A three-judge panel will decide on Wednesday whether four suspects charged and arrested in a fraud scandal rocking the European Parliament will stay in detention during the investigation or can be set free.

The investigation, during which Belgian police discovered huge stacks of cash as they raided the homes and offices of EU lawmakers, parliamentary assistants and NGO campaigners has triggered one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit Brussels.

Prosecutors suspect Greek MEP Eva Kaili and three others accepted bribes from World Cup host Qatar in a bid to influence EU policymaking.

Kaili’s lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos told Reuters on Tuesday that his client was innocent and Qatari officials have also denied any wrongdoing.

The case has sent shockwaves through the European Parliament and could badly dent its efforts to present itself as a sound moral compass that takes government in Europe and beyond to task on ethics and human rights.

Kaili, her partner Francesco Giorgi, who is a parliamentary assistant, Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, the secretary-general of a rule of law campaign group, and Pier Antonio Panzeri, an ex-MEP and founder of another non-profit campaign group, have all been in custody since Friday.

They will appear before the judge at around 11:40 (1040 GMT) and the hearings are set to take about an hour or two, a judicial source said.

Reuters could not reach Giorgi, Figa-Talamanca and Panzeri or their lawyers for comment. Non-profit organisations they work with did not respond to emailed requests seeking comment.

Any release would likely be conditional on their not contacting their co-accused and not leaving Belgium, the source said.

The European Parliament on Tuesday voted to strip Kaili, a 44-year old Greek Socialist MEP, of her vice presidency role. Lawmakers have called her to quit the assembly altogether.

The European Parliament’s president Roberta Metsola said the assembly was carrying out internal investigations and would tighten lobbying rules and ensure a better oversight of contacts between MEPs and foreign governments.

Belgian prosecutors said they had suspected for more than four months that a Gulf state was trying to buy influence in Brussels. Although no state was publicly named by prosecutors, a source with knowledge of the case said it was Qatar.

($1 = 0.9400 euros)

Pope Francis on Wednesday urged people to spend less on Christmas celebrations and gifts this year and send the difference to Ukrainians to help them get through the hunger and cold of winter.

The pope, who has been making appeals for Ukraine at nearly every public event since Russia invaded its neighbour in February, made the unscripted plea at the end of his weekly general audience.

“Brothers and sisters, I tell you, there is so much suffering in Ukraine, so much, so much,” he said, adding that he wanted to draw attention to the particular problems Ukrainians will bear in the coming months.

“It is beautiful to celebrate Christmas, but let us lower the level of Christmas spending. Let’s have a more humble Christmas, with more humble gifts, and send what we save to the Ukrainian people, who need it,” he said, prompting several rounds of applause in the audience hall.

“They are suffering so much, they are going hungry, they feel the cold and many are dying because there are not enough doctors and nurses available,” he said.

He spoke as millions of civilians enduring Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two have had to contend with cuts to power, heat and water caused by Russian attacks on infrastructure as sub-zero temperatures take hold.

“Let’s not forget. Christmas, yes. In peace with the Lord, yes. But with Ukrainians in our hearts. Let’s make this concrete gesture for them,” he said.

Francis spoke on the same day the Ukrainian national church in Rome, Santa Sofia, issued a new appeal to Italians to donate clothing and medicine that volunteers have been taking to Ukraine by the truck load since March.

A small boat carrying around 40 migrants has sunk off the southeastern coast of England in freezing temperatures, killing some of those on board, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

Britain’s government and emergency officials confirmed that an incident was ongoing, with lifeboats, helicopters and rescue teams working with the French and British navies to respond to an event that occurred at around 3:40 a.m.

British radio station LBC reported that 43 people had been rescued, with “a small number” having died. Sky News said at least three people had died

“We are aware of an incident in UK waters and all relevant agencies are supporting a coordinated response,” a spokesperson for the government said. “Further details will be provided in due course.”

Temperatures have plunged across Britain in the last week, bringing snow to parts of the country. The temperature was logged at 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) in a nearby town on Wednesday morning.

Despite the freezing temperatures, more than 500 migrants have made the perilous journey in small boats since the weekend alone, with the people traffickers who organise the crossings taking advantage of low winds and calm seas.

They have followed the more than 40,000 who have arrived from France this year, many having made the journey from Afghanistan or Iran to travel across Europe and onto Britain.

In the last year there has also been a significant increase in the number of Albanians crossing the sea, a fact that the government has seized on to say they must take a tougher line against arrivals and remove those who can return to a safe country.

Ambulances and emergency crews gathered on the quayside at the port of Dover to handle Wednesday’s sinking. Sky News said some people had been transferred to a hospital in Ashford, Kent, but it was not known if they were survivors or fatalities.

“I am aware of a distressing incident in the Channel this morning and I am being kept constantly updated while agencies respond and urgently establish the full facts,” Britain’s interior minister Suella Braverman said on Twitter.

“My heartfelt thoughts are with all those involved.”

The new incident occurred a day after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to toughen the laws to stop the small boats crossing the Channel, including legislation to prevent migrants from remaining in the country.

Sunak said the government was sending a message that “enough is enough” and people were “right to feel angry” about repeated failures to tackle the issue.

Polls have shown that the government’s inability to halt the arrival of often young men via small boats is a major frustration for many voters, especially after the country voted to leave the European Union so it could better control its own borders.

The government has said that a tougher line is also needed to deter people from risking their lives, and breaking the business model of people traffickers who arrange the journeys at great cost.

Data compiled by the Missing Migrants Project showed 205 migrants had been recorded dead or missing in the English Channel since 2014.

In the worst recorded accident of its kind in the Channel, 27 people died while attempting to cross the sea in an inflatable dinghy in November 2021.

The Philippines’ defence chief on Wednesday said the reported presence of dozens of Chinese vessels in disputed waters in the South China Sea was an “unacceptable” action that violates the country’s sovereignty.

“The president’s order to the department is clear – we will not give up a single square inch of Philippine territory,” Jose Faustino, the officer-in-charge at the Department of National Defense said in a statement.

He added there was “great concern” over the “reported swarming of Chinese vessels in Iroquois Reef and Sabina Shoal in the West Philippine Sea.” Manila refers to the part of the South China Sea that it claims as the West Philippine Sea.

Faustino’s remarks follow a report last week in the Philippine Daily Inquirer in which a Philippine military commander confirmed the presence of Chinese vessels believed to be manned by militias in the reef and shoal since early this year.

“Our lines remain open to dialogue,” Faustino said. “However, we maintain that activities which violate our sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction, and undermine the peace and stability of the region, are unacceptable.”

The Philippines had won a landmark arbitration case in 2016, which invalidated Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea where about $3 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes annually.

The ruling, which China refused to recognise, states that the Philippines has sovereign rights to exploit energy reserves inside its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, where both Iroquois Reef and Sabina Shoal are located.

Iroquois is 127 nautical miles from the Philippine island of Palawan in the disputed waters, which U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris visited last month to reiterate Washington’s defence commitments to Manila and its support for the 2016 arbitration ruling.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese embassy in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr will go to Beijing next month for a state visit.

---

Source link

The post Russians hit Kherson region 42 times in past day, killing a civilian appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The chief of Israel’s armed forces on Wednesday claimed credit for a recent air strike on a convoy that had entered Syria from Iraq, saying the target was a truck carrying weaponry.

Though he did not give a date for the event, describing it only has having taken place “several weeks ago”, Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi appeared to be alluding to a Nov. 8 attack that Iraqi officials at the time said destroyed two fuel trucks.

Were it not for Israeli intelligence, Kohavi told a conference hosted by Reichman University, “we might not have known that among the 25 trucks (in the convoy), that was the truck – truck number eight – that was the truck with the arms”.

“There too, the pilots had to be sent. They had to know how to evade the ground-to-air missiles,” he added, hinting that piloted jets were used for the distant mission. Iraqi officials had described the Nov. 8 strike as the work of a drone.

For almost a decade, Israel has been carrying out air strikes against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in next-door Syria. Israeli officials have rarely acknowledged responsibility for specific operations.

A regional official aligned with Iran said two Syrian nationals were killed in the Nov. 8 air strike. Officials at the Iraq-Syria border were unaware of any Iranian casualties.

Ukrainian forces shot down 13 Russian drones over the capital Kyiv on Wednesday and two administrative buildings were damaged, officials said, as Washington considered sending its advanced Patriot air defence system to Ukraine.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Iranian-made Shahed drones were shot down and that there were explosions in the central Shevchenkivskyi district. Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv’s city military administration, said 13 drones were destroyed.

One attack in a residential area appeared to have ripped through a chunk of the roof of a walled-off brick building, a Reuters witness said. It was unclear what the building was used for.

Some of the windows of nearby residential buildings had been smashed. Bits of the roof were strewn in the snow along with bricks and other debris. Shocked residents, wrapped up against the cold, inspected the damage.

They said no one appeared to have been wounded.

The white tail of a drone could be seen in the wreckage. It had M529 Geran-2 written on it and a handwritten message “For Ryazan!!!”, an apparent reference to a Ukrainian attack on a military air base deep inside Russia earlier this month.

Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said the attack was deliberately timed for when it was dark to make it harder to shoot the drones down, but that Ukrainian air defence systems had been effective.

“The air defences worked well.” he said. “Thirteen (drones) were shot down.”

“Well done, I am proud,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a brief video message, praising the air defence systems which he said appeared to have shot down all the drones.

Zhenya, 38, who lives right next to one of the sites that was hit, said he was awoken by a powerful explosion.

“I was asleep and was woken up by a big loud blast…I didn’t understand at first – I heard it when I was dreaming. Then I didn’t know what to do… I went out on the street because I thought that my building had been hit.”

Ukraine has already received air defence systems from the West, including from the United States. The Patriot is considered one of the most advanced.

In Washington, officials told Reuters an announcement on a decision on providing the system could come as soon as Thursday. The Patriot is usually in short supply, with allies around the world vying for it.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned NATO against equipping Kyiv with Patriot missile defences, and it is likely the Kremlin will view such a move as an escalation.

The Patriot system would help Ukraine defend against waves of Russian missile and drone attacks that have pounded the country’s energy infrastructure.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces morning report highlighted the need for air defence systems throughout the country.

It said in the past 24 hours in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions “the enemy launched 1 air and 11 missile strikes, 3 of them on the civilian infrastructure…(and) launched more than 60 attacks from multiple rocket launchers”.

Gaining Patriot air defence capability would be “very, very significant” for the Kyiv government, said Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one-time leader of Ukraine policy at the White House.

“These are going to be quite capable of dealing with a lot of different challenges the Ukrainians have, especially if the Russians bring in short-range ballistic missiles” from Iran.

The Pentagon declined comment. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

Kyiv held high-level military talks on Tuesday with Washington, Zelenskiy’s office said. The United States has given Ukraine $19.3 billion in military assistance since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

Millions of civilians enduring Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two have had to contend with cuts to power, heat and water as sub-zero temperatures take hold.

In Paris, about 70 countries and institutions pledged just over 1 billion euros ($1.05 billion) to help maintain Ukraine’s water, food, energy, health and transport in face of Russia’s attacks.

Sergey Kovalenko, the head of the YASNO power company, said on Facebook that repairs continued on the electricity grid but that Kyiv still only had two-thirds of the power it needed.

In a video speech to New Zealand’s parliament on Wednesday, Zelenskiy said the environmental harm from Russia’s war will affect millions of people for years.

Russian attacks have contaminated the country’s oceans and 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of forest, he said.

“Dozens of rivers are polluted, hundreds of coal mines are flooded, dozens of the most dangerous enterprises, including chemical ones, have been destroyed by Russian strikes,” he said, according to translation provided by the parliament.

There are no peace talks under way to end the conflict that began on Feb. 24, which Moscow describes as a “special military operation” against security threats posed by its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies call it an unprovoked, imperialist land grab.

Russia on Tuesday dismissed a peace proposal from Zelenskiy that would involve a pullout of Russian troops and demanded that his government accept Russia’s annexations.

Related Galleries:

Democracy activist and barrister Chow Hang-tung won an appeal on Wednesday against her conviction and sentence over a “banned” candlelight vigil in Hong Kong last year to commemorate victims of China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

High Court judge Judianna Barnes said in a written judgment that Chow did appeal for the public to assemble at the Victoria Park but it was not illegal, as the legality of the police ban was “not established”.

Chow, 37, was originally convicted by magistrate Amy Chan for inciting others to take part in an unauthorised assembly and sentenced to 15 months in jail in January.

She was at the time found guilty for publishing social media posts and newspaper articles calling for mass participation in the vigil last year.

Police banned the annual Tiananmen vigils last year, citing coronavirus restrictions.

Chow was the former vice-chairperson of the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. She told Reuters in November that the “communist state” can incarcerate people, but it cannot lock up their thinking.

The Alliance, which organised the city’s annual candlelight vigils for the 1989 crackdown in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, disbanded last September after the arrests of its key leaders and executive members.

Although Barnes dropped Chow’s unauthorised assembly charge, she has nearly finished serving the original sentencing. She is remanded in custody for two other national security charges.

She has pleaded not guilty to all the security charges, including inciting subversion and failing to comply with a police order to submit information about the group’s membership, finances and activities.

The national security law, punishing subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorism with up to life in prison, was imposed by Beijing in 2020.

Hong Kong and Chinese governments said the law is necessary to restore stability to Hong Kong after anti-government protests in 2019.

---

When China’s historic protests against COVID curbs erupted in late November, a 30-year-old Chinese man in a flat in northern Italy became one of the most important conduits of information on the unfolding drama via a lone Twitter account.

“Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher”, his Twitter handle, became an Internet sensation as he reposted details and footage of protests from citizens across China – skirting censors on the rapidly unfolding demonstrations – in the most forceful show of dissent since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

From this perch, Li had a unique overview of the sheer scale of public discontent, both against the COVID-19 lockdown measures and the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding curbs on individual liberties and information.

Li is emblematic of a more tech savvy generation of young Chinese, who are using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent China’s Great Firewall to access critical and uncensored content. He is also part of a growing number of overseas-based China critics who share perspectives on China via western media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, which are banned in China.

“I received thousands of messages per day,” he told Reuters from his home in Italy, opting to only be identified by his surname, citing privacy concerns.

He said protests took place nationwide, from cities to small districts. “Things happened far beyond what we have seen, it’s just that much has gone unreported.”

Li, a painter and former art teacher from Anhui province in eastern China, said during the height of the protests he was posting every few minutes, and sometimes only had two hours sleep per night.

Many people sent content to him as they believed that going through Li, rather than posting it directly online themselves, gave them an extra layer of protection, he said. His followers skyrocketed from 140,000 in mid-November to over 860,000 now.

He said protesting in China can be dangerous for ordinary people but the demonstrations showed people could express themselves. “I believe through this crack, this opening, more and more people will come out to express their demands.”

The protests, widely seen as a tipping point to an easing in tight COVID restrictions, largely petered out after police mounted a heavy presence on streets and scooped up some protesters. The vast majority of the protests opposed zero-COVID measures with a smaller number calling for the ouster of Xi or the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese authorities have largely stayed silent about the protests. Earlier this month, in a statement that did not refer to the protests, the Communist Party’s top body in charge of law enforcement agencies said China would crack down on “the infiltration and sabotage activities of hostile forces” and would not tolerate any “illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order”.

Asked about the protests, China’s foreign ministry has said rights and freedoms must be exercised lawfully.

Li told Reuters his Twitter account has put him in a vulnerable position, receiving death threats while his family back home has been questioned by police.

Rights activists say the repercussions of protesting and spreading sensitive information have grown in recent years under Xi’s tenure.

Despite this, he says he is determined to keep going because his account has become a symbol of “freedom of speech”, even though the price of his actions means he can’t return to the country of his birth.

“Right now, I am a person without a future,” he said.

Related Galleries: