell backed down at the last minute.

Biden told the city council that “the idea that, for example, my Republican friends say that we are going to stop paying the national debt because they are going to obstruct that and we need 10 Republicans to support us is the strangest thing I ever heard.”

He said that if a similar showdown were to be repeated, “you will see a lot of Democrats willing to say, ‘not me.’ I’m not going to do that again. We’re going to put an end to obstructionism. ‘ But it is still difficult to end the filibuster beyond that. “

WELLINGTON: Tremors from a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in New Zealand did not force Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to interrupt her press conference on Friday, while instead declining to dismiss the event, describing the rumors as a “mild distraction”.
“Ah sorry, slight distraction, would you mind repeating that question?” Arden said and continued the briefing.
The briefing was broadcast live and focused on the government’s goal of vaccinating up to 90% of the population against Covid-19 and introducing vaccination certificates.
New Zealand’s seismic agency GeoNet said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck the central part of the North Island at a depth of 210 kilometers (130 miles), with tremors reaching as far as the southern city of Christchurch.
No injuries or casualties have been reported.

Millions more Americans can get a Covid-19 booster and choose another company’s vaccine for the next injection, federal health officials said Thursday.

Certain people who received the Pfizer vaccines months ago are already eligible for a booster, and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that specific beneficiaries from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson qualify as well. And in a major change, the agency is allowing the flexibility to “mix and match” that extra dose regardless of the type of people getting first.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had already authorized such an expansion of the nation’s beef up campaign on Wednesday, and it was also endorsed Thursday by a CDC advisory panel. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky had the final say on who gets the extra doses.

“These last 20 months have taught us many things, but above all to be humble,” he told the panel. “We are constantly learning about this virus, increasing the evidence base and accumulating more data.”

There are still restrictions on who qualifies and when for a booster. Beginning six months after their last Pfizer or Moderna vaccination, individuals are urged to receive a booster if they are 65 or older, a nursing home resident or at least 50, and are at increased risk of serious illness due to health problems. Boosters were also allowed, but not recommended, for adults of any age at increased risk of infection due to health problems or their jobs or living conditions. That includes healthcare workers, teachers, and people in prisons or homeless shelters.

The Moderna booster will come at half the dose of the original two injections.

For recipients of the single-shot J&J vaccine, a Covid-19 booster is recommended for everyone at least two months after vaccination. This is because the J&J vaccine has not been shown to be as protective as the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer options.

The CDC panel did not explicitly recommend that no one get a different brand than they originally had, but it left the option open, saying only that a booster of some sort was recommended. And some of the advisers said they would prefer that J&J recipients receive a competition boost, citing preliminary data from an ongoing government study that suggested a larger increase in virus-fighting antibodies from that combination.

“We’re in a different place in the pandemic than we were before” when supply constraints meant that people had to take whatever opportunity was offered, said CDC adviser Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of the Vanderbilt University.

She said it was “invaluable” to be able to choose a different type of booster if, for example, someone might be at risk for a rare side effect from a specific vaccine.

About two-thirds of Americans eligible for Covid-19 injections are fully vaccinated, and the government says the priority remains to receive the first injections for the unvaccinated. While health authorities hope the boosters will bolster waning immunity against milder coronavirus infections, all vaccines still offer strong protection against hospitalizations and death, even as the extra-contagious delta variant burned across the country. .

And CDC advisers debated whether people who didn’t really need boosters could get them, especially young, otherwise healthy adults whose only qualification was their job.

Dr. Sarah Long, Drexel University, expressed concern about the possibility of such people suffering rare but serious side effects from another dose if they were already adequately protected.

“I have my own concerns that we seem to be recommending vaccines for people who I think don’t need them,” added Dr. Beth Bell of the University of Washington.

But he stressed that vaccines work and that following through on recommendations makes sense in the interests of being clear and allowing flexibility when it comes to boosters.

Despite the concerns of some members, the votes of the panels ended up being unanimous.

The vast majority of the nearly 190 million Americans who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have received the Pfizer or Moderna options, while J&J beneficiaries represent only about 15 million.
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