BERLIN: The Alternative for Germany (AfD) claims to be a force of “patriots” but some of its new lawmakers have shocked with xenophobic and revisionist comments and have been linked to far-right groups.
The AfD is the first hard-right nationalist party to enter the German Bundestag in large numbers in the post-World War II era, an epochal event that stunned most Germans.
Since the party’s breakthrough in Sunday’s vote, the country has been scrutinizing the biographies of the often little-known newcomers, elected on a platform of rejecting migrants, Muslims and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Among them are police officers, prosecutors and judges, academics and business leaders, soldiers and scientists, a one-time radio host, an undertaker and a former fighter pilot.
A disproportionate number are from Germany’s ex-communist and poorer east, where the AfD was the number one party for male voters and won outright in the state of Saxony.
The AfD rails against “traitor” Merkel as public enemy number one, for opening German borders to an “invasion” of more than one million migrants since 2015.
Some MPs have links to PEGIDA, short for Patriots Against the Islamization of the Occident, a street movement that emerged in the Saxony state capital of Dresden.
Other lawmakers have reported links to shadowy fraternities, football hooligans, Russian ultra-nationalists and the nativist Identitarian Movement, which is being watched by the BfV domestic security service.
One has reportedly driven a car with “AH1818” on its number plates, the Tagesspiegel daily wrote — neo-Nazi code for Adolf Hitler’s initials, followed by the number of those letters in the alphabet, listed twice.
And Jens Maier, a judge in Dresden, has drawn fire for voicing a degree of understanding for Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, reportedly saying that he had acted “out of desperation” over multiculturalism when he killed 77 people in 2011.
Still giddy from the election, which made the AfD Germany’s third strongest party, its 93 freshly baked lawmakers gathered this week in a modernist concrete-and-steel annex building to the glass-domed Reichstag that is still pockmarked from Word War II battles.
Lawmaker number 94 stayed away — Frauke Petry, the former face of the AfD, had theatrically walked out of a party press conference the day before to protest against its bitter infighting and radicalization.
Co-Leader Beatrix von Storch, picking up her new parliamentary ID card, said it was time for the party to “get to work.”
Asked whether the AfD, with slogans like “Bikinis not Burkas,” is far right, she replied: “We want to cap refugee numbers, we are against Islamization, we want to preserve our culture, we want to protect our borders.
“We are for the classic family unit, we don’t want a United States of Europe, but a Europe of fatherlands. I think these are perfectly normal topics.”
The MPs include at least 13 with ultra-right views, 30 “nationalist-conservatives,” and 18 comparative “moderates,” according to a count by Die Zeit weekly, which said the allegiances of others were unclear.
Among the new MPs is Leif-Erik Holm, 47, a former radio host who has claimed Germany is being turned “into a caliphate,” and who ran against Merkel in her Baltic Coast electorate.
Merkel lost a lot of votes, he said, but “beating her would have been the icing on the cake.”
Some members are veterans of the AfD’s founding days in 2013, when it railed mainly against eurozone bailouts to crisis-hit Greece.
Others call for tougher law and order, traditional “family values” and fighting against what they consider a left-leaning establishment spreading its lies via a complicit media.
On the far right, leaders have shocked with taboo-breaking comments that challenge Germany’s culture of atonement over World War II and the Holocaust.
One is co-leader Alexander Gauland, 75, a defector from Merkel’s conservative bloc, who has urged Germans to be proud of their veterans from two world wars.
Another, Martin Renner, has criticized Germany’s “guilt cult.”
Asked about the comment, he stuck by the phrase but added that he had only learnt later that it was commonly used by the far-right and anti-Semitic NPD party.
Dozens of members are close to regional party leader Bjoern Hoecke, who has demanded “a 180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance and called Berlin’s Holocaust monument a “memorial of shame.”
Anti-migrant, revisionist: Germany’s hard-right AfD
Anti-migrant, revisionist: Germany’s hard-right AfD
India announces state funeral for former PM Manmohan Singh
- Former leader was one of the architects of India’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s
- He sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the US that he said would help India meet its growing energy needs
NEW DELHI: India on Friday announced seven days of state mourning after the death of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, one of the architects of the country’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s.
Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 late Thursday evening at a hospital in New Delhi. He will also be accorded a state funeral.
“As a mark of respect for the departed dignitary, it has been decided that seven days of state mourning will be observed throughout India,” the Indian government said in a statement Friday, with mourning running until January 1.
“It has also been decided that the state funeral will be accorded to late Dr. Manmohan Singh,” it said, adding that the national flag will also be flown at half-mast.
India’s cricket team battling hosts Australia in the fourth Test took to the ground Friday with black arm bands to show respect for Singh.
The official date for the state funeral was not immediately announced, but a senior member of the Congress party suggested it would be held on Saturday.
The former premier was an understated technocrat who was hailed for overseeing economic boom in Asia’s fourth-largest economy in his first term but his second stint ended with a series of major corruption scandals, slowing growth, and high inflation.
The unpopularity of Singh in his second term, and a lackluster leadership by Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, the current leader of opposition in the lower house, led to the first landslide victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.
Born in 1932 in the mud-house village of Gah, in what is now Pakistan, Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast nation and never held elected office before taking the nation’s highest office.
He won scholarships to attend both Cambridge, where he obtained a first in economics, and Oxford, where he completed his doctorate.
Singh worked in a string of senior civil service posts, served as a central bank governor and also held various jobs with global agencies such as the United Nations.
He was tapped in 1991 by then Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to reel India back from the worst financial crisis in its modern history
In his first term Singh steered the economy through a period of nine-percent growth, lending the country the international clout it had long sought.
He also sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the US that he said would help India meet its growing energy needs.
North Korean soldier captured in Russia-Ukraine war: Seoul
- The soldier was captured by the Ukrainian army
- Location where he was seized was unknown
SEOUL: South Korea’s spy agency said Friday it had confirmed that a North Korean soldier sent to back Russia’s war against Ukraine had been captured by Ukrainian forces.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russian troops, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock border incursion in August.
“Through real-time information sharing with an allied country’s intelligence agency, it has been confirmed that one injured North Korean soldier has been captured,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said in a statement.
The soldier was captured by the Ukrainian army, an intelligence source told AFP, adding that the location where he was seized was unknown.
The first confirmation of the capture of a North Korean soldier came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) also said Monday that more than 1,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded.
The JCS had also said that Pyongyang is reportedly “preparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers” and supplying “240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery” to the Russian army.
Seoul’s military believes that North Korea was seeking to modernize its conventional warfare capabilities through combat experience gained in the Russia-Ukraine war.
North Korean state media said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a New Year’s message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying “the bilateral ties between our two countries have been elevated after our talks in June in Pyongyang.”
A landmark defense pact went into effect in December after the two sides exchanged ratification documents.
Putin hailed the deal in June as a “breakthrough document.”
Putin says Slovakia offered to host Ukraine peace talks
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Slovakia had offered to be a “platform” for possible peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, nearly three years since the launch of Moscow’s offensive.
Putin told a televised press conference Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico “said that if there are any negotiations, they would be happy to provide their country as a platform.”
He added that Russia was “not against it,” praising Slovakia’s “neutral position.”
Fico, one of the few European leaders to maintain ties with the Kremlin, met with the Russian president in Moscow on December 22.
His visit came despite Western efforts to isolate Putin and present a united front in support for Kyiv.
Slovakia, an EU and NATO member, has already halted military aid to Ukraine since autumn 2023 under Fico’s government, and called for peace talks.
Fico has accused Kyiv of jeopardizing his country’s supply of Russian natural gas, on which it is heavily dependent.
Ukraine has said it will not renew a contract expiring at the end of this year to allow Russia gas to transit its country toward Europe, and no feasible alternative has yet been found.
Ukrainians “are already punishing Europe by ending the contract to supply our gas,” Putin said, adding that no new contract could be reached “in three or four days.”
But he suggested he was ready to supply gas to the EU, possibly via the Yamal-Europe pipeline that transits Poland.
The prospect of peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2022 has grown since the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House.
Trump has vowed to push for a quick deal to halt the fighting when he takes office in January.
That has sparked fears in Kyiv and Europe that Ukraine could be pushed to make concessions to Moscow.
Putin reiterated his vow that his country would achieve “all the objectives in Ukraine.”
“This is our number one task,” he said, warning that Moscow was ready to again use its latest-generation Oreshnik missile, first fired in a strike last month.
Putin has repeatedly threatened to strike “decision-making centers” in Kyiv in retaliation for its use of Western-supplied long-range missiles to hit targets in Russia.
He also claimed Thursday that in 2021, US President Joe Biden offered to “push back” Ukraine’s entry into NATO — a move urgently sought by Kyiv but that Putin considers an unacceptable threat.
“In 2021, the current President Biden offered exactly that: push back Ukraine’s NATO membership by 10 to 15 years, because it was not yet ready.”
“I answered reasonably that ‘Yes, today it is not ready. But you will prepare it for it and you will accept it.’“
But for Russia, “What is the difference — today, tomorrow or in 10 years?“
US says kills two Al-Shabab fighters in airstrike
WASHINGTON: The US military said Thursday it had killed two members of the jihadist Al-Shabab group in southern Somalia in an airstrike.
The strike took place on Tuesday about 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest of the town of Quyno Barrow, south of Mogadishu, the United States Africa Command (US AFRICOM) said in a statement.
The strike was conducted “in coordination” with Somalia’s federal government, it said.
“The command will continue to assess the results of the operation and provide additional information as appropriate,” the statement said, providing no further details.
The Somalian government issued a statement lauding a “meticulously planned operation” that was conducted alongside “international partners” in the same district.
That statement said the operation “has successfully eliminated the terrorist ring leader Mohamed Mire Jama, also known as Abu Abdirahman, in the Kunyo-Barow district of Lower Shabelle province.”
Somalia is one of the poorest countries on the planet, enduring decades of civil war, a bloody insurgency by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, and frequent climate disasters.
Washington has invested massively for several decades in the fight against the insurgency.
During his first term, US President-elect Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, a decision reversed by his successor Joe Biden.
Earlier this week, Egypt said it was joining a new African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.
The mandate of the current African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) ends on December 31, and it will make way for a new force against the Al-Shabab insurgents, the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM).
Russia missile suspected in Azerbaijani plane crash, Moscow warns against ‘hypotheses’
- Pro-government Azerbaijani website Caliber cited officials as saying they believed a Russian missile fired from a Pantsir-S air defense system downed the plane
ASTANA: Azerbaijani and US officials believe a Russian surface-to-air missile caused the deadly crash of an Azerbaijani passenger jet, media reports and a US official said Thursday, as the Kremlin cautioned against “hypotheses” over the disaster.
The Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, an oil and gas hub, on Wednesday after going off course for undetermined reasons.
Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board died.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea.
An investigation is underway, with pro-government Azerbaijani website Caliber citing unnamed officials as saying they believed a Russian missile fired from a Pantsir-S air defense system downed the plane.
The claim was also reported by The New York Times, broadcaster Euronews and the Turkish news agency Anadolu.
Some aviation and military experts said the plane might have been accidentally shot by Russian air defense systems because it was flying in an area where Ukrainian drone activity had been reported.
A former expert at France’s BEA air accident investigation agency said there appeared to be “a lot of shrapnel” damage on the wreckage.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the damage was “reminiscent” of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was downed with a surface-to-air missile by Russia-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It would be wrong to make any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions.”
Euronews cited Azerbaijani government sources as saying that “shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as it exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight.”
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said early indications suggested a Russian anti-aircraft system struck the plane.
Kazakhstan news agency Kazinform cited a regional prosecutor as saying that two black-box flight recorders had been recovered.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially said the plane flew through a flock of birds, before withdrawing the statement.
Kazakh officials said 38 people had been killed and there were 29 survivors, including three children.
Jalil Aliyev, the father of flight attendant Hokume Aliyeva, told AFP that this was supposed to have been her last flight before starting a job as a lawyer for the airline.
“Why did her young life have to end so tragically?” the man said in a trembling voice before hanging up the phone.
Eleven of the injured are in intensive care, the Kazakh health ministry said.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of mourning and canceled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
“I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the crash... and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Aliyev said in a social media post Wednesday.
The Flight Radar website showed the plane deviating from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, on the eastern shore of the sea.
Kazakhstan said the plane was carrying 37 Azerbaijani passengers, six Kazakhs, three Kyrgyz and 16 Russians.
A Kazakh woman told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) she was near where the plane crashed and rushed to the site to help survivors.
“They were covered in blood. They were crying. They were calling for help,” said the woman, who gave her name as Elmira.
She said they saved some teenagers.
“I’ll never forget their look, full of pain and despair,” said Elmira. “A girl pleaded: ‘Save my mother, my mother is back there’.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev and “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash,” Peskov told a news conference.
