European Union chief negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier has officially ruled out the possibility that the bloc and the United Kingdom could reach a deal on Brexit during an October summit.

Barneir said after a meeting with Britain’s Brexit minister Dominic Raab on Tuesday that a deal on how the UK will leave the EU would not be completed by the European Council summit in October as previously hoped.

“I’m not going to say October, a few days here, the beginning of November, but not much later than that,” said Barnier during a press conference with Raab in Brussels.

The French diplomat, who has been tough with Britain on the country’s recent proposals for Brexit, said there will be works to do on key issues like the Irish border while the two sides will need time to prepare a political declaration on the future relationship.

Raab was still hopeful a deal would come through during the EU summit although he admitted there remained differences on key issues.

“If we have that ambition, that pragmatism and that energy on both sides, I’m confident we can reach that agreement by October,” said Raab after the meeting with Barnier, adding, “There are still gaps, we’ve had an honest conversation about those.”

The uncertainty about Brexit deepened in July when Barnier rejected key proposals from a plan submitted by British Prime Minister Theresa May earlier that month. May’s so-called white paper also sparked domestic controversies and caused two senior ministers in her cabinet, including Raab’s predecessor David Davis, to resign.

Fears have grown among the public that Britain could face serious shortage of foods and other basic items in case it fails to reach a withdrawal agreement with the EU.

May has said that there are still chances to avoid a no-deal Brexit but she insists that Britain would not accept a bad deal.

Culled from Presstv

A police officer shot dead a man armed with a knife as he tried to attack a police station in the northern Spanish region of Catalonia on Monday, in what authorities are treating as a “terrorist attack”. Police said the man invoked the name of Allah during the assault, which came just days after the first anniversary of a twin attack in Catalonia that killed 16 people.

The man arrived at the closed police station in the town of Cornella de Llobregat near Barcelona at 5:45 am (0345 GMT) and repeatedly pressed the buzzer to be let in, Rafel Comes, a commissioner with the Catalan regional police, told a news conference.

After police allowed him in, the man pulled out a “large knife” and lunged at officers in “a clearly premeditated desire to kill an agent of our force,” Comes said. “The officer used her gun to save her own life,” Comes said, adding the man shouted “Allah” as well as words the police officers did not understand.

“These are enough indication to treat the events being investigated as a terrorist attack.” Anti-terrorism police sources had earlier told AFP the man was a 29-year-old Algerian, but Comes said police still needed to confirm that the Algerian identity papers he carried with him were in fact his.

The police station in Cornella de Llobregat, a working-class town of around 86,000 people, was quickly cordoned off after the attack and the attacker’s body removed, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

‘It was strange’

Police explosives experts searched the man’s flat, which was located just a few hundred metres (yards) from the site of the attack.

Resident Conchi Garcia, a 50-year-old office worker, said the man came to the neighbourhood two years ago, when he moved in with a woman and her two daughters who had always lived in the area. “It was strange that the woman started wearing the veil shortly after he arrived,” Garcia told AFP.

Security has been reinforced at police stations across Catalonia. The incident occurred just days after the one-year anniversary of a deadly jihadist rampage in Catalonia. Sixteen people were killed on August 17 and 18, 2017 when a van drove into crowds on Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard and in a knife attack in the nearby resort of Cambrils.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, Spain’s worst since the Madrid train bombings in 2004 when 191 people died and more than 1,800 were injured. Spain has kept its terrorist alert at the second-highest level since 2015.

‘Centre of jihadist activity’

Catalonia, which is home to a significant number of second-generation North African immigrants, has had a long history of Islamic militant activity. Spain’s first Muslim extremist — a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) — was uncovered in Catalonia in 1995.

Mohammed Atta, the pilot who slammed a passenger plane into one of New York’s World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, spent time in Catalonia shortly before the attacks. And in 2008, police foiled a plot targeting Barcelona’s underground trains.

One in four people detained in Spain in relation to extremist Muslim-linked terrorism come from the Catalan province of Barcelona, according to a study published last year by the Real Instituto Elcano, a Spanish think-tank, which called the province the country’s “main centre of jihadist activity”.

The Islamic State group has frequently called on their followers to attack soldiers and police in neighbouring France.

(AFP)

Italy will let its coastguard ship carrying 177 migrants it rescued five days ago dock in Sicily, ending a standoff with Malta, its transport minister said on Monday, though it was not clear when and if the migrants would be allowed to disembark.

The European Commission also said it was working on a solution to share out the migrants aboard the Diciotti with Italy’s EU partners after a request from Italy the previous day. “The Diciotti ship will dock in Catania,” Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said on Twitter without specifying when. “Now Europe must hurry to do its part.”

But shortly afterwards, Interior Ministry sources said Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had not yet given authorisation for the ship to dock. He was awaiting guarantees that the migrants would go elsewhere. The sources said they would not disembark before then.

Since taking office in June, Salvini and Toninelli have toughened the stance on allowing ships to dock in Italian ports at a time of rising anti-immigration sentiment in Italy. The Diciotti picked up 190 migrants on Wednesday from an overcrowded boat on the high seas.

The coastguard quickly evacuated 13 of them to Italy for emergency medical treatment, but instead of bringing the rest to shore, the Diciotti stayed in international waters while Rome insisted that Malta should take them since the migrant boat had first passed through its search-and-rescue area. But Malta said the migrants had refused its aid because they wanted to reach Italy.

On Sunday, Toninelli said the small island nation should be sanctioned for not performing the rescue.

After more than 650,000 arrivals on Italian shores since 2014, Salvini has repeatedly said the country “will no longer be Europe’s refugee camp”, calling on EU partners to share the burden of the arrivals.

Flows across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy – one of the main routes to Europe – have tapered off as Libyan factions cracked down on people smugglers, and as the EU bolstered its support for the Libyan coast guard.

But people are still dying at sea and summer is peak season for migrants attempting the crossing, often in packed, unseaworthy boats. Brussels said it was in talks with EU states on which of them would take the Diciotti people in, but it declined comment to say which capitals were involved and when help might be on offer.

(REUTERS)