Italy votes in EU election with Meloni poised as powerbroker

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni casts her vote for the European Parliament elections, in Rome, Saturday, June 8, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 09 June 2024
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Italy votes in EU election with Meloni poised as powerbroker

  • The two-day ballot in Italy — the EU’s third-largest economy with 76 of 720 seats in the new parliament — could have big consequences

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Italy became the first heavyweight nation to cast votes for the EU’s next parliament on Saturday, in a test of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni’s strength at home — and future influence in the bloc.
Most of the European Union’s 27 member countries, including powerhouses France and Germany, go to the polls on Sunday, the final day, with projected overall results due late that evening.
The first polling stations have already opened in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, the site of deadly rioting this month.
The two-day ballot in Italy — the EU’s third-largest economy with 76 of 720 seats in the new parliament — could have big consequences.
Meloni cast her vote in her Rome constituency, under sweltering late spring temperatures, telling reporters that the EU contest “will shape the next five years.”
Polls suggest Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party could win with 27 percent of the vote — more than quadrupling its score from 2019 — amid a broader surge of far-right groups across the bloc.
Walter Esposito, a 78-year-old Roman, cast his vote for her party in protest at EU policies on the environment, complaining: “Europe has always tried to crush Italy and the Italian people.”
At the other end of the political spectrum, Carlotta Cinardi, an 18-year-old student, said she found no party that “100 percent represents my ideas” — but voted green as the “most progressive toward young people.”
A victory could set up Meloni as a powerbroker in determining whether EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen gets the backing she needs, from both member states and parliament, for a second term.
Meloni has been actively courted both by the center-right von der Leyen — and by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who wants to create a right-wing EU supergroup.
But one European diplomat warned against overestimating her influence.
“Meloni will have an influence on Italian interests, at the commission, in parliament,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named. “She will play the game. But does that make her a kingmaker? No.”
For the time being, Meloni is keeping her cards close to her chest — though she makes clear she wants to relegate the EU’s left-wing parties to the opposition.
Public concern over the flow of irregular migrants across the Mediterranean was one of the key issues that propelled Meloni to power in 2022.
EU-wide, immigration is the hot-button issue driving support to far-right parties. They are forecast to grab a quarter of parliament seats — though the centrist mainstream is still seen coming out on top.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied in cities across Germany Saturday, urging a vote against the far-right, with the anti-immigration AfD party polling at about 15 percent.
Beyond the predicted surge, analysts say the bigger question is whether parliament’s main grouping, von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP), will ally with the far-right.
Von der Leyen has indicated willingness to have the EPP work with far-right lawmakers, as long as they are pro-EU and not what she calls “puppets” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On those grounds Von der Leyen explicitly ruled out allying with Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which is topping French polls, or with Germany’s AfD.
Both those parties — unlike Meloni’s — are leery of EU military and financial support to Ukraine against Russia’s invading forces, with the AfD outright hostile to weapons deliveries.
In Hungary — where tens of thousands rallied Saturday in support of opposition leader Peter Magyar — Viktor Orban’s ruling populist Fidesz party is likewise opposed to further helping Kyiv.
Italy was voting on the same day as Slovakia, a NATO and EU member since 2004, shaken by an assassination attempt last month on premier Robert Fico.
Voters have rallied to Fico’s Russia-friendly camp in the wake of the shooting — which he blamed on “aggressive and hateful politics” by the opposition.
Authorities said the assassination attempt, by a 71-year-old poet, was politically motivated.
Jozef Zahorsky, a 44-year-old teacher, said he cast his ballot for Fico’s ruling left-wing nationalist Smer-SD because it stood for “the interests of Slovakia, not Brussels.”
Fico’s party opposes EU arms deliveries to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, and rails against alleged “warmongers” in Brussels.
In a Facebook post, Fico posted a photograph of himself casting a ballot from his hospital bed. He urged voters to “elect European Parliament lawmakers who support peace efforts, not the pursuit of war.”


International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation

Updated 11 sec ago
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International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation

  • Court to give opinion on legal obligations around climate
  • ICJ opinion is non-binding but likely to influence litigation
THE HAGUE: The United Nations’ top court next week begins hearings on the legal obligation of countries to fight climate change and the consequences for states of contributing to global warming, the outcome of which could influence litigation worldwide.
While the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) are non-binding, they are legally and politically significant. Experts say the ICJ’s eventual opinion on climate change will likely be cited in climate change-driven lawsuits in courts from Europe to Latin America and beyond.
The hearings begin a week after developing nations denounced as woefully inadequate an agreement reached at the COP29 summit for countries to provide $300 billion in annual climate finance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, said it was imperative fossil fuels be phased out and more money provided to poorer nations bearing the brunt of climate change, such as his Pacific island nation.
“We’re not seeing that in the outcome of the COPs,” Regenvanu told Reuters.
“We are hoping (the ICJ) can provide a new avenue to break through the inertia we experience when trying to talk about climate justice,” he added.
Fiji’s Attorney General Graham Leung called the hearings a historic opportunity for small island developing states in their quest for climate change justice.
CLIMATE LITIGATION
Climate litigation is on the rise.
Earlier this year, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. But it also rejected two other cases, pointing to the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation.
Vanuatu, one of the small developing nations that pushed for an ICJ advisory opinion, says it disproportionately suffers the effects of climate change as a result of increasingly intense storms and rising sea levels.
Vanuatu will be the first of 98 countries and twelve international organizations to present arguments to the ICJ, also known as the World Court. It is the United Nations’ highest court for resolving international disputes between states and can be tasked by the UN General Assembly to give advisory opinions.
In 2023, the assembly asked it for a formal opinion on questions including the legal obligations of states to protect the climate system and whether large states that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions may be liable for damages, in particular to small island nations.
“As COP29 failed to provide a clear direction for climate justice and ambition, any developments from the ICJ will now only become more weighty,” said Lea Main-Klingst, a lawyer with ClientEarth.
Aside from small island states and numerous Western and developing countries, the court will also hear from the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, the United States and China. Oil producer group OPEC will also give its views.
The hearings will start at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) local time on Monday and run until Dec. 13. The court’s opinion will be delivered in 2025.

Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week

Updated 40 min 46 sec ago
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Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week

  • Representatives from more than 100 countries, organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice
  • Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change

THE HAGUE: The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?“
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers.”
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organizations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.


Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra

Updated 50 min 42 sec ago
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Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra

  • The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven
  • Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas

JAKARTA: Indonesian rescuers on Friday searched for survivors buried in three cars and bus at the base of a cliff after flash floods and landslides in North Sumatra province killed at least 29 people.
Torrential rain for the past week in the province has triggered flash floods and landslides in four different districts, Indonesia’s disaster agency has said.
The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven, Hadi Wahyudi, the spokesperson of North Sumatra police told Reuters on Friday.
At least five cars, one bus, and one truck were trapped at the base of a cliff following the landslide. On Friday, police and rescuers focused their search for missing people on three cars and one bus buried in mud.
“We still don’t know how many people who were still trapped,” Hadi said.
In other districts, landslides over the weekend killed 20 people and rescuers will keep searching for two missing people until Saturday.
Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas, said Sariman Sitorus, spokesperson for the local search agency.
The floods forced a delay in votes for regional elections in some areas in Medan on Wednesday.
Extreme weather is expected in Indonesia toward the end of 2024, as the La Nina phenomenon increases rainfalls across the tropical archipelago, the country’s weather agency has warned.


UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case

Updated 45 min 53 sec ago
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UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case

  • The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud
  • After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police

LONDON: British Transport Minister Louise Haigh resigned on Friday over a decade-old fraud conviction for claiming her cellphone had been stolen.
In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Haigh said “I remain totally committed to our political project, but I now believe it will be best served by my supporting you from outside government.”
“I appreciate that whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are both committed,” she wrote.
The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud after she reported that a work cellphone had been stolen after she was mugged in 2013. She later said she had mistakenly listed it among the stolen items.
After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police. Haigh pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation and was given a conditional discharge.
In a statement before her resignation, Haigh said that “under the advice of my solicitor I pleaded guilty -– despite the fact this was a genuine mistake from which I did not make any gain. The magistrates accepted all of these arguments and gave me the lowest possible outcome (a discharge) available.”
Haigh, 37, has represented a district in Sheffield, northern England, in Parliament since 2015 and was named to the key transport post after Starmer’s center-left Labour party was elected in July.


Taiwan says 41 Chinese military aircraft, ships detected ahead of Lai US stopover

Updated 29 November 2024
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Taiwan says 41 Chinese military aircraft, ships detected ahead of Lai US stopover

  • The figure was the highest in more than three weeks, according to a tally of figures released daily by Taiwan’s defense ministry

TAIPEI: Taiwan said Friday it had detected 41 Chinese military aircraft and ships around the island ahead of a Hawaii stopover by President Lai Ching-te, part of a Pacific tour that has sparked fury in Beijing.
The figure was the highest in more than three weeks, according to an AFP tally of figures released daily by Taiwan’s defense ministry.
China insists self-ruled Taiwan is part of its territory, which Taipei rejects.
To press its claims, China deploys fighter jets, drones and warships around Taiwan on a near-daily basis, with the number of sorties increasing in recent years.
In the 24 hours to 6:00 a.m. on Friday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected 33 Chinese aircraft and eight navy vessels in its airspace and waters.
That included 19 aircraft that took part in China’s “joint combat readiness patrol” on Thursday evening and was the highest number since November 4.
Taiwan also spotted a balloon — the fourth since Sunday — about 172 kilometers west of the island.