Bill to route internet through Russian servers spurs protest

March 10, 2019

MOSCOW (AP) — Several thousand people have rallied in Moscow to protest legislation they fear could lead to widespread internet censorship for Russian users. The sanctioned rally on Sunday was organized in response to a bill in parliament that would route all internet traffic through servers in Russia, making virtual private networks (VPNs) ineffective.

The proposed measure also would create a division in Russia's agency that regulates communications to oversee traffic control and routing. The bill has passed the first of three readings in the Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Advocates say the bill is intended to address concerns that Russia could be cut off if the United States applies a new cybersecurity doctrine in an offensive maneuver. Critics say the bill would create an internet firewall similar to China's.

Australia says tensions with Turkey ease after WWI remarks

March 21, 2019

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday tensions between his country and Turkey had eased after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said comments by the Turkish leader that sparked the row had been taken out of context.

A diplomatic dispute flared over Erdogan's comments in the wake of Friday's gun massacre in which 50 people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, attacks for which an Australian white supremacist has been charged with murder.

Speaking while campaigning for local elections, Erdogan warned Australians and New Zealanders going to Turkey with anti-Muslim views would return home in coffins, like their ancestors who fought at Gallipoli in World War I.

Morrison slammed the comments as "highly offensive," and on Wednesday summoned Turkish Ambassador to Australia, Korhan Karakoc, to explain the remarks. Australia also placed under review its travel advisory for its citizens visiting Turkey, which was already set at "exercise a high degree of caution" due to the threat of terrorism.

But on Thursday, Morrison said progress had been made on mending bilateral ties after a spokesman for Erdogan said the president's words were "taken out of context." Fahrettin Altun, director of communications for the Turkish presidency, said Erdogan was in fact responding to the manifesto posted online by the man arrested in the mosque attacks.

Altun also said Erdogan had made his remarks in a historical context relating to attacks past and present against Turkey, a move partly inspired, he said, by the fact the president was speaking near commemorative sites near the Gallipoli battlefields.

"President Erdogan's words were unfortunately taken out of context," Altun said on Twitter. "He was responding to the so-called 'manifesto' of the terrorist who killed 50 innocent Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. Turks have always been the most welcoming & gracious hosts to their Anzac (Australia and New Zealand) visitors.

"The terrorist's manifesto not only targeted Erdogan himself but also the Turkish people and the Turkish state. "As he was giving the speech at the Canakkale (Gallipoli) commemoration, he framed his remarks in a historical context of attacks against Turkey, past and present."

Morrison on Thursday welcomed what he called a "moderation" of Erdogan's views, which followed a series of high-level bilateral diplomatic communications on the matter. "Overnight, progress has been made on this issue and overnight we've already seen a moderation of the president's views," Morrison told reporters in Melbourne.

"It's my intention to break any cycle of recklessness, to work through these issues practically, to register in the strongest and clearest of terms the offense that was taken — I believe rightly — by those comments yesterday, but now to work constructively," Morrison told reporters in Melbourne.

"Australia and Turkey, the peoples of both countries, have a tremendous relationship, built up over generations." Thursday's developments came as New Zealand Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was en route to Turkey to meet with Erdogan and seek clarification over his comments.

The 1915 Gallipoli campaign, marked by heavy casualties on both sides, was a disastrous defeat for the allies against the then Ottoman Empire. Although the battle later helped cement friendship among the three countries, it remains a highly sensitive subject in Australia and New Zealand.

Erdogan has also sparked outrage abroad by showing video excerpts at his campaign rallies of the footage broadcast by the Christchurch gunman, to denounce what he has called rising hatred and prejudice against Islam. Three Turkish citizens were among the dozens wounded in the attack.

It is not the first time Erdogan has sparked outrage abroad by making controversial statements about foreign countries, particularly during pre-election periods to stir up nationalist sentiment and consolidate his support base. He has sought to patch up relations after the elections.

Local elections are set to be held in Turkey on March 31. With the economy struggling, Erdogan's party risks losing the capital, Ankara, to the opposition. Such an outcome would be a severe blow to the president, whose ruling Justice and Development Party and its predecessor have run the city for the past quarter century.

Wild animals get care at private Russian center

March 20, 2019

RAPPOLOVO, Russia (AP) — Gena the crocodile was left in a trash can. Elza the lion was roaming free in the cargo hold of a plane. As Tonya the bear grew up, the chain she wore dug so tightly into her skin that it started to cut through bone.

Luckily for these wild animals, and some 200 others, they have now found their way to the Veles Center, an out-of-the-way operation regarded as Russia's premier facility for rehabilitating wild animals that were abandoned or fell victim to human callousness.

Taking care of all of them costs about 10 million rubles ($155,000) a year. The center gets help from volunteers and public donations, but much of the funding comes from Alexander Fyodorov, the St. Petersburg construction company owner who founded the center in 2009.

"It is probably not enough to say that I like wild animals who normally get little help and that a part of my life belongs here," said Fyodorov. "I also want to do something important in this life." The crocodile was simply left in a trash can and found by a street cleaner, he said.

"The cleaner at first thought it was a toy crocodile in good condition, but then the toy crocodile came to life." The lion came to the center in a mixture of comedy and pathos after she was flown to St. Petersburg as an unannounced gift from one wealthy businessman to another.

"During the flight, she escaped from the cage and was wandering in the luggage compartment. When the plane landed at Pulkovo airport and personnel started to unload luggage, they found a lion that was attacking people," said center veterinarian Natalya Bondarenko.

The man for whom Elza was intended asked the center to take charge of her. She appears to have happily adapted to life at Veles, bounding through the snow in her outdoor enclosure and rolling on her back kittenishly.

The bear, Tonya, spent eight years chained up before she came to Veles. "There were two chains around her neck that grew into the body; one grew seven centimeters (nearly three inches) inside her neck," Fyodorov said.

"The bear had several surgeries. The last chain link reached the backbone. We cut a little part of the bone to remove that piece of chain." The center aims to release its animals back into the wild, but for many that's not possible because of environment or because they become dependent on human care and lose their survival skills.

For some of the animals, going back to the wild would mean leaving friends. For instance, a wolf named Vuk, who was found abandoned as a pup, has somehow appointed himself protector of the bears who live in an adjacent enclosure.

"The wolf considers himself a father for the bears, takes care of them, protects them if he feels there is any danger," the vet Bondarenko said. Other occupants of the center, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of St. Petersburg, include foxes, elks, donkeys, storks, peacocks and a group of 11 hedgehogs who bask in the attention of volunteer Yekaterina Gilchyonok, stretching for caresses rather than rolling into protective balls.

Veles, named after a Slavic pagan god of cattle, is an unusual undertaking in Russia, where care for wild animals largely is a "disaster," says Svetlana Ilyinskaya of the Center for Legal Protection of Animals.

"We are missing centers both for saving animals and for supporting them. There is no state support or policy regarding the matter," she says.

Croatia's top oyster farmers in alarm after norovirus found

March 11, 2019

MALI STON, Croatia (AP) — Oyster farming is the pride of this small town in the south of Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast. But tasting the famed local delicacy may not be a good idea at the moment. Authorities have detected norovirus, which causes diarrhea and vomiting, in parts of the Mali Ston bay — triggering shock and alarm among the breeders.

The traditional oyster-tasting feast in March has been canceled and fears are mounting of huge financial losses to the local community that harvests about 3 million oysters each year. Experts are pointing their fingers at the outdated sewage system in the area that has seen a rise in the numbers of tourists flocking to Croatia's stunning Adriatic coast.

"I am really sorry but people themselves are to blame that something like this happened," explained Vlado Onofri from the Institute for Marine and Coastal Research in nearby Dubrovnik. "It's something that has to be solved in the future."

While some stomach bugs can be eliminated with cooking, norovirus survives at relatively high temperatures. "The problem with oysters is that they are eaten raw," Onofri said. Stunned locals pointed out their oysters are famous for high quality — a 1936 award from a London international exhibition still hangs on the wall in Svetan Pejic's La Koruna restaurant in Mali Ston.

"Our oyster here is really a special oyster ... and this is the only place (in the world) where it can be found," he insisted. "Everyone wants to take our oysters and try to breed them elsewhere." Navigating the oyster fields in their small boats, the farmers proudly show visitors rows and rows of oyster-filled underwater farm beds spreading through the bay.

Top municipal official Vedran Antunica questioned the assumption that the local sewage system was to blame for the outbreak. "Viruses are everywhere, now as we speak, the air is full of viruses," Antunica said. "We had the same sewage system in the past, so why wasn't it (norovirus) recorded? What has changed?"

Malta armed forces seize tanker hijacked by rescued migrants

March 28, 2019

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — A Maltese special operations team on Thursday boarded a tanker that had been hijacked by migrants it rescued at sea, and returned control to the captain, Malta's armed forces said.

The tanker was being escorted to a Maltese port, where the migrants will be turned over to police for investigation, they said. Authorities in Italy and Malta on Wednesday said that the migrants had hijacked the Turkish oil tanker El Hiblu 1 after it rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea, and forced the crew to put the Libya-bound vessel on a course north toward Europe.

Italy's interior minister, Matteo Salvini, said the ship had rescued about 120 people and described what happened as "the first act of piracy on the high seas with migrants" as the alleged hijackers. The ship had been heading toward Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa and the island of Malta when Maltese forces intercepted it.

Maltese armed forces established communications with the captain while the ship was still 30 nautical miles off shore. The captain told Maltese armed forces he was not in control of the vessel "and that he and his crew were being forced and threatened by a number of migrants to proceed to Malta." A patrol vessel stopped the tanker from entering Maltese waters, they said.

The special team that restored control to the captain was backed by a patrol vessel, two fast interceptor craft and a helicopter. There was no immediate word on the condition of El Hiblu 1's crew. Humanitarian organizations say that migrants are mistreated and even tortured in Libya, and have protested protocols to return migrants rescued offshore to the lawless northern African nation. Meanwhile, both Italy and Malta have refused to open their ports to humanitarian ships that rescue migrants at sea, which has created numerous standoffs as European governments haggle over which will take them in.

A private group that operates a rescue ship and monitors how governments treat migrants, Mediterranea, urged compassion for the group on the hijacked vessel and said it hoped European countries would act "in the name of fundamental rights, remembering that we are dealing with human beings fleeing hell."

Mass migration to Europe has dropped sharply since 2015, when the continent received 1 million refugees and migrants from countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The surge created a humanitarian crisis in which desperate travelers frequently drowned and leading arrival spots such as Italy and Greece struggled to house large numbers of asylum-seekers.

Along with the dangerous sea journey itself, those who attempt to cross the Mediterranean risk being stopped by Libya's coast guard and held in Libyan detention centers that human rights groups have described as bleak places where migrants allegedly suffer routine abuse.

EU members "alert the Libyan coast guard when refugees and migrants are spotted at sea so they can be taken back to Libya, despite knowing that people there are arbitrarily detained and exposed to widespread torture, rape, killings and exploitation," said Matteo de Bellis, an international migration researcher for Amnesty International.

European Union member countries, responding to domestic opposition to welcoming immigrants, have decided to significantly downscale an EU operation in the Mediterranean, withdrawing their ships and continuing the mission with air surveillance only.

"This shameful decision has nothing to do with the needs of people who risk their lives at sea, but everything to do with the inability of European governments to agree on a way to share responsibility for them," de Bellis said.

Barry reported from Milan. Vanessa Gera contributed from Rome.

UN rights chief renews call for access to China's Xinjiang

Geneva (AFP)
March 6, 2019

The UN rights chief on Wednesday renewed her request to access China's Xinjiang region, where large numbers of the Uighur ethnic minority are reportedly being held in re-education camps.

In her annual address to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet said her office was seeking to "engage" with China on conditions in Xinjiang.

She also re-issued her requests for "full access to carry out an independent assessment of the continuing reports pointing to wide patterns of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions, particularly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region".

A UN panel of independent experts has said there are credible reports that nearly one million Uighurs and other Turkic language-speaking minorities are being held in Xinjiang.

Beijing at first denied the allegation, but later admitted putting people into "vocational education centers".

Xinjiang has long suffered from violent unrest, which China claims is orchestrated by an organized "terrorist" movement seeking the region's independence. It has implemented a massive, high-tech security crackdown in recent years.

But many Uighurs and Xinjiang experts say the violent episodes stem largely from spontaneous outbursts of anger at Chinese cultural and religious repression, and that Beijing plays up terrorism to justify tight control of the resource-rich region.

Bachelet said she was confident that "stability and security in this region can be facilitated by policies which demonstrate the authorities' respect of all people's rights."

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/UN_rights_chief_renews_call_for_access_to_Chinas_Xinjiang_999.html.

IAI unveils improved anti-jamming GPS

Washington (UPI)
Mar 6, 2019

Israel Aerospace Industries has unveiled an upgrade to its satellite operational navigation systems, which it says repels attempts at jamming.

While most navigation, communication and electronic warfare systems rely on continuous availability of multiple satellites for navigation, the majority of worldwide avionics systems are vulnerable to localized, low-power jamming emitters.

"In the Army, we have recognized that PNT [Positioning Navigation Timing] is a critical enabler of our warfighting capability, and that GPS is the predominant materiel solution that we rely upon," the U.S. Army said in a 2015 statement.

IAI said its ADA-O development features an advanced architecture and can defeat jamming efforts. The system can be installed on armored vehicles, communications carriers and other land-based platforms.

The ADA approach to Assured PNT [Positioning Navigation Timing] involves the use of advanced digital processing techniques that provide a high-level of immunity in severe and dynamic multi-jammer scenarios, the IAI statement said.

The company said it recently sold an ADA package for "tens of millions of dollars" to an unnamed Asian-Pacific nation's military.

Source: GPS Daily.
Link: http://www.gpsdaily.com/reports/IAI_unveils_improved_anti-jamming_GPS_999.html.