BRUSSELS: Irish and Czech voters picked up the baton in the EU’s marathon elections Friday, some driven by concerns about migration and others bent on countering the anti-immigrant far right.
Both countries were voting in advance of Sunday’s main election day when most of the European Union’s 27 nations — including powerhouses Germany and France — will vote to elect the bloc’s next parliament.
Surveys point to election gains for anti-immigrant populists across the EU, and day one on Thursday saw a strong showing, though no knockout blow, for the Dutch far right.
Ireland’s 37-year-old prime minister Simon Harris voted near his home in Delgany, a village south of Dublin, before hitting the road to canvass for both local and EU elections.
Keith O’Reilly, a 41 year-old IT worker, said that he admired Harris’s “energy” but that his vote would not be going to the premier’s center-right Fine Gael.
“They’re getting so many things wrong, the migration issue for one thing,” he told AFP.
With around 20 percent of Ireland’s population born outside the country and record levels of asylum seekers, many candidates are running on an anti-immigration platform — one of the reasons that drove Trevor Gardiner to vote.
“The rise of the far right jumping on immigration is really, really scary for us,” said the 42-year-old finance worker, “because it’s happening not just in mainland Europe but here in Ireland too.”
Emily, a 21-year-old first-time voter who declined to give her full name, likewise said she “worried” about the far right’s rise.
“I think the others need to get their act together,” she said. “It’s incredible the type of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become normalized here.”
The EU vote comes at a time of geopolitical upheaval almost two and a half years into Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The far right is looking to tap into grievances among the bloc’s 370 million eligible voters, fatigued by a succession of crises from the Covid pandemic to the fallout of Moscow’s invasion.
The contest in the Netherlands was seen as a bellwether for its strength — and exit polls showed gains for the Freedom Party (PVV) of firebrand Geert Wilders, in second place.
But the Dutch result was tighter than expected, with a Green-left alliance set for first place, and could spell hope for centrists battling to maintain their majority.
That was the early assessment of Eurasia Group’s managing director Mujtaba Rahman, who predicted “the center will largely hold” even if the far right takes a quarter of the EU’s 720 parliament seats.
“There’ll be lots of noise over next few days about the far right surge in EU. The reality is more boring,” Rahman wrote on X.
The other country voting Friday was the Czech Republic, where politicians face widespread apathy to the EU vote: the country had the second-lowest turnout last time around in 2019, at 28.72 percent.
Polls put the centrist ANO movement of billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis in the lead.
At an elementary school in southern Prague, voters cast their ballots while children played nearby, many relishing the opportunity to stop and chat with neighbors.
Marek Cerveny, a 45-year-old teacher and tour guide who voted accompanied by his daughter, said he “definitely” saw EU decisions “reflected in our lives“: “What we can buy, how easily we can travel, how well we can live here.”
Others like Vera Zazvorkova, a 72-year-old economist, said she was voting for change, wanting fewer EU rules on the environment and tougher curbs on migration.
“The ‘Green Deal’ should change, that is, it should be restricted a lot, and the immigration policy should change too,” she said.
The prospect of a rightward lurch has rattled the parliament’s main groupings, the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and the leftist Socialists and Democrats.
They still look set to be the two biggest blocs but current European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, of the EPP, may need support from part of the far right to secure a second term.
With an eye on the horse-trading that may be needed, von der Leyen has been courting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party.
Over the weekend, scrutiny will shift to the EU’s bigger economies as they open polling stations.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is predicted to come out on top in France, as is Meloni’s party in Italy — which votes Saturday — and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s far-right Fidesz.
In Germany, the extreme-right AfD is polling second, behind the opposition conservatives.
Irish, Czechs cast EU votes with immigration front of mind
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Irish, Czechs cast EU votes with immigration front of mind
- Both countries voting in advance of Sunday’s main election day
Firefighters battle wildfires on 2 Greek islands as premier warns of a dangerous summer
- Greece saw 52 wildfires breaking out in the previous 24-hour period, 44 of which were tackled in the early stages
Emergency services issued evacuation orders for those in the Metohi area of western Chios on Monday morning, urging them to head to a nearby beach. By the evening, more than 140 firefighters, along with eight teams of firefighters specializing in wildfires, seven water-dropping planes and three helicopters were fighting the blaze.
Fire department spokesman Vasilis Vathrakoyiannis said two firefighters had been lightly injured, while dozens more firefighters were heading to the island by boat from the nearby island of Lesbos and from Athens. State-run ERT television later reported that another two firefighters and a volunteer had suffered non life-threatening burns.
“The situation remains difficult in Chios, and all Civil Protection forces will make great efforts to limit it,” Vathrakoyiannis said during an evening briefing.
Another fire broke out further to the south in the Aegean, on the resort island of Kos, and by late Monday had forced the evacuation of several people, including tourists from hotels, as a precaution. That blaze was being tackled by more than 100 firefighters, including reinforcements sent from Athens, as well as six water-dropping planes and two helicopters, Vathrakoyiannis added.
In total, Greece saw 52 wildfires breaking out in the previous 24-hour period, 44 of which were tackled in the early stages, Vathrakoyiannis said. Authorities were still battling a total of eight fires by Monday evening.
The blazes come a day after the fire department managed to tame two large forest fires near Athens that had been fanned by strong winds.
“We have had an exceptionally difficult June regarding weather conditions, with high levels of drought and unusually strong winds for this season,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday during a Cabinet meeting. This year’s summer, he said, “is predicted to be particularly dangerous” for wildfires.
Mitsotakis said the use of drones as part of an early warning system for wildfires had been particularly useful this year and credited better coordination between authorities and volunteer firefighters for limiting the extent of fire damage so far.
“We are entering the tough core of the anti-fire period, and this will certainly not be won without the help of the public as well, particularly in the field of prevention,” Mitsotakis said.
Hot, dry weather combined with strong winds helped fan fires in both Greece and Turkiye last month. This year’s summer is expected to be particularly prone to blazes following a particularly mild, dry winter. Last year, extensive wildfires in Greece killed more than 20 people.
Hurricane Beryl pummels Caribbean, strengthens to Category 5
- Beryl is now the earliest category 5 storm in the Atlantic on record, and has developed into a “potentially catastrophic” hurricane
Beryl is now the earliest category 5 storm in the Atlantic on record, and has developed into a “potentially catastrophic” hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 160 miles (260 kilometers) per hour, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Early in the day, Grenada’s Carriacou Island took a direct hit from the storm’s “extremely dangerous eyewall,” with sustained winds at upwards of 150 miles, the NHC said.
Nearby islands, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, also experienced “catastrophic winds and life-threatening storm surge,” according to the NHC.
“In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a press conference.
“We are not yet out of the woods,” Mitchell added, noting that while no deaths had been reported so far, he could not say for sure that none had occurred.
Video obtained by AFP from St. George’s in Grenada showed heavy downpours with trees buffeted by gusts.
Later on social media, Mitchell said the government was working to get relief supplies to both Carriacou and the island of Petite Martinique on Tuesday.
“The state of emergency is still in effect. Remain indoors,” he wrote on Facebook.
Beryl became the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season on Saturday and quickly gathered strength.
Experts say that such a powerful storm forming this early in the Atlantic hurricane season — which runs from early June to late November — is extremely rare.
It is the first hurricane since NHC records began to reach the Category 4 level in June, and the earliest to reach Category 5 in July.
“Only five major (Category 3+) hurricanes have been recorded in the Atlantic before the first week of July,” hurricane expert Michael Lowry posted on social media platform X.
Barbados appeared to be spared from the worst of the storm but was still hit with high winds and pelting rain, though officials reported no injuries so far.
Barbados seems to have “dodged a bullet,” Minister of Home Affairs and Information Wilfred Abrahams said in an online video, but nonetheless “gusts are still coming, the storm-force winds are still coming,” he said.
Homes and businesses were flooded in some areas, and fishing boats were damaged in Bridgetown.
The storm prompted the cancelation of classes on Monday in several of the islands, while a meeting this week in Grenada of the Caribbean regional bloc CARICOM was postponed.
Jamaica has issued a hurricane warning, ahead of the storm’s expected arrival on Wednesday. The NHC also warned the Cayman Islands and areas on the Yucatan Peninsula to monitor the storm’s progress.
A Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale is considered a major hurricane.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in late May that it expects this year to be an “extraordinary” hurricane season, with up to seven storms of Category 3 or higher.
The agency cited warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures and conditions related to the weather phenomenon La Nina in the Pacific for the expected increase in storms.
Extreme weather events including hurricanes have become more frequent and more devastating in recent years as a result of climate change.
Australia police arrests 14-year-old boy after stabbing at Sydney university
SYDNEY: Australian police said on Tuesday it had arrested a 14-year-old boy after a stabbing at the University of Sydney.
Emergency crews treated a 22-year-old man, who was taken to a hospital in a serious but stable condition, New South Wales state police said in a statement.
There is no ongoing risk to the community, it said.
A University of Sydney spokesperson said a police operation was underway on its Camperdown campus and that police would remain on campus while investigations continue.
Biden blasts landmark Supreme Court ruling on Trump immunity
- This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent,” Biden said in a speech at the White House
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden warned Monday that the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity sets a “dangerous precedent” that Donald Trump would exploit if elected in November.
The conservative-dominated high court ruled earlier that day that Trump — and all presidents — enjoy “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for “official acts” taken while in office, but can still face criminal penalties for “unofficial acts.”
Trump is facing criminal charges over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, but that trial had been put on hold while the Supreme Court considered his immunity claims.
“For all practical purposes today’s decision almost certainly means there are no limits to what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent,” Biden said in a speech at the White House.
The 6-3 ruling on Monday, split along ideological lines, is set to further delay proceedings in Trump’s case as lower courts work through myriad questions raised in the Supreme Court decision.
With only four months left until the presidential election, the delays likely mean the case will not reach trial before voters head to the polls.
“The American people must decide if they want to entrust... once again, the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases, whenever he wants to do it,” Biden said.
Trump was quick to revel in what he called a “big win.”
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, said a president is “not above the law” but does have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
“The president therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers,” Roberts said.
“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity,” the chief justice added, sending the case back to a lower court to determine which of the charges facing Trump involve official or unofficial conduct.
Both a District Court and an appeals court panel had previously rejected Trump’s immunity claims in a historic case with far-reaching implications for executive power.
Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as well as obstruction of an official proceeding — when a violent mob of his supporters tried to prevent the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress held to certify Biden’s victory.
The 78-year-old former president is also charged with conspiracy to deny Americans the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
The three liberal justices dissented from Monday’s ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying she was doing so “with fear for our democracy.”
“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” Sotomayor said. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” she said.
Trump, in posts on Truth Social, welcomed the decision calling it a “big win for our Constitution and democracy.”
“Today’s Historic Decision by the Supreme Court should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me,” he said.
Trump’s original trial date in the election subversion case had been March 4.
But the Supreme Court — dominated by conservatives, including three appointed by Trump — agreed to hear his argument for absolute immunity, putting the case on hold while they considered the matter in April.
Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the ruling means the case “is going to drag on more and more and longer and longer and well beyond the election.”
“To the extent that Trump was trying to drag his feet and extend this beyond the election, he has succeeded wildly,” Schwinn said.
The opinion also provides a “roadmap” for a US leader to avoid prosecution for a particular action “simply by intertwining it with official government action,” he added.
“That’s going to seriously hamstring the prosecution of a former president because the president’s official actions and unofficial actions are so often intertwined,” he said.
Facing four criminal cases, Trump has been doing everything in his power to delay the trials until after the election.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, making him the first former US president ever convicted of a crime.
His sentencing will take place on July 11.
By filing a blizzard of pre-trial motions, Trump’s lawyers have managed to put on hold the three other trials, which deal with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding top-secret documents at his home in Florida.
If reelected, Trump could, once sworn in as president in January 2025, order the federal cases against him closed.
Haiti violence displacing one child every minute: UNICEF
UNITED NATIONS: Violence raging in troubled Haiti is forcibly displacing one child every minute, on average, with some 300,000 already affected, the United Nations children’s agency warned on Monday.
Displaced children account for more than half of the 600,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, according to UNICEF, particularly in the capital Port-au-Prince, much of which is controlled by gangs.
“The number of internally displaced children in Haiti has increased by an estimated 60 percent since March — the equivalent of one child every minute — a result of ongoing violence caused by armed groups,” it said in a report.
Haiti has long been rocked by gang violence, but conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
“Children in Haiti continue to endure an onslaught of multiple dangers, including horrific violence and critical levels of displacement,” said UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell.
“The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes is taking a devastating toll on children. Displaced children are in desperate need of a safe and protective environment, and increased support and funding from the international community.”
When displaced children and teenagers are forced to move — often without their families — it puts them at risk of dropping out of school and making them vulnerable to sexual assault, exploitation and abuse.
Additionally, young people are increasingly joining the armed groups that sow terror in a country where 90 percent of the population lives in poverty, and three million children need humanitarian aid, UNICEF warned.
Kenyan police finally arrived in Haiti last month, on a long-awaited international mission to help stabilize the Caribbean nation.
The violence in Port-au-Prince has affected food security and humanitarian aid access, with much of the city in the hands of gangs accused of abuses including murder, rape, looting and kidnappings.
The multinational Kenyan force, greenlit last year by the UN Security Council, had been held up for months amid challenges to its deployment in Kenyan courts.
