Far-right’s victory in German state election puts migrants on edge

Far-right’s victory in German state election puts migrants on edge
Syrian doctor Humam Razok poses for a picture in Soemmerda, Germany, on Sept. 03, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 04 September 2024
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Far-right’s victory in German state election puts migrants on edge

Far-right’s victory in German state election puts migrants on edge
  • Razok, 39, fears racism will worsen in Thuringia even if the Alternative for Germany is unlikely to be able to form a government
  • “It’s like having a huge mole on your face as you walk down the street — people look at you in a strange way”

BERLIN: Syrian doctor Humam Razok felt relief when he arrived in Germany nine years ago after fleeing Damascus, where he had been jailed twice for his political beliefs.
But the far-right AfD party’s victory in an election on Sunday in the eastern state of Thuringia where he lives, and the daily racism he says his wife encounters, have convinced him to leave the state once she graduates.
Razok, 39, fears racism will worsen in Thuringia even if the Alternative for Germany is unlikely to be able to form a government because other parties refuse to work with it.
“It’s like having a huge mole on your face as you walk down the street — people look at you in a strange way. We are still seen as new or unfamiliar to them,” Razok said.
He was one of more than 10 migrants Reuters spoke to in Thuringia. All shared experiences of racism and said they were anxious about the rise of the far-right.
The nationalist, anti-migrant AfD won nearly 33 percent of votes in Thuringia and came a close second, with over 30 percent of votes, in neighboring Saxony. It is the first far-right party to win a state legislature election in Germany since World War Two.
Razok quickly learned German following his arrival from Syria, and works as an anaesthetist at a hospital near the state capital of Erfurt. He says he is respected by patients and is satisfied with the atmosphere at work but that his wife, who wears a headscarf, faces racism every day.
“I am very careful on the street. If I speak Arabic with my wife, I try to keep it down or switch to German if someone is close by,” Razok said.
He said he was not surprised by the AfD’s election success but was disappointed, and that its rise had emboldened some of his work colleagues to openly voice support for the party.
Other migrants he knows in Thuringia, where foreigners make up 7.6 percent of the population, are also afraid, Razok said.
“Only a minority (of them) still want to live here,” he said, adding that he plans to move to one of Germany’s western states once his wife graduates as a pharmacist.
Skilled workers are desperately needed in Thuringia, where more than three in four health care vacancies could not be filled with a suitable applicant within a year, according to data compiled by the IAB labor market research institute.
If this trend continues, it could exacerbate the labor shortage in Thuringia, where the number of employed people is expected to shrink by about 20 percent by 2040, twice the national average, according to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation.

MIGRATION TRAUMA
Nearly half the people who voted in Thuringia supported either the AfD or the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which also called for tighter asylum policies and won 15.8 percent of votes.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner blamed the outcome on the federal government’s migration policy, saying Germans were fed up with the fact that the government may have lost control of immigration and asylum.
A deadly attack by a Syrian asylum seeker in the western city of Solingen a week earlier had intensified voters’ concerns about unregulated migration, said Hermann Binkert, head of the German Institute for New Social Answers (INSA).
“Also, there is still a bit of that trauma from 2015,” he said, referring to the impact of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to allow over a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany.
The Solingen attack prompted Germany’s federal government to introduce measures to tighten asylum policies and accelerate deportations.
The arrival of refugees fleeing war in Ukraine and a rise in asylum applications in 2023 have also fueled public debate on migration, said Zeynep Yanaşmayan-Wegele, a researcher at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM).
She said social problems, such as a lack of affordable housing and labor shortages, were often oversimplified by politicians and wrongly attributed to migration, making it very difficult to “depoliticize” the topic.

HATE CRIMES
Hate crimes surged nearly 50 percent in Germany to 17,007 cases in 2023, according to data released by the Federal Criminal Police Office, which put the rise down largely to a rise in xenophobic offenses which it said were mostly linked to right-wing extremism.
Yara Mayassah, an integration social worker in Erfurt, attributes the AfD’s rise to what she sees as the wrong focus in Germany’s integration policies.
“It’s an awareness problem. Since we arrived in Germany, all initiatives have focused on educating and raising awareness among migrants. But we’ve never worked on raising the awareness of the host community,” Mayassah said.
Ali Hwajeh, 28, a psychology student in Thuringia, said he feared the AfD’s success would embolden its supporters to physically attack refugees.
“I’ll stay for now and see how things develop. If the situation worsens — if there’s aggression, if people get injured— then my decision might change,” he said.


US embassy in Kyiv shuts down over anticipated air attack

US embassy in Kyiv shuts down over anticipated air attack
Updated 4 sec ago
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US embassy in Kyiv shuts down over anticipated air attack

US embassy in Kyiv shuts down over anticipated air attack
  • The warning comes a day after Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory,
The US embassy in Kyiv has received information of a potential significant air attack on Wednesday and will be closed, the US Department of State Consular Affairs said in a statement.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the embassy will be closed, and embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place,” the department said in a statement published on the website of the US embassy in Kyiv.
“The US Embassy recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced.”
The warning comes a day after Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory, taking advantage of newly granted permission from the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden on the war’s 1,000th day.
Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire US, British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in October that Moscow will respond to Ukraine’s strikes with US-made weapons deep into Russia.
On Tuesday, Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, with nuclear risks rising amid the highest tensions between Russia and West in more than half a century.

Time ticks down for negotiators at UN climate talks to find deal to curb warming and its effects

Time ticks down for negotiators at UN climate talks to find deal to curb warming and its effects
Updated 40 min 19 sec ago
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Time ticks down for negotiators at UN climate talks to find deal to curb warming and its effects

Time ticks down for negotiators at UN climate talks to find deal to curb warming and its effects
  • Vulnerable nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to deal with damage from climate change and to adapt to that change, including building out their own clean-energy systems
  • Rich potential donor nations have so far been reluctant to offer a starting figure to replace that

BAKU: With time running down, negotiators at the United Nations annual climate talks on Wednesday returned to the puzzle of finding an agreement to bring far more money for vulnerable nations to adapt than wealthier countries have shown they’re willing to pay.
Pressure was building to drive a deal by the time COP29, as this year’s summit is known, concludes this week. COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev asked negotiators to clear away the technical part of talks by Wednesday afternoon so they can focus on substance.
That substance is daunting. Vulnerable nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to deal with damage from climate change and to adapt to that change, including building out their own clean-energy systems. Experts agree that at least $1 trillion is called for, but both figures are far more than the developed world has so far offered.
Half the world away in Rio, Brazil, where the Group of 20 summit was wrapping up, the United Nations Secretary-General told the group of the world’s largest economies that “the success of COP29 is largely in your hands.”
“That goal, the financial goal, in its different layers, must meet the needs of developing countries, beginning with a significant increase in concessional public funds.”
And the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said developed nations should consider moving their 2050 emission goals forward to 2040 or 2045.
“The G20 is responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse effect emissions,” he said. “Even if we are not walking the same speed, we can all take one more step.”
Negotiators are fighting over three big parts of the issue: How big the numbers are, how much is grants or loans, and who pays. The “how big” question is the toughest to negotiate and will likely be resolved only after the first two are solved, COP29 lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
“There are interlinkages of the elements. That’s why having one of them agreed could unlock the other one,” Rafiyev said.
“All presidencies must at this point show that they have what it takes to move from administration to leadership,” German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said. “They must set the expectation for ambitious outcomes across the board. ... It is now up to the presidency to ensure that we move at full speed toward a green future.”
The current goal of $100 billion annually was set in 2009. Rich potential donor nations have so far been reluctant to offer a starting figure to replace that. Rafiyev said the conference presidency has sought to pressure them, telling them that the figure should be “fair and ambitious, corresponding to the needs and priorities of the world.”
India’s junior environment minister Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is at the Baku talks, said that “the Global South are bearing a huge financial burden.”
“This is severely limiting our capacity to meet our developmental needs,” he said.
The European Union is expected to finally offer a figure, likely ranging from $200 billion to $300 billion annually, Linda Kalcher, executive director of the think tank Strategic Perspectives, said Tuesday.
That wasn’t enough for Debbie Hillier, climate policy lead for the humanitarian group Mercy Corps, who called it “wildly out of step with the needs of developing countries” and a failure by richer nations to live up to the agreement of the 2015 Paris climate talks.
“If $200-300 billion is indeed the ballpark for what developed countries will offer, then this is a betrayal — a betrayal of the communities around the world who, whilst least responsible for climate change, are bearing its most devastating consequences,” she said.
Some wealthy nations were talking of loans that could be leveraged to attract other money — grants, more loans and private investment — to multiply the funds they can offer.
But poorer nations say they are already drowning in debt and most money should come in the form of grants.
Whatever the form of the finance, Ireland’s environment minister Eamon Ryan said it would be “unforgivable” for developed countries to walk away from negotiations in without making a firm commitment toward developing ones.
“We have to make an agreement here,” he said. “We do have to provide the finance, particularly for the developing countries, and to give confidence that they will not be excluded, that they will be center stage.”


Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean

Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean
Updated 20 November 2024
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Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean

Trump has called for dismantling the Education Department. Here’s what that would mean
  • The Education Department manages approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers
  • Federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools

WASHINGTON: Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump heaped scorn on the federal Department of Education, describing it as being infiltrated by ” radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
He has picked Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to lead the department. But like many conservative politicians before him, Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether — a cumbersome task that likely would require action from Congress.
The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.
Indeed, federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools. Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14 percent. Colleges and universities are more reliant on it, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Here is a look at some of the department’s key functions, and how Trump has said he might approach them.
Student loans and financial aid
The Education Department manages approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers. It also oversees the Pell Grant, which provides aid to students below a certain income threshold, and administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which universities use to allocate financial aid.
The Biden administration has made cancelation of student loans a signature effort of the department’s work. Since Biden’s initial attempt to cancel student loans was overturned by the Supreme Court, the administration has forgiven over $175 billion for more than 4.8 million borrowers through a range of changes to programs it administers, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The loan forgiveness efforts have faced Republican pushback, including litigation from several GOP-led states.
Trump has criticized Biden’s efforts to cancel debt as illegal and unfair, calling it a “total catastrophe” that “taunted young people.” Trump’s plan for student debt is uncertain: He has not put out detailed plans.
Civil rights enforcement
Through its Office for Civil Rights, the Education Department conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied, such as for LGBTQ+ students and students of color. The office also oversees a large data collection project that tracks disparities in resources, course access and discipline for students of different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Trump has suggested a different interpretation of the office’s civil rights role. In his campaign platform, he said he would pursue civil rights cases to “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.” He has described diversity and equity policies in education as “explicit unlawful discrimination” and said colleges that use them will pay fines and have their endowments taxed.
Trump also has pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women’s rights law. This year, Biden’s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but Trump can undo that.
College accreditation
While the Education Department does not directly accredit colleges and universities, it oversees the system by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies. Institutions of higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Accreditation came under scrutiny from conservatives in 2022, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools questioned political interference at Florida public colleges and universities. Trump has said he would fire “radical left accreditors” and take applications for new accreditors that would uphold standards including “defending the American tradition” and removing “Marxist” diversity administrators.
Although the education secretary has the authority to terminate its relationship with individual accrediting agencies, it is an arduous process that has rarely been pursued. Under President Barack Obama, the department took steps to cancel accreditors for a now-defunct for-profit college chain, but the Trump administration blocked the move. The group, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was terminated by the Biden administration in 2022.
Money for schools
Much of the Education Department’s money for K-12 schools goes through large federal programs, such as Title I for low-income schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those programs support services for students with disabilities, lower class sizes with additional teaching positions, and pay for social workers and other non-teaching roles in schools.
During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping proposal outlining a far-right vision for the country that overlaps in areas with Trump’s campaign, offers a blueprint. It suggests sending oversight of programs for kids with disabilities and low-income children first to the Department of Health and Human Services, before eventually phasing out the funding and converting it to no-strings-attached grants to states.


Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic

Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic
Updated 20 November 2024
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Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic

Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic
  • Supporters say social media is doing too much harm to not have an age limit. More about how the ban would work may be known next week when the legislation is introduced in Parliament

MELBOURNE: How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution could be far more difficult.
The Australian government’s plan to ban children from social media platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections due within months if the government hadn’t moved first.
The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.
But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”
Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant. More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament next week.
The concerned teen
Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.
“With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn’t grow up in the social media age, they’re not growing up in the social media age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that, like it or not, social media is a part of people’s daily lives,” Leo said.
“It’s part of their communities, it’s part of work, it’s part of entertainment, it’s where they watch content – young people aren’t listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV – and so it can’t be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented, is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on social media,” Leo added.
Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his home state Victoria’s nomination for the Young Australian of the Year award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits his platform with “fostering a new generation of informed, critical thinkers.”
The grieving mom-turned-activist
One of the proposal’s supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for children.
Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.
“Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they’re being fed misinformation, there are body image issues, there’s sextortion, online predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try and manage and kids just don’t have the skills or the life experience to be able to manage those well,” Sonya Ryan said.
“The result of that is we’re losing our kids. Not only what happened to Carly, predatory behavior, but also we’re seeing an alarming rise in suicide of young people,” she added.
Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.
She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age limit at 16.
“We’re not going to get this perfect,” she said. “We have to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children to social media.”
A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation’s potential privacy implications.
Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user is at least 16.
The skeptical Internet expert
Tama Leaver, professor of Internet studies at Curtin University, fears that the government will make the platforms hold the users’ identification data.
The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms, rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the age limit.
“The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may be inadvertently pushing toward, which would be that the social media platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter,” Leaver said.
“They would be the holder of identity documents which would be absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far of holding on to personal data well,” he added.
The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to work out how the ban can be implemented.
Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of removing children from social media.
“What is the cost if we don’t? If we don’t put the safety of our children ahead of profit and privacy?” she asked.


Trump names former wrestling executive as Education Secretary

Trump names former wrestling executive as Education Secretary
Updated 20 November 2024
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Trump names former wrestling executive as Education Secretary

Trump names former wrestling executive as Education Secretary
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, on Tuesday to lead the Department of Education, which he has pledged to abolish.
Describing McMahon as a “fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights,” Trump said in a statement: “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
McMahon is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team ahead of his return to the White House in January. It is tasked with filling some 4,000 positions in the government.
Regarding McMahon’s experience in education, Trump cited her two-year stint on the Connecticut Board of Education and 16 years on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school.
McMahon left WWE in 2009 to run in vain for US Senate, and has been a major donor to Trump.
Since 2021, she has chaired the Center For The American Worker at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.
During the election campaign Trump promised to do away with the federal education department when he returns to the White House.
“I say it all the time. I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin.
At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, McMahon said she was “privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague and a boss,” as well as “a friend.”
Her ties with Trump go back to her years in the professional wrestling industry — she said she first met him as chief executive at WWE.
At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once body-slammed her husband, legendary wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.
In 2017, she was confirmed as the head of the Small Business Administration, which is responsible for supporting America’s millions of small businesses, which employ around half the country’s private-sector workforce.
In nominating her, Trump pointed to her experience in business, helping to grow the WWE.
After leaving the administration, she served as chair of the pro-Trump America First Action SuperPAC, or political action committee.