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Poland denies involvement in Nord Stream sabotage

Poland denies involvement in Nord Stream sabotage
Gas bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching surface of the Baltic Sea in the area shows disturbance of well over one kilometer diameter near Bornholm, Denmark, on Sep. 27, 2022. (Reuters/File)
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Updated 16 August 2024
AFP
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Poland denies involvement in Nord Stream sabotage

Poland denies involvement in Nord Stream sabotage
  • “Poland did not take part in anything. It has to be said clearly that this is a lie,” the minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, said
  • Gawkowski was speaking after former German intelligence chief August Hanning accused Poland of working with Ukraine on the sabotage
Updated 16 August 2024
AFP
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WARSAW: A Polish deputy prime minister on Friday denied his country’s involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022.
“Poland did not take part in anything. It has to be said clearly that this is a lie,” the minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, told TV channel Polsat News.
Gawkowski was speaking after former German intelligence chief August Hanning, who held the post between 1998 and 2005, accused Poland of working with Ukraine on the sabotage.
Kyiv has also strongly denied any role.
“It looks like it was a Ukrainian team that acted, according to the results of the investigation,” Hanning said in an interview with the Die Welt daily.
“It is quite obvious that Polish authorities were involved,” he said, calling for Germany to demand compensation from Kyiv and Warsaw.
Gawkowski firmly denied the accusation.
“I think this is Russian disinformation resonating through the words of German politicians,” he said.
“Either they are acting under the influence” of Moscow “or they know that this will lead to divisions between NATO member states,” he said.
Polish prosecutors on Wednesday told AFP they had received an arrest warrant issued by Berlin for a Ukrainian diver residing in Poland accused of involvement in the blasts.
But Warsaw said he left the country before he could be detained.
On Thursday, Ukraine said the accusation of its involvement was “absolute nonsense” after a detailed report in the Wall Street Journal.
Nord Stream’s twin gas pipelines, which ran from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, came under intense scrutiny when Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Several large gas leaks were discovered emanating from the pipelines in September 2022, with seismic institutes recording underwater explosions just before.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Poland Nord Stream 2

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Over 130 homes lost in California wildfire as winds drop

Over 130 homes lost in California wildfire as winds drop
Updated 12 sec ago
AFP
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Over 130 homes lost in California wildfire as winds drop

Over 130 homes lost in California wildfire as winds drop
  • The blaze erupted Wednesday morning and spread rapidly, fanned by fierce seasonal Santa Ana winds from California’s desert interior.
Updated 12 sec ago
AFP
Camarillo: Firefighters grappling with a blaze that has destroyed at least 130 homes in California said Friday they had made progress in their fight as a turn in the weather offered a break.
Hurricane-strength winds this week fueled an explosion in the Mountain Fire near Camarillo, outside Los Angeles, which grew rapidly to over 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares).
Thousands of people in the path of the inferno were forced to flee, some with only minutes to gather possessions and pets as unpredictable flames leapt from home to home.
Robin Wallace told AFP the home she grew up in was destroyed minutes after everyone fled.
“We were expecting we’d be able to go back and get some things. But of course, that didn’t work out.
“It was completely gone by the afternoon. It went very quickly.”
Linda Fefferman said she knew she had to go when she smelled smoke.
“I’m trying to load the car with animals and important papers, my oxygen concentrator, and when it got too smoky for me, I knew I had to get out,” she told a local broadcaster.
A neighbor with a chainsaw helped remove a fallen tree that was blocking her path.
“I went down to the Goodwill parking lot, watched the smoke, you know, probably our own house burning.
“Nothing is left. It’s gone,” she said. “It’s all gone.”
Fefferman said she thought 14 or 15 houses on her street had been destroyed by the flames.
Authorities said Thursday that initial inspections revealed at least 132 homes had been lost, with 88 more damaged.
The area is home to around 30,000 people, with approximately 10,000 having been told to evacuate.
The blaze erupted Wednesday morning and spread rapidly, fanned by fierce seasonal Santa Ana winds from California’s desert interior.
Gusts up to 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour pushed smoke and flames sideways, with terrifying footage showing fire engulfing brush, orchards and properties.
Those winds dropped Friday, with meteorologists saying they did not expect them to return for at least a few days.
That was welcome news for firefighters, some of whom had been on the frontlines for 36 hours straight.
The change in weather meant fire crews were able to make progress in their fight, said Nick Cleary of the Ventura County Fire Department, with 14 percent of the perimeter of the blaze contained.
“Today on the fire, we had a very successful day,” he told reporters, with a mild onshore breeze bringing some much-needed humidity.
More than 2,400 personnel, as well as engines, bulldozers and aircraft were involved in the fight.
“We need to keep using these resources with this advantageous weather that we’re having to get in there and make sure we’re mopping everything... so we’re not going to have any secondary starts,” Cleary said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom visited the area Thursday and declared a state of emergency, a move that will free up resources.
The White House said President Joe Biden called Newsom on Friday, along with local elected official Kelly Long, to discuss “support needed for the communities affected” and the approval of a Fire Management Assistance Grant by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Utility companies have shut off electricity to thousands of customers in the area — a common practice in California during high winds, with toppled power lines often causing wildfires.
Two relatively wet years have left California’s countryside flush with vegetation that is now dry and exceedingly flammable after a long, hot summer.
While fires, drought and strong winds are characteristics of the local environment, scientists say human-caused climate change is affecting weather patterns and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic events.

California spearheads new ‘resistance’ to Trump’s plans of mass deportation, environmental protection rollback

California spearheads new ‘resistance’ to Trump’s plans of mass deportation, environmental protection rollback
Updated 09 November 2024
AP
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California spearheads new ‘resistance’ to Trump’s plans of mass deportation, environmental protection rollback

California spearheads new ‘resistance’ to Trump’s plans of mass deportation, environmental protection rollback
  • Trump’s sweeping election victory this week came off the back of promises to swiftly expel millions of illegal immigrants and roll back nationwide environmental protections
  • But under the US constitution, states wield significant power and any such moves will certainly be met with lawsuits
Updated 09 November 2024
AP

LOS ANGELES: California is spearheading a new resistance to the incoming Donald Trump administration that will test the power of Democratic states to battle mass deportation, defend reproductive rights and combat climate change.
Trump’s sweeping election victory this week came off the back of promises to swiftly expel millions of illegal immigrants and roll back nationwide environmental protections. Critics fear his allies could move to restrict access to abortion medication.
But under the US constitution, states wield significant power and any such moves will certainly be met with lawsuits.
California’s top prosecutor stood in front of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge this week and vowed to “take on the challenges of a second Trump Administration — together.”
“We lived through Trump 1.0. We know what he’s capable of,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“We’ll continue to be a check on overreach and push back on abuse of power,” he promised.
Governors and attorneys general of other liberal states including New York, Illinois, Oregon and Washington have made similar proclamations.
“If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way,” Governor Kathy Hochul vowed.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said, as Democratic prosecutors across the nation coordinate their strategies.
The pre-emptive maneuvers have swiftly drawn the ire of Trump, who singled out California Governor Gavin Newsom in an angry social media riposte Friday.
“He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election,” complained Trump.

Hindrance by litigation
State plans to disrupt his agenda will bring an unwelcome sense of deja vu for Trump, whose efforts to rescind Barack Obama’s immigration and health care policies during his first term were repeatedly stymied in court.
During the last Trump administration, California alone sued over 100 times in a variety of areas, slowing down or restricting its policies. Republican states echoed that strategy under Joe Biden’s administration.
“It was as successful as you can get,” said Julian Zelezer, professor of political history at Princeton University.
“States, especially a state as large as California, do have the power to resist some of the changes that will come from the administration, to uphold emissions regulations and other laws, including on reproductive rights.”
A benefit of litigation is that “cases move about as fast as snails,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at University of California, Davis.
“Some cases go around the lower courts, and by the time they hit the Supreme Court, there’s a new president,” he told AFP.

“Sanctuary states”
Immigration is expected to be a flashpoint in the looming battle.
Republican states may cooperate with the Trump administration in identifying and detaining undocumented people. But Democratic states are likely to refuse.
During Trump’s previous term California was the first to declare itself a “sanctuary state,” prohibiting local law enforcement from working with federal agents to arrest illegal immigrants.
Trump could withhold federal funding to certain states as a means of exerting pressure.
He has also floated more radical measures, including massively expanding a process called “expedited removal” to evict undocumented people without court hearings, or even using the military to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.
But “there would almost immediately be a request for a preliminary injunction,” predicted Johnson.
“If you send the military on the border” to detain or deport immigrants, “it is unprecedented in all kinds of ways, and it raises all kinds of issues.”

“As California goes, so goes the nation”
One downside for states is the enormous financial cost of countless legal battles.
“State budgets are tight, and so that money has to come from somewhere else,” said Zelezer.
With Trump having won the popular vote and increased his vote share even in most liberal states, “politically, it might be a little harder as they try to move forward with doing this again,” he said.
Still, California’s leaders’ zeal in opposing Trump appeared undaunted.
“As is so often said, as California goes, so goes the nation,” said Bonta.
“In the days and months and years to come, all eyes will look west.”

Topics: US Election 2024 Donald Trump California

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Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party

Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party
Updated 09 November 2024
AFP
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Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party

Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party
Updated 09 November 2024
AFP

BERLIN: Germany marks 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell with festivities from Saturday under the theme “Preserve Freedom!” as Russia’s war rages in Ukraine and many fear democracy is under attack.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz — whose coalition dramatically collapsed this week — said in a message to the nation that the liberal ideals of 1989 “are not something we can take for granted.”
“A look at our history and at the world around us shows this,” added Scholz, whose three-party ruling alliance imploded on the day Donald Trump was reelected, plunging Germany into political turmoil and toward new elections.
November 9, 1989 is celebrated as the day East Germany’s dictatorship opened the borders to the West after months of peaceful mass protests, paving the way for German reunification and the collapse of Soviet communism.
One Berliner who remembers those momentous events, retiree Jutta Krueger, 75, said about the political crisis hitting just ahead of the anniversary weekend: “It’s a shame that it’s coinciding like this now.”
“But we should still really celebrate the fall of the Wall,” she said, hailing it as the moment East Germans could travel and “freedom had arrived throughout Germany.”
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will kick off events on Saturday at the Berlin Wall Memorial, honoring the at least 140 people killed trying to flee the Moscow-backed German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War.
In the evening, a “freedom party” with a music and light show will be held at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, on the former path of the concrete barrier that had cut the city in two since 1961.
On Sunday, the Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot will perform in front of the former headquarters of the Stasi, former East Germany’s feared secret police.
Pro-democracy activists from around the world have been invited for the commemorations — among them Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad.
Talks, performances and a large-scale open-air art exhibition will also mark what culture minister Claudia Roth called “one of the most joyous moments in world history.”
Replica placards from the 1989 protests will be on display along four kilometers of the Wall’s route, past the historic Reichstag building and the famous Checkpoint Charlie.
Also among the art installations will be thousands of images created by citizens on the theme of “freedom,” to drive home the enduring relevance of the historical event.
Berlin’s top cultural affairs official Joe Chialo said the theme was crucial “at a time when we are confronted by rising populism, disinformation and social division.”
Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall foundation, said the values of the 1989 protests “are the power-bank for the defense of our democracy, which today is being gnawed at from the left and the right.”
Most East Germans are grateful the GDR regime ended but many also have unhappy memories of the perceived arrogance of West Germans, and resentment lingers about a remaining gap in incomes and pensions.
These sentiments have been cited to explain the strong support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in eastern Germany, as well as for the Russia-friendly and anti-capitalist BSW.
Strong gains for both at three state elections in the east in September highlighted the enduring political divisions between eastern and western Germany over three decades since reunification.
While the troubled government led by Scholz’s Social Democrats and the opposition CDU strongly supports Ukraine’s fightback against Russia, the anti-establishment AfD and BSW oppose it.
The AfD, which rails against immigration, was embarrassed this week when several of its members were arrested as suspected members of a racist paramilitary group that had practiced urban warfare drills.
On the eve of the anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann recalled that the weekend will also mark another, far darker chapter in German history.
During the Nazis’ Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, at least 90 Jews were murdered, countless properties destroyed and 1,400 synagogues torched in Germany and Austria.
Hoffmann said that “it is very important for our society to remember the victims... and learn the correct lessons from those events for our conduct today.”

UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
Updated 09 November 2024
Arab News
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UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
  • Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
  • He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
Updated 09 November 2024
Arab News

LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.

Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.

Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.

However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”

Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”

Topics: Jonathan Powell Tony blair Iraq war

Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says
Updated 09 November 2024
AP
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Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says
  • Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
  • The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees
Updated 09 November 2024
AP

WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”

Topics: US Election 2024 Donald Trump Partnership for Public Service Howard Lutnick Linda McMahon

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