Soccer-In Damascus, World Cup loyalties muddled by war

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

DAMASCUS, June 20 (Reuters) - In a Damascus cafe, some of the Syrians watching Russia play Egypt in the World Cup faced a dilemma: whether to support a fellow Arab nation or their government's most powerful ally.

"I am confused because I was supposed to support Egypt but because Russia supports us, I support Russia," said Amin Maarouf, 62, as he watched Russia defeat Egypt 3-1 on Tuesday at a crowded cafe in a middle class Damascus neighborhood.

"If Egypt were playing against any other country I would support it. But when I had to choose, I chose Russia."

Seven years of conflict have muddled the loyalties of a Syrian nation fractured by a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and driven millions abroad as refugees.

While Russia enjoys support among Syrians who back the government, President Bashar al-Assad's opponents are rooting for any team that is playing against it or Iran, his other major military ally.

These are the first World Cup finals since Russia intervened in support of Assad in 2015, turning the tide of the war decisively in his favor. Russia is hosting the tournament.

Russian flags were being waved by fans watching Tuesday's match at an open-air screen in a street in Damascus, where just last month the government and its allies crushed the last remaining rebel enclave.

Still, not everyone was cheering for Russia. "I am supporting Egypt," said Jubran Louis, 18. "It's an Arab team, I have to support it."

The Syrian national side did not make it to the tournament, but it made an unexpectedly strong showing in the qualifiers. This too was also a point of division among Syrians. While government supporters rallied behind the team, some Assad opponents identified it with the Syrian government.

Omar Fleihan, who has lived in Istanbul since leaving Syria in 2014, ultimately wants England to win the World Cup and was hoping Egypt would beat Russia on Tuesday.

"Yesterday they were supporting Russia in Damascus, and this isn't something strange or new to them," he said. "I certainly support anyone (playing) against Iran and Russia without exception - Arab or non-Arab". (Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Beirut bureau Writing by Tom Perry Editing by Alison Williams)

Link: http://news.trust.org//item/20180620121506-t77yl/.

Turkey: 30,000 Syrians who were granted citizenship will vote

June 19, 2018

Some 30,000 Syrians who have been granted Turkish citizenship will vote in Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections, broadcaster NTV quoted Prime Minister Binali Yildirim as saying today.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has granted citizenship to thousands of refugees who have fled the conflict in neighboring Syria. Turkey is hosting around 3.5 million Syrian refugees.

In April, Erdogan announced snap parliamentary and presidential elections would take place in the country on 24 June.

The move came a day after his main ally, far-right leader Devlet Bahceli, called for snap polls, with the decision primarily motivated by the need to strengthen the current administration to effectively tackle the ongoing crisis in Syria and the country’s economic challenges.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180619-turkey-30000-syrians-who-were-granted-citizenship-will-vote/.

Turkish army announces patrols in Syria's Manbij

18.06.2018

Turkish army on Monday announced the start of patrols in the northern Syrian city of Manbij by Turkish and U.S. troops in line with a previously agreed roadmap for eliminating terrorists and stabilizing the area.

In a tweet, the Turkish Armed Forces said the patrols were being carried out between Manbij and Turkey's Operation Euphrates Shield area.

Earlier on Monday, local sources speaking anonymously said armored vehicles of Turkish army were stationed around Sajur stream which divides Jarablus town, in the Operation Euphrates Shield area, and Manbij.

The joint forces carried out patrols in an area overlooking the U.S. base in Syria's Dadat town, the sources said, adding that the patrols lasted around three hours.

The roadmap was first announced after a meeting in Washington last week between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The deal focuses on the withdrawal of PKK-affiliated YPG terror group from the northern Syrian city and stability in the region.

Should the model prove to be a success, Turkey will push for a similar arrangement in eastern Syria.

In its over-30-year terrorist campaign against Turkey, the PKK has taken some 40,000 lives. The YPG/PKK is its Syrian branch.

Turkey has said the presence of terrorist forces near its border constitute a threat, and has launched military operations and other efforts to rid the region of terrorists.

Source: Anadolu Agency.
Link: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkish-army-announces-patrols-in-syrias-manbij/1178013.

15 Palestinian refugees killed in Syrian regime shelling on Yarmouk camp

June 1, 2018

The bodies of 15 Palestinian refugees who were killed by regime shelling have been found in Yarmouk refugee camp, the Working Group for the Palestinians in Syria said yesterday.

The rights group went on to demand medical and civil defense teams be allowed access to the Palestinian refugee camp to recover the bodies from under the rubble.

Following the Assad regime’s brutal air raids against Syria’s largest refugee camp, the United Nations said the regime “turned it into a death camp”.

“The Yarmouk camp in Damascus lies today in ruins, with hardly a single building that has not been destroyed or damaged.  The fighting has been particularly intense in the last month or more.  Almost all the Palestine refugees who were there have now fled,” United Nations Secretary-General’s Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said last week.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180601-15-palestinian-refugees-killed-in-syrian-regime-shelling-on-yarmouk-camp/.

3m homes destroyed in Syria war

June 1, 2018

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said yesterday that the years of conflict in Syria have left almost three million homes completely or almost completely destroyed, and the regime has caused about 90 per cent of the damage.

In a report the network stressed that it had obtained satellite images which prove that the Russian attacks on eastern Ghouta destroyed entire towns.

Under the title “Satellite imagery proves that Russian attacks have exterminated entire eastern Ghouta towns”, the report said that the military campaign in eastern Ghouta in February was the most brutal of the campaigns by the Russian-Syrian-Iranian coalition forces since the outbreak of popular movements in March 2011.

The report pointed out that “the Syrian regime and Russia deliberately bombed and destroyed the largest possible number of houses later, especially vital installations.” It noted that “most of the bombing was without a military justification as required by the law of war.”

“Some three million homes have been partially or completely destroyed in Syria and that millions of Syrians have lost their homes, which means for the majority the loss of a quarter of a century of work that they spent in order to have housing.”

According to the report, “the regime used extensive destruction as a war tool against all who opposed it, and aimed to end and destroy all forms of opposition to the regime, and to completely destroy society.”...

... It went on: “Since 18 February until 12 April 2018, the use of 3,968 surface-to-surface missiles, approximately 1,674 explosive barrels, 5,281 mortar and artillery shells, as well as four explosive hoses, 60 rockets loaded with incendiary munitions, 45 rockets loaded with cluster munitions has been registered.”

During the same period, “the Russia-Syria forces killed 1,843 civilians, including 317 children, 280 women, 15 medical personnel and 12 civil defense personnel. The same forces committed at least 68 massacres and at least 61 attacks on civilians’ vital centers.”

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180601-3m-homes-destroyed-in-syria-war/.

Syria civilians protest against US-backed Kurdish forces

May 30, 2018

Syrian civilians held demonstrations across the city of Raqqa yesterday calling on US-backed Kurdish militias to leave the area, according to Syria Call news agency.

Protests took part in the main Al-Sakia Street as well as in several of the city’s neighborhoods, including Al-Mashbal. Demonstrators shouted slogans against the Kurdish authorities and expressed opposition to the federalist system they seek to implement in the northern territories under their control.

People’s Protection Unit (YPG) militias sent security reinforcements to suppress the demonstrations and reportedly fired on the crowded protesters, resulting in several injuries.

The protests come a week after the YPG imposed forced conscription on residents of the city, mandating that men between the ages of 18 and 30 join militias for at least nine months, dubbing the policy “compulsory conscription in the duty of self-defense”.

The YPG, an offshoot of the designated terror organization the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has started to face increasing resistance to its policies from Syrians, including the formation of a new battalion called the Al-Raqqa Brigade.

Earlier this week, Kurdish militias stormed a bastion of the group in an operation that left three opposition fighters dead. Despite the attack, Al-Raqqa Brigade called on civilians to show their resistance to the YPG in yesterday’s demonstrations.

US-backed Kurdish forces, known collectively as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have secured swathes of land in the north of Syria causing heightened tensions with neighboring Turkey.

Since January, Turkey has undertaken an air and ground offensive in Syria as part of “Operation Olive Branch” against the YPG in Afrin. The move prompted the Kurdish militia to call on the Syrian regime of President Bashar Al-Assad to aid them in the fight against Turkish soldiers.

Cooperation between the YPG and the Syrian regime is ongoing, with a member of the Central Committee of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria revealing last week that the YPG had handed over more than 90 Kurdish detainees to the security branch of the Assad government, after withdrawing from the city of Afrin in the north-west of Aleppo.

The YPG has also received increased backing from Europe; French forces have established six artillery batteries in the north of the country and along the Syria-Iraq border since their arrival last month.

Source: Middle East Monitor.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180530-syria-civilians-protest-against-us-backed-kurdish-forces/.

Foe accused by Maduro says Venezuela military is fracturing

August 15, 2018

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The exiled opposition leader accused by Venezuelan authorities of directing a failed plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro says the greatest threat to the embattled socialist leader may be his detractors in uniform standing quietly behind him.

Julio Borges, who once led Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly, said Tuesday that the arrests of two high-ranking military officers in connection with the attack using drones loaded with plastic explosives is yet another signal that fractures within the nation's armed forces are growing.

"The conflict today is within the government — not just at the political level, but more importantly within the armed forces," Borges said in an interview with The Associated Press in Colombia's capital.

His comments came hours after Venezuela's chief prosecutor announced the arrest of Gen. Alejandro Perez and Col. Pedro Zambrano from Venezuela's National Guard as part of the investigation into the Aug. 4 attack. Their alleged roles were not described.

Authorities said they have arrested 14 people so far while Borges and other alleged conspirators are being sought. Maduro has accused Borges of plotting with others to train anti-government saboteurs in Colombia and transport the drones and explosives used in the attack across the border into Venezuela.

Borges, who fled to Colombia with his family following the breakdown of negotiations with the government this year, said he had no prior knowledge of the plot. "Not at all," he said in his simple, bare office in a drab building in Bogota.

Almost from the moment the attack took place, Venezuela's opposition has warned that Maduro would use the incident to intensify a crackdown on his opponents as the government seeks to tamp down discontent over the country's imploding economy. In the past week, the number of suspects and detainees has nearly doubled.

Among those in custody is another opposition lawmaker, Juan Requesens, who was charged with treason and attempted homicide. Officials released videotaped testimony of Requesens that they say shows an admission of involvement in the alleged plot, but he never mentions the attack itself. In the video, Requesens is heard telling investigators that he helped Borges ferry one of the alleged ringleaders into Venezuela from Colombia.

Relatives of Requesens deny he participated in any plot. They say he is being unjustly jailed for being an outspoken critic of Maduro's government and policies that the opposition blames for Venezuela's severe shortages of food and medicine as well as hyperinflation that the International Monetary Fund has said could reach 1 million percent by year's end.

The drone attack came as Maduro was delivering a speech at a military ceremony in Caracas. Video footage of the event being aired live on state television shows Maduro, his wife and several other high-ranking officials suddenly looking up to the sky. The video then pans to hundreds of uniformed soldiers scrambling out of their formation in panic.

Authorities say two drones were aimed at the stage where Maduro was speaking but the military succeeded in knocking one off its path electronically while the other crashed into a nearby apartment building. Seven soldiers were injured but Maduro was not harmed.

Since taking over Venezuela's presidency in 2013 following the death of Hugo Chavez, Maduro has sought to maintain the loyalty of the armed forces by awarding troops outsized bonuses and bestowing officers with top government posts. With Venezuela reeling economically, and its oil production collapsed to levels unseen since the 1940s, that support has become even more important.

Maduro and top military commanders dispute the idea that dissention is growing in the armed forces, but analysts say discontent has been brewing among rank-and-file soldiers, many of whom now need to find second jobs in order to put food on their families' tables.

"Maduro is facing a divorce with the armed forces, which is apparent in the various rebellions that have taken place in recent months," Borges said. "That's opened a road which is irreversible." The drone incident was not the first attack targeting Maduro's government. Rogue police officer Oscar Perez stole a helicopter and flew it over the capital in June 2017, launching grenades at the Supreme Court building. He and several comrades died in a gunbattle with police after months on the lam. A year ago, a small band of armed men assaulted an important military base.

Attorney Alonso Medina Roa said 154 members of the military have been detained in recent months as discontent and instability escalates within the armed forces. Borges, the founder of the Justice First party, served as the opposition's top negotiator in the failed dialogue with the government and is one of the beleaguered anti-government movement's most visible leaders.

Maduro has called him the mastermind behind the drone attack and Venezuelan officials have requested his extradition from Colombia. "Borges you are an assassin," Maduro said on state television. "Life gave you the chance to conduct politics freely in Venezuela but you've turned into a killer in Colombia."

Borges brushed off Maduro's allegation, describing it as one more baseless charge by a government that regularly claims to have stymied opposition attacks. "Fear is the government's last resort left," Borges said. "They want to appear like a strong government. And they're not."

Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman contributed to this report.

3 WWII bombs removed from Baltic Sea resort in Poland

August 13, 2018

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — More than 2,000 people were evacuated Monday while Polish navy experts removed three World War II bombs from the Baltic Sea bed at the vacation resort of Kolobrzeg. The spokesman for the local navy unit, Jacek Kwiatkowski, said the bombs were hoisted out of the sea and onto a special truck and were taken to a test range for a controlled detonation.

Each bomb weighed about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) and their impact radius was estimated at 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). Two other metal objects found at the site turned out to be parts of an old anchor and some scrap metal.

Dariusz Trzeciak, a Kolobrzeg city official, said about 2,000 residents and 200 vacationers were evacuated in their own cars or in buses. They were later allowed to return. Kolobrzeg, which was part of Germany during the war, was the site of fierce fighting in the war's last phase.

Italian bridge collapse sends cars plunging, killing 26

August 15, 2018

MILAN (AP) — A 51-year-old highway bridge in the Italian port city of Genoa collapsed in a driving rain Tuesday, killing at least 26 people and injuring 15 others as it sent dozens of vehicles tumbling into a heap of concrete and twisted steel.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte called it "an immense tragedy ... inconceivable in a modern system like ours, a modern country." The disaster, on a major interchange connecting Genoa and other northern cities with beaches in eastern Liguria into France, focused attention on Italy's aging infrastructure, particularly its concrete bridges and viaducts built in the postwar boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

What caused the Morandi Bridge to fall remained unknown, and prosecutors said they were opening an investigation but had not identified any targets. Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said the collapse was "unacceptable" and that if negligence played a role "whoever made a mistake must pay."

Early speculation focused on the structural weakness of the span. Witnesses reported hearing a roar as the 45-meter (nearly 150-foot) bridge collapsed in a torrential rain during midday traffic on the eve of a major holiday that sees most Italians abandoning cities for beaches and mountains.

One unidentified woman who was standing below told RAI state TV that it crumbled as if it were a mound of baking flour. Video of the collapse, showing a misty scene of crumbled concrete, captured a man screaming: "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

Civil Protection authorities said at least 30 cars and three heavy vehicles were on the 80-meter (260-foot) section of the span that collapsed in the industrial area of warehouses. There was an immense gap where the bridge used to be, and one heart-stopping image showed a green truck halted on the rain-slickened roadway just short of the edge.

A man who was standing under the bridge in front of his truck at the time of the collapse called it "a miracle" that he survived. The middle-aged man, who did not give his name, said the shockwave sent him flying over 10 meters (33 feet) into a wall, injuring his right shoulder and hip.

"I was in front of the truck and flew away, like everything else. Yes, I think it's a miracle. I don't know what to say. I'm out of words," he said, walking away from the site. More than 300 rescue workers and canine crews were on the scene. They used heavy equipment and dogs to search for survivors in the rubble. At least four people were pulled alive from vehicles under the bridge, ANSA reported.

"Operations are ongoing to extract people imprisoned below parts of the bridge and twisted metal," said Angelo Borrelli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency. Officials evacuated several hundred people living along the raised highway that traverses the city as a precaution.

The effort would continue into the night. "It is a bit like working on an earthquake," said firefighters spokesman Luca Cari. "The main difficulty is removing the rubble and safeguarding the rescue teams."

There was confusion over the death toll throughout the day, with different officials giving conflicting numbers. Officials in the Liguria region said Tuesday night that 26 people had died, saying two more bodies had been found and one of the 16 injured had died in surgery.

After visiting the scene, Conte told RAI state TV the tragedy was "a serious wound for Genoa, Liguria and Italy." The Italian CNR civil engineering society said that structures dating from when the Morandi Bridge was built had surpassed their lifespan. It called for a "Marshall Plan" to repair or replace tens of thousands of bridges and viaducts built in the 1950s and 1960s. Updating and reinforcing the bridges would be more expensive than destroying and rebuilding them with technology that could last a century.

They cited previous accidents: a bridge that fell in April 2017 in the northern province of Cuneo, crushing a carabinieri police car after the officers and driver had barely managed to get away in time; and an overpass that in the northern city of Lecco that collapsed under exceptional weight, crushing a car and killing the driver.

The design of the bridge has been criticized in the past. Antonio Brencich, a professor specializing in reinforced concrete construction at the University of Genoa, called the span "a failure of engineering" in an interview in 2016.

"That bridge is wrong. Sooner or later it will have to be replaced. I do not know when. But there will be a time when the cost of maintenance will be higher than a replacement," he told Italian media Primocanale.

Other engineers said corrosion or weather conditions could have contributed. "As this reinforced and pre-stressed concrete bridge has been there for 50 years, it is possible that corrosion of tendons or reinforcement may be a contributory factor," said Ian Firth, former president of The Institution of Structural Engineers, a London-based international network. He called the bridge "an unusual design."

Mehdi Kashani, an associate professor in structural mechanics at the University of Southampton in the U.K., said maintenance issues and pressure from "dynamic loads," such as traffic and wind, could have resulted in "fatigue damage in bridge components."

Borrelli said highway engineers were checking other parts of the bridge and that some areas were evacuated as a precaution. "You can see there are very big portions of the bridge (that collapsed). We need to remove all of the rubble to ascertain that all of the people have been reached," he said.

The transport minister, Toninelli, said the company that has the concession to operate that section of highway said its maintenance on the bridge was up to date and no work was being done at the time of the collapse. But he added that they were about to launch a 20 million euro ($22.7 million) bidding process for significant safety work on the bridge.

"There has not been sufficient maintenance and checks, and safety work for many bridges and viaducts and bridges in Italy constructed — almost all — during the 1960s," he said. It was the second deadly disaster on an Italian highway in as many weeks.

On Aug. 6, a tanker truck carrying a highly flammable gas exploded after rear-ending a stopped truck and getting hit from behind near the northern city of Bologna. The accident killed one person, injured dozens and blew apart a section of a raised eight-lane highway.

Kirka reported from London. Simone Somekh in Rome contributed.

New Amnesty International leader's 1st move targets Zimbabwe

August 15, 2018

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Amnesty International's new leader said Wednesday his first act is writing to Zimbabwe's next president about the disappearance of activist Itai Dzamara: "Whoever leads the new government must move to undo the injustices of the past."

Kumi Naidoo, a South African-born former anti-apartheid activist, took office as secretary general of the London-based rights group on Wednesday. His focus on Dzamara, who was abducted by suspected state agents in 2015 under Zimbabwe's former leader Robert Mugabe, puts further pressure on the government of President-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe's former enforcer, to acknowledge past abuses.

Dzamara is the highest-profile activist to go missing under Mugabe's 37-year rule, which was marred by the Matabeleland massacre of thousands of people in the 1980s by a North Korea-trained military brigade, harsh repression against the opposition and sometimes violent land seizures from white farmers. The southern African nation eventually became an international pariah.

Last week President Donald Trump signed a law tightening the requirements Zimbabwe must meet for the lifting of U.S. sanctions, which include ordering an inquiry into the disappearance of Dzamara and other rights activists. It was a setback for Mnangagwa, who has tried to recast himself as a reformer since taking over after Mugabe's military-enforced resignation in November. Mnangagwa himself remains under U.S. sanctions.

Instead of addressing the abuses of the past, however, Mnangagwa has urged Zimbabweans to let "bygones be bygones" and move on from the repressive era during which, at different times, he held the posts of minister of state security, defense and justice.

The 94-year-old Mugabe last month dismissed Dzamara as "that character" and denied knowing of his fate. The former newspaper reporter was abducted when he was having a shave at a barbershop near his home. Two days before that, Dzamara told a rally organized by then-opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that Zimbabweans should rebel against Mugabe.

Patson Dzamara, the activist's brother, was assaulted and arrested by state security agents after protesting the kidnapping by raising a placard in front of Mugabe when he was still president. On Wednesday he tweeted that it was "humbling" that Amnesty International's new leader decided to speak up for his brother in his first act in office. He called it sad that Mnangagwa "chose to ignore us over this."

Japanese emperor tries to make amends for his father's war

August 15, 2018

TOKYO (AP) — For his last time, Japan's Emperor Akihito addressed a memorial service Wednesday marking the end of World War II. Once again, he expressed "deep remorse" for the war. It was in keeping with what by all appearances has become a mission for Akihito over his 30-year reign: to make amends for a war fought in the name of his father, Hirohito. The 84-year-old monarch is set to abdicate next spring.

"Reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated," Akihito said in a two-minute speech on the 73rd anniversary of Japan's surrender.

As emperor, he has made unprecedented visits to the Philippines and other Pacific islands conquered by Japan early in World War II and devastated in fierce fighting as the U.S.-led allies took them back. Though Akihito has avoided a direct apology, he has subtly stepped up his expressions of regret in recent years in carefully scripted statements on the war.

His words have taken on greater importance as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has sought to move Japan beyond its troubled past since coming to power in December 2012. Opponents of Abe's policies have grabbed onto the emperor's statements as a counterbalance to the prime minister's push to revise Japan's war-renouncing constitution and build up its military.

Akihito's World War II-related trips and pronouncements form part of a broader effort to bring the royal family closer to the public. In so doing, he has won over pacifists, leftists and other critics of the emperor system in a way his father was never able to do.

Hirohito, who was worshipped as a living god until the end of the war, remains a controversial figure even today, with historians still debating his responsibility for the war. During his father's reign, Akihito himself was almost hit by a Molotov cocktail on a 1975 visit to Japan's southern Okinawa island, where tens of thousands of civilians died in intense fighting near the end of World War II.

He has since visited the island 10 times. Okinawans warmly welcomed him and his wife Michiko earlier this year in what was likely his last as emperor. Akihito was 11 years old when he heard his father's voice announcing Japan's surrender on the radio on Aug. 15, 1945. During the subsequent U.S. occupation of Japan, he was tutored in English by Elizabeth Vining, a Quaker, an experience that experts say gave Akihito his pacifist and democratic outlook.

Though Hirohito hardly changed the wording of his Aug. 15 message for a quarter century, Akihito's has evolved since he became emperor after his father's death in 1989. On the 50th anniversary of the war's end in 1995, he expressed for the first time the hope that the same tragedy would never be repeated.

The same year, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama acknowledged Japan's wartime aggression and made a landmark apology to victims in the rest of Asia. His successors expressed remorse to other Asian countries until Abe dropped them and any reference to aggression in his Aug. 15 remarks beginning in 2013. He has pledged that Japan will not repeat the devastation of war, and did again Wednesday.

Abe also sent a religious offering to a Tokyo shrine that honors the war dead, including convicted war criminals. He has avoided visiting the shrine since 2013 in a bid to avoid overly angering China and South Korea, which see the Yasukuni shrine as a symbol of Japan's military aggression.

In his 70th anniversary address in 2015, Akihito started using the expression he used Wednesday, stronger words than he had used previously. The contrast with Abe captured media attention, with the prime minister portrayed as a nationalist pushing for a stronger military versus a pacifist Akihito. Abe wants Japan to stop dwelling on the past, while the emperor doesn't want his country to forget it.

Akihito visited China early in his reign and has traveled to some of the harshest World War II battlefields in the Pacific. His 2005 visit to the U.S. territory of Saipan was hailed as a statement of his desire to be part of the postwar healing process. Akihito traveled to the western Pacific nation of Palau in 2015 and the Philippines in 2016.

While his Aug. 15 address is always short, Akihito has expressed his thoughts about the war more clearly in annual birthday remarks and on overseas trips. He has repeatedly stressed the importance of studying history and passing it down to the next generations.

"Now that the memories of the war have started to fade, I think it is extremely important for everyone to study time and again the course of history Japan has followed and to reflect on peace," he said in his 2011 birthday address.

His son, Crown Prince Naruhito, has largely echoed his father's pacifist stance, but it is unclear if the first postwar-generation emperor will be able to strike a similar chord with today's younger Japanese.

This story has been corrected to show Akihito visited Saipan in 2005.

Endangered Green, Loggerhead turtles make comeback in Cyprus

August 16, 2018

LARA BEACH, Cyprus (AP) — For these ancient reptiles, a stretch of beach on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been their home for thousands of years. Against the setting sun, the tiny turtles that have just hatched on Lara Beach strain against the surf to reach the Mediterranean Sea and embark on their life's journey.

And in 20 to 30 years, they'll be back at this exact location to lay their own eggs. After being hunted to near extinction in the first half of the last century, the Mediterranean's endangered Loggerhead and Green turtles are making a comeback thanks to pioneering conservation efforts, Cypriot marine biologists say.

When those efforts began in 1978, there were just 300 turtle nests on the island's beaches where the reptiles return to lay their eggs. The population has grown to around 1,100 nests last year, said Andreas Demetropoulos, the founder and co-head of a turtle conservation program under the island-nation's Fisheries and Marine Research Department.

That may not sound a lot, but with the turtles' reproductive cycles stretching out as long as three decades, the results are "quite spectacular," said Demetropoulos. This increase is especially encouraging for the Green turtle, which lays its eggs in only two countries — Turkey and European Union member Cyprus. There are only about 1,500 female Green turtles that lay eggs in those two countries, as opposed to 6,000 female Loggerhead — or Careta Careta — turtles that lay eggs across the Mediterranean.

According to marine biologist and conservation program co-head Myroula Hadjichristophorou, Cyprus has 200-300 Green turtles who lay eggs while the number for Loggerheads is more than double that. Cyprus instituted its conservation program long before any other EU member and that has paid dividends, said Hadjichristoforou. Efforts include guarding against the turtles' main predator — foxes — and passing crucial legislation in 1989 that allowed conservationists to protect two key beaches in the island's west and northwest, keeping curious locals and tourists at bay.

Before this, residents would camp on the beach and fire up barbecues with little concern for the turtles. But over time, Hadjichristophorou says the region has built up a conservationist culture — from schoolkids to adults — so that folks who spot something like an injured turtle notify the authorities immediately.

Turtles have been around for 200 million years on Earth but have called the Mediterranean home only for about 10,000 years, said Hadjichristophorou. Remarkably, the turtles' own ingrained "biological GPS" brings them back to lay their eggs to the same beaches that their ancestors chose thousands of years ago.

"When people come here with their families, their children, they see the babies coming out of their nests, this is something that they will never forget," said Hadjichristophorou.