LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government will retain a ban on asylum seekers being able to claim protections under modern slavery and other human rights laws, even as its ministers have previously criticized those measures.
Starmer is under pressure to deal with tens of thousands of people who arrive to the UK each year on small boats, a key issue of concern for British voters, after he pledged in last year’s election campaign to “smash the gangs” controlling the people smuggling trade.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill introduced to parliament on Thursday will allow the police to seize the mobile phones of asylum seekers to help track down people smugglers, and target those suspected of supplying parts used in the small boats to transport people to England.
The Labour Party, which won power in July, also plans to retain parts of legislation passed by the previous Conservative government that will disqualify asylum seekers using modern slavery laws to challenge decisions to remove them, and the power to detain child asylum seekers for up to 28 days.
Labour had voted against those measures in parliament when legislation on them was passed in 2023.
Starmer said at the time that the decision to deny asylum seekers using modern slavery laws would “drive a coach and horses” through protections for women trafficked to Britain.
Jess Phillips, now a junior interior minister, said in 2023 the legislation was a “traffickers’ dream” because it would hide victims of modern slavery.
Starmer’s office and the interior ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Immigration and asylum are the second most important issue to voters after the economy, ahead of health, according to a tracker poll published by YouGov.
Government figures show that 36,816 people came to Britain via small boats last year, a 25 percent jump from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023.
The latest government statistics on Channel crossings make 2024 the second-highest year for arrivals since data was first collated in 2018.
Concern over immigration was a leading factor in Britain’s decision to vote to leave the European Union in 2016, but successive governments have failed to reduce both legal and illegal migration.
UK to keep ban on asylum seekers claiming modern slavery protections
https://arab.news/44bws
UK to keep ban on asylum seekers claiming modern slavery protections
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- Labour had voted against those measures in parliament when legislation on them was passed in 2023
- Immigration and asylum are the second most important issue to voters after the economy
Australia warns airlines to beware of a potential Chinese navy live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea
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- China had given notice that the warships could potentially fire live weapons during an exercise
- Chinese exercise legal and took place in international waters outside Australia’s exclusive economic zone
Regulator Airservices Australia warned commercial pilots of a potential hazard in airspace between the countries as three Chinese warships conduct exercises off the Australian east coast.
China had given notice that the warships could potentially fire live weapons during an exercise, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Australian defense officials were uncertain whether any live fire of weapons had occurred. The risk had since passed, Albanese said.
“There was no imminent risk of danger to any Australian assets or New Zealand assets,” Albanese told reporters, citing information from his Defense Ministry.
Air New Zealand, the country’s national carrier, said in a statement it had “modified flight paths as needed to avoid the area, with no impact on our operations.”
Virgin Australia said it was following Airservices Australia instructions, but did not say whether its New Zealand services had been diverted.
Pilots of Virgin, Qantas and Emirates flights from Sydney to New Zealand diverted their courses after hearing one of the warships broadcast a warning of an imminent live-fire exercise, Nine Network television reported.
Australian and New Zealand military ships and P-8 Poseidon surveillance planes have been monitoring the Chinese warships – frigate Hengyang, cruiser Zunyi and replenishment vessel Weishanhu – for days.
Chinese warships rarely venture so far south in a deployment regarded as a demonstration of the Chinese navy’s growing size and capabilities.
Australian and International Pilots Association Vice President Captain Steve Cornell, who represents pilots from Australia’s largest airline Qantas, was critical of where the Chinese choose to hold their exercise.
“Whilst it was unusual to have Chinese warships in this part of the world, pilots often have to contend with obstacles to safe navigation, whether that be from military exercises such as this or other events like rocket launches, space debris or volcanic eruptions,” Cornell said.
“That being said, it’s a big bit of ocean and you would think that they could have parked somewhere less inconvenient whilst they flexed their muscles,” he added.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong will discuss the deployment when she meets her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at a G20 ministers meeting underway in South Africa, Albanese said.
The Chinese exercise was legal and took place in international waters outside Australia’s exclusive economic zone, Albanese said.
Pope Francis passes another calm night in hospital: Vatican
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- Pope Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital last Friday with bronchitis
- But it later developed into pneumonia in both lungs, sparking widespread alarm
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis spent another night without incident in hospital, the Vatican said on Friday, after a week in the hospital where the 88-year-old pontiff is being treated for bronchitis and pneumonia.
“The night went well, this morning Pope Francis got up and had breakfast,” the Vatican said in a regular morning update.
It was the latest in a series of incrementally positive updates this week from the Vatican, which has regularly been publishing information – however modest – about the Argentine pope’s state of health.
Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital last Friday with bronchitis, but it later developed into pneumonia in both lungs, sparking widespread alarm.
But the Vatican said Thursday he continued to not have a fever and his “hemodynamic (blood flow) parameters continue to be stable.”
Vatican sources have said the pope continues to keep up with his correspondence and has been working with his collaborators.
Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, the head of Italy’s bishops conference, expressed confidence Thursday that the pope was “on the right path.”
“The fact that the pope had breakfast, read the newspapers, received people, means that we are on the right path to a full recovery, which we hope will happen soon,” Zuppi said.
‘Difficult without it’: EU hopes in German leadership comeback after vote
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- Germans head to the polls on Sunday in an election that has been impatiently awaited in Brussels
BRUSSELS:Germans head to the polls on Sunday in an election that has been impatiently awaited in Brussels, where many hope Berlin can swiftly return to play a driving role in EU affairs as the bloc faces a string of crises.
Already suffering from lacklustre economic growth and competitiveness, the EU has been rocked by US President Donald Trump threatening a trade war and reaching out over European leaders’ heads to Russia to settle the Ukraine war.
“We are sometimes afraid of German leadership,” said a European diplomat. “But it is difficult to live without it.”
Incertitude in Germany has added to months of political turmoil in France, where a weakened President Emmanuel Macron in December appointed his fourth prime minister within a year.
The Franco-German engine normally credited with driving the European Union “has not been able to work” and take “major decisions” at a time where “it is more necessary than ever,” said Yann Wernert, an analyst at the Jacques Delors Institute.
“We don’t see much German commitment in current EU legislation,” lamented another diplomat.
The vacuum has been partially filled by others.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, has been pushing for Brussels to do more to confront Russia, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has taken the lead on migration issues.
But the absence has been felt.
“Can the EU act without Germany and France? In case of an emergency this would be possible, but it is better to act with France and Germany,” said a third diplomat.
Sunday’s vote will not immediately solve the problem, as Germany may not have a new government until the spring.
The confident frontrunner Friedrich Merz has said he’s aiming for an Easter deadline. But arduous coalition negotiations tend to drag on for weeks if not months in the country, spelling long stretches of political paralysis.
Questions about the shape of a future coalition government are likely to slow down key legislative projects also at the European level, on anything from migration to defense funding and climate change, said Wernert.
“All Europe is watching this election,” said Daniel Freund, a European lawmaker with the Greens, lamenting the current “lack of movement.”
Some of his colleagues worry about the ripple effect the vote could have on political balances at the European Parliament.
Merz’s conservative CDU-CSU alliance belongs to the largest parliamentary group, the EPP, which currently shapes the chamber’s agenda with support from a loose alliance of centrists, social democrats and greens.
But led by Manfred Weber, a German, the EPP has occasionally sided with the far right over the past year.
The same tactic was used by the CDU/CSU, which last month passed a motion calling for an immigration crackdown with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a taboo-breaking maneuver.
“For me, the real question is to what extent what happened in Germany will have an impact on the outcome of the elections and what lessons EPP representatives will draw from it,” said Valerie Hayer, head of the centrist Renew group.
“Will they say... it was a losing strategy or, on the contrary, a winning one?“
If the so-called “firewall” barring cooperation with the extreme right “breaks down” in Germany “it will be very unfeasible to have it implemented here,” added Dane Anders Vistisen, a European lawmaker with the far-right Patriots group.
Lawyers to deliver closing arguments in the trial of man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie
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- Lawyers are set to deliver their closing arguments Friday in the trial of a New Jersey man charged with trying to kill Salman Rushdie on a western New York lecture stage
- The knife attack at the Chautauqua Institution severely injured the Booker Prize-winning author and left him blind in one eye
MAYVILLE: Lawyers are set to deliver their closing arguments Friday in the trial of a New Jersey man charged with trying to kill Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in a knife attack that left the author blind in one eye and with other serious injuries.
Hadi Matar, 27, is charged with attempted murder and assault in the August 2022 attack at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Rushdie, 77, was the key witness during testimony that began last week. The Booker Prize-winning author told jurors he thought he was dying when a masked stranger ran onto the stage and stabbed and slashed at him until being tackled by bystanders. Rushdie showed jurors his now-blinded right eye, usually hidden behind a darkened eyeglass lens.
Jurors also heard from a trauma surgeon who said Rushdie’s injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment, and a law enforcement officer who said Matar was calm and cooperative in his custody.
They were shown video of the assault and aftermath that was captured from multiple angles by Chautauqua Institution cameras. The recordings also picked up the gasps and screams from audience members who had been seated to hear Rushdie speak with City of Asylum Pittsburgh founder Henry Reese about keeping writers safe. Reese suffered a gash to his forehead.
From the witness stand, institution staff and others present that day pointed to Matar as the assailant.
Stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center. He detailed his long and painful recovery in his 2024 memoir, “Knife.”
Throughout the trial, Matar often took notes with a pen and sometimes laughed or smiled with defense attorneys during breaks in testimony.
His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own and Matar did not testify in his defense. Instead, the attorneys challenged prosecution witnesses as part of a strategy intended to cast doubt on whether Matar intended to kill, and not just injure, Rushdie. The distinction is important for an attempted murder conviction.
Matar had with him knives, not a gun or bomb, his attorneys said. And Rushdie’s heart and lungs were uninjured, they noted in response to testimony that the injuries were life-threatening.
Public Defender Nathaniel Barone said Matar likely would have faced a lesser charge of assault were it not for Rushdie’s celebrity.
“We think that it became an attempted murder because of the notoriety of the alleged victim in the case,” Barone told reporters after testimony concluded Thursday. “That’s been it from the very beginning. It’s been nothing more, nothing less. And it’s for publicity purposes. It’s for self-interest purposes.”
A separate federal indictment alleges that Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa in 1989 after publication of the novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
Rushdie spent years in hiding. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, he had traveled freely over the past quarter century.
A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will be scheduled in US District Court in Buffalo.
China’s military drives away Philippine aircraft near Spratly Islands
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- China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, a vital waterway for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce
- On Thursday, Philippine guard and fisheries bureau had jointly carried out a maritime domain awareness flight over Spratly Islands
BEIJING: China’s military said it warned and drove away three Philippine aircraft that “illegally intruded” into the airspace near the Spratly Islands on Thursday.
There was no immediate comment from the Philippine embassy in Beijing on the Chinese military’s statement issued on Friday.
China’s Southern Theatre Command accused the Philippine side of attempting to “peddle its illegal claims” through provocation, and warned that the “clumsy maneuver is doomed to failure.”
China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, a vital waterway for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce, putting it at odds with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
A 2016 arbitration ruling invalidated China’s expansive claim but Beijing does not recognize the decision.
On Thursday, the Philippines said its coast guard and fisheries bureau had jointly carried out a maritime domain awareness flight over the Kalayaan Islands, the Philippine name for Spratly Islands.
The mission was to assert the Philippines’ sovereignty, sovereign rights, and maritime jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea, it said. More than 50 Chinese maritime militia vessels and a Chinese coast guard ship were spotted during the exercise.
It was not immediately clear if that mission, which deployed two aircraft, was the one Chinese military said it responded to.
The latest confrontation comes after Philippine coast guard accused the Chinese navy of performing dangerous flight maneuvers earlier this week when it flew close to a government aircraft patrolling the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
Beijing disputed that account.