LONDON: The UK government will house hundreds more asylum-seekers on barges, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Monday, as he unveiled the latest migration figures that he said showed that his plans to crack down on small boat crossings on the English Channel are working.
Two more barges will house about 1,000 migrants, Sunak said, alongside one that’s set to be docked in Portland in southern England within the next two weeks. The move is meant to help save millions in taxpayers’ money currently spent to house asylum-seekers in hotels across the country.
Sunak told reporters that compared to the same time last year, the number of people making the dangerous sea crossing on small vessels from northern France to the southern English coast so far this year has decreased by a fifth. He suggested that the UK was doing better than other countries in Europe, where he said unauthorized migrant crossings have increased by a third over the same period.
Figures from the Home Office show that about 7,600 people were detected crossing the English Channel so far this year, compared with almost 10,000 last June. However, it is difficult to tell whether the decrease was linked to Sunak’s government’s policies or other factors such as weather conditions. The summer months typically see much higher numbers making the journey.
Sunak also said that the number of Albanian migrants arriving by small boats has fallen by almost 90 percent, and that a deal with Albania has seen 1,800 asylum-seekers turned back.
Many of the asylum-seekers arriving in the UK each year hail from conflict zones, including Afghanistan and Syria, though a large number come from Albania, which Sunak’s government describes as a “safe” country.
Sunak has made “Stop the Boats” his flagship policy since he took office in October. His government is pushing through a controversial migration bill that seeks to dramatically curb migrants’ ability to seek asylum in the UK Critics, including the UN refugee agency, have decried it as unethical and unworkable, and some say it breaks international law.
UK to house hundreds more migrants on barges, Sunak says
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UK to house hundreds more migrants on barges, Sunak says
- Two more barges will house about 1,000 migrants, Sunak said, alongside one that’s set to be docked in Portland in southern England within the next two weeks
EU impatience builds over thorny migration reform
- Key proposals include lengthening the detention period of irregular migrants arriving on EU soil from 12 weeks to 20 weeks and accelerating evaluations of asylum applications
BRUSSELS: The EU will seek Thursday to make progress on a troubled reform of its policy toward asylum-seekers and migrants, with many member states looking to coax Germany to agree key measures.
Paralysis on the issue has caused frustration in the 27-nation bloc as it faces a rise in irregular migration. The arrival of thousands of asylum-seekers on the Italian island of Lampedusa has spurred matters.
The aim of the reform, put on the table three years ago, is to have EU countries share the burden posed by the arrivals, either by taking in some of the migrants who mainly arrive in Italy or Greece or contributing money to those that do.
The text, drawn up by the European Commission, is in part a bid to forge Europe-wide solidarity in case of a repeat of the massive 2015-2016 influx of asylum-seekers, most of whom were Syrians fleeing their civil war.
Key proposals include lengthening the detention period of irregular migrants arriving on EU soil from 12 weeks to 20 weeks and accelerating evaluations of asylum applications.
In July, an attempt to get the reform adopted failed when the required weighted majority of EU countries was not met.
Hungary, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic voted against the package, while Germany, Slovakia and the Netherlands abstained.
Germany — a heavyweight voting power — wanted carve-outs for minors and families.
Its foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, on Sunday warned that the current proposal would “de facto prompt a large number of unregistered refugees to head toward Germany if there were a crisis”.
But German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser on Wednesday told Handelsblatt newspaper that Berlin was determined to “finalize” revised EU policy on migration.
Several EU countries have called for the file to be settled quickly.
“We have no time to lose,” Belgium’s minister for migration Nicole de Moor said during a conference Monday organized by the European Policy Center think tank. Failure to agree the pact “could threaten European unity”.
To put pressure, the European Parliament last week decided to pause its negotiations with EU member states on aspects of the pact, dealing with reinforced security along the bloc’s outer border.
One relates to Eurodac, a biometric database for asylum-seekers, and the introduction of a mandatory screening procedure of irregular arrivals.
The goal of the EU is to have the reform adopted before European elections next June that will usher in a new European Parliament and commission.
The next cycle in EU politics could see a political shift in the European Parliament, given the rise of rightwing parties in several EU countries, and would see Hungary and Poland — both hostile to hosting asylum-seekers — take turns holding the rotating EU presidency that sets policy agendas.
Biden isn’t paying much attention to the 2024 GOP debate. He’s already zeroing in on Trump
- Biden is drawing a contrast with the GOP logjams in Congress, seeking to showcase what he is getting done
- Says he is running to prevent Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans from destroying American democracy
SAN FRANCISCO, California: President Joe Biden was raising campaign cash in San Francisco on Wednesday while seven Republican presidential hopefuls held a debate down the coast in Simi Valley. Biden wasn’t paying them much attention because he’s already zeroing in on Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner who wasn’t on the stage.
The president has been increasingly calling out Trump by name and referring to him as his “likely opponent” in 2024, signaling a likely rematch from four years earlier and warning of what the Democratic incumbent sees as major dangers to the nation if he is not reelected.
“I’m running because Democracy is still at stake in 2024. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” he said during one fundraiser, referring to a Trump campaign slogan and skipping entirely over Trump’s GOP rivals.
Biden’s trip to the West this week is counterprogramming of sorts as a government shutdown looms, House Republicans launch impeachment hearings, the Republican debate unfolds and Trump makes a campaign stop in Michigan to court autoworkers.
Biden is drawing a contrast with the GOP logjams in Congress, seeking to showcase what he is getting done and trying to make the case that will continue as long as he wins a second term.
“I’m running because important freedoms we have now are at stake,” Biden told supporters at a Tuesday night fundraiser. “The right to choose. The right to vote. The right to be who you are, love who you love. They’re being attacked and being shredded right now.”
Earlier Tuesday, Biden became the first modern president to walk a picket line when he joined UAW members in the Detroit area. The union has expanded its strike against Detroit automakers by walking out of spare-parts warehouses in 20 states.
Biden met with the science and technology advisers on Wednesday to discuss artificial intelligence, vaccine misinformation and other concerns. He said he did not think a government shutdown was unavoidable.
“I don’t think anything is inevitable when it comes to politics,” the president said. When asked what could be done to avoid it, he said, “If I knew that I would have done it already.”
Before he heading to Phoenix in the evening, Biden headlined three Northern California fundraisers, avoiding for now the famous names — and bank accounts — in Los Angeles as the actors’ strike wears on, although the writers’ strike ended Tuesday.
In Arizona, a critical swing state he won in 2020, Biden will pay tribute to the late US Sen. John McCain and give a democracy-focused address on Thursday.
Trump, meanwhile, railed against electric vehicles during a speech in Michigan at a non-unionized auto parts supplier, shortly before the second debate of the primary season got underway without him. Biden never mentioned the debate, but at his final fundraiser of the night, he told supporters Trump was out for revenge.
“He’ll seek revenge for what’s happened ... you know all the assertions he’s made,” Biden said. “Donald Trump does believe we’re a nation driven by anger and fear, and is playing on it. He says we’re a failed nation.
“Did you ever think you’d hear a former president of the United States say those kinds of things?”
Trump is facing multiple criminal indictments, including charges related to the Republican’s role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden. Nonetheless, Trump is the most popular choice among Republicans at this point for the party’s White House nomination.
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans — 63 percent — now say they want him to run again, according a poll last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up slightly from the 55 percent who said the same in April when Trump began facing a series of criminal charges.
While 74 percent of Republicans say they would support Trump in November 2024, 53 percent of those in the survey say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee. An additional 11 percent say they would probably not support him.
Biden doesn’t fare much better, with 26 percent overall wanting to see him run again, with 47 percent of Democrats saying they want him to run, compared with 37 percent in January.
Pakistani vocational school helps Afghan women refugees build businesses
- Officials say hundreds of thousands of Afghans have traveled to Pakistan since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: In a small workshop in the bustling northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, a dozen Afghan women sit watching a teacher show them how to make clothes on a sewing machine.
The skills center was set up last year by Peshawar resident Mahra Basheer, 37, after seeing the steady influx of people from neighboring Afghanistan where they face an economic crisis and growing restrictions on women since the Taliban took over in 2021.
Trying to create options for women to become financially independent, she opened the workshop to teach tailoring as well as digital skills and beauty treatments. Basheer quickly found hundreds of women enrolling and has a long wait list.
“If we get assistance, I think we will be able to train between 250 and 500 students at one time, empowering women who can play an important role in the community,” Basheer said.
Officials say hundreds of thousands of Afghans have traveled to Pakistan since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021. Even before then, Pakistan hosted some 1.5 million registered refugees, one of the largest such populations in the world, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
More than a million others are estimated to live there unregistered. Grappling with an economic crisis of its own, Pakistan’s government is increasingly anxious about the number of Afghans arriving, officials say. Lawyers and officials have said scores of Afghans have been arrested in recent months on allegations they don’t have the correct legal documents to live in Pakistan.
Basheer said that her main focus was expanding operations for Afghan women and she has also included some Pakistani women in the program to boost their opportunities in the conservative area. Once graduating from the three-month course, the women are focused on earning a modest but meaningful income, often starting their own businesses.
Nineteen-year-old Afghan citizen Fatima who had undertaken training at the center, said she now wanted to open a beauty parlour in Peshawar – currently banned in her home country just a few hours away.
“Right now my plan is to start a salon at home. Then to work very professionally so that I can eventually open a very big salon for myself,” she said.
Ukrainian troops repel Russian attacks on eastern front — officials
- Ukraine’s General Staff reported air strikes on four localities in the area and said 15 towns and villages had come under artillery and mortar attack
Ukrainian troops held off determined attacks on Wednesday by Russian forces trying to regain lost positions on the eastern front, military officials said, while analysts suggested Kyiv’s forces were also making progress in the southern theater.
The Ukrainian military launched its counteroffensive in June intending to recoup ground in the east and in the past two weeks announced the capture of two key villages, Andriivka and Klishchiivka, near the shattered city of Bakhmut.
Its forces are also trying to advance southward to the Sea of Azov to sever a land bridge established by Russia between the annexed Crimean Peninsula and positions it holds in the east.
Ilia Yevlash, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces, told national television: “We continue to repel intense enemy attacks near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.
“The enemy is still storming these positions with the hope of recapturing lost positions, but without success.”
There had been 544 Russian shelling incidents in the past 24 hours in the area, seven combat clashes and four air attacks, Yevlash said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky referred briefly in a post on the Telegram messaging app to “our advance in the Donetsk sector” in the east, but provided no details.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported air strikes on four localities in the area and said 15 towns and villages had come under artillery and mortar attack.
In its account of military activity, Russia’s Defense Ministry also reported heavy fighting in the area, saying its forces had beaten back 10 attacks by Ukrainian troops near Klishchiivka and further south, near the village of Nevelske.
Ukrainian officials have spoken of gains in the drive southward, with General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of forces in the south, telling CNN last week of a “breakthrough,” while noting that progress was slower than had been hoped.
Zelensky and other officials have said the counteroffensive will take time and have dismissed Western critics who said the advance has been too slow and beset by strategic errors.
Tarnavskyi referred to the village of Verbove, which other officials have said Ukrainian forces are poised to seize. Ukrainian forces are targeting several other villages as they progress through Zaporizhzhia region toward the major town of Tokmak.
“There have been three or four days of painstaking hard work by our assault group and commanders conducting tactical tasks in this area which have led to very serious problems for the Russians,” military analyst Roman Svitan told NV Radio.
“I would not speak of a breakthrough until we reach Tokmak.”
Reconstruction aid lagging for 2022 Pakistan floods: UN chief
- “Delays are undermining people’s efforts to rebuild their lives,” the UN chief said during a special session dedicated to the catastrophe
UNITED NATIONS, US: A year after deadly floods inundated a third of Pakistan, the broken promises to rebuild the country present “a litmus test for climate justice,” the head of the United Nations said Wednesday.
“Billions were pledged” by rich nations in the aftermath of the disaster, said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “but the vast majority was in loans. And Pakistan is still waiting for much of the funding.”
“Delays are undermining people’s efforts to rebuild their lives,” the UN chief said during a special session dedicated to the catastrophe, adding that the Asian nation was “a double victim — of climate chaos and of our outdated and unjust global financial system.”
Some $9 billion was pledged to help reconstruct Pakistan in January, though it is still reeling from the effects of the heavy monsoon rains, which displaced eight million people and killed some 1,700.
More than eight million residents in areas hit by the floods lack access to clean water, Guterres said, while noting that Pakistan is responsible for less than one percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that likely fueled last year’s “climate chaos.”
“The countries that contributed most to global heating must contribute most to righting the harm it has done.”
Guterres also called for the creation of a “loss and damage” fund for developing countries — many of which, like Pakistan, are at outsized risk of climate change despite contributing relatively little in the way of carbon emissions.
Such a fund was promised at COP27 late last year, though it has yet to take shape. It is on the agenda for this year’s COP28, to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates.
Calling again for the world to move away from fossil fuels, Guterres warned that climate change is no longer “knocking on everyone’s door.”
“Today, it is beating that door down, from Libya to the Horn of Africa, China, Canada and beyond.”
