In Greece, the case of an Iranian migrant now jailed on charges of inciting an insurrection is highlighting the Greek government’s rising concerns about a flare-up of clashes involving migrants along Greece’s border with Turkey. Greek authorities say the Iranian man — a self-described anarchist — was urging groups in Greece to arm asylum seekers trying to enter Europe from Turkey. The man, if convicted, faces a stiff sentence of up to ten years in prison.Greek counter-terrorism forces say they arrested the 23-year-old Iranian national in central Athens after he posted a call for an armed insurrection on a website that is often visited by homegrown extremists and urban guerrilla groupings.Authorities say the unidentified man describes himself as a migrant anarchist and they say he has not denied the criminal charges set against him — among the stiffest slapped on a migrant in recent years.
 
Greek intelligence officials say Greece granted the man political asylum three years ago and that he has since then established a militant profile, linking up with a far-left extremist group in Greece.
 
Left-wing groups in Greece have long supported asylum seekers, advocating their safe passage — and their right to stay in Europe. But in his online calling, the Iranian went a step further, urging anarchists to help arm migrants, take to the streets and renew clashes with authorities in northern Greece to help tens of thousands trapped in Turkey stream in to Europe.
 
Authorities in Athens say they have not established links between that plot and Turkey.
 
But the Iranian’s arrest here and the severity of the charges laid against him underscore Greece’s desperate bid to stamp out any potential flare up of migrant clashes along the country’s borders with Turkey.
 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flung open the borders to migrants heading for Europe in late February after dozens of Turkish soldiers were killed in an air raid in Syria. FILE – Migrants walk in Edirne at the Turkish-Greek border, March 9, 2020.Turkey last week said it moved 5,800 migrants away from the border crossing at Edirne province where they had been massing, citing concerns over the threat of coronavirus.  The move was interpreted by some in Greece as a reversal by Ankara. But Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told an independent broadcaster the move did not represent a policy change.
 
“Once the COVID-19 crisis is over, the Turkish government will not block migrants from returning to the border,” he said. Although Greek authorities have not established a link between the Iranian migrant and the Turkish government, they worry about how Ankara may use the nearly four million Syrian refugees now inside Greece.
Ioannis Mazis, an international relations analyst in Athens, said Greece has already seen Turkey using tens of thousands of migrants as pawns in the recent border clashes. He said the Turkish government has even admitted that it has orchestrated much of the border violence. So, threats of further clashes should not be underestimated, Mazis added.
 
By some accounts, as many 150,000 migrants and refugee tried to push into Europe last month. Greece says it succeeded in fending off more than 50,000, while many others managed to sneak in.  
 
  
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Prince Harry and his wife Meghan officially make the transition Tuesday from senior members of Britain’s royal family to — well, it’s unclear. International celebrities, charity patrons, global influencers?
The royal schism that the couple triggered in January by announcing that they would step down from official duties, give up public funding, seek financial independence and swap the U.K. for North America becomes official on March 31.
The move has been made more complicated and poignant by the global coronavirus pandemic, which finds the couple and their 10-month-old son Archie in California, far from Harry’s father Prince Charles — who is recovering after testing positive for COVID-19 — and Harry’s 93-year-old grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
“As we can all feel, the world at this moment seems extraordinarily fragile,” the couple said in a final post Monday on their now-mothballed SussexRoyal Instagram account.
“What’s most important right now is the health and well-being of everyone across the globe and finding solutions for the many issues that have presented themselves as a result of this pandemic,” they added. “As we all find the part we are to play in this global shift and changing of habits, we are focusing this new chapter to understand how we can best contribute.”  
It is less than two years since ex-soldier Harry, who is sixth in line to the British throne, married American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle in a lavish ceremony watched by millions around the world.  
Soon the couple began to bristle at intense scrutiny by the British media — which they said tipped into harassment. They decided to break free, in what Harry called a “leap of faith” as he sought a more peaceful life, without the journalists who have filmed, photographed and written about him since the day he was born.  
Harry has long had an uncomfortable relationship with the media, which he blames for the death of his mother, Princess Diana. She died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi.
Harry’s unhappiness increased after he began dating Markle, then the star of TV legal drama “Suits.” In 2016 he accused the media of harassing his then-girlfriend, and criticized “racial undertones” in some coverage of the biracial Markle.
It’s clear that Meghan’s upbeat Californian style — embodied in the glossy images and life-affirming messages of the couple’s Instagram account — rankled with sections of Britain’s tabloid press, which is both insatiable for royal content and fiercely judgmental of the family members.  
The couple — who are keeping their titles, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but will no longer be called Their Royal Highnesses — had hoped to keep using the Sussex Royal brand in their new life. But last month they announced they wouldn’t seek to trademark the term because of U.K. rules governing use of the word “royal.”
The couple plans to launch a non-profit organization for their charitable activities in areas including youth empowerment, mental health, conservation, gender equality and education. Harry will also continue to oversee the Invictus Games, the Olympics-style competition he founded for wounded troops.
Meghan has been announced as the narrator of “Elephant,” a Disney nature documentary.
But for now, the couple’s office said they want the world to focus “on the global response to COVID-19.”  
“The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will spend the next few months focusing on their family and continuing to do what they can, safely and privately, to support and work with their pre-existing charitable commitments while developing their future non-profit organisation,” the couple’s office said in a statement.
The newly independent Harry and Meghan will also need to earn money to help pay for a multi-million dollar security bill.
As senior royals, they have had bodyguards funded by British taxpayers. Since late last year, Harry and Meghan have since been based on Canada’s Vancouver Island, where security was provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Canadian authorities warned last month that would end once the couple ceased to be working royals.
The duke and duchess recently moved to the Los Angeles area, where Meghan grew up and where her mother still lives. The news led President Donald Trump to tweet on Sunday: “the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!”
Harry and Meghan’s office said they had “no plans to ask the U.S. government for security resources. Privately funded security arrangements have been made.”  
Some royal historians warned that Harry and Meghan could struggle to find a fulfilling role. Comparisons have been drawn to King Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936 to marry divorced American Wallis Simpson. The couple lived the rest of their lives in luxurious but lonely self-imposed exile from Britain.
Royal historian Penny Junor said U.K.-based royals were helping boost the nation’s morale during the coronavirus pandemic. The queen has issued a message to the nation, while Harry’s brother Prince William and his children joined in a public round of applause for health care workers.
“All of this is absolutely what the family is about, and those members of the royal family that are on a limb now are pretty irrelevant,” Junor said.
 
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Ukraine’s parliament has voted to lift the ban on the sale of farmland in a move that would allow the country to get $8 billion worth of aid from the International Monetary Fund.  The bill, long pushed by economists to stimulate investment in agriculture, was approved by 259 votes out of 450 late Monday. It opens up the land market for Ukrainian citizens starting from July 1, 2021, and for Ukrainian companies starting from 2024.  Ukrainians will vote on a nationwide referendum on whether to allow foreigners to buy farmland.  FILE – In this handout photo released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks at a ceremony in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 13, 2020.Speaking in parliament Monday night, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stressed the importance of getting the IMF loan.  “It is really important for us, to sign the memorandum with the IMF, and you know well that the two main conditions were the land law and the banking law,” Zelenskiy said.Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal echoed his sentiment in televised remarks Monday.  “Without the support of international organizations we will have to fall into the abyss of a financial meltdown,” Shmyhal said.  Earlier Monday, lawmakers approved the banking law in the first reading. It prevents former owners of banks that were nationalized or liquidated from regaining ownership rights or receiving compensation from state funds.  Some said that the bill, among others, targets billionaire tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, whose Privatbank was nationalized in 2016 and who sought to get it back using his connections to Zelenskiy. In recent months, Zelenskiy has been trying to distance himself from Kolomoisky, who wasn’t hiding his ambitions to influence both domestic and foreign policies, observers say.According to Zelenskiy, once Ukraine fulfills the conditions outlined by the IMF, it will receive the first batch of funds — $1.75-$2 billion — in 15 days.  “We agreed with the management of the IMF,” Zelenskiy said.
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Germany, Britain and France have facilitated exports of medical goods to Iran in the first use of a mechanism designed to get around U.S. sanctions, Germany said Tuesday.A German Foreign Ministry statement Tuesday did not specify what type of medical supplies were involved, nor any companies that were part of the action.It said now that the system had been used successfully, the two sides would “work on more transactions.”Iran and a group of five world powers signed a deal in 2015 that restricted Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.After the United States withdrew from the deal and imposed sanctions, Iran pressured the European signatories to work around those restrictions to help its battered economy.That pressure included Iran taking a series of steps away from its commitments under the 2015 deal, including caps on uranium enrichment.
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Russia tightened controls aimed at combating the spread of the coronavirus on Monday, with Moscow introducing temporary quarantine measures, and the Kremlin moving to extend the lockdown nationwide. The new restrictions came as President Vladimir Putin discussed the coronavirus, among other issues, with President Donald Trump in a phone call that the Kremlin insisted was at Washington’s request.The conversation came as Putin made clear he recognized the growing threat of the COVID-19 outbreak. He appeared for his second televised national address on the issue Monday afternoon with a new sense of urgency.“If you value your life, you should remain home,” he said, addressing elderly Russians, in particular. “God helps those who help themselves,” added the Russian leader. A doctor observes through a glass window the condition of the patient in a ward in the Moscow Sklifosovsky emergency hospital in Moscow, Russia, March 25, 2020.The new tone came as a  government task force said suspected cases of COVID-19 had swelled past the 1,800 mark with nine deaths — numbers that continued to place Russia far lower than other global coronavirus hotspots but that Kremlin allies and critics alike now acknowledge reflect some degree of underreporting.Moscow through the looking glass  Under new rules that went into effect midnight Sunday, the vast majority of Moscow’s 15 million inhabitants now face a blanket “home isolation quarantine” — with exceptions for trips to local supermarkets and pharmacies, as well as walking pets or taking out trash. A police officer wearing a protective mask and glasses stops a car driver to check his documents in Grozny, Russia, March 30, 2020.City authorities also announced that a system of smart QR codes would be developed to track people moving about the capital, as well as plans to retrofit additional public hospitals and private clinics to accept COVID-19 patients.“The situation with the spread of coronavirus has entered a new phase,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin wrote in a blog post explaining the new rules with Moscow now an epicenter of the virus threat.  “The extremely negative turn of events that we see in the largest cities of Europe and the USA is cause for enormous concern for the lives and health of our citizens,” Sobyanin said.Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin later issued an appeal to Russia’s far-flung regional governors to follow Moscow’s lead — calling the quarantine a “logical extension of the president and the government’s policies to battle the coronavirus.” Putin’s ‘workless week’Moscow’s restrictions seemed to upstage the “workless week” introduced by Putin in an address to the nation last week.While the Russian leader requested people to stay home, his appeal fell far short of the quarantines and self-isolation measures now commonplace in cities across Europe, the United States and Asia.Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with Russian regional officials via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, March 30, 2020.Some Russians seemed to interpret the “workless week” as an unexpected paid vacation — a factor that Sobyanin said played a role in the decision to close Moscow down. “Movement across the city has been cut by two-thirds, and that’s very good,” Sobaynin wrote in the blog. “But it’s also obvious that far from everyone has heard us.” Amid a spell of spring-like weather over the weekend, parks were so crowded that authorities resorted to blasting public service announcements from passing ambulances. The message: Go home. Media reports also noted a run on meat and charcoal at local supermarkets, suggesting the outdoor barbecue season was, or soon would be, in full swing.  Meanwhile, there was a spike in booked flights from Moscow to the southern resort city of Sochi — so much so that the region’s local governor, Benjamin Kondratiev, warned on social media that “this is not a week of extra leave or a holiday,” and ordered city attractions closed.  Good cop, bad copRussia’s political chatter centered on the seeming gulf between Sobyanin and Putin over how to respond to the contagion.  Had the mayor undermined the president? And who was in charge?“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” Genady Gudkov, a former member of Parliament with ties to the opposition, wrote in a post on Facebook. “Either Putin is losing control, or differences among the elite are dangerously strong.”Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin attends a cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow, Russia, March 30, 2020.Others argued that Putin was merely distancing himself from more unpopular restrictions — at least until they were trial-ballooned by the hapless Moscow mayor — in effect, playing good cop to Sobyanin’s bad. Putin threw Sobyanin “before the firing squad, and himself remained in the shadows, giving speculation that Sobyanin is acting on his own,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst with R.Politik, in a post to her Telegram channel. Stanovaya chalked the showdown to the shifting improvisational nature of Putin’s rule, one in which “circumstances rule.” “And who rules the circumstances, rules Russia,” added Stanovaya.
 
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Spain will delay a planned auction of 5G spectrum due to the coronavirus outbreak, the government said on Monday.
 
As part of a Europe-wide drive to speed up the roll out of fast Internet and broaden coverage, Spain had been due to free up space in the 700 MHz band of its network by switching from analog to digital terrestrial television by June 30.
 
One of the world’s worst national outbreaks of the virus, which had infected 85,915 people and killed 7,340 as of Monday, constitutes force majeure, making it impossible to stick to that deadline, the government said in a statement.
 
Madrid has told Brussels it will set a new deadline for the 700 MHz band depending on the eventual end-date for emergency measures including restrictions on people’s movements, it added.
 
Austria postponed a planned 5G auction last week, and the CEO of French group Iliad said one coming up in France would likely meet the same fate. 
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Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan posted their last message as working members of Britain’s royal family on Monday before officially embarking on new careers without their “Royal Highness” styles.   Harry and Meghan shocked Queen Elizabeth and the royal family in January by hastily announcing plans to take a step back from their royal roles. A later deal brokered by the 93-year-old monarch sees them go their own way from April.   “While you may not see us here, the work continues,” the couple said in the last message they will post on their susexroyal Instagram page.   “Thank you to this community — for the support, the inspiration and the shared commitment to the good in the world. We look forward to reconnecting with you soon. You’ve been great!   “Until then, please take good care of yourselves, and of one another.”    
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British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, who had tested positive for coronavirus, is out of self-isolation after seven days and is in good health, his spokesman said on Monday. Last week, his Clarence House office revealed that Charles, 71, had been tested after displaying mild symptoms of the virus and had been in self-isolation at his Birkhall home in Scotland where he had continued to work. After consultation with his doctor, he is now out of self-isolation, Clarence House said. He will resume meetings and take exercise in accordance with government and medical guidelines. However, his wife Camilla, who tested negative for coronavirus, will remain in self-isolation until the end of the week in case she too develops symptoms. Buckingham Palace has previously said Queen Elizabeth, who left London for Windsor Castle on March 19 along with her 98-year-old husband, Philip, is in good health.  
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