Tag Archives: Britian

Sitting ducks: UK charity sees surge in calls from stalking victims

By Emma Batha

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – British charities for victims of stalking have reported a surge in calls during the coronavirus lockdown, with women isolated at home saying they feel like “sitting ducks”.

Paladin, a national anti-stalking service, said on Monday that requests for help jumped 40% since the lockdown was imposed on March 23.

Campaigners said police and the judiciary did not take “the invidious crime” seriously enough even though research showed stalking was a factor in more than 90% of domestic homicides.

“Stalking is premeditated and is extremely dangerous behaviour,” said Rachel Horman, chairwoman of Paladin.

She said most victims were reporting being stalked via social media, messaging apps and email, but physical stalking was still happening despite the lockdown.

Some women had even found their stalkers waiting for them when they dropped off shopping for relatives.

“Their stalker is watching the house and knows exactly where they are now much more than they did in the past, and that’s making them feel a lot more anxious,” said Horman, a solicitor who specialises in domestic violence and stalking cases.

“I’ve had several clients say to me they feel like sitting ducks.”

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which runs a national anti-stalking helpline, says nearly 1.5 million people are victims of stalking each year in England and Wales.

The trust could not be contacted, but calls to the helpline are reported to have increased.

Katy Bourne, chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, which advises Britain’s police forces, described lockdown as a “stalker’s paradise”.

“Stalkers normally would have to go to work, but now with everyone in lockdown they have 24 hours a day to obsess over their victims,” said Bourne.

“If they went into lockdown not knowing much about social media, and how to stalk across it, you can bet your life they’ve learned an awful lot since they’ve been indoors.”

Bourne, herself a victim of stalking, said referrals to a stalking support group in the south of England were up 26% since lockdown.

She said many victims suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and that by the time someone asks for help they had on average already suffered 100 incidents.

“I want police forces to absolutely make this a priority because there are many thousands of victims out there who are suffering in silence,” Bourne said.

“It’s pretty evil … It needs to be called out.”

Horman said there was growing support for a national register of stalkers and domestic abusers similar to the sex offenders register.

“They are serial offenders. If they stop abusing one person they don’t just give up, they will then focus on somebody else and it goes on and on,” she said. “It makes absolute sense to monitor them.”

(Reporting by Emma Batha @emmabatha; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

UK calls in army and warns people to stay home or face lockdown

By Kate Holton and Sarah Young

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain sent in the army to deliver protective equipment to hospitals on Monday and told people to stay at home and heed warnings over social distancing or the government would bring in more extreme measures to stop the coronavirus spread.

With some doctors saying they felt like “cannon fodder”, the government said the military would help ship millions of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) including masks to healthcare workers who have complained of shortages.

So far, 281 Britons have died from coronavirus and, in the last few days, British authorities have rapidly stepped up action to try to limit the spread of the disease and prevent a repeat of the death toll seen in other countries where thousands have died.

However, there have been complaints from frontline medical staff about shortages of kit, saying they did not feel safe at work. In a letter pleading with Prime Minister Boris Johnson to increase PPE supplies, more than 6,000 frontline doctors said they were being asked to put their lives at risk with out-of-date masks, and low stocks of equipment.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted there had been issues but promised action was being taken. He said the army would drive trucks throughout the day and night to get supplies to medical staff.

“It’s like a war effort, it is a war against this virus and so the army have been incredibly helpful in getting those logistics so we can get the supplies to protect people on the front line,” he told the BBC, saying the health service now had 12,000 ventilators, 7,000 more than at the start of the crisis.

Britain has brought in a series of measures to try to curb the spread of the virus.

On Monday, a much-reduced rail service was introduced and jury trials were suspended, coming days after Johnson advised Britons to work from home if possible and ordered the closure of pubs, gyms and leisure centers.

ADVICE IGNORED

But advice to stay at home and avoid social gatherings went unheeded by millions at the weekend who took advantage of sunny weather to flocked to parks and beauty spots over the weekend, ignoring instructions to stay 2 meters (6 feet) apart.

Emyr Williams, chief executive of the Snowdonia National Park Authority in Wales, said the past 24 hours had been unprecedented.

“We have experienced the busiest visitor day in living memory. The area has been overwhelmed with visitors,” he said.

The government warned that Britain would face a shutdown with curfews and travel restrictions if people continued to flout the advice.

“Well, we’re perfectly prepared to do that if we need to because the objective here is really clear which is to stop the spread of the virus. Of course we will enforce and bring in further strong measures if we need to,” Hancock told Sky News.

The government was also pondering whether to close all non-essential retail shops, the BBC’s political editor reported.

Some firms have already acted because of slowing demand, with clothing retailer Primark and department store John Lewis saying on Monday they would temporarily close all of their shops.

It comes as Britain opened the first part of a 330 billion pound ($384 billion) loan guarantee scheme for businesses , which will help small and medium-sized firms borrow up to 5 million pounds to deal with coronavirus stoppages.

(Additional reporting by Costas Pitas and David Milliken; Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alison Williams)

Who gets the ventilator? British doctors contemplate harrowing coronavirus care choices

By Stephen Grey and Andrew MacAskill

LONDON (Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic is forcing senior doctors in Britain’s National Health Service to contemplate the unthinkable: how to ration access to critical care beds and ventilators should resources fall short.

The country’s public health system, the NHS, is ill-equipped to cope with an outbreak that is unprecedented in modern times. Hospitals are now striving to at least quadruple the number of intensive care beds to meet an expected surge in serious virus cases, senior physicians told Reuters, but expressed dismay that preparations had not begun weeks earlier.

With serious shortages of ventilators, protective equipment and trained workers, the physicians said senior staff at hospitals were beginning to confront an excruciating debate on intensive care rationing, though Britain may be a long way from potentially having to make such decisions.

Rahuldeb Sarkar, a consultant physician in respiratory medicine and critical care in the English county of Kent, said local NHS trusts across the country were reviewing decision-making procedures drawn up, but never needed, during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. They cover how to choose who, in the event of a shortage, would be put on a ventilator and for how long.

Decisions would always be based on an individual basis if it got to that point, taking into account the chance of survival, he said. But nevertheless, there would be difficult choices.

“It will be tough, and that’s why it’s important that you know, that two or more consultants will make the decisions.”

Sarkar said the choices extended not only to who was given access to a ventilator but how long to continue if there was no sign of recovery.

“In normal days, that patient would be given some more days to see which way it goes,” he added. But if the worst predictions about the spread of the virus proved correct, he suspected “it will happen quicker than before”.

Britain is by no means the only country that faces having its health system overwhelmed by COVID-19, but the data on critical care beds – a crucial bulwark against the disease – is concerning for UK authorities.

Italy, where the coronavirus has driven hospitals to the point of collapse in some areas and thousands have died, had about 12.5 critical care beds per 100,000 of its population before the outbreak.

That is above the European average of 11.5, while the figure in Germany is 29.2, according to a widely-quoted academic study https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-012-2627-8 dating back to 2012 which doctors said was still valid. Britain has 6.6.

‘MANY TIMES MORE’ VENTILATORS

Estimates of the potential death toll in Britain range from a government estimate of around 20,000 to an upper end of over 250,000 predicted by researchers at Imperial College. As of March 19, 64,621 people had been tested, with 3,269 positive.

The NHS is preparing for the biggest challenge it has faced since it was founded after the ravages of World War Two, promising cradle-to-grave healthcare for all.

It was stretched long before COVID-19, struggling to adapt to the vast increase in healthcare demand in recent years. Some doctors complain that it is underfunded and poorly managed. About a tenth of its more than one million staff roles in the health service are vacant while almost nine out of 10 beds are occupied.

The department of health referred a request for comment to NHS England, which said it was crucial to reduce the coronavirus’s infection rate to ease peak pressure on the health system.

“Unmitigated, there is no health service in the world that would be able to cope if the virus let rip,” said NHS England head Simon Stevens. “In the meantime, what the NHS is doing, of course, is pulling out all the stops to make sure that we have as many staff, beds and other facilities available.”

So how many life-saving ventilators are needed?

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Sunday that hospitals had around 5,000 but that they needed “many times more than that”.

The physicians interviewed by Reuters said, if ventilators were secured, the aim was to increase intensive care beds from around 4200 to over 16,000, partly by using beds in other parts of hospitals.

Rob Harwood, a consultant anesthetist in Norfolk who has worked in the health service for almost four decades, said access to critical care could ultimately have to be determined by patient scoring systems for survivability. Systems developed for SARS, another coronavirus that broke out in 2003, could for example be refined, he added.

“Once you have exhausted your capacity and exhausted your ability to expand your capacity you probably have to make other decisions about admission into intensive care.”

But he emphasized that, for now, admission criteria would stay unaltered: “We are a country mile from that at the moment.”

‘BECOME CANNON FODDER’

While shortages of critical care equipment may be most alarming, the coronavirus has exposed how generally ill-equipped the health system is for a pandemic.

The British Medical Association said doctors have been asked to go to hardware stores and building sites to source protective masks.

Some doctors are worried about Public Health England’s (PHE) new advice last week which reduces the level of the protective equipment they need to wear.

Previously, staff on ward visits were told to wear full protective equipment, comprising high quality FFP3 face masks, visors, surgical gowns and two pairs of gloves. But the new advice recommends only a lower-quality standard paper surgical face mask, short gloves and a plastic apron.

PHE referred queries about doctors’ worries to the health department, which did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.

A senior NHS epidemiologist, who was not permitted to be named, told Reuters this advice was based on a sensible assessment of the biohazard risk of the virus. “It’s not Ebola,” the doctor said, pointing out the risk to medical staff without underlying medical conditions was low.

Matt Mayer, head of the local medical committee covering an area in south of England, said GPs had been sent face masks in boxes that said “best before 2016” and that have been relabeled with new stickers reading “2021”.

“If you are going to lead people into a hazardous situation then you need to give them the confidence that they have the kit to do a decent job and they are not just going to become cannon fodder,” said Harwood the anesthetist.

The department of health said that they had tested certain products to see if it is possible to extend their use.

“The products that pass these stringent tests are subject to relabelling with a new shelf-life as appropriate and can continue to be used,” a spokesman said.

RAPID GUIDELINES

Dr Alison Pittard, dean of the Faculty of Intensive Medicine and a consultant in Leeds, northern England, said there had been chronic underinvestment in critical care in Britain. But she said the country was not yet at the stage where it had to make calls about rationing patient resources.

She said, if rationing became necessary, medical ethics should still prevail and guidelines needed to be issued on a national level so that no patient was worse off based on where they lived. The NHS might need also need the advice of military leaders, she said, on how to effectively triage.

“If we got to a difficult position where we had to exhaust every bit of resource in the country then, yes, we may have to change the way we approach the decision-making.”

Stephen Powis, the National Medical Director of NHS England, said there were plans to issue new guidance to give doctors advice on how to make difficult decisions if there was a surge in coronavirus cases, like in Italy.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said on Friday it would shortly announce a “series of rapid guidelines” on the management of people with suspected and confirmed COVID-19, including in critical care.

The guidelines are not, however, expected to be prescriptive but to suggest leaving key decisions to individual doctors.

Pittard said patients with pre-existing conditions who already had life-threatening health difficulties should be having conversations with their family about how they wished to spend their last days, in the event of them being infected.

“If I get coronavirus now I’ve got a very high chance of dying of it,” she said, putting herself into the shoes of such a patient. “So do I want to die in hospital and when my relatives can’t come in to visit me because it’s too risky, or would I like to die at home?

“And if I do want to go into hospital, do I then want to go to intensive care where my chances of surviving are minimal?”

(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Pravin Char)

Dubai’s ruler abducted daughters and threatened former wife, UK judge rules

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and orchestrated a campaign of intimidation against his former wife, a British judge has ruled.

Judge Andrew McFarlane said he accepted as proved a series of allegations made by Mohammed’s former wife, Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, 45, half-sister of Jordan’s King Abdullah, during a custody battle over their two children at London’s High Court.

Haya fled to London on April 15 last year with the children, Jalila, 12, and Zayed, 8, fearing for her safety amid suspicions that she had an affair with one of her British bodyguards.

Her lawyers argued that Mohammed’s treatment of two of his older daughters by another marriage showed her children were at risk of being abducted too.

As part of the custody case, Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Court division in England and Wales, made a series of “findings of fact” about allegations raised by Haya during hearings over the last nine months.

McFarlane said he accepted her claim that Mohammed arranged for his daughter Shamsa, then aged 18, to be kidnapped off the streets of Cambridge in central England in 2000, and had her flown back to Dubai.

He also ruled it was proved that the sheikh had arranged for Shamsa’s younger sister Latifa to be snatched from a boat in international waters off India by Indian forces in 2018 and returned to the emirate in what was her second failed escape attempt.

Both remained there “deprived of their liberty”, McFarlane said.

After the ruling became public on Thursday, Mohammed said it only represented “one side of the story”.

“As a Head of Government, I was not able to participate in the court’s fact-finding process, this has resulted in the release of a ‘fact-finding’ judgment which inevitably tells only one side of the story,” he said in a statement issued by his lawyers.

He said a decision to allow the judgments to be made public did not protect his children “from media attention in the way that other children in family proceedings in the UK are protected”.

In the judgments, McFarlane accepted that the sheikh subjected Haya to a campaign of intimidation which made her fear for her life.

He said the sheikh, who married Haya in 2004, had divorced her on the 20th anniversary of the death of her father King Hussein of Jordan, timing she said was deliberate.

“I have … concluded that, save for some limited exceptions, the mother has proved her case with respect to the factual allegations she has made,” McFarlane said.

The sheikh, 70, vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, did not appear himself during the court case and instructed his lawyers not to put forward a challenge to the claims, which his lawyers said he rejected.

The judgment does not amount to a determination of criminal guilt but it is likely to deal a reputational blow to the sheikh, regarded globally as the visionary force behind Dubai’s leap on the international stage.

RESTRICTIONS LIFTED

The judge’s conclusions were made in December but could only be reported after restrictions were lifted after the UK Supreme Court earlier rejected Mohammed’s request for permission to appeal against their publication.

McFarlane said the allegations made by Haya about the abduction and torture of Shamsa and Latifa and the threats made against her were proved, with the exception of her claim that an arranged marriage was being sought between Jalila and Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Last July, the judge had issued a temporary forced marriage protection order in respect of Jalila over Haya’s fears but said these were only based on hearsay evidence.

“The allegations that the father ordered and orchestrated the kidnap and rendition to Dubai of his daughters Shamsa and Latifa are of a very high order of seriousness,” said McFarlane.

“They may well involve findings, albeit on the civil standard, of behavior which is contrary to the criminal law of England and Wales, international law, international maritime law, and internationally accepted human rights norms.”

McFarlane said the sheikh had denied all the allegations, but said of his account relating to Shamsa and Latifa that “he has not been open and honest with the court”.

“I have found that he continues to maintain a regime whereby both of these two young women are deprived of their liberty, albeit within family accommodation in Dubai,” he said.

The sheikh married Haya, believed to be his sixth wife, in 2004. McFarlane said in his judgment that at some stage in 2017 or 2018, she had an affair with one her bodyguards and her relationship with her husband had deteriorated by early 2019 when she left Dubai.

Mohammed’s lawyer told the court Haya had closed the children’s bank accounts and withdrawn about $32 million before arriving in Britain.

FRIENDS OF UK ROYALS

Haya and Mohammed are both on friendly terms with members of the British royal family and in the past the sheikh, one of the founders of the Godolphin horse racing stable, has been pictured with Queen Elizabeth at Britain’s Royal Ascot horse races.

Haya, who shares his love of horses and competed in equestrian jumping in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, was schooled in Britain and is now living with their children in the couple’s luxury mansion near Kensington Palace in west London.

McFarlane said the case had been unique.

Outside the austere wood-panneled courtroom of the Royal Courts of Justice, four or five bodyguards wearing earpieces patrolled, with only lawyers and a small number of journalists, including Reuters, allowed to be present.

The lawyers’ benches were filled with some of Britain’s most senior legal operators including David Pannick, who successfully represented anti-Brexit campaigners in two high-profile court victories over the government and was drafted in by Mohammed to lead his team during the case.

Haya herself attended all the hearings, accompanied by her legal team which included Fiona Shackleton who represented British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles in his divorce from his late first wife Princess Diana.

Giving evidence in person last November, she told McFarlane she feared the sheikh would abduct her two children, take them back to the Gulf Arab state and she would never see them again.

“I have seen what has happened to their sisters and I can’t face the fact that the same might happen to them,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Iranian factory makes U.S. and Israeli flags to burn

KHOMEIN, Iran (Reuters) – Business is booming at Iran’s largest flag factory which makes U.S., British and Israeli flags for Iranian protesters to burn.

At the factory in the town of Khomein, southwest of the capital Tehran, young men and women print the flags by hand then hang them up to dry. The factory produces about 2,000 U.S. and Israeli flags a month in its busiest periods, and more than 1.5 million square feet of flags a year.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have reached the highest level in decades after top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, prompting Iran to retaliate with a missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq days later.

In state-sponsored rallies and protests in Iran, demonstrators regularly burn the flags of Israel, U.S. and Britain.

Ghasem Ghanjani, who owns the Diba Parcham flag factory, said: “We have no problem with the American and British people. We have (a) problem with their governors. We have (a) problem with their presidents, with the wrong policy they have.”

“The people of America and Israel know that we have no problem with them. If people burn the flags of these countries at different rallies, it is only to show their protest.”

Rezaei, a quality control manager, who declined to give her first name, said, “compared to the cowardly actions of the United States, such as General Soleimani’s assassination, this (burning an American flag) is a minimal thing against them. This is the least that can be done.”

For hardliners, anti-American sentiment has always been central to Iran’s Islamic revolution, and Iran’s clerical rulers continue to denounce the United States as the Great Satan.

Last November, however, many Iranians took to the streets to protest against the country’s top authorities, chanting “our enemy is not the U.S., our enemy is here.”

During protests this month that erupted after Tehran belatedly admitted shooting down a passenger plane by mistake, young demonstrators in Tehran refused to step on the American flag painted on the street.

(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

China tells U.S. and Britain to stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – China’s ambassador to London on Monday accused foreign countries including the United States and Britain of interfering in Chinese internal affairs through their reactions to the violent clashes taking place in Hong Kong.

The Asian financial hub, which was handed over to China by former colonial ruler Britain in 1997 but enjoys a degree of autonomy under the “one country, two systems” formula, has been plunged into chaos for almost six months.

In a dramatic escalation, Hong Kong police were laying siege to a university in Hong Kong, firing rubber bullets and tear gas to push back anti-government protesters armed with petrol bombs and other weapons to stop them from fleeing.

In London, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming called a news conference at the Chinese Embassy to comment on events in Hong Kong and criticise Western governments and media for their responses to the crisis.

“Some Western countries have publicly supported extreme violent offenders,” he said.

“The U.S. House of Representatives adopted the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act to blatantly interfere in Hong Kong affairs, which are China’s internal affairs.

“The British government and the foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons published China-related reports making irresponsible remarks on Hong Kong.”

Liu also said that by criticising violent actions by the authorities as well as by the protesters, Britain was in effect taking sides.

“I think when the British government criticises Hong Kong police, criticises the Hong Kong government in handling the situation, they are interfering into China’s internal affairs,” he said.

“They look like they are balanced but as a matter of fact they are taking sides. That is our position.”

The ambassador also attacked Western media, saying that reporting on Hong Kong was misleading and did not give enough prominence to violence perpetrated by the protesters. He also dismissed Western media reports on the separate issue of what U.N. experts and activists condemn as repression in China’s western Xinjiang region as “pure fabrication”.

As the ambassador’s news conference was unfolding, the British Foreign Office issued the latest in a series of statements about Hong Kong.

“The UK is seriously concerned by the escalation in violence from both the protesters and the authorities around Hong Kong university campuses,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.

“It is vital that those who are injured are able to receive appropriate medical treatment, and that safe passage is made available for all those who wish to leave the area. We need to see an end to the violence, and for all sides to engage in meaningful political dialogue ahead of the District Council elections on Sunday.”

Also during the news conference at the embassy, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on all sides to show restraint.

The European Commission on Monday also called on law enforcement authorities to keep their action “strictly proportionate”.

(Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Elizabeth Piper and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alison Williams)

Season of discontent: protests flare around the world

Season of discontent: protests flare around the world
(Reuters) – Another day, another protest.

On Monday it was Bolivia – angry people clashed with police after the political opposition said it had been cheated in an election won by incumbent President Evo Morales.

Last week, the streets of the Chilean capital Santiago descended into chaos, as demonstrators enraged by a hike in public transport fares looted stores, set a bus alight and prompted the president to declare a state of emergency.

Earlier this month, Ecuador’s leader did the same after violent unrest triggered by the decision to end fuel subsidies that had been in place for decades.

And that was just South America.

Hong Kong has been in turmoil for months, Lebanon’s capital Beirut was at a standstill, parts of Barcelona resembled a battlefield last week and tens of thousands of Britons marched through London at the weekend over Brexit.

Protests have flared around the world in the last few months. Each has had its own trigger, but many of the underlying frustrations are similar.

Globalization and technological progress have, in general, exacerbated disparities within countries, said Sergei Guriev, former chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, while noting that not all of the current protests were driven by economic concerns.

Digital media has also made people more acutely aware of global inequalities, said Simon French, chief economist at UK bank Panmure Gordon.

“We know that the economics of happiness is largely driven by a relative assessment of your position versus your benchmark,” he said, a benchmark that now stretched way beyond the local community.

ECONOMICS

In at least four countries hit by recent violent protests, the main reason for the uprising is economic.

Governments in Chile and Ecuador have incurred their people’s wrath after trying to raise fares and end fuel subsidies.

As clashes engulfed Quito, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno reached out to indigenous leaders who had mobilized people to take to the streets.

Within minutes, chief protest organizer Jaime Vargas had rejected that outreach.

“We’re defending the people,” Vargas said in a live Facebook video from the march in Quito.

His response, visible to millions of people, underlines an added challenge authorities have when trying to quell dissent: social media has made communication between protesters easier than ever.

Tens of thousands of people have flooded Beirut in the biggest show of dissent against the establishment there in decades. People of all ages and religions joined to protest about worsening economic conditions and the perception that those in power were corrupt.

Similar factors were behind deadly civil unrest in Iraq in early October.

More than 100 people died in violent protests across a country where many Iraqis, especially young people, felt they had seen few economic benefits since Islamic State militants were defeated in 2017.

Security forces cracked down, with snipers opening fire from rooftops and the internet being shut to stem the flow of information among protesters.

GIVE US OUR AUTONOMY

Hong Kong has been battered by five months of often violent protests over fears Beijing is tightening its grip on the territory, the worst political crisis since colonial ruler Britain handed it back to China in 1997.

There have been few major rallies in recent weeks, but violence has escalated at those held, with militant activists setting metro stations ablaze and smashing up shops, often targeting Chinese banks and stores with mainland links.

Police have fired thousands of rounds of tear gas, hundreds of rubber bullets and three live rounds at brick- and petrol bomb-throwing activists.

The events in Hong Kong have drawn comparisons to Catalonia in recent days. There, too, people are angry at what they see as attempts to thwart their desire for greater autonomy from the rest of Spain, if not outright independence.

Protesters set cars on fire and threw petrol bombs at police in Barcelona, unrest sparked by the sentencing of Catalan separatist leaders who sought to declare an independent state.

Demonstrators also focused on strategic targets to cause maximum disruption, including the international airport, grounding more than 100 flights.

That came several days after similar action in Hong Kong, suggesting that protest movements are following and even copying each other on social media and the news.

“In Hong Kong they have done it well, but they are crazier,” said Giuseppe Vayreda, a 22-year-old art student at a recent Catalan separatist protest.

On Thursday, Hong Kong protesters plan a rally to show solidarity with those demonstrating in Spain.

LEADER OR NO LEADER

In some cases, individuals rise to the forefront of protest movements, using social media to get their message across.

In Egypt, where demonstrations last month were relatively small yet significant in their rarity, the catalyst of dissent against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was an Egyptian posting videos from Spain.

Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, inspired millions of people to march through cities around the world in September to demand that political leaders act to stop climate change.

Tens of thousands gathered in a New York park to listen to her speech.

“If you belong to that small group of people who feel threatened by us, then we have some very bad news for you,” she said. “Because this is only the beginning. Change is coming whether they like it or not.”

(Reporting by Reuters correspondents; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal and Heather Timmons in Washington; Writing by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Sonya Hepinstall)

Britain joins Boeing suspensions, investigators probe Ethiopia crash

Passengers' personal belongings are seen at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

By Duncan Miriri and Tim Hepher

ADDIS ABABA/PARIS (Reuters) – Britain joined a growing wave of suspensions of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft around the world on Tuesday, escalating the global alarm after a crash in Ethiopia that killed 157 people in the second such disaster for the model in the past few months.

The decision by one of the industry’s most established regulators was the most serious setback yet for Boeing in the wake of Sunday’s crash and put pressure on regulators in the rest of Europe and the United States to follow suit.

At the same time as London’s announcement, Norwegian Air said it too would temporarily ground its MAX 8 passenger jets on the advice of European regulators.

Earlier, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Oman had also temporarily suspended the aircraft, following China, Indonesia and others the day before.

“The UK, Singapore and Australia are independent professionals,” said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia. “I am sure the (U.S.) Federal Aviation Administration will take their judgment into account.”

Sunday’s disaster – after the fatal crash of a 737 MAX jet in Indonesia in October – has wiped billions of dollars off the market value of the world’s biggest planemaker.

But experts say it is too early to speculate on the reason for the crash or whether the two are linked. Most crashes are caused by a unique chain of human and technical factors.

Given problems of identification at the charred disaster site, Ethiopian Airlines said it would take at least five days to start handing remains to families.

The victims came from more than 30 different nations, and included nearly two dozen U.N. staff.

“We are Muslim and have to bury our deceased immediately,” Noordin Mohamed, a 27-year-old Kenyan businessman whose brother and mother died, told Reuters.

“Losing a brother and mother in the same day and not having their bodies to bury is very painful,” he said in the Kenyan capital Nairobi where the plane had been due.

 

Wreckage is seen at the site of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

Wreckage is seen at the site of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

FIREBALL

Flight ET 302 came down in a field soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday, creating a fireball in a crater. It may take weeks or months to identify all the victims, who include a prize-winning author, a soccer official and a team of humanitarian workers.

The United States has said it remained safe to fly the planes, and Boeing has said there is no need to issue new guidance to operators based on the information it has so far.

Ethiopian Airlines has grounded its four other 737 MAX 8 jets as a precaution.

Anxiety was also evident among some travelers, who rushed to find out from social media and travel agents whether they were booked to fly on 737 MAX planes – the same model in the Lion Air crash off Indonesia that killed 189 people in October.

If the black box recordings found at the Ethiopian crash site are undamaged, the cause of the crash could be identified quickly, although it typically takes a year for a full probe.

Nearly 40 percent of the in-service fleet of 371 Boeing 737 MAX jets globally is grounded, according to industry publication Flightglobal. That includes 97 jets in biggest market China.

Boeing shares fell another 4.8 percent on Tuesday after having lost 5 percent on Monday.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a “continued airworthiness notification” for the 737 MAX on Monday to assure operators, and detailed a series of design changes mandated by Boeing after the Indonesia crash.

FILE PHOTO - SilkAir's new aircraft, the Boeing 737 Max 8, sits on the tarmac at Changi Airport in Singapore October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo

FILE PHOTO – SilkAir’s new aircraft, the Boeing 737 Max 8, sits on the tarmac at Changi Airport in Singapore October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo

BETTER SOFTWARE

Boeing said it had been working with the FAA following the Lion Air crash to enhance flight control software that would be deployed across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks.

The MAX 8 has new software that automatically pushes the plane’s nose down if a stall is detected. There is no evidence so far whether the system was involved in the Ethiopia crash, though experts said this would be a focus of the investigation.

The new variant of the 737, the world’s best-selling modern passenger aircraft, could become the workhorse for airlines around the globe for decades and another 4,661 are on order.

In Latin America, Gol in Brazil temporarily suspended MAX 8 flights, as did Argentina’s state airline Aerolineas Argentinas and Mexico’s Aeromexico.

In Asia, South Korean budget carrier Eastar Jet said it would temporarily ground its two 737 MAX 8s from Wednesday, while India ordered additional checks.

Vietnam state media reported the aviation regulator would not issue licenses to local airlines to operate the 737 MAX until the cause of the Ethiopian crash was known.

Still, major airlines from North America to the Middle East kept flying the 737 MAX. Southwest Airlines Co, which operates the largest fleet of 737 MAX 8s, said it remained confident in the safety of all its Boeing planes.

Former FAA accident investigator Mike Daniel said the decision by regulators to ground the planes was premature. “To me it’s almost surreal how quickly some of the regulators are just grounding the aircraft without any factual information yet as a result of the investigation,” he told Reuters.

In Nairobi, the U.N. Environment Program set up a small memorial for Victor Tsang, a staff member who lost his life.

“Travel well my friend, see you on the other side,” said one entry in a condolence book beside a framed photograph, bouquet of flowers and candle. By mid-afternoon, 23 pages of the condolence book had been filled with over 250 names.

(Additional reporting by Jamie Freed and Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Katharine Houreld and Hereward Holland in Nairobi; Eric Johnson in Seattle; James Pearson in Hanoi; Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Georgina Prodhan, Jon Boyle and Keith Weir)

Major European nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela president

FILE PHOTO: Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido speaks during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

By Jose Elas Rodriguez and Sudip Kar-Gupta

MADRID/PARIS (Reuters) – Ten European nations joined the United States in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president on Monday, heightening a global showdown over Nicolas Maduro’s socialist rule.

France, Spain, Germany, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands’ coordinated move came after the expiry of an eight-day ultimatum for Maduro to call a new election.

The Venezuelan leader, accused of running the OPEC nation of 30 million people like a dictatorship and wrecking its economy, has defied them and said European rulers are sycophantically following President Donald Trump.

Guaido, who leads the National Assembly, declared himself caretaker leader last month in a move that has divided international powers and brought Venezuelans onto the streets.

Trump immediately recognized him but European Union countries were more hesitant.

Russia and China, which have poured billions of dollars of investment and loans into Venezuela, are supporting Maduro in an extension of their geopolitical tussle with the United States.

“From today, we will spare no effort in helping all Venezuelans achieve freedom, prosperity and harmony,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, urging fair elections and humanitarian aid.

In response, Maduro accused “cowardly” Spain of taking a “malign” decision. “If one day there is a coup, if one day there is a gringo military intervention, your hands will be stained with blood, Mr. Pedro Sanchez,” he said in a speech.

Maduro, 56, a former union leader, bus driver and foreign minister, replaced former president Hugo Chavez in 2013 after his death from cancer. But he has presided over an economic collapse and exodus of 3 million Venezuelans.

He accuses Washington of waging an “economic war” on Venezuela and harboring coup pretensions aimed at gaining control over its oil. Venezuela’s oil reserves are the largest in the world but production has plunged under Maduro.

“ILLEGITIMATE, KLEPTOCRATIC REGIME”

Critics say incompetent policies and corruption have impoverished the once-wealthy nation while dissent has been brutally crushed.

A draft EU statement said the 28-member bloc would “acknowledge” Guaido as interim president, but formal recognition was a prerogative of individual states.

“The oppression of the illegitimate, kleptocratic Maduro regime must end,” said British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt as he announced London was recognizing Guaido.

Russia accused Europe of meddling.

“Imposing some kind of decisions or trying to legitimize an attempt to usurp power is both direct and indirect interference,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Caracas pays both Russian and Chinese loans with oil.

Maduro won re-election last year, but critics say the vote was a sham. Two opposition rivals with a good chance of winning were barred, while food handouts and other subsidies to hungry Venezuelans were linked with political support.

Italy’s 5-Star Movement, which makes up half of the ruling coalition, dissents from the European stance, saying it would not recognize self-appointed leaders.

But its governing partner, the League, disagrees.

Guaido told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that he would do everything possible to secure Italian support.

In addition to European pressure, a bloc of Latin American nations plus Canada were to meet on Monday seeking to maintain pressure on Maduro.

“All these shameless people are clinging to power,” said Luis, a 45-year-old Venezuelan outside the consulate in Madrid. “Let them hold elections so they see they won’t get even 10 percent of the votes.”

Italy’s SkyTG24 channel quoted Maduro as appealing to the Pope to help dialogue ahead of what he hoped would be a “peace conference” led by Mexico and others on Feb. 7. Conscious of the collapse of a past Vatican mediation bid, foes say Maduro uses dialogue to play for time and regroup when on the back foot.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Marine Pennetier in Paris; Guy Faulconbridge and Mike Holden in London; Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid; Andrew Osborn and Thomas Balmforth in Moscow; Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Steve Scherer in Rome; Alissa de Carbonnel and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Sarah Marsh in Caracas; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Kremlin says we won’t use detained ex-U.S. marine as a pawn

FILE PHOTO: Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen detained in Russia for suspected spying, appears in a photo provided by the Whelan family on January 1, 2019. Courtesy Whelan Family/Handout via REUTERS

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin on Wednesday rejected a British suggestion it might use a former U.S. Marine detained in Russia on espionage charges as a pawn in a diplomatic game and said it reserved the right to conduct counter-intelligence activities.

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who also holds a British passport, was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service on Dec. 28. His family has said he is innocent and that he was in Moscow to attend a wedding.

Commenting on the case earlier this month, British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said individuals should not be used as pawns of diplomatic leverage.

Asked about Hunt’s remark, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters:

“In Russia, we never use people as pawns in diplomatic games. In Russia, we conduct counter-intelligence activity against those suspected of espionage. That is done regularly.”

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Christian Lowe)