Rome — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced Sunday she will be a candidate at June’s European elections in a bid to boost support for her Brothers of Italy party, though she will not take up a seat if elected. 

The June 6-9 European Parliament vote is a key test of strength for her 18-month-old rightist coalition. 

“We want to do in Europe what we did in Italy… create a majority that brings together the center-right forces and send the left into opposition,” Meloni told cheering party faithful at a party conference in the coastal city of Pescara to set out EU policies and launch the campaign. 

Meloni, whose party traces its roots to Benito Mussolini’s Fascist group, called for Italy to leave the euro zone when in opposition and her 2022 election raised concerns in some European capitals. 

However, she has followed a broadly pro-European, orthodox line in office, particularly on foreign policy matters such as Ukraine and the Middle East. 

Her party is Italy’s most popular with 27% of support, according to recent polls, ahead of the opposition Democratic Party (PD) on around 20% and the left-leaning 5-Star Movement on 16%. 

Meloni will be the first name on the ballot for Brothers of Italy in all five of Italy’s constituencies for the EU election, but pledged she would not use “a single minute” of her time as prime minister to campaign. 

PD leader Elly Schlein announced last week she would also run, as did Antonio Tajani, head of the centrist Forza Italia party which is in the ruling coalition. 

All three leaders hope to win votes of people who take little interest in politics but are attracted by names of party chiefs on the ballot. 

Assuming they are elected, Meloni, Schlein and Tajani are expected to give up their seats, making way for runner-up candidates. 
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BEIRUT — French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné arrived in Lebanon Sunday as part of diplomatic attempts to broker a de-escalation in the conflict on the Lebanon-Israel border. 

Séjourné was set to meet with United Nations peacekeeping forces in south Lebanon and with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, army chief, foreign minister and caretaker prime minister. 

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has exchanged strikes near-daily with Israeli forces in the border region — and sometimes beyond — for almost seven months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hezbollah ally Hamas in Gaza. 

Israeli strikes have killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups but also including more than 50 civilians. Strikes by Hezbollah have killed 10 civilians and 12 soldiers in Israel. 

A French diplomatic official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak to journalists, said the purpose of Séjourné’s visit was to convey France’s “fears of a war on Lebanon” and to submit an amendment to a proposal Paris had previously presented to Lebanon for a diplomatic resolution to the border conflict. 

Western diplomats have brought forward a series of proposals for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Most of those would hinge on Hezbollah moving its forces several kilometers from the border, a beefed-up Lebanese army presence and negotiations for Israeli forces to withdraw from disputed points along the border where Lebanon says Israel has been occupying small patches of Lebanese territory since it withdrew from the rest of south Lebanon in 2000. 

The previous French proposal would have involved Hezbollah withdrawing its forces 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border. 

Hezbollah has signaled a willingness to entertain the proposals but has said there will be no deal in Lebanon before there is a cease-fire in Gaza. 
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KYIV — Russian drones early Sunday struck the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, setting a hotel ablaze and damaging energy infrastructure, the local Ukrainian governor reported, while ammunition shortages continued to hobble Kyiv’s troops in the more than 2-year-old war. 

Vitaliy Kim, the governor of Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv province, said that Russian drones “seriously damaged” a hotel in its namesake capital, sparking a fire that was later extinguished. Kim also reported that the strike damaged heat-generating infrastructure in the city, but gave no details. He added that there were no casualties. 

Russian state agency RIA carried claims that the strike on Mykolaiv targeted a shipyard where naval drones are assembled, as well as a hotel housing “English-speaking mercenaries” who have fought for Kyiv. The RIA report cited Sergei Lebedev, described as a coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas. His claim could not be independently verified. 

Also on Sunday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 17 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight over four regions in the country’s southwest. Three drones were intercepted near an oil depot in Lyudinovo, an industrial town some 230 kilometers (143 miles) north of the Ukrainian border, Gov. Vladislav Shapsha said. 

One of the Ukrainian drones damaged communications infrastructure in Russia’s southern Belgorod province, which borders Ukraine, Gov. Vyachaslav Gladkov said later on Sunday. There were no immediate reports of casualties. 

Russian shelling on Saturday and overnight wounded at least seven civilians across Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. A 36-year-old woman was pulled alive from the rubble after Russian shells on Sunday morning destroyed her home in the northeastern Kharkiv region, the local administration reported. Her 52-year-old neighbor was also rushed to hospital with a stomach wound, the administration said. 

The Donetsk and Kharkiv regions have seen fierce clashes in recent weeks as Russian forces seek to grind out gains along the more than 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, while ammunition shortages have increasingly hamstrung Ukraine’s defenses. 

Russian troops “will likely make significant gains in the coming weeks” while Kyiv awaits much-needed arms from a huge U.S. aid package to reach the front, a Washington-based think tank said. 

In its latest operational assessment, the Institute for the Study of War said that Moscow’s forces have opportunities to push forward around Avdiivka, the eastern city they took in late February after a grueling, montshlong fight, and threaten nearby Chasiv Yar. Its capture would give Russia control of a hilltop from which it can attack other key cities forming the backbone of Ukraine’s eastern defenses. 

Despite this, the think tank assessed that neither of these efforts by Moscow are likely to cause Kyiv’s defensive lines to collapse. 

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman on Sunday confirmed that Moscow’s troops had taken a village some 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of Avdiivka, days after the institute reported on its likely capture early on Thursday. That day’s assessment described Moscow’s gains as “relatively quick but still relatively marginal,” adding that Russian troops had advanced by no more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) over the previous week. 

U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he was immediately rushing badly needed weaponry to Ukraine as he signed into law a $95 billion war aid measure that also included assistance for Israel, Taiwan and other global hot spots. 

The announcement marked an end to the long, painful battle with Republicans in Congress over urgently needed assistance for Ukraine, with Biden promising on Wednesday that U.S. weapons shipment would begin making the way into Ukraine within hours. 
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london — Former U.S. President Donald Trump said he is ready to renew a right-wing alliance with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban if he wins the presidential election in November.    

The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee made the comments in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Europe, which was held in Budapest on Thursday and Friday. 

The conference has long been a powerful force in right-wing American politics. The first European edition of the conference was held in Budapest in 2022 and has been an annual fixture since.    

Orban, the host and keynote speaker, received a standing ovation as he told the audience that conservatives had a chance to seize power in a major election year.  

“These elections coincide with major shifts in world political and geopolitical trends. The order of the world is changing, and we must take our cause to triumph in the midst of these changes. … Make America great again, make Europe great again! Go Donald Trump, go European sovereigntists!” Orban told a delighted crowd. 

He claimed that liberal forces were trying to silence the political right.  

“This is what they are doing with the conservatives in the progressive liberal European capitals. The same thing is happening in the United States when they want to remove [former] President Donald Trump from the ballot with court rulings,” he said. 

‘Battling to preserve our culture’

In a recorded address to the conference, Trump said he was ready to renew a conservative alliance with Orban.  

“Together we’re engaged in an epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them,” Trump said. “Every day we’re battling to preserve our culture, protect our sovereignty, defend our way of life and uphold the timeless values of freedom, family and faith in Almighty God.”  

“As president I was proud to work with Prime Minister Orban — by the way, a great man — to advance the values and interests of our two nations,” Trump said.     

Orban’s critics, including most of his European Union allies, accuse him of overseeing a backsliding of democracy. The Hungarian prime minister sees an opportunity to hit back, said Zsolt Enyedi, a political analyst at Central European University in Budapest.   

“Orban has an ambition to change the discourse, so he’s not simply someone who is, who cares about staying in office, but he also wants to have an impact on the ideological climate, and he thinks that by sponsoring particular friendly parties, governments and intellectual clubs and initiatives, he will emerge as the leader of this conservative movement and that can counterbalance the fact that the mainstream in Europe and in liberal democracies hates him,” Enyedi told VOA. 

Another of the keynote speakers at the CPAC conference was the Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who is facing anti-government protests at home over a controversial proposed foreign agent law, which has been widely compared to similar Russian legislation. The EU has said the law would be incompatible with Georgia’s membership in the bloc. 

“(Kobakhidze) at the moment is turning his country more and more toward Russia, trying to in a way turn his back on the European Union, and interestingly, he is welcome at a club that is supposed to stand for the interest of the West. So, these kinds of strategic alliances are possible, because all speak the language of culture wars,” Enyedi said. 

Orban faces challenges at home

While right-wing parties are expected to do well in June’s European parliamentary elections, Orban’s Fidesz party is battling an economic crisis alongside a series of political scandals.  

The U.S. presidential election is set for November 5. Polls suggest a tight race between Trump and incumbent Joe Biden. 
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KYIV, Ukraine — Even amid war, Ukraine finds time for the glittery, pop-filled Eurovision Song Contest. Perhaps now even more than ever.

Ukraine’s entrants in the pan-continental music competition — the female duo of rapper alyona alyona and singer Jerry Heil — set off from Kyiv for the competition Thursday. In wartime, that means a long train journey to Poland, from where they will travel on to next month’s competition in Malmö, Sweden.

“We need to be visible for the world,” Heil told The Associated Press at Kyiv train station before her departure. “We need to show that even now, during the war, our culture is developing, and that Ukrainian music is something waiting for the world” to discover.

“We have to spread it and share it and show people how strong (Ukrainian) women and men are in our country,” added alyona, who spells her name with all lowercase letters.

Ukraine has long used Eurovision as a form of cultural diplomacy, a way of showing the world the country’s unique sound and style. That mission became more urgent after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that Ukraine existed as a distinct country and people before Soviet times.

Ukrainian singer Jamala won the contest in 2016 — two years after Russia illegally seized the Crimean Peninsula — with a song about the expulsion of Crimea’s Tatars by Stalin in 1944. Folk-rap band Kalush Orchestra took the Eurovision title in 2022 with Stefania, a song about the frontman’s mother that became an anthem to the war-ravaged motherland, with a haunting refrain on a traditional Ukrainian wind instrument.

Alyona and Heil will perform Maria & Teresa, an anthemic ode to inspiring women. The title refers to Mother Theresa and the Virgin Mary, and the lyrics include the refrain, in English: “All the divas were born as the human beings” — people we regard as saints were once flawed and human like the rest of us.

Heil said the message is that “we all make mistakes, but your actions are what define you.”

And, alyona added: “with enough energy you can win the war, you can change the world.”

The song blends alyona’s punchy rap style with Heil’s soaring melody and distinctly Ukrainian vocal style.

“Alyona is a great rapper, she has this powerful energy,” Heil said. “And I’m more soft.”

“But great melodies,” alyona added. “So she creates all the melodies and I just jump in.”

Ukraine has been at the forefront of turning Eurovision from a contest dominated by English-language pop songs to a more diverse and multilingual event. Jamala sang part of her song in the Crimean Tatar language, while Kalush Orchestra sang and rapped in Ukrainian.

Ukraine’s Eurovision win in 2022 brought the country the right to host the following year, but because of the war the 2023 contest was held in the English city of Liverpool, which was bedecked in blue and yellow Ukrainian flags for the occasion — a celebration of Ukraine’s spirit and culture.

Thirty-seven countries from across Europe and beyond — including Israel and Australia — will compete in Malmö in two Eurovision semifinals May 7 and 9, followed by a May 11 final. Ukraine currently ranks among bookmakers’ top five favorites alongside the likes of singer Nemo from Switzerland and Croatian singer-songwriter Baby Lasagna.

Russia, a long-time Eurovision competitor, was kicked out of the contest over the invasion.

The Ukrainian duo caught a train after holding a news conference where they announced a fundraising drive for a school destroyed by a Russian strike.

The duo is joining with charity fundraising platform United 24 to raise 10 million hryvnia (about $250,000) to rebuild a school in the village of Velyka Kostromka in southern Ukraine that was destroyed by a Russian rocket in October 2022. The school’s 250 pupils have been unable to attend class since then, relying on online learning.

Teacher Liudmyla Taranovych, whose children and grandchildren went to the school, said its destruction brought feelings of “pain, despair, hopelessness.”

“My grandchildren hugged me and asked, ‘Grandma, will they rebuild our school? Will it be as beautiful, flourishing, and bright as it was?'” she said.

From the rubble, another teacher managed to rescue one of the school’s treasured possessions — a large wooden key traditionally presented to first grade students to symbolize that education is the key to their future. It has become a sign of hope for the school.

Alyona and Heil have also embraced the key as a symbol, wearing T-shirts covered in small metal housekeys.

“It’s a symbol of something which maybe some people in Ukraine won’t have, because so many people lost their homes,” Heil said. “But they’re holding these keys in their pockets, and they’re holding the hope.”
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ISLAMABAD — Germany’s ambassador to Pakistan faced backlash on social media Saturday for asking pro-Palestinian demonstrators to leave a human rights conference instead of “shouting” and interrupting his speech.

Alfred Grannas was speaking on civil rights at the live-streamed event in the eastern city of Lahore when a young man rose from his seat and spoke to the German diplomat.

“Excuse me, Mr. ambassador. I am shocked by the audacity that you are here to talk about civil rights while your country is brutally abusing the people speaking for the rights of the Palestinians,” the protester said.

The participants cheered and chanted “Free, Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” in response to the comments, with many of them rising from their seats in support of the man.

“If you want to shout, go out; there, you can shout because shouting is not a discussion,” the German ambassador shouted back furiously in response to the questioning voice.

“If you want to discuss it, come here. We’ll discuss it, but don’t shout. Shouting is not a behavior. Shame on you,” Grannas said.

Organizers forced the protesters out of the conference to let the German diplomat complete his speech.

Grannas’ video remarks quickly went viral, drawing criticism from Pakistanis, including activists, politicians and journalists.

“The German ambassador shouting into the mic about shouting,” said Uzair Younus, a former nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

“Not a great look for German diplomacy. These types of interruptions will be the norm, not the exception for Western countries’ representatives in the global south moving forward as they lecture folks about human rights,” Younus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Mr. ambassador, can you tell someone to ‘get out’ for expressing their opinion freely in your own country?” Ghulam Abbas Shah, a Pakistani broadcast journalist, asked on X.

“German ambassador to Pakistan lecturing Pakistanis about free speech while German government bans any discussion on Gaza. Students who spoke up during this speech were dragged and beaten up. Shame!” Ammar Ali Jan, a Pakistani historian, activist, and politician, said on X.

Some social media influencers urged the German diplomat to apologize to Pakistanis for his reaction.

“This isn’t the way a diplomatic relation is built with the masses of host country @GermanyinPAK,” said journalist Sumaira Khan on X. “We are shocked to see your level of respect toward Pakistan and Pakistanis. … You should apologize to our people I believe,” she wrote.

Germany has firmly supported Israel since the Jewish state declared war on Gaza-based Hamas after the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and leading to the capture of scores of hostages.

Israel’s counteroffensive has killed nearly 34,000 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, Gaza health officials say. Israel says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.

The German government has not budged even as warnings of a genocide allegedly committed by Israeli forces have mounted.

Pakistan does not recognize Israel and has no direct channels of communication with it over the issue of Palestinian statehood.
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LONDON — British troops may be tasked with delivering aid to Gaza from an offshore pier now under construction by the U.S. military, the BBC reported Saturday. U.K. government officials declined to comment on the report.

According to the BBC, the British government is considering deploying troops to drive the trucks that will carry aid from the pier along a floating causeway to the shore. No decision has been made, and the proposal hasn’t yet reached Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the BBC reported, citing unidentified government sources.

The report comes after a senior U.S. military official said on Thursday that there would be no American “boots on the ground” and that another nation would provide the personnel to drive the delivery trucks to the shore. The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public, declined to identify the third party.

Britain is already providing logistical support for construction of the pier, including a Royal Navy ship that will house hundreds of U.S. soldiers and sailors working on the project.

In addition, British military planners have been embedded at U.S. Central Command in Florida and in Cyprus, where aid will be screened before shipment to Gaza, for several weeks, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Friday.

The U.K. Hydrographic Office has also shared analysis of the Gaza shoreline with the U.S. to aid in construction of the pier.

“It is critical we establish more routes for vital humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza, and the U.K. continues to take a leading role in the delivery of support in coordination with the U.S. and our international allies and partners,” Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement.

Development of the port and pier in Gaza comes as Israel faces widespread international criticism over the slow trickle of aid into the Palestinian territory, where the United Nations says at least a quarter of the population sits on the brink of starvation.

The Israel-Hamas began with a Hamas-led terror attack into southern Israel on October 7, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 people as hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others. Since then, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air and ground offensive, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a barrage of missiles against Ukraine overnight, in attacks that appeared to target the country’s energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Russia said its air defense systems had intercepted more than 60 Ukrainian drones over the southern Krasnodar region.

Ukraine’s air force said Saturday that Russia had launched 34 missiles against Ukraine overnight, of which 21 had been shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.

In a post on Telegram, Minister of Energy Herman Halushchenko said energy facilities in Dnipropetrovsk in the south of the country and Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv in the west had been attacked and that an engineer was injured.

Private energy operator DTEK said four of its thermal power plants were damaged and that there were “casualties,” without going into detail.

Earlier this month Russia destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants and damaged others in a massive missile and drone attack as it renewed its push to target Ukraine’s energy facilities.

Ukraine has appealed to its Western allies for more air defense systems to ward off such attacks. At a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the U.S. will provide Ukraine with additional munitions and gear for its air defense launchers.

Further east, a psychiatric hospital was damaged and one person was wounded after Russia launched a missile attack overnight on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Photos from the scene showed a huge crater on the grounds of the facility and patients taking shelter in corridors. Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said a 53-year-old woman was hurt.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry said Russian air defense systems had intercepted 66 drones over the country’s southern Krasnodar region. Two more drones were shot down over the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

The governor of the Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratyev, said that Ukrainian forces targeted an oil refinery and infrastructure facilities but that there were no casualties or serious damage. The regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry reported that a fire broke out at the Slavyansk oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban during the attack.

Ukrainian officials normally decline to comment on attacks on Russian soil, but the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said Saturday that two oil refineries in the Krasnodar region had been hit by drones.
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SYDNEY — The Asian Development Bank holds its annual meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, next week, with discussions on climate change and the world’s aging population high on the agenda.

The four-day summit, starting Thursday, marks the first time that the ADB’s 68 members have gathered for a meeting in Georgia, which joined the multilateral development bank in 2007.

“Georgia sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia,” said Shalini Mittal, a principal economist for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“This meeting signifies ADB’s agenda of bridges to the future where technology and expertise from the West can be used to enhance structural reforms in Asia,” Mittal told VOA.

Alongside numerous panel discussions and a keynote speech from ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa, finance ministers from Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries Japan, China and South Korea will also meet on the sidelines.

“Given the geopolitical uncertainty with the Ukraine-Russia war and tensions in Asia with China’s problematic relations with its neighbors, I think the meeting is taking place at a crucial time,” said Jason Chung, a senior adviser with the Project on Prosperity and Development at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It provides an additional path to have meaningful discussions on global economic issues,” Chung told VOA.

Climate change stressed

The issue of climate change is set to headline proceedings at the conference, with the ADB now marketing itself as the climate bank for the Asia-Pacific region.

The bank pledged a record $9.8 billion of climate finance in 2023, supporting developing countries to cut greenhouse emissions and adapt to extreme conditions as global warming continues.

“Storm surges, sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, and floods — all our countries suffer from all of the imaginable impacts of climate change,” said Warren Evans, who, as senior special adviser on climate change in the ADB president’s office, acts as the institution’s climate envoy.

The bank says that the Asia-Pacific region was hit by over 200 disasters last year alone, with many of them weather related, a problem that shows no sign of letting up.

“Right now, there’s a heatwave in Bangladesh that is causing severe impacts. Schools are closed, they’re seeing a drop in agricultural productivity, hospitals are getting overloaded with people with heatstroke,” Evans told VOA.

“Mortality rates are going up and, of course, women and children are the most vulnerable to those impacts,” he said.

While much of the Asia-Pacific region is extremely vulnerable to climate change, it is also a huge driver of the phenomenon.

The region contributes more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions, with a heavy reliance on coal as a source of energy, according to the ADB.

To try to reach net zero targets, many Asia-Pacific nations require huge investment to convert to clean energy alternatives.

One way that the ADB is tackling this issue is through a program targeting coal-burning power plants, a major contributor to emissions.

“With private sector partners and sovereign funding, we’re refinancing coal-fired power plants in order to be able to close them down early,” Evans said. The ADB’s “energy transition mechanism” uses private and public capital to refinance investments in coal-fired power, allowing power purchase agreements to be shortened and plants to be closed as much as a decade earlier than planned. The financing is also used to fund clean energy projects to generate the power that would have come from the coal plant.

The project looks to replace these plants with clean energy alternatives, ensuring that power is generated more sustainably.

A coal-burning power plant in Indonesia’s West Java is set to become the first to be retired early under the initiative.

“The communities that are impacted will have support, allowing people to find new jobs or to get social welfare,” Evans said.

 

Aging population in Asia

During the Tbilisi summit, the ADB will also launch a major report on aging population, which also affects member countries’ economies.

According to the bank, 1 in 4 people in the Asia-Pacific region will be over 60 by 2050, close to 1.3 billion people.

“The speed of aging is very quick in Asia, because of the rapid progress in the social development that has taken place in the region,” said Aiko Kikkawa, a senior economist for the ADB’s Aging Well in Asia report.

Researchers have investigated the implications of this demographic transition, with Kikkawa finding that the Asia-Pacific region is currently “unprepared” for aging populations.

“Large numbers of older people do report a substantial disease burden, lack of access to decent jobs or essential services, such as health and long-term care, and even lack of access to pension coverage,” Kikkawa told VOA.

The ADB has pledged to help to improve the lives of older people across the Asia-Pacific region, by supporting the rollout of universal health coverage and providing infrastructure for ‘age-friendly cities’ that are more accessible for older people.

Poverty to be addressed

While much of the focus in Tbilisi will be on climate change and aging populations, the ADB’s core edict remains to eradicate extreme poverty in its many developing country members.

That task has become even more challenging in an environment of high inflation and growing government debt.

However, Chung, the former U.S. director of the ADB, told VOA he believes that this goal should be at the center of discussions in the Georgian capital.

“The ADB should focus on its core mission of alleviating poverty and creating paths for economic growth in the developing member countries.

“While climate risk is important, I think given the state of uncertainty, it is important to provide support to create economic conditions for growth,” he told VOA.
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KIGALI, Rwanda — Rwanda says it’s ready to receive migrants from the United Kingdom after British Parliament this week approved a long-stalled and controversial bill seeking to stem the tide of people crossing the English Channel in small boats by deporting some of them to the East African country.

There is even a place ready and waiting for the migrants — a refurbished Hope Hostel in the vibrant upscale neighborhood of Kagugu, an area of the Rwandan capital of Kigali that is home to many expats and several international schools.

The hostel once housed college students whose parents died in the 1994 genocide, this African nation’s most horrific period in history when an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed by extremist Hutu in massacres that lasted over 100 days.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged the deportation flights would begin in July but has refused to provide details or say how many people would be deported.

Rwanda government’s deputy spokesperson Alain Mukuralinda told The Associated Press on Tuesday that authorities here have been planning for the migrants’ arrival for two years.

“Even if they arrive now or tomorrow, all arrangements are in place,” he said.

The plan was long held up in British courts and by opposition from human rights activists who say it is illegal and inhumane. It envisages deporting to Rwanda some of those who enter the U.K. illegally and migrant advocates have vowed to continue to fight against the plan.

The measure is also meant to be a deterrent to migrants who risk their lives in leaky, inflatable boats in hopes that they will be able to claim asylum once they reach Britain. The U.K. also signed a new treaty with Rwanda to beef up protections for migrants, and adopted new legislation declaring Rwanda to be a safe country.

“The Rwanda critics and the U.K. judges who earlier said Rwanda is not a safe country have been proven wrong,” Mukuralinda said. “Rwanda is safe.”

The management at the four-story Hope Hostel says the facility is ready and can accommodate 100 people at full capacity. The government says it will serve as a transit center and that more accommodations would be made available as needed.

Thousands of migrants arrive in Britain every year.

After they arrive from Britain, the migrants will be shown to their rooms to rest, after which they will be offered food and given some orientation points about Kigali and Rwanda, said hostel manager Ismael Bakina.

Tents will be set up within the hostel’s compound for processing their documentation and for various briefings. The site is equipped with security cameras, visible across the compound.

Within the compound are also entertainment places, a mini-soccer field, a basketball and a volleyball court as well as a red-carpeted prayer room. For those who want to light up, “there is even a smoking room,” Bakina explained.

Meals will be prepared in the hostel’s main kitchen but provisions are also being made for those who want to prepare their own meals, he said. The migrants will be free to walk outside the hostel and even visit the nearby Kigali city center.

“We will have different translators, according to (their) languages,” Bakina added, saying they include English and Arabic.

The government has said the migrants will have their papers processed within the first three months. Those who want to remain in Rwanda will be allowed to do so while authorities will also assist those who wish to return to their home countries.

While in Rwanda, migrants who obtain legal status — presumably for Britain — will also be processed, authorities have said, though it’s unclear what that means exactly.

For those who choose to stay, Mukurilinda said Rwanda’s government will bear full financial and other responsibilities for five years, after which they will be considered integrated into the society.

At that point, they can start managing on their own.
…

Lausanne, France — Between six and eight Palestinian athletes are expected to compete at the Paris Olympics, with some set to be invited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) even if they fail to qualify, its head, Thomas Bach, said.

Bach told AFP on Friday that qualification events for the Paris Games, which start July 26, were ongoing for a number of sports.

“But we have made the clear commitment that even if no (Palestinian) athlete would qualify on the field of play … then the NOC (National Olympic Committee) of Palestine would benefit from invitations, like other national Olympic Committees who do not have a qualified athlete,” he said in an interview at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

He said he expected the Palestinian delegation to number “six to eight.”

Bach said that the International Olympic Committee “from day one of the conflict” in Gaza had “supported in many different ways the athletes to allow them to take part in qualifications and to continue their training.”

Palestinian militants from Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of about 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign to destroy Hamas has killed 34,356 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Bach dismissed suggestions the IOC has treated Russia differently over its invasion of Ukraine compared with Israel and its war in Gaza.

Russia was suspended from many international sports after its invasion and its athletes have been banned from competing under the national flag at Paris 2024.

In order to take part in the Paris Games, they are also required to have never publicly supported the war against Ukraine and not be employed by the military or security services.

The sanctions against Russia were a result of Moscow violating the “Olympic truce” in its invasion of Ukraine soon after the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022 and for annexing Ukrainian sports organizations.

“The situation between Israel and Palestine is completely different,” Bach said.

He said he had been even-handed in his public statements on Ukraine, the Hamas attack on Israel and the “horrifying consequences” of the war in Gaza.

“From day one, we expressed how horrified we were, first on the seventh of October and then about the war and its horrifying consequences,” Bach said.

“We have always been very clear as we have been with the Russian invasion in Ukraine.”
…