World

US President Joe Biden traveled Tuesday to Oklahoma to honor the victims of a 1921 racial massacre in the city of Tulsa, where African American residents are hoping he will hear their call for financial reparations 100 years on.

“I just want him to feel our pain,” said local activist Kristi Williams.

The Democratic leader landed Tuesday afternoon in Tulsa, where he was to mark the centenary by meeting with survivors of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history.

Ahead of his arrival, the White House announced a raft of new national initiatives including billions in federal grants to address racial disparities in wealth, home ownership and small business ownership.

Williams, who is descended from some of the massacre victims, wants Biden to “do us right.”

“It’s been 100 years, and we have been impacted negatively, from housing, economic development, our land has been taken,” she told AFP.

“This country, right now has an opportunity to right this wrong.”

On May 31, 1921, a group of Black men had gone to the Tulsa courthouse to defend a young African American man accused of assaulting a white woman. They found themselves facing a mob of hundreds of furious white people.

Tensions spiked and shots were fired, and the African Americans retreated to their neighborhood, Greenwood.

The next day, at dawn, white men looted and burned the neighborhood, at the time so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street.

In 2001, a commission created to study the tragedy concluded that Tulsa authorities themselves had armed some of the white rioters.

The mayor of Tulsa formally apologized Monday for the city government’s failure to protect the community.

As with the economic losses, the human toll is difficult to estimate, but historians say that as many as 300 African American residents lost their lives, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.

– ‘It hasn’t changed’ –

Expectations were running high ahead of Biden’s arrival in Tulsa.

“Presidents before should have addressed this, attorney generals and city officials should have addressed this, long before,” said Cleo Harris, a local store owner, told AFP.

Dozens of people gathered under light rain ahead of Biden’s arrival, Greenwood locals rubbing shoulders with people come from out of state for the commemorations. 

Khalid Kamau, 44, said he made the journey from Georgia less to mark the massacre than to celebrate what was once “a successful, self sustaining black community.”

“If it existed once, it can exist again,” he said.

In a statement Tuesday, the White House acknowledged that the destruction in Greenwood “was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible.” 

It cited redlining, which locked Black people out of home ownership; federal highways which were built and cut the community off, and chronic disinvestment in Black businesses — moves which have “echoes in countless Black communities across the country.” 

“Because disparities in wealth compound like an interest rate, the disinvestment in Black families in Tulsa and across the country throughout our history is still felt sharply today,” the statement continued.

– Reparations –

In this city in Oklahoma, once a slave-owning state and a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, those disparities are clear.

There are marked inequalities between the northern part of Tulsa, which is predominantly Black, and the south, which is mostly white.

Billie Parker, a 50-year-old African American woman, said Tulsa is the same as when she was growing up there. “It hasn’t changed. We’re still separated.”

She said Black residents are still disadvantaged compared to the city’s white residents. Reparations could, she believes, help Greenwood improve its schools.

Reverend Robert Turner, pastor of the historic Vernon AME Church in Greenwood, has launched a petition in support of reparations for the community.

“I hope this country finally does right about the citizens that they have done wrong for centuries, which is African Americans,” he said.

The 2001 commission had recommended that Greenwood residents receive compensation. But so far, reparations have not been paid.

On April 19, some of the last survivors of the Tulsa massacre testified before Congress and asked that the country recognize their suffering.

Beyond financial compensation, city residents are counting on Biden’s visit to bring more attention to a tragedy that long remained taboo.

Tulsa has also begun to excavate mass graves, where many Black victims of the massacre are buried, in an effort to shed more light on the city’s dark past.

For LaShaundra Haughton, 51, the great-granddaughter of some of the survivors, “it is time to heal, it is time to tell the truth, it is time to bring everything to light.”

The US military will hand over its main Bagram Air Base to Afghan forces in about 20 days, an official said Tuesday, as Washington presses on with withdrawing the last of its troops from the country.

The vast base, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, is the biggest military facility used by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands of troops stationed there during the peak of America’s military involvement in the violence-wracked country.

“I can confirm we will hand over Bagram Air Base,” a US defence official told AFP without specifying when the transfer would take place.

An Afghan security official said the handover was expected in about 20 days and the defence ministry had set up special committees to manage it.

In Washington, the Pentagon indicated that the pace of the withdrawal was picking up. As of Monday, US Central Command estimated it had completed 30-44 percent of the so-called “retrograde” process.

It has shipped the equivalent of 300 loaded C-17 transport planes out of the country.

In April, President Joe Biden set a target of September to remove all the 2,500 US troops and some 16,000 civilian contractors out of the country, aiming to end the US military’s two-decade-old presence.

– Handing over bases –

Bagram base was the centre for nationwide command and air operations for the past two decades.

It also houses a prison that held thousands of Taliban and jihadist inmates over the years.

Washington had already handed over six military bases to Afghan forces before May 1, when it began accelerating the final withdrawal of troops.

Last month it completed the withdrawal from Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan, once the second-largest foreign military base in the country.

The US withdrawal comes despite bloody clashes across the country between the Taliban and Afghan forces.

Peace talks were launched in September in Qatar, but so far have failed to strike any deal to end a war that has killed tens of thousands of people over nearly two decades.

On Tuesday, a group of Afghan government negotiators was headed to Doha in the hope of resuming stalled talks.

“Our team is ready for serious negotiations. There is no military solution to this conflict,” Najia Anwari, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Peace, told AFP, adding that no date had been fixed for resuming the talks.

Fawzia Koofi, one of four women negotiators from the government team, said on Twitter that she hoped for a “meaningful and result based negotiation this time to end the bloodshed and suffering of my people”.

“We need to see more willingness and sincerity in the talks as the few months ahead of us are crucial for Afghanistan and the region.”

Last month the two sides had agreed to speed up the talks, with the Taliban saying the dialogue would begin after the festival of Eid al-Fitr that ended on May 16.

Pope Francis updated the Catholic Church’s criminal code Tuesday, reinforcing penalties for priests who sexually abuse minors, measures long sought by activists against paedophilia.

The most comprehensive revision of the Code of Canon Law in nearly 40 years followed a years-long process that begun under Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, and involved input from canonist and criminal law experts. 

It came after repeated complaints by victims of sexual abuse and others that previous wording within the code was outdated and opaque.

The purpose of the canon’s revision is “restoration of justice, the reform of the offender, and the repair of scandal” Francis wrote in introducing the changes.

Since becoming pope in 2013, the Argentine pontiff has striven to tackle the decades-long sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic priests around the globe, although many activists against paedophilia insist much more needs to be done. 

He convened an unprecedented summit on clerical sex abuse in 2019 while lifting secrecy rules that hindered investigations of abusing priests, among other measures.

In a press conference, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, referred to “very serious episodes of paedophilia” within the Church. 

The revised code, he said, sought to express “the will of the legislator to reaffirm the seriousness of this crime and the attention to be paid to the victims.”

– ‘Offenses against dignity’ –

The new code does not spell out in plain language sexual offences against minors, instead referring to offences against the sixth commandment, which prohibits adultery.

Clergy sexual abuse survivor Marie Collins, one of the original members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors who resigned in 2017 because she was concerned that promised reforms were not being implemented, was scathing.

“Adultery has nothing to do with the abuse of children, it’s completely inappropriate,” she told AFP. 

“Punishment is left very loose and can lead to different outcomes.”

Still, the offences and their punishments are now grouped under a new heading of “Offences against human life, dignity and liberty,” replacing the earlier “Delicts against special obligations.” 

The new code specifies that a priest is to be stripped of his office and punished “with other just penalties” if he “commits an offence against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue with a minor.”

Previously, the text specified that a cleric who “persists with scandal in another external sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished by a suspension,” with extra penalties if the crime persists.

In a new addition, the code states that a priest who grooms or induces a minor “to expose himself or herself pornographically or to take part in pornographic exhibitions” will be similarly punished.

– Need for justice –

Francis wrote that the revision was an attempt to better balance justice and mercy, “which has sometimes been misinterpreted,” leading to a climate of laxity and a hesitation towards punishment within the Church. 

Another aim of the revision, he said, was to reduce the number of penalties left to the discretion of judges, especially in the most serious cases. 

Other technical improvements related to “the right of defence, the statute of limitations for criminal action, a more precise determination of penalties,” added Francis. 

The changes — which include others outside the scope of sexual abuse — will take effect in December. 

Despite recent measures to root out abuse by priests and increase transparency, some victims say the Vatican still has not gone far enough to protect children even in the West, where intense media coverage of paedophile priests has led to greater scrutiny of church practices.

Another new offence included in the revised canon is attempting to ordain women, an act punishable by excommunication, a pushback against the Church’s more progressive members advocating for women to be allowed to become ordained ministers. 

Israeli politicians battling to unseat veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were racing against the clock Tuesday in talks to build a “change” coalition of bitter ideological rivals.

They have until a minute before midnight (2059 GMT) Wednesday to cobble together an administration that would end 12 straight years of rule by the hawkish heavyweight, Israel’s longest-ruling premier.

The high-stakes push is led by former TV presenter Yair Lapid, a secular centrist, who on Sunday won the crucial support of right-wing religious nationalist Naftali Bennett, a tech multi-millionaire.

“The coalition negotiation team sat all night and made progress toward creating a unity government,” a Bennett spokesman said in a statement, adding that further talks were scheduled for the afternoon.

But to reach a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, their unlikely alliance would also have to include other left and right-wing parties — and would probably need the support of Arab-Israeli politicians.

That would result in a government riven by deep ideological differences on flashpoint issues such as Jewish settlements in the Israel-occupied West Bank and the role of religion in politics.

Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, was tasked with forming a government by President Reuven Rivlin after Netanyahu again failed to win a majority following Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in less than two years.

Lapid has reportedly agreed to allow Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, to serve first as a rotating prime minister in a power-sharing agreement, before taking over half way through their term.

– ‘Greater goal’ –

Israel’s latest political turmoil adds to the woes of Netanyahu, who is on trial for criminal charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust while in office — accusations he denies.

It also follows the latest flare-up of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which ended after 11 days of deadly violence with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on May 21.

Netanyahu, who served an earlier three-year term in the 1990s, had warned on Sunday of “a left-wing government dangerous to the state of Israel”.

The premier, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has developed a reputation as a wily political operator, was scrambling to scupper the new alliance.

Likud’s lawyers tried to hobble the emerging coalition by challenging Bennett’s right to serve first as prime minister, given that it was Lapid who was charged with forming the government.

But the legal adviser to Israel’s president knocked down the challenge.

Opponents of the possible alternative government meanwhile accused Bennett and his right-wing partners of betraying their voters.

Spokesmen for both Lapid and Bennett confirmed to AFP that the two have received additional security protection.

Lapid said Monday that obstacles remained to build the coalition, but added: “That’s our first test — to see if we can find smart compromises in the coming days to achieve the greater goal.”

In order to build the anti-Netanyahu bloc, Lapid must sign individual agreements with seven parties, whose members would then vote in parliament to confirm their coalition.

They include the hawkish New Hope party of Netanyahu’s former ally Gideon Saar and right-wing secular nationalist Avigdor Lieberman’s pro-settlement Yisrael Beitenu party.

The centrist Blue and White party of Defence Minister Benny Gantz, the historically powerful centre-left Labor party and the dovish Meretz party would also join.

– Arab Israeli support? –

If all those parties indeed sign on, the emerging alliance still needs the backing of four more lawmakers.

For that, Lapid is counting on parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, which have not yet announced their intentions.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamic conservative Raam party, which has four seats, has generally voiced openness to any arrangement that improves living conditions for Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority of Palestinian descent.

Political analyst Afif Abu Much said Tuesday that Abbas would not pursue ministerial posts, but wanted chairmanship of two parliament committees and budgets for Arab communities.

He also aimed to revoke a law that has hardened penalties for illegal construction, which is seen to impact Arab communities disproportionately.

“They don’t want to be part of the government,” Abu Much told AFP. “What they want is to be the address of the Arab people in Israel.”

Political scientist Jonathan Rynhold warned that it would be unwise at this point to write off Netanyahu, “the best card player by miles”.

If Lapid fails to muster a majority, and lawmakers cannot agree on another candidate for prime minister, Israelis will return, yet again, to the polls.

Abbas told reporters Tuesday that negotiations appeared to be heading “in a good direction”.

But, he said: “until it’s finished, nothing is finished.”

Farmers in western France are doubling down on an unusual crop: breeding millions of tiny predatory bugs and wasps to protect tomato plants without resorting to the insecticides that consumers are shunning.

“Here, we’re in one of the greenhouses for a bug that’s called the macrolophus,” says Pierre-Yves Jestin, as clouds of the pale green insects swarm around his hands.

Jestin is president of Saveol, the Brittany cooperative that is France’s largest tomato producer, cranking out 74,000 tons a year.

For several years the cooperative has promoted “pesticide-free” harvests in response to growing concerns about the impact of harsh chemicals on humans and the environment.

It does so thanks to its own bug farm, launched in 1983, that now stretches across 4,500 square metres (just over one acre) outside Brest, where the tip of Brittany juts out into the Atlantic.

Plans are in the works to add 1,200 square metres more this year, producing macrolophus as well as tiny wasps that feed on common tomato pests such as whiteflies and aphids.

Every week the insects are packed up in plastic boxes and shipped to the cooperative’s 126 growers.

“This new extension will allow us to increase our breeding of macrolophus, which are increasingly in demand for the pesticide-free range,” said Roselyne Souriau, head of the insect programme at Saveol — whose name means ‘sunrise’ in the local Breton language.

“At the same time, it will let us develop a new range — at least we hope — better suited to strawberries, with parasitic micro-wasps that feed on aphids,” she said.

– ‘A third way’ –

Because the vast majority of Brittany’s tomatoes are grown in greenhouses, they do not qualify for an organic label, which requires plants to be grown under natural conditions in the ground.

That prompted Saveol to team up with two other Brittany cooperatives, Sica and Solarenn, two years ago to promote their pesticide-free offerings.

“In 2020, we didn’t use any chemical treatments at all,” said Francois Pouliquen, whose eight hectares at the Saveur d’Iroise farm are part of the Saveol network.

“Consumers are now looking to eat healthily,” he said. “Organic produce exists of course, but it isn’t always within reach for people on a budget.”

“Pesticide-free is an alternative, a third way, for mass production that is still healthy,” he said.

Overall, use of predatory insects by French farmers has soared, with regulators approving 330 species as plant pest treatments in the first quarter of this year, up from 257 in 2015, according to the agriculture ministry.

At Saveol’s insect farm, the predatory bugs feast on moth eggs spread over hundreds of tobacco plants, which are in the same family as tomatoes and eggplants.

The broad leaves make it easy when workers cut the tops off the plants and shake the insects into a giant metal funnel for packing.

Some 10 million macrolophus and 130 million micro-wasps are produced each year, and Saveol claims it is the only growers’ cooperative in Europe with its own insect-raising facility.

Italians were outraged Tuesday after a notorious mob boss was released from prison, where he served 25 years for a string of grim crimes, including assassinating a famous prosecutor and dissolving a boy’s body in acid.

Giovanni Brusca, 64, was released Monday from Rome’s Rebibbia prison after serving a 25-year sentence, during which he became a state’s witness. He will now serve four years of probation.

“Brusca freed — the cruellest boss,” wrote La Repubblica daily.

But while some politicians and relatives of his victims denounced his release, others defended it given his cooperation with the authorities.

Brusca was a key figure within the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia group.

In 1992, he detonated the bomb that killed Giovanni Falcone, Italy’s legendary prosecuting magistrate who dedicated his career to overthrowing the mafia.

Falcone’s wife and three bodyguards were also killed in the attack after their car drove over a section of highway outside Palermo packed with 400 kilos (882 pounds) of explosives, detonated by Brusca nearby. 

The wife of one of the bodyguards killed, Tina Montinaro, told Repubblica she was “indignant” at Brusca’s release.

“The state is against us — after 29 years we still don’t know the truth about the massacre and Giovanni Brusca, the man who destroyed my family, is free,” Montinaro said.  

Falcone’s sister, Maria, told the paper she was distressed by the news. But she added: “It’s the law, a law moreover wanted by my brother and that should be respected.”

– Dissolved in acid –

Brusca, who went by the nickname ‘the Pig’, was one of the most loyal operators of the head of Cosa Nostra, Salvatore “Toto” Riina.

Arrested in 1996, he decided to cooperate with the authorities, admitting to hundreds of murders, Italian news media reported.

One of the most grisly was the killing of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a mafia turncoat, who was kidnapped in 1993 in retaliation for his father having collaborated with authorities. 

After being held in a house for over two years in squalid conditions, the boy was strangled and his body thrown into acid in what police have called “one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Cosa Nostra”. 

“The law cannot be the same for these people,” the boy’s father Santino told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Brusca does not deserve anything.”

“These people are not human,” he added, recalling how Brusca “as well as my son, also killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman” who had nothing to do with the mafia, “after torturing her boyfriend”.

He hoped he would never meet him in the street, he added. “I don’t know what might happen.”

Di Matteo himself still lives in a secret location for fear of mafia retribution.

There were protests, too, from both sides of Italy’s political divide.

The leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, described the news as a “punch in the stomach that leaves one speechless”.

Far-right leader Matteo Salvini called Brusca a “wild beast” who “cannot get out of prison”.

– ‘No scandal’ –

But Pietro Grasso, a leftist politician and former Senate president who was once on the killer’s hit-list, saw “no scandal”.

Grasso served as a magistrate and was Italy’s chief anti-mafia prosecutor before switching to politics in 2013.

He said he had little sympathy for Brusca, especially since the assassin and his aides had plotted to kill him and kidnap his son. 

But he insisted that it was right to offer jail term reductions to mobsters who turn state informants.

“The indignation of many politicians who understand very little about the penal code and the fight against the mafia scares me,” he wrote on Facebook.

“We need heavy jail term reductions for those who help the state, and the prospect of life imprisonment, with no reductions, for those who do not cooperate,” Grasso said.

A Spanish judge on Tuesday declined to order that the leader of Western Sahara’s movement, who is under investigation in Spain for torture and genocide, be taken into custody.

Brahim Ghali, who heads the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, denied the allegations against him as he testified by video conference from a hospital in northern Spain where he is recovering from a severe case of Covid-19.

Spain says he was allowed into the country in April for treatment as a humanitarian gesture but the move has angered Morocco, triggering a major diplomatic spat between Rabat and Madrid.

Ghali is facing two investigations in Spain following accusations of genocide, murder, torture and disappearances made against him by a Sahrawi activist and a Spain-based Western Sahara rights group.

During the closed-door hearing at the National Court in Madrid, the judge turned down a request from the complainants for Ghali to be taken into custody and turn over his passport, saying he posed no flight risk.

Ghali, who is also the president of the Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic, a self-declared state since 1976, was only asked to provide an address and a telephone number in Spain where he could be reached.

The decision means there is nothing to stop Ghali from leaving Spain, a scenario feared by Rabat and the complainants who want him to face trial in the country.

After he completes his investigation, the judge will decide whether to dismiss the lawsuits against Ghali or charge the Polisario leader.

Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said Ghali could “return to his country of origin, where he came from” once he recovers his health.

– Algerian plane returns –

Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial reported that an Algerian government plane had departed on Tuesday morning for Logrono to pick up Ghali but then turned backed.

A “state” jet flying from Algeria to the Spanish city of Logrono where Ghali is hospitalised turned back on instructions from the Spanish military, a spokesman for civil air authority Enaire told AFP.

But Montero said she had “no knowledge of any flight which was sent back or stopped.”

Citing diplomatic sources, Spain’s El Pais newspaper said Ghali was “critically ill” when he arrived on a medicalised Algerian government plane on April 18, bearing a diplomatic passport.  

It said he was admitted to the hospital under a false name for “security reasons”.

Rabat, which considers Ghali to be a “war criminal”, has demanded a “transparent investigation” into Ghali’s arrival in Spain with what it said was a forged passport. 

His Algeria-backed Polisario Front has long fought for the independence of Western Sahara, a desert region bigger than Britain which was a Spanish colony until 1975. 

Morocco controls 80 percent of the territory, while the rest — an area bordering Mauritania that is almost totally landlocked — is run by the Polisario Front. 

– ‘Totally false’ –

One of the lawsuits relates to allegations of torture at Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, a town in western Algeria.

The accusations were made in 2020 by Sahrawi activist Fadel Breika, who also holds Spanish nationality. 

While a Spanish court initially rejected the complaint, it agreed to reopen the case earlier this year.

“The tortures are confirmed by thousands of witnesses,” said Breika’s lawyer, Maria Jose Malagon Ruiz del Valle.

The second investigation relates to allegations of genocide, murder, terrorism, torture and disappearances made in 2007 by the Sahrawi Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADEDH) which is based in Spain.

Ghali’s lawyer, Manuel Olle, said the accusations against his client “are totally false” and are “politically motivated to target the credibility of the Sahrawi people”.

He also suggested that Rabat was behind the lawsuits against Ghali in Spain.

The UN refers to Western Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory”.

After 16 years of war, Rabat and the Polisario signed a ceasefire in 1991, but a UN-backed referendum on self-determination has been repeatedly postponed.

Morocco is willing to offer it within Morocco but not independence.

Israeli politicians battling to unseat veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were racing against the clock Tuesday in talks to build a “change” coalition of bitter ideological rivals.

They have until a minute before midnight (2059 GMT) Wednesday to cobble together an administration that end 12 straight years of rule by the hawkish heavyweight, Israel’s longest-ruling premier.

The high-stakes push is led by former TV presenter Yair Lapid, a secular centrist, who on Sunday won the crucial support of right-wing religious nationalist Naftali Bennett, a tech multi-millionaire.

“The coalition negotiation team sat all night and made progress toward creating a unity government,” a Bennett spokesman said in a statement, adding that further talks were scheduled for the afternoon.

But to reach a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, their unlikely alliance would also have to include other left and right-wing parties — and would probably need the support of Arab-Israeli politicians.

That would result in a government riven by deep ideological differences on flashpoint issues such as Jewish settlements in the Israel-occupied West Bank and the role of religion in politics.

Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, was tasked with forming a government by President Reuven Rivlin after Netanyahu again failed to win a majority following Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in less than two years.

Lapid has reportedly agreed to allow Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, to serve first as a rotating prime minister in a power-sharing agreement, before taking over half way through their term.

– ‘Greater goal’ –

Israel’s latest political turmoil adds to the woes of Netanyahu, who is on trial for criminal charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust while in office — accusations he denies.

It also follows the latest flare-up of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which ended after 11 days of deadly violence with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on May 21.

Netanyahu, who served an earlier three-year term in the 1990s, had warned on Sunday of “a left-wing government dangerous to the state of Israel”.

The premier, who heads the right-wing Likud party and has developed a reputation as a wily political operator, was scrambling to scupper the new alliance.

Likud’s lawyers tried to hobble the emerging coalition by challenging Bennett’s right to serve first as prime minister, given that it was Lapid who was charged with forming the government.

But the legal adviser to Israel’s president knocked down the challenge.

Opponents of the possible alternative government meanwhile accused Bennett and his right-wing partners of betraying their voters.

Spokesmen for both Lapid and Bennett confirmed to AFP that the two have received additional security protection.

Lapid said Monday that obstacles remained to build the coalition, but added: “That’s our first test — to see if we can find smart compromises in the coming days to achieve the greater goal.”

In order to build the anti-Netanyahu bloc, Lapid must sign individual agreements with seven parties, whose members would then vote in parliament to confirm their coalition.

They include the hawkish New Hope party of Netanyahu’s former ally Gideon Saar and right-wing secular nationalist Avigdor Lieberman’s pro-settlement Yisrael Beitenu party.

The centrist Blue and White party of Defence Minister Benny Gantz, the historically powerful centre-left Labor party and the dovish Meretz party would also join.

– Arab Israeli support? –

If all those parties indeed sign on, the emerging alliance still needs the backing of four more lawmakers.

For that, Lapid is counting on parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, which have not yet announced their intentions.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamic conservative Raam party, which has four seats, has generally voiced openness to any arrangement that improves living conditions for Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority of Palestinian descent.

Political analyst Afif Abu Much said Tuesday that Abbas would not pursue ministerial posts, but wanted chairmanship of two parliament committees and budgets for Arab communities.

He also aimed to revoke a law that has hardened penalties for illegal construction, which is seen to impact Arab communities disproportionately.

“They don’t want to be part of the government,” Abu Much told AFP. “What they want is to be the address of the Arab people in Israel.”

Political scientist Jonathan Rynhold warned that it would be unwise at this point to write off Netanyahu, “the best card player by miles”.

If Lapid fails to muster a majority, and lawmakers cannot agree on another candidate for prime minister, Israelis will return, yet again, to the polls.

Abbas told reporters Tuesday that negotiations appeared to be heading “in a good direction”.

But, he said: “until it’s finished, nothing is finished.”

Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), announced his resignation Tuesday after weeks of infighting and tension with party colleague and former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.

“My own journey at the helm of the FPOe is ending today,” Hofer said in an FPOe press release but clarified that he will keep his position as one of the deputy presidents of parliament until the next general election, currently scheduled for 2024.

Hofer has a mild-mannered public image and was seen as representing a more moderate wing within the anti-migration FPOe, which has been known to use Islamophobic rhetoric and imagery.

Hofer had for months been at loggerheads with Kickl, the party’s longterm ideologue who has been behind some of the FPOe’s most trenchant campaigns.

Hofer has walked with a cane since a 2003 paraglider accident and announced his resignation following three weeks of treatment for his old injuries at a physical rehabilitation centre.

When the tabloid Oesterreich asked Hofer Tuesday if his resignation was also partially in response to differences of opinion with Kickl, he replied: “Yes, of course. I won’t be told every day that I am out of place.” 

The two politicians had differing approaches to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hofer was notable in the FPOe caucus for wearing the FFP2 face mask required in parliament, while Kickl made a point of not doing so and made fiery addresses to anti-lockdown demonstrations.

In 2016 Hofer narrowly failed in his bid to become the first far-right president of an EU member state, losing to Alexander Van der Bellen by some 31,000 votes.

He took over as head of the party in 2019 when Heinz-Christian Strache, then Austria’s Vice Chancellor, was forced to resign after secretly recorded footage in a luxury villa in Ibiza showed him offering a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch state contracts in exchange for campaign help for the FPOe. 

The so-called “Ibiza-gate” scandal brought down the first coalition headed by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, an alliance of his centre-right People’s Party (OeVP) and the FPOe.

“The time after Ibiza wasn’t easy,” Hofer said in his statement, adding that it had been “a difficult job to build the party back up again” after the coalition collapsed.

“In the last few months it has been possible to stabilise the party,” he said, pointing to improved recent performance in the polls where it has scored as high as 20 percent.

The party won just over 16 percent in the last national elections in 2019.

A fire aboard a ship that triggered Sri Lanka’s worst-ever marine ecological disaster was finally extinguished Tuesday after a 13-day international operation, the navy said.

The near two-week inferno prompted a mammoth clean-up operation as huge volumes of microplastic granules from the Singapore-registered ship’s containers inundated 80 kilometres (50 miles) of beach.

The unprecedented pollution forced a fishing ban and saw thousands of troops deployed to scoop tonnes of burnt plastic from beaches.

Experts from Dutch salvage company SMIT boarded the MV X-Press Pearl Tuesday and reported massive flooding of the engine rooms.

Sri Lankan navy divers were also deployed to examine the hull below the waterline to check for any cracks, officials said. 

The fire was first reported on May 20 as the ship was about to enter Colombo port. 

The blaze was initially contained, but strong monsoon winds fanned the fire, forcing the crew to evacuate on May 25.

Navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said the stern of the 186-metre (610-feet) long container carrier had gone down by about a metre because of the flooding.

“It is not unusual for the vessel to trim by aft (tilt to the rear) when water sprayed on deck settles in the engine room,” Silva told AFP.

He said the spraying of water was stopped to prevent further flooding, but some areas of the ship were still too hot to carry out a complete examination of the vessel.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered officials to move the vessel from its anchorage near the port and move it to deeper waters in a bid to minimise further coastal damage, his office said.

“Representatives from a number of fields, including shipping and the environment, pointed out that the vessel was at risk of sinking,” the president’s office said.

“Their suggestion, then, was to take the vessel to the deep seas to minimise possible damage to the marine environment.”

Sri Lankan authorities fear an even greater disaster should the 278 tonnes of bunker oil and 50 tonnes of gasoil in the ship’s fuel tanks leak into the Indian Ocean.

– ‘Worst ever’ pollution –

Sri Lanka’s navy was joined by India’s coastguard and tugs brought in by SMIT to battle the flames, which destroyed most of the nearly 1,500 containers onboard.

The three-month-old ship had 25 tonnes of nitric acid and other chemicals as well as 28 containers of plastic raw material onboard, much of which fell into the sea.

Marine Environment Protection Authority chief Dharshani Lahandapura said they were still assessing the ecological damage, but believed it was the “worst ever in my lifetime”.

President Rajapaksa asked Australia on Monday to help with assessing the ecological damage to the island, one of the most bio-diverse countries in South Asia, his office said.

The MEPA chairman Lahandapura said the crew apparently knew of a nitric acid leak on May 11, long before the vessel entered Sri Lankan water en route to Malaysia and Singapore.

Sri Lanka Monday launched a criminal investigation into the fire and the marine pollution.

Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said the captain and chief engineer, both Russian nationals, had been questioned for 14 hours since Monday.

The third officer, an Indian national, was also questioned at length, he said, adding that a court had ordered Tuesday to impound the passports of all three pending investigations.

The ship was heading to Colombo from Gujarat, India when the blaze started, having previously visited Qatar and Dubai where the containers of nitric acid had been loaded.

Sri Lankan authorities suspect a leak of that acid triggered the fire.