Six In The Morning Sunday 13 September 2020

 

Russia: Local elections test Kremlin party's grip on power

Voters across Russia are casting their ballots in dozens of local elections that are seen as a big test for the ruling pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

Nearly 160,000 candidates are vying for seats in local parliaments. Governors are also being elected in many regions.

The polls come only weeks after the suspected poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny with Novichok.

Migrants land in Sicily after 'longest standoff in European maritime history'

Twenty-seven people stranded on Danish tanker for 38 days finally allowed to disembark

Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo

@lorenzo_tondo

Sun 13 Sep 2020 13.24 BST 

The odyssey of 27 migrants stranded onboard a tanker for 38 dayshas finally come to an end, as the passengers were finally allowed to disembark in Sicily in what has been described as ‘‘the longest standoff in European maritime history”.

On 5 August, the Danish tanker Maersk Etienne responded to requests from Maltese authorities to help an overcrowded boat in distress carrying 27 asylum seekers, including a pregnant woman and a child, about 70 nautical miles north of the Libyan coast.

Europe's ShameThe Moria Catastrophe and the EU's Hypocritical Refugee Policy

The fire in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos has revealed the full hypocrisy of the European Union's refugee policy. Pressure is growing to finally take action.

By Giorgos Christides, Katharina Fiedler, Hubert Gude, Kevin Hagen, Barbara Hardinghaus, Valerie Höhne, Carolin Katschak, Katrin Kuntz, Timo Lehmann, Steffen Lüdke, Peter Müller, Maximilian Popp, Lydia Rosenfelder, Maria Stöhr, Britta Stuff und Steffen Winter

Shahrzad made it. She managed to escape the flames that transformed Moria, Europe's largest refugee camp, into a wasteland of scorched earth. But now she doesn't know where to go next. A shy 25-year-old from Afghanistan with delicate features, Shahrzad is sitting in front of the burned-out camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Wednesday evening with her husband and two small children. What next? "We don't know," she says. They have their documents with them, she says, but little else. "We have hardly anything to eat, just a bit of water. Nobody tells us anything."

Mali opposition rejects junta proposal on transition period

Divisions deepened between Mali's military coup leaders and the country's political opposition movement on Sunday after the ruling junta announced a plan that would allow a military leader to oversee an 18-month transitional period.

While the two sides initially were united in wanting the departure of former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, their paths have increasingly diverged since he was deposed in an Aug. 18 coup after months of street demonstrations by the opposition.

On Sunday, the opposition coalition known as M5-RFP publicly objected to the junta's plan, which was announced Saturday after three days of talks on Mali's political future.

AMID TERROR WARNINGS, RAILROAD INDUSTRY GROUP PASSED INTEL ON ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALIST TO COPS

By distributing private intelligence reports to federal “fusion centers,” industries can influence how law enforcement views threats.

Murtaza Hussain, Alleen Brown

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTER Justin Mikulka was unnerved as he scanned through the pages. “A friend had contacted me and said that he had found some documents with my name in them,” Mikulka recalled to The Intercept. “He told me I really had to see them for myself.”

Mikulka did see for himself. Descriptions of the journalist and his work were nestled among security reports detailing bloody terrorist attacks and far-right threats, in documents prepared by a private railway industry group and shared with law enforcement. The series of documents suggested that law enforcement was being taught to view him — an author whose work specializes in the hazards of transporting oil by rail — as a possible instigator of criminal activity and a threat to railway safety.

Naomi Osaka hints at more racial justice activism

By Peter HUTCHISON

Naomi Osaka said she wants to be known for more than just tennis, suggesting she will keep campaigning for racial justice after winning her third Grand Slam at the U.S. Open Saturday.

Osaka, of Japanese and Haitian heritage, wore different masks honoring victims of systemic racism and police brutality in the United States in each of the tournament's seven rounds.

The 22-year-old said thinking time during the coronavirus lockdown, which coincided with protests across the United States over the police killing of black man George Floyd, had led to her political awakening.