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Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Madrid has revived calls to build a huge gas pipeline between Spain and France dubbed MidCat that would boost Europe’s energy independence from Russia.

What is MidCat?

Initially launched in 2003, the 190-kilometre (120-mile) Midi-Catalonia (MidCat) pipeline would pump gas across the Pyrenees from Hostalric just north of Barcelona to Barbaira in southern France.

Its aim was to transport gas from Algeria through Spain to the rest of the European Union. There are currently only two small gas pipelines linking Spain and France.

But following several years of work, the project was abandoned in 2019 after energy regulators from both countries rejected it amid questions over its environmental impact and profitability.

Why restart it?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the EU has vowed to end its dependence on gas from Russia, which currently supplies nearly 40 percent of the bloc’s gas needs.

A 750-kilometre deepwater pipeline called Medgaz already links gas-rich Algeria with southern Spain.

A second underwater pipeline, called GME links Spain to Algeria via Morocco but Algiers in November shut supply through it due to a diplomatic conflict with Rabat.

Spain also has six terminals for regasifying and storing liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported by sea, the largest network in Europe.

Gas which arrives in Spain by sea and pipeline from Algeria could then be sent on to the rest of Europe though MidCat.

The MidCat pipeline is “crucial” to reduce the EU’s reliance on fossil fuels and “end the Kremlin’s blackmail”, EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Friday in Barcelona in a reference to Russia’s threats to halt its gas supplies to the bloc.

What are the obstacles?

The MidCat pipeline faces several hurdles, starting with its huge price tag estimated in 2018 at 440 million euros ($460 million). It would also take three to four years to complete.

“MidCat cannot be approached as a short-term solution,” France’s ambassador to Spain, Jean-Michel Casa, said during an interview with Barcelona-based daily newspaper La Vanguadia in March.

In addition, there is a lack of connections between France and Germany, the country which is most interested in finding alternatives to Russian gas.

It would be “much simpler to bring gas directly by boat to Germany,” said Thierry Bros, an energy expert at the Science Po university in Paris.

“This would of course require building gas terminals in Germany” but their cost would not be higher than building MidCat, he told AFP.

What support?

Despite the debate over its usefulness, MidCat enjoys significant support, especially in Spain where the authorities are pushing for Brussels to declare the project to be of “community interest”.

France has so far been more reserved but according to Madrid this position is changing.

There is a new “perception of the risks and opportunities” that MidCat brings, Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said, adding Paris “has understood” that Midcat “must” be built.

There are also questions over the financing for the project.

Madrid argues Brussels should foot the bill, not Spanish taxpayers, because the project would benefit the entire EU.

But the European commission has not yet committed to funding it.

Spain also wants the pipeline to be compatible with the transport of green hydrogen, in the hopes this will boost its appeal to Brussels which has made financing renewable energy projects a priority.

The threat of losing his West Bank land has loomed over Ali Mohammed Jabbareen for more than two decades, but he now fears an Israeli court decision may finally force him to go.

Jabbareen, 60, lives in the Palestinian village of Jinba, part of the Masafer Yatta area in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that has been at the centre of a protracted legal battle.

In the early 1980s, the army declared the 3,000 hectare (7,400 acre) area a restricted military area — calling it “Firing Zone 918”.

The army said it was uninhabited, and that anyone claiming to live there was doing so illegally.

The roughly 1,000 Palestinians who live there say Masafer Yatta was their people’s home long before Israeli soldiers set foot in the West Bank.

Israel’s top court ruled against the Palestinians last week, saying they had “failed to prove” their claim to permanent residence before its declaration as a military training zone.

The European Union condemned the decision on Tuesday, saying “the establishment of a firing zone cannot be considered an ‘imperative military reason’ to transfer the population under occupation”.

The ruling made no specific mention of evictions, which are usually followed by demolitions such as one carried out Tuesday at Silwan in annexed east Jerusalem.

But Jabbareen fears they could be carried out with little notice.

“We have no information about the demolitions,” he told AFP as he gazed through the open door of his one-room house at an Israeli military patrol stirring up dust on the unpaved road nearby.

Army units with clearance to destroy his home, “could come at any time”, he said.

– ‘No other place to go’ –

Masafer Yatta residents insist they lived in the area even as control of the West Bank changed hands — from the British mandate period through Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, the year the Israeli occupation began.

The isolated community is in the West Bank’s “Area C” — which is under full Israeli control — and is more than an hour’s drive from the nearest paved road.

Few of the homes are connected to a water supply system or power grid.

Jabbareen built his house into a rocky outcrop in the heart of his farmland. It is currently home to 12 people, who scratch out a living raising sheep and growing vegetables.

“This is my land and they want to expel me from it,” he said.

Some residents of Masafer Yatta were first kicked out in 1999.

The following year, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) helped some of the families challenge their expulsion in court.

They secured a temporary reprieve that remained in force pending the high court’s final decision last week.

Roni Pelli of the ACRI said the verdict was “inherently flawed”.

“The villages in Masafar Yatta are the homes of the petitioners, and they have no other home.”

She insisted expelling them was “illegal,” and backed a long-standing allegation made by Israeli critics that the army uses the military zone designation as a pretext to grab West Bank land.

The Israeli human rights group Akevot, which specialises in state and military archival research, has obtained a document from 1981 in which then agriculture minister and future prime minister Ariel Sharon proposed to set up the firing zone.

Sharon, in the document, says the military zone declaration will ultimately make it easier to expel the Palestinian residents.

– ‘We are the opposite’ –

It was not immediately clear if the residents have any further legal recourse to ward off evictions.

Inside Jabbareen’s house, where blankets are piled high against a wall, he gestured to a nearby Jewish settlement and reflected on what he termed grossly unequal treatment in the West Bank.

Some 475,000 settlers now live in the West Bank in communities considered illegal under international law, alongside some 2.7 million Palestinians.

They are frequently granted permission to build permanent structures with proper electrical connections, while many Palestinians are denied building permits and live under the threat of eviction, he said.

“They build with concrete,” he said of the settlers.

“They are provided with electricity and water. The army is guarding them, but we are just the opposite.”

The number of gun deaths in the United States underwent an “historic” increase in 2020, possibly due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and poverty, according to a report by health authorities published Tuesday. 

The US racked up 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent as compared to 2019, and 24,245 gun suicides (up 1.5 percent), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its report. 

The CDC deemed both the murders and suicides by firearm “persistent and significant US public health concerns.”

The firearm homicide rate stood at 6.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, the highest for more than 25 years. 

The proportion of murders involving guns increased most notably among men, teenagers and young adults, and in African-American and Native American communities, the CDC said.

No region of the United States has been spared, although homicides have risen the most in counties with high poverty rates and large ethnic minority populations.

People also die by suicide more often in poor, non-metropolitan and rural areas.

“One possible explanation is stressors associated with the Covid-19 pandemic that could have played a role” in the rise, said Tom Simons, an expert in violence prevention at the CDC.

“These include changes and disruptions to services and education, social isolation, economic stressors such as job loss, housing instability, and difficulty covering daily expenses,” he told reporters.

The report also notes that the risk of violence is linked to “longstanding systemic inequities and structural racism” in the country.

The report cites tensions between the public and law enforcement, noting the wave of protests in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, spikes in weapons purchases, and a rise in the number of cases of domestic violence.

“Firearm deaths are preventable, not inevitable,” said Debra Houry, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, recommending “a comprehensive approach focused on reducing inequity.”

She cited the “promising” work of street outreach workers in reducing tensions in high-crime neighborhoods, as well as mediation programs set up in some hospitals to help young people wounded in the streets “break the cycle of violence,” and the work of suicide prevention programs. 

Houry also noted the need to address underlying economic factors by offering housing aid or tax credits, and ensuring “livable wages” to lift disadvantaged families out of poverty. 

Another avenue being explored is the role of improving the environment, with the creation of green spaces or the cleaning-up of waste lots. 

“Revitalized vacant lots in communities have been associated with reduced firearm assault, with particular benefits in areas with the highest poverty,” she said.

Paraguayan anti-drug prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was shot dead execution-style Tuesday while honeymooning on a Colombian Caribbean island by attackers who fled by sea, police and his widow said.

Paraguay’s president denounced the crime as a “cowardly murder” and a fellow prosecutor said the modus operandi was reminiscent of “the mafia.”

Pecci, 45, was felled by two shots while relaxing on a beach on the idyllic tourist island of Baru, according to his wife, Paraguayan journalist Claudia Aguilera.

The couple got married on April 30 in the nearby city of Cartagena.

“Two men attacked Marcelo. They came (by sea) in a small boat, or on a jet ski, the truth is I did not see well,” Aguilera told the El Tiempo newspaper.

One of the assailants got out and “without a word he shot Marcelo twice, one (bullet) hit him in the face and another in the back,” she described.

Aguilera, who is pregnant, said her husband of less than two weeks had not received any threats.

The Decameron Hotel, where the couple were staying, said in a statement that “assassins arrived on the beach… and attacked and murdered one of our guests.”

The motive for the killing was not immediately known, but Paraguayan prosecutor Augusto Salas, a colleague of Pecci, said the attack appeared “typical of the (drug) mafia, so that is what I will think until the contrary is proven.”

Colombian police chief Jorge Luis Vargas said five homicide investigators have been dispatched to Baru, and will receive backing from Paraguayan and US experts.

“There is information being collected… that will help us identify those responsible,” Vargas said.

Late Tuesday, Colombian police released a photo of one of the presumed attackers, wearing black Bermuda shorts and a beige Panama hat.

– Paraguay ‘mourns’ –

Colombian President Ivan Duque “denounced” the killing on Twitter and said he had offered condolences to his Paraguayan counterpart Mario Abdo Benitez and vowed “cooperation to find those responsible.”

For his part, Benitez said on Twitter: “The entire Paraguayan nation mourns the cowardly murder of prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in Colombia.

“We condemn this tragic event in the strongest terms, and we redouble our commitment to fighting organized crime,” he added.

Pecci’s office said in a statement steps were being taken “to provide assistance and guarantee the safety of his family.”

Pecci had specialized in organized crime, drug trafficking, money laundering and terror financing.

The US embassy in Paraguay offered its condolences to Pecci’s loved ones and hailed his “commitment, professionalism and dedication to the fight against organized crime.”

– Baby shoes –

Paraguay Attorney General Sandra Quinonez said Pecci had obtained “important convictions” in an 11-year campaign against cross-border and drug crime.

“He just wanted to enjoy his honeymoon in privacy, and that is why he had no security” around him, she said.

“He was a great friend… he had announced to me that his wife was expecting a baby.”

The latest post on Aguilera’s Instagram account Tuesday showed a couple embracing on a beach with a pair of baby shoes in the foreground in what appeared to be a pregnancy announcement.

Other recent photos were of the couple’s wedding and happy moments in Cartagena and Baru.

Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, is contending with a wave of violence despite a 2016 peace deal that disarmed the FARC guerrilla group and ended a near six-decade civil conflict.

Fighting over territory and resources continues in parts of the country between dissident FARC guerrillas, the ELN rebel group, paramilitary forces and drug cartels.

For its part, landlocked Paraguay — nestled between Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina — has become an important launchpad for drugs headed for Europe.

Paraguay and Colombia have recently strengthened their alliance in the fight against organized and cross-border crime.

Food and water stockpiles, generators, toilets, stacks of mattresses and even wood-burning stoves in bunkers deep underground — the Soviets built this Ukrainian steelworks with war in mind.

A sister plant of the Azovstal mill that’s the last redoubt of Ukrainian forces in the port city of Mariupol, the Zaporizhstal factory shows how these Stalin-era sites are designed to defy Russia’s invasion.

“We can stay in the shelters for a long time,” said Zaporizhstal employee Ihor Buhlayev, 20, in his hooded silver safety gear as molten metal flowed and sparked behind him. “I think it will give us the chance to survive.”

Buhlayev’s workplace in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was not taken in Russia’s internationally condemned attack, though the plant had to halt operations as the front drew dangerously closer.

The bunkers underneath the giant Azovstal and Zaporizhstal plants were built in the early 1930s, when the world recovered from one war while plodding towards another, and they are intended to shelter thousands of workers.

Both plants are under Metinvest Holding, which is controlled by Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov.

There are 16 bunkers at the Zaporizhstal works, and the one AFP visited was about 10 metres (about 30 feet) underground and protected by a roughly 10 centimetre-thick blast door.

The long, brightly lit room has rows of wooden benches and is supposed to be able to hold 600 people.

Tanks of water can flush the toilets, emergency food and bottled water are stacked in a storage room, and there are chest-high stacks of firewood for the oil barrel-sized metal stove.

– Another kind of war –

The bunkers under Azovstal sheltered hundreds of civilians, many of whom left the site in an international rescue operation, and still offer refuge for the holdout forces resisting full Russian control of Mariupol.

“God forbid we find ourselves in a situation like our colleagues from Azovstal, metalworkers like us, who ended up staying for so long (in the shelter)… I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Alexander Lotenkov, communications department head, said inside the bunker.

Above that shelter, the roughly 5.5-square-kilometre site has about half the footprint of Azovstal but is still massive and the only way to efficiently get between its units is on a vehicle with wheels.

The size of the site is one thing, but the sheer number of places to hide among rows of buildings and tunnels below the site, as well as observation posts from its tall structures, is another.

But war, in this case, has not been good for business.

Reduced operations have been back up and running since the beginning of April, the same period when the Russians were forced by fierce Ukrainian resistance to retreat from areas around Kyiv.

Some good news came this week with an American announcement to suspend tariffs on Ukraine-made steel, but the situation is still dire.

Ukraine accounts for only about one percent of US steel imports, according to American authorities, who had imposed the 25 percent protective tariff, and logistics is a major challenge for Ukrainian exporters with the usual transport routes shattered by the war.

“We won’t be able to compete with other producers, because their logistic expenses are lower and for us to export to the US we need now to get our production from Zaporizhzhia to Poland,” the site’s general director Alexander Mironenko told AFP.

Steel exports have plunged to a fraction of their pre-war levels and getting back up to speed and to market will be key for the Ukrainian economy.

“It was one of the primary export-oriented industries in Ukraine and around 50 percent of foreign currency income was generated by the metallurgical and mining sectors of Ukraine,” Mironenko added.