Northern Ireland police faced a barrage of petrol bombs and rocks on Thursday, an AFP journalist said, as violence once again flared in Belfast despite pleas for calm.

Riot police on the republican side of the divided city were pelted with projectiles as they tried to prevent a crowd moving towards pro-UK unionists.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Irish counterpart Micheal Martin had earlier called for “calm” following days of violence that included a petrol-bomb attack on a moving bus.

Martin and Johnson held telephone talks in which they stressed that “violence is unacceptable” and “called for calm”, the Irish leader’s office said.

But their calls went unheeded as night fell in Belfast, with unrest breaking out on the republican side of the capital.

Rioting over the last few days—the city’s worst unrest in recent years—had mainly stemmed from its unionist community, leading to joint condemnation from political leaders in the British province.

Unionists are angry over apparent economic dislocation due to Brexit and existing tensions with pro-Irish nationalist communities.

“Destruction, violence and the threat of violence are completely unacceptable and unjustifiable, no matter what concerns may exist in communities,” said the Northern Ireland executive—made up of unionist, nationalist and centrist parties.

“While our political positions are very different on many issues, we are all united in our support for law and order.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis visited Belfast to meet leaders from the main parties, including unionist First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, as well as faith and community advocates.

He called the joint condemnation “a very clear statement”, adding “there is no excuse for violence, we’ve got to make sure we take things forward in a proper democratic and political way.”

In Washington, the White House also expressed concern over the violence and urged calm.

‘Sectarian violence’

In the disorder on Wednesday, gates were set alight on a “peace line”—walls separating pro-Irish nationalist and unionist communities—and police said crowds from either side broke through to attack each other with petrol bombs, missiles and fireworks.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) temporary assistant chief constable Jonathan Roberts said the scale and nature of the violence was unprecedented in recent years.

“The fact that it was sectarian violence and there was large groups on both sides… again is not something we have seen for a number of years,” he told reporters.

Before Thursday, six nights of unrest left 55 police injured, Roberts noted, as well as a press photographer and the driver of the bus fire-bombed Wednesday.

He said children as young as 13 were suspected of involvement following encouragement from adults, and the large volume of petrol bombs used suggested “a level of pre-planning”.

The PSNI is probing if Northern Ireland’s notorious paramilitary groups were involved in the unrest.

‘Deep rooted’

Northern Ireland endured 30 years of sectarian conflict that killed 3,500 people.

Unionist paramilitaries, British security forces and armed nationalists seeking to unite the territory with the Republic of Ireland waged battle until a landmark peace deal in 1998.

The accord let unionists and nationalists coexist by blurring the status of the region, dissolving border checks with fellow European Union member Ireland.

But Britain’s 2016 vote to quit the EU revived the need for border checks. A special “protocol” was agreed that shifted the controls away from the land border to ports trading with the UK mainland, prompting many unionists to accuse London of betrayal.

There was also recent outrage among unionists after Northern Irish authorities decided not to prosecute Sinn Fein leaders for attending a large funeral last year of a former paramilitary leader, in apparent breach of Covid restrictions.

Few people in central Belfast on Thursday wanted to discuss the sensitive situation.

“It’s deep-rooted, it’s not just about Brexit,” said Fiona McMahon, 56, before adding Britain’s EU withdrawal had had a “massive impact”.

“The British do whatever the hell they want to do and we get landed with everything afterwards,” she told AFP.

PM Johnson tweeted overnight that he was “deeply concerned”, saying “the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality”.

Johnson and Martin agreed during their call that “the way forward is through dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement,” according to Dublin.

Source: AFP

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalised for the second time in two weeks, a source within his Forza Italia party said Wednesday.

The flamboyant 84-year-old billionaire and media tycoon has been at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital since Tuesday afternoon, the source said.

Berlusconi arrived for a check-up, and doctors decided to keep him in to conduct more tests, the source added.

The hospitalisation was also announced by one of Berlusconi’s lawyers during a hearing in Milan linked to his long-running “bunga bunga” sex scandal.

The hearing is part of the latest prong of the investigation into Berlusconi’s relationship with an underage girl, Karima El-Mahroug, dubbed “Ruby the heart-stealer”.

The probe involves alleged payments to witnesses by Berlusconi to buy their silence over his so-called “bunga bunga” parties involving El-Mahroug and other women.

Berlusconi, who has dominated public life in Italy since the 1980s, has had a string of health problems in recent years.

He already spent a couple of days at the San Raffaele in late March. His entourage said at the time it was to conduct previously scheduled tests.

In January, Berlusconi — who had open heart surgery in 2016 — was admitted to a hospital in Monaco for heart problems. Last September, he was hospitalised for 11 days with Covid-19.

Source: AFP

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy goes on trial Wednesday over claims of illicit financing for his failed 2012 re-election bid, just two weeks after a landmark conviction for corruption.

On March 1, the 66-year-old became France’s first post-war president to be sentenced to prison when he was given a three-year term, two years of which were suspended, for corruption and influence peddling.

That case was one of several hanging over him since he left office.

Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing, saying he is the victim of a vindictive judicial system with which he tangled while in power between 2007 and 2012.

In the trial opening Wednesday, which he is not expected to attend, the divisive rightwinger is accused of overspending on his failed 2012 re-election bid to the tune of 20 million euros ($24 million).

The money was spent on lavish US-style rallies in the final days of the race, as Sarkozy scrambled to fend off an unexpectedly strong challenge from his Socialist rival Francois Hollande.

Prosecutors say accountants had warned him that the campaign was set to blow the 22.5 million euro ($26.7 million) cap on spending between the first and second rounds of voting, but Sarkozy insisted on holding more events.

Investigators say his total spending on the second round came to nearly 43 million euros ($51 million).

To hide the spending, the PR firm behind the campaign, Bygmalion, and officials in Sarkozy’s UMP party (since renamed Les Republicains) are accused of conspiring to have the UMP foot the bill through a system of fake invoices.

The former president says he was unaware of the fraud — unlike some of the defendants he is not charged with fraud, but with the lesser offence of illegal campaign financing. He fought for years to avoid a trial.

‘Runaway train’

Bygmalion executives and Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy manager of Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign who will also go on trial, have acknowledged the system of fake invoices.

Lavrilleux in particular made headlines in 2014 after he tearfully confessed to the scam during a French TV interview, saying: “This campaign was a runaway train that no one had the courage to stop.”

The trial is set to run until April 15, but Lavrilleux’s defence team has said it will seek to postpone the start because his main lawyer has been hospitalised with Covid-19.

If convicted, Sarkozy risks being sentenced to up to a year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros.

On March 1, he was found guilty of forming a “corruption pact” with his lawyer to convince a judge to share information about yet another investigation into the politician’s affairs, relating to his winning 2007 campaign.

His prison sentence stunned the political establishment and prompted his many admirers on the right, including Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, to send him messages of support.

This sentence is not expected to see him serve actual jail time with two of the three years suspended by the court and the remaining year set to be served at home with an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy has appealed the verdict which effectively crushed any hopes that he could stage another presidential comeback after a first failed attempt in 2016.

In an TF1 television interview on March 3, he repeated that he had “turned the page” on his political career but made clear he would continue to make his political views known and anoint right-wing favourites.

Sarkozy is married to former singer and model Carla Bruni, with whom he has a nine-year-old daughter.

He has also been charged over allegations he received millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 election campaign.

And in January, prosecutors opened a probe into alleged influence-peddling involving his activities as a consultant in Russia.

Source: AFP

The European Commission authorised Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, giving the European Union’s 27 nations a fourth licensed vaccine to try to curb the pandemic amid a stalled vaccination drive in the bloc.

“More safe and effective vaccines are coming to the market. We have just authorised the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in the EU, following EMA positive review,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, wrote on Twitter.

The EU medicines regulator said earlier it was recommending the vaccine be authorised “after a thorough evaluation” of Johnson & Johnson’s data found it met the criteria for efficacy, safety and quality.

“With this latest positive opinion, authorities across the European Union will have another option to combat the pandemic and protect the lives and health of their citizens,” said Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

US pharma giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) filed on February 16 for approval for the vaccine, developed by its Belgian subsidiary Janssen.

Its approval offers a boost for the EU’s sluggish vaccination programme, even if reports say the first J&J shipments doses may not arrive in European countries until April.

Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said the vaccine’s authorisation marked “another key step towards ensuring that all citizens can access safe and effective vaccinations as soon as possible”.

AstraZeneca concerns

The move comes as several European countries have suspended their roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine citing concerns about patients developing blood clots after receiving the jab.

The EU has so far approved three vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and the AstraZeneca jab developed by the University of Oxford.

Three other vaccines are under “rolling review” by the Amsterdam-based EMA – Novavax, CureVac and Russia’s Sputnik V.

As well as being the first that requires a single injection as opposed to two, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is easier to store.

The J&J shot however appears less protective than Pfizer and Moderna’s regimes, which both have an efficacy of around 95 percent against all forms of Covid-19 from the classic coronavirus strain.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

A French court on Thursday acquitted former prime minister Edouard Balladur on corruption charges after he was accused of using kickbacks from an arms deal but handed a suspended jail term to his former defence minister.

The verdict by the Law Court of the Republic (CJR), which sits to try serving and former ministers for alleged violations committed in office, came just days after ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted for corruption.

Balladur, 91, had been accused of funnelling illicit commissions from arms deals to his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1995.

His former defence minister Francois Leotard, 78, was however convicted of complicity in the misuse of assets and handed a suspended two-year prison term and a fine of 100,000 euros ($120,000).

Neither was present in court for the verdict.

Balladur and Leotard, both right-wingers, were charged in 2017 with “complicity in the misuse of corporate assets” over the sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia between 1993 and 1995.

The verdicts came hot on the heels of a corruption conviction for former president Sarkozy on Monday which stunned France and has led to a debate about the extent of political corruption.

That judgement meant that both of the last heads of states from France’s right-wing party now called The Republicans (LR) — Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy — have criminal convictions.

Sarkozy has vowed to appeal and clear his name.

Swiss cash

The allegations against Balladur and Leotard came to light during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, that targeted a bus transporting French engineers.

Fifteen people were killed in the attack, including 11 engineers working on the submarine contract, with the Al-Qaeda terror network initially suspected of carrying out the assault.

But the focus shifted and French investigators began to consider whether the bombing had been carried out as revenge for a halt in commission payments for the arms deals.

Balladur lost his 1995 presidential bid to rival Chirac who allegedly cut off the payments negotiated by the previous government.

Leotard was accused of having created an “opaque network” of intermediaries who took commissions on contracts signed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and then paid back some of the money with illicit cash transfers.

Prosecutors alleged that the commissions totalled 550 million francs, or 117 million euros in today’s money, some of which was funnelled back to Balladur’s campaign.

At the centre of the case was a deposit of 10.25 million francs in cash made into Balladur’s campaign account three days after his electoral defeat in 1995.

Balladur claimed the money came from donations from supporters and merchandise sales, but prosecutors linked the money to cash withdrawals in Switzerland made by a Lebanese-French intermediary who took commissions on the arms deals.

Ziad Takieddine, long active in French right-wing circles, fled to Lebanon last June after a Paris court sentenced him and another middleman, Abdul Rahman El-Assir, to five years in prison over their role in the “Karachi” kickbacks.

Three others were also convicted but have announced appeals.

“I have a completely free conscience,” Balladur told the court during his interrogation.

Takieddine has also made — and retracted — claims that he delivered suitcases stuffed with cash from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi to Sarkozy’s chief of staff to help with the ex-president’s 2007 presidential campaign.

Those claims are the subject of a separate investigation into Sarkozy.

Combative Sarkozy

On Monday, the 66-year-old ex-president was found to have formed a “corruption pact” with his lawyer Thierry Herzog to convince a judge to obtain and share information about yet another inquiry into his campaign financing.

Sarkozy, who has been dogged with investigations since leaving office in 2007, denies the charges and has vowed to clear his name with an appeal.

In two interviews Wednesday, he lambasted the verdict and said he was mulling filing a complaint with Europe’s top rights court.

“I never betrayed the trust of the French people,” France’s president from 2007 to 2012 told TF1 channel in a primetime interview on Wednesday evening.

(AFP)

A French court found former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Monday of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling, making him the second head of state in modern-day France to be convicted of corruption.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

He was sentenced to three years in jail, including two years suspended.

The sentence means it is unlikely Sarkozy will physically go to prison, a punishment that in France usually applies to custodial terms above two years.

The court said Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy has 10 days to appeal the ruling.

The same sentence was handed down to his co-defendants – lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

The former president and his lawyer were found guilty of seeking to bribe judge Azibert for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had received illicit payments from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case was based on wiretaps of conversations between Herzog and Sarkozy, with prosecutors accusing him of “using secret telephone lines” to cover up his attempt to infiltrate the court.

Prosecutors said it had been established “with certainty” that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line to his friend Herzog.

One conversation “overwhelmingly” showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, they said.

Azibert, who was a senior adviser at France’s highest appeals court at the time, never got the job in Monaco.

Sarkozy’s lawyers argued this pointed to the absence of corruption but prosecutors said French law makes no distinction between a successful corruption attempt and a failed one.

Other cases pending

Sarkozy, who was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in the Bettencourt affair, still faces a raft of other legal woes.

Allegations that he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign are still being investigated, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 reelection bid.

In January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.

News website Mediapart said the probe targeted a payment by Russian insurance firm Reso-Garantia of 3 million euros in 2019 when Sarkozy was working as an adviser, well after leaving office.

Sarkozy’s long-running legal travails helped sink his comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote, but he has surfed on a wave of popularity since announcing his retirement from politics in 2018.

Only one other French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was put on trial after leaving office, but he was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health.

Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

A French court is to hand down its verdict in the corruption trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, with prosecutors demanding prison time for the 66-year-old.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, is accused of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

The former president told the court he had “never committed the slightest act of corruption”.

Prosecutors called for him to be jailed for four years and serve a minimum of two, and asked for the same punishment for his co-defendants — lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

“The events would not have occurred if a former president, as well as a lawyer, had kept in mind the magnitude, the responsibility, and the duties of his office,” prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon told the court as the trial was wound up in December.

The graft and influence-peddling charges — among several legal cases against him — carry a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of one million euros ($1.2 million).

‘With certainty’

Prosecutors say Sarkozy and Herzog tried to bribe judge Azibert for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had received illicit payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case is based on wiretaps of conversations between Herzog and Sarkozy, with prosecutors accusing him of “using secret telephone lines” to cover up his attempt to infiltrate the court.

Prosecutor Celine Guillet said it had been established “with certainty” that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line to his friend Herzog.

One conversation “overwhelmingly” showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, she said.

Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont lashed out at the flaws and “emptiness” of the prosecutor’s accusations, with the defence also claiming that the tapped conversations had been just “chats between friends”.

Azibert, who was a senior adviser at France’s highest appeals court at the time, never got the job in Monaco.

Sarkozy’s lawyers argued this pointed to the absence of corruption but prosecutors said French law makes no distinction between a successful corruption attempt and a failed one.

More to come

Sarkozy was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in the Bettencourt affair but still faces a raft of other legal woes.

Allegations that he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 election campaign are still being investigated, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 reelection bid.

In January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.

News website Mediapart said the probe targeted a payment by Russian insurance firm Reso-Garantia of 3 million euros in 2019 when Sarkozy was working as an adviser, well after leaving office.

Sarkozy’s long-running legal travails helped sink his comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote, but he has surfed on a wave of popularity since announcing his retirement from politics in 2018.

Only one other French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was put on trial after leaving office, but he was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health.

Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

(AFP)

Lorry drivers returning to France from Britain will not now need to have a coronavirus test if they have spent less than 48 hours in the country, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Sunday.

France demanded in December that lorry drivers travelling from Britain to France must carry a negative Covid test result to reduce the spread of a more infectious coronavirus variant that had been found in Kent in southeast England.

“I’ve agreed more flexibility in testing for hauliers travelling from the UK to France,” Shapps said on Twitter.

“From 11 p.m. (2300 GMT) tonight, lorries returning to France from UK having spent less than 48 hours in the UK will no longer require a coronavirus test.”

(REUTERS)

Protests against the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist have turned violent in Barcelona as thousands of demonstrators called for his release for the fifth consecutive night across Spain.

Angry protests initially began on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, and took him to prison to start serving a nine-month sentence for “glorifying terrorism” and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.

Since then, protesters have turned out every night, clashing with police in Hasél’s home region of Catalonia. Angry protests later began to spread to Madrid and beyond.

Police were deployed en masse, with dozens of police vans lining the streets of Madrid and Barcelona.

About 6,000 demonstrators began gathering in Barcelona early Saturday evening, and clashes broke out as they started marching towards police headquarters, according to local police.

Protesters hurled projectiles, cans and firecrackers at police, who fired foam bullets to disperse the crowd, the Catalan regional police said on Twitter.

Angry protesters attacked shops on Barcelona’s most prestigious shopping street, Passeig de Gracia, smashing windows and looting stores, according to police.

Officers arrested nine people across Catalonia, six of them in Barcelona. 

Nine people were also injured, two of whom were taken to hospital.

More than 60 people have so far been arrested across Catalonia since Hasél was detained, police said.

One woman lost an eye during clashes in Barcelona, triggering calls from politicians to investigate police tactics.

Demonstrations in Madrid, however, were largely peaceful but in the northern cities of Pamplona and Lleida, police clashed with protesters.

Around 400 people gathered under a heavy police presence in Madrid clapping and chanting, “Free Pablo Hasél!”

Hasél was given the prison sentence in 2018 for “glorification of terrorism” through more than 60 tweets he published on Twitter between 2014 and 2016.

He was also fined $30,000 for insults, libel and slander for tweets about the former king Juan Carlos I and for accusing police of torturing and killing demonstrators and refugees.

Source: Presstv

Yet another phone call comes in for Artur Palma, who is straining to cope with all the bodies piling up at his suburban Lisbon funeral parlour.

The call is from a nearby retirement home, prompting Palma to send his employee Jose Santos to collect the latest Covid-19 victim and drive her body back to the Velhinho funeral parlour he runs in Amadora.

Santos suits up in line with Portugal’s latest health guidelines: head-to-toe white suit, gloves and surgical mask. Then, he sets off in his hearse.

Faced with an explosion in Covid deaths during a virulent third wave in the last few weeks, Palma says that the demands on the business and staff are taking their toll.

“It’s real chaos. There are so many dead people we don’t have enough room for them all,” Palma says.

“It’s an enormous weight at all levels, physically and psychologically. We sleep little and we are reaching our limit. We are reaching the breaking point,” he adds.

Velhinho employees now make three or four trips a week to retirement homes to collect the dead, Santos, 62, tells AFP, at the wheel of his hearse.

That is about three times the number of deaths the funeral parlour handled in January 2020.

According to data compiled by AFP, over the last two weeks Portugal has recorded the largest number of infections and deaths relative to its population of any country in the world.

Over the year since the pandemic began, Portugal ranks seventh in the world for infections per capita but is lower down the list for deaths per capita.

The disease has claimed just over 13,000 lives in the country of 10 million people, including more than 5,500 in January alone.

A second general lockdown was introduced on January 15 in a bid to slow infections.

– ‘We feel it at home’ –

At the retirement home, Santos and a colleague place the body in a mortuary bag and wheel it on a stretcher to the hearse.

“It really has to happen like this from now on,” Santos says, stressing the importance of respecting health measures at each stage of preparing the body for burial.

Back at the funeral parlour, amid stacks of new ornate wooden coffins, Santos and Palma complete their protective gear by pulling on medical shoe covers, goggles, overalls and gas masks.

“We absolutely must stick to using this protective equipment. I myself put on three pairs of gloves. They are made for high-risk situations,” Palma says.

Covid-19 victims are wrapped in a shroud before being placed in the coffin.

Their bodies are not embalmed because of the contagion risk but disinfectant is sprayed everywhere.

When the coffin is sealed, Velhinho staff cover the joints with an adhesive tape, which, in turn, is sealed with several layers of cellophane.

The deceased is then put back in a refrigerated room, full of Covid victims.

Palma himself has lost family members to the disease.

“With Covid-19, I have already lost my aunt, my cousin, my father and my grandfather,” he says.

At the Velhinho funeral parlour, there are a total of just four people to cope with the recent surge in bodies and the work is having a high personal cost.

“It’s very difficult and we feel it at home with our families. Fortunately, they are there to support us,” Santos says, smoking a cigarette.

Source:  AFP