Russia ramps up diplomatic expulsions, hauls in ambassadors

Irish ambassador to Russia Adrian McDaid leaves the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. Russia says it has informed ambassadors of most of the countries that ordered the expulsion of Russian diplomats that an equal number of their diplomats have been declared persona non grata. (AFP)
Updated 30 March 2018
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Russia ramps up diplomatic expulsions, hauls in ambassadors

LONDON: The Russian foreign ministry ominously summoned the ambassadors of Albania, Denmark, Ireland and Spain as it looks to follow through on its promise to expel the same number of diplomats from each nation that has expelled Russian diplomats.

Russia said it had informed ambassadors of most of the countries that ordered the expulsion of Russian diplomats that an equal number of their diplomats have been declared persona non grata. A ministry statement Friday said the ambassadors were from 23 of the countries that are expelling Russians in connection with the poisoning in Britain of a former Russian double agent and his daughter.

Russia had on Thursday announced it was expelling 60 US diplomats and closing the consulate in St. Petersburg in retaliation to Washington’s moves.

Russia also ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a dispute with the West. The massive expulsion of diplomats on both sides has reached a scale unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

Two dozen countries, including the US and many EU nations, and NATO ordered out more than 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter that London blamed on Russia.
Moscow has vehemently denied involvement in the March 4 nerve agent attack in the city of Salisbury and has busily set about a tit-for-tat series of expulsions.

Russia expelled four German diplomats, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, as the Kremlin responds in kind to expulsions of its own officials. “The news from Moscow comes as no surprise,” Maas said in a statement. “Even in the current climate we remain ready for dialogue with Russia and we will work on both European security and constructive future relations between our countries.”

Germany had earlier this week expelled four Russian diplomats.

Russia expelled one Irish diplomat, Ireland’s foreign ministry said on Friday, following Dublin’s decision to expel a Russian diplomat over a nerve agent attack in England that the British government has blamed on Russia.

“There is no justification for this expulsion. Our staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status,” a spokesman for the Irish foreign ministry said.


Greek govt calls for EU farm scandal probe

Updated 8 sec ago
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Greek govt calls for EU farm scandal probe

ATHENS: The Greek government on Monday called for a special parliamentary committee to probe a European Union farm subsidies scandal, reportedly involving tens of millions of euros, that has seen at least two ministers put under EU investigation.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said the ruling conservative party would request an investigation into the 27-year operation of the Greek authority for the payment of common agricultural policy aid (OPEKEPE).
“Our proposal concerns the period from the establishment of OPEKEPE in 1998 until today in order to investigate the dysfunctions, identify the problems, and ensure complete transparency,” Marinakis told reporters.
An investigation by EU prosecutors has shown widespread abuse of funds at OPEKEPE, which according to the government annually disburses 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion) to nearly 650,000 farmers. Reports said prosecutors suspect tens of millions of euros have been siphoned off.
The investigation period is mostly under the current government, which came to power in July 2019. But the government argues that the fraud has lasted decades.
In nearly 30 years, the Greek state has paid more than 2.7 billion euros in fines, Marinakis said.
Greece’s ruling New Democracy party has a large enough majority in parliament to create the committee on its own.
Last month, a minister who had formerly held the agriculture portfolio resigned, after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office sent a case to parliament on the alleged involvement of two former ministers in Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government in the misappropriation of EU funds.
Three junior ministers and another senior government official also submitted their resignations.
In May, investigators searched the Athens offices of OPEKEPE and seized documents and electronic equipment. They indicated that “a significant number” of people had gained payment rights between 2019 and 2022, mainly by falsely claiming public land.

Bangladesh’s child marriage rate soars to highest in South Asia

Updated 8 min 9 sec ago
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Bangladesh’s child marriage rate soars to highest in South Asia

  • 51 percent of Bangladeshi girls marry before age 18, according to UN
  • Rate is significantly lower in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan

DHAKA: The child marriage rate continues to rise since the COVID-19 pandemic, experts warn, as the latest UN data shows that more than half of Bangladeshi girls are married before reaching adulthood — the highest percentage in the whole of South Asia.

Bangladesh has long had one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage and, unlike other countries in the region, for the past few years has seen the situation worsening.

According to the annual report of the UN Population Fund released last month, 51 percent of Bangladeshi girls are found to have been married before turning 18, the legal age for marriage.

The rate was significantly lower at 29 percent in nearby Afghanistan, 23 percent in India, and 18 percent in Pakistan.

“Among South Asian countries, we are in a poor position when it comes to child marriage rates, even though we perform better on some other gender-related indicators set by the UN,” Rasheda K. Chowdhury, social activist and executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education, told Arab News.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the child marriage rate in the country was around 33 percent. At that time, we were not the worst in South Asia in this regard. However, the pandemic disrupted everything.”

Data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics shows a steady increase in child marriage rates of several percent a year since 2020, coinciding with pandemic lockdowns, which exacerbated poverty, disrupted education, and increased household stress.

“Our research found that COVID-19 increased poverty, interrupted education for both boys and girls, and worsened malnutrition. In this context, many guardians from underprivileged communities chose to marry off their daughters in hopes of reducing the financial burden on their families,” Chowdhury said.

“Poverty is the primary driver of early marriages, as many guardians are unable to cope with household expenses. As a result, they often choose to marry off their daughters at a young age.”

Lack of women’s access to education is usually seen as the main reason behind high child marriage rates, but Bangladesh has the highest enrollment of girls in secondary school in the whole region.

“Bangladesh has invested more in infrastructure development rather than human development,” Chowdhury said.

“To prevent early marriages, society must play a crucial role. The government alone cannot act as a watchdog in every household. Local communities need to take initiative and actively work to stop child marriages.”

Azizul Haque, project manager at World Vision Bangladesh, also saw the problem as related to social awareness.

“In the villages and remotest parts of the country, girls are mostly considered a burden for the family, so the parents prefer to marry off the girls as soon as possible … In many of the remotest areas, there are schools that provide education only up to class eight, so after the completion of their eighth grade in school, many of the girls have nothing to do at home. This situation also triggers the increase in child marriages,” he said.

“There is a huge lack of social awareness. At the national level, we need to strengthen the mass campaign conveying the demerits of early marriages, so that everyone becomes aware of the negative impacts.”


Police detain 8 people after anti-migrant clashes in Spanish town

Updated 14 July 2025
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Police detain 8 people after anti-migrant clashes in Spanish town

MADRID: Eight people have been detained by police in Spain in relation to violent clashes that erupted between far-right groups, local residents and migrants in a southeastern town over the weekend, officials said on Monday.
Clashes in Torre-Pacheco in the Murcia region took place on Saturday night after an elderly resident was beaten up earlier in the week by unknown assailants, which led to a call by far-right groups to seek retribution on the area’s large migrant community.
The motivation for the initial attack was not clear.
Among those detained were two people allegedly linked to the attack on the elderly man and several others in relation to the weekend clashes, Mariola Guevara, the central government’s representative in Murcia, said Monday on X.
Six Spaniards and one North African resident were detained for the assaults, damages and disturbances, Guevara said. The two others detained had helped the perpetrator of the attack on the elderly man, she said.
A major police presence was moved into Torre-Pacheco, which has a population of roughly 42,000. About a third of its residents are of foreign origin, according to local government figures.
Large numbers of migrants also work in the surrounding area as day laborers in agriculture, a major driver of the regional economy.


German doctor goes on trial for 15 murders

Updated 14 July 2025
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German doctor goes on trial for 15 murders

  • Palliative care specialist alleged to have killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024 while working in Berlin
  • The case recalls that of notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was handed a life sentence in 2019 for murdering 85 patients

BERLIN: A German doctor went on trial Monday accused of killing 15 patients with lethal injections and acting as “master of life and death” over those in his care.

The 40-year-old palliative care specialist, named by German media as Johannes M., is alleged to have killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024 while working in Berlin.

The doctor is accused of injecting the victims, aged between 25 and 94, with deadly cocktails of sedatives and in some cases setting fire to their homes in a bid to cover up his crimes.

The accused had “visited his patients under the pretext of providing medical care,” prosecutor Philipp Meyhoefer said at the opening of the trial at the state court in Berlin.

Johannes M. had organized “home visits, already with the intention of killing” and exploited his patients’ trust in him as a doctor, Meyhoefer said.

“He acted with disregard for life... and behaved as the master of life and death.”

A co-worker first raised the alarm over Johannes M. last July after becoming suspicious that so many of his patients had died in fires, according to Die Zeit newspaper.

He was arrested in August, with prosecutors initially linking him to four deaths.

But subsequent investigations uncovered a host of other suspicious cases, and in April prosecutors charged Johannes M. with 15 counts of murder.

A further 96 cases were still being investigated, a prosecution spokesman said, including the death of Johannes M.’s mother-in-law.

She had been suffering from cancer and mysteriously died the same weekend that Johannes M. and his wife went to visit her in Poland in early 2024, according to media reports.

The suspect reportedly trained as a radiologist and a general practitioner before going on to specialize in palliative care.

According to Die Zeit, he submitted a doctoral thesis in 2013 looking into the motives behind a series of killings in Frankfurt, which opened with the words “Why do people kill?”

In the charges brought against Johannes M., prosecutors said the doctor had “administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his patients... without their knowledge or consent.”

The relaxant “paralyzed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes.”

In five cases, Johannes M. allegedly set fire to the victims’ apartments after administering the injections.

On one occasion, he is accused of murdering two patients on the same day.

On the morning of July 8, 2024, he allegedly killed a 75-year-old man at his home in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.

“A few hours later” he is said to have struck again, killing a 76-year-old woman in the neighboring Neukoelln district.

Prosecutors say he started a fire in the woman’s apartment, but it went out.

“When he realized this, he allegedly informed a relative of the woman and claimed that he was standing in front of her flat and that nobody was answering the doorbell,” prosecutors said.

In another case, Johannes M. “falsely claimed to have already begun resuscitation efforts” on a 56-year-old victim, who was initially kept alive by rescuers but died three days later in hospital.

Prosecutors said he had “no motive beyond killing” and are seeking a life sentence.

The case recalls that of notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was handed a life sentence in 2019 for murdering 85 patients.

Hoegel, believed to be modern Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, before he was eventually caught in the act.

More recently, a 27-year-old nurse was given a life sentence in 2023 for murdering two patients by deliberately administering unprescribed drugs.

In March, another nurse went on trial in Aachen accused of injecting 26 patients with large doses of sedatives or painkillers, resulting in nine deaths.

Last week, German police revealed they are investigating another doctor suspected of killing several mainly elderly patients.

Investigators are “reviewing” deaths linked to the doctor from the town of Pinneberg in northern Germany, just outside Hamburg, police and prosecutors said.


EU climate VP seeks ‘fair competition’ with China on green energy

Updated 14 July 2025
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EU climate VP seeks ‘fair competition’ with China on green energy

  • Deep frictions exist over economic relations between the 27-nation bloc and Beijing

BEIJING: The European Union is seeking "fair competition" with China and not a race to the bottom in wages and environmental standards, the bloc's vice president for the clean transition told AFP on Monday.
Deep frictions exist over economic relations between the 27-nation bloc and Beijing.
Brussels is worried that a manufacturing glut propelled by massive state subsidies could add to a yawning trade deficit and result in a flood of cheap Chinese goods undercutting European firms.
Speaking during a visit to Beijing ahead of a major EU-China summit in the city this month, Teresa Ribera dismissed China's claims that the bloc was engaging in "protectionism".
"We Europeans don't want to go down a race towards low incomes, lower labour rights or lower environmental standards," said Ribera, who also serves as the bloc's competition chief.
"It is obvious that we could not be in a good position if there could be an ... over-flooding in our markets that could undermine us with prices that do not reflect the real cost," she said.
The EU imposed extra import taxes of up to 35 percent on Chinese electric vehicle imports in October and has investigated Chinese-owned solar panel manufacturers.
Asked whether EU moves against Chinese green energy firms could harm the global transition to renewables, Ribera said: "It is fair to say that, yes, we may benefit in the very short term."
However, she also warned "it could kill the possibility" of long-term investment in the bloc's future.

Ribera's visit comes as Beijing seeks to improve relations with the European Union as a counterweight to superpower rival the United States, whose President Donald Trump has disrupted the global order and pulled Washington out of international climate accords.
"I don't think that we have witnessed many occasions in the past where a big economy, a big country, decides to isolate in such a relevant manner," she told AFP.
"It is a pity.
"The Chinese may think that the United States has given them a great opportunity to be much more relevant in the international arena," Ribera said.
The visit also comes as the bloc and the United States wrangle over a trade deal. Trump threw months of negotiations into disarray on Saturday by announcing he would hammer the bloc with sweeping tariffs if no agreement was reached by August 1.
Ribera vowed on Monday that the EU would "defend the interests of our companies, our society, our business".
Asked if a deal was in sight, she said: "Who knows? We'll do our best."
However, she insisted that EU digital competition rules -- frequently condemned by Trump as "non-tariff barriers" to trade -- were not on the table.
"It's a question of sovereignty," Ribera said.
"We are not going to compromise on the way we understand that we need to defend our citizens and our society, our values and our market."