World

ATHENS — Greece said on Saturday some 40,000 illegal migrants had been blocked from entering the country along the northern border with Turkey since the beginning of the year.

Greece is often the country of choice for migrants fleeing Africa and the Middle East to try to reach a better life in the European Union.

Many come via Turkey at the Evros border and in 2020 Athens bolstered border controls after large numbers of migrants tried to cross the Evros River in the north.

Athens has accused Ankara of not doing enough to stop smugglers from sending migrants across the border, often in flimsy boats that make for dangerous journeys.

On Saturday, Greece's Civil Protection Minister, Takis Theodorikakos, said tens of thousands of illegal migrants had been stopped from coming into the country at the Evros border this year.

"In the first four months of 2022, about 40,000 illegal immigrants have tried to enter the country illegally," he told Skai TV, specifying they had been stopped at Evros.

"We effectively repel any threat to our country, to our borders."

He also sent a message to Turkey, saying it is not “allowed to tolerate traffickers of desperate people, nor to foster such situations”.

The Evros River, which separates Greece and Turkey, has seen an increase in traffic in recent weeks because water levels are low.

A migration ministry source said migration flows to all of Greece in the first four months of 2022 were nearly 30 per cent higher than in the same period last year.

In March 2020, Greece bolstered border patrols and installed cameras, radar and a 40 kilometre steel fence over five metres high in some areas.

Over 3,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Greece so far this year, including over 1,100 last month, according to the ministry’s data.

TOKYO — Fusako Shigenobu, the 76-year-old female founder of the once-feared Japanese Red Army, walked free from prison Saturday after completing a 20-year sentence for a 1974 embassy siege.

Shigenobu was one of the world’s most notorious women during the 1970s and 1980s, when her radical leftist group carried out armed attacks worldwide in support of the Palestinian cause.

Shigenobu left the prison in Tokyo in a black car with her daughter as several supporters held a banner saying “We love Fusako”. 

“I apologise for the inconvenience my arrest has caused to so many people,” Shigenobu told reporters after the release.

“It’s half-a-century ago... but we caused damage to innocent people who were strangers to us by prioritising our battle, such as by hostage-taking,” she said.

She is believed to have masterminded the 1972 machine gun and grenade attack on Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport, which left 26 people dead and injured about 80.

The former soy-sauce company worker turned militant was arrested in Japan in 2000 and sentenced to two decades behind bars six years later for her part in a siege of the French embassy in The Netherlands.

She had lived as a fugitive in the Middle East for around 30 years before resurfacing in Japan.

Shigenobu’s daughter May, born in 1973 to a father from the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), hailed her mother’s release on social media.

Shigenobu maintained her innocence over the siege, in which three Red Army militants stormed into the French embassy, taking the ambassador and 10 other staff hostage for 100 hours.

Two police officers were shot and seriously wounded. France ended the standoff by freeing a jailed Red Army guerilla, who flew off with the hostage-takers in a plane to Syria.

Shigenobu did not take part in the attack personally but the court said she coordinated the operation with the PFLP.

Born into poverty in post-war Tokyo, Shigenobu was the daughter of a World War II major who became a grocer after Japan’s defeat.

Her odyssey into Middle Eastern extremism began by accident when she passed a sit-in protest at a Tokyo university when she was 20.

Japan was in the midst of campus tumult in the 1960s and 70s to protest the Vietnam War and the Japanese government’s plans to let the US military remain stationed in the country.

Shigenobu quickly became involved in the leftist movement and decided to leave Japan aged 25.

She announced the Red Army’s disbanding from prison in April 2001, and in 2008 was diagnosed with colon and intestinal cancer, undergoing several operations.

Shigenobu said on Saturday she will first focus on her treatment and explained she will not be able to “contribute to the society” given her frail condition.

But she told reporters: “I want to continue to reflect [on my past] and live more and more with curiosity.”

In a letter to a Japan Times reporter in 2017 she admitted the group had failed in its aims.

“Our hopes were not fulfilled and it came to an ugly end,” she wrote.

ROME — Silvio Berlusconi dreamed of finishing his career as Italy’s president, but the billionaire former premier is instead again facing the threat of criminal sanction over his notorious “bunga-bunga” parties.

Milan prosecutors on Wednesday requested six years in jail for the 85-year-old for allegedly paying guests to lie about the parties in the third instalment of the so-called “Ruby” affair, named after the underage exotic dancer at the centre of the case.

Berlusconi denies wrongdoing, and even if convicted has little chance of going to jail due to a long appeals process and restrictions against imprisoning the elderly.

Around 20 former guests of the parties at Berlusconi’s sumptuous mansion near Milan are also on trial, accused of accepting money and gifts from the media mogul in return for their silence.

“These young women were assured that they would be OK both in terms of income, with a 2,500-euro [$2,677] monthly payment, and for a roof, a house, accommodation,” Prosecutor Luca Gaglio told the court in his summing up on Wednesday.

Previously, fellow prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano accused Berlusconi of hiring “sex slaves”.

Young women who attended would later describe the events as sex fests, but Berlusconi always insisted they were nothing more than elegant, “convivial” dinner parties.

Berlusconi’s lawyers insist payments amounting to millions of euros were compensation for the reputational damage suffered by the women from the scandal.

The former prime minister is among 29 people accused in the trial, including Karima El Mahroug, the Moroccan teenager and dancer who used the name “Ruby”, for whom prosecutors asked for five years in jail.

The verdict is expected in the autumn.

‘Politically motivated’ 

The “Ruby” investigations date back to Mahroug’s arrest for theft in 2010 — and Berlusconi’s intervention for police to release her — and each time Berlusconi has emerged victorious, eventually.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2013 for paying for sex with Mahroug, but the verdict was overturned on appeal after the judge said there was reasonable doubt he knew she was underage.

A second trial, named “Ruby-bis” (Ruby Two), ended in jail terms for Berlusconi’s close allies for supplying young prostitutes.

The Ruby-ter (Ruby Three) trials are spread out across several Italian cities, including in Siena, where Berlusconi was cleared last October of bribing a piano player to lie about the parties.

Berlusconi and his allies have long claimed the extensive legal proceedings against him in recent decades — he claimed in 2021 he had gone through 86 trials — are politically motivated.

He has never spent any time behind bars but in 2013, with his first definitive conviction for tax fraud, he carried out community service in a care home for Alzheimer’s patients.

Berlusconi was prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011 and remains active in politics, although his career is reaching its twilight.

His Forza Italia Party is part of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s coalition government but is languishing in the polls and his January bid to become Italy’s president, a ceremonial but prestigious post, was an embarrassing failure.

He has also been plagued by health problems, saying he almost died after being hospitalised with coronavirus in September 2020.

Last year, he was again hospitalised in Milan and Monaco, due to problems with his heart, a fall at home and the after-effects of COVID.

KYIV, Ukraine — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed Thursday that Vladimir Putin will neither win the Ukraine war nor dictate the terms for peace, as Russian troops made fresh attempts to take a key eastern city.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces had tried to storm the besieged industrial hub of Severodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, the focal point of Moscow's renewed offensive in the Donbas region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to offer help "without limits", specifically heavy weaponry for his outgunned troops, and blasted suggestions a negotiated peace could include territorial concessions.

European powerhouse Germany has faced frequent Ukrainian criticism for not doing enough to help, but Scholz underscored the "resolve and strength" of Berlin and 

Western allies.

"Our goal is crystal clear, Putin must not win this war. And I am convinced that he will not win it," the German chancellor told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Putin has "already failed in all his strategic aims" and Russia's plan to capture all of Ukraine is "further away today than it was at the beginning" of its invasion on February 24.

“It is a matter of making it clear to Putin that there will be no dictated peace,” said Scholz. “Ukraine will not accept that and neither will we.”

‘I am not scared’ 

Since failing in its early objective of capturing Ukraine’s capital, Moscow’s army has plotted a slow but steady course deeper into the country’s eastern Donbas region.

Fierce fighting is now centred on Severodonetsk, as Ukrainian forces try to stop Russian troops encircling the city and cutting off the lone road in.

Ukraine’s presidency said in a morning update that “Russian troops tried to storm Severodonetsk and Lysychansk”, with three people killed in Lysychansk.

“It is clear that slowly, slowly, our guys [Ukrainian soldiers] are simply retreating to more fortified positions,” Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said on Telegram on Thursday.

“It’s very hard for the guys. Extremely hard. But they are holding on”.

In the eastern front city of Kramatorsk, children are roaming the rubble as the sound of shellfire booms.

“That was a 22 [122-mm artillery],” said Yevgen, a sombre-looking 13-year-old who moved to Kramatorsk with his mother from the ruins of his village Galyna.

“I am not scared,” he declared as he sat alone on a slab of a destroyed apartment block. “I got used to the shelling in Galyna.”

Four civilians were killed in shelling in the Donetsk region around Kramatorsk, while two were killed in Kharkiv region in the northeast, the Ukrainian presidency said.

‘Without limits’ 

As the fighting raged, Zelensky called out the international community for paying too much attention to Moscow’s interests.

He took specific aim at former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and The New York Times for suggesting territorial sacrifices might be necessary to end the conflict.

Kissinger, the 99-year-old champion of realpolitik, this week told Davos that a return to the “status quo” before Russia’s invasion would prevent a broader war.

Russia formally annexed Crimea in 2014, while separatist groups aligned with Moscow have controlled parts of Donbas, which comprises Donetsk and Lugansk regions, since the same time.

But Zelensky ruled out any such concessions and urged the West to add to the billions of dollars of weapons it has already poured into Ukraine.

“We need the help of our partners — above all, weapons for Ukraine. Full help, without exceptions, without limits, enough to win,” Zelensky said in his daily address to the nation.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had earlier told Davos that his country “badly” needs multiple-launch rocket systems to match Russian firepower.

Kyiv has also been pushing for a full energy embargo on Russia in addition to the sweeping economic sanctions already imposed on Moscow since the invasion.

‘Show me one Nazi!’ 

Russia’s central bank cut its key interest rate Thursday to 11 per cent from 14 per cent following an emergency meeting, as authorities sought to rein in the ruble which has surged in value despite the conflict in Ukraine.

Moscow slapped strict capital controls to boost the economy after the imposition of the sanctions and since then the ruble has staged a spectacular rebound, but Russia fears a strong ruble can hit budget revenues and exporters.

Russia has meanwhile called on the West to lift the sanctions in exchange for freeing up grain exports, with fears mounting of a global food crisis, particularly in Africa.

The Kremlin is also seeking to tighten its grip over the parts of Ukraine it occupies, including fast-tracking citizenship for residents of two southern regions that are mostly under Russian control.

The United States branded the plan an “attempt to subjugate the people of Ukraine”.

Even in areas where Ukraine has pushed back Russian forces, such as around the second city of Kharkiv, the shells continue to fall.

Russia’s rationale of a “special military operation” to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine draws a snort of derision in one village near Kharkiv.

“Show me one Nazi in the village! We have our nation, we are nationalists but not Nazis nor fascists,” says retired nurse Larysa Kosynets.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's ousted prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday warned the government to stage fresh elections or face more mass protests, after leading thousands of supporters to the capital Islamabad in a showdown with his political rivals.

His morning address was the culmination of a chaotic 24 hours which saw the capital blockaded and clashes break out between police and protesters across the country.

The government had attempted to prevent the convoy from reaching the capital by shutting down all entry and exit points around the city, but was forced to allow in the protesters by an emergency Supreme Court order.

Since being removed from power through a no-confidence vote last month, cricket star turned politician Khan has heaped pressure on the country's fragile new coalition rulers by staging rallies, touting a claim he was ousted from office in a "foreign conspiracy".

"I want to give a message to this imported government to announce elections within six days. Dissolve the assemblies and call an election in June," he said, to a thinned out crowd of thousands who later dispersed.

He warned that he would return to the capital with his supporters next week if elections were not scheduled.

Thousands of supporters of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party heeded his call to march to the capital from nearby cities on Wednesday.

But political analysts said Khan's attempt to stage a historic sit-in was a failure, with smaller numbers than expected hobbling his bargaining power.

"With around 30,000 people, it was not a good idea to stay in Islamabad and face the powerful police that broke his momentum," said Qamar Cheema.

Confrontations erupted between police and protesters throughout, who attempted to remove roadblocks on key highways to join the convoy.

Police repeatedly deployed teargas to disperse crowds in the capital, as well as in the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was “deeply concerned by the highhandedness of law enforcement agencies” in disrupting the march.

“The state’s overreaction has triggered, more than it has prevented, violence on the streets,” it tweeted.

The government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had pledged to stop the protesters from entering the capital, calling the rally an attempt to “divide the nation and promote chaos”.

But as unrest was breaking out around the country, the supreme court granted permission for PTI to stage its rally on the edge of the city.

The court also ordered the government and PTI leaders to hold urgent negotiations over the political crisis and the release of supporters detained by police.

More than 1,700 people have been arrested since police began raiding the homes of PTI supporters on Monday night, said Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, who previously accused protesters of planning to carry weapons.

Forced negotiations 

The country’s two normally feuding dynastic parties that combined to push Khan out of power have repeatedly said they have no plans to hold an imminent election.

Khan joined the march in dramatic fashion, arriving in a helicopter that touched down on a motorway clogged with supporters in his power base of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

While some supporters were left disappointed by the curtailed sit-in, many were prepared to follow their leader.

“Whatever decision he takes we just obey it,” said Muhammad Uzair, a 29-year-old clothes shop assistant. “We are ready to come back after six days.”

The international sporting hero came to power in 2018, voted in by an electorate weary of the dynastic politics of the country’s two major parties and enjoying the backing of the nation’s powerful military

Promising to sweep away decades of entrenched corruption and cronyism, he is believed to have fallen out with Pakistan’s generals.

He was brought down by opposition parties in part by his failure to rectify the country’s dire economic situation, including its crippling debt, shrinking foreign currency reserves and soaring inflation.

SHANGHAI — Shanghai schoolchildren will gradually resume some in-person classes in June with daily COVID-19 tests, the local government said on Thursday, as the Chinese metropolis gradually emerges from a lengthy lockdown that brought it to a standstill.

The country has been fighting its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with the epicentre Shanghai banning its 25 million residents from leaving their homes for weeks.

Some of the city's restrictions have recently eased as cases dwindle, though much of the population is still not allowed to venture outside for more than a few hours a day at most.

Schools have been shut since March 12, weeks before the megacity's lockdown officially began.

Students in the last two years of high school, who must prepare for the all-important college entrance examinations, will return to their campuses on June 6, Shanghai education official Yang Zhenfeng said at a press conference on Thursday.

They will be joined a week later by students in the final grade of middle school, while all other students are to remain home and attend online classes, Yang said.

"We will ensure that students get swabbed on campus after school every day," with results from their PCR tests available by the next morning, Yang said.

Shanghai's lockdown has taken a heavy toll on business and morale, pushing city authorities to allow some factories and public transport lines to resume operation in a patchy reopening.

China is the last major economy hewing to a zero-COVID policy with mass lockdowns, routine tests and movement restrictions whenever infection clusters emerge.

Those who test positive for COVID, even if they have no symptoms, are sent to mass quarantine centres or isolation facilities.

In another sign of slowing infections in Shanghai, state media reported that a 7,300-bed makeshift quarantine centre had been closed on Wednesday.

Converted from the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Centre, the hospital was the city's first large-scale quarantine site for patients with mild to no symptoms.

Patients who stayed there and in other makeshift quarantine halls complained to AFP of inadequate sanitary conditions and overworked staff.

China’s zero-COVID approach has been severely challenged by the rise of the Omicron variant, which has caused hundreds of thousands of infections nationwide this year.

Authorities have also turned greater attention to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population, long a weak point in the country’s defence against the virus.

Officials have ramped up incentives for older people to get jabbed, including one neighbourhood near Beijing’s Temple of Heaven which is dangling as much as 1000 yuan ($149) in gift cards for residents over 80 who get their first shot.

DAVOS, Switzerland — US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Wednesday said it would sell its patented drugs on a not-for-profit basis to the world's poorest countries, as part of a new initiative announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"The time is now to begin closing this gap" between people with access to the latest treatments and those going without, Chief Executive Albert Bourla told attendees at the exclusive Swiss mountain resort gathering.

"An Accord for a Healthier World" focuses on five areas: infectious diseases, cancer, inflammation, rare diseases and women's health, where Pfizer currently holds 23 patents, including the likes of Comirnaty and Paxlovid, its Covid vaccine and oral treatment.

"This transformational commitment will increase access to Pfizer-patented medicines and vaccines available in the United States and the European Union to nearly 1.2 billion people," Angela Hwang, group president of the Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group, told AFP.

Five countries: Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda have committed to joining, with a further 40 countries, 27 low-income and 18 lower-middle-income, eligible to sign bilateral agreements to participate.

"Pfizer's commitment sets a new standard, which we hope to see emulated by others," Rwanda's President Paul Kagame said.

But he added that "additional investments and strengthening of Africa's health systems and pharmaceutical regulators" would also be needed.

Seven years behind 

Developing countries experience 70 percent of the world's disease burden but receive only 15 percent of global health spending, leading to devastating outcomes.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, one child in 13 dies before their fifth birthday, compared to one in 199 in high-income countries.

Cancer-related mortality rates are also far higher in low and middle-income countries, causing more fatalities in Africa every year than malaria.

All this is set to a backdrop of limited access to the latest drugs.

Essential medicines and vaccines typically take four to seven years longer to reach the poorest countries, and supply chain issues and poorly resourced health systems make it difficult for patients to receive them once approved.

“The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the complexities of access to quality healthcare and the resulting inequities,” said Hwang.

“We know there are a number of hurdles that countries have to overcome to gain access to our medicines. That is why we have initially selected five pilot countries to identify and come up with operational solutions and then share those learnings with the remaining countries.”

‘Very good model’ 

Specifically, the focus will be on overcoming regulatory and procurement challenges in the countries, while ensuring adequate levels of supply from Pfizer’s side.

The “not-for-profit” price tag takes into account the cost to manufacture and transport of each product to an agreed upon port of entry, with Pfizer charging only manufacturing and minimum distribution costs.

If a country already has access to a product at a lower price tier, for example vaccines supplied by GAVI, a public-private global partnership, that lower price will be maintained.

Hwang acknowledged that even an at-cost approach could be challenging for the most cash-strapped countries, and “this is why we have reached out to financial institutions to brief them on the Accord and ask them to help support country level financing”.

Pfizer will also reach out to other stakeholders — including governments, multilateral organisations, NGOs and even other pharmaceuticals — to ask them to join the Accord.

It is also using funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance work on a vaccine against Group B Streptococcus (GBS), the leading cause of stillbirth and newborn mortality in low-income countries.

“This type of accord is a very good model, it’s going to help get medicines out,” Gates told the Davos conference, adding that “partnerships with companies like Pfizer have been key to the progress we have made” on efforts like vaccines.

UVALDE, United States — A teenage gunman killed at least 19 young children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday, prompting a furious President Joe Biden to denounce the US gun lobby and vow to end the nation’s cycle of mass shootings.

The attack in Uvalde, a small community about an hour from the Mexican border, was the deadliest US school shooting in years, and the latest in a spree of bloody gun violence across America.

“It’s time to turn this pain into action for every parent, for every citizen of this country,” Biden said, his voice heavy with emotion.

“It’s time for those who obstruct or delay or block common-sense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget,” he said.

“As a nation, we have to ask when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott named the suspect as Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old local resident and a US citizen.

“He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly,” Abbott said.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials told CNN the gunman was believed to have shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary School around noon where he abandoned his vehicle and entered with a handgun and a rifle, wearing body armor.The gunman was killed by responding officers, the officials said, adding later two teachers also died in the attack.

“Right now there’s 19 children that were killed by this evil gunman, as well as two teachers from this school,” DPS spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez told NBC News.

Fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles was shot and killed while trying to protect her students, her aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado told The New York Times.

“I’m furious that these shootings continue, these children are innocent, rifles should not be easily available to all,” she said in a separate statement to US media.

More than a dozen children were also wounded in the attack at the school, which teaches more than 500 students aged around seven to 10 years old, mostly Hispanic and economically disadvantaged.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital said on Facebook it had received 13 children while University Health hospital in San Antonio said on Twitter it had received a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl, both in critical condition, and two other girls aged nine and 10.

At least one Border Patrol agent responding to the incident was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with the shooter, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Marsha Espinosa tweeted.

It was the deadliest such incident since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed.

 ‘Happens nowhere else’ 

Ted Cruz, a pro-gun rights Republican senator from Texas, tweeted that he and his wife were “lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde”.

But Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.

“This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day,” Murphy said on the Senate floor in Washington.

“I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”

Among the international leaders reacting, Pope Francis was “heartbroken by the massacre” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was “terrible to have victims of shooters in peaceful times”.

President Emmanuel Macron said France shared “the shock and grief of the American people, and the rage of those who are fighting to end the violence”.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted: “We have to stop this daily horror in the US.”

And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his thoughts were with “the injured and the bereaved of the victims of this inconceivable massacre for which hardly any words can be found.”

The deadly assault in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.

On May 14, an 18-year-old self-declared white supremacist shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and wounding five.

Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to strengthen, or weaken, their own restrictions.

The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent on 2019, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest data.