World

Children and sick or vulnerable people are expected to be allowed off a German-flagged rescue vessel by Italy on Saturday but other migrants on board may be sent back into international waters despite worsening weather conditions.

The Humanity 1, run by German charity SOS Humanity and carrying 179 migrants, has been requested by Italian authorities to come the port of Catania, its press officer told AFP.

The Humanity 1 is one of four humanitarian ships off Sicily which have requested permission to bring those rescued to safety in Italy as conditions at sea worsen in bad weather.

So far it is the only one that has been ordered to enter the harbour.

But the charity said it has not officially been assigned a port, an omission that leads it to believe not everyone will be allowed off.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Friday that vulnerable people would be let off the Humanity 1, after which the ship would have to “remove” the remaining migrants from Italian waters.

“We fear that authorities will just let (us) disembark emergency cases and children, perhaps minors,” the ship’s press officer Petra Krischok said in a statement.

“We fear for the protection rights of the people who were rescued from distress at sea and all need protection,” she said.

– ‘Illegal’ –

Italy’s new far-right government, which was sworn in last month, has vowed to crack down on boat migrants coming from North Africa to Europe.

On Saturday, Piantedosi said the government would not “back pedal” on its humanitarian obligations, but those who do not “qualify… must leave our territorial waters and been taken care of by the flag state” — a reference to the national flags under which the vessels sail.

Two of the charity boats — the Humanity 1 and Mission Lifeline charity’s Rise Above — sail under the German flag.

The other two — SOS Mediterranee’s Ocean Viking and Doctors Without Borders’ Geo Barents — are registered in Norway.

The four vessels are carrying over 1,000 people saved in the Mediterranean.

The Norwegian foreign ministry said Thursday it bore “no responsibility” for those rescued by private Norwegian-flagged ships in the Mediterranean.

Mirka Schafer, SOS Humanity’s advocacy officer, said the Italian government’s decision to only take some people was “undoubtedly illegal”.

“The survivors fled Libya, where they were exposed to human rights violations such as torture. As refugees, they are clearly in a vulnerable state, some of them visibly traumatised.

“Those rescued must be allowed to go ashore immediately, where their medical and psychological care can be ensured, and they can exercise their right to apply for international protection,” she added.

– ‘Lots of babies’ –

There were “lots of babies” on board the Rise Above which needed to immediately be provided with a safe port, Hermione Poschmann from Mission Lifeline told AFP.

The youngest of the 42 minors it is carrying are just seven and 10-months old.

The ship was off Catania after seeking shelter from bad weather. The 25-metre-long vessel “is a small, fast responder, not made for a long stand-off”, Poschmann said.

The ship usually transfers those it rescues to the bigger charity vessels, but they have no space for them.

A photographer on the Ocean Viking, run by SOS Mediterranee, told AFP conditions at sea “are worsening, and we are expecting more rain”.

“Those on board are not well because they are sea-sick, children included”, he said, adding that there were 57 minors among the 234 migrants.

The Geo Barrents, run by Doctors Without Borders and currently carrying 572 rescued people, said Saturday it had also entered Italian waters to seek shelter “after requesting and receiving permission from the authorities”.

“We have been waiting for more than 10 days for a safe landing place,” mission head Juan Matias Gil said.

About 30,000 flag-waving worshippers attended an open-air mass held by Pope Francis in mainly Muslim Bahrain on Saturday, marked by a small protest by relatives of death row prisoners.

Police briefly detained around 10 people who had protested outside a school where he was due to speak and asked to meet with the pontiff, according to a London-based human rights group.

Hajer Mansoor, mother of jailed activist Sayed Nizar al-Wadaei, held a placard reading: “Tolerance does not exist for us here in Bahrain.”

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said police had detained about 10 people and released them around an hour later.

A government spokesman said: “There have been no arrests or apprehensions related to the papal visit.

“A group of nine individuals were requested to disperse by uniformed police and acceded to the request,” the spokesman said, adding: “No further action is being taken in this regard”.

The pope, who did not stop to talk to the protesters, was met with dances and flowers inside the Sacred Heart school, where he urged children to “embrace the culture of care”.

The pontiff, leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, is on his second visit to the Muslim-ruled Gulf, home to millions of migrant workers including a sizeable Catholic community.

Matricia, a Filipina living in Dammam in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, said she felt “lucky” to be at Saturday morning’s mass.

“I am feeling blessed because we are really lucky to be at this holy event, where the pope will be giving the mass to all of us,” she said.

At the service, some congregants had tears in their eyes as they waited to see the 85-year-old at Bahrain National Stadium, the kingdom’s biggest venue.

Francis, who uses a wheelchair and walking stick due to knee problems, smiled and waved to the crowds and kissed children from his popemobile as it drove towards a white stage backdropped by a giant gold cross.

“This very land is a living image of coexistence in diversity and indeed an image of our world, increasingly marked by the constant migration of peoples and by a pluralism of ideas, customs and traditions,” he said in an address.

– ‘Right to life’ –

But while his trip has focused on dialogue with Islam, it has been marked by accusations of rights abuses in the Gulf nation.

Rights groups have long cited discrimination, repression and harassment by Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers against Shiite opposition figures and activists.

Human Rights Watch has accused Bahraini courts of issuing death sentences based on “manifestly unfair trials”.

In a speech after his arrival on Thursday, the pontiff had spoken of the “right to life” and the “need to guarantee that right always, including for those being punished, whose lives should not be taken”.

A government spokesperson said Tuesday in a statement that Bahrain “does not tolerate discrimination” and “prides itself on its values of tolerance”.

The statement said that “no individual” is prosecuted “because of their religious or political beliefs”, but pointed to “a duty to investigate” people who “incite, promote or glorify violence or hatred”.

Pope Francis’s 39th international visit is largely aimed at building ties with Muslim officials. 

On Friday, he met the grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque, one of the leading authorities of Sunni Islam, and members of the Muslim Council of Elders.

He also attended a service at Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral, the biggest in the Arabian peninsula that seats more than 2,000. Hundreds of migrant workers were among the congregation welcoming him.

Iran has admitted for the first time that it sent drones to Russia but insisted they were supplied to its ally before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Russia of using Iranian-made drones in recent weeks to carry out attacks. 

Tehran has repeatedly denied the claims but on Saturday foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying that drones had been sent to Russia before the invasion began in late February.

“We supplied Russia with a limited number of drones months before the war in Ukraine,” Amir-Abdollahian said, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

But he again denied Iran had supplied missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “completely false”.

For weeks, Russian forces have rained missiles and explosive drones onto Ukraine’s infrastructure, as a major Ukrainian ground offensive — propelled by Western arms deliveries — has pushed Russian troops back in swathes of the country.

Kyiv claims around 400 Iranian drones have already been used against the civilian population of Ukraine and that Moscow has ordered around 2,000.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Iranian officials of lying about its drone deliveries to Moscow.

“They decided to admit that they did supply drones for Russian terror. But even in this confession they lie,” he said.

“We shoot down at least 10 Iranian drones every day, and the Iranian regime claims that it allegedly gave little and even before the start of a full-scale invasion.”

Earlier Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman had warned Iran that “the consequences of complicity” with Moscow would be “greater than the benefit from Russia’s support.”

Britain and the European Union have imposed sanctions on three Iranian generals and an arms firm accused of supplying Russia with drones.

– ‘Deportations’ –

Russian strikes over the past month have destroyed around a third of Ukraine’s power stations and the government has urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity as much as possible.

Ukraine’s state energy company on Saturday announced additional power rationing in Kyiv and several other regions of the country.

Ukrainian and Russian forces appear to be gearing up for a fierce battle in Kherson, a southern city with a population of around 288,000 people before the conflict.

It was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces following Moscow’s invasion.

Russia has been pulling civilians out of the Kherson region, with President Vladimir Putin saying residents must be “removed” from danger zones. 

But Kyiv has likened the departures to Soviet-style “deportations”.

Meanwhile, soldiers in northern Ukraine are watching out for a fresh attack along the border with Russia and Belarus.

Guards have been scanning the horizon at a remote outpost near the Senkivka border crossing, where Russia’s 90th armoured division swept in when the war started, cutting through Ukrainian territory.

Inside the well-fortified dugout set up after the Russian pullback in April, a guard in his 30s nicknamed “Lynx” spoke to AFP. 

“Since autumn began, the enemy has become more active,” he said, a machine gun slung over his shoulder.

“Everything is more serious now… we have thought through all the possible options to avoid a repeat of what happened before.”

– ‘De-communism drive’ – 

In the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, Moscow’s occupying authorities said Saturday they had brought back a statue of Lenin, seven years after it was taken down following Kyiv’s pro-EU revolution. 

The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, posted a photograph of workers in the city reinstating the tribute to the Bolshevik leader.

Almost all cities in Russia have a statue of the founder of the Soviet Union in their central squares.

But Ukraine dismantled Lenin statues across the country after its 2014 revolution overthrew a Moscow-backed regime, as part of its “de-communisation drive.”

It was seen as an effort to break away from Russian and Soviet influence. 

Meanwhile tens of thousands of people marched through Italy’s capital on Saturday calling for peace in Ukraine — and urging the government to stop sending weapons to fight Russia’s invasion.

“No to war. No to sending weapons”, read one banner carried by protesters in Rome, as a vast crowd broke into cries of “give peace a chance”.

Some politicians, including former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, have said Italy should be stepping up negotiations. 

But new far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to keep supporting Ukraine and the government has said it expects to send more weapons soon.

US President Joe Biden and his two predecessors converged on the state of Pennsylvania Saturday, making closing pitches in a key battleground state for next week’s midterm election.

Biden was set to rally alongside his old boss Barack Obama as the Democrats deployed their big guns to build the energy they hope will spread nationwide and reverse the late rightward-shift in polling.

And in a split-screen preview of a potential rematch of the 2020 presidential contest, the midwestern state is also playing host to Biden’s predecessor and bitter political rival Donald Trump.

Obama was the first to appear Saturday, lashing out before a crowd in Pittsburgh at what he said were Republican plans to cut government spending.

“They want to gut social security. They want to gut medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts,” Obama said.

Obama — still the party’s most bankable star six years after leaving the White House — threw his support behind Democratic candidate John Fetterman, who is in a dead heat against Republican TV physician Mehmet Oz in their crucial Senate race.

Biden and Obama were to appear later in the day in Philadelphia, the historic cradle of US independence where the 44th and 46th presidents will woo voters from the suburbs that make for a crucial base of Democratic support.

Hours before the rally was scheduled to begin, hundreds of people lined up to enter the Liacouras Center to attend the event.

“It’s very important that democrats stay in the position they’re already in,” said Jennifer Hahn, 57, a clinical psychologist from the town of Audubon, outside Philadelphia. “The biggest issues facing us are climate change, gun violence and our rights being stripped away.”

The Keystone State backed Trump over Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 but preferred Biden to Trump in 2020.

Strategists from both parties believe the side that wins the post vacated by retiring Republican Pat Toomey will hold the majority in the upper chamber of Congress next year.

Fetterman and Oz sparred for an hour in state capital Harrisburg 10 days ago, with Fetterman still struggling with communication issues after a stroke in May upended his campaign.

– ‘Chipping away’ –

“The month-to-month shifts in support for Oz are not statistically significant,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

“The overall trend suggests he has been chipping away with some voters who have not been completely comfortable with him, but that mainly happened prior to the debate.”

Just a few miles east of Pittsburgh in Latrobe, Trump — the one-term 45th president with ambitions to return as the 47th — will seek to firm up support in a region that delivered him big margins in 2016 and 2020. 

Pennsylvania is seen as a must-win not just for control of the Senate, but also for the balance of power among the country’s 50 state governors, influential officials that weigh in on most aspects of voters’ lives, from education and health care to voting rights.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro has been spotlighting the fringe views of state senator Doug Mastriano, his far-right opponent who was involved in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

A victory for Trump-backed Mastriano would give the prominent election denier oversight of the state’s voting system for the 2024 presidential race.

Like Biden, Trump has visited Pennsylvania twice this year, rallying for Oz and Mastriano most recently in Wilkes-Barre in early September.

The 76-year-old tycoon has already claimed baselessly that the state’s elections have been “rigged,” echoing his false claims that his own 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. 

“As Biden’s approval rating plummets, Pennsylvania crime spikes, and Pennsylvanians grapple with a 74 percent hike in heating oil, coupled with record inflation, just weeks away from winter,” Trump’s office said in a statement. 

“The America First Movement offers the Keystone State an alternative vision for America: safe streets, cheap gas, low inflation, and a thriving American economy.”

France’s far-right National Rally on Saturday elected its 27-year-old rising star, Jordan Bardella, to succeed Marine Le Pen as party chief, tasked with pursuing the group’s efforts to anchor itself in the political mainstream.

Bardella, who was widely expected to win as Le Pen’s protege, is the first person outside the Le Pen family to lead the RN in its 50-year history. 

Questions remain over what value the RN presidency has for him, given that Le Pen formally leads its cohort in parliament and is widely expected to again be its presidential candidate in 2027.

“I am not stepping down so I can go on vacation,” Le Pen told the party conference in Paris.

Bardella obtained 85 percent of the votes from around 26,000 party members, beating Louis Aliot, a party veteran and mayor of the southern city of Perpignan, who garnered 15 percent.

His nomination comes on the heels of the party’s best-ever showing in parliamentary elections earlier this year, when it won 89 seats even after Le Pen failed to unseat Emmanuel Macron in her third run for the presidency.

“We are patriots, who know that France needs a wake-up call,” Bardella said after his election, vowing to help the country “heal its divisions.”

He reiterated the party’s promise to crack down on immigration, not least by restricting welfare benefits to French citizens, while also tackling inflation and growing concerns “about being able to make it to the end of the month.”

Bardella has embraced Le Pen’s efforts to shed the virulent anti-Semitic and extremist views fomented by her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was excluded in 2015.

But critics accuse Bardella of encouraging white supremacist groups and emphasising us-versus-them “identify politics” at the expense of pocketbook issues more pressing for working-class voters.

This past week, Bardella and Le Pen defended one of its parliamentarians accused of racist outburst that saw him hit with a rare suspension.

Steeve Briois, a popular RN mayor in northern France whom Bardella quickly ejected from its executive committee, warned Saturday of a “re-radicalisation” of the party that would keep it at the margins of the political spectrum.

Bardella also faces the daunting task of getting the party on solid financial footing as it faces inquiries over alleged misuse of public funds by party members, including Le Pen.

– Next generation –

Brought up in a gritty Paris suburb by his Italian-born mother, Bardella has proven himself a polished media presence, rarely seen out of a tailored suit and impressing both admirers and critics with sharp performances in election debates.

The party leadership can be a stepping stone for Bardella when “MLP” finally bows out from the political scene.

Populist parties are gathering steam across much of Europe. Both Bardella and Le Pen will have their work cut out for them in convincing French voters that the party is a respectable mainstream force, capable of uniting and governing the country.

This week one of their MPs, Gregoire de Fournas, yelled “back to Africa!” to a black lawmaker who was challenging the government’s response to migrants rescued at sea in the Mediterranean.

He later said he was referring to the boat, not his fellow lawmaker, but parliament voted for a 15-day suspension and pay cut, only the second time since 1958 a lawmaker has been handed the assembly’s harshest punishment.

Bardella has also given credence to the so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory of a surreptitious “Islamisation” of Europe orchestrated by its elites — something Le Pen has shied away from.

In an open letter last month, Aliot slammed “extremist nostalgia” and “the excesses of the National Front of a long-gone era”.

Bardella responded by accusing Aliot of “bitterness and bad faith”, insisting that his goal is to win over more supporters from traditional parties on the right and left.

North Korea fired four ballistic missiles on Saturday, the South Korean military said — the latest in Pyongyang’s testing blitz this week as Washington and Seoul concluded their biggest-ever air force drills.

The flurry of North Korean launches has included an intercontinental ballistic missile and one that landed near the South’s territorial waters. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has called the barrage “effectively a territorial invasion”.

The launches came as hundreds of US and South Korean warplanes — including B-1B heavy bombers — participated in the Vigilant Storm exercise, which Pyongyang described as “aggressive and provocative”. 

“The South Korean military detected four short-range ballistic missiles launched by North Korea from Tongrim, North Pyongan Province, to the West Sea at around 11:32 a.m. to 11:59 a.m. today,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement Saturday, using another name for the Yellow Sea.

Their “flight distance was detected at about 130 km (80 miles), an altitude of about 20 km, and a speed of about Mach 5”, they added. Mach 5 is equivalent to five times the speed of sound.

The United States and South Korea have warned that these launches could culminate in a nuclear test by North Korea, and extended their air force drills in response by a day, until Saturday.

Pyongyang ramped up missile launches in response to the drills. Such exercises have long provoked strong reactions from North Korea, which sees them as rehearsals for an invasion.

– ‘Significant threat’ – 

Vigilant Storm concluded with the US Air Force deploying two B-1B long-range heavy bombers on the final day in a ramped-up show of force.

This was the first time B-1Bs have flown to the Korean peninsula since December 2017.

The South Korean JCS said the move demonstrated the “capability and readiness to firmly respond to any provocations from North Korea”.

Pyongyang has especially condemned past deployments of US strategic weapons such as B-1Bs and aircraft carrier strike groups in times of high tension.

While the supersonic B-1B “Lancer” aircraft no longer carries nuclear weapons, it is described by the US Air Force as “the backbone of America’s long-range bomber force”.

The USAF lists the Lancer’s weapons payload as 34 tonnes (75,000 pounds), which can include cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs.

The B-1B’s range can be extended by in-air refuelling, giving it the ability to strike anywhere in the world.

Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean studies scholar, told AFP that given the B-1B’s status as a strategic US asset, its deployment will be seen as a “significant threat” by North Korea.

On Friday, South Korea scrambled fighter jets in response to what it said was the mobilisation of around 180 North Korean warplanes.

Experts say Pyongyang is particularly sensitive about these drills because its air force is one of the weakest links in its military, which lacks high-tech jets and properly trained pilots.

Compared with North Korea’s ageing fleet, Vigilant Storm has seen some of the most advanced US and South Korean warplanes in action, including F-35 stealth fighters.

The European Union on Saturday slammed the North’s missile launches as “a dangerous escalation” and called for a global “resolute and united response”, including the full weight of UN sanctions.

At the United Nations Security Council on Friday, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield dismissed criticism of Vigilant Storm as North Korean “propaganda”, saying it posed no threat to other countries.

She assailed China and Russia during the emergency session, accusing them of having “enabled” North Korea.

Moscow and Beijing have in turn blamed Washington for the escalation, and the meeting ended without a joint statement from the full Council.

Two climate activists on Saturday each glued a hand to the frame of paintings by Spanish master Francisco Goya in Madrid to protest inaction in the face of global warming.

The protest at the famed Prado museum damaged neither painting, but the protesters scrawled “+1,5°C” on the wall between the two artworks and both were detained, police said.

The United Nations warned last week that the world was nowhere near the Paris Agreement target of capping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Saturday’s stunt in Madrid was the latest increasingly daring action taken by climate activists to grab the headlines, including throwing soup on Vincent van Gogh paintings in London and Rome, and mashed potatoes on a Claude Monet masterpiece.

On Sunday, nearly 200 nations will kick off in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh the latest climate summit tasked with taming the terrifying juggernaut of global warming.

Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion posted a video online showing the two activists each with a hand fixed on a painting before museum security moved in.

The group said the two artworks in question were “The Naked Maja” and “The Clothed Maja”.

The action was to protest rising world temperatures which will “provoke an unstable climate with serious consequences for all the planet”, the group said.

Videos posted by Extinction Rebellion show the two young women pulling glue from their clothes and sticking their hands to the frames before addressing other museum goers.

Some of the crowd shout at the activists before security appears and asks those present to stop filming.

– ‘Desperate cry’ –

Spanish Culture Minister Miquel Iceta denounced the attack, writing on Twitter that it was an “act of vandalism” and that “no cause justifies attacking everyone’s heritage”.

It is the latest in series of protests by climate activists targeting famous artworks in European cities.

On Friday, a group splashed pea soup onto a van Gogh masterpiece in Rome.

“The Sower”, an 1888 painting by the Dutch artist depicting a farmer sowing his land under a dominating sun, was exhibited behind glass and undamaged.

Four activists were arrested, according to news reports.

The climate activists from Last Generation called their protest “a desperate and scientifically grounded cry that cannot be understood as mere vandalism”.

They warned the protest would continue until more attention was paid to climate change.

Other actions have seen cake or mashed potatoes used in recent weeks.

They have targeted masterpieces such as the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre in Paris or “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer at The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum.

In October, the group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery.

All those paintings were covered by glass and were undamaged.